Deadly in New York

by Randy Wayne White

  “God damn it, Scott,” one of the uniforms complained, “we were in a hurry. Hell, a few seconds can save a life—”

  “And some day you’re going to hurry yourselves right into the grave,” Callis snapped. “Now holster your weapons! Davis, you go check the four stiffs. Make sure one of them isn’t still breathing. Then call for the forensic boys. I want a lab truck down here pronto. And O’Connor, read this guy his rights before you say another word.”

  Hawker waited patiently while the cop recited legalese from a plastic card. When he had finished, Callis took a half step closer. “What did you say your name was again?” he snapped.

  “Hawker. James Hawker.”

  Callis touched the black stubble of beard on his thick jaw. “Why is it that name sounds familiar?”

  The New York detective was playing staredown as he talked. Hawker didn’t flinch. “It’s a common name,” he answered.

  For a moment, a troubled look crossed Callis’s face, as if he were struggling to remember something. But then the look passed, and he nodded shrewdly. “Common name, huh? Well, Hawker, I’m not so sure. I’m not so sure at all. But we’ll find out soon enough when I get an N.C.I. check on you. Right now, though, I’m more interested in hearing about how you happened to blow away four guys—”

  “Three,” Hawker interrupted wryly. “As I told you, I just shot the three guys in suits.”

  “Ah, that’s right,” Callis went on with studied sarcasm. “Are you getting this down, O’Connor? This guy is waiving his right to remain silent, and he’s admitted to murdering the three stiffs in suits.” His head swung back suddenly toward Hawker. “What is it, you got a thing about suits? You don’t like guys who wear coats and ties?”

  Hawker looked pointedly at Callis’s worn sports jacket. “I have noticed that a coat and tie seems to be an advertisement for assholes, but that’s not the reason—”

  “There you have it, O’Connor,” Callis cut in. “We’ve got a real Bellevue candidate here. A regular Son of Sam.” Callis smiled thinly. “So how many more people have you murdered, Hawker? Confession’s good for the soul, you know. Just these four? Or maybe you’ve got a long list stashed away someplace back in your apartment. The world’s full of men who wear suits.”

  Hawker knew what Callis was doing. It was a sophisticated interrogation technique, where patter was used both to relax and confuse the person being questioned.

  But Hawker was in no mood for it. “Look, Callis,” he said, “if you want your questions answered, I’ll answer them. But I’m getting a little tired of your ping-pong talk. If you want to be clever to impress O’Connor here, go right ahead. I’ll just wait until you have to wake up a judge to have an attorney appointed for me before I say another word.” Hawker returned Callis’s thin smile. “I don’t mean to offend you, Callis. But I think it’ll save us both some time if we understand each other.”

  Callis actually chuckled. He chuckled softly. He calmly returned the .357 to its shoulder holster, brushed an imaginary piece of lint from his jacket—then, in a blur, grabbed Hawker by the shirt and forced his face down against the squad car.

  “You listen, and listen good, smartass,” Callis hissed into Hawker’s ear. “Because I want to be real sure we do understand each other. You come into my precinct and waste four guys right out on the street, right in plain sight. That upsets people, Hawker. It upsets the citizens in this shithole, and it upsets me. Furthermore, you pick a night when the heat off the streets makes this place as hot as cheerleader’s bike seat, and that upsets me even more. You may find this hard to believe, Hawker, but I’d rather be back at the station house sitting in front of a fan and scoring my own farts. I don’t like people getting killed in my precinct, Hawker. And I especially don’t like the people who do the killing. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll handle this interrogation any damn way I choose.” Callis released Hawker and stepped away. “Now,” he said, “do we understand each other a little better?”

  Hawker straightened his shirt. “You’ve got a way with words, Callis.” He smiled. “I admire that. And I think we’re going to get along fine.”

  Callis’s face tightened for a moment, but then he snorted and wiped his mouth, as if to cover a grin. “Okay, Hawker. Have it your way. No more—what was it? Pingpong talk? Yeah, ping-pong. I like that. No more ping-pong talk. Just turn around nice and easy while Officer O’Connor puts the cuffs on you and escorts you back to my car.”

  Hawker was genuinely surprised. “You’re arresting me already, Callis? What’s the charge?”

  Detective Lieutenant Callis straightened his jacket and walked away. He said over his shoulder, “How about murder? Four counts. In the first degree.”

  eight

  London

  Hendricks wore a charcoal-gray suit, vest, and bowler hat as he walked down Baker Street toward Westminster.

  It had misted rain only an hour before, and his umbrella was still damp.

  He had an appointment with an old friend of his from MI-5. Sir Blair Laggan. “Laggy” had gone into data operations for the government after the war, and then he had used his knowledge to begin a private data collecting and sales concern on an international basis.

  It had made him a very, very wealthy man.

  Hendricks knew that if one individual could help him bait his trap for Blake Fister and Fister Corporation, it would be Laggy.

  And, if Laggy couldn’t help him, he would know who could.

  Hendricks stopped momentarily on the crowded sidewalks of Baker Street and pretended to use a shop window as a mirror to straighten his tie.

  Actually, he was checking to see if he was still being followed.

  He was.

  A swarthy-looking character with long greasy hair and the soiled clothes of a punk rocker had been following him ever since he’d left his hotel room.

  Hendricks knew he couldn’t allow himself to be traced to Laggy’s corporate data offices. That would immediately tell Fister Corporation—assuming his tail had been sent by Fister—too much about Hayes’s and Hawker’s plans to topple the company.

  As Hendricks reasoned quite coolly, he had two options:

  He either had to lose the man who was following him.

  Or he would have to kill him.

  Hendricks—Sir Halton Collier Hendricks—hadn’t killed a human being since 1945.

  It was the same year he was awarded his knighthood at Buckingham Palace in a secret ceremony held especially to acknowledge the contributions of British Military Intelligence.

  Hendricks remembered his last victim and the circumstances of 1945 very well.

  It was May 3, a cool German spring day, in Berlin. It was the day after the Soviets had fought their way into the Nazi capital, and Hendricks was there in his undercover role as a MI-5 agent doubling for the KGB.

  Because of his role, he was the first British subject to view the ruin of the Reich Chancellery.

  There were bodies everywhere. Bodies on the streets. Bodies piled on wagons. Most were fresh bodies, recently executed by the “liberating” Soviets.

  Many of the bodies were those of women. They had been raped, of course, before they were killed. There were more than 90,000 recorded rapes of Berlin women in those last few days of the war.

  But Hendricks had no interest in these horrors. Neither did his “tour guide” who, as Hendricks well knew, was another KGB agent sent to accompany him and keep an eye on his activities.

  The tour guide’s name was Karnakov, and he was a particularly unsavory Russian with bad skin and garlic breath.

  Hendricks was there to find Fuehrerbunker—the labyrinth of offices and living quarters built thirty meters underground where Adolf Hitler had directed his broken German war machine during the last 105 days.

  Karnakov was there to make sure that, if he did find the secret bunker, all surviving papers and artifacts were to go to Moscow, not London.

  Something caught Hendricks’s attention as they walked through the bombed-out
Chancellery garden. Russians digging. Digging a trench not to bury bodies, but to exhume bodies. Hendricks walked over to observe, and Karnakov tagged along.

  There were two bodies, barely distinguishable as a male and a female. They had been badly burned. Oddly, the female corpse was frozen into a sitting position, hands thrown outward as if holding reins. On the belly of the male corpse had been placed the German Iron Cross.

  As Hendricks immediately noticed, the medal had not been burned with the bodies. It had been placed there later—probably just before burial.

  “Who are they?” Karnakov had asked one of the workers in Russian.

  “I do not know,” a worker replied, leaning on his shovel, his nose turned away from the stench. “German brass, I guess. All I know is, we have orders to dig in everything around that looks like a fresh grave.”

  Hendricks didn’t have to ask who they were.

  He knew.

  The Iron Cross had told him.

  The charred corpses were those of Eva Braun and Adolf Hitler.

  Nonchalantly Hendricks had walked over and taken the Iron Cross from the chest of the corpse. He held it up for Karnakov’s inspection, then wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

  He knew Hitler would not have been buried far from his Fuehrerbunker. And, within five minutes, he had found the secret entranceway. With Karnakov right behind him, he had descended the forty-five steps into the dark maze.

  For nearly an hour, the two of them did not speak as they went from room to room. In what was obviously Hitler’s quarters, Karnakov had paused at a blue horsehair couch. Noticing the bloodstains on it and the floor, Karnakov had wondered out loud if the rumor was true. Maybe Hitler really was dead. Maybe he had committed suicide.

  Hendricks had said nothing. Britain’s MI-5 was quite sure that Hitler had killed himself. Now there was no doubt in his mind.

  But Hendricks hadn’t been sent after data on the death of Adolf Hitler. He had been sent after records of communication between the German Abwehr and their spies in England.

  MI-5 had convincing evidence that one German agent still roamed London—an agent code-named “Druid.”.

  In the communications shack, the Germans hadn’t taken the time to destroy their files. And why should they? The war was obviously lost. With Karnakov looking over his shoulder, Hendricks found a sheath of papers in which the Druid was named several times.

  He folded the papers and stuck these, too, in his jacket.

  The Russian agent had eyed him suspiciously. “I assume you are taking those back to Moscow?” he asked in bad English.

  “London,” Hendricks had replied, smiling softly. “I’m afraid I find Moscow rather a dull place. Worse, I find you Russians a barbarous and uncivilized people. If you like, you may consider this my resignation from the KGB.”

  The insult registered slowly with the KGB agent. As he reached beneath his coat and fumbled to draw his revolver, Hendricks drove the six-inch stainless-steel needle he had been hiding in his hand deep into the Russian’s ear.

  Karnakov seemed to freeze for a moment. Then he collapsed on the floor, leaking a slight trickle of blood from his head.

  Hendricks had walked calmly and coolly up the steps outside.

  He smiled pleasantly at the men now wrestling with Hitler’s corpse.

  He got into Karnakov’s jeep and began driving north. He did not stop until American troops with the Third Army flagged him down and asked in their quaint assault on the King’s language if there was someplace they could find “Drinking liquor in this god-damn Kraut country worth a shit—and not none of that schnapps crap that tastes like peppermint candy.…

  That night, Hendricks had billeted at General George S. Patton’s headquarters.

  After a dinner laid by servants, and over Kentucky bourbon, Hendricks gave an edited report of what he had done and seen that day.

  Patton listened wide-eyed, then smacked a big fist on the table and offered him a thousand dollars U.S., guaranteed box seats to the next World Series, and a very ugly white dog in exchange for Hitler’s Iron Cross.

  After politely inquiring what, exactly, was a “World Series,” Hendricks refused.

  It had been many years since Hendricks had killed the Russian agent in the subterranean complex of what had been Adolf Hitler’s death chamber.

  But sometimes it was necessary to kill. When the cause was good, and there was no other way.

  The war had taught him that.

  Hendricks tapped his bowler hat down and began walking steadily along Baker Street.

  At the old Black Stag Hotel, he nodded at the doorman and went inside. Without hesitating, he crossed the lobby and went out the back exit. Quickly then, he walked one more block toward Westminster, then cut through an alley toward Baker Street.

  Halfway down the alley, a hand reached out from behind a stack of boxes and jerked him roughly against the damp brick wall.

  Hendricks found himself face to face with the greasy-haired punk rocker who had been following him.

  “Tried to give me the bloody dodge, you old fart, didn’t you?” the young man said in a heavy Cockney accent. There was a knife in his fist, and he pressed the blade against the old butler’s throat.

  “There’s no need to kill me,” Hendricks whispered. “If it’s money you’re after, then I’ll give you money.”

  The punk rocker had a hoarse, phlegmy laugh. “So you think this a stickup, eh, mate?” he grinned. “Well, old top, you might be right. Be easier for the scum at Scotland Yard to understand, hey! A stickup she will be.” He slammed Hendricks against the wall again. “Now give me your money, Sir Halton,” he added with contempt. “After that, we’ll see if Her Majesty’s servants bleed the same color as us poor common folk.”

  Slowly Hendricks reached into his pocket and found what he had been carrying there ever since he had arrived in London.

  The metal was cool in his hand.

  It was the same stainless-steel needle he had used to kill Karnakov so many years before.…

  nine

  New York

  With his hands cuffed behind him, James Hawker rode moodily as Detective Lieutenant Scott Callis drove them through the heavy Bronx traffic of 10:30 P.M.

  “Damn it, Callis,” Hawker said finally. “You’re wasting time. My time and your time. You know god-damn well I killed those three guys in self-defense.”

  Callis looked amused. “Do I? And how in the world could I know that? The legal department made us get rid of our crystal balls.”

  Hawker looked at him. “You won’t drop the sarcasm for even a minute, will you? Okay, I’ll tell you how you know it was self-defense. First of all, I stuck around after I did it. I made no feverish attempt to rub out my fingerprints, hide my weapon, and try to escape—and I had plenty of time to do all those things, believe me.”

  “Psychopathic killers are almost always very cool and calm after they waste someone,” Callis countered as he turned right and kicked his unmarked car into passing gear on a rare open straightaway.

  “Do I strike you as psychopathic?”

  “I never did trust guys with reddish hair. Such terrible tempers, you know.”

  “I’m not even going to react to that, Callis.” Hawker shook his head in frustration. “Do you want to hear the second reason why you know it was self-defense?”

  “Absolutely,” said Detective Scott Callis. “By all means, tell me.”

  “Because you’re a smart cop, that’s how you know. I watched you from the time you pulled up. You made all the right moves, did and said all the right things. You’ve been around, Callis. You know your job, and you’ve seen enough crooks and murderers to pick them out of a packed stadium.”

  Callis smiled. “Flattery. I like that. Tell me more.”

  “Ha,” said Hawker. “That’s where the flattery ends. You come on smart, Callis, but you end up real dumb.”

  “Dumb?” The Greek cop raised his eyebrows. “Let me get this straight
. I’m free to go wherever I please, and you’re sitting there with cuffs on, a murder rap hanging over your head, and you call me dumb?”

  Hawker snorted involuntarily. As much as he hated to admit it, he liked Callis. The guy had a weird sense of humor. “How long have you been on the force, Callis?”

  As the streetlights flashed by, Hawker saw the look of slyness on Callis’s face. “Let’s see.… Oh, about as long as you were on the Chicago force. Thirteen, fourteen years. Something like that.”

  Hawker sat up straight. “Just how in the hell did you know I was a Chicago cop?”

  Callis began to laugh softly. “About three months ago, at a law enforcement convention in L.A., I ran into a friend of yours. It took me a while to place your name when you first volunteered it. I knew damn well I had heard that name before. And then I began to match the name with the description. The red-brown hair. That broken beezer of yours. Built like someone had put arms on a stack of bricks—that’s the way that funny little Irish detective from the L.A.P.D. described you—”

  “Flaherty!” Hawker interrupted.

  “That’s the guy.” Callis chuckled. “I spent the first day there wondering how a mick as dumb as him could ever rise above a uniform corporal. You know—the way he asks those innocuous little questions of his, with that innocent expression and those twinkly blue eyes. Christ, you’d barely give him credit for having enough sense to come in out of the rain. But then one night we were discussing something serious—I forget what—and all of a sudden I realized those innocuous little questions of his were backing me into a corner. Every time I’d change tacks, he’d nail me with another one. Christ, it was like sitting down to a checker game and ending up playing chess against a god-damn grand master! And never once did that twinkly expression of his ever change.”

  Hawker nodded his understanding and said nothing. That was Flaherty all right.

  Hawker had run into the Irish detective when he traveled to California on a freelance mission to help clean up two savage street gangs that were making life hell for the residents in one of the suburbs there.