Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks (16 page)

Once again Harry was confirmed in his judgment that someone—and someone very high up in the administration—was directing things on behalf of Braxton, deliberately delaying police reinforcements and sabotaging all efforts to settle the wildcat walkout peacefully. And Harry knew also that should he discover who it was he would be in far deeper trouble than he was now.

But at this juncture he could scarcely be bothered thinking about any of that. His wounds needed tending to and he had to go home and get a good long sleep. Not as long as Sleeping Beauty’s, but long.

C H A P T E R
F o u r t e e n

T
here was no way for Harry to sleep. Despite the care that the doctor had lavished on him, stitching back the torn skin and the underlying strata of muscles, the pain could be awakened at any time just by applying the smallest bit of pressure to the bandaged wounds. On his back or on his side, these injuries reasserted themselves. Even when at last he could contort himself into a position that did not hurt him, he would usually make the mistake of rolling over in his sleep and sleep would end right there; he’d regain consciousness with a groan and a hatred of the antagonists who’d given him this pain that went beyond what animosity he’d felt when he was actually trying to subdue them.

So it was that at quarter past three in the morning, five days after the incident at Deringer’s, Harry was still awake, having resigned himself to another sleepless night. The doctor had given him a prescription to alleviate the pain, but Harry chose not to take it. He was not sure himself why not but thus far he’d made it on coffee and a few medicinal shots of whiskey and that was quite sufficient.

At three in the morning when the phone rings it’s either a wrong number or bad news. Very seldom is it anything else. Which was why Harry stared long and hard at the phone before he answered it.

“Callahan.”

“Harry Callahan?”

He recognized the woman’s voice. The same informant who’d phoned him the last time about the plans Lesko and Passaretti had to kill him. She was a woman with a lot of credibility, whoever she was.

“That’s right. Who is this?” He knew she wouldn’t tell him but figured he’d try anyway.

“There’s no need for you to know that. Look, I can’t talk long. You know where they’ve taken Braxton to?”

“I’ve heard.”

“Then you’ll want to know that at two-fifteen tomorrow morning he’ll be sprung.” She waited for a reaction. “You hear me?”

“Yes, I did.”

“That gives you less than twenty-four hours. You’ll have to act pretty damn quick.” With that she hung up.

This information tended not to surprise Harry. He didn’t doubt what this unidentified woman said for one minute. Whoever it was watching over Braxton had obviously concluded that he might actually end up losing his case and be convicted. Better then to engineer his escape. What mystified Harry was what this woman’s involvement with Braxton’s organization was and why she was so anxious to screw him.

What Harry should have done, what he was fully expected to do, was to inform Bressler of what he’d learned and let him deal with it. But Harry was never one for going through proper channels in any case; and in this instance, it was too risky. Bressler might forward the information all right but somewhere along the line it would get stonewalled. Even to go directly to the prison authorities would be a mistake; Harry assumed that someone in the chief warden’s office would probably have been compromised, too.

Since these alternatives were pretty much foreclosed to him, he realized he would have to once again work on his own. In fact, he wasn’t even supposed to report back to duty until the following Monday; he’d been given time off to recuperate adequately from the wounds he’d sustained at Deringer’s.

Well, it wouldn’t be the first time he put himself on the line with no expectation of assistance from his own department.

It was one of those cold drizzly San Francisco nights that look lovely and romantic when they’re put on film but in actuality, leave something to be desired. The dampness in the air was insidious; fifteen minutes of being exposed to it and you were chilled to the marrow.

The way this particular minimum-security institution was designed reflected the ease with which someone could escape from it. For one thing, the northern extension of it ran parallel to part of Golden Gate Park; it wouldn’t be difficult for someone to lose himself in the brambles of a thickly wooded area there. It seemed the most likely site for a prospective escape Harry had concluded after having made a surreptitious surveillance that afternoon. However, it now appeared to him that the escape was to occur on the opposite side, adjoining the street.

The gray-blue limousine that was parked immediately below the prison wall, with its motor running and its headlights doused, provided Harry with all the evidence he needed. It was scarcely past two and the fine drizzle that had been coming down ever since nightfall had begun to turn into a fog that all but obscured the low-lying wall over which Harry expected Braxton to come.

Across the street Harry remained in his car, alternately fixing his eyes on the limo and on the wall. As far as he could tell, the fog and the darkness together shielded him from view.

But as it drew close to fifteen minutes past the hour Harry slipped out of the car and quietly made his way down the street, approaching nearer to the prison. He still was scrupulous about keeping silent: just another shadow loose in the damp.

Two minutes to go—if what the woman had told him was correct. Two minutes and yet there was no sign of any activity along the walls. From time to time a searchlight slashed the fog but it illuminated next to nothing. This being a minimum-security institution, there wasn’t an abundance of guards to begin with and in this particular quadrant there were, as far as Harry could see, none at all.

Braxton was late—by five minutes—but he came. Harry was not disappointed. At first he could hardly be sure there was anyone moving along the wall, so dense was the fog. But little by little a figure, diminutive-looking from such a distance, emerged from the murk. A rope was flung down and it reached to about two feet above the ground. The wall itself must not have been any higher than fifteen feet.

Although he’d gotten on in years and was not in the best of shape, Braxton still displayed an enviable dexterity as he negotiated his way down the rope. He wasn’t slow by any means and he betrayed no sense of panic; apparently he was certain that no one would interfere with his progress.

Harry waited until Braxton had his feet on the ground before he advanced toward him, gun in hand. As hard as he was concentrating on Braxton he kept one eye on the Lincoln which now was pulling up in their direction. The Lincoln’s headlights suddenly went on, throwing the two of them into relief. Braxton blinked, for the first time sighting Harry. He blinked again, caught between bolting for the vehicle that was about to carry him away and remaining absolutely still lest Harry blow him into another and not necessarily better world.

“Mr. Braxton, I suggest you hold up right there.”

In desperation Braxton gazed toward the limousine; between the fog and the intense glare from the headlights it was impossible to make out just who the occupants of the vehicle were.

No sooner had Harry gotten the words out of his mouth than he became aware of a car coming up in back of him. The roar that its motor produced was monstrously loud, its tires screamed against the pavement.

Automatically, Harry turned just in time to see the front of an Impala, gleaming chrome, materializing from out of the thickening fog. Having shot around the corner, it was now bearing right down on Harry, leaving him only seconds in which to act before being pinned to the prison wall and quite possibly crushed into that very wall.

He leapt to the left and as far as he could to avoid the Impala but in doing so he stumbled, half-falling. The Impala at the last moment skillfully maneuvered itself off the sidewalk and back out onto the street again. Harry, still in an awkward position, let loose three rounds at the departing car but he was deprived of the satisfaction of seeing any of them do damage.

Of course, Braxton was nowhere to be seen. While Harry was busy saving his ass, Braxton’s friends had snatched him away. It was hardly much of a surprise.

C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n

B
raxton had arranged his escape too late for it to make the early editions of the papers but the wire services and radio news commentators were not subject to the constraints of such deadlines. Outrage was the one word that described reaction the best. Authorities, all sorts of authorities—the mayor (through his press secretary), the police commissioner, the correctional system’s administrator, the chief warden of the prison itself—all vowed to undertake prompt investigations into the escape of Matt Braxton. Naturally, no one admitted guilt or complicity but rather expressed astonishment that such a thing could have happened. Opinion was divided among the public—at least that part of the public which was randomly sampled by reporters; half of them believed that Braxton’s escape proved that he must have been guilty, the other half thought that he had no other choice but to escape since he was bound to be framed and convicted.

In situations like this Harry knew what happened was that a scapegoat—probably some poor sucker who worked as a guard—would be quickly found, tried, and punished, just so that the whole affair could be gotten off the front pages and expunged from the public’s memory which was scarcely a problem, the public’s memory being notoriously short. And Braxton would still be at large, living not like a fugitive afraid of every shadow but rather as an exiled potentate who’d not neglected to take the national treasury with him when he fled his native land.

Only one benefit seemed to have resulted from the escape, if the news commentators were to be believed (and they weren’t, Harry was convinced) and that was that the picket lines were beginning to come down on the docks and the men, who’d gone off the job illegally, were returning to work. What no one seemed to realize was that this was the price exacted for abetting Braxton’s bid for freedom. It was to Harry an obvious
quid pro quo;
you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

It wasn’t the lingering pain from his wounds nor the depleted condition of his body from getting too little sleep but rather an overwhelming sense of futility that wearied Harry. You work your ass off, you struggle mightily to do your job, only to have someone snatch the rug right out from under you. He felt at that moment that he would have done better to be giving out speeding tickets. At least he would have half a chance of actually apprehending an offender without someone interferring all the time.

Toward evening he decided that he would take a therapeutic walk and set out from his apartment building in no particular direction.

It wasn’t long, however, before he realized that he was being followed. There was a car—a cream-colored Seville—tailing him half a block behind and on the other side of the street. It crept along for a while, then stopped. Harry kept going but he maintained a leisurely pace, interested to see who it was. He doubted that it was a professional. No professional would be so clumsy and obvious in his surveillance.

Harry turned a corner and, pressing himself into a doorway out of sight, waited for the tail to catch up.

It sure wasn’t what he’d expected. A tall, leggy woman who’d probably long ago forgotten what color her hair used to be. She had come to a halt, astonished and a bit irritated to discover that her quarry had vanished. She put a finger under her lip as a sign of puzzlement and turned in place, looking every which way for Harry. Because she did not expect to see Harry concealed in the shadows of the doorway, she failed to find him.

Instead, Harry made himself known to her, coming up right in back of her and taking her by surprise. She let out a stifled scream and pressed her hand to her heart. “Oh,” she said, “you frightened me!”

The voice; Harry identified it immediately. It was the voice of the woman who’d called him twice before.

“You were looking for me?”

“Well, no, actually . . . Why should I be looking for you?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know. These days a lot of people look for me, it’s contagious.” He started to walk away from her.

“Wait a minute. I’m sorry, yes, I was looking for you. I don’t know why I said that just now.”

Harry turned to look at her. Not bad looking, he considered, but she had an unhealthy neurotic energy to her which was obvious simply by the hunger in her eyes and the excessiveness of her gestures; it was not enough for her to exhibit her emotions on her face, her whole body was marshaled to dramatize them.

“You have a name?”

“Well, yes . . .” Even at this late date she was reluctant to divulge it. “Andrea Foley.”

“Now tell me what your real name is.”

Because she’d been helpful to him twice before Harry resisted the impulse to express his impatience. He had the feeling that he was going to have to coax even the most trivial bit of information from her now that she had finally decided to appear in person.

“Darlene Farley,” she said. It was as though she were apologizing. “I don’t know where I got Andrea Foley from. It just came to me on the spur of the moment.” She kept her eyes away from Harry; clearly she was embarrassed.

“I expect you might have something to say to me.”

“I guess I do.”

“All right then. There’s a place we can talk in privacy.”

If Darlene Farley had anticipated an intimate atmosphere for their conversation she was sure to be disappointed. A place called Kwik-Lunch was hardly the setting for an exchange of confidences. On the other hand, Harry was comfortable in this pedestrian hamburger establishment and never had to worry about being disrupted at his meals, such as they were.

“The usual, Mr. Callahan?” Jaffee, the proprietor, called from behind the counter. As soon as Harry signaled that he was in no mood to try anything new, he was already throwing a meat patty on the grill. “And for you, Miss?”