by Dane Hartman
The slow, deflected bullet punched the lead man in the pelvis, doubling him over and throwing off his own aim. The .25 round meant for Harry hit his own man’s right hip.
By then Harry had his own gun out to return the favor. He threw the wounded kid forward with his left hand while pointing and firing the Magnum to his right with his right.
The hood who served as his shield took down the punk to the left of the booth while Harry’s bullet picked up the man to the right of the innocent couple and threw him over the back of the woman’s chair. His own gun shot the ceiling as he dove back, somersaulted over the seat top, and landed flat on the next booth’s empty table.
The lead hood had stumbled back, clutching his waist, and stopped, leaning up against the door. He brought his Saturday Night Special up again just as Harry pivoted. Both Callahan and Clarence shot the boss boy a second time at once.
The combination of the .44 and the .357 slug propelled him back first through the stained glass window of the entrance, his own gun being ripped from his hand by a jagged shard.
Harry’s attention was brought back to the last man to the left of the booth by the hood’s bullets. He felt one pass between his side and his left arm. He swung his head and Magnum back to see the kid’s gleeful face just over his dead companion’s shoulder.
The punk thought he learned something from Harry. After Callahan threw his wounded pal on him, he got back up, using his dying friend as a shield just the way Harry did. His expression said that he could empty his paltry revolver into Harry while the cop couldn’t stop him.
Only he didn’t know the .44 very well. Harry pulled the trigger, the Magnum missile going right through the wounded man’s back and then right through the man behind him.
The shielded kid felt his buddy’s insides explode against him just as the slug drilled into his chest as well. They were both dead, smoking holes in their torsos, even as they were falling onto the adjoining booth’s seat. Together, locked for an instant in a death kiss, they rolled under the table.
Harry lowered his smoking gun as he unbent his knees, his eyes squinting through the gunpowder haze. The man in the booth rose from beneath his table, his mouth open. The girl was still pushed back into a corner, her eyes tightly shut and her hands over her ears. Clarence pushed his .357 over the bar and then rose behind it.
The job done, Harry holstered his weapon, turned back to the bar, and hefted the scotch to his mouth. “Salut,” he said.
“Jesus, Harry,” Clarence breathed. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Damned if I know,” Harry said. “But I’ve got a very bad feeling I’m going to find out.”
C H A P T E R
S i x
It was old home week back at headquarters. Waiting for him in the Lieutenant’s office this time was not only Bressler, but Captain McKay, Walter White, a rested Fatso Devlin, and Sergeant Lynne McConnell of the vice squad. It was good to see McConnell again, especially since after their last case together he wasn’t sure whether she’d ever recover. He had taken her out of a box moments before she was to be loaded into a ship and sent off to parts unknown by a group of child pornographers and white slavers.
Thankfully for all concerned, she was unconscious for most of her ordeal and bounced back from it with very little problem.
Their reunion was limited since Bressler immediately took up where he had left off that morning. “Where the hell did you disappear to now?” he demanded. “I wish to hell you’d let somebody know where you’re going.”
“He answers only to the Lord,” McConnell suggested.
“And sometimes even He has problems getting through,” Walter cracked.
“I don’t need your jokes now, White,” Bressler warned. “Nobody does,” he continued, glancing at a placid McKay—who was sitting on the edge of the Lieutenant’s desk, his arms folded.
Bressler turned to Harry. “Have you been watching the news?”
Callahan blinked. It seemed as if he couldn’t avoid television no matter what he did. “No,” he replied. “Why?”
“It was everywhere,” Devlin mused. “They even interrupted Merv with the news.”
“What news?” Callahan asked anybody.
“You tell him,” Bressler demanded of White. “You’re the one who found out.”
“We identified the most recent Jane Doe,” White told him.
“I know that,” Harry countered, confused but unimpressed. “I was here when they brought Kim Byrnes in.”
“He found her matching fingerprints in my files, Harry,” McConnell elaborated.
“In Vice?” Harry considered the first possibility that came to mind. “What was she, a hooker?”
“Close,” said Bressler. “Homosexual.”
The words spoken to him in the bar suddenly echoed through the office. “What does television have to do with that?” Harry wanted to know, his voice even but angry.
The lieutenant looked cautiously at the still expressionless McKay before answering. “Somehow the press has gotten hold of it,” Bressler explained. “They are suggesting that all the murders might be gay-related.”
McConnell spelled it out. “They are reporting rumors on the street that Mount Douglas was not just a cemetery for dead women, but dead lesbian women.”
“A graveyard for queers,” Devlin breathed. “Jesus, that’s just what we need.”
Callahan understood all too well what that might mean. Of all the major cities in America, San Francisco was the one most associated with the gay community. Homosexuals had come out of the closet and spilled into the streets, organizing into a sizable and effective political force. Everyone from the mayor’s office on down worked very hard not to polarize the already tense homosexual and heterosexual interrelationships.
Now, if there was any chance of a psycho specifically killing only lesbians, it would set the fuse for an explosion much like the one San Francisco experienced in 1906. Only this earthquake wouldn’t destroy buildings—it would figuratively rip the city in half, turning the two already sensitive factions against each other. And naturally, in the name of news, the local stations had introduced the concept to the masses long before anything could be proven.
“White,” Bressler snapped. “I want the lid shut so tight on your examinations of the McLaren remains that even you have trouble breathing, understand?” The labman nodded. “I don’t want anything said here today to go beyond these four walls, agreed?” the Lieutenant continued. Everyone nodded except McKay. “From here on in, no one in this department knows anything about a graveyard for quee . . . I mean a homosexual cemetery, is that clear?” Bressler breathed easier when all present seemed to concur. “It would only make the investigation that much more difficult,” he concluded.
At that, Captain McKay finally spoke up, his voice an unctuous monkey wrench in the homicide works. “I can not agree,” he said, rising from his haunches, his arms still crossed. “It only makes the investigation that much easier,” he told them all. “If the murderer kills only lesbians, then our field of search is limited.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “It has to be somebody who lives on the planet Earth.”
Bressler was quick to soften Callahan’s sarcasm with a disagreement of his own. “Captain, the killer could be anyone.”
“Yes,” McKay calmly countered. “But perhaps the victim couldn’t be. If the murderer kills only lesbians, then we can create made-to-order bait.” He looked pointedly at McConnell and all eyes followed.
“Forget it, Captain,” she said.
McKay’s eyebrows raised. “Watch your language,” Bressler snapped. The captain waved the interruption away.
“That’s hardly what I’d call police spirit or teamwork, Sergeant,” he admonished.
“Begging the captain and lieutenant’s pardons, but it’s not what you think, sirs,” McConnell went on. “It’s just that everybody on the street knows me. The girls, the dikes, the pimps, and the fags. If I dressed up and went cruising
, they’d all laugh and tell me Halloween is one month off.”
This settled the officer’s disquiet and made Callahan breathe a silent breath of relief too. He had to admit that after “The Long Death” case, he just wouldn’t feel right about putting McConnell in the line of fire again. Especially since he almost lost her last time.
But the sigh of relief caught in his throat when McKay saved face with his next brilliant decree.
“Well, all is not lost,” he brightened. “We still have that other girl . . . you know, the rape victim. The lesbian’s best friend . . .”
“Kim Byrnes,” Bressler informed him.
“Yes,” McKay smiled. “Ms. Byrnes. After the terrible thing that happened to her and her best friend, I’m sure she’d want to do what she could to catch the homosexual’s killer.”
“I think she’s been put through enough,” Harry said without a trace of emotion. “We shouldn’t involve an amateur.”
“Now that should be her decision, Inspector,” McKay retorted in a pseudo-soothing tone. “We can tell her that she might be helping to capture her attacker as well . . .”
“Captain,” Bressler said leeringly, afraid that McKay was asking his men to lie.
“Well, it could be true,” McKay snapped. “It’s not outside the realm of possibility that she could attract both the rapist and the killer.”
“We can handle this ourselves,” Harry contended. “If something happens to her . . .” He stopped when he caught the concerned look in Devlin’s eyes. He knew Callahan well enough to see a change in his emotions.
“If something happens to her, what?” McKay almost seethed, daring Harry to say something wrong.
“The press would have a field day,” the inspector finished, wondering what made him bring up the subject in the first place.
“Well then, you’d better see to it that nothing happens to her, Callahan,” the captain taunted. “Ask her to be the bait, Inspector,” McKay commanded. “That’s an order.”
Without waiting for an answer, McKay swept out of Bressler’s office.
Harry said it under his breath.
“Shit.”
It was that kind of day.
C H A P T E R
S e v e n
It was that kind of night too. In memory of Lisa Patterson, Dirty Harry Callahan and Sergeant Lynne McConnell set up her best friend, Kim Byrnes.
To his surprise, the blonde girl hardly resisted the idea of becoming a decoy for the police. Even after her trying experience, she meekly listened to what Harry had to say—including his assurances that they’d do their damndest to make sure nothing happened to her—and then she quietly agreed.
Callahan didn’t like that, thinking it was all too easy. She should have asked more questions, she should have been a little doubtful . . . hell, she should have done something!
But instead, she invited Harry into her apartment, which she returned to without qualms, listened, and then agreed. Harry straightened, moving away from the couch where she sat—the couch she had been raped on—went into the kitchen, where Alex Wu sat sipping coffee.
He sent the rape expert in to make sure that Byrnes wasn’t agreeing to become bait because she was psychologically vulnerable or self-destructive. Minutes later Wu returned and nodded Callahan back into the girl’s presence.
“There have been thousands of others, right?” Kim said, her hands folded in her levi-covered lap. Confused, but unwilling to question her about the statement, Callahan nodded.
“I mean,” she self-consciously laughed, “I haven’t been the only person in the world to be raped, right? I mean, life goes on, right?” Harry nodded with assurance this time.
“And the way I figure it,” she concluded, looking down at her hands, and then slowly up at Harry, “I’d be better off out there hunting the hunter than waiting for him to come after me.” The effect of her bravery was near devastating.
Harry’s deeply lined face cracked open in a reassuring smile. “Right,” he concurred. When he turned, he didn’t see her smile. It wasn’t the smile of a brave girl. It was the smile a black widow spider might make after taking a soon to be imbibed husband.
“You like her, don’t you?” McConnell asked him later that night.
“I brought you along to be my guide of the underground,” Harry told her, shifting up in the car seat and turning his head toward her. “Not my conscience.”
The decoy process was complete. Byrnes was set loose on the street in a furry white sweater, designer jeans, and heels to elicit the sympathy of any gay person she might meet. All the time she was followed by several shadows. Shadows which were preparing for a long, tedious surveillance operation.
The vice sergeant spit air with an audible “Phew.”
Callahan lowered the binoculars again, shifted his position and looked carefully at his new partner. She was just as attractive as she had been when she worked undercover at Berkeley during the white slavery investigation. Fresh-faced, with long brown hair, she was sleekly packed, but lacked the innocence Byrnes exuded. McConnell was a strong woman, secure within herself. But the younger girl had something less that made her something more.
His look was all that was necessary. McConnell matched his stare for a second, then looked away with a frown that trembled on the edge of indifference and pouting. “You like her,” McConnell judged.
Harry turned back to the passenger window. He had changed from his tweed coat, grey slacks, dark green shirt, and striped tie into a casual night outfit consisting of a dark crew neck shirt, brown slacks, and an elbow-patched corduroy jacket—cut to effectively camouflage the near gigantic Magnum bulge under his arm. He watched the entrance to the small building near Washington Square carefully. It was located between the California School of Fine Arts and the Ferry Building.
Kim Byrnes had gone in there several minutes before; McConnell had suggested that she attend a mobilization meeting of SAFE—the San Francisco Association for Full Equality. Harry marveled at the name and then thought about the girl. Small, voluptuous, but still seemingly lost and beaten.
“She’ll attract every male mothering instinct and every female protective instinct in the place within seconds,” McConnell had predicted, and Harry didn’t doubt it. Kim had all the equipment to be instantly lusted after.
“What’s not to like?” he told the vice cop with a shrug, returning to his surveillance.
“Careful, Harry,” she warned in a friendly, bantering tone. “You play-act at being the tough guy, but inside you’re just as soft as anybody else.”
Harry lowered the binoculars for a second. “I wish you were around this morning to tell that to Bender.”
McConnell ignored that. “I know all about you. I’ve heard about the way you rescue rape and assault victims. Hell, I’ve seen it. Only our Kim is a particularly vulnerable specimen who’s hardly had time to recuperate from her experience. You’re ready to blow apart anything that comes near her.”
“Something wrong with that?” Harry said woodenly, McConnell’s two-bit psychoanalysis beginning to bother him.
“Hell, no, Harry,” she countered sincerely, “but don’t let your judgment go out the window. No girl who looks like that can be totally helpless. She hasn’t gone this far without learning how to get what she wants . . .”
“Did she want a rape?” Callahan interrupted incredulously.
“Of course not!” McConnell flaired, and then softened with hurt understanding. “Come on, Harry . . .”
The Inspector waved the rest of her argument away. A small familiar figure had appeared in the doorway of the SAFE house. “She’s signaling,” he told the sergeant.
“Let’s go then,” McConnell said, beginning to open her door.
“No,” Harry stopped her.
“Harry . . . ,” she said like a mother reprimanding a too eager child. He had to admit that annoyed him more than it should have. There was no reason for him to be irritated by her misconception.
“You
said it yourself,” he told her. “They all know you in there. We can’t afford to have Byrnes pegged as a police plant.”
“And if anybody sees your .44 . . . ?” she countered.
Callahan was taking it off even before she finished the argument.
“Harry, I didn’t mean . . . ,” she began with regret.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” he interrupted again, laying the holster and gun on her lap. “If there’s any trouble, one of us will signal you and you can come running.”
“And if no one signals?” she inquired. “How long should I wait?”
“Make a discreet reconnaissance after fifteen minutes,” he decided, already getting out of the car. “Look in after half an hour.”
“Will do,” the vice cop said. But he had already begun running across the street to answer the blonde girl’s call. “Damn!” McConnell seethed, slapping her hand on the steering wheel. “Lovers should never work together.”
Sexual relations were far from Harry’s mind as he moved quickly toward the entrance. He was thinking instead about what McConnell had told him about the SAFE set-up. The group was led by M. Peter Steele, a balding, blondish man with a slight Australian accent.
Everything about the guy was artificial except his rugged good looks. His name was fake, having changed it from the less solid sounding Raymond Markovitc. His accent was culled from the movies. But false front or not, Steele was as steadfast as his new name.
The one thing he professed to believing in was equal rights for all people under the law. And as his homosexual faction grew larger and more influential, he became more militant. SAFE, however, found itself being foiled by biased legalities at every turn. Whether it was right or not, it seemed that many from the heterosexual faction felt threatened by SAFE’S existence and would do most anything to undercut it.
And with every setback, Steele became more determined to get a fair shake. But after awhile, the doctrine of peace, goodwill, and fairplay was lost in the fanatical effort to achieve it. Now Steele was collecting and hawking an entirely different ball of wax. One that made him the darling of the cocktail set and muckraking reporters.