Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death (10 page)

Harry only regretted that it wasn’t a cleaner death. He got no satisfaction out of presenting the film class with a man puking out his own brains, but he couldn’t afford to deal with any “freeze” or “hold it” lines. When a team of big guys come running into a college class with assault rifles, no one could count on them giving up even when they were caught dead to rights. Whether they were terrorists intent on holding the class hostage or assassins intent on turning Callahan into Wheatena, it wasn’t exactly the M.O. of rational pros.

Harry was taking off his dark suit jacket to cover the gore when the vacuous-looking student appeared in the doorway, staring at the gruesome corpse with wide eyes.

“Hey, neat,” the student said.

Harry dropped his jacket over the body anyway. He brushed by the vacuous-looking kid to collect Devlin. He was just in time for the end of
Deep Red.
It turns out that the mother of the boy everyone suspected was the real murderer, and she gets hers, while trying to open David Hemmings up with a meat cleaver, by catching her large pendant in the door of a rising elevator. The chain tightens around her neck, and her head gets ripped off. The end credits roll over a deep, red pool of blood on the elevator floor.

Harry had to hand it to the independent producers. They always made it with the happy endings.

C H A P T E R
F o u r

I
f the case had gone to a higher court, somehow the defense attorney would have made it all Rose Ray’s fault. It was the bright red wrap dress, he might proclaim, setting her out like a beacon in the dim Fillmore streets. It was the dark blue T-strap shoes with the beige high heels, he might add, marking her as a haughty bitch who had nothing better to do than entice and excite every person she came into contact with.

Then the defense would blame her for not drinking Drano and grinding a broken bottle on her face to lessen her attractiveness. Why, by not wearing a burlap bag and bathing regularly in hydrochloric acid, she was just asking for trouble. And Rose Ray got it.

If the truth be known, her natural beauty was not the deciding factor in her fate, although it helped mightily. If Harry Callahan thought the five-foot-two-inch black girl on the steps of the Uhuru cellar was good looking in jeans and a shirt, he should’ve seen her in the dress and heels. Her mound of loosely curled black hair surrounded her well-shaped face like a glow. Her facial beauty was further heightened by the rouge on her cheeks and lips. She handled the highlighting gracefully, giving the impression that she wore no makeup at all.

The thing that really did her in was her location and family background. Her only real family was Uhuru, and she was heading back there after a date. She was heading back on an empty street that was supposedly dangerous only for white people. Rose Ray was about to find out differently.

Naturally, it had to happen fast. Rose walked past the mouth of an alleyway. She was walking the way she had always been told; right down the middle of the sidewalk—never too close to either the buildings or the street. In this case, her teachings didn’t help her at all.

Two men took one long step out of the dark mouth of the alley and they had her. Rose had occasionally fantasized about this happening. It was hard to live in the area of town that she did and not think about it. But when she daydreamed she had always figured that if they didn’t kill her instantaneously she could fight and make enough noise to get away. Only she was fantasizing about maddened rapists. The men who took her were professional.

The first one slapped his hands on the top of her head and under her chin. He pushed while the other man stretched a dark, wet band of something across the lower half of her face, just below her nose. The thing was put on her mouth like a big Band-Aid. The man peeled something off both sides as it adhered to her skin. She was caught by surprise. Her body bent backward, and she nearly fell. By the time she found her footing again, both pairs of hands were off her, her mouth was tightly closed, and she felt the moisture around her lips dry and harden.

She was still somewhat off balance when her hands started to move toward her face. Halfway there, the four hands of her assailants smacked into her back and propelled her toward the side of a van parked at the curb. Her hands went out in front of her to serve as protection against the metal vehicle, but just before she seemed to hit the side, it slid away, and she fell into two more pairs of waiting hands. They wrapped around her, torso and pulled her all the way in as the two original assailants hopped in the back, pulling the door closed after them.

Rose was dropped on her back, her head nearest the rear of the van, her feet pointing toward the front windshield. She couldn’t see the dashboard because a curtain separated the cab from the back. Hands were firmly holding her elbows and knees to the carpeted floor. Her mind told her mouth to open and shout but her lips wouldn’t respond. Her brain demanded her mouth to open, but when the muscles attempted to react she felt sharp, needling pain. It was the pain of trying to pull your tongue off dry ice. Her lips were sealed together as if she had kissed cement.

She began to hum in panic. The hands on her arms remained sure, but she managed to pull one of her legs out from under the grip. She kicked out at the van walls, only to feel her toe hit something soft. It made the sound of a penny hitting a bed. Her only accomplishment was to expose her handsome leg from the skirt of her wraparound dress. Her attackers hardly seemed interested. While one hand retrieved her loose leg, another hand began massaging the side of her neck.

“Don’t fight it,” she heard a gentle male voice admonish. “We won’t hurt you. Just relax and take it easy. There’s nothing to worry about. Just keep still and you won’t come to any harm.”

The words sent a chill up her spine. She couldn’t just he there, she had to fight. But try as she might, her limbs wouldn’t respond. She felt her eyes rapidly blinking and the warmth of the hand on her neck. She wanted to see the faces of the people holding her down, but her eyesight was getting fuzzy. She groaned in despair as she felt herself drifting down to a dark, soft cloud.

“There, there,” she heard the male voice from far, far away. “That’s better, isn’t it? Isn’t that nice?”

Rose Ray didn’t lose consciousness. She floated in a tender, silky world inside her head. She felt too weak to do anything but feel. The activity around her body in the van, meanwhile, had picked up speed.

One of the men who had pushed her in jumped on the driver’s seat and propelled the vehicle to an alley three blocks away. On the way there, the van passed the Uhuru house. They had to make their careful way around several news trucks and a small bunch of reporters, but since the van only had two curtained windows in the back besides the cab’s glass, no one was the wiser. And the driver couldn’t resist throwing a sarcastic wave at the front porch.

The alley was big enough to hold the van and the large Cadillac which had pulled alongside. Four black men sat silently in the parked Caddy. Inside the van they were taking off Rose Ray’s clothes. The quartet of kidnappers in the back moved her around like a flaccid Barbie Doll. Occasionally her eyelids would open, but her dark eyes saw nothing. Occasionally she would moan behind the thin seal over her mouth, but the sound was no greater than a sigh.

The red wrap skirt came off to reveal a dark blue spandex bra and panties. A knife suddenly appeared in a man’s hand. He sliced open the bra between her breasts and over both shoulders. The garment fell away.

“Good,” said a feminine voice. “Size 34 and sturdy.”

While two men sat Rose up and held her arms above her head, the other two men pulled off her shoes and quickly measured her waist and inseam. Incongruously, one man then measured her shoe size. And while they toiled, a woman was meticulously wrapping tape tightly around the black girl’s chest.

The men working below her waist moved over to a small box against the van wall. Out of it they pulled a dark, man’s shirt, a cap, a pair of sneakers, and some straight-leg jeans. They laid the jeans out on the floor next to Rose. One man used a needle to punch a small hole behind the knee of the right denim leg, then punched a hole above the knee of the left pant leg. The other man picked at a special flap of cloth just under the jean’s waistband to reveal a zipper alongside both pockets. He then unzipped both pockets so they opened like doors on either side of the pants.

By then the woman had finished taping down Rose’s breasts. The tape had pressed them out against her chest, not flattening her, but greatly diminishing her femininity. As the woman cut away the last piece of sticky stuff, a man strapped a pad across her stomach, evening out the torso girth somewhat. The dark shirt was passed over and put on the woozy girl. When it had been buttoned down the front, she looked several inches wider—almost mannish.

She was laid back down, stomach up, as the men nearest her feet pulled out a roll of thick, rubber-coated wire. They tied a loop around both her wrists, then tied those to both her thighs. The woman then taped the rest of her hands flat against the side of her thighs. The men tied a double loop of wire just above her right knee, letting a double strand hang down off it.

Then the jeans were pulled on. When they got to her knees, a man pushed the two hanging ends of the wire through the hole in the pant leg. He then pushed it through the other hole in the top of the other leg. Before the jeans were pulled up any higher, he tied the long double strand tightly around Rose’s left leg, just above her left knee. He pulled it tight so one leg was above the other. Finally he pulled the jeans all the way up. The pockets zipped back over her bound hands so none of the wire or tape showed. They tucked the shirttail in and sat Rose up again.

The woman went to work on her hair while one man held her head still and another man took out a makeup kit and approached her face. The woman pinned the loose curls back while the man smeared her face with a uniform base color. He was careful to blend the edges of the dark tape in with the rest of her skin. Then, taking out a delicate brush and some pots of color, he began drawing over the seal on her mouth.

Rose Ray awoke completely in the back seat of the Cadillac. She turned her head to the left. A black man smiled at her. She looked forward, her vision clearing. Two more black men in the front seat were turning around and smiling. She looked down at someone else’s body. An unobtrusive seat belt held a man’s waist firmly against the plush seat. The man’s knees were folded over each other. As much as she tried, Rose couldn’t get these alien legs to uncross.

The Caddy was a mediumly expensive one so there wasn’t much leg room. It kept her from kicking out with the bottom of these strange legs. On her feet were high-rise sneakers. Her hands were in the pant pockets. She couldn’t pull them out. She couldn’t even wiggle her fingers. She looked to the right. A tall woman with streaked brown hair and loop earrings stared back at her and smiled.

“I see you’re ready to go,” the woman said. “We just couldn’t drive off with you lying against one of your friends here. That would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.”

Rose tried to reply, but no sound came out and the stabbing, rending pain came back.

“No, no, dear,” the woman cautioned. “Be quiet. Your lips are sealed by a plaster-chloroform mixture. Just enough chloroform to keep you weak but not enough to affect those near you. And more than enough plaster to serve. Only we have another mixture to get it off your face. If you tried, all your skin would be ripped off with it.”

The woman placed her hands on Rose’s arm and shoulder and moved her against the man to her left. “So just sit up straight, dear. It would be too dangerous to move you to your destination all bound up in the back of a van. It would look too suspicious when Mohamid finds you missing. We’re going to get you out of the district right before their eyes. And they won’t even see you.”

To prove her point, the woman reached into her large pocketbook and pulled out a mirror. She held it before Rose. Someone else’s face stared back. Her hair had been pushed under a cap and the back had been cut off to a boyish style. Her skin was a darker color. And worst of all, there were a pair of dark, male lips painted exactly where her full, rosy lips should be. To anyone looking in the car there would be just three black guys in the back seat, one with his hands nonchalantly in his pockets.

Rose’s face crumbled and tears welled up in her eyes as she looked in supplication at the woman.

“Ah, now for the final touch,” the woman remarked as she put the mirror back in her purse. When her hand came out, it was holding two cotton balls. “Close your eyes,” she instructed. Rose pulled herself back, her eyes widening with fear. “Close your eyes,” the woman said again, quieter. Rose felt a male hand on the back of her head. She closed her eyes.

The woman placed one specially treated cotton ball each over her eyes. They stuck her lids closed and also absorbed any moisture that leaked out. The woman then pulled a large set of sunglasses out of her bag. With a flourish, she placed them over Rose’s eyes.

“We’re all set then,” she concluded, stepped out of the Caddy and waved a black man holding the door for her in. “Have a nice ride,” she breathed to Rose. The frightened black girl felt the two men on either side of her press in. One put his arm around her shoulders.

“Act naturally,” he warned. “A sudden move and you’ll never see how you died.”

Rose sobbed silently, drily, as the car drove out of the alley and into the night.

It was Saturday afternoon and ABC-TV was waving a tit in Harry Callahan’s face. The cop was recuperating from yesterday’s classroom attack by re-creating the dream of every red-blooded American male. That is, he was sitting around in his apartment, wearing an undershirt, drinking beer, and watching a football game. The only thing marring this classically macho tableau was that Harry was fifteen minutes early. The pre-game show was not set to commence until 1:30. So Harry was stuck with the last quarter of
American Bandstand.