Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons (16 page)

If Harry could get into something else besides the sheriff’s car, there was a good chance he could contact Bressler and the San Francisco boys before the roof fell in. Once that was accomplished he’d have to avoid the jailhouse knife-in-the-ribs or slit-throat or despondent-hanging-suicide ploy or any other mishap that’s apt to befall a caged “enemy of the state.”

To add to his problems, with Strughold shepherding Nash, there was no guarantee the ex-deputy would get back either. Harry could be safe in custody before Striker pulled the rug out from under all of them. In that case, Harry would have accomplished nothing.

Instead of making a decision, Harry counted the cops in his immediate vicinity. There were two near the doorway of the stone building. There were four lounging near the middle of the walkway. There were two more near Strughold and Nash. There were three others keeping their eyes on various flower arrangements. Just under a dozen men against one man and a helpless, handcuffed hostage.

Almost of its own volition, the .44 Magnum was out and in his hand. He crouched in the flowers, ready to move off to the right and get behind Strughold and his prisoner. So he was ready when the first explosion came.

A crackling boom suddenly echoed across the Gardens. Harry looked down at his own gun in surprise, then saw a flash in his peripheral vision. He jerked his head up in time to see the second cop behind Strughold crumble to the ground. The first cop had already fallen, his gun barrel still smoking.

Bursting out from the shadows was a big, muscular man with a huge silenced Magnum revolver. For the first time, Harry laid eyes on Sweetboy Williams.

He must’ve been in ‘Nam, was the first thing Harry thought because the hitman was wearing a completely black outfit and his face was smeared with grease. He had blended in with the night perfectly. And nobody could use a Magnum that well and that fast without some sort of concerted practice. The only real place for concerted practice was either in police academies or the military and Sweetboy sure as hell wasn’t no ex-cop! Not the way he mowed down the officers present without a shred of remorse or hesitation.

Harry saw the assassin’s left arm swing at Strughold while his right hand aimed the silenced Magnum. He hit the sheriff and killed the cops at the building entrance at the same time. All three crumbled. Williams in action was astonishing.

The remaining cops’ first thought was not to avenge their fallen comrades; it was not to join them. The others scrambled behind any cover they could find as Sweetboy grabbed Nash around the neck. Harry broke out from his cover as the hitman dragged the ex-deputy back the way he had come.

Callahan raced across the flowers, trampling beautiful buds as he went. He leaped onto the sidewalk just in time to see Sweetboy cut across the theater grounds and for the hiding cops to show themselves again. To them, one big silhouette with a Magnum was just like any other, so they started firing on Harry.

The sidewalk ripped apart with little asphalt gushers as Harry went after Williams. The theater was built on the edge of the river which wound its way through the entire park. There was a bridge connecting an open-air summer theater stage with a bleacher section of seats on the other side. Williams and Nash were dodging in and out of the bleachers as Harry stepped out onto the stage.

The only applause he got was in the form of .44-caliber bullets. Williams may have been good, but no one was good enough to hit Harry with anything from across a river in the middle of the evening. Harry leveled his own weapon and snapped off a shot.

It was a mistake. Not only had he jeopardized Nash’s continual breathing but he set up a booming beacon for the other cops to follow. Harry didn’t want them to catch him midway across the bridge, so he ran to the stage edge and dropped into the water.

That wasn’t a mistake. Not only didn’t the arriving policeman spot him, but he was able to follow Williams by simply floating down the shallow river.

The Paseo was so shallow at that point that Harry was able to crouch beneath the walled-up bank with his torso and weapon out of the H
₂
O. He listened as the cops scanned the opposite bank for any sign of their prey. He heard them admit defeat and plan to spread out and search. Harry grinned. Both he and Sweetboy had gotten away from the cops again, but Sweetboy hadn’t gotten away from him. Not yet he hadn’t. Harry pushed off down the river.

He pulled himself out of the drink in front of a wooded area into which he saw two shadowy figures disappear. The night had taken on a quietly ominous atmosphere. The bright lights of the park only added to the feeling by cutting through the treetops like laser beams. It was a night of blue shadows and pale white bolts. The evening’s warmth started coming off the water in the form of mist. Harry rose from the river like a gun-toting Creature from the Black Lagoon.

He dripped across the woods, remembering the last two times he had done the same. In Los Angeles he had wound up in the middle of a Western movie. This time he was close. He wound up facing the entrance to the Old Trail Drivers Museum. The front door, which should have been locked, was wavering in the night wind. It shuddered open for a moment, then clacked close, only to blow slightly open again.

Harry walked over and went inside without pausing. As soon as he was in he moved quickly to the other side of the entrance. He waited on his haunches for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. About thirty seconds later, just as it seemed they had, the lights went on.

But only for a second. Long enough for Harry to see Sweetboy seeing him. He saw the hitman’s gun point at him, then the lights went off again.

He heard the cough of Williams’ gun and the tinkle of broken glass even as he was diving toward the open door. As he slapped the unlocked entry open and rolled away he heard a slapping sound on the floor where he had been.

He righted himself as the door banged against the wall and bounced closed again, allowing the dim moonlight into the museum in an ever widening then ever thinning band. That weak illumination was enough to let Harry glimpse Sweetboy moving deeper into the museum. Strangely, Nash was nowhere to be seen.

Remembering the exhibits’ placements from the splitsecond the lights were on, Harry followed Sweetboy’s lead. He moved carefully, his gun held out of harm’s way, one arm out and his feet silently shuffling across the floor. As soon as he had attained the second room, the lights went on again.

Sweetboy was aiming at him from over the driver’s seat of an old-fashioned flatbed wagon. He fired and the bullet splattered into the wall next to Harry’s head. Harry fired back, his bullet biting off a hunk of the wooden handbrake next to Sweetboy’s cranium. The lights went off again.

Harry ran forward, hoping to cut Sweetboy off where he saw him last. When he reached the flatbed in the darkness, he heard footsteps moving in the opposite direction. The lights went on again. Sweetboy was leaning out the back of a covered wagon, gun swinging in Harry’s direction.

Callahan shot first this time, right through the cloth of the wagon. The bullet billowed the material from both sides but streaked over Sweetboy’s right shoulder. His silenced pistol leveled in his left hand, the hitman fired back, ripping off an entire plank from the side of the flatbed.

Harry ran until he was looking through the covered wagon from the front. Sweetboy was jumping out the back. Harry fired again, neatly cutting off a lock of Williams’ hopping hair. Sweetboy landed, bent to his knees and shot under the wagon. His bullet went between Harry’s legs. The lights went off again.

The light show was driving Harry’s pupils crazy. He had to get into a room that had a little consistent illumination. He didn’t worry about Sweetboy. Where Harry went, the hitman would follow. Lord knows Callahan had followed him long enough—it was about time he returned the favor.

Harry stayed quiet and still until he thought he sensed some blue amid the blackness. A strange thing about darkness; it had a way of throwing off all one’s other senses as well. All Harry had to go on was instinct and common sense. All the rooms couldn’t be windowless and all the windows couldn’t be covered, so it was just a matter of finding that room. Keeping a pair of mental fingers crossed, Harry followed the feeling of blue.

A few steps later and he was feeling a bit more secure. The blue was getting stronger. A few more feet and he was certain. He was following a definite light to its source. The trail led into another room. There Harry could see a line of bright beige, like the semblance of a lamp escaping through the crack of a door. Harry marched up to it and put his hand up where a doorknob should be.

A round globe of metal slipped into his hand. He twisted, pulled, and pushed his gun inside the tiny room. The rest of the area was immediately bathed in illumination, revealing the last room in the museum. It was a storage area in the back, complete with an emergency exit door and the control closet, into which Harry was presently pointing his revolver. At that moment, the lights went on again.

Right in front of his barrel was a blinking Peter Nash. His hands were still cuffed in front of him, but all his fingers were poised over the switches that controlled the spotlights for the entire museum. The ex-deputy’s eyes were glazed and half-closed. It was obvious he hadn’t recognized Harry yet. But before the inspector could say anything, both the back door and entrance door flew open.

Cops started pouring in through the back and Sweetboy appeared framed in the front.

“Kill the lights!” the hitman screamed.

It was Harry who complied. Nash froze up in confusion, so Callahan shifted his aim to zero in on the light box. Nash fell back as Harry pulled the trigger. There was an explosion of sparks, and then the entire museum was bathed in blue again.

It was a blue that was soon filled with yellow-orange specks. The cops blasted away with careless abandon. To their way of thinking, they had nothing to worry about. As far as they were concerned, all their targets were mad-dog killers. It was every bullet for itself.

Harry hit the floor and crawled deeper into the control booth, hoping to make contact with Nash’s legs. Although he found himself against the rear wall, the ex-deputy had seemed to disappear magically. Harry sat up and listened. Among the hectic police gunshots, he could hear a rapid coughing and the noise four feet made when running. According to all evidence, Sweetboy was making good his getaway still in Nash’s company.

Even though he hated the hitman’s guts, Harry found a lot to admire about him. He could appreciate Sweetboy’s ability, speed, and accuracy. Given all that to commend him, Harry thought it best to follow the assassin’s example. When the smoke cleared and the lights went back on, he didn’t want to be around with any dead cops riddled with .44 Magnum holes.

Harry waited until all the cops stampeded through the back room and into the museum. Then he went out the back door. The river floated him to safety beyond the park cordon.

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

“A
gain? You let him get away again?” Hannibal Striker was incredulous. Mitch Strughold was in pain.

“For Christsake, Sweetboy showed up! He hit me and started going crazy!”

“I know that!” Striker raged. “I can believe that! What I can’t believe is that you let Williams, Nash, and Callahan get away from you again!”

The businessman rose from behind his desk and paced across the thick white carpet. Never before had he been so amazed at one man’s performance. For years his empire had run well and his power had seemed absolute. Then one lousy inspector from Los Angeles shows up and the whole thing falls apart. His own personal hitman turns into an obsessive cowboy, desperate for a gunfight at the OK Corral, and his own personal lawman turns into an incompetent, accident-prone idiot.

“We’ll find him,” said Strughold in pleading tones from the couch. “There are only so many places Callahan can go . . . !”

“Callahan!” Striker roared again, the veins on his neck getting as big as shotgun barrels. “Who gives a fuck about Callahan?”

“But I thought . . .” the sheriff stuttered.

“Don’t think!” Striker commanded. “Do! Find Sweetboy Williams and kill him!”

“But what about Nash’s evidence?” Strughold asked, confused. “If he knew all about the payoffs, he must have a hell of a lot of evidence somewhere.”

“It’s hidden,” the businessman said very quietly, putting his arms on either side of the sheriff’s shoulders, which rested on the back of the couch. “Nash wouldn’t tell us where it is and we couldn’t find it so that means that no one else is likely to find it either.

“But,” Striker continued, his voice rising in volume, “Williams knows enough about this operation to bury me, you, and everybody else in the city! And if he decides to do any harmonizing with Nash, it’ll kill every crooked official in the state! Forget about Nash’s papers. We could tear his whole house apart and not find them. Find Williams! Kill Williams!”

The sheriff had been right for once. There were only a few places Harry could go. He had already used Tucker’s place. He could hole up on public property, but that was a losing proposition. He needed time to think, plan, and eat. Another change of clothes wouldn’t hurt either.

It was the latter desire that made up Callahan’s mind. Taking plenty of time to stake out the grounds, Harry slipped into Nash’s neighborhood, waited until night, then broke into the ex-deputy’s cellar. He stumbled over to the stairs, flicked on the light, and looked right down the barrel of a service revolver.

Lucky for him, Carol Nash was holding it. She took one look at her target, dropped the gun like it had suddenly heated up to five hundred degrees, and fell sobbing into Harry’s arms.

After Harry changed into his original pair of pants that Carol had washed so long ago, eaten, and cleaned up, he started tearing the basement apart.

“What are you looking for?” Carol asked from her seat on the cellar steps.

“I’m not sure,” said Harry. “Some papers. A file. A book. I don’t know, just something that could tell me a little more about what I’m fighting against.”