by Dane Hartman
The Tiger Claw who had gotten hit with the pot found his feet again. He took one look at his five friends, writhing and sleeping on the ground, looked up at Harry’s still figure—standing amid the wreckage with his Magnum at his side—and then ran out of the restaurant as fast as he could.
Harry shook his head. Kids shouldn’t play with matches. And if they couldn’t stand the heat, they should get out of the kitchen. The cop figured he only had a limited time left in Chinatown. If and when that kid came back, he’d be bringing a lot of Tiger Claws with him. But he wasn’t about to drag the leader in and have the poor child start screaming police brutality. Harry would just have to dispense with legality and dispense a little street justice.
He reached down and grabbed a handful of the leader’s hair again. He hadn’t hit the kid hard enough to put him out for long, and sure enough, as he pulled, the kid groaned and responded. Harry slipped the .44 into its holster, grabbed the kid’s arm, wrenched it up his back and whirled the kid around so that his stomach was against the stove. Then he pushed down his head so his face was hovering over the open flame which had been heating the soup.
“There’s nobody around to back you up now, punk,” Harry told the Tiger Claw through clenched teeth. “And I don’t give a shit if you leave here without a face or not. Answer my questions or get fried.”
Having a code of life was a lot easier than living up to it. This kid, this high-ranking Tiger Claw, had always thought that he could handle anything that was thrown at him. And up until now, that had been true. But now his face was just a few inches from a searing hot flame. A flame that was already frying his rapidly blinking eyes and crisping his eyebrows. He felt a pain unlike those inflicted by blades, chains, and clubs. He suddenly felt overwhelmingly inclined to answer any question the tall cop asked of him.
“Who killed the two Chinese at the wax museum?” Harry demanded, pushing the kid’s head closer to the flame.
“Ni . . . Nihonmachi hitmen,” the kid heard himself saying.
“Where do they come from?”
“All over. New York, L.A . . .”
“Where did these three come from?” Harry growled, pushing the head down again.
“Chicago!” the kid yelled, trying to pull away. “Chicago, I swear!”
“How do you know?”
“The orders come from there. The Nihonmachi headquarters is in Chicago.”
“What about the kidnapping?” Harry asked in a different voice. It was a softer, more intense tone.
The kid paused until Harry started pressing down on his head again. “What kidnapping?” the kid squealed, confused. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“The kidnapping of the Japanese girl!” Harry yelled. “Did the Chinese do it as revenge? Was she some kind of warning to the Nihonmachi?” With every question, Harry pressed.
“I tell you, I don’t know about any kidnapping!” the kid yowled, his face closer to the flame than ever before. “I’d know about it if the Tiger Claws did it. I swear! Maybe the Thunderfists. Check the Thunderfists!”
Harry pulled the kid abruptly up and hurled him against the back wall. The kid hit head first and slid slowly down to the glass-, pastry-, and soup-splattered floor. His eyes crossed and fuzzed, but he didn’t lose consciousness.
Harry stepped around the broken counter and moved toward the now open door. As he neared, the kid he had jabbed in the eye found his feet and stumbled in front of the cop, trying to maintain a kung fu stance. Harry pushed his fist in between the kid’s wavering arms and sent him to the floor again with a devastating punch. The kid hit the tile and slid all the way to the front window.
Without pausing Harry went outside to the deserted streets, got into his car and headed toward home.
C H A P T E R
F o u r
Police and reporters were crawling all over his apartment house when Harry arrived at dawn. His parking garage blocked by two video vans, he parked around the corner and slipped in by the fire escape. The presiding cops inside recognized him and let him shave, shower, and change. Harry left the way he had come, wearing a dark green tweed jacket, a thick cotton button-down shirt, a plaid tie, a brown sweater vest, matching slacks, and his own Lawman leather shoulder holster.
Once he arrived at the Justice Building, however, there was no fire escape he could use to avoid the veritable army of reporters that charged him. Ever since the press had discovered what great copy he made during the “Scorpio” mass-murder case more than a decade ago, they hadn’t missed an opportunity to paint him into a corner. And this was no exception. In fact, this situation was made to order. A kidnapped woman. A young man shot on the street. The escape vehicle found at the scene of a double murder. And the massacre of five “alleged” drug smugglers. Perfect, just perfect.
Harry walked right toward the mass of microphones, video cameras, lights, and note pads. The two opposing factions—Harry and the reporters—converged on the bottom step of the front entrance.
“Inspector Callahan,” came the first shouted question Harry could hear over all the other shouted questions, “why did you kill the young boy outside your apartment?”
“Fuck you,” said Harry lightly as if he was saying “nice day.”
“Were you and the girl who was kidnapped lovers, Inspector?” came another question, along with a mike that was stuck right under his nose.
“Suck cock,” said Harry with a friendly smile, waving at the still-photographers.
“Inspector,” came a third voice, “don’t you think murdering five men who just want to sell pot is a little severe?”
“You’re a motherfucker,” Harry replied breezingly, three-quarters up the steps.
“Inspector Callahan,” came a stern female voice as he neared the front doors, “don’t you think you have a responsibility to the people of this city to explain your actions?”
Harry reacted as if the question got to him. He slowed, a concerned look on his face, then turned to face the mob of reporters with his hands raised for silence.
“A statement,” one demanded of him. “A statement!”
Harry waited until they had all grown quiet and all the pencils and tape recorders were at the ready.
Then, with an abnormally wide smile, he said, “You all eat shit. Thank you.”
With that, Harry slipped inside, accompanied by the sounds of teeth gnashing, pencil breaking, and hair ripping. Harry had spent too many years as the abused, used, misquoted butt of the allegations, secondhand rumors, wild guesses, and assumptions that passed for “electronically gathered news” nowadays. There wasn’t even safety in saying “no comment.” The TV reports and papers would edit it in such a way that he still looked guilty as hell.
Harry had learned his lesson hard, but he had learned it well. He had discovered the one surefire way not to appear on screen or in print was to swear so grieviously that the reporters wouldn’t dare use it. Add that to a wonderfully cheerful smile for the still-photographers so no newspaper reader would believe he was being asked serious questions, and there was the foolproof Dirty Harry style of noninterviews.
His reception on the seventh floor was about as gracious. Inside room 750—the homicide suite—the rest of the detectives reacted to him as if he had just come back after a drunken binge. Some looked heavenward. Others looked in the opposite direction, shaking their heads, and others shrugged at him, as if saying “what can you do?” As he turned into his cubicle his long-time friend and occasional partner, Frank DiGeorgio, pulled his forefinger across his throat, his teeth clenched.
Strewn across Harry’s blotter were enough messages to start papering his walls. Each said about the same thing, but with increasing amounts of intensity. The basic message was: “Go to the head office. Do not pass ‘Go,’ do not collect two hundred dollars.”
Lieutenant Al Bressler was waiting for him. Harry’s immediate superior was a tough old pro, like Callahan, except that he harbored a slight streak of fear that kept
him firmly under the thumb of the higher-ups. Unlike Callahan, he was worried about his pension and his retirement. These concerns had taken their physical toll on the lieutenant. He was only a few inches shorter than Harry, but looked even more because of his slightly stooped shoulders and a posture which said he’d been carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders for too long.
In addition, the vests of his three-piece suits were getting strained by the spare tire that was slowly but surely turning from a “bias ply” into a “steel-belted radial.” His longish black and gray hair was unusually unkempt this morning and his normally calm brown eyes were bloodshot.
“You know what you are, Callahan?” Bressler cracked without looking up, as soon as Harry entered and closed the door behind him. “You’re a fucking magnet, that’s what you are,” the Lieutenant answered before Harry had a chance to speak. He looked up then and rose from behind his desk, his fists flat on the surface. “Wherever you go, whatever you do, crime seems irresistibly attracted to you. Violence is your lover, Harry. As soon as we take you away from it, put you on a harmless fact-gathering detail, it comes looking for you, leaving bodies from your house to Chinatown and back.”
“I didn’t ask for trouble, Lieutenant,” Harry said.
“That’s what so incredible, Harry,” Bressler replied. “I know that. I know you don’t go out of your way to find trouble. It just seems to find you. But try to explain that to Captain Avery. Try to explain that to Captain McKay. Try to explain that to the chief and the commissioner! They seem to think you’re some kind of goddamn Charles Bronson in Death Wish, for Christ’s sake!”
“Well, it’s not like my file is full of saving cats from trees,” Harry admitted.
“You’ve got a tiger by the tail this time, Harry,” Bressler said, growing serious. “The drug smugglers were a clean bust. Those guys were suspected of murdering several crewsful of pleasure boaters, but the guy you shot outside your apartment could be trouble.”
“What do you mean?” Harry asked.
“The coroner says he was Jap. As near as I can figure he must be a member of one of these Oriental street gangs that have been driving us crazy all these years. You know the setup, Harry. It’s a closed society in Chinatown. We couldn’t do anything about the mess down there if we wanted to. Hell, it’s better if we don’t! We start messing around and a lot of innocents’ll get hurt.”
“It looks like they’re already beginning to,” Harry reminded him.
“And that’s what’s worrying me,” Bressler said, coming around to sit on the edge of his desk. “These guys probably grabbed this Michelle girl for reasons all their own. I can’t begin to figure it out. You lived in the same building, Harry. You got any ideas?”
Harry thought about it. His private life was his own business. He didn’t talk about it to anyone. No one knew he and Suni were occasional lovers. The only reason one of the reporters asked is that reporters always wanted to aggravate their target. It had been a lucky guess.
But Harry now had enough information to safely assume that Suni was taken by the Nihonmachi underworld for some reason having to do with their fight for attention and power. But as far as he could tell, there was little or nothing the police force could do about it. The girl stood a better chance without an army of cops seeking to clean up Japantown, but with one enforcer who couldn’t give a shit about gang wars and just wanted to rescue her.
“No,” he lied to his immediate superior. “No ideas.”
“Well, whatever way it pans out,” Bressler went on, looking over Harry’s shoulder through the office window at the small army of detectives trying to sort out the mass of murders on their rosters, “it’s not our headache.” He looked back at Callahan pointedly. “You read me, Inspector?” he asked. “This is Missing Persons’ baby. And . . .” the lieutenant checked his watch, “in about sixteen hours the FBI will come in. Let them handle it, is that clear?”
Harry scowled. Rather than answering, he threw a curve ball into the conversation. “What about the Chinatown murders? That’s not a Missing Persons case.”
Bressler stood up, fixing Harry with an impatient stare before turning back toward his seat. As he took up his position behind the desk, he pulled a sheet of paper from his top drawer. “Very true, Inspector,” he said formally. “I’ve already set up a homicide task force to look into it. Your name is not on the list.” Bressler threw down the paper and ran his hands through his hair. Callahan, could see it wasn’t easy for him.
“Come on, Harry,” he finally said, all rigidity out of his voice and demeanor. “It’s for your own good. You know how these Oriental street gangs operate. All that shit about maintaining face and seeking revenge for shame. Well, you just shot one right in the back. You take a step into Chinatown and your life won’t be worth a plug yen.”
“Lieutenant,” Harry replied calmly, “the man I shot was Japanese. The Chinese hate the Japanese’s guts. I’ll probably get a ticker-tape parade in Chinatown.” The bravado was all for the lieutenant’s benefit. His killing a Japanese terrorist would probably not balance out the damage he did in the brothel and restaurant.
Bressler leaned back, throwing his hands up. “Chinese, Japanese, is there really that much difference? They’re all crazy for vengeance. I really think you ought to lay low for a while, Harry. How about a week off?”
Callahan brought the talk back to its main subject. “Any positive I.D. on the man I shot?”
“None,” Bressler begrudgingly admitted. “Yet. But you know how close-mouthed the Orientals can get. See nothing, know nothing.”
“In this case, it’s true,” Harry said with conviction. “You’re not going to find anything in San Fran’s Japantown, Lieutenant, because the Japanese here have too much to lose by allowing this kind of thing to go on. The Japanese who kidnapped the girl were out-of-town talent.”
“All right, Inspector, that’s enough,” Bressler said flatly. “You don’t know anything for sure and there’s no way this department is going to let you continue with the investigation. I want you out of town too, Inspector. I thought I could reason with you, get you to agree to take some time off, but you seem to think you’re a goddamn member of The Untouchables. You’re taking a vacation, Callahan. Starting now. And that’s an order.”
Harry couldn’t believe how well it worked out. He was planning to lead up to asking for some leave, but the lieutenant had beat him to it. But he kept his face stoic and replied with a simple “Yes, sir.”
Bressler didn’t like it when Harry called him “sir.” It reminded him just how vulnerable he was to the screaming from upstairs in the department. “Look, Harry,” he said apologetically. “With you gone for a while, it’ll give everybody a chance to cool down and see straight. The press will get off the department’s back and the department will get off my back. I promise you. If we don’t make any progress by the time you get back, I’ll reapproach the commissioner about putting you on the case. But for now, enjoy yourself. Go on a little trip, ok?”
Harry allowed himself a little smile. “Ok,” he replied, turning to go.
“Callahan,” Bressler called after him as he reached the lieutenant’s door. Harry turned. “You, uh, have any idea where you might be going?”
Harry understood what lay behind the question. If Bressler knew where he was, he would know where to find him in case of emergency. And if he knew where he was, he could guarantee his superiors that Callahan would stay out of their hair. At least for a couple of days.
“I hear there’s a lot of good Irishmen in Chicago,” Harry told the lieutenant. “And a lot of beautiful women. I think I’ll check out the Windy City.”
Bressler smiled with relief. Harry smiled back. What he didn’t mention was the city’s Oriental population, nor the one particular beautiful woman he was looking for.
The plane took three hours to get from San Francisco Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In that time, Harry tried to ignore the little plastic pouches of nuts, t
he little plastic-covered sandwiches, the little plastic glasses of booze and the little plastic smiles of the flight attendants. Instead, he tried to assimilate as much as he could about the Windy City. In three hours, he found the place had some things in common with his home town—most primarily a devastating natural disaster. In Chicago’s case, it was the Great Fire of 1871, after which the city was rebuilt brick by brick.
In the twenties, the city’s rebirth was interrupted by Prohibition and the gang violence that was brought to a head by Al Capone. Four years after the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Chicago celebrated its centennial with its second world’s fair. Before the modern economic crunch set in, Mayor Richard Daley set about leveling the slums and giving rise to a spanking new Chicago.
He didn’t completely succeed, and now the new city government had to contend with ridiculous transit problems and vicious racial tensions. In the three hours of flight time, Harry got a general idea of the city’s layout and history while some of Chicago’s finest got prepared for his arrival. As Callahan had learned in the past, news of his movements traveled fast.
After the plane had touched down and he had walked the long tunnel to the disembarker’s lounge, he found two big airport officials waiting for him. It was no coincidence. Both men had the look of practiced assurance people got in occupations that incorporated possible violence. Their hands were crossed in front of their crotches, their eyes were half-closed and small, smug smiles hung just below their noses.
“Inspector Callahan?” one asked as Harry moved toward them. “Inspector Harry Callahan?” The San Francisco cop nodded and slowed. As he did so, the two wide airport men, wearing official O’Hare jackets, positioned themselves on either side of him. Although neither Chicagoan was as tall as Harry, together they looked like half the front line of the Bears’ football team.
“Please come with us,” said the other man reasonably. Harry saw no other choice, so without a word, the trio broke off from the rest of the passengers, who were finding relatives and friends or going in search of buses, rent-a-cars or taxis, and marched down the clean, bright hallways into the airport’s bowels.
