Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons (12 page)

“H. A., we should’ve . . . !” Strughold sputtered until Striker raised his hand again. They all kept silent until Harry had crossed the bridge and disappeared into a white building on the other side.

“It’s fine,” Striker soothed, regaining his composure. “It’s all right. We’ve learned a lot today. This entire regrettable incident has given me an idea.”

Striker was a little less civilized when he confronted Sweetboy Williams later that afternoon. “
Stupido!”
he screamed, slapping himself on the forehead. “I ignored the mess you made of the Tucker hit. I’ve ignored your eccentricities, your minor idiosyncrasies, but this is too much—too much! All those things you said were mistakes were not mistakes, were they?
Were they?”

“You hired me because I was the best, right?” Sweetboy answered calmly. “The Tucker thing worked because I meant it to work. The Callahan thing could work as well.”

“As well?” Striker exploded in amazement. “As well? Bodies littering an amusement park? A rape-murder in Los Angeles?”

“It got him here, didn’t it?”

“Who wants him here?” Striker shouted, his face getting purple again. “Not me. It was
your
aggravated sense of wild West fantasy that hatched this showdown idea. Callahan said he was answering an invitation. It was your invitation. Your invitation has left a trail of blood that has led to me!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Williams complained. “Callahan’s a renegade. There’s nothing official he can do. And once he’s out of the way, things’ll get back to normal.”

“Normal?” Striker asked the ceiling. “Normal? A dead San Francisco inspector? San Francisco investigators crawling all over the place? San Francisco chiefs pressuring San Antonio chiefs? That’s normal?”

“Callahan’s a renegade,” Williams repeated. “A rogue. A maverick. He’s got no friends, and his reputation is dicey. His Frisco superiors will probably be glad he finally bought it.”

“No,” Striker said flatly, sitting behind his large oak desk in his Spanish-style office. “You will not kill Inspector Callahan. You will go nowhere near Inspector Callahan. I shall accept the opinion that your luring him to San Antonio was done with what you felt were my best interests in mind. I grant you that he was Tucker’s friend and the most likely man to seek revenge, but this must not turn into a high-noon shoot-out.

“No,” Striker repeated. “There is another, more effective way of eliminating Inspector Callahan from the scene. I shall ask for your cooperation in this matter. Do I have it?”

“Yes,” Williams said immediately, rising from the thick beige couch in front of the desk.

“Then you will not approach Inspector Callahan in any way, is that understood?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Striker leaned back in the tall, brown, padded chair. “I will consider a little time off for you. A vacation. A reward, if you will, for a job well done. All right?”

“Yes,” Williams said for a third time, his expression empty, his eyes looking over Striker’s head.

“Very well. That’s all for now.”

Williams left quickly and quietly. Striker stared after him as the automatic door slid back into place. Then the businessman looked around his inner sanctum. The walls here, like the walls elsewhere in the mansion, were decorated with antique weapons. The ceiling was low and lined with gnarled crossbeams. The rest of the interior was furnished with a Spanish motif. The thick sliding door was detailed with sculpture. The beige walls were hand-stippled. The only window in the room was the large one behind Striker, outfitted with bulletproof, oneway glass so he could see the grounds but the guards and the rest of his staff couldn’t see him.

Striker turned to gaze out that window. He seemed to stare through the beautifully kept flora and the various animals he let roam on the grounds. He thought about Sweetboy Williams. It had been a very touchy thing, he knew, and he felt that the assassin realized it as well. The only thing between Williams and immediate execution was Striker’s attitude. For while the weapons on the wall were ancient, the weapons hidden in the desk were anything but.

It was only Williams’ past accomplishments that saved him. The hitman hadn’t stepped out of line until now. But it was enough. Striker knew he couldn’t trust Sweetboy as he had in the past. The businessman mused over the day’s two meetings. The Callahan question was already on its way toward being answered. And through that, Striker felt sure he could eradicate the people behind Tucker once and for all.

But the Williams question was still open. Striker thought about the assassin’s recent actions and reactions. He knew about the taxi cab reconnaissance at the airport. He had given Williams plenty of time to admit it, but the hitman had remained silent, choosing instead to inform Striker of the out-of-date cop car through another employee. The number had not been enough. He had needed Williams to follow the vehicle and identify the drivers. Instead, the assassin had collected some information about Callahan, and Striker had found the car in question at the police junkyard.

Striker pondered it all. He decided that he would have to terminate Williams’ employment quite soon. But first things first. Harry Callahan would have to be eliminated.

C H A P T E R
S i x

T
he locale was cheery. It was time for the annual Alamo Stadium Rodeo. The crowd was cheery. Among the roaring masses that were delighting in the assembled cowboys’ antics were Peter Nash and his family. The weather was cheery. The sun shone bright on the Stadium and its sparkling surroundings, Brackenridge Park, the San Antonio River, and the Hemis-Fair Plaza.

The only thing that wasn’t cheery was Harry Callahan. He felt the heavy weight of a cross-hair sight across his face all the time. He didn’t like the crowd, he didn’t like the noise, and he didn’t like the stake-out.

“Don’t worry,” Nash had said. “Everything is tightly planned.”

“As tight as the Four Ponies Bar?” Harry had asked.

“Tighter. Come on, don’t worry, Harry, we’re using only experienced officers this time. The whole thing will go down smooth as silk. You’ll see.”

But Harry had made his living worrying. It kept him on his toes and above ground. “I don’t like Carol and the kids being here.”

“Come on,” Nash said again. “I take them to the Rodeo every year. We’ll be three people amid tens of thousands!”

Even so, Harry didn’t like it. The whole situation had come together too easily. Word had gotten around that another Striker payoff was going down at the Rodeo. That made sense. It was one of the biggest civic events that occurred all year. It would be natural that Striker would skim off some extra cream. But the way the rest of the plan fell into place bothered Callahan.

He was to backstop Officer Henry Lieber, a by-the-book veteran who was set to catch Jack Foster, another Striker employee, in the act of payoff. That, too, was fine. What really worried Harry was that a huge stadium with thousands of screaming fans was a perfect place to payoff an out-of-town inspector. Harry kept about a tenth of his attention on Lieber and Foster, and ninety percent of his instincts were scanning the area for a Sweetboy.

To lower the risk of a back attack, Harry positioned himself against a solid concrete wall near the stables. He was watching the main stadium office from across an open area lined with animal enclosures. In the middle of the oblong space were heaps of straw and a wagon or two. Beyond that was a driveway leading to the stadium grounds flanked by paths into both sides of the stands.

Harry had been busying himself at that end of the open space for about fifteen minutes as off-duty officer Lieber worked his nonchalant way toward the office. The plan was to wait until Foster went inside the office, then they’d both move in to catch him in the act of receiving a kickback.

According to Nash’s information, Foster was late. That didn’t bother Harry a bit. If he had his druthers, Foster wouldn’t show at all, so Harry could wait until the rodeo ended and everyone went home before leaving himself.

Lieber signaled that he would check up the road a bit to see if Foster was coming. Harry, preoccupied, signaled back in the affirmative. He was so intent on other things that he didn’t notice the look of honest regret that passed over Lieber’s face.

It didn’t take long for Lieber to disappear and a gang of youths to start ambling into the stable space.

Harry’s expression didn’t change, but his blood chilled for a moment, then picked up circulatory speed throughout his body. It was looking more and more like a setup, all right, but not the kind he was expecting.

In came the Mexican who had slashed his pants at the airport. Next came the kid who had stuffed his underwear. He recognized them all. It was the exact same group who accosted his luggage. Finally in sauntered Tattoo. As soon as he appeared, Harry toyed with the notion that Tattoo was Sweetboy. It didn’t seem likely, but the inspector wasn’t about to take chances. He placed his right hand inside his coat and moved forward to meet them.

The gang spread out across the enclosure, taking up what seemed to be preplanned positions near the middle of the stable space. They lined its equator, effectively blocking any route of escape. Harry saw that Tattoo was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and a dark green vest. As the inspector neared, Tattoo nonchalantly opened his vest to expose his torso.

“See?” he asked Harry. “No weapons.”

“No guns,” said the Mexican, unbuttoning his shirt.

“No knives,” said another kid, pulling off his jacket.

“No clubs,” said a third, turning all the way around with his arms out.

“No weapons of any kind,” said a kid in the back, pulling down his pants and giving Callahan a quick moon.

“So it would be murder if you shot any one of us with that big gun of yours,” Tattoo hastened to add.

Harry looked everyone over. Almost all the kids were wiry. One or two were heavily muscled. All of them looked like products of manual labor. There didn’t seem to be a weak link among them. Even if there had been, the enclosure wasn’t wide enough and there were too many of them to barrel through, then outrun them. Harry looked down. On all their feet were the customary pointed Texas cowboy boots. Whatever happened, Harry thought, he wouldn’t let them get him on the ground.

He also wouldn’t throw the first punch. What he would do was play a sort of pedestrian chicken. He started to speed up his walk as he moved toward Tattoo. The kid stood his ground until Harry was almost right on top of him. It then became quite clear that Harry wasn’t going to stop and there was no way Tattoo was going to stop him by just standing there.

At the last second, Tattoo, pivoted, twisted, and got out of Harry’s way. At the same time he hopped in back of the inspector, jumped up, and swung his arm at the back of Harry’s head.

Harry ducked and swung backward. The kid’s arm shot through empty air, pulling him forward. He collided midway with Harry’s elbow, pushing him back. Tattoo’s mouth opened to release an explosive exhalation and some of his lunch. Then he took a step backward, lost his footing, fell through the air for three feet, and landed flat on his back.

Even before Tattoo stopped choking on his puke and yelled for the others, the rest of the gang had taken Harry’s action as a declaration of war.

Harry kicked the first kid to his left. His foot, connecting with the kid’s solar plexus, braced him to turn toward the right and catch the first kid there in the nose. Then they started coming from all directions.

Harry did some fast calculations. He had taken out three and only one of those had no chance of coming back. Tattoo was already finding his feet. So that meant at least six kids to take out in a non-permanent fashion.

Someone grabbed him around the waist from the front. He clubbed the guy with both fists on the back of the neck. Two down. But the tackle had pushed him back into the waiting fists of one of the muscular boys. He felt one first graze his ear and the other smack solidly into the back of his neck. He only felt the pain while already twisting around, the side of his palm making a whirring noise in the air. It landed against the attacking boy’s ear.

The kid’s head swung away as Harry felt a boot smash into the small of his back. The pain and power of that blow was amazing, but it was that very realization that kept him from going down. Even as he was flying forward from the force of the flying kick, Harry somehow found his footing. The horror of what those same boots could do to him while he was helpless on the ground was enough to keep him upright. With an incredible effort he stumbled, found his footing, spun, and delivered a devastating punch to the face of the Mexican.

The kid had run after him when it seemed certain he would fall. The Mexican’s momentum was too strong to stop when Harry miraculously turned and punched. Even though the Mexican’s hands were up, Harry’s fist sank into his face, sending a halo of blood in all directions. That was three down.

It was enough for Harry. He enjoyed exercise as much as the next guy, but he saw no sport in playing punching bag. Before the next kid could charge, Harry pulled out his Magnum, pointed it at the ceiling, and pulled the trigger. The effect was instantaneous. All the stabled animals went crazy, the gang stopped dead in its tracks, and the office door opened to reveal Sheriff Mitch Strughold and his deputies.

Everybody except Harry was smiling.

“Man,” said Tattoo in a husky, broken voice, “that guy’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” chimed in another kid, “he just started beating up on us for no reason at all.”

“Look what he did to Frank and Manwell,” choked a third.

“Wall, wall, wall,” said the sheriff, his hands back in his gun belt. “Looks like we have a dangerous fugitive here, boys. I think y’all better keep yer guns on him while I read him his rights.”

The sheriff was more than happy to do more than read Harry his rights. He was happy to take his Magnum away from him. He was happy to cuff Harry’s hands in front of him. He was happy to personally herd Harry to his car. He was happy to join Harry in the back seat. And he was happy to gloat.