Dirty Harry 05 - Family Skeletons (4 page)

Miserably, the driver did as he was told. As he prepared to get behind the wheel, Harry slapped ten dollars of his own money into the guy’s hand. “For the wife and kids,” he said.

The driver looked up in surprise, but Harry had already turned and walked back to his waiting spot. Callahan looked the other way as the taxi took off. It had cost him a ten-spot, but it was worth satisfying his sense of justice. Although no excuse was acceptable for the cabbie’s kind of behavior, the man did have a point. Even if he had gotten away with his fraud, the kids probably wouldn’t have missed the money. Their loaded daddy was sending them to the best American school, so price was no object. He had no love of the OPEC nations, but he wasn’t going to blame the spoiled children for the sins of the fathers.

That set his mind back onto his own track. Blaming the kids for the sins of their parents. It wasn’t Linda’s fault that his parents had died. It wasn’t her fault that a drunk driver had wiped out his wife. Still, he couldn’t help dreading the meeting. In the back of his mind he was sure the “life or death” matter was going to amount to something trivial. Some little personal thing that Linda had blown way out of proportion. Something she couldn’t talk to anybody she knew about.

Just as he was thinking this, an orange Pinto station wagon pulled up in front of him. He groaned inwardly, guessing the occupant. Trust the car to be an orange Pinto. A Pinto, for God’s sake! Who in his right mind bought a Pinto anymore?

Things lightened just a little bit as Linda stepped out of the driver’s seat. She was still a handsome woman, Harry thought, as she ran around the front of the car.

“Harry!” she said happily, honestly. She practically jumped on him with a big hug. He couldn’t help but be swept up in her mood. She was so visibly happy to see him, so uncloyingly delighted and pleased that he felt appreciated. He suddenly became aware that he was accepted by her. It was a strangely pleasant sensation for the hardened detective.

He returned her hug to the amused, smiling faces of the others around them. Everyone basked themselves in the feeling of family they gave off. Everybody loves a lover.

And Harry and Linda looked like a good pair. She was still young and firm with her Irish blood showing in her facial structure and her dark, almost brown, auburn hair. She wore a simple dress, but it made her appear somehow more feminine than the girls around her in pants.

She stopped hugging him but held onto his arms as she moved back for a more discerning view. “It’s so good to see you again, Harry,” she said without self-consciousness. “You look terrific.”

Harry appraised her, the smile staying on his face. “You haven’t changed,” he commented.

“Oh, come on,” Linda answered in disbelief, breaking away. “I’m an old lady now. Where’s the rest of your bags?” She looked around the base of the concrete column.

“That’s it,” Harry said, motioning at the two pieces of luggage.

For the first time, real apprehension bordering on panic entered Linda’s voice. It put an edge on the otherwise happy reunion scene. “You are staying the whole week?” she questioned, her voice slightly catching.

Harry didn’t want to deal with it too quickly. Instead of answering her to her face, he bent down to retrieve his things. “Yeah, I just don’t need much to get by,” he said casually.

Linda relaxed again, and things almost went back to the way they had been. But not quite. The thing that brought him here was getting between them. They both knew it was not a social visit, and they both didn’t like the idea. Linda opened the rear of the Pinto for the bags. Harry remembered the reports of rear-end collision explosions but dropped the luggage in anyway. Who was he to believe everything Geraldo Rivera said?

“It’s terrible on the roads,” Linda said, trying to bring the conversation back to its previous level. “Do you want to have dinner here until the rush hour ends?”

“No,” Harry replied, moving to the front passenger’s door. “Let’s get going.” He thought about the black music man and the cabbie. “Airports seem to bring out the worst in people.”

Linda misunderstood. It was obvious from her subsequent silence as she threaded her way out of the Logan environs and onto the expressway into Boston. She must’ve thought that Harry had been referring to her with his last comment. That, or she may have thought he was irritated from waiting. Whatever the cause, she took Harry’s comment to heart.

The dread that had been slightly dispelled when they met was growing again in Callahan’s mind. Linda was a person he couldn’t just be with. She was blood. He felt an obligation to deal with her. To work around her moods. To play all the obligation games that relatives were expected to play. Even though he hated the idea, he still couldn’t bring himself to find out the specifies of what Linda wanted.

As they crossed the expressway bridge and Boston rose in the sunsetted distance, Harry looked out the window at the
U.S.S. Constitution,
the revolutionary war frigate anchored in the Boston Navy Yard. “Old Ironsides” was its nickname, and it heralded travelers to their first view of Boston’s historic heritage.

Callahan wasn’t much interested in sightseeing. He also wasn’t much interested in family affairs. He mentally steeled himself for a long week.

“How’s Peter?” he asked, breaking silence’s grip on the car.

“All right, I guess,” Linda responded, her sudden dourness as much attributable to the snarled traffic as Harry’s attitude. “He’s not working as much as he’d like. You know, with inflation and recession and everything.”

Harry nodded. He remembered the Peter Donovan he had met at the wedding a little more than twenty years ago. They were both about the same age then, young and full of hope. Harry had only talked to the groom a little bit, but he liked the man. He’d make a good hunting and drinking buddy. But that was years ago when Harry did a lot more drinking and a lot less hunting.

“Still in construction?” he asked as a follow-up. That’s me, he thought, Harry Callahan, master interrogator.

“Yes,” Linda answered simply. She paused, then thought it was worth more of a reply. “Almost finished an apartment house in Revere. Funds ran out. He’s waiting for the backers to come up with more.” Linda didn’t like the way that sounded. It made her depressed. She changed the subject. “How’re you doing?”

“I keep busy,” Harry answered, not particularly wanting to go into detail.

“We read about you sometimes in the paper,” Linda spoke up, her voice getting perky again. “A couple of years ago when you saved the governor from those terrorists on Riker’s Island.”

Harry didn’t like to think about that either. It seemed that most of his memories involved losing something close, or at least getting close, to him. He had lost Inspector Kate Moore on that case. She was his one and only female partner. He had liked her more than just as a police associate. She was killed by a terrorist before Harry managed to blow her murderer to kingdom come.

No, he didn’t like to think about it. But since the subject had already been brought up, he figured Linda might as well have her facts right.

“It was the mayor, not the governor,” he told her, still looking out the window. “And it was at Alcatraz. Riker’s Island is in New York.”

Linda’s voice went back to its dull level. “Oh. Sorry.”

“No problem,” said Harry. He turned to her, getting a little tired of the Harold Pinter play being enacted inside the car. “What’s this section of town?” he asked, referring to the heavily business-oriented buildings that were cropping up around them.

“Oh,” Linda livened, “this is Back Bay. It neighbors and incorporates the Italian North End, Government Center, which is right over there, and beyond that, Beacon Hill.”

“Beacon Hill?” he echoed. “Is that where those murders were?”

That would do the trick, Harry thought smugly. If there was one thing housewives in orange Pintos liked to talk about, it was juicy murders. Callahan had discovered that from experience. During his office’s once-a-year open house for the public, he was consistently amazed by the continual flow of meek, unassuming men and women who wanted to talk about nothing but the most excruciatingly detailed murders.

Linda surprised him. He had badly misjudged her. His own discomfort and reluctance had affected his opinion of her. Instead of answering immediately, she approached the subject delicately. “Yes,” she said very quietly, almost in a whisper. “A college boy and a . . . a young girl. It was horrible,” she finished with a rush of breath. Then she started to cry.

Harry’s hand went to the wheel as the car began to crawl into another lane. Linda tried to control her emotions but could not. The tears rolled out faster, and she began to shake uncontrollably. As her foot fell off the accelerator, the car slowed.

Visions of the vehicle turning into a firebomb pushed Harry into action. He was pulling the wheel back, kicking out for the pedals and spinning around to look behind at the same time.

The Pinto swerved back into the middle lane as a Cutlass Supreme zoomed up behind them. A second vision of a rush-hour pile-up got Harry moving faster. He reached over and hit the right turn signal. His shoe pushed Linda’s foot out of the way and pressed down on the accelerator. He turned his eyes front to spot an exit up ahead. The car to their right had braked a bit when they first began to sneak over, so when Harry speeded up, it drifted farther behind. There was just enough room to squeeze between it and the car ahead of them.

Harry took the chance, pulling the steering wheel hard to the right. The Pinto responded surprisingly well. It practically jumped right to the side, scraping off only a coat of paint in the process as it screeched in between the other autos. Harry kept the wheel down, pulling even more with his other hand. The Ford turned even farther, just missing the embankment and careening down the exit ramp.

A car behind them, having already turned to exit, had to slam on its brakes to avoid rear-ending them on the ramp. The word “PINTO” in metal on the hatch-back did much to help. Thankfully, there was no one else right behind the car right behind them. Harry had avoided a pile-up on the highway and on the exit ramp.

He managed to keep the car straight and even braked at the bottom of the exit road. “Linda,” he said. “Come on, snap out of it.” His cousin didn’t seem to hear. She was wrapped up in her own world of tragedy. Real or imagined, Harry didn’t know yet.

The car behind them blew its horn, so Harry had no choice but to continue driving from the passenger’s side. He looked up at the myriad roads and signs in front of him. It was the most incredible mess he had ever seen except in Manhattan. And even there, the confusion came from too many cars, no lanes, and potholes. Here, the roads were well-groomed but totally chaotic. They twisted and turned in every direction, and more cars came from every other direction.

As far as he could tell, Callahan couldn’t go right or straight. From the signs and traffic flow, it seemed he could go left, bear to the left, bear slightly to the right, or turn all the way around. He settled on taking close to a U-turn, since all these angry-looking grillworks were bearing down on him from every other roadway.

He pulled the steering wheel all the way to the right as if he were hauling in a line, hand over hand. The car turned in a tight radius and wound up going parallel to the expressway in the opposite direction. Harry saw they were heading toward some empty-looking warehouses. He saw a few other cars parked along what looked like an alleyway.

He pulled alongside these parked cars in front of some boarded-up shops. The smell of decaying fat was everywhere. As he pulled himself back to his seat, away from his blubbering cousin, he saw the quaint wooden shops flanked by a large office building on one side, an empty, glass-strewn lot on the other, and a system of highway ramps on the third side.

The little orange Pinto stalled in the barren oasis just a few hundred feet from the frenzied activity behind Government Center. Linda was finally able to make sense again as night drew in on Boston.

“Harry,” she sobbed. “I knew that girl. I saw her all the time with Shanna.”

Shanna was her daughter. As soon as her name was mentioned, Harry pictured her in his mind. She was a bonnie little Irish lass of ten with a warm, cheery face that wasn’t quite round and wasn’t quite sharp. Her lips were little things but amazingly expressive. Her hair was bright red, and freckles covered every square inch of her skin.

Harry saw her as he remembered her. Facing his big, unsmiling form without fear. Looking at his already lined face and gnarled hands, she sized him up and named him on the spot, “Uncle Harry.” His rough demeanor hadn’t fooled her for a second. They used to play together. She had made him wish that his wife would give him a daughter.

Then his wife had died, and the wishes had gone all away unanswered. Harry’s vision of Shanna misted and was swept away by the realization that she was twenty years old now. No longer a little girl playing with her kind, sensitive Uncle Harry. A lot of things had changed inside the cop since then. He wondered if his rough exterior could fool her now. It fooled everybody else in the world. Even himself.

Slowly, he became aware of Linda again. She was still speaking between tears. “They both did volunteer work for the Unitarian Church. Oh God, Harry, I’m so afraid Shanna will be next.”

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

M
urder. Just like any other city, Boston was no stranger to it. In fact, Boston was the site of one of the more infamous mass-murder sprees in modern history. Not even Son of Sam, the man who made the .44 famous, had the far-reaching fame and reputation of the Boston Strangler. But then again, Son of Sam was not played by Tony Curtis in a big-grossing movie.

Funny, Harry thought as he walked through Scollay Square, the section that was generally known as Government Center. Albert DeSalvo, the alleged, and now dead, perpetrator of the Strangler crimes was the first of the modern waves of men who killed for no other reason than to simply kill. The Strangler and Richard Speck had paved the way for such more recent notables as the Hillside Strangler and Charles Manson. Manson had done the world a further disservice by murdering a movie star. The papers had made so much of it that the madman and his sick clan had become media stars themselves. A motion picture for television was made from a best-selling book, both named after the song title Manson had scrawled on the wall of the slaughterhouse. And the tragedy had come full circle. Another media murder star was made when the co-writer of that song Manson found so inspirational was murdered in New York.