Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (6 page)

“You tell me you’re operating on a hunch,” Bressler said, never once looking Harry directly in the eyes.

They were in Bressler’s office. Tuber and his wife and children had been dead for a week and a half. That was six days away from being front-page news and three days away from being news at all. All anyone talked about was the Giants’ chances to win the pennant. It was too hot, too much August, to pay attention to anything else. Murder and corruption in high places could wait until fall.

“That’s correct. I would stake my life on it.”

“It might not be your life, Harry. It may be just a little thing like your career. I know in the past you’ve seemed uncommonly anxious to throw away your career. If you feel that way now, Harry, why don’t you let me know now, save us both the trouble.”

Harry was silent.

“Because I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve gotten complaints about your behavior in the last couple of days.”

Harry knew what was coming but thought he’d ask anyway. “Oh? What sort of complaints, Lieutenant?”

“You are accused of harassing a citizen for no other purpose than to intimidate him. You know who I’m talking about.”

“What is this harassment supposed to consist of, mind my asking?”

“Come off it, Harry.” Bressler was losing his patience. “Do I have to spell everything out for you? No one gave you any directive to follow Matt Braxton around town. No one told you to watch his every movement, to station yourself outside his home. If that’s what I want you to do, I’ll tell you.”

“What happened to personal initiative?”

“Personal initiative, my ass. With you, personal initiative means blowing someone away with that cannon of yours. The only reason you’re still with this department is because you’ve been lucky. Luck doesn’t last forever. That’s what they call the law of probability, Harry. Now get out of my office. And if I hear that you’re still shopping Braxton, I’m taking you off the case. Understand me?”

“Every word, Lieutenant.”

Harry left the office but what was on his mind wasn’t the upbraiding he’d just been subjected to; that had been anticipated. What truly interested him was just who had sent the word to Bressler to lay off of Braxton. He doubted it had come from Braxton directly. Braxton wasn’t the sort of man to deal with a mere homicide lieutenant. He had gone to someone higher up. But whom? For the first time he began to feel that maybe it didn’t make much sense to tail Braxton around Nob Hill and the Embarcadero. Could be he was following the wrong person.

There was a bar a block or so away from the station house. Safest goddamn bar in town since it was frequented mostly by cops who, whether they were in or out of uniform, were always packing pieces on them. A would-be stickup man would have to be a suicidal lunatic to attempt to rip off the joint.

It was approaching in on eveningtime; the bar was filling up with men just coming off their shifts, desperate for the invigoration a couple of cold brews could provide. Outside the air had stopped moving; with no place special to go, it sat there in the bay, stuperously hot, waiting for a fog or a fresh breeze from the Pacific to dispel it.

Arnold Judson wandered in and took a stool next to Harry.

“How’re you doing, Harry?”

“I have no idea, Arnie. None at all.”

“You were in with Bressler.”

“Word gets around, doesn’t it?”

Judson ordered a double shot of Red Label and a beer back. He then turned to Harry. “This Tuber shit’s eating you up. You getting any sleep? Don’t answer that. You know what I think?”

“I don’t want to know what you think.” Harry stared morosely at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar. He wasn’t particularly happy with what he saw.

“I don’t care whether you want to know what I think because I’m going to tell you. I’m telling you that you ain’t getting any sleep. You look like shit. You’re busting your ass over this one and why? I know why. You bust your ass over every case. OK, I think that’s really fine. Rare in this day and age, but I’m all for it. But you fucking damn well know that all you’re going to come up against is a goddamn stone wall. Everybody knows Braxton had Tuber hit. But no one wants to prove it. And you know why they don’t?”

“I don’t want to know,” Harry said, realizing that it made no difference to Judson.

“I’ll, tell you why. Because if anything happens to Braxton there’s going to be a wildcat strike on the docks. And the city is in no mood to stand for a strike. It means too much to the economy, and you don’t need to be told how shitty the city’s economy is these days. Just look at your goddamn paycheck. When was the last time we got a raise that could buy you more than another beer every week? So, as one cop to the other, let me tell you, Harry, the best thing you can do is forget it.”

“Forget it?”

“Hey, no, I don’t mean forget it. I mean, well, hell, I don’t know what I mean. I mean you don’t have to eat, sleep, and drink this case.”

Harry glanced down at the whiskey in front of him. “Well, I don’t know about that last part.”

Just as he spoke, Judson directed Harry’s attention down to the other end of the bar. “Talk about drinking, here comes the force’s representative of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.”

Harry looked to where Judson was pointing. Sandy Patel had just come in. He was in his uniform; it looked as crisp and ungodly fresh as he did.

“What’d he do, renounce abstinence? I’ve never seen him here before.”

“No, no, nothing like that. Patel get pissed? Never happen. He orders orange juice, Perrier, some shit like that. You watch.”

Just as Judson predicted, Patel asked for a large glass of orange juice which he hastily downed, then hurried out.

“The pause that refreshes,” Judson mumbled.

“Maybe I have been following the wrong person,” said Harry, abruptly abandoning his seat.

“What did you say, Harry? Hey, where are you going?”

Patel was alone in his squad car, one of the few members of the department who’d volunteered to ride solo. The object was to spread the police around, give them a greater presence. But there was a serious drawback, as far as the Benevolent Association saw it, and that was that a patrol officer couldn’t rely on the immediate backup a partner would provide.

But Patel claimed he preferred the solitude and didn’t mind going it alone, and as far as his colleagues were concerned that was fine with them. A guy like Patel, who doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, hardly ever swears, keeps to himself, never accepts invitations out when he’s off-duty, doesn’t exactly endear himself to the people he works with.

It struck Harry though, as he tailed the unsuspecting patrolman through the North Beach sector, that there might be another motive Patel had for keeping his own company, something besides an obsession with privacy (Harry knew about that, suffered it too often), something behind the smug attitude he manifested, the I-can-handle-any-shit-they-throw-at-me attitude. Riding solo gave him the opportunity to move freely. You report in but there’s no one by your side to maintain tabs on you; no one you have to cut in on a deal so that he won’t turn you in out of frustrated greed, no one to suspect you of anything at all.

The intersection of Broadway and Columbus was ablaze with lights, primary colors blinking on and off with mesmerizing rhythms, advertising the delights of the flesh to the accompaniment of loud brassy music, Donna Summer and Gloria Gayner blasting out of every other hole in the wall. Lean, aggressive men half-hidden in the shadows were calling out to the passersby: “Girls, girls, girls, check ’em out, don’t cost you nothin’ to look!”

Patel was stopping a block beyond this famous intersection, double-parking, leaving the motor running. He disappeared into the door of a topless joint that once used to be a decent jazz club. Not that Harry minded the topless joint; it was just that the dancers there were so damn ugly that you knew something else was going on. No way a place like that could pull in the rent each month with those girls alone.

Patel was back in five minutes. He thrust something into his pocket and looked around, possibly expecting to see somebody he knew. Then he returned to his car and pulled away, continuing down Broadway.

Harry was listening in on the police band; he was hearing exactly what Patel was hearing.

But it was only when the dispatcher addressed Patel directly that he sat up and took notice.

“Car 42 . . . Car 42 . . .”

Patel picked up, “This is Car 42.”

“We have a report of an eleven-two in progress at the corner of Fifth and Mission. Two men both armed.”

“Ten-four.”

Patel’s squad car made its existence known with a wailing siren as he continued along Columbus. Harry followed him into Montgomery and then onto Market and down Fifth.

At first it was impossible to determine what was happening at the corner. Patel, a 9mm high-powered Browning gripped steadily in his hand, got out of his car and began walking toward the corner. A man dashed up to him and grabbed him on the arm so suddenly that Patel seemed ready to blow him away.

“Not there, Officer,” the man cried. “Down to your right. That pawnshop. A spade and a white dude.”

Patel turned and raced toward where the man had pointed. Harry by this time had parked his own car and was just half a block behind Patel. Much as he disliked Patel, Harry was prepared to back him up; he wasn’t about to let even a corrupt and arrogant cop get killed by low-lifes on the street if he could help it.

A faint light shone through the rectangular window of the pawn shop, which was cluttered with clock radios, Motorolas, Sony color TVs, an electric typewriter, and a harpsicord, of all things. The iron grill fence that ordinarily protected the shop at night had been pulled half-way to the door. Maybe the pawnbroker had forgotten something while closing up and gone back inside. Maybe he was interrupted and forced back.

In any case, you couldn’t really see anything. The interior was mostly bathed in darkness. The pawnbroker must have relied on a silent alarm under the counter, Harry thought.

Patel, still unaware of Harry’s presence in the vicinity, moved cautiously into the doorway, flattening himself out against the narrow wall so as to avoid being spotted from within. Then, slowly, he took hold of the door knob and twisted it to the right. Nothing happened. It was locked.

So Patel shot out the lock, kicked the door halfway open, and went down into a crouch.

Reaction to this was practically instantaneous—not on the part of the two would-be robbers but from the store’s owner. The problem was that the robbers, still with their handguns directed on the pawnbroker, hadn’t yet mobilized themselves to deal with this latest threat. The pawnbroker, a corpulent figure who looked like he suffered from a terrible disposition, was certain that Patel’s invasion had given him the opportunity he was waiting for.

Reaching below the counter he came up with a gun of his own.

“Freeze! Freeze, you’re under arrest!” Patel was shouting.

Harry was a couple of feet away from him, but stayed well to his right, not wanting to endure the barrage of bullets should the men fail to obey Patel’s instruction.

And in fact, the two men would have frozen were it not for the pawnbroker who seemed reluctant to be deprived of his moment of glory. Evidently unappreciative of Patel’s rescue effort, he trained his gun on the white member of the pair and discharged it. They were so close to each other that only a blind man could have missed.

The white, a bearded mother of around forty, staggered with the impact, but he wasn’t quite ready to lay down and die. He fired back, now at the pawnbroker, now at Patel. It was a Luger he had and while it was only firing .22s, it was making a huge racket. Patel had ducked back, out of the line of fire, shooting back but not with any great effect since he was unable to see around the corner and into the pawnshop.

The pawnbroker, having the ill fortune not to have ducked in time himself, looked vastly surprised by the way everything had developed. How many times he’d been punctured by .22s was impossible to determine, but a ship could have set sail on the blood that rushed out over his clothes. He refused, however, to acknowledge defeat. He raised his gun with difficulty and was about to shoot again when a 9mm bullet pierced his head. He had gotten in the way of Patel’s fire. Harry was the only one to realize this but he was in no position to do anything about it—and come to think about it what could he do?—being forced to lay low while the wounded white partner in this misconceived operation continued to spray the street with a hail of bullets.

What the .22s couldn’t do the 9mm cartridge surely did. The pawnbroker, astonished that life should terminate so abruptly and on this particular August night, lurched over and collapsed with a final groan.

The white, himself critically wounded, was no longer in command of his faculties. His shooting was dangerous and erratic; he seemed to have no special target in mind. Blood, in systolic rhythm, spurted out from a wound at the base of his neck. And when he opened his mouth, almost as if to say something, blood crested up from his throat and dribbled down his chin.

His tall black companion looked simply appalled at the way things were working out. Whatever the plans he and his dying partner had contrived, obviously didn’t include this kind of shit. He was, just like Patel and Harry, ducking, crawling along the floor, doing his utmost to save his ass, swearing up and down that should he emerge whole from this melee he would be happy to serve God, country, and the Man, in whichever order was necessary. “God help me!” he kept screaming. “Somebody help me! Don’t have to be God!”

Patel risked stretching his head out into the doorway to see if he could capture a better glimpse of the madman who refused to be shut down. He nearly got his scalp singed by a passing bullet for his trouble. Like a turtle disappointed with what it sees, he retracted his head immediately.

Harry crept way around, crossing Fifth, taking no notice of the terrified pedestrians who, having scattered at the sound of the first shot, were now peering out from doorways and windows.

It was clear that the white had another weapon, maybe a couple more to supplement the Luger. No way of telling. But he kept on firing. Weak as he was, he wouldn’t stop shooting. And with the pawnbroker out of the running, he had apparently settled on taking random potshots at the street.