by Dane Hartman
Harry shook his head. Her sexual interests probably hardly mattered.
What mattered was finding out who was killing these women. The more Harry went over in his mind the occurences of the last twenty-four hours, the less he seemed to be able to hold onto.
The inspector’s tortuous thought process was interrupted by Fatso Devlin, who came bursting through the swinging door, looking quickly over his shoulder. “Better get up on the table and pull the sheet over your head, Harry,” he said, breathing heavily. “You’re as good as dead already.”
White asked, “What’re you talking about?”
“Have you seen the morning paper?” the detective addressed the lab man directly.
“I haven’t even been to sleep yet,” he replied, with a pointed look at Callahan.
Rather than retorting, Fatso reached across White and handed Harry the folded paper. Callahan opened it up with White looking over his shoulder. The headline said in bold, eight point type: GAYS CLAIM POLICE CONSPIRACY, under that, just as bold: TOP COPS NAMED. The subheading put the capper on Harry’s morning. “CALLAHAN CALLED ‘CRIMINAL.’ ”
“What the hell . . . ?” White exclaimed.
“SAFE is saying we killed that lesbian last night,” Devlin exclaimed. “They come right out and say you murdered the four guys in the bar in cold blood, Harry. That if something isn’t done about it by us, something will be done about it by them.”
“You mean, they’re going to try to kill Harry?” White said in confusion.
“I’m not worried about a bunch of homosexuals,” Devlin said. “I’m worried about what McKay will do to him when he finds out.”
“I see you’ve already gotten the morning paper,” said a calm voice at the lab door. White and Devlin whirled around to see McKay himself, perfectly attired in a dark pin-striped suit, standing in the doorway. Callahan glanced up from the paper.
“I was just reading it, sir,” he said diffidently.
“Well, you can read it in my office, Inspector,” the captain said coldly. “You and I have a lot to talk about.”
“They published a letter,” McKay went on, his voice even less civil in the privacy of his office. “An entire letter from that madman . . . that lunatic . . . !”
“Michael Peter Steele,” Harry said, finishing the myriad of connected articles. Articles about the dead girl, articles about her family, articles about gay liberation, articles about famous lesbians in history, articles about SAFE, articles about gay organizations, and even an article analyzing Steele’s handwriting on the infamous letter.
The letter itself was clear, but no less inflammatory than the headlines. It accused the San Francisco City Government and the Police Department with either conceiving or agreeing to a long term conspiracy in which the interests of the homosexual community were systematically undermined.
It concluded by threatening a retaliation in kind and proclaiming that Inspector Harry Callahan was first on their private list of “Most Wanted Criminals” for crimes to and against the homosexual community.
“Great, just great, Callahan,” McKay sneered, his fists on his blotter as he stood behind his desk between the United States and California flags. The emblem of San Francisco was in a frame above his window, which looked out on the Greyhound Bus Terminal.
“I’m glad you have such a good memory,” the captain went on, spitting fire. “Because maybe then you’ll remember your responsibility to this department the next time we unleash you to do a simple job.”
“Simple?” Harry echoed incredulously, looking up from the left seat in front of McKay’s massive, perfectly organized oakwood desk.
“Yes, simple!” the captain contended. “All you were supposed to do was stake-out the meeting and protect a decoy, that’s all. Well, not only do you stick the city with a bill to repair more than three dozen privately owned automobiles, but you let the entire gay community know we’re watching them . . . !”
“Of course we were watching them,” Harry argued impatiently. “What did they expect us to do? Sit home and watch television?”
“I might as well have been watching TV,” came McKay’s boiling retorted. “I see more of you there than I do on the streets. You’re so famous, I’m surprised you don’t give out autographed pictures. Every morning news program had a segment on you today. Every one. And every one dragged out highlights from your ‘illustrious’ career.”
McKay’s manner had changed from rage to bitter sarcasm. “I’ll tell you, Inspector, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Shoot-outs on school buses, motorcycle crashes in the Bay, car chases in Chinatown, even gunfights at the Alamo. Christ, Callahan, I don’t know whether to kick you out on your backside or have you bronzed.”
“Why don’t you let me do my job?” Harry softly replied.
“Your job?” McKay asked with mock incredulity. He leaned over his desk and crooked his finger at the Inspector. “You tell me, Callahan. What’s your job?”
Harry replied, “To nail this murderer.”
“Very good, Inspector, very good,” McKay said quietly while nodding. “Now why don’t you tell me how you’re going to do it now that your face is plastered on every television screen in this city, that every homosexual wants to see you dead, and that you somehow lost the only person who could’ve helped us crack this case?”
“Let them come after me,” Harry said quietly, already knowing it would do little good. “Just wait for SAFE to make its move.”
“What do you think this is?” the captain snorted, pulling his high, plush black chair out. “The Lost and Found Department? Forget it, Callahan. You’re bounced.” He sat down and started reading some reports.
“Captain,” Harry said evenly. “Somebody killed that girl last night. It wasn’t me.”
McKay raised his head, his eyes veiled. “What are you suggesting, Inspector?”
“Angela Mayer was at a SAFE meeting last night. Somewhere between the time she left and the time the police arrived, she was killed. The only people we know who were at the scene were SAFE members and uniformed officers. And if the officers didn’t do it, then who’s left?”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Inspector.”
“What does in this case, Captain? Let SAFE come after me.”
McKay pushed his lower lip over his upper one. “Nice try,” he abruptly decided, going back to his reports. “But if SAFE wants you, they’ll have to get you on your own time. You’re officially off this case, Callahan. Report back to Lieutenant Bressler for reassignment. Good morning.”
Harry stood stiffly and walked toward the door. “Inspector?” McKay called when he was halfway out. Harry stuck his head back in. The captain gave him his widest smile. “Have a nice day.”
There was that move the other detectives perfected every once in a while when things looked bad for Callahan: that glance-up, avoid-his-gaze, go-back-to-work look that’s the boon of uncomfortable people everywhere.
The lieutenant was not much different. While Harry sat on his office’s tattered couch, Bressler sat down, shuffled papers, got up again, straightened the law books in his pressed woodchip case, poured himself a cup of coffee, shuffled, set the cup down unsipped, lit a cigarette, ran his fingers through his hair, sat down, and rubbed his head again.
“Look, Harry” he said “just lay low for a little while, all right? Take some time off. Get out of town.”
“I’ve been to San Antonio, I’ve been to Boston, I’ve been to Chicago. I’ve even been down to the Caribbean. Where do you want me to go now?”
“I hear Australia’s nice . . . ,” Bressler ruminated facetiously. “Christ, Harry, I don’t have to snow you. You know what kind of pressure the captain and the chief are putting on me.”
“McKay wants me out of town?”
“Hell, no!” Bressler exclaimed, surprising himself with his own vehemence. He continued at a near whisper. “He wants you right where M. Peter Steele can get you. Nothing would please him more than pegging the homo for all t
hose deaths, after your murder, of course.
“I want you out of town,” the lieutenant admitted. “I don’t want you to be anybody’s scapegoat, let alone McKay’s dead one.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. He looked at the lieutenant. While he always seemed to be a company man with very little spine, Callahan realized Bressler had never failed him. He never closed the door or pulled the rug out from any of his men.
“So you’ve got nothing for me,” Harry finally said.
“Not even the time of day,” Dressier retorted, looking at his watch. “I’ve got a press conference in less than five minutes and I don’t want you within five miles of this place, capisch?”
Harry nodded and rose, stopping midway to the door. Bressler’s mentioning of a press conference set off an alarm in the back of his mind. In order to cover his sudden brainstorm, he turned back toward his superior’s desk. “Lieutenant.” He waited until Bressler looked him in the eye. “Thanks,” he said sincerely.
Bressler nodded. “Get lost, Harry,” he advised. “Go underground.”
Sidney Melchior was late for the press conference. True, he had a lot on his mind, but that was no reason for him to be tardy for what could turn out to be the most volatile, interesting, and progressive media event of the year. Progressive, he thought, because finally the police were being made truly aware of the homosexual’s major place in this city.
If he was going to be late, then at least he had a good reason for it. He had been up half the night writing an eyewitness account of what occurred at the SAFE meeting and was up the other half thinking of the concise, controversial, and embarrassing questions he was going to ask the commissioner, chief, captain, and lieutenant.
He readjusted the shoulder strap on his carryall, pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his small nose and ran his fingers through his black hair. Struck by a new thought, he hoped the batteries on his tape recorder weren’t running down as he reached the top step of the Justice Building and ran inside. Well, it was too late now.
The lobby was almost completely deserted. It had to be because everyone was at the press conference. He only hoped he could still get a decent seat as he walked into a waiting elevator and pressed the button for the seventh floor. If the press conference ended before three, he could probably get back to the Advocate office and get the piece written in time for the four-thirty deadline.
MelcMor’s mind was swarming with these thoughts as the elevator doors opened on the seventh floor. He didn’t notice a tall man in brown tweed blocking his way to the conference room. “Excuse me,” the preoccupied reporter said brusquely, trying to sweep around the obstruction. The man took Melchior by the elbow and easily swung him around in the other direction. The stranger shoved him down the hall in the opposite direction.
“But the press conference . . . ,” Melchior complained, still craning his neck away from his chaperone, still unaware as to his identity.
“Change of plans,” Harry Callahan told him. “I want to give you an exclusive interview.”
The inspector practically threw the reporter into a plain, small room, lined with white cork. He came in behind Melchior, slipping a card into the special holder on the door which read, INTERROGATION IN PROGRESS, DO NOT DISTURB.
Melchior’s case hit the table in the middle of the room and slid down its length. The reporter himself had to grab the edge to keep from falling. He fell heavily into a chair, his glasses slipping down his nose again.
“Jesus!” he cried out, not without a touch of fear. “Inspector Callahan . . . !” he finally realized, then grew indignant. “What’s the meaning of this? How dare you push me around.”
“Shut up,” said Harry casually, moving up beside the reporter. “I should have done a lot more, considering what you did to me last night.”
“What I did to you? It seems to me you dug your own grave, friend. Now you’ll just have to lie in it.”
“Maybe,” Harry considered. “But if you hadn’t opened your big mouth, none of this would have happened.”
Melchior couldn’t disagree. “I was merely making Mr. Steele aware of your presence. I thought it best, considering the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Harry inquired. “Why shouldn’t I be there? If a reporter from the Advocate can be there, why can’t a cop?”
“I hardly doubt if we were there for the same reason,” Melchior scoffed.
“You never know,” Harry said while looking at the ceiling.
“Come now,” the reporter sniffed. “You don’t expect me to believe that you’re homosexual, do you?” When Callahan didn’t answer, Melchior considered the possibility, but laughed it off. “Besides,” he professed. “I was objectively observing. You were spying. I simply informed Mr. Steele of that fact.”
“I like that,” Harry said with amusement, shaking his head. “ ‘Watch out, he might have a gun’?”
Melchior remembered. “Oh yes. I see what you’re getting at. Well. What can I say? I was in the throes of passion, so to speak. It was the spirit of the moment, I suppose. I’m sorry.”
Harry leaned in, his hands on the tabletop and chair back, his face inches from Melchior’s. “You set me up,” he accused the reporter. “Why?”
“Now see here!” Melchior flared, pushing back in the seat. “I’ve had just about enough of this. You know damn well that what you’re doing here is illegal!”
Harry spread his arms out. “All we’re doing is talking. Nothing illegal about that.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Melchior huffed, collecting his material. “The conversation is at an end,” he declared, walking toward the door with his arms full of equipment. He found Harry in his way again. “Stand aside, Inspector,” he said sternly. Harry didn’t move. “Did you hear what I said?” Still no movement.
Unable to look him in the eye, Melchior made his ultimatum, quaking. “All I have to do is walk down this hallway and tell your superiors what you are doing and you’ll lose your pension so fast it’ll make your head swim!”
“But first you’ve got to get down the hallway,” Harry told him quietly.
Melchior stepped back, still unable to look Harry in the eye. He shakily moved to the table, dropped his gear and sat again. He purposely looked away from Harry, ashamed of his own cowardice, his fists clenched. “I could write about this, you know.”
“And I’d still lose my job,” Harry agreed, approaching. “But then it would be just you and me with no badge between us to protect your rights.” Harry sat down across the table from the abashed reporter. “What would happen to you then with no pension protecting you from me?”
Melchior looked up into Harry’s assured eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.” But his tone betrayed his bravado.
Callahan sighed. “Who believes what they read in the papers? Who believes in what they see on T.V.? Who believes anything, anymore?” Then, with a swiftly savage swipe, Harry sent the table between them off the floor, and smashing into the back wall. It happened so suddenly that Melchior jerked in his chair, almost falling backwards. When he looked back from the toppled table, he saw Harry was standing in its stead.
“I’ll tell you who believes,” he said. “I’ll tell you who believes that murder is murder and rape is rape and murderers and rapists should be punished for it, not written about or filmed or interviewed or glorified. I’ll tell you.”
As quickly as he had knocked the table aside, Harry reached down and pulled Melchior out of his seat. “I’ll tell you that there’s a girl missing. A girl who had just been raped the night before. A girl who might be the next victim of this Mortician Murderer, as you call him, unless we find her.”
Harry loosened his grip and let Melchior fall back into his chair. Watching him wipe the beads of perspiration from his face, the inspector returned to his own chair. “Now it’s your turn,” he said carefully. “You tell me all you know about last night and Michael Peter Steele.
C H A P T E R
T e n
> Deep in Mission Park, between Castro and Delores Streets, was a theater. It was originally built to house an electronics clearing-house. The owners had built it on the prospect of being one of the first major centers for the latest in technology. They had spent a lot of money fashioning the squat, multi-roomed, one-storied building, and filling it with the newest advances in the electronics field. They worked very hard stocking it with everything from fifteen watt light bulbs to the most complex microprocessing chip.
Shortly after completion, they came back to find most of it missing. No matter how advanced their alarm system, no matter how strong their steel bars and metal grates, it seemed as if equally enterprising vandals had made off with everything but the building itself.
The owners threw up their hands and slapped a Chapter Eleven bankruptcy blanket over the place. They opened a video store near Van Ness and offered up the hollow Mission Park location at a veritable sacrifice. No businessman would touch it, but a company called GETT—the Growing Enlightenment Theater Troupe—was willing to take the building, provided that the owners left what little remained of the electronic fixtures.
GETT moved into one of the most technically advanced showcases of its kind, putting on plays for the last eight months that were monumental in their ambitiousness as well as pretention. All were original works that strove to illuminate cosmic struggles.
Harry should have been clued to the actual producers behind the place by the name of the repertory company. GETT was another catch-as-catch-can name that it seemed SAFE specialized in. M. Peter Steele was at his fund-raising best here, collecting dues and contributions from the homosexual community in the name of civic awareness with which he produced, directed, and usually co-wrote the shows under a variety of florid stage names.
At least that was what Sidney Melchior had told him. The reporter professed to knowing nothing manipulative about the SAFE meeting last night—honestly pointing Callahan out only because of the fear brought on by Steele’s rhetoric. As for Steele himself, Melchior had a wealth of intimate knowledge, having followed and given good press to his movement since its inception.