Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men

by Dane Hartman

  Somebody must’ve been pretty busy with the phone while he was packing and flying, Harry figured. Somebody was either anxious to keep very close tabs on him or very worried about what he might do. Harry’s two companions chaperoned him to a tiny room by the custom’s agents—the little gray, soundproofed cells where folks were known to do strip searches and find all manner of illegal goods.

  Inside, the room was one long table and no chairs. The two brawny men motioned Harry in first. He moved to the other side of the table. They stood just inside the one door that they closed behind them.

  “Where’s the rubber hoses, boys?” Harry asked amiably. He mentally dubbed the pair Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum.

  The two men’s expressions remained the same. “No rubber hoses,” said Tweedle-dee just as affably. “Would you mind opening your bag for us, Inspector?”

  Harry stared at the men for a moment, then swung his one carry-on case onto the table, unclipped and unzipped it open. He laid it out and stepped back. The two men moved forward and gingerly displaced the shirts, socks, tie, and underwear until they revealed a handgun-cleaning kit.

  “Toiletries?” Tweedle-dee innocently inquired. The two men retreated to their previous positions.

  “Would you mind taking off your jacket, Inspector?” asked Tweedle-dum.

  This was the moment of truth, Harry realized. He would be within his rights not to comply, but he didn’t see what good it would do him. The city’s officials would only keep after him until they pegged him. Might as well get it over with at the outset, he figured.

  Harry didn’t take off his coat. He merely pulled one side back to reveal his .44 in its shoulder holster. Now the pair of men let their smiles grow. One tsked. The other clucked.

  “Now that isn’t exactly kosher, is it, Inspector?” said Tweedle-dum the clucker. “I’m sure you have a right and proper license to carry the weapon, but I don’t see how you could have arranged to get the proper permits completed for Chicago possession, given that you just left San Francisco this afternoon.”

  “You got me, boys,” Harry emotionlessly admitted. “So what’ll it be? Confiscation, a night at headquarters, or some friendly graft?”

  “None of the above,” said the short, dark-haired man in the tailored suit who suddenly entered the room from behind the pair. Harry could only see his shoulders from behind the two brawny officials. When those men moved aside, the third man’s back was toward Harry since he was closing the door after him. Finally he turned to face the San Francisco cop. Harry saw the smooth, handsome face of a slim, muscular man in his mid-thirties. A man with straight dark hair, slanted eyes, and slightly yellowish skin. An Oriental man. A Japanese man.

  “Sergeant Terry Inagaki,” the smaller man said, standing about five feet eleven inches in his loafers. He held his hand across the table, over the open suitcase, toward Harry. Callahan took it, feeling a hard, practiced grip. He saw the man’s wrist was thick and muscular. He either used a heavy, powerful gun himself or was seriously training with weights.

  “Sorry about the inconvenience, Inspector,” Inagaki went on in soothing, apologetic tones, “but we had to know where you stand.”

  “I’m just visiting,” Harry countered. “No good cop goes anywhere without his piece.”

  Inagaki smiled a patient, but disbelieving smile. “I’ve read your file, Inspector,” he went diplomatically on. “You never let go of an investigation once you get your teeth in it. It is not mere coincidence that you are in Chicago just sixteen hours after the kidnapping of a Japanese girl from your apartment house.”

  “So what’s the bottom line?” Harry asked.

  “I think . . .” Inagaki began, then changed his approach. “The department feels that you should choose some other location for your vacation. We are prepared to fly you, at no extra cost, to the city of your choice anywhere within the continental United States”

  “Why?” Callahan cunningly asked.

  Inagaki answered flatly. “Because we do not want you to be the first innocent victim of the coming Oriental street-gang explosion.”

  The room was suddenly filled with indirect menace. The looks on the two airport officials’ faces told Harry that what Inagaki had said was valid. Even these guys had seen the signs of upcoming trouble. “Do I have a choice?” Callahan slowly inquired.

  Inagaki slowly became blandly inscrutable. “You always have a choice, Inspector. This is a free country. It is a democracy which would never consider incarcerating its own citizens out of fear and ignorance.” Harry picked up the sardonic irony of the policeman’s statement. His own relatives had probably been put in the American internment camps for the Japanese during World War II.

  “Then I think I’ll stay awhile,” Callahan decided. “You want my gun?”

  Inagaki stood his placid ground for a second before waving a casual hand at Harry’s shoulder holster. “Keep it,” he said lightly. “And come with me. If you’re going to get back from your vacation alive, we have a lot of groundwork to cover.”

  Driving from the airport to downtown Chicago was a little like traveling from Kansas to the land of Oz. After staring off into vast stretches of flat, dull farmland, the glittering glass spires of the Windy City—lit up in the Illinois dusk—appeared in the distance like the Emerald City itself. The first hint of its mortality came on the highway when Inagaki’s unmarked car stopped in a sea of other vehicles—all crawling home in the errantly named “rush” hour.

  “The lines have been drawn,” Inagaki was telling Harry as the car creeped along. “Out of the morass of early fighting, two Japanese gangs have risen to power, each with their main concentration in Chicago. Whoever emerges victorious in the coming war will be able to reap profits from women, numbers, drugs, and gambling in New York, Los Angeles, and your own San Francisco.”

  “How organized is it?” Harry asked.

  “As tight as the Chinese groups,” Inagaki answered. “The leaders are yakuza and ex-yakuza from Japan, who give orders to Japanese businessmen in America who control the young gang members who serve as soldiers.”

  “What are the two factions?” Harry inquired.

  “The more violent, desperate, and disorganized of the two are the ‘Seppuku Swords,’ which roughly translates into the Suicide Swords. They’re losing ground to the Kozure Ronin, which means ‘Renegade Wolves,’ so they’ll do anything to weaken them.”

  “Including kidnapping a Japanese girl from the West Coast?” Harry wondered aloud. Sergeant Inagaki nodded.

  “She must have some connection to one of the gangs somehow,” the Chicago cop figured.

  The two fell silent as Callahan considered his situation. It was now fairly clear that Suni was being held hostage. It was unlikely that she was a member of these gangs, so her past—the past she would not share with Harry—had caught up with her. And in order to free her of it, Harry would have to fight his way right into the heart of the Japanese gang war.

  Only when Inagaki turned off the highway for one of the suburban exits did Harry speak again. “This isn’t the way to downtown.”

  “I think it is best if you stay with me and my wife tonight,” the sergeant replied. “It will be safer for you. Besides, we can do much better together than separately. I hope you will agree.”

  Begrudgingly, Harry accepted the offer. He didn’t want to waste any time before searching for Suni, but he had to admit that blundering all over the city wouldn’t help matters. Inagaki offered him a few more hours of information and reconnaissance. He looked over at the gleaming towers of apartments, bank buildings, insurance companies, hotels, and tourist attractions which made up the Chicago skyline. Somewhere amid all the glossy metal and glass was Suni. Harry felt sure of it. And he vowed to find her—dead or alive.

  Inagaki lived in Arlington Heights, a residential suburb of Greater Chicago, or Chicagoland as it used to be called. His was a small stone house at the end of a wide, winding street. It was set on a little hill and surrounded by trees an
d a large, sloping, grassy yard. It was an extremely comfortable-looking place and area—giving Harry a feeling of peace. That unusual feeling made the San Francisco inspector wander along the grounds toward the house as Inagaki went up the curving stone walk, pulling out his door keys.

  Around the side of the house, Harry could see a well-cultivated garden, its colorful flowers blowing in the lukewarm spring breeze of early evening in Illinois. Harry turned back to the front just as Inagaki slid his key into the front door lock. Harry looked toward the street, his eyes suddenly focusing on one section of a tree midway down the lawn.

  Crucified on the tree was a cat. There was a nail through each of its paws, and its stomach had been sliced open. Its dripping guts hung down below its outstretched legs.

  Harry stopped in his tracks, staring at the slaughtered house pet. Inagaki, unable to see the thing from the front steps, twisted the key, turned the knob, and then called to Harry as he pushed the door open. If he hadn’t pivoted to the side of the steps when he did so, the subsequent shotgun blast would have torn out his middle.

  As it was, the front door blew outward in a hail of highly concentrated steel pellets, hurling Inagaki to the side and causing Harry to duck instinctively. The boom of the shotgun blast rolled across the lawn and echoed against the neighboring trees.

  Callahan raced to where the sergeant had fallen in the bushes covering the right side of the house’s foundation. As he passed the front door he could see a sawed-off shotgun moored just inside through a jagged hole in the center of the wood. It was set up in such a way that pushing the door in would depress its trigger.

  Harry grabbed the Japanese cop by the shoulder as Inagaki painfully twisted over. “I’m all right,” he said. Harry immediately left his side and leaped up the steps. “No!” Inagaki warned. “I know these gangs’ methods. I’m one of the detectives assigned to their investigation. Their specialty is traps within traps.”

  The Chicago cop struggled to his feet and joined Harry on the porch. Looking through the hole in the door, he pointed to a slack wire that was attached to the shotgun trigger which led deeper into the house.

  “You see?” he said. “There’s another surprise waiting.” Inagaki said it with almost glee. He seemed to find the gangs’ cunning fascinating. He called out his wife’s name. “Denise!” There was no answer. Only then did his smooth features bunch up in worry.

  Harry had enough of waiting. He moved his hand forward to push the door all the way open and charge in. Inagaki caught his wrist in mid-move. “No,” he repeated. “We must use caution.”

  “There’s a time for caution,” Harry growled, remembering the dead cat. “And it’s passed.” He shook off the Oriental’s hand and ran toward the garden. When he rounded the side wall, his worst fears were confirmed. He could see that the back door was still intact. So if the wire running into the house was not attached to another gun to blow out the back door, what was it attached to?

  Harry found out when he looked into the ground-floor bedroom window. Inside there was a woman bound stringently to a chair with a sack over her head and what was obviously a bomb balanced precariously on her knees. From what Harry could see, it had a thin glass shell on one side which, if broken, would detonate the explosive as well as a timer attached to a wire.

  The timer had been set in motion when the shotgun’s trigger had been pulled. It too would set off the explosive. Harry immediately tried the window. It was locked. He moved back two feet and dived forward. He smashed through the glass and wood, slamming to the bedroom floor. The noise made the bound woman start, jiggling the bomb. It rocked, slipped and then toppled toward the floor.

  Harry rolled and caught it. He rolled back and threw it out the window. As Terry Inagaki came charging into the room from the front, the device exploded in the back yard, leveling one wall of the back porch.

  C H A P T E R

  F i v e

  Denise Inagaki cried over her dead cat while Harry and her husband plotted out an initial strategy to counter the terror.

  With the hood off and her body untied, the wife turned out to be an attractive half-breed in her late twenties wearing a striped top and jeans. If Harry was any judge of exotic good looks, one of her parents must have been American while the other was Japanese.

  Her husband marveled again at the gangs’ guile while the local police looked over the damage and took notes.

  “Now you see what we are up against, Inspector,” the sergeant said. “The explosive was constructed so that it would detonate either with a shock or by timer. If it fell off my wife’s knees, it would have exploded at her feet. Or it would have gone off in her face seconds after my supposed death by shotgun. We both owe our lives to you.”

  “Never mind that.” Harry waved the gratitude away. “What’s the point of killing a cop and his wife? Why get innocent bystanders involved?”

  “It is a warning,” Terry explained. “It is not a good sign. And we are not so innocent. The gangs know I am getting close. This means that they want me off their backs bad enough to threaten my loved ones. It means that their own fight is coming to a head. Whatever the final outcome of the Nihonmachi underworld fight, it will happen very soon.”

  The whole thing stunk worse than a train wreck of spoiling meat. Harry didn’t feel comfortable fighting a group willing to balance a bomb on a helpless woman’s lap. That torturing was bad enough, but to then slaughter the family cat was the afterthought of practiced sadists. Harry remembered the raped and strangled girl at the wax museum. The sooner he found Suni, he figured, the better he would feel.

  “So what can you do about it?” Harry asked the Oriental policeman.

  “We,” Inagaki corrected him. “What can we do about it. You have proven your worth this night. I think I can trust you with a little information.” The two walked from the ruined back porch to the peaceful garden on the side of the house. Harry’s back was to the wall, but he could see the Japanese’s face illuminated by the living-room lights.

  “Our contacts inside the Kozure Ronin organization tell us that the gang will hit the First Union City Bank near the entrance of Wacker Drive tomorrow morning. It seems as if they need more funds to fuel their war. Chicago’s finest will be out there in force, but I think it might be advisable to have you on hand as a backup. What do you say?”

  Harry checked his watch. It was seven o’clock, Tuesday evening. He had just enough time to check out the bank area, do some planning, and get some missed sleep. “No offence, Terry,” he said, “but do you think you can get me into town at a speed faster than five miles an hour now?”

  The structure of Chicago was magnificent. Dirty Harry Callahan took a long, hard snootful of the city as he left his hotel room at eight-fifteen Wednesday morning. The ten hours of sleep he had taken was just what he needed to reload his mental and physical weapon. And he hoped the four-speed loaders in his two jacket pockets would be enough to keep his literal weapon filled.

  He walked out the Sheraton’s entrance to stand at the foot of the Loop’s northwest corner. This downtown business center was locked in by the rectangular-shaped tracks of the elevated train and the bodies of water all around. To the east was Lake Michigan. To the north and west was the Chicago River. Harry stood under Wacker Drive and in the geographic center of Marina City, the Merchandise Mart, the Opera House and Orchestra Hall, and the Chicago City Hall.

  It was a bustling, shiny area in the middle of the morning’s scurry to get to work. It was the worst possible time for a bank robbery. Harry considered the situation as he walked toward the bank, his Magnum heavy, solid, and somehow comforting under his left arm. He looked up at the double-decked Wacker Drive—with the local traffic crawling on the upper section and the express lanes filling up on the lower.

  He looked over at the elevated trains, which only crossed the drive in two places, as the roadway moved alongside the river. Then he checked the city streets to and from the bank itself. These were relatively clear, but the sidewa
lks were full of innocent workers straggling along, trying to get to their offices. Their presence would make it dangerous for the cops to move in or fight back if the robbers started anything.

  The First Union City Bank was in the middle of the right-hand section of the block. Harry hung back in the doorway of a shoe store down and across the street. He scanned the area for any police giveaways, but there was not a cop car or motorcycle in sight. Undercover men could be crawling all over the place, but Harry couldn’t pick them out. The sidewalk vendors, window cleaners, and panhandlers all looked authentic. Either the Chicago force had the world’s best actors or something was very, very wrong.

  Harry didn’t have time to double check. The criminal festivities began early. As he started out from his vantage point, two nondescript vehicles turned the corners onto the block from different directions. One was hightailing it down Harry’s side of the two-way street, and the other was moving away from the San Francisco cop, on the bank’s side. Both cars screeched to a halt in front of the bank, across the street from each other, one pointing north, the other pointing south.

  The cop tried peering through the windshield, but it was tinted and the morning sunlight glared off the glass, further obstructing his view. Harry reached into his jacket, expecting a double team of robbers to leap out of the cars any second. However, the moment his fingers touched the .44 butt, the bank doors exploded outward.

  It was completely unexpected and completely effective. The metal twisted and the glass spun out, cutting down a swath of pedestrians where they walked. A makeshift path from the entrance to the street was created by stunned, cut, falling innocents. Harry stepped forward, his hand frozen on his gun, his eyes squinting, and his jaw nearly dropping open. His teeth ground against each other as six masked men—dressed the same way as Suni’s kidnappers—came leaping out of the smoking hole in the bank’s doors.