by Dane Hartman
He slammed against it with his shoulder. It was locked. He shot away the lock and kicked it open. Big Ed Mohamid hung from an overhead pipe by a police belt notched around his neck.
Harry brought his Magnum up and blasted. The bullet went right through the center of the leather belt, sending pieces in every direction and sending Mohamid to the floor. Harry didn’t have time to check his condition. He ran from the room to the last door on the right. On the front were the neatly stenciled letters, “A-U-T-O-P-S-Y.”
“Oh Christ,” Harry breathed as Fatso rounded the corner with four other men. “Stay there,” Harry called to him. “There’s a maniac in here I want to talk to.”
The inspector pushed open the barrier and dove in. The slick floor was perfect for sliding. Harry skimmed almost all the way to the side wall. He stopped right behind a locker as a bullet whined off its metal front.
Harry checked his position. He was on the right side of a long room lined with lockers and dotted with tables. On the tables were bodies. They were blue and looked cold. From where he was standing, he could see a completely naked old woman and a middle-aged man. Pulling his gaze away from the motionless corpses, Harry concentrated on not becoming one of them.
“Come on,” he called. “There’s no other way out. You know you don’t stand a chance.” Harry waited, but there was no answer. The bald man didn’t want to give away his position by shouting back, and he didn’t want to waste his ammo by shooting again.
Well, Harry figured, if you want anything done, you’ve got to do it yourself. The cop jumped from his locker cover to behind the table with the dead old woman on it. The dead old woman’s stomach ripped open and a fountain of blood and other liquid gouted up. Harry heard the gun report right afterward. He fired back in the general direction as the woman’s fluid flecked the side of his face. He heard the smashing of glass in front of him.
Callahan dodged behind the middle-aged man’s table. Another bullet tore up some tile by his right foot. Harry dropped to his knees, seeing the bald man between the legs of a table all the way down the room. His adversary threw himself flat as Harry blasted away. The cop heard a satisfying yell of pain as one of his slugs gouged across the bald man’s upright back. His other bullets tore away at the underside of the table and one of its legs.
Harry stood as the bald man pulled himself upright. The villain staggered back and crashed against some more lockers. He used them for leverage as he tried to get a bead on Harry. Callahan zigzagged toward him, keeping behind another set of tables. In panic, the bald man fired twice more, tearing off the top of a hippie corpse’s head and punching a third nostril in the young man’s nose.
Harry directed himself to the right, but the hippie’s guts got in the way. He felt his shoe connect with something slick, and he fell. The bald man took advantage of the situation by running between tables and aiming at Harry’s prone chest. Callahan grabbed the table and pulled it over just as the bald man fired.
Flesh and wood fell into the path of the bald man’s bullet. The lead tore through the hippie’s ribs and dug its way into the wood. It cracked through and sped over Harry’s chest and under his arm to clatter on the tile. The corpse flopped down on its side, a large crack echoing through the room, as Harry hurled the table out of his way with a powerful kick. He pulled himself to his feet to confront the bald man.
The bald man stared angrily at the rising cop. He held his weapon on a level with Harry’s chest. Callahan recognized the gun. It was a 380 ACP-caliber F.I. Model D manufactured in America by Astra. It carried six rounds in the clip and one in the chamber. The bald man was out of ammunition. Harry, on the other hand, had two bullets left. He brought his Magnum up to the same level as the other man’s Astra.
Facing the cop’s big gun, the bald man seemed to panic. He backed away slowly, his tense face showing signs of fear. Harry moved forward, pacing him, holding the .44 steady and straight. The man passed between the last two tables. Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry saw two black men on the tops. The bald man kept moving back. He veered off to Harry’s right, his gun hand getting shaky.
Finally there was no more room to move. The bald man had backed into a corner. He lifted his gun up toward Harry’s face. Harry lifted his toward his opponent. They looked down each other’s barrels. Two seconds passed and the bald man let his Astra droop. He lowered his head and pulled the gun’s trigger. The room echoed with an empty click. Harry smiled.
Then the black corpse behind him sat up.
If Harry had seen it, his first thought would be muscle spasm. He had seen dead bodies in the morgue bend their arms and legs from involuntary muscle spasms. But he didn’t see the black man rise behind him. And he didn’t see him open his eyes. Harry only felt the black man’s big fists smash into his kidneys.
The cop stumbled forward, the Magnum erupting harmlessly to the left. The bald man reared up and slugged the off-balance inspector in the face. Harry’s head snapped back into the black man’s grip. Two muscular arms wrapped around his head and neck in a hammer-lock. The bald man grabbed his gun wrist in both hands.
Harry felt the black man’s nudity against his back. He felt the thick limbs crushing down on his windpipe and pushing against the back of his head. He tried to pull the Magnum back, but the bald man held it forward. The trio staggered around the back of the autopsy room in a struggling clump.
One of the black man’s hands grabbed a fistfull of Harry’s hair. The bald man let go with his right and started pummeling Callahan in the stomach. Harry knew what they were planning to do. Once he had weakened sufficiency, the black man would snap his head to the side and hopefully break his neck. As the rumbling pain from his stomach and the lack of air reached his brain, Harry had to admit it was possible.
He went limp. His weight pulled the black man forward and made the bald man step back. Then Harry put all his muscles into overdrive. He pulled his gun arm back while throwing the other hand forward. The bottom of his palm slammed in the bald man’s nose. A circle of blood splattered out onto his face. He swung the gun back into the black man’s head. He heard a meaty thunk, and the grip relaxed around his neck.
Harry himself spun about, having to fall halfway across the empty autopsy table to catch his breath. He heard a noise behind and to his right. He swung the Magnum around as hard as he could. It slammed into the black’s forehead. The man fell flat on his back.
Harry pivoted toward the bald man. He was on his knees, jamming some new shells into his weapon’s magazine as blood continued to stream out of his nose. As soon as he realized that Harry was turning toward him, he tried pushing the clip back into the gun and firing it at the same time. But before the magazine had even clipped into place, Harry fired his last bullet point blank into the bald man’s hand.
The man’s hand was hurled backward, entire fingers literally being blown off. Two columns of blood foamed out of the hand like a bottle of champagne that had just been opened. The bald man fell on his destroyed nose, his ruined hand outstretched. The black man began to come to, his eyes blinking and his head shaking. Harry heard the door open behind him.
He whirled to see Fatso Devlin at the other end of the room. “Get out of here!” Harry shouted. His partner simply closed the door and told the other cops that it was a false alarm. Nothing to worry about. Then he stood against the autopsy room door from the outside, looking nonchalantly at his fingernails.
Inside Harry went over to the groggy nude black man, put a hand on his nodding forehead and hammered his head on the floor. Then he ran over to the writhing bald man, who was pushing his mangled hand into his other, trying to stem the flow of blood. He looked up as Harry approached. Harry kicked him in the jaw. The bald man flew back, his hands flung behind him.
He landed spread-eagled on his back, the torrent of blood from his shot-off fingers having left a double-banded trail of his fall. Harry dodged the slopping liquid as it splashed on the tile, then leaned down to rip off a strip from the bald man’s la
b coat. He tore it from the hem to the man’s arm, then ripped it off sideways. He quickly tied a tourniquet around the man’s upper arm. The blood flow diminished, then slowed to a thin stream.
Harry reached back and took out a pair of handcuffs from under his belt. He cuffed the bald man’s good left hand to his left ankle. He then started going through the lockers. He pulled out two lab coats and a syringe. Harry laid those on the empty table and went to the coroner’s desk. He pulled the reading lamp out of its socket and tore the wire out the back. He went through the drawers and found an extension cord. With these in hand, he approached the unconscious black man.
The naked man was awakened by some sharp slaps on his face. He looked up to see Harry’s smiling face framed by an operating lamp. He tried to smash the face, but his arms and legs were twisted back behind him. He looked at himself. He was lying on the table he had been on before, only this time his arms were bent back over his head and over the edge of the table. They were tied by wire and lab-coat cloth, which stretched under the table to his ankles, which were tied similarly. The cording was tight, keeping his big black body taut across the slab top.
The black man looked around. Behind Harry he saw the bald man half hog-tied by the one pair of handcuffs. Blood still leaked from his stumpy palm.
“Just a minute,” said Harry, picking up the syringe, which was filled with a clear liquid. Harry walked over, reached down and roughly pulled the bald man’s pants down, exposing his ass. Harry injected the fluid just above his right cheek. “That ought to do it,” Harry remarked, returning to the table.
“Hey, man, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” the black man boomed. “You can’t do this, man.”
“Uh-huh,” Harry agreed, plugging something into the handy socket on the leg of the table. “You know,” he commented, “it may not look like it, but this room is really very well designed.” Harry pointed up. “It has water jets in the ceiling.” Harry pointed down. “It has gratings in the floor. I bet you could kill a herd of elephants in here and still have the place spotless in an hour. What do you say?”
“You’re crazy!” the black man shouted.
“Wrong answer,” Harry quietly told him. He raised his right hand. In it was a miniature buzz saw, the kind of hand held scalpel medical examiners use to make dissecting easier. There was a button on the side of the thick tube. Harry pressed it. The thin, sharp blade spun around with a grating, whirring sound. The black man’s eyes bulged.
“What are you going to do with that?” he asked, his voice quaking.
“Punctuate our conversation,” Harry said. “You say something right, and there’ll be a period. You say something I don’t like and I’ll draw exclamation points all over your body.”
The black man stared at Harry’s placid face and the electric scalpel. Then he started to laugh. He roared with delight, his head going back between his bound hands.
“Naw, you ain’t gonna do shit with that thing, man,” he told Harry with assurance. “This is police headquarters. You touch me and all bets are off. I’ll never even get to court. You’ll lose your job. Forget it man, you’re bluffing.”
Harry stood stock-still for a moment. The black man was sure he was going to lean over and untie him. Instead Harry turned the saw on and sliced a cut along the black man’s thigh.
The man screamed in surprise, his body bucking against the wire and cloth cords. Harry brought the still-whirring blade next to his face. The black man became very still and very quiet very quickly.
“I’m not going to bring you to court,” Harry informed him. “I’m going to send you to hell. You’re a corpse, remember? You were lying on a slab when I came in. Now all I have to do is find your clothes bunched in one of these lockers and burn them so no one will know the difference. What’s another dead person here or there?”
“Christ, man,” the tied man cried. “You cut me.”
“The coroner cut you when he started your autopsy,” Harry corrected him.
“Nobody’ll buy it,” the black yelled as a last ditch argument. “Tony’ll tell them I was with him!” The black man motioned his head toward the unconscious bald man.
“Tony’ll be out for a long time,” Harry assured him. “Maybe forever. And if he wakes up, who’ll believe him? And even if they do, you won’t be around to see it.” Harry started up the machine and sliced his other leg along the calf.
The black man screamed again, pulling himself left and right in an effort to escape. His heart pounded, creating two red waterfalls down his leg.
“Scream all you want,” Harry said calmly. “The room is soundproof.”
“What do you want?” the man howled, sweat pouring across his body. “Man, you’re killing me!”
“Like you killed Barbara Steinbrunner?”
“Man, I swear I had nothin’ to do with that! On my mother’s grave!”
“Don’t bring your mother into this. You’ll be with her soon enough.”
“Christ! I swear! I swear!” the black man babbled. “It was Tony. Tony did it to her!”
“What about the others?” Harry asked, holding the scalpel over the black man’s head.
“What others?” he asked immediately.
Harry turned the device on. The black began screaming and writhing again. Harry slapped his free hand on the man’s right hip. He brought the sharp, whirring blade close to the man’s penis.
“Please!” the man shrieked. “Please, oh God, no! All right, all right, I’ll tell you everything you want to know! Please don’t!”
Harry kept the blade a centimeter from the organ, looking back up at the black man’s face. “Go on,” he instructed.
“I pointed some chicks out,” the black man gibbered. “Whores, runaways, shit like that. They called me. Had me sit in a Caddy with another girl. That’s all! I swear, that’s all!”
“What girl?”
“I don’t know, man,” said the black, getting bolder. “Some black chick all dressed up.”
“Red dress?”
“No, man, dressed like a boy! All these straps and makeup.”
Harry cut away the very surface of the man’s penis. The black man shrieked in agony, straining at his bonds. He had pulled so hard at the cords that his wrists were beginning to bleed almost as bad as his legs.
“I swear that’s the truth!” he hollered up at the ceiling.
“Where did you take her?”
“Some disco, man. A disco in Emeryville. Off the bridge.”
“I know where Emeryville is,” Harry said warningly.
“It’s right near the bay,” the man hastily added. “Right at the end of a marsh. Near Route 15. Madame’s, it’s called. Madame’s!”
“Thank you,” snapped Harry, bringing the electric scalpel up, then down toward the man’s throat. The black stiffened, gritted his teeth, and screwed his eyes shut. Harry just kept bringing the saw down until it cut away the wire binding the black’s wrists to his ankles. The man opened his eyes in astonishment. “Get dressed,” Harry advised him, cutting away the rest of the bondage.
Harry pulled the plug out and brought the scalpel back to the coroner’s desk. The man watched until the cop had turned back to him and pulled out his Magnum. The black hastened to a locker near the table and pulled out his clothes. Callahan waited until the man’s pants were painfully drawn on over his bleeding legs and crotch. He then took him by the arm and led him toward the door.
Harry pulled the door open, nearly dropping Fatso Devlin on his back. The Irish cop stumbled backward, his arms windmilling to keep his balance. When he had regained his equilibrium, Harry hooked a thumb toward the back of the room.
“A little package for Captain Avery,” Harry said, “telling him how much I appreciated his moving Mohamid.”
“Big Ed is beyond caring,” Fatso informed him.
Harry didn’t say anything. The black man took it as a silent indictment.
“I didn’t do it,” he swore. “I was just look out
for Tony.”
“Shut up,” Harry snapped. Devlin glanced questionably at the black man wearing just his pants. “You didn’t see him,” Harry demanded of his partner.
“Right,” Devlin agreed, walking back toward the bleeding Tony.
Harry hauled the black around the corner and down the hall to the basement exit. He pushed the door open, and they walked outside. “Where’s your car?” Harry asked his prisoner.
“Down the alley,” the man motioned behind them. The pair hustled down the way until they came to a dark blue Oldsmobile.
“The keys,” Harry demanded, putting his hand out.
The black man reached painfully into his pocket and brought out a key chain with three keys on one end and the astrological sign of Pisces on the other. Harry took the whole thing and unlocked the passenger door. “All right, Fish,” Harry said, coining a nickname for him from the horoscope figure. “Get lost.”
“Say what?” said the surprised Fish.
“You heard me,” Harry said threateningly. “Get out of town, get out of state, get off the planet if you think that’ll get you far enough away from me. Because if I ever see you again, I will kill you. And believe me, it’ll hurt a lot worse and take a lot longer than what I did in there.”
The look on Callahan’s face stopped whatever doubting words the black man might have uttered. Without a sound, he scrambled across the car’s front seat. Harry threw the keys after him. Within ten seconds the auto with the black man was speeding down the street.
Harry watched him go. You were right, he was thinking. There would have been no way to get him into court without self-destructing his police career. Cops all over the country were learning the same lesson in less extreme circumstances. It was easier and cheaper to administer backstreet justice than haul every asshole up on charges. The police do one thing wrong, and they find themselves hung on a lawsuit.
Harry probably could’ve been sued, but he would have been up on departmental charges for sure if someone like Avery knew what he had done. Thankfully, with a partner like Devlin, there was little chance of it. Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if Fatso had already cleaned up the blood stains left by the black’s wounds on the hallway floor.