by Dane Hartman
Inside the booth, Hinkle hurled the girl away from him in frustration. Weak from fear, the blond hit the side wall and slipped to the floor. The Professor took the MAC 10 in both hands and tried to level Harry where he stood. The .45 bullets drilled out the glass into the very edge of the table shield.
Harry felt the table buck in his hands and actually saw the bullets ricochet over his head. Then he fired the fifth shot.
The tube broke. The north wire held, swinging the big, glittering ball right at the disc jockey’s booth.
The destruction of the glass was extraordinary. The mirrored ball broke open like a shattering water balloon sending hundreds of spinning little squares off like the rays from the sun. Even more of the mirror powdered, spreading a sparkling gray cloud across the disc jockey booth’s protection.
At first it didn’t seem as if the one-way pane would give, but as the gray cloud dissipated, hunks of light broke through. The booth’s glass fell in like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling from the ceiling. They all shattered on the burnished wood and lighted glass dance floor with a crackling roar.
Harry dropped the table as The Professor was forced back. He stumbled toward the girl. Harry shot him in the back. Hinkle was thrown forward, his arms limp behind him. His face hit the wall above the girl. Harry didn’t wait for him to crumble. He charged right by the booth and pounded downstairs, reloading his Magnum as he went.
He nearly slammed face first into a steel curtain that blocked the bottom of the staircase. A sign on it read, “We are sorry, but the rest rooms are out of service at this time.”
Harry cursed and ran back to the bar. Reaching over the edge, he pressed down all the buttons. As he ran back, he saw the captive blond carefully making her way out of the booth. He wanted to help her, but he had more pressing matters to attend to.
This time the stairway was clear. Harry kicked open the ladies’ room door. Empty. He kicked at the door across the hall. It wouldn’t budge. He blasted away at the lock with his .44 until it fell completely out of the metal partition and clattered on the floor. Harry hurled it inward.
The room wasn’t empty, but there were no people inside. Instead there was equipment. There were four tables lined with the most incredible array of restraining devices Harry had ever seen. The tables themselves had straps to hold the entire body still. There was rope, leather cord, wire and tape of all shapes and sizes. There were handcuffs, padlocks, and chains. And that was just in the middle of the floor.
To his left was a complete makeup center with wigs, every type of cosmetic imaginable, and a full paint set. On the back wall was a lab stocked with drugs. And to his right was a large computer. The information section of the unit was as big as a casket. The readout and keyboard were the same sort one would find in any modern newsroom. Harry turned on the power. A flashing green star immediately appeared in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Harry typed in Lynne McConnell’s name. He hit the “Enter” button.
Her name flashed on the screen twice, then records began to march up the screen like the cast and credits of a TV show. The machine displayed her birth certificate, some school report cards, her driver’s license, her bank statements, her college diploma, her tax form, hospital records, her life insurance policy, and even the lease on her apartment.
Harry switched off the computer without emotion. He ran back upstairs and hopped into the disc jockey’s booth. Hinkle was where he had shot him. Harry gingerly turned him over. The Professor was leaking blood from his nose and mouth as well as his back.
“Get ’em?” Hinkle asked softly.
“Long gone,” said Harry.
Hinkle chuckled and a renewed stream of crimson drooled out of the corners of his mouth.
“Figures,” he finally said, grimacing with the pain.
“Save the death scene,” Harry stated. “If you know where they went, say so.”
The Professor thought about all the ironies of life. He thought about how there was no honor among thieves. He thought about his life and felt no remorse for the things he did. He felt no regret that he had ended this way either. But all he said was, “Angel Island. House on the Northern face. Call it the Cave.”
Harry didn’t thank him. He just got up and started to walk away.
“Hey,” Hinkle said.
Harry turned.
The Professor smiled a death smile. The blood had stained his teeth. It was a smile that said Harry didn’t have a chance. “Do you feel lucky, Callahan?” he asked. Then he lowered his head to the floor and died.
Harry looked at the corpse in the devastated disco for a few seconds.
“That’s my line,” he told the body. “Punk.”
C H A P T E R
E i g h t
It was nearly midnight when Harry arrived on Angel Island. He had had to drive all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf to find a cruiser captain still up and about. The tour boats were supposed to stop running at four o’clock in the afternoon, but a police badge and a loaded Magnum went a long way in loosening the moorings. Fifty bucks started the engine and raised the anchor.
Harry jumped off the salt-eaten deck onto a crumbling cement jetty on the north side of the island.
“There it is,” said Orville, the crusty little seahorse who had brought him this far. “The Cave.”
Harry looked up at the dark, foreboding mansion overlooking the Raccoon Strait.
“People call it that because they figger a whole system of caves runs underneath it,” Orville explained. “People figger a whole horde of gold was hidden in ’em after the rush of 1849.” The old man squinted up at the house himself. “Great earthquake probably destroyed ’em, though.” He shook his head. “Want me to wait?” he asked Harry.
“No,” Callahan answered. “Thanks.”
“Okie-doke,” Orville said, figuring the cop knew what he was doing.
Harry was already marching through the brush toward the mansion by the time the captain had cast off. He pulled out his weapon when the shadow of the place blotted out the moon.
It was another world here. A world of gothic horror, of dark despair, where the worst nightmares of a society trying to become liberated came true. Harry still had no proof. He had a disco full of terrified dancers and dead bodies but no real, prosecutable proof. He had a cellar that would set a sadist’s heart aflame, but he had no corroborating witnesses. Just a well-programmed computer and a lot of corpus delecti.
There were two more in the cellar with the girl, the bartender had said. Two more in the cellar, Harry thought, and how many more here? He soon got his answer. He heard a sound behind him and to his right. He spun around, his gun cocked.
It was Orville, the boat man, coming up to him and holding out a flashlight. “Here,” he said, flicking it on, “I thought you might need this . . .”
As soon as the light went on the night was torn open by the rasping growl of a submachine gun. Harry saw the captain’s middle get torn open by the bullets. He threw himself back and down as the poor old man and the flashlight dropped.
The only noise for seconds after that was the sound of the flashlight rolling down the hill toward the jetty. Harry watched the dot of white light get smaller and smaller until it smashed against a rock. The noise continued but the light went out. Finally the noise stopped too.
“I think I got him,” a voice said.
“Yeah, me too,” said another. “Come on.”
Harry kept perfectly still as two men, armed with G3 assault rifles, sidled up to the dead man.
“That’s him, huh?” the first one said, prodding the corpse with his toe. “He doesn’t look like much.”
The other shrugged. “Ours is not to reason why . . .” he quoted.
Harry couldn’t resist. “Yours is just to do and die,” he said. Callahan really wasn’t taking too much of a chance finishing the sentence because as he spoke, he blew both men away so fast his Magnum reports sounded as one.
The men spun and flew back, their rifles fo
llowing the flashlight down the hill.
Harry had no time to mourn the old sea salt’s meaningless murder. He ran up the remainder of the hill to the mansion, flattening against the nearest windowless wall he saw. Up close, the place wasn’t much different than it was from far away. The night hadn’t masked any windows, he noted, because there were no windows to mask. The whole side of the building had no opening. Harry walked around to the back of the house, away from the side that faced the strait.
There was one door back there, and in front of that door was the black man Harry knew as Fish. The black looked with trepidation in all directions, but he didn’t see Harry until the barrel of the .44 touched his neck.
“You’ve got a big mouth,” Harry told him, then brutally flung him against the wall. He bounced back toward Harry, who pushed him again. He kicked Fish’s legs wide, threw his arms up, and frisked him as Fish pleaded.
“Hey, man, they were going to kill me. I swear, they had my fucking head over a stove. I couldn’t help it, man. What did you want me to do?”
Harry spun him around, pinned his neck to the wall with one hand, and pressed the Magnum against his temple with the other. “Die,” he said.
“No, no wait!” the black man screamed. Harry tapped him lightly on his Adam’s apple. Fish choked on his begging and fell to his knees.
“Keep your voice down,” Harry ordered. He grabbed him by the Afro and pulled him to his feet again. “Now what will you do to stay alive?”
“I can bring you to her, man,” Fish whispered.
“Who?”
“The woman, jack. The boss. The head honcho.”
“And how many others?” Harry snarled.
“No, no, c’mon, man,” the black man pleaded, trying to twist his head out of Harry’s grip. “There’s nobody left. You got them all. It’s just her now, waiting for the ship to come in.”
“Isn’t everybody?” Harry grinned mirthlessly, digging his fingers deeper into the black man’s Afro.
“I swear,” Fish begged. “It’s the slaver’s ship, man! You catch her with that and you’ll have it all wrapped up.”
Harry suddenly let him go. They stood opposite each other at a distance of five feet. Harry held the gun steady on a level with his chest. There wasn’t much more to be made of the situation. Either he killed Fish or he didn’t. If he did, he was back on his own. If he didn’t, even if Fish led him into a trap, he’d be inside. Closer to McConnell.
Harry pictured her face. “All right,” he told the black man. “Let’s go.”
With great relief, Fish easily opened the plain wooden door and walked inside. As Harry followed him he noticed the inside part of the door was solid steel. They entered a deteriorating front parlor, all cracking cement and tarnished marble. The most notable feature of the room was the two marble columns near the center. Columns that stretched from the once sumptuous floor to the ceiling, now peeling, twelve feet above. Flickering candles were all over the place.
Fish walked between the columns to the entrance of a long hallway. There were open rooms to either side of the passage, their doors either hanging off their hinges or gone completely. The pair walked through without incident. But as they walked, Harry noticed the black man’s pace quickening. As if he was tired of the whole affair and anxious to have it end.
At the end of the hall, the way narrowed somewhat. The number of rooms multiplied, and the air was thick with wax smoke from the candles. Harry’s eyes began to smart. In the gloom of the long, winding passageways, Harry thought of another reason they called it the Cave. Moving through the oppressive dimness Harry thought about his long afternoon and evening of trying to find McConnell. He had killed them all to reach her. He thought he had almost found her at the disco, but he let her slip through his fingers. She was down with the other two, the bartender had said.
Two . . . ? Fish had said that only the woman was left!
Harry saw Fish almost ten feet ahead of him. He looked at the walls as he passed them. They were beige plaster, reinforced with intermittent wood beams. Thin, crumbling plaster. He looked ahead. They were coming to a small section of hall up three steps. The walls were even closer together than before. Three people could hardly pass shoulder to shoulder. And Fish was ten feet ahead.
The black man took the steps all in one jump. Harry was right behind him. He heard a scrape to his right and saw the peephole just as he grabbed Fish by the back of the neck. When it happened, it happened fast.
Callahan wrenched Fish in front of him as a machine-gun blast tore through the plaster wall. The black man caught it full in the chest. Harry pushed his Magnum between Fish’s dying torso and arm and shot point-blank into the peephole. Blood sloshed through the tears in the plaster.
But it wasn’t over. Harry heard another peephole slide back behind him and to his left. He hurled Fish down the steps and threw himself back against the wall. Machine-gun bullets poured out of the wall next to him. They tore off the edge of the beam he was behind, but the killer couldn’t bring the gun far enough to the right to peg him.
Harry crouched, leaned out, and shot up into the wall. The bullets stopped coming from that section. Harry glanced to his right. There was another peephole two beams down from the first one. Harry had the system now. Four assassins, two on either side of the hall, staggered in rooms behind the wall so they wouldn’t catch each other in crossfires. The rooms must have been built in the heyday of the gold rush to discourage thieves and swindlers.
Harry rolled down the passage and came up to the left of the peephole in the right wall. He saw another hole and heard a gun bolt click back right in front of him. He fired at the center of the left wall just as bullets spat out of the right wall beside him. Harry pressed the .44 barrel against the right wall, right over the peephole, and fired his last bullet.
He ran to the end of the hall and down the other steps, dumping his empty shells and reloading in two seconds flat. There was a door on either side. He kicked the left one open first. There was one dead man with a gaping wound in his chin and another crawling around the room on his back, trying to hold his intestines in. Harry ran across to the other door and shouldered it open. Two more corpses. A Magnum slug in one chest and another in a forehead. The flies had already set up housekeeping.
Harry stood at the end of the hallway, looking at the beige plaster flecked with red and the torn-up corpse of the black man known as Fish. He turned when he heard the scream.
The hall emptied out onto a circular room with a domed ceiling. The scream’s echo seemed to come from everywhere. It sounded again, narrowing the field to a large wooden door set deep in the stone wall of the room. Harry grabbed the heavy metal ring set in the middle of the portal and pulled. Slowly, the thick door swung back with a painful creak. Inside was a descending staircase of stone steps.
At first, Harry’s weariness and the flickering candlelight combined to make him feel as if he had stumbled back into history or onto a film set. The winding stairwell finished up in a subterranean dungeon. There were shackles set in rings on the walls. A broken rack in a heap in the corner. A gibbet, used for displaying dead bodies, hung from the ceiling. It was the ancient equivalent of the hostage room at the disco.
And in the center of the antiquated torture chamber was a woman. A naked woman locked in a fetal position on her back by one of the rusted metal instruments. It was all one piece, a long metal bar that wrapped around the back of her neck then moved down between her legs. Another two bands were attached to the outside of the bar, clamping her wrists to the main bar, then moving down on the outside of her legs. Each bar ended with a circle of iron so another, shorter bar could be thrust through the holes to keep the bonds in place. Finally, two horseshoe-shaped shackles were attached to the short bar to keep the ankles trapped and the thighs pressed against the stomach.
The archaic device was keeping the woman in agony. She screamed again. Harry noticed the loose kerchief around her neck and the wet rolled-up handkerchief lyin
g next to her head. By the looks of it, she had been able to loosen her gag and cry for help.
“Take it easy,” Harry told her, holding his hand over her mouth. “We can’t have anyone else rushing in.” He saw the one padlock holding the short and the two long bars together. Knowing it was the only way, Harry put his gun as close as he could to the lock and shot it off.
The woman hissed as the Magnum’s flash and recoil sizzled against her calves. But within seconds, Harry had loosened the device and pulled the woman free. She grabbed him around the neck and sobbed.
The woman’s weight was keeping him off balance. He tried to get up, but her hysterical grip was surprisingly strong. He had to let go off his gun to gently unwrap her arms from his neck. As soon as he had gotten free, the woman had fallen over on her side, away from him, still sobbing.
Harry stood, marveling at the viciousness of the case. He leaned on a chopping block next to him, fingering an iron mask, wondering how a woman could do such nasty things to other women. He wondered where the woman—the head honcho the late Fish had called her—was.
Then all of a sudden, he knew. And it was the woman’s inexperience with the Magnum and Harry’s immediate reaction that saved his life.
He twisted around the chopping block just as the naked woman fired. The bullet sliced across Harry’s ear, deafening him for a second. The big gun bucked in her hand, pointing at the ceiling. Despite a loud ringing in his ears, Harry managed to swing the iron mask around and bat the revolver out of her hand. The Magnum soared across the room, bounced across the floor, and clattered against the wall.
It didn’t stop the woman for a second. She reached behind her and pulled a huge, two-pronged boat hook off its ring on the wall. She swung it at Harry with a speed that rivaled any man he had faced. Harry parried with the iron mask. One thick point rang off the heavy effigy, sending up sparks. She swung back. Harry dodged and swung his own weapon. It glanced off her shoulder. She shrugged it off.