Dirty Harry 05 - Family Skeletons (12 page)

“Cellar room,” the man replied. “B-2.”

“It figures,” Harry muttered, pulling open the door and motioning the tail to enter.

The tiny foyer cut off all the Boston sunlight from outside. The space was illuminated by a single naked bulb as was the hallway inside. The entryway was classic, even in so rundown a building. There were a bunch of mailboxes along one wall and a bunch of buttons along the other. Usually there were name tags identifying the apartment dwellers next to the buttons. Not in this building.

Callahan examined the buttons. He could hardly see the identifying numbers etched in a thin metal strip attached to the wall. He looked at the tail. The young man was leaning against the second door, hands in his pockets, looking miserable. “Hey, you,” Harry said.

The tail looked up, pointed at himself in surprise, and said, “Me?”

“No, Mahatma Gandhi. Who do you think I’m talking to? Give me something to call you. It doesn’t have to be a name, I don’t care.”

The tail thought about it. “Tim,” he decided.

“Tim, get over here,” Harry instructed. “Press Jeff’s buzzer. Don’t fuck around. I’m not here to crucify anybody. I just want to get some answers.”

The tail moved his finger around the rows of buttons, then pressed the second one up along the first column. There was no answer. Tim pressed it again. Still no response. Tim looked up at Callahan and shrugged.

Harry pulled a credit card out of his pocket. “We’ll wait for him,” he said. “Inside.” With a simple push and a sudden twist, the locked entry door popped open.

“Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Tim asked, exasperated.

“I wanted to see if Browne was home,” Harry answered, pulling the tail in front of him and lightly pushing him toward the stairs.

The interior of the place was worse than the outside. The smells of pulpy wood, kitty litter, and urine combined to create an aroma unsurpassed anywhere else in Boston. The cellar stairs had a pronounced starboard list, and the basement hall looked like a subway tunnel.

The two went over to the door marked 2. Only a pale shadow of the “B” remained. Harry leaned up against one side of the door. Tim took a post on the other side. Callahan checked the area for possible exits. It was an incredible rattrap. Paint was peeling everywhere, and the lighting was so bad, Harry could hardly make out his feet at the ends of his legs.

At the end of the hall was an emergency exit. Harry pointed it out to Tim and put up a finger to mean “just a second.” He went over and tried the latch. It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Great, Harry thought. Not only a rattrap, but a fire trap. He returned to Tim, secure in the knowledge that no one was getting in or out that way.

Tim couldn’t take the gloom or the silence for long. “I don’t get it,” he suddenly said. “Why us? Why pick on the Order of the Orenda?”

“Bad luck,” said Harry, keeping the death of Morrison to himself. “Bad timing.” The thought of the tall, intense Orenda shaman reminded Callahan of something that had been bothering him. Something Morrisson had said. Perhaps Tim could clear up that mystery. “How do you see the wolf?” Harry asked nonchalantly.

The tail looked over in surprise. “No lip,” Harry warned him.

“It’s a method of enlightenment,” Tim reported. “You fast and meditate until the spirit of the wolf comes to you. The wolf is the Indian’s friend. To be visited by the wolf is a white man’s greatest honor.”

Callahan listened patiently in the dank, decrepit hallway. “Isn’t that a little ridiculous?” he asked.

Tim looked the other way. “Fat lot you know,” he muttered. “You probably never even got high.”

Callahan snorted in amusement. He glimpsed something on the floor. He looked closer. The wood was darker around his shoes than it had been. He knelt down. The floor around his feet was covered with blood.

It was drooling out from under the door of apartment B-2.

Harry pulled out the Magnum and kicked in the door at the same time. The bolt split open and the wood partition swung in, hit something, and moved back. Callahan was already moving forward. He met the door with his shoulder. It swung in again.

A table laden with stuff was smashed to the side. As it was thrown out of the door’s path, Callahan took in the rest of the room like a camera’s eye. It was a small, dark, cramped, and cluttered room. Everywhere there was Indian paraphernalia. Masks with bulging eyes and thick dark lips covered the walls. A pair of snowshoes hung on a doorknob. Beadwork and stitchings were lying on the floor, on tables, and on almost every other surface. Harry saw animal skins, pottery, carved bowls, arrowheads, a chart of Indian symbols, and a small totem pole in the corner.

In the middle of the room was a dead blonde girl.

Callahan moved forward. He felt a push at his back. He lost his balance just as a tomahawk thudded into the wall behind him. He landed on top of the woman’s corpse. He glanced behind him. Tim had his hands out and was hunched over. He had pushed Harry out of the way. He stared in bewilderment at the dead girl, then started to throw up.

Harry looked back to where the tomahawk had come from. He saw a man with a full beard push through a swinging door on the other side of the room. He jumped up and went after him.

“Watch it,” Tim managed to choke out. “He’s great with those things.”

“Those things” turned out to be knives. Harry kicked open the door. It led to the kitchen. He dove in just as a heavy ceremonial blade chunked into the wood of the doorjamb.

There was a window at the end of the dirty kitchen. Cockroaches scurried away as the bearded man threw open the metal grate in front of the glass and Harry dragged his gun up from under him.

The bearded man threw himself right through the pane as he pushed the grate closed behind him. Harry pulled the Magnum’s trigger at the same time. The .44’s massive boom reverberated through the tile and rattled some dishes. They fell as the bullet tore through one of the grate’s metal slats, sending off thick sparks.

Harry pulled himself up as Tim stumbled in. “What the hell is going on?” he screamed in confusion and panic.

Callahan ignored him as he tore open the grate and looked outside. The bearded man was vaulting a fence on the other side of a garbage-strewn yard. Harry pulled off another shot which punched a hole in the wooden fence in between the man’s legs.

“Who is that girl?” Tim screeched in the cop’s ear.

Harry whirled toward him. “Don’t you know her?”

“No!”

Harry leaped out the window. “Call the police. Get them over here.”

“But what’s going on?” came Tim’s frightened, plaintive cry from behind him as he ran for the fence. “What is happening? I don’t understand what could have happened!”

Callahan vaulted over the wooden partition in one leap. He landed on his feet in a back alleyway between blocks. He saw the bearded man speeding toward the street. Harry anchored his feet on the asphalt and held his Magnum out in front of his face with two hands. He pointed the barrel right in the middle of the bearded man’s back just as the runner was getting to the mouth of the alley. His finger tightened on the trigger.

A car turned the corner into the alley. Both the bearded man and Harry were taken by surprise. The Magnum boomed and bucked in his hand.

The bearded man fell over onto the hood of the car. The bullet sped over his head and tore through the center of the windshield. It smashed out the rear window as the bearded man got up and scrambled across the car’s roof.

For one of the few times in his life, Harry felt a cold helplessness. Even in the worst situations, he had always kept faith in his abilities. But now, here, he may have shot an innocent bystander. The chill that coursed through him did not freeze him out of action, however. As he felt the numb rage of a mistake inside him, his legs were already throwing him forward after the bearded man. If he had hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, he wanted to be damn sure he got the one who did.

He saw the bearded man fall off the trunk of the car and scramble around the alley corner at the same time he saw the middle-aged couple in the car blink, look around, and generally act unhurt. Harry paused for a split second in front of the stalled auto.

“Are you all right?” he shouted.

“You fucking maniac!” said the pot-bellied driver. “You could have killed someone!”

Harry had jumped onto the hood even before the man had formed the obscenity. He wouldn’t be raging if he or a loved one was hurt. As the man finished his curse, Callahan was in the street twenty feet behind the bearded man.

The bearded man was in the traffic, where there were too many other innocent bystanders. Harry kept the gun out to keep them out of his way and ran into the street. He held his free hand out in a stop signal and kept the .44 up in case he got a clear shot at the bearded man.

The bearded man made it across the street to the accompanying wail of car horns and tire screeches. He disappeared around the corner into the Combat Zone. Harry smiled grimly. It was going to be a hell of a hunt. He poured on the steam and crossed the same distance in three long steps. He was on the sidewalk, at the wall, then around the corner in time to see the bearded man duck into a bookstore three doors down.

Callahan pushed by some shocked pedestrians. He went by two doors, becoming vaguely aware of some non-pornography material in the window of the third building. Harry stopped just before he got to the door. He looked at the items on sale and nearly groaned. It was one of those all-purpose dives that not only sold porno, but jewelry, watches, sunglasses, and weapons as well.

Just as in many of these X-rated sections of other cities, the shops weren’t allowed to sell guns—not over the counter, at any rate—but no one drew the line at knives, tridents, clubs, Samurai swords, and fucking maces. The bearded man whom Tim had said was so good at throwing things was inside an armory.

Harry hung outside the third door, hearing nothing unusual going on inside. The man must be near the back, Harry theorized, hoping that Callahan hadn’t seen him go in. While he thought out his next move, Harry tried to picture the bearded man with Shanna. He tried to see them in any way, shape, or form. The mental picture did not work. The wild-eyed, bearded man who had to be Jeff Browne looked more suitable throwing knives in a rancid apartment with a corpse on the floor.

Harry calmly walked into the store. He saw Browne in the back corner, ostensibly flipping through a magazine. He had chosen his place well. Although his back was to the door, he had slipped between two other browsers. If Harry had tried to shoot, it would have been a dangerous shot. The only thing Harry could do now was try to get to Browne before the man turned to see if Callahan had passed.

The San Francisco cop moved past the magazine rack to his left and the counter full of signet rings to his right. He walked up three wide steps onto a level with magazine-laden tables on two sides and a cabinet full of blades on the third. He had made it three-quarters of the way toward Browne when the bearded man glanced back.

“Get down!” Harry boomed at the others while he pulled his gun up into full view. Browne wrenched the men beside him in front of the barrel and hurled himself over the counter. One man fell to the ground, but the other froze right in Harry’s way. Callahan saw a hand grab a sword off the wall as he pulled the shocked man out of his way.

He blasted two holes in the glass cabinet with the wooden backing. The window section disintegrated and jagged holes appeared in the backing, but Browne would not be flushed out. Harry heard the sword whipping at him before he saw it. He dodged instinctively, but still he was amazed when the blade tore across the tweed at his elbow. Tim had been very right: the guy was very dangerous with knives.

Harry was even more surprised when he heard a cracking blast, and a bullet followed the sword across the room. Even as he threw himself backward across a table, he realized that most of these places usually had a licensed gun on the premises for protection. Naturally, it would be behind the weapons counter, Harry told himself as his shoulder slammed across the slick magazines. You dumb bastard.

Callahan was somersaulting backward. As he felt the edge of the table against his shoulders, he reached down with his free hand and pulled. As he dropped to the floor, the table went with him as a shield. It was a lousy shield, but it would have to do. One way or the other, the gunfight wouldn’t last long.

Harry remembered the position of the other counter. He sat up amidst the porno pictures, got his bearings, and shot once through his own table. To his chagrin, there was no return fire. Suddenly, knives began to smash through the tabletop. The bearded man was fighting back, but he was saving his bullets for a final stand.

Harry could only think of one other strategy. If Browne had to conserve his bullets, it made sense that he would think Harry had to do the same. The bearded man could easily count Harry’s rounds, since there was a hole in the cabinet backing for every shot. Callahan recalled: Two shots when he came in. Two shots back at the apartment and in the alley. One more through the table. If Browne was counting, he probably thought Harry had one bullet left.

A Samurai sword blade came right through the wood in front of the cop. The hilt stopped the blade inches from his chest. Harry rose up and fired at the head he saw dropping behind the cabinet. His anger nearly did the trick. The shot was perfect. If the Formica and the steel band on the surface of the cabinet hadn’t deflected the shot, the lead would have lodged right in Browne’s brain.

Instead, the bullet whined, ground, and splattered into the wall behind the bearded man, hacking off some strands of his long curly hair in the process. Then Browne was up and out from his cover, blasting at Harry with a Charter Arms Bulldog .44 Special. Hot damn, Harry thought as he ducked under cover. Those damn guns do get around.

Browne kept firing, running backward toward the door. The gun clicked on an empty chamber, and he nearly fell backward down the three steps at the same time. He twisted in the air, landed with his right foot flat, and then ran for the exit.