Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks

by Dane Hartman

  “We know all about your dealings with Harry. Word gets around, my man. So I don’t want to hear this shit. You refuse me and they are going to have to put you back together like a jigsaw puzzle just to fit you into a grave.”

  Wiping his mouth free of the blood that had gathered there, Longlegs cautiously got to his feet, at any moment expecting Patel to strike again and knock him back down.

  “When you want me to do this?” Longlegs was hoping for a reprieve, a day or two, to give himself a chance to conveniently disappear.

  “Right now. No sense wasting time.”

  Longlegs realized that it was useless to protest. Acquiescing to Patel’s demands, he allowed himself to be hustled back into the bar and into the phone booth there. It was hard to hear; the booth was open, there was music pouring out of the jukebox and Howard Cosell’s grating voice booming from the TV. Longlegs looked down at the number Patel had written out for him. His only hope was that Harry would not be in, but Harry was in all right, must have been sitting on top of the phone when he answered.

  One look at Patel and he knew that he had no choice but to say what he’d been instructed to.

  “Harry, look, I got some information for you. About those hit men you been running down. I got an idea who they might be.”

  “Which saloon are you at?”

  Harry could hear the music and the sounds of the televised ballgame filtering through the wires.

  Longlegs told him. “I’ll meet you right outside,” he said because that was his line and with each passing day he was becoming a better and better actor.

  “I trust you are satisfied,” Longlegs said, training his blurry bloodshot eyes on Patel.

  “Partially.” Patel smiled, but it was not the kind of smile Longlegs generally appreciated. “You carrying a piece with you?”

  After the conflict in the pawnshop a gun was about the last thing Longlegs wanted to be caught dead with. He thought again about the nature of that phrase caught dead with.

  When Longlegs said no, Patel nodded sagely and owned that that was pretty much what he’d suspected. “For that reason I brought along a present.” He led Longlegs back outside again and only when he was certain that no one was anywhere in the vicinity did he reveal a cheap Saturday night special.

  The ghost of his long-departed mother couldn’t have terrified Longlegs more. For all at once he understood what Patel wanted him to do.

  “Oh no, man. You’re not asking me what I think you’re asking me! You wouldn’t want me to be offing Officer Callahan, would you now?”

  “Exactly.” Patel’s voice turned soothing but there was a false note to it that Longlegs immediately picked up. “But I’ll see that you escape. There won’t be any problems afterward. You just make sure that you fire before he has a chance to anticipate you. And don’t stop until you’ve emptied the gun.”

  Under other circumstances Longlegs would have burst out laughing; knowing Harry’s reputation as he did he would never attempt to go one-on-one with him, with guns, fists, or Bowie knives if it came to that. But these were not laughing circumstances. Glumly, he asked what would happen if he should refuse to comply.

  “I’ll blow you the hell away.”

  “That’s what I figured you’d say.”

  “It won’t be as hard as you expect. Harry doesn’t suspect you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Officer Callahan, he suspects every mother that moves.”

  But Patel was a better judge of the situation than Longlegs had believed. Harry was so tense, so near the biting edge of exhaustion, that he was no longer humanly able to stay on top of things as he should. He materialized out of the San Francisco night like a man who’s just emerged from a couple of months buried in a cave. He looked shot, dazed, but he still had a decisive walk, purposefully straight ahead.

  “Over here, Harry!” Longlegs called to him.

  The noise and music from the bar could be heard in this half-darkened spot where the bar’s lights and the streetlamp broke off. The top of a garbage can clattered noisily to the pavement. Mice or else a cat was playing.

  Longlegs’ chest was heavy with fear; the pressure kept mounting, squeezing his heart until he thought the blood must be getting sucked all the hell out of it. The barrel of the Saturday night special was becoming ever more slippery with the sweat from his palm. Patel had told him to shoot right out of his pocket as soon as Harry came close enough to him. How close was close enough? At this point, a thousand miles for him was close enough.

  Patel was in back of him, around the corner, out of sight and out of Harry’s range. Longlegs couldn’t see the glint of his Browning—wouldn’t have dared shift his eyes to look in any case—but he knew it was there all right. If he failed to shoot Harry, Patel would shoot him. But he had the instinctive feeling that he would be blown away no matter what he did. The odds are always with whitey, he mused. Always.

  Harry was approaching, closing the distance with some speed. Ten yards remained between them. Longlegs knew damn well he was going to do something quickly. It was one thing when he’d stuck up grocers and gas station attendants; he’d had the advantage and while he was afraid, they were more afraid. But with two cops it was a whole different story. They were professionals and Longlegs was out of their league entirely.

  Suddenly Harry stopped. Maybe that sixth sense of his was operating. But he stopped, didn’t do anything else.

  Longlegs couldn’t help it or maybe he meant to but right at that point his eyes slid ever so slightly rightward in Patel’s direction and Harry picked up on it. The speed with which he reacted astounded Longlegs.

  He went down, providing as small a target as he could, but he still had no idea where or who his enemy was. Out of the corner of his eye Longlegs saw that Patel had shifted just enough to get a view of Harry, but it was not clear what he was going to do. He might still be waiting for Longlegs to act. He surely had a contingency plan though in case Longlegs did not.

  Longlegs, almost wholly immobilized, watched these two men who could not see each other as though he were no longer a participant but a spectator, waiting to see how the movie developed. Something in his mind was telling him that this was no fucking movie, but that something did not also inform him as to what precisely he should do about it.

  Then Harry, without a word, beckoned Longlegs forward. Longlegs couldn’t move. So Harry decided to. Move he did, back, practically zigzagging, still with his eyes on the unhappy snitch. Patel, rather than risk allowing his victim to escape him, drew himself parallel to the wall, still not exposing himself, and extended his Browning automatic to fire.

  But Longlegs realized that Harry couldn’t see his assailant yet. Ah hell, he decided, if he was going to die he might as well earn his death. He turned, facing Patel, expecting his body to become a home for several 9mm rounds within the next several moments. But to his astonishment, Patel, either because he was concentrating too much on Harry or because he was saving Longlegs till later, didn’t react to his sudden movement.

  Still with his hand gripping the Saturday night special—actually a 38-caliber Liana Especiala made for seven rounds—Longlegs pulled the trigger. He wasn’t really aiming at any point in particular, just in Patel’s general direction. The gun, when it discharged, bruised his thigh with its recoil, causing him to grunt with pain. A singed hole now appeared in his pocket, partially exposing the pistol.

  Patel was clearly taken by surprise. He still had his Browning up, aimed at Harry, but when he fired the bullet went awry. Longlegs’ shot had caught him in the groin and, upon entry, torn up much of his intestines. The expression on his face, beheld more easily now as he fell towards the light, was one of surprise more than pain.

  But the shot he fired panicked Longlegs who had no idea that he’d been lucky in his shooting; he flattened himself out on the ground, waiting for his death which he felt sure must be imminent.

  Harry, spotting Patel for the first time, had excellently positioned himself and
had his Magnum leveled directly at his antagonist. But he withheld his fire for a moment, being reluctant to inflict harm on another cop, albeit a cop who had a decidedly unfriendly attitude toward him. Also, he knew he would have to answer to Bressler if he did so, and that could prove more than a little bit awkward.

  And, in any case, from where Harry was crouched, behind the rear of a parked Ford LTD, he was not in any immediate jeopardy.

  Patel staggered forward, propelled by the pain that, now having made itself felt, began to blossom, coiling through his vitals with venomous fury. His eyes were glazing over. No longer able to see Harry or place him with any degree of certainty, he looked for a more convenient target. Blood, in the meantime, was spreading copiously over his uniform and leaking down his legs.

  Longlegs was doing his best to crawl away, but he could not avoid Patel’s attention. “Motherfucking son of a bitch,” Patel mumbled, cursing both Longlegs’ betrayal and his own miserable luck.

  With the choice of lying there and simply doing nothing or expending another round from his .38 Especiala, Longlegs decided that the latter made more sense. Patel shot at him, putting all his energies into the task, but Longlegs scrambled out of the way. Finding a great deal of difficulty in extricating the gun from his ruptured pocket, he kept it where it was and fired from thigh-level again and again. And yet again. He was firing like crazy, ignoring the constant slam of the butt against his hand and leg, not at all sure where all these bullets were going.

  Where they were all going with deadly but inadvertent accuracy was into Sandy Patel. He would jump involuntarily but otherwise he seemed incapable of responding. The last thing that he expected to happen was to meet his death at the hands of this spade, and so he resisted its coming for a few moments more than he would have had it been a white man perforating him with bullets. But Sandy Patel was only human after all, and at a certain point, no matter how much will he had, there was no way he had of resisting the inevitable. Blood no longer oozed from the wounds, it positively erupted, and deprived of his strength, his ambition, his concentration, even his rage, deprived of everything in fact but an awful gathering pain, he succumbed, allowed the darkness to sweep over him, and collapsed, dead before his body pitched forward to greet the awaiting pavement.

  Longlegs did not move. He kept expecting Patel to arise and continue in his quest to kill him. He could not believe that he had been responsible for ending his life. Actually, he didn’t want to believe that he’d done this because whatever else Sandy Patel was he was still a cop and murdering a cop, especially if you were black, was something you couldn’t readily dismiss. Longlegs began to wonder whether it might not have been better had he been the one shot and destined for a secure place in the earth six feet under.

  “You can get up now,” Harry said, approaching him.

  Longlegs saw that a number of the bar’s patrons had forsaken the game on television for the more violent spectacle on their doorstep. They were curious but puzzled, as yet uncertain as to exactly what had happened.

  Longlegs got to his feet, unthinkingly still holding onto the Especiala that Patel had given him to kill Harry. Without offering any resistance, he allowed Harry to lead him to his car. This is it, he thought with characteristic fatalism, this is where it ends for you.

  A police cruiser, its red beacon flinging swaths of light along the darkened streets as it raced toward the bar, could be discerned in Harry’s rearview mirror. But Harry paid no attention to it. He already had his car moving.

  Finally Longlegs spoke, his voice filled with remorse. “Officer Callahan, man, you gotta know this was not my doing. I swear to you on my mother’s grave—”

  Harry cut him off. “You don’t have to explain.” He brought the car to a halt in a vacated area not far from where the railroad tracks ran parallel to the Embarcadero. “You know a place you can disappear to?”

  Longlegs regarded him with bafflement. “What do you mean?”

  “What I said.” Harry was becoming impatient. “I want you to disappear. For a good long time.”

  “How long’s a good long time?”

  “Oh, five or ten.”

  “Weeks?”

  “Years.”

  “This is my home.”

  “Not any more it isn’t.” He leaned across Longlegs and opened the door for him. “See you around,” he said, at the same time slipping the Saturday night special from the black man’s grasp. “Let me dispose of this for you.”

  Longlegs gave Harry one more questioning glance, then did as Harry had ordered. “I suppose I should thank you.”

  “Forget it,” Harry told him. “Forget everything.”

  C H A P T E R

  N i n e

  The dress (orange in color, modest in style) that Darlene Farley first chose was not the one she finally settled for. Blue silk was what she ultimately decided on, a clinging bold designer concoction that she thought would be just right for dancing the night through till dawn. The silk had nearly the same texture as a spring breeze and was just about as protective; one brusque movement in any direction would result in the exposure of a breast. From every angle it was the sort of dress that disclosed another interesting view.

  The necklace that wound close around her neck and the gold bracelets that jangled a trifle too noisily on her wrists had just been removed from her safe deposit box that morning. She was not so security-conscious as Braxton, but he’d prevailed upon her to secrete her valuables. The problem was that she didn’t really care if her jewelry and furs were lost, stolen, or somehow mutilated. But that was because she’d never paid for any of them.

  The occasion for which she dressed so seductively and for which she’d squandered most of the day in preparation, deliberating over creams, lotions, scents, and clothes, was the debut of a new discotheque that was located in the Nob Hill area off California.

  There was nothing quite so much that Darlene liked to do as dance, with the notable exception of the entertainment she did in bed. There was all this nervous energy she had and, aside from dancing until exhaustion stopped her, she rarely could think of a better way to work it out of her system.

  Usually Braxton indulged her, occasionally even accompanied her to discotheques. But try as he might, he couldn’t comprehend why people gave themselves over to music that he found by turn monotonous and aggravating. He preferred his old hangouts, male enclaves, where he and his cronies could fall back oh the rites and conversational gambits that they’d been developing for years. Not that Braxton didn’t like being seen, parading around with a nubile twenty-eight-year-old blonde on his arm, displaying his virile image to all of San Francisco. But when he did squire her about, it was to such established nightspots as the Starlite Lounge, Henri’s, and The Penthouse. People under the age of forty were an enigma to him and while having Darlene around invigorated him he seemed to resent her youthfulness and did his utmost to keep her away from others who were equally as young. Especially men.

  But because he was busy with union affairs he sometimes had to relent and let her loose. Better, he thought, that she should go dancing at some public place than seclude herself in a bedroom—her own or someone else’s—where she could not be as easily monitored.

  Accordingly, Braxton had arranged for escorts for her who had his personal approval. These escorts Darlene referred to derisively as eunuchs because, while they were all handsome and urbane, walking models out of GQ Magazine, they would sooner shoot themselves than lay a hand on her. Temptation might be awesome, but still they would refrain. They knew, and knew with the absolute certainty that Jehovah’s Witnesses have about God, that they need only make a pass at her and they would suffer retribution. Getting fired would be the least of it. For if they were correctly reading the implication in Braxton’s commands they might end up being turned into eunuchs literally, and not just metaphorically.

  So they danced with Darlene and dined with her and joked and were photographed with her for the Chronicle’s society page, but
when they brought her back to her apartment at the evening’s end they were chaster than a virgin adolescent on his first date.

  There were times when all the jewelry, all the furs, all the expense accounts, all the attention and money did not make up for the frustration she felt. She regretted that men could not be miniaturized so that she could smuggle them back home in her pocketbook, then blow them up again to full size.

  But there was the dancing to save her. In ten minutes Philip Lem, tonight’s eunuch, was to come and pick her up. But when she saw her door opening she knew that it was not Philip. Couldn’t be. Only she and Braxton had the key.

  Matt Braxton stood at the doorway, dressed elegantly in a tux. He smelled strongly of English Leather.

  Darlene gave him a perfunctory kiss. She did not like it when Braxton burst in on her like this with no warning. “Don’t tell me,” she said, barely concealing the annoyance in her voice, “you’ve made a change in the schedule.”

  “How did you guess?” Braxton had the complacent smile he wore on his lips whenever he exercised power. Over a union or a single woman it didn’t matter, the smile appeared. “We’re going to L.A. The limousine’s waiting outside. Ten-fifteen flight on Air West.”

  “What’s in L.A.?”

  “What’s in L.A.? I’ll tell you what’s in L.A. Mel Potter is in L.A.”

  “I should know who Mel Potter is?”

  “You should. You should know a lot of things. Mel Potter is a big-shot producer. He’s on the backlot of 20th Century-Fox. The man’s got a million deals going.”

  “That’s the only sort of person you admire, isn’t it? A man who’s got a million deals going.”

  Braxton chose to ignore her. He had no intention of arguing with her. He’d allotted exactly ten minutes to the task of persuading Darlene to accompany him and no more. “This man Potter, he’s interested in doing a story about my life. About the rise of the union under my leadership. We never met. So—” Braxton took hold of Darlene’s hands, “so he arranged for me to meet some of his friends at a late night party.”