Dirty Harry 06 - City of Blood

by Dane Hartman

  ONLY “DIRTY HARRY”

  CALLAHAN CAN STOP

  THE “SNUFF” PSYCHO

  ON HIS ’FRISCO RAMPAGE!

  Winos burtally slain on San Francisco’s skid row. Beautiful young women butchered in the act of sex by a perverted killer. The acts of two men—or one? Not even Dirty Harry knows. But he’s going to find out, if he has to break every law to do it. From ’Frisco’s sexual underground to the boardrooms in the city’s sky, Harry plunges into a blood-streaked manhunt that will leave only one survivor.

  SHOWDOWN

  ON CASTRO STREET!

  The driver managed to elude him and began running down Castro, zigzagging to evade the rounds he expected Harry to send after him.

  But now there were two police cruisers, side-by-side, speeding up the street in his direction.

  Trapped, the terrorist turned to confront Harry.

  For one brief instant the two looked at each other. Harry remembered the terrorist, and the terrorist remembered Harry.

  As if they were actors in a Western, the two men faced off, both with guns raised in their hands, knowing that in this duel one or the other, maybe both, would have to die.

  The terrorist opened up just as Harry threw himself to the ground . . .

  Books by Dane Hartman

  Dirty Harry #1: Duel For Cannons

  Dirty Harry #2: Death on the Docks

  Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death

  Dirty Harry #4: The Mexico Kill

  Dirty Harry #5: Family Skeletons

  Dirty Harry #6: City of Blood

  Dirty Harry #7: Massacre at Russian River

  Dirty Harry #8: Hatchet Men

  Dirty Harry #9: The Killing Connection

  Dirty Harry #10: The Blood of Strangers

  Dirty Harry #11: Death in the Air

  Dirty Harry #12: The Dealer of Death

  Published by

  WARNER BOOKS

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1982 by Warner Books, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10019

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 0-446-30051-9

  First Printing: May, 1982

  DIRTY HARRY #6

  CITY OF

  BLOOD

  The Beginning

  At four-thirty in the afternoon the Tocador Hotel is a quiet place. The street that adjoins it, in the Union Square area, is virtually devoid of traffic, so none of the residents of the hotel are obliged to suffer the rumble of passing cars or the occasional wail of a siren, signaling disaster of one sort or another.

  As its name would indicate, the Tocador has a certain unpretentious Spanish ambience. You enter through filigree gates into a courtyard where ailanthus trees keep the unused and unusable fountain perpetually in shadow. There is a certain air of obsolescence about this place; the courtyard, with its cracked stone surface, and the lobby, with its chipped and broken tiles on the floor and the paint fading on its walls, all testify to the gentle ruin time has been responsible for.

  The clerk who sat at the desk of the Tocador, with a registry larger than a Guttenberg Bible stretched open before him, was a man who had aged along with the hotel, growing a bit moldy himself. His skin seemed vaguely greenish and exuded a smell of faint decay that was probably the result of weeks without a shower.

  The Tocador was largely a residential hotel. The people who lived there had been living there for years, cooking in the kitchens most of the apartments contained, which explained why no restaurant could be found in the establishment. The clerk knew the great majority of the residents; they were older than he and shambled rather than walked, relying on canes and walkers to get from the lobby’s entrance to the elevators that were more cranky than the people who went up in them. It was always with some surprise that he greeted a guest who wished to be put up for only one or two nights. No guide book, save for the most thorough ones, even bothered mentioning the Tocador.

  But the mere appearance of an unfamiliar face was not enough to startle the clerk, who passed most of his time on duty viewing soap operas and reruns of The Million Dollar Movie on the fuzzy black and white television mounted behind the counter. Most of those who sought temporary lodging in the Tocador were men who were down on their luck but who had yet to acknowledge the fact. Rates at the hotel edged on twenty dollars a day; it was generally more than the transients found they could afford, so they moved out before long, dragging suitcases that weighed half as much as they did.

  This afternoon, however, as the big white clock in the lobby announced with a single chime that four-thirty had arrived, the clerk did have cause for surprise. More than surprise: utter astonishment.

  For there, standing before him, were two of the most beautiful young women that he had ever had occasion to lay eyes on. Not that he had much basis for comparison. A widower, he did not get out much, but from what he had seen in magazines and on the television, which now was turned up way too loud to compensate for the clerk’s failing hearing, these two were something else.

  One was taller, leaner, a bit perkier in manner than the other. She wore a suede jacket edged with silver fox, and her long tan legs emerged from a velvet skirt. The other wore a cloche hat, a black leather jacket that was open to reveal a magenta silk skirt that was open in turn to reveal a slash of white skin, and black jodphur-like bloomers that extended to the upper perimeter of her ankles. Her toenails, peeking out of white sandals, he noticed were coated a bright lavender.

  The taller one had black hair cut pageboy fashion so that her long and graceful neck was available for inspection. She seemed perpetually about to laugh, and her brown eyes were alive with the excitement of knowing something nobody else did. Her companion, by contrast, looked a bit quizzical, almost sullen, as though she were attempting to come to grips with some immense and troubling problem. But there was no question of the delicacy of her features, the sensuality of the lips, the flare of her nostrils, and the startlingly blue incandescence of her eyes.

  The clerk rose to see what they wanted. He supposed they must be tourists who had gotten lost and were seeking directions. He felt years younger just to be in their presence and wished that he could persuade them to remain. But that, he realized, was unlikely; neither girl possessed any luggage, only their expensive handbags.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked, clearing his throat, adjusting his glasses so that he could see them with greater clarity.

  “We would like to register,” the taller one said, almost giggling at this request. “That is unless you’re full up.”

  Was their accent English? Maybe she was simply being affected. The clerk couldn’t judge. But his astonishment was so great that he did not respond for a moment. Then he shook his head, as if to free himself from his daze.

  “Full up? Oh no. Not at all.” He turned the registry so that they could sign it.

  “Is your luggage out in the car? I can bring it up to you.”

  The shorter, serious girl shook her head. “No, no luggage.” Then she added gratuitously: “No car.”

  “No bags, no car,” the clerk repeated wonderously. Then he remembered his responsibility: “That will be thirty-five dollars in advance. For a double?”

  The taller girl who had just put her name down as Mary Nold said that a double would be just fine and from her pocketbook uncoiled a roll of fifties. “You do have change, don’t you?”

  “Oh, of course, I do.” The clerk stared stupidly at the display of money. He did not know what to make of it.

  The other girl signed the name of Doris Paine. Both she and Mary gav
e their address as Palm Springs.

  “Come quite a way,” the clerk noted, inspecting what they had written.

  “That’s right,” Doris said, seeming a bit annoyed. Obviously, she was not one for small talk. “Can we have the key to our room now?”

  The clerk apologized. He wasn’t thinking. “The key. Of course, the key.” He produced one, a cumbersome thing with a brass ornament attached, upon which was inscribed the name of the hotel. “Room 358. It looks right out on the courtyard. I’m sure you’ll be happy there.”

  “I’m sure we will,” said Mary, taking it from him.

  They turned from him and went to stand by the elevator.

  The clerk called to them, suggesting that they might want to consider taking the stairs. The elevator could not be counted on, and the two girls looked to be fit enough to conquer two flights without trouble.

  He kept his eyes on the stairs until their quick light footsteps no longer registered in his bad ears. Only then did the thought cross his mind that these two were prostitutes, that that was why they had so much money on them. But then he could not adjust the image he held of a prostitute (fading looks, a body gone to seed, an expression of indifference frozen on her face) and match it to these two lovely, seemingly uncorrupted, young women. And even if they were prostitutes, of the high-priced kind he had heard about and only rarely seen, why would they choose to do business in a hotel such as this where no potential john could be expected to have the kind of money that they would demand for their services?

  The clerk, rather than continue to trouble his mind about these mysterious ladies, returned his attention to the soap opera that he had been following for years; he knew the characters in it better than he knew anyone in real life. His absorption in this televized drama was such that he failed to notice when another arrival appeared in the lobby, a gentleman this time.

  He was certainly not one of the regulars but he proceeded directly to the stairs, and though he had never been to the Tocador before in his life, he nonetheless knew enough not to wait for the elevator to take him where he wanted to go.

  There was nothing special to distinguish him, to cause you to remember him later. He was dressed simply in a raincoat and carried an umbrella, which must have meant that he’d left his home early in the morning when rain still threatened. In his other hand he held a satchel of some kind, one that from the nicks and scars on its surface looked as though it had been used for several years.

  With the TV blaring so loudly, and with the clerk so deaf, this newcomer escaped attention altogether. He continued up the two flights of stairs to the third floor. It was now ten minutes before the hour of five.

  At the door to Room 358 the man halted. For several moments he contented himself with just staring at the door as if he expected it to open without his having to knock. His eyes darted from one end of the dimly lit corridor to the other. He finally gave a light tap on the door.

  It was Mary who answered. Her suede jacket removed, she sported a silk shirt, vermilion in color with ruffled sleeves of white damask. The shirt was tight enough to dramatize the contours of her small breasts where the man’s gaze first fell. He smiled, then raised his eyes to meet her own.

  “How are you?” she asked, returning his smile and stepping aside so that he could enter. “We didn’t expect you so soon.”

  The man shut the door behind him and carefully placed his umbrella and his satchel in the closet on his immediate right. “I started out as soon as I received your call.” He looked around the room which, like the rest of the hotel, had an air of genteel shabbiness. The curtains and the furniture and most certainly the floral-patterned wallpaper appeared to be bleached by the sun which in this late autumn afternoon still shone brightly through the window. “Where’s our mutual friend?” he asked.

  “In the bathroom. She’ll be right out. Say, Teddy, why did you want us to come here? This is such a weird, out-of-the-way place.”

  The man smiled again. “I like out-of-the-way places,” he said. “I like different things.” His eyes, concentrated on her body, were slightly bloodshot and inflamed.

  “I know,” Mary said, almost resignedly, “I know all about your different things.” Noticing that Teddy had yet to take off his raincoat she now urged him to do so. “That is unless you’re feeling in an especially modest mood this afternoon.”

  Not only did Teddy proceed to remove his raincoat but he also went about slipping off his shirt. But there was no haste in his disrobing, no, he was a meticulous, very neat man, compulsive. He made sure every article of clothing was put away in the closet.

  “You don’t waste any time,” said Doris emerging from the bathroom.

  “Aren’t you going to say hello?” Teddy asked, sitting naked on the double bed. He did nothing to conceal his erection, his legs spread wide. But the expression on his face, far from intimating at excitement, was simply indifferent.

  “Hello,” Doris spat the greeting out.

  “You don’t sound pleased. And it’s been such a long time, too.”

  Doris said nothing to this, but Mary felt compelled to defend her friend and said, “Don’t mind her. She’s had a hard day.”

  “Doris, come over here.”

  Doris complied, sashaying across the room to the bed.

  Teddy reached his hands up and slowly drew the gold chain from around her neck. Then he slipped his hands beneath the sensuous fabric of the magenta shirt, separating it where it had not been buttoned in order to more fully reveal her breasts.

  “Careful,” Doris said, “I don’t want you tearing it. I didn’t bring anything else.”

  “Aren’t I always?” Teddy was not looking at Doris; his eyes were fixed entirely on Mary who stood there, waiting her turn, neither expectant nor bored. She looked as interested in what he was doing to her friend as she might have been in a moderately amusing movie.

  The shirt altogether undone, Doris, with a simple shrug sloughed it off.

  “Magnificent!” pronounced Teddy, cradling her ample breasts with his hands. In doing this, he resembled someone testing heads of lettuce for their respective weight.

  Surrendering one breast, he slid his free hand down under the bloomers. “Already wet, that’s very nice,” he said.

  Although Doris was still determined to maintain a sullen, disinterested expression, her breathing had become more rapid.

  “Now I want you to come around in back of me,” he instructed Mary. “You know what to do.”

  And Mary did. She had done this, with Doris and with others like Doris, more times than she could count—or cared to.

  Almost as an afterthought she shed the leather skirt, dropping it in a heap to the floor, and kicked off her pumps, leaving herself bare below the waist. She then climbed up onto the bed and encircled Teddy with her arms. Then, so as to give her hands the necessary freedom to operate, she disengaged and began to knead the swell of his stomach with the skill of a professional masseuse, gradually working her way down to his groin, practically duplicating what Teddy was doing to Doris. This had the effect of further arousing Teddy; his eyes rolled up toward the ceiling, exposing a generous portion of the whites, his breathing was harsh and rasping, and from time to time he arched when Mary’s touch proved too exquisite, too liable to bring him to climax. Doris remained where she was, the bloomers drawn halfway down her thighs, her pubis hidden from Mary’s view by Teddy’s head. A loud sucking noise, the sound of air popping from the vaginal cavity, was accompanied by a deep moan that Doris released involuntarily. Her head seemed to sway and lurch against her chest as though she were incapable of keeping it upright. Her face was lost in a tangle of hair.

  Mary drew both her legs around Teddy’s waist, clasping him stalwartly, so much so that she succeeded in unbalancing him and pulling him down to the bed. Teddy didn’t seem to mind about this, and brought Doris down to join them.

  And so as the sun dipped beneath the horizon, unleashing a brilliant spattering of color across the wes
t, the two lovely ladies and their male friend expertly passed the time.

  And when, for all his vigor and an energy that was astonishing in a man who was probably past fifty years of age, Teddy had to call it quits, it was not at the expense of Doris or Mary. Spent, Teddy indicated that he wouldn’t mind watching them entertain each other for a while. This was unlike Teddy, who had in the past resisted any sport that he could not take part in.

  But Teddy was the boss, the man with the money, and the two young women were certainly willing to provide him with another several minutes of amusement. They were accomplices in a sense, one could play the other’s body with virtuoso technique. Teddy could draw only so much pleasure from them because, for all his experience with them, he hadn’t quite mastered them.

  Doris assumed the more active role, maneuvering her smooth, sweat-slickened pale body over Mary’s finely tanned one. Mary lowered her lips to between Doris’ legs, teasing her friend with a tongue that seemed in emerging to have no end. Doris allowed her eyes to close, mingling the ecstatic violence of sensation with fantasies in her dazzled mind.

  Teddy, watching this spectacle, seemed alternately amused and mystified as though he couldn’t quite fathom how he had been left out, forgotten completely. When he rose from the bed neither of the two women noticed his movement. Nor did they react at all when he slid open the closet and stooped down to open the satchel he’d brought with him. Nor did they pay any attention as he rummaged about inside this satchel, finally extracting from it exactly what he wanted.

  Whether they were both groaning now because of the dizzying heights they had managed to bring each other to or because they were still approaching those heights and needed a bit more stimulation before they actually got there Teddy did not know, did not care.

  Instead, simply because it was more convenient since she was now the one on top, Teddy raised the blade, razor-sharp and almost scimitar-like in length, and with one deft motion, brought it directly down on the back of Mary’s exposed neck, grateful that her hair was cut short enough to provide him with such a clear target.