by Dane Hartman
Everytime the slurred voice mangled a word with “s” in it, a shower of spittle escaped from between the man’s lips. By the time he had surfed through Pittsburgh and piss-ass, Harry’s ear felt like the Mississippi basin. But even with the drunken drizzle, Harry would have had a hard time moving away from the man. The Four Ponies Bar was packed and he had to keep his eye on the back booth.
“We’ve got barrios filled with wetbacks,” the drunk went on. “Half a million of ’em! We’ve got soldier boys. Fifty thousand of ’em on four bases! We’ve got the San Antonio River. We’ve got the Passeo . . . the Passeo . . .”
“Paseo del Rio,” Harry completed for him, feeling like his ear was turning into a prune.
“Yeah, thass it,” mumbled the drunk. “Everything’s big in Texas. And that’s the way I like ’em. Big! You know what I mean? Big! I like ’em big!”
The drunk laughed hysterically over his weak metaphor. Harry thought it time to get rid of the guy. If he kept up his sodden spiel the boys in the back booth might take notice.
“You want another beer?” Harry asked the drunk.
“Sure!” the drunk responded immediately. “Gimme another brew! C’mon, give it to me!”
“There’s a big, cold can of Golden State beer outside for you,” said a smiling Harry. “Go on and get it.”
“Golden State? All right!” cried the drunk struggling off his stool. “Thass better than Fosters. Thass better ’n Coors. Golden State, thass the beer for me.” The drunk shouldered his way through the ample crowd of cowboys and Mexicans. “Clear my plate for Golden State!” was the last thing Harry heard him cry before he was swallowed up by the smoke and the crowd.
There was plenty of both in the Four Ponies on that Friday night. It had been a hard week for everybody, including Harry. He had spent his time commuting between the Ramada Inn room where he was staying and Peter Nash’s cellar where the cop conspiracy was planned. Harry liked the cellar better. His hotel room was like most moderately priced hotel rooms; long, beige, dull, with beds that were almost as wide as they were long. And neither length was really enough to rest his tall frame comfortably.
The cellar was low, cool, and interesting. The floor was uneven, dirty concrete, the walls were dark stones swimming in white plaster, and the corners held webby condominiums of strange-looking bugs. But the most interesting thing about the cellar was what went on there. Every night a parade of incognito police officers would traipse through and get orders from ex-deputy Nash.
Nash, Harry discovered, was a brilliant strategist. He moved every officer in exactly the right arrangement to make a noose around his target’s neck. One by one, Nash had been marking Striker’s underlings for arrest and probable conviction. While most of the sentences for these crimes had been minor and bail was produced almost immediately in all cases, the constant harassment and annoyance factor must have been driving the Mexican businessman crazy.
Tonight was the night for Glen Thurston, Striker’s kickback specialist. It was the first step in the new campaign to change Callahan into a thorn that would be driven into Striker’s side. Once it started smarting enough, Nash was sure Sweetboy Williams would be sent out. After that Harry would go home either on a plane or in a pine box.
The San Francisco-based detective watched the back booth through the mirror behind the bar. Seated there were Thurston, a chunky, blondish hunk, and two of his kickback pals. The fourth was the outwardly affable owner of the bar. Harry saw he was doing his best to pal it up with the gang. The dozens of beer bottles and half-eaten plates of Italian food were evidence enough of that.
But Harry saw the nervousness under the owner’s pleasant manner. Harry knew the owner knew why the Striker boys were here. If it wasn’t for a payoff, then it was for the perks that came with being affiliated with power. Thurston and his friends were having the time of their lives, secure in the knowledge that Striker’s name was enough to get them anything they wanted.
Things hadn’t changed much from the twenties, Harry decided. Then it was called “protection” or “insurance.” Buy your booze from me or cut me in for some of the gravy and the Ninetieth Panzergrenadier Division won’t fall on your grandmother. Only today, the system was much more civilized. If I throw a lot of income your way, you throw me back some. It was still illegal and it was still thievery, but the kickbacker figured it was worth his while.
That is, he figured it was worth it until Striker and company got their claws into him. Then the kickbacks had to keep coming whether the orders got larger or not. So it had to be all smiles, spaghetti, and sauce from the bar owner or the Ninetieth Panzergrenadier Division would return.
Callahan sat, waiting for his cue. Everything had been set up perfectly. The money was set to change hands tonight. While the cops had not been ordered to set up a stake-out or surveillance, Nash arranged for two “unbought” officers to “just happen to be in the area.” Another off-duty cop would just happen to be on the scene when the cash changed owners. It was Harry’s job to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. And if they did get out of hand, make sure that no one got away.
During the Tucker time in office, it was much easier, but now things had to be done unofficially. The arrests had to be made “by coincidence.” Harry marveled at the things he got himself into. He was the muscle man in the operation. An operation that took police work out of the police’s hands. For all intents and purposes, Peter Nash was declaring war on all the cops on the take with Harry being set up as the scapegoat. Long after Callahan had broken up the “Vigilante Cop,” he was the prime ingredient in another one.
Thurston’s dinner was finished. Harry saw the fat cat push his plate away. The place was packed with noisy, happy drinkers. The jukebox was blaring David Allan Coe’s “Willie, Waylon and Me.” The two pinball machines were going strong. Guys were huddled around the two video games; “Space Invaders,” and “Asteroids.” The cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoke had gotten as thick as Tennessee fog. It was 11:15 P.M., so it was unlikely that the place would get any busier.
If any green were going to dance across the table into Thurston’s lap, it was going to dance now.
Harry was glad he had checked the place out earlier. It was a moderately sized watering hole, much like Tanya’s place in his home town. The front door opened to a coat rack and a small, plastic partition. To the right of the partition were tables, a phone, and rest rooms, occasionally interrupted by potted cactus plants. To the left was the bar, flanked on both sides by the entertainment machines: pinball, video, and the jukebox.
In back of both these sections was a separate small dance hall, complete with a fenced-off section where a live band would play, more tables, a walk-in refrigerator for excess booze, and a closed-off kitchen.
The dance hall itself was closed off tonight because the band that usually played on Fridays had a sick drummer. So instead of a few musicians and boogieing dancers, the hall was filled with crates, casks, and empty beer bottles.
The only way out of the room besides the entrance was a door between the fridge and the kitchen. It led to a back porch which led to a back yard. The back yard was fenced in on three sides, leaving an open space to the right of the porch.
To the left of the roadside bar was a business-machines shop and to the right was a truck loading depot. To drown out the sound of trucks on the move, the Four Ponies turned the pinball sound effects and the jukebox’s volume way up high. Screaming your head off was common practice at the bar.
At the moment, the bar’s owner was using the universal sign language of green paper. Harry saw the cash flash in the mirror even before the off-duty cop playing one of the video games did. Harry slowly swung around, slipped off the stool, and started shouldering his way toward the back.
He saw the off-duty cop staring intently at the “Asteroids” screen. Stupidly, he had agreed to play another patron. Not only was the extra man blocking some of the cop’s line of sight, it made the officer too intent on the game. He see
med more interested in winning than paying attention to Thurston.
Harry looked back to the table. Thurston slid his hand over the wad of money and drew it toward the edge of the table. In a few seconds it would be over the lip and as far as any of the straight cops were concerned, gone for good. Harry glanced back at the off-duty officer. He was cursing his luck as a video-created hunk of rock destroyed the video ship he was piloting. Then he patiently waited for his score to appear.
Harry didn’t know whether to jump the table or smack the cop on the side of the head. No wonder Striker was able to get control of the city, Callahan marveled. With cops like these, Nash needed all the help he could get.
After a millisecond’s deliberation, Harry decided to hit the table. Thurston’s hand had palmed the cash and was just about to slip it into his coat when an iron-hard grip latched onto his wrist, squeezed like a boa constrictor, and pulled the money hand out for all to see.
It was Harry’s right hand that gripped Thurston’s. In Harry’s left hand was the off-duty cop’s collar. With the money held somewhere between Thurston’s chin and the eggplant parmigiana, Harry pulled the cop until his thighs were bouncing off the table edge and his eyes were bouncing from face to face.
“Glen Thurston,” said Harry, “I’d like you to meet a San Antonio police officer. Officer, this is Mr. Thurston.” Harry looked from one man to the other until the full implications of the situation were obvious to both. “I hope you two will be very happy together,” he finished, opening his hands and moving behind the cop. “Read him his rights, asshole,” Harry instructed.
Glen Thurston had no intention of waiting around to hear them. With a roar befitting a man of his size, he placed his hands on the seat of his chair, lifted his legs, and kicked over the heavy wooden table.
The edge of the circular furniture came down on the cop’s toes while the top section pushed against his lower legs. The off-duty officer fell forward and sideways at the same time, pain rocketing up his limbs. The bar owner sat aghast as the three Striker representatives went every which way but loose.
Harry was there to make sure they didn’t get loose. The guy to Thurston’s right came straight at Callahan. In no mood to discuss anything, Harry made sure the man met his right fist head-on. The guy to Thurston’s left slid out from behind the felled table and slipped behind the partition between the bar and the rest rooms.
This partition, which stretched from one end of the room to the other was dotted with openings so the bartender could make sure no one skipped out on his check. Through one of these openings, the guy to Thurston’s left poked the barrel of a snubnose gun.
Harry didn’t wait to see who it might be pointed at. He ripped out his own gun, which was anything but snubnose, and shot right through the partition.
A hole the size of which was usually attributable to a shotgun blast appeared in the partition as the guy to Thurston’s left flew backward in the company of tiny, spinning shards and streams of his own blood. His snubnose spun in the air like a yo-yo at the apex of its flight, then dropped to the ground.
Harry pivoted toward Thurston himself. The kickback master was pushing his way toward the dance hall. Thanks to the man’s efforts and the sight of Harry’s Magnum, a clear line was created between the inspector and the fleeing hoodlum. Harry pointed his gun at Thurston’s back and was just about to say “halt,” when the slush-talking drunk wavered into the line of fire.
“You lied to me,” he moaned to Harry. “I looked and I looked, but there was no brew outside.”
Cursing, Harry pulled his gun barrel up, threw himself forward, and bowled the drunk over with a sweeping body block. The amazed drunk thought he was flying until he landed amid the broken table, the broken dishes, the extra macaroni, and the cringing off-duty police officer.
Harry entered the dance hall in time to dodge a rain of beer bottles. Thurston was marking his escape with any box he could grab and throw behind him. Harry crouched to the side of the entrance and took aim again. This time he was able to call out “halt” without any interruptions.
Thurston reacted to the pronouncement by leaping behind a silver cask of beer and clawing at his waistband. That particular hand motion usually meant one thing to Harry; the alleged perpetrator was going for a weapon.
Acting on instinct, Harry’s finger tightened on the Magnum’s trigger. He immediately loosened his trigger finger for two reasons. First, he remembered that he was not shooting on home turf at a local scumbag. Usually that reason was not sufficient for Harry to let someone shoot back at him, but the second reason he didn’t shoot was the more important and the more pressing. Namely, Harry didn’t know whether the keg Thurston was huddled behind was full or empty.
If empty, Harry’s bullets would go through like they went through almost everything else. But if it was full and under pressure, it could explode with the force of a frag grenade, sending hunks of sharp metal and gallons of beer everywhere. Under normal circumstances, Harry might have tried it, but these weren’t normal circumstances. He was fighting in front of an innocent crowd and had no personal cover.
Before Thurston could bring his own gun up and aim, Harry threw himself from the room entrance into the kitchen by way of the rectangular ordering window. He slid across the Formica counter and dropped to the floor. Punctuating his landing were the sounds of two gunshots and the wholesale stampede of the bar’s patrons toward the exits.
Harry hazarded a look through the ordering aperture he had jumped through. Thurston kicked over his keg cover at that very moment, charging for the rear door like the Schlitz Malt Liquor bull. He fired his gun as he went, slapping lead all around the kitchen.
Callahan ducked down while calculating Thurston’s speed. As soon as he thought the guy had reached the rear door, he shot diagonally through the kitchen door. His aim was good but his timing was a smidge off. The bullet punched a hole midway up the kitchen door and blasted outside, narrowly missing both Thurston’s back and the swinging back door.
Immediately afterward Harry was up and out the kitchen door himself, almost tripping over the beer keg Thurston had kicked aside. After noticing that the kickback man was still hustling across the back porch trying to find a way out of the yard, Harry hefted the metal cask up. It was empty. He carried it with him as he cautiously neared the back door.
He stood to one side, his Magnum held high and the beer keg held low. He looked back at the barroom. What patrons were left were staring at him from behind furniture. The only noise was of the off-duty cop groaning in pain from his squashed toes.
Harry looked outside. The back yard was empty. The loading lights from the truck stop next door bathed the area in a humid yellow gleam. Combined with the dark blue of the night, it made the shadows slightly green.
Harry stepped outside. He saw no human figure and he heard nothing. Harry looked to the right. The open part of the porch looked invitingly escapable. Harry shuffled in that direction for a moment, then stopped. He looked down. He thought about the fact that the porch was mounted about six feet off the ground. He thought about all the empty space between the dirt and the boards he was standing on.
Then he silently lowered the beer keg to the porch floor on its side. He placed the sole of his shoe against it and pushed. The keg slowly rolled toward the right edge of the porch.
Two seconds after it started rolling, bullet holes started appearing from underneath. As it lazily drifted to the right, gun reports would mingle with the sound of lead popping through and inside the oblong cask. As Harry had figured, Thurston was underneath the porch, shooting what he thought was a stalking policeman.
As soon as Thurston thought his stalker was dead, he himself fled. He raced out from under the porch toward the right and headed for the front of the bar and his parked car. Putting his weapon away, Harry ran over to the hole-ridden keg, picked it up, and threw it after the running man.
The fairly heavy metal cask bounced off the back of Thurston’s head with a noise
that was reminiscent of the sound the gong made at the beginning of a J. Arthur Rank film or throughout a Chuck Barris TV game show. Thurston’s head jutted forward, then the rest of his body followed. The kickback man did a forward somersault through the air, landed heavily on his back, and lay still.
“I tell you there’s nothing we can do about it,” complained Sheriff Strughold in a voice mixing pride with pleading. “The gun was legally registered, the final arrest was made by a duly authorized officer of the law . . . there’s absolutely nothing we can charge him with.”
“Do you mean to say,” H. A. Striker began, his voice mixing patience with displeasure, “that an out-of-state inspector throws a beer keg on one man’s head, assaults another, kills the third, and shoots up a night spot, and he hasn’t broken the law?”
“The owner isn’t pressing charges,” the Sheriff answered unhappily. “Every single witness backs up Callahan’s plea of self-defense. Besides, its being handled by the homicide and D.A.’s office. There was nothing I could hold him on.”
Hannibal Striker and Mitch Strughold stewed in the company of two bodyguards and two deputies at an outside café along the Paseo del Rio, the river Harry had mentioned to the drunk. It was a two and a half mile section of the San Antonio river dotted with shore-bound shops and eateries as well as floating vehicles for sightseeing and entertainment. The six powerful men sat around a square table right at the water’s edge.
On either side of them were trees that had strung lights reaching from branch to branch. It was a festive location and a beautiful Texas morning. It was a nice day to plan a vengeful counterattack.
The river was only about sixty feet wide and rarely more than twenty feet deep. Across the river from the half-dozen plotters was a walking area, often interrupted by stairways that led to stone bridges that spanned the water. On the bridge closest to the restaurant stood Harry Callahan. He watched as Striker and company talked.
