Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air (9 page)

Harry watched the wounded man move to the left and down the subway tunnel, as the cop quickly dumped out the spent .44 shells and reloaded. The obstructing automated BART train, oblivious to the battle, sealed its doors and continued on its way.

The pusher took off down the subway tunnel, holding onto his side. Callahan dropped to the tracks and went after him. As soon as he got away from the platform and into the darkened tube, he saw the cracking flashes and heard the deafening blast of the .45. The rounds ricocheted off a support beam in the tunnel’s center and burrowed into the wall in front of him.

The fight had turned into an insidious game, much like the ones Harry had seen at Jaffe’s Kwik Lunch. The two ran, each listening carefully for the sound of the other’s footsteps. When one stopped, the other would also stop, trying to pinpoint their respective positions.

And whenever one fired, the dark tunnel lit up as if with a strobe light—revealing the men for a split second, before darkness swallowed them again.

Harry ignored the man for the most part. He moved over to the far side and kept his eyes on the blood. The pusher was leaking badly from Harry’s ripping Magnum shot, leaving a trail of crimson as he hobbled down the subway path.

“This is only going to end one way, and you know it!” Harry called after him, trusting the darkness and the echo to shield his location.

His first reply was a crashing .45 report, the bullet swallowed up by the night. The second answer was laughter. Mocking, choked, but honest laughter.

“Yeah,” the pusher coughed, his echoing voice a thin rasp. “I know it. I know how it’s going to end, Callahan. Better than you do. Much better than you.”

Harry didn’t like the sound of that, but he repressed a desire to shoot back at the man. The pusher would do him no good dead.

“Come on,” Harry taunted, moving forward. “What’s your name? Why did you push those three girls?”

The laughter started again, but it was choked off by a spasm of wet coughing. “Fuck off, Inspector,” came the reply, finally. “You think I’m going to make it easy on you?”

“What do you mean?” Harry pressed, eyes intent on the bloodstains. He walked silently forward, keeping the red spots between his feet.

“You’re a dead man,” was the instant reply, which seemed to come from everywhere. “I don’t have to kill you, because you’re already dead. I’m dead, you’re dead, we’re all dead.”

“You’re talking crazy!” Callahan exploded, unnerved by the man’s calm statements.

“You think so?” the pusher hissed, his rational tone making the hairs on the back of Harry’s neck stand up. “Ah, you’ll see,” the pusher continued. “Your death is going to be worse than mine. Yours is going to be far worse. Because I’m in control now. You won’t be.”

Callahan couldn’t understand him. He also couldn’t understand why the bloodstains had suddenly stopped. He moved forward cautiously and searched both tracks, but there were no bloodstains to be found.

Harry’s teeth ground against each other, imprisoning any words he felt like yelling. He didn’t want the killer to know he was spooked. As he moved back to where the last crimson droplet was, he heard another BART train coming from the opposite direction.

He turned to look at its approach far down the track. He wasn’t unduly worried—there was plenty of time for him to get onto the empty track. But as he looked, he noticed a strange, squat blob lying on the track like a small pile of garbage.

As the train straightened, its headlights illuminated the obstruction from the rear. The pusher was fifty feet down the way, back toward the Lincoln Station, lying on top of one of the approaching BARTs rails.

He had doubled back, Harry realized in astonishment. He had only to stem the blood for a few moments while he waited against the wall for Callahan to pass, and then he walked back the way he had come. And now he was resting on the track in such a way that the BART train would scramble him.

“Thank you,” he said to Harry as the train stopped in the station, back-lighting him with a macabre effect. “You have enabled me to prepare a proper death.”

He held the gun out before him, keeping Harry at bay. Callahan could see the killer’s stomach wound pumping out blood onto the thirsty ground. “I can promise you two things, Inspector,” the pusher said. “Your death will not be so noble and . . . there won’t be enough left of me to identify. Good-bye, Callahan. See you in hell.”

The BART train closed its doors and started out of the station into the tunnel. Harry’s stunned face was highlighted by its illumination. Then his Magnum came up on the end of a straight arm, and he started shooting.

He wasn’t trying to prove anything, release his frustration, or get revenge. He had to kill the pusher before the train did. If he could nail him, he might be able to get him off the track before the subway disintegrated him.

The pusher realized that, just a second too late. He realized it as the .44 slugs dove into his torso. He quaked atop the rail, making a small animal sound as he died. The .45 automatic dropped out of his hand, and, again, Harry found himself running right into the face of an oncoming BART train.

He was going to make it. He was sure he was going to make it. He’d just have enough time to make a flying tackle and haul the pusher off the rail to the safety of the far wall. There was no doubt in his mind.

Then he slipped on the blood. The pusher had doubled back, letting that much more blood drip onto the tracks. Callahan’s racing feet slid across a large pool close to the body. He fell heavily on his back, the air knocked out of him. The pusher’s punctured corpse was only twelve feet away.

It was twelve feet too many. Harry watched the train rend the killer down the middle just before he twisted feverishly to the side. The train barreled on, sweeping the pusher’s guts in its wake, like water following a speedboat.

A hunk of skin, bone, and muscle slapped against Callahan’s leg as a thin spray of blood dotted his face. He had to wait until the train passed before kicking it away. He threw up before he was able to wipe the pusher’s remains from his head.

The Inspector rose unsteadily as the BART train disappeared around a far corner. He was weak from relief and astonishment. He moved carefully around the killer’s ravaged remains. There was only one thing left whole after the train’s passing, and that was the pusher’s gun. It lay by the tracks, almost completely unscathed except for a scrape mark.

Harry picked it up. His eyes had adjusted to the tunnel’s gloom enough to read what was etched on its barrel.

COLT MK IV/SERIES 20
.45 AUTOMATIC CALIBRE
GOVERNMENT MODEL

C H A P T E R
E i g h t

D
enise Patterson was gone when he got back to the platform.

In her place were dozens of cops, including Frank DiGeorgio and Al Bressler.

“Lieutenant,” Harry said weakly. “Fancy meeting you here.”

His superior couldn’t bring himself to berate the Inspector, considering the shape he was in. He did explain that it wasn’t long before the message from the owner of the wrecked Toyota got to his office. So, when the report of a gunfight on the BART came in, it was easy to put two and two together and find Dirty Harry.

“You had better have one hell of an explanation,” Bressler warned, before turning and walking up the subway steps.

Harry simply stood calmly at the bottom. DiGeorgio came to his side with concern as an army of police bagged and numbered the mess the pusher had made on the tracks.

“Help me up the stairs,” Harry told DiGeorgio quietly. “I don’t think I can make it by myself.”

The Sergeant was badly shaken by Harry’s statement. DiGeorgio realized just how much Callahan had had to go through in the tunnel to be in this condition. By the time he had driven the Inspector three-quarters of the way to the Justice Building, Harry seemed to have gotten some of his inner strength back.

“Go to Patterson’s place,” he directed.

“Come on, Harry,” DiGeorgio moaned with humor as well as concern.

“Don’t argue with me,” Callahan said dangerously.

That’s all it took. DiGeorgio changed direction and sped toward Denise Patterson’s Grand View Park apartment. When they arrived Harry unlatched the car door and kicked it open with venom.

“Be prepared for anything,” he advised his partner, taking the Magnum out of its holster.

DiGeorgio had to run to keep up. By the time he got to the foyer, Callahan was already buzzing the super’s apartment. When there was no answer by the third ring, Callahan kicked open the door and started charging up the steps.

“Harry . . .” DiGeorgio called after him, worried.

“Probable Cause,” Callahan growled back. As far as he was concerned, that was the understatement of the year.

He made it to the fourth floor in record time, taking the stairs three at a time. The symptoms of shock and exhaustion he had shown back at the station were completely gone. But what he found at apartment 4-B was enough to give him a relapse.

The door was closed and locked. Harry had seen it smashed, practically off its hinges. He tried the knob, The thing wouldn’t budge. Stepping back, he kicked it open.

Inside was a perfectly clean, perfectly decorated, vacant apartment. The walls were unstained by blood. The furniture was unscathed. The floor was covered by wall-to-wall carpeting. All of the windowpanes were in one piece.

Callahan’s face grew pale. DiGeorgio reached his partner’s side to find Harry almost shaking. But, just a second later, all evidence of his weakness was gone. He slowly, almost imperceptibly straightened to his full height, and his .44 went back into its holster deliberately.

“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” came a voice behind them. They turned to see a short, bald, chubby man with a cigar clamped between his teeth and wearing a T-shirt, work pants, and windbreaker.

“You the super of this building?” Harry said, his voice clipped.

“Yeah,” the guy said, with defiance, “and you can’t just come barging in here . . . !”

Callahan brought the performance up short by flipping open his wallet, revealing his badge. “Police business,” he said vacantly. Putting the shield away, he hooked a thumb back at the empty apartment. “Who lives here?”

“There?” the man said stupidly.

“Don’t waste my time,” Harry snapped.

“What is that?” the super continued stolidly. “4-B?”

DiGeorgio checked the number on the door. “Yeah.”

“Nobody,” the super said.

“Nobody?” DiGeorgio echoed. He remembered it as being the number of Patterson’s apartment.

“Yeah,” the super concurred. “Nobody’s been in that apartment for a couple of weeks now.”

“Who was in it before that, then?” the Sergeant asked.

Before the super could answer, Harry interrupted. “Never mind.”

Both men looked at him. “Thanks for your help,” Harry said to the super. “Come on,” he said to DiGeorgio, as he started down the steps.

Taking a final look at the apartment and the super, DiGeorgio followed his ranking partner’s order.

“Hey!” the super called after them. Both men stopped and looked back. “What about the two broken doors?”

Harry stared at the audacious man for several seconds before acting. “Wait for me in the car,” he told DiGeorgio. “I’ll give him the address and number for departmental restitution.”

Something in his voice and manner told DiGeorgio to do exactly what he was told. “Okay, Harry,” he agreed, going down the steps as Callahan remounted them.

The Inspector stopped in front of the bland-looking super before starting to talk fast and low.

“My partner and my superior have nothing to do with this. You must know enough about me by now to know I’m telling the truth. This is between you and me.”

The super’s expression remained blank. “I don’t know what you mean, Officer,” he said hollowly.

“Then I’ll tell you what I mean,” Harry said, his lips moving back off his teeth. “You tell your boss to take those doors and shove them up his ass.”

The super’s expression was anything but vacuous as he talked on the phone in his apartment later that night.

“He may not know who he’s dealing with exactly, but I think he has a real good idea.”

The man on the other end, the one who had dealt with the murderer of the Murray girl, thought the situation over for a few seconds.

“It looks like he’s giving us a choice,” the super continued. “We can either fight him head-on, or we can manipulate matters so that he’s satisfied.”

“There’s no such choice,” the super’s boss retorted. “Since the Patterson fiasco, we’ve done the research we should have done in the first place. When this Inspector Callahan gets hold of something, he doesn’t let go. He is practically an autonomous executioner on the police force.”

“What are you saying?” the super asked. “We have no choice?”

“Exactly,” his boss replied. “With Daley gone, you’re in charge of enforcement. Satisfy the SFPD, by all means, but find that woman, then kill them both. Kill Patterson and Callahan.”

When the two men got back to Homicide Office on the seventh floor of the Justice Building, Bressler had already gone home, leaving a message that he wanted to see Harry first thing in the morning.

The partners parted, but, unlike DiGeorgio, Harry didn’t go home. He went down the block and entered the first bar he saw. It was a hangout for newspaper reporters, called Abbot’s.

Harry liked the place because a guy could get some privacy for his phone calls. The tired cop sat in the booth and dialed the airport. Bill MacKenzie answered. Harry told him what he wanted, then hung up. He sidled up to the bar, had a double scotch, and then went to Mackenzie’s house in Sausalito to wait.

The airport man showed up about an hour later and let Callahan into the cellar. Turning on the overhead light, he put down two heavy bags on the Ping-Pong table in the middle of the floor between the low stone walls.

Without a word, he unzipped the first bag and pulled out three small, round, paper-wrapped packages. “Here’s the hamburgers you ordered,” he said.

Bill MacKenzie was an ex-cop who had a food concession stand at the airport. He made the best chili-burgers Harry had ever eaten. That was the first thing Callahan needed from him. Because of his location, MacKenzie was also acutely aware of the trafficking in a variety of other commodities.