Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill (4 page)

Father Nick had attempted to take advantage of Harry’s distraction, but in escaping he was no luckier than he had been when he’d tried to impress his friends by distributing cocaine. There were just too many people blocking his passage for him to get anywhere. Harry, assured that the fat man was going to cause him no further trouble that night or any night to come, spotted and caught him easily.

“You weren’t trying to go anywhere, were you?” he asked politely. “I thought we had a date, you and me.”

C H A P T E R
T h r e e

T
heir date didn’t last very long.

The following morning, before the sun had gathered enough energy to head up in the sky, Harry was summoned to the D.A.’s office. The D.A. was a political hack named Axel Nolan. He was well into his fifties but looked fit and in the best of health. While not very good at bringing criminals to justice, he could shoot nine under par on the greens he tramped with his cronies, and since he didn’t expect glowing eulogies and front-page obits when he arrived at the eternal eighteenth hole, he did not much care what people thought of him. Especially if those people were named Harry Callahan.

And, in this particular instance, he had the backing of a good many both in the D.A.’s office and on the SFPD; some were high up, others were schlepps who ticketed illegally parked cars on Van Ness, and the only thing they had in common was a loathing for Inspector #71.

“That was some shit you pulled at Dorthaan’s last night,” Nolan began. He could be diplomatic in his language when he thought it was necessary. He didn’t think it necessary now.

“For six months we’ve known that Father Nick—that is Cimentini—has been distributing junk in this city. High-grade brown Mexican stuff. No one can find the son of a bitch. If I didn’t get him last night, it would’ve been another six months before anyone got a look at him again.”

Nolan wasn’t interested in what Harry was saying. He kept his eyes on the portrait of the current governor that hung on the wall above his desk. Appropriately, the painting had been rendered by a hack.

“We had to let Cimentini walk,” he said.

“Walk? You set the fucker free? On what grounds? He had the snow on him, we got witnesses to that. I read him his rights, not that he doesn’t know them by heart by now. Went right by the book.”

“Your book reads a bit differently than mine does.” Nolan finally turned to face Harry. “In my book it says that in this state there is no uniform arrest act. You cannot walk up to a man simply on suspicion . . .”

“On what fucking suspicion? He had the coke out in plain sight.”

“That may be. But you barged into a private club—a
private
club I repeat—not because you observed Cimentini with any illegal substance in his possession but because you suspected he might have. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of
Kelly v. U.S.,
but in that case something similar happened. Cop walked into a restaurant and placed a suspect under custody, and while it turned out he was guilty—after a search—there was nothing the suspect was doing that was suspicious of itself.”

Again Harry tried to reason with Nolan. Impossible.

“You haven’t picked up the subtlety involved here, Callahan,” he continued, the tone in his voice suggesting that Harry was utterly incapable of picking up subtleties under any circumstances. “You did not spot the suspect allegedly distributing the cocaine in a public place. It was a private establishment and as such is like any other private establishment including a home or an apartment. As a police officer you had no right to enter without a warrant. Under questioning, both guards at the door said that you were asked for one. You ignored them and brandished your weapon, threatening both.”

“I invited them to move but I did not threaten them.”

“Whether you exchanged words to that effect or merely displayed a gun I think is immaterial. Mr. Cimentini’s attorney reminded the court that his client was illegally arrested in terms of a recent Supreme Court decision
Payton v. U.S.
which extended the definition of what is subject to search and seizure in the privacy of one’s home. I do not propose to go into my interpretation of the decision, particularly whether Dorthaan’s is equivalent to a home for Cimentini. But all things considered, it was obvious to this office that it would be a waste of the taxpayers’ money to prosecute the suspect for an alleged parole violation.”

“Next time I’ll kill the bastard,” Harry muttered to himself.

“What’s that?”

“Is that all you have to tell me?”

“Not all.” He was gazing down at his desk blotter, seeming to study some documents collected there. “Making a questionable arrest is bad enough, but you also created quite a furor at Dorthaan’s. Half the front page of the
Chronicle
is filled with the story.” He waved the paper in Harry’s face. There was a large blurry photograph of people tumbling out of the club, panic and confusion written all over their pretty faces.

“I saw it.”

“One man killed, a Mr. Henry Cantwell of Sonoma, a prominent insurance executive.”

“That what he was? I didn’t realize insurance companies were training their executives to shoot. What do they do, blow away clients who are late with their payments?”

“I would appreciate it, Callahan, if you do not inflict your sense of humor on this office.” He went back to announcing the casualties of last night’s imbroglio: “In addition, one woman was shot in the stomach and is now in critical condition in the intensive-care unit, another man was shot and preliminary tests on him show that he’ll probably be crippled for life.”

“Preliminary tests should also show that I was not responsible for shooting either of them.”

“Not directly perhaps. But if you hadn’t decided to burst into Dorthaan’s, I don’t think those two people would be in the hospital this morning. Not to mention the uncounted numbers who suffered minor injuries while attempting to flee the premises.”

“You ever consider the thousands of people hooked on junk? All of Cimentini’s victims?”

“The problem with you is that you tend to break things down in terms of black and white. You don’t consider implications, Callahan. Which is why you are being suspended from the force—pending a full investigation, naturally. If you are exonerated you will be reinstated. If not—well, I can’t promise you there won’t be a trial.”

“When does this suspension occur?”

“As of now.”

“Without pay, I assume.”

“You assume right.” He turned back to contemplate the governor’s sad visage, indicating that Harry should consider himself dismissed.

Harry walked out slowly. After all, he had nowhere in particular to go, no deadlines to meet.

He was still numb when he reached his apartment, hadn’t quite absorbed the shock. First he loses Father Nick, then he loses his job. And it wasn’t even nine o’clock. It was one hell of a morning to lose all that before you sat down to breakfast.

But the truth was he wasn’t hungry. Nolan had stolen away his appetite along with his job. And while he was sweating profusely and thirsty as hell he couldn’t quite summon the initiative to walk to the refrigerator and get out some cold orange juice. He just sat in a chair and gazed blankly out the window.

Which was how he was occupied when, half an hour later, the phone rang.

“What is it?” Harry had no patience and wasn’t in a mood to be polite.

“Harry, that you?”

“Who is this?”

“Harold Keepnews. Long time no see, eh?”

“Hello, Harold, what can I do for you?”

“Why don’t you start by coming out here for a visit?”

“Any special occasion?”

“You might say so, Harry. When can you make it?”

“How about right away?”

“I always liked your style, you know that, don’t you?”

“Right, Harold.”

“You remember how to get up here?”

“How could I forget?”

The Keepnews’ home commanded a view of the bay that was so spectacular it was nearly impossible to tear your eyes away. About the only thing that could do it was Mrs. Keepnews. Between the bright blue water, which Keepnews’ mansion overlooked from the San Francisco side of the bay, and Wendy’s eyes you would have a hard time knowing where to look first.

“We haven’t seen you for a million years,” she said when he approached the door. He’d anticipated a servant or two, not this splendidly bronzed woman who from her appearance seemed to have nothing else to do but cultivate a tan all day long.

“What a surprise,” Harry said. The sight of Wendy was the first pleasant sight he’d had all day. She was as good as it was ever going to get.

“What surprise? I live here, you know.” She laughed, a delightful trilling laugh.

“I didn’t think I’d see you is all.”

“Well, it’s not like I’m a nun stuck in a convent.”

Harry observed her lithe form, the soft browning body dramatized by the thin white lines of her bikini. “No,” he agreed, “you don’t bear much resemblance to any nun I ever met.”

She laughed again. She liked doing that, laughing.

Shortly, Keepnews himself appeared. Clapping Harry on the back, he invited him inside which meant parting from Wendy. Whatever Keepnews had asked him up here for, Harry thought, he couldn’t imagine it would be half as interesting as exchanging pleasantries with Wendy, idly watching the parade of sailboats on the bay.

Keepnews had first met Harry on a case a long time ago. There’d been a theft; a burglar had tried making off with a cache of jewelry one night. Keepnews had stopped him by putting a bullet into the back of his head. Keepnews was a hunter and maintained an interesting arsenal of rifles and handguns. The burglar was running away when he shot him. Didn’t want to waste ammunition; one bullet was all that was necessary to change the burglar’s mind by eliminating a good part of it.

Harry had been called upon to investigate. The problem was that Keepnews had gone to the papers and announced what he’d done and further, recommended that every other law-abiding citizen of San Francisco, of all California for that matter, go out and buy a gun, if they didn’t already have one, and use it to protect their life, their family, and their property, not necessarily in that order.

This caused something of an uproar among supporters of gun-control legislation and a large number of minority groups, who felt that Keepnews was calling for something like open warfare against any poor sucker whose only crime might be to swipe something from the five-and-ten. That had not been Keepnews’ intention, but he was not a man either to repudiate his words or to clarify them. You either understood what he was talking about in the first place or you didn’t, and he for one didn’t really give a damn.

But the furor was such that the word came from the mayor’s office to bear down hard on Keepnews in order to demonstrate to the concerned citizenry that he was not being let off easy. No one on the force especially relished the assignment. Not that they exactly condoned what Keepnews had done, but they weren’t especially put out by it either. The man he’d killed had a rap sheet that read like a catalogue of the ten plagues. He’d done more than burgle, he’d raped and assaulted and conned folks who should know better out of their life savings. If anyone deserved to meet an early end it was this fellow.

What usually happened when no one on the force wanted to undertake this kind of investigation was that it was handed to Harry. Harry was good, he could handle delicate, messy situations, and hell, if it didn’t work out and he somehow failed, why then that was one less pain in the ass.

Harry had his reservations about Keepnews, not being especially comfortable with people who were born to ten million and got it to forty, but he still couldn’t help liking the man. There was something charming and boyish about him, especially when he got carried away, which he frequently did. A man with more ideas than he had money, with no time to execute them all. But above all, what Harry liked about him was his impatience, his insistence that if something were worth doing it was worth doing right at that very moment. No sense waiting around for times to get better or the conjunction of stars to improve.

In the end, partly because of Harry’s testimony, Keepnews was exonerated; the D.A. decided against bringing charges of manslaughter in return for Keepnews’ promise to stay out of the limelight for a while and keep his thoughts regarding the use of guns and the benefits of vigilante groups to himself. It was all a very informal agreement, but Keepnews abided by it. He was always as good as his word. It was something he prided himself on.

More than that, he made it a point never to forget those who had helped him—as well as those who had betrayed or otherwise fucked him. Harry luckily was one of those who fell into the former category.

Whenever possible, Keepnews would provide Harry with valuable information, and the kind of information he acquired was not easily obtained. You had to move in certain circles, and Harry by himself would have no way of gaining access to them. Harry got the feeling that Keepnews would like to hire him away, not for anything in particular, simply to have, like he had so many things; his house, his cars, his private jet, his yacht, his buildings in downtown San Francisco, his software company, his biological research center, and his wife. Harry figured Keepnews would stick him away in a closet somewhere, forget all about him until the occasion for his services arose, like a tuxedo you brought out for a wedding or funeral now and again. Not that it wouldn’t be a real nice closet, but spending much of his life in mothballs, no matter how good the pay, was not his idea of the way he cared to spend the years that remained to him.

Keepnews was aware of Harry’s feelings, and he’d stopped courting him long ago. But this was a special occasion, as he’d indicated over the phone.

He started off apologetically, saying he knew how pressed Harry was for time. “But there’s no one else I can turn to, no one I can think of. Fact of the matter is I spoke to the Coast Guard and I talked to your people. Did everything proper—not because I expected satisfaction, mind you, but I wanted the record to be straight. I wanted it shown that I went through proper channels and that I got shit for my troubles, if you understand my battle plan?”