Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (12 page)

One was a fellow named Booth, a husky, somewhat Neanderthal figure whose arms were festooned with tattoos testifying to a strange love for a girl named Maria and an interest in Nazi emblems. “Heavy customer all right,” Slater admitted, “but he’ll work his ass off and keep his mouth shut, that kind always does, and that’s the way I like them.”

That wasn’t the way Harry liked them necessarily, not when they looked like Booth, but then he wasn’t the one in charge of this part of the operation.

The second said his name was Vincent. In contrast to Booth, he was lean and nimble, with an angular face whose skin had been worked over by the sun of the tropics until it had become leathery and almost Negro-black. Vincent conceded that he had done time but that “was years ago and didn’t mean shit.”

“Another good worker?” Harry asked, thinking of the crew he had to cope with—Max, Vincent, Booth, and the garrulous Slater Bodkin.

“You bet,” Slater said with customary authoritativeness, complacently stuffing more of his foul-smelling tobacco into his pipe.

Although there was no boat available, Keepnews had assured them that by the time they were scheduled to sail—the 20th of August—their craft would be waiting for them. And who could doubt Harold Keepnews? He made his reputation keeping his word.

But even when they got the boat there was the problem of where exactly to take it. It was one thing to direct someone into the waters off the western coast of Mexico, but presumably the object was to disembark in whatever infested town all the heroin was originating from.

This was exactly what Keepnews wished to speak to Harry about when he put through a phone call to him. A phone was the one luxury Harry and Slater could count on in their little hovel by the pier.

Slater spoke for a few minutes with Keepnews, then handed the phone to Harry, adding, “I told him we got our men.”

“He want to see them?” Harry hoped that Keepnews would. One look at the whole lot of them and he’d throw them out on their collective ass—Max, Booth, and Vincent were men he wouldn’t trust with a rowboat.

“Nah, he trusts my judgment.”

“Of course.” He put the receiver to his ear, half-expecting Keepnews to announce he’d found out about him and Wendy. But no, he sounded as smooth, as untroubled as he always did. “Harry, how’re you doing? Glad to hear you’ve made progress down there today. Tell me, you know a place named Winnicker’s? It’s down somewhere near the Embarcadero, don’t know where exactly, you’ll have to look it up. A real dive from what I’m told.”

“Not the sort of place I generally hang out.”

“Didn’t expect so. Anyhow, I think you ought to check this Winnicker’s out. My sources say that there are men there who are substantially involved with the drug business. The mules—the couriers, you know—they frequent it, not the big-time folks. I would think that you’d have a better chance of eliciting information from them as to where the heroin is coming from in Mexico. We need a name, Harry, we need a name.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.”

“Good man. If I couldn’t depend on you who could I depend on?”

Harry hung up, not knowing exactly how to take this last remark.

Winnicker’s was not easily found. It was on a street that was short, poorly lit, and in a neighborhood that looked as though it hoped everyone would simply ignore it and leave it in peace.

Harry didn’t leave it in peace. There wasn’t much he came in contact with that he left in what you could call peace.

Winnieker’s wasn’t a dive exactly, although that might have been its intention. It didn’t reek of urine, for instance, which Harry took as one auspicious sign. Maybe the only one.

He didn’t fit in, that was obvious from a single glance. On the other hand, this didn’t much surprise him. Fitting in wasn’t what he had in mind.

The customers, of whom there were a considerable number at seven in the evening, did not especially look like drug runners if drug runners can be said to have a “look.” But they did exude a certain air, not of mystery but of calculation. Their eyes moved with practiced speed, took in everything, took in Harry most of all because clearly he was not a regular and had the appearance of someone who would only make trouble for them. They didn’t move down the bar away from him, but they ignored him deliberately, muting their voices in his vicinity.

Then, suddenly, one man, who was probably wired on speed or going through a nervous breakdown, rushed up to Harry and said, “Hey, I know you!” From his voice you couldn’t tell whether this was a good thing or a bad thing.

He was thin as they come, emaciated was more like it, all angles and bones with eyes that were beginning to burn holes in their sockets.

Harry was not prepared for recognition. He scrutinized the joker in front of him, thinking that there was in fact something familiar about him.

“Chuck,” said the man now, “Chuck Loomis.” He stuck out his hand. “Don’t you remember me?” Disappointment tinged his voice.

“I’m not sure I do . . .”

“You fuckin’ arrested me in 1975. Assault with a dangerous weapon.”

“Ah hah.” This to Harry did not seem like reasonable grounds for a great friendship. The more he studied Chuck Loomis, the more his memory cooperated in conjuring up the incident in question.

“You do remember, don’t you?”

“Yes, I certainly do.” Especially since the assault with a dangerous weapon had been directed against himself. Left a large gash in his left cheek, hurt like hell for a week.

“Sent away for five years.”

Now it’s coming, Harry thought, prepared for an outburst of anger, a demand for restitution, a vicious threat.

“Served all your time?” A harmless question he figured.

“Three years of it. Good behavior. But it wasn’t so bad. I mean I don’t hold it the fuck against you, you know what I’m saying? Some people, they’d get right on your fucking case, but I’m not some people. I was doing shit on the street, I get inside, well, I got a roof over my head, friends in the yard, I was head of the tennis team there. Wouldn’t believe it from looking at me, but I was one hell of a tennis player. Watched TV, smoked a couple of Js before I went to sleep nights. Not a bad life considering the circumstances, you know what I’m saying? And I learned a lot of shit, got myself all lined up once I was on the street again.”

Harry could imagine just what sort of education the man had acquired in prison and to what use he’d put it now that he was free.

“Now it’s not that I was grateful for you busting me. It’s a little bit hard working up a spirit of gratitude for somebody who’s sent you away for a fin, you know what I’m saying?”

Harry had a very good idea.

“But for a cop I figured you weren’t so bad. I liked your manner, believe it or not. I says to myself, ‘Chuck, this is one straight dude. He bears watching!’ Now I’m a well-educated man, been through three years of college, though you wouldn’t know from looking at me. Majored in political science, you want to try that on for size? So I keep up, I read the newspapers. I see your name, I remember it, I read on. So what do I find out? You’re in a shitload of trouble. They fucking suspended you over some shit. That Father Nick character, eh?” His voice abruptly fell lower. “There are dudes in here, they owe Father Nick, but there are dudes here, like me, we hate his fucking guts. You know what I’m saying? We got our territory parceled out, we got our business just like you got yours—or had yours—and this Father Nick, he walks out of the slammer, shoves his butt in, announces that he’s doing the kingpin number. Well, fuck him, I say.”

As he continued, Harry deduced three things—one that Loomis was probably on speed and couldn’t shut up, two that he’d perceived in Harry a possible ally because he too was in trouble with the law, and three that anyone who busted Father Nick couldn’t be all bad.

“They let Father Nick walk.” Harry decided to stick with neutral statements—seemed safer that way.

“Father Nick will always walk. Like that fellow, what’s-his-damn-name in New York, spade pusher, carried $75,000 for spare change, he got out on bail, maybe half a mil, maybe a mil, and he just went and disappeared. The Father Nicks of the world always walk unless somebody stops them cold, guts their insides, and stuffs ’em.”

“Any idea who’s going to do that?”

Chuck Loomis allowed his inflamed eyes to survey the inhabitants of Winnicker’s. “No one hereabouts I’ll tell you. Mules got a philosophy. They don’t interfere. There’s a job they do it. The time will come they’ll all be working for Father Nick. You should know there’s no such thing as loyalty in this business once the cash stops flowing.”

Harry acknowledged that he understood the truth of this. “Tell me something, Chuck,” he continued, trying to sound very casual, “is Father Nick using the same source or is he opening up another one? I hear he’s operating in Mexico these days.”

Loomis hesitated, but not because he was apprehensive about divulging what information he had, it was just that he wasn’t so sure about how true it was. “Now you got to know one thing, I’ve been out of this business for some time . . .” He did not realize that he had just contradicted his assertion of a few minutes before that he’d been set up right after emerging from prison. Probably needed to protect himself. “So I can only tell you what I hear the talk is. And the talk is Carangas.”

“Carangas?”

“That’s what I hear. Down on the western coast somewhere. Never been there myself. Probation officer don’t like me traveling. I never get farther than Oakland. Besides, it’s new, Carangas, not the town, just the use they’re making of it. Like the Wild West, everyone with guns, knives. You’d probably love it.”

“I don’t suppose it gets written up much in the travel brochures.”

Chuck Loomis liked this remark and howled with laughter. This drew some reproachful looks from the others in the house.

“Say, can I buy a drink for my arresting officer?”

Harry saw no reason to remain any longer in Winnicker’s now that he had the information he had come for but, before he could refuse the offer Loomis had already turned to the bartender. “Give my friend whatever he’s drink—” He didn’t get any further. Harry looked at him. Loomis wasn’t doing so well, his body had stiffened, and his face, pale to begin with, had gone absolutely livid: a hue well beyond where the rainbow ends. He clutched both hands on the edge of the bar, desperate to keep himself upright. It was not going to work. He tottered like a child taking its first steps, then released his feeble hold on the bar. Dazedly, he stepped aside from Harry and began lurching out into the center of the bar, knocking against a table, much to the consternation of the two leather-jacketed men drinking there. Then, without warning, he spun around, deciding on the opposite direction, thinking possibly that the door might be a better option. As he staggered, a slight, barely perceptible trickle of blood down his pants leg began to turn into a thickly swelling ooze. A jagged trail of glistening red followed him.

The problem was seeing where all this blood was coming from because of the jacket he wore. But Harry had no doubt that Loomis had been knifed. There was of course no telling who’d been responsible. Everyone at the bar looked equally innocent—and equally guilty—their eyes were all fixed on the uncertain progress Loomis was making toward the exit. It was as though he felt he could be free of his pain if he could only get some fresh air. This therapy would not be sufficient. Not that it mattered. Loomis did not have enough energy left in him to attain the door. He stopped, turned again so as to face the Winnicker’s regulars expectantly waiting for his death. Then, drawing himself up, he seemed about to curse them all for their iniquity. But when he opened his mouth to speak the words he got out were submerged in a bubble of blood that smeared his lips and chin all at once. With a final shudder he crumpled to the floor. Even then he seemed not to have made his mind up about dying; he was on his knees, like a penitent at confession; his eyes were closed but you could see he was still living because tears—of pain, of anger, of regret—still leaked from them. He even managed to wipe his mouth free of some of the blood with the back of his shirtsleeve in an attempt to recapture some shred of dignity. That done, he decided all at once to give up. He died like that right on his knees.

“We can call the cops now,” the proprietor, a lug of a man with a Texan hat and a bountiful beard, informed the bartender. Harry had the impression that incidents like this were not all that infrequent. As soon as he’d made his announcement—which was directed to the customers as much as to the bartender—the bar began to clear.

Harry had not moved the whole time. There’d been nothing he could have done for Loomis, and while he had his suspicions as to which one of the men here had knifed him, he could not be absolutely certain. Moreover, the murderer would have backup, and Harry was not prepared for a struggle against such formidable odds. This was enemy territory. He did much better on neutral turf.

But he did have to assume that Loomis was killed for his habit of talking too much to the wrong people. Being one of those wrong people, Harry recognized that he too was in danger. Not here though. They—whoever “they” were—would not risk perpetrating two murders in the same bar on the same evening. Especially when one of them would involve a cop—even if that cop was on suspension.

Once beyond the vicinity of Winnicker’s though, it was natural to expect his unknown antagonists to strike.

No matter. He had no impulse to linger on here, hoping they’d all go away by the time he left. He was not, however, fast enough out the door to avoid the police coming in. They’d responded to the belated call far more quickly than Harry had anticipated. He had not wished to deal with his colleagues at this juncture.

Especially with Bob Togan.

Togan looked so astounded to see Harry here, of all places, that he gave him a far more searching glance than he did the corpse at his feet. He might be viewing an apparition. “Harry?” he inquired tentatively, possibly hopeful that he might be mistaken, that it might be somebody who just looked like Harry.

“How are you doing, Bob?”