Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (15 page)

For a moment it didn’t appear that the man had understood. Glassy-eyed, he regarded Harry with baffled scrutiny. Then he blinked. Leaning over the bar he grasped hold of the morning paper and thrust it in Harry’s face, so close he could scarcely be expected to read it. But he knew what it said. The Grand Jury had handed up a five-count indictment against Matt Braxton on charges of murder, assault, and conspiracy to commit murder. The trial, the story said, was likely to start soon given the enormous publicity surrounding the case. Defense attorneys were already saying that they would apply for change in venue, averring that their client could not hope to receive a fair trial in his home city. Actually, this promised to be only the first of at least two trials; he’d only been indicted for the slaying of Clay Meltzer and the attempts on Harry’s life. He would then face charges in connection with the Tuber killings and have to go up on trial in Palo Alto.

But all these technical details did not interest the man speaking to Harry. The only thing that mattered to him was that his leader had been placed unceremoniously in the slammer and there was little likelihood that he’d be released soon.

“Fucking Bull,” he was saying, no longer concerned what Harry did or did not do for a living. “He’s telling us to go back to work. We’ll fucking go back to work all right if they release Matt. If they don’t, they better forget about it. We’re shutting down the fucking docks. You tell your fucking shipping people they can get that through their fucking heads. You got that?”

Harry said he’d gotten it.

The man, however, didn’t seem convinced he’d adequately made his point. “You think you’ve seen trouble, you’ve seen nothing. You step over to Deringer’s, well now I don’t have to tell you, Mr. Investigator.” He was turning coy. “You being what you say you are you should know these things.”

What Harry knew was that Deringer’s was a saloon favored by the union dissidents. Already there’d been some heated brawls there. But what he didn’t know was what was planned—and when.

So Harry pretended not to be interested. “Nothing,” he countered, “is going to happen over there. I’ve been there. Boring place you ask me.”

“Oh you think so do you, Mr. Investigator? Tomorrow afternoon you be over there you see some fucking action.”

The longshoreman was drunk and boastful and Harry didn’t exactly invest him with much credibility. But the next afternoon he was there at Deringer’s just in case. Deringer’s didn’t really look very different than the bar habituated by Braxton’s men; it was equally dark, and the air was stale and thick with the smell of booze that had spilled and had never been cleaned, and with the rancid stench of too many cigarettes lit up at once. The jukebox was filled with Irish music hall numbers, polkas, some C&W, none of it particularly to Harry’s taste.

No one looked like they expected any trouble; either that or they’d grown so accustomed to it that they didn’t bother making any special to-do over it. Every so often from down the other end of the bar you could hear a group of men arguing about the wildcat strike and the ultimate fate of Braxton and his disloyal successor, John Bull Ryan.

“Don’t tell me he ain’t got no influence down at City Hall,” one was shouting, making himself heard over the din. “Hey, you read what it said in the papers today? Braxton’s been transferred . . .”

Harry listened more intently; he had no idea what the man was referring to.

“What do you mean transferred?” another asked.

“He means just that. Read it myself.” A third man was speaking now. “Braxton’s been taken to a minimum security joint. Like those bastards from Watergate. Mitchell and Erlich-whatever his name was. Braxton’s like them, he’s got influence. TV all day long. Steak and lobster if he wants it. Living in clover. You and me did what he fuckin’ did we’d be doing twenty-to-life in Soledad.”

“That’s the fuckin’ truth,” rejoindered the first one. “You watch, the guy’ll be out on the streets again a couple of months, back in the fuckin’ saddle. See what Bull does when that happens.”

Harry was already at the pay phone, dialing the station.

He got Judson on the line. “What’s this I hear about Braxton being transferred to minimum security?”

“I just heard about it like you, Harry. I swear no one told me a thing. In fact, no one here knew about it. We got the news from the radio.”

“Who approved the transfer?”

“Beats me. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Harry would have talked further, but just then he noticed the appearance of three new men in the bar. They did not look like they belonged; one was distinguishable by the loss of more than half his nose; the other two didn’t need any deformities to look menacing. All three were carrying beat-up canvas bags slung over their shoulders.

“Be with you later,” Harry told Judson. “Have to get off now.”

The three men took up position at the forward end of the bar; each ordered an ale. While they tried to be inconspicuous there was no way that this was going to be possible; furtively, they kept scanning the bar.

Harry had an idea that this trio could be counted on for an awful lot of trouble in the next few minutes or so. He was just about to fish another dime from his pocket and call the station again, this time to request backup, when four or five men crashed through the front door, swinging clubs and bailing hooks. The three at the bar, right on cue, extracted their bailing hooks from the bags they were carrying and joined the fray.

With three men, Harry would have had hope of quelling the disturbance on his own. But with seven there was little likelihood of that—not when the antagonists and their victims were locked in such close combat; you fire on one you risked hitting the other.

The uproar was tremendous. Customers were collapsing with heads split open by pipes, the blood pouring in rivulets down their faces. One bulky longshoreman in a checkered flannel shirt was staggering towards the exit with a hook stuck half an inch or so into his back; he kept grasping for it, trying to get it out but for some reason he couldn’t seem to locate it.

Harry turned back to the phone. No question he was going to need assistance; this was like a full scale riot, only in strictly confined circumstances. But no sooner had he reached for the phone than the man with less than half a nose severed the cord connecting the receiver with his deftly wielded hook.

The assailant swept the hook up again, preparatory to doing to Harry what he’d done to the cord. With no time to get out his weapon, Harry ducked his head and rammed it directly into Half-nose’s abdomen, sending him reeling back a couple of feet. And a couple of feet was all he could go since the place was so packed. But he still had a steady grip on the hook and there was no question he’d had years of experience using it, though not always on other human beings. He lunged again, driving the sharp end of the instrument toward Harry’s left side. Shifting to the right and taking a step backward, Harry managed to avoid the worst of the blow. Still the hook did connect, tearing through the bottom part of his jacket and then through his shirt and into his skin. The wound wasn’t serious but it produced a good deal of blood which seemed to renew Half-nose’s enthusiasm. With a sort of banshee wail, he went in for the attack again, ready to drive the hook home straight into Harry’s chest.

Harry caught hold of his arm before he could complete the motion necessary to sink the hook into him while at the same time delivering a ruthless punch into his solar plexus, just about knocking the wind wholly out of him. The impact of Harry’s blow had the effect of causing Half-nose to weaken his grip on the hook though he still struggled to retain hold of it.

As Harry sought to close him out with another strong punch, Half-nose’s friend—the one with a yellow Adidas T-shirt—had slipped up behind him with his bailing hook. The rounded end of the hook was stained with blood nearly up to the handle.

Adidas, a savage look to his face, brought the hook back so that it would have the full force of his weight when it struck Harry. But there was so little room to execute the maneuver that this proved impossible. Two men were battling it out right in back of him—one with fists, the other with a rattling chain that he kept slamming against his enemy’s ribs—and so Adidas was propelled up almost directly against Harry.

Harry, sensing his presence, shifted, but because he was still concentrating on Half-nose, he could not take sufficient precautions to avoid Adidas’ assault altogether. The sudden sting in the back of his shoulder jolted him. He turned so suddenly that Adidas had not yet had a chance to extract the hook. Half-nose meanwhile was still doubled up and retching from the blows Harry had inflicted on him.

Ignoring the weapon that protruded awkwardly from his back, releasing a thin line of blood that would have been greater had the hook not been staunching the wound, Harry confronted Adidas. And because Adidas now lacked any weapon aside from his hands, Harry had the advantage.

But it was an advantage that was quickly fading. Like the earlier injury between his ribs, the wound the hook had produced directly under the shoulder blade was not very serious, but still it had the effect of numbing an ever widening area, making it more and more difficult for him to use his right arm. No matter, his left was good enough for the task at hand. He gained hold of his .44 and was on the verge of removing it when Adidas saw his chance and went in at Harry, hoping to take him off guard. Despite his wounds, Harry was more nimble than he’d suspected and with his right leg delivered a lethal straight kick that threw Adidas back, sending him sprawling right into the two combatants struggling to the rear of him. He surprised one of his allies who ended up inadvertently slashing him in the face with the chain. First an ugly elongated gash appeared running across his face at an angle—from his brow to nearly his jaw—and then it opened, erupting with so much blood that it obscured the left side of his face. He was stunned all right, but still functional.

Half-nose, however, had managed to gain a vertical posture and was beginning to renew his assault on Harry. The assault got nowhere. Harry, tiring from the wounds, was in no mood to continue struggling with him. In a gesture that Half-nose somehow missed in all the confusion, Harry brought the barrel of the .44 hard down on his head, knocking him out cold. With this motion, the hook slipped out of his back.

Turning his attention now to the conflicts raging in other parts of the bar, Harry realized that Braxton’s shock troops, having the advantage of surprise and being more heavily armed, were getting the best of it.

He had no time to reflect on the situation. One man who’d dropped out of the fight early—clubbed into submission by the bartender who could clobber someone with a bottle of B&B as well as he could pour it—began to show signs of life again. Shaking himself free from his daze, he needed a moment to orient himself. That done, he raised himself to full height—and full height came near to seven feet—and searched for some object suitable enough to reduce a man to a protracted state of unconsciousness. Almost obliviously, he began picking out glass splinters from the B&B bottle that were strewn about his hair. At last his reddened eyes hit upon a harpoon that was suspended above the tarnished mirror behind the bar. The harpoon probably went back to the eighteenth century during the heyday of the whaling industry. Not that Sleeping Beauty cared about its venerable history. He just wanted to participate in the fight before it ended, regretting that he’d been senseless throughout most of it. So, groaning with effort, he extended his arms up over the bar and seized hold of the harpoon. Tugging at it with his powerful arms, he succeeded in getting it down.

Delighted with this accomplishment, Sleeping Beauty turned and rushed Harry—Harry being the most available target at the time—the rusted point of the weapon aimed directly at his chest. Harry failed to observe him, for he was too preoccupied with Adidas. Bloody and hurt as he was, Adidas seemed intent on inflicting further injury on Harry. Somehow he’d come up with a new weapon, a tire chain this time, and he was lashing it through the air, creating an unimpeded path for him in Harry’s direction. He appeared not to notice the .44 in Harry’s hand, an unforgivable oversight.

Harry allowed Adidas to approach him, ducking to avoid the chain, then fired one round into Adidas’ kneecap. The kneecap exploded and Adidas was pivoted right around and fell, screaming to the ground. At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw not Sleeping Beauty but the tip of the hundred-year-old harpoon. He had no idea what it was, he couldn’t get a clear glimpse of it, but he had the foresight to jump clear of it, simultaneously going into a crouch and letting off two additional rounds, both of which took Sleeping Beauty, once in his upper chest, above his heart, the other in the neck which entered at such a decided angle that it continued to travel up through his throat and into his brain where it must have stopped somewhere because certainly it didn’t emerge. Sleeping Beauty’s eyes clouded and almost immediately began filling up with blood hemorrhaging inside the occipital lobe. He was not alive and yet he continued to remain upright for another few seconds before collapsing in a heap, his hand still clutching the ornamental harpoon. Sleeping Beauty was going to be sleeping forever.

Whether it was his death, and the sudden realization that the battle had escalated beyond the use of bottles, clubs, hooks, and chains, or whether there was some prearranged signal given, Harry could not be certain. In any case, all at once, the bloodied but more or less victorious remnants of Braxton’s troops disengaged themselves and made for the exit.

A few men, who still had their skulls and bodies intact, pursued them outside but there was little point in it. A delivery truck was waiting directly in front of Deringer’s and the escaping dock workers simply piled into it. Before anyone had a chance to stop them, the truck had pulled away from the curb and was heading fast toward Jefferson.

Only then did Harry hear, but still way in the distance, the familiar whine of police sirens. It seemed reasonable to have expected them before this. Even though Harry himself had not had the opportunity to call for backup surely the commotion in the bar was loud enough to have alerted anyone in the vicinity to the fact that something more than a common tavern brawl was in progress inside.