Dirty Harry 12 - The Dealer of Death (14 page)

Hennessy, a short stubby man with granite for muscles and the dead yellowed eyes of someone who’d spent too long in the bush, settled for a Sterling Mark 5, a British 9mm gun designed so virtually all sound is eliminated. Hennessy was accustomed to moving and killing in silence.

They risked unveiling their weapons only when they’d gotten to the third floor of the building, and were positioned right outside Harry’s door.

Hennessy was skillful when it came to sabotaging locks, and just as quiet as when he blew open a man’s skull.

To their mutual disappointment, however, there was no Harry. He wasn’t hiding—his apartment contained few places in which to hide in any case—he simply wasn’t there, and it was getting on toward two in the morning. As they’d been briefed by Turner in advance, they knew that Harry was on suspension so that meant he could not be working at such a late hour. And he couldn’t be with his girlfriend, according to Turner, because she’d broken up with him and moved in with her father up in that place above Paradise Road. The only conclusion they could draw, based on what they knew of Harry’s life, was he was out somewhere getting drunk with his friends. The way things were going for him, he’d probably want to get drunk.

So they waited, biding their time in the darkness of their victim’s flat. They did treat themselves to a beer from his refrigerator since they naturally assumed that after tonight he wouldn’t be consuming any of it himself.

After nearly half a hour, they heard the slam of a car door and voices coming from the street below. Mulqueen went to the window. He’d gotten a glimpse of Harry that night at the shelter when he’d come storming in to rescue Sugar. It was Harry. He was saying goodbye to whoever it was in the magenta Chevy who’d given him a lift.

Mulqueen wondered why he hadn’t driven his own car, but he soon understood; both of Harry’s hands were wrapped in bandages. Turner had said nothing about this, maybe he hadn’t known. The more he watched, peeking out behind a corner of the shade, the more it became apparent Harry had little mobility in either hand. It seemed to take him forever just to dig his keys out of his pocket.

As if that were not a sufficient handicap, it also appeared he was intoxicated. He wasn’t staggering, but his walk hinted at the amount of liquor coursing through his blood.

To Mulqueen it did not seem conceivable this was the man who had Turner so frightened. Yet that was not his judgment to make. All he had to do was make the kill.

He anticipated an easy kill. A man who could barely get his keys out of his pocket was not someone who could easily defend himself with a .44 Magnum and hope to stay alive.

“No fucking challenge,” he whispered to Hennessy who characteristically remained silent.

Mulqueen looked out again, but could no longer see Harry. That would mean he was already on his way up. They could hear footsteps on the landing. They grew louder until they were coming from just outside the door.

They trained their guns on the door. What they planned to do was to allow Harry to enter and shut the door behind him. They wanted him to trap himself. Then they would open up.

One lock snapped open, then a second. Mulqueen and Hennessy raised their guns higher, waiting.

When the door opened, it wasn’t Harry who stood there, partly silhouetted in the light from the hallway beyond. It was a man in a mask of bandages.

The two assassins were so astounded that for several moments they couldn’t bring themselves to react. Then it dawned on Mulqueen that it must be Gallant. He’d assisted Pine in putting the dressings on him not more than twelve hours before. What the hell was he doing here?

Gallant had anticipated their temporary paralysis. The .44 in his right hand, the Dan Wesson .357 in the other, he fired simultaneously on both men.

Mulqueen was struck in the neck and he toppled over without getting off a shot. Blood rushed so profusely from the wound it soon had his whole face covered. The head had nearly been decapitated and it lay at an angle to the neck which in life would have been impossible.

With Hennessy, Gallant wasn’t quite so lucky. The bullet had hit Hennessy, catching him below his left collarbone, and knocking him over, but the injury was not critical. He still had hold of the Sterling. He picked himself off the floor with a groan, discharging his gun at the same time.

Gallant couldn’t hear the gun, with its subsonic rounds, but he was very much aware of the racket it made as it tore up the windows and sent a lamp tumbling to the floor.

Yet the chest wound had had its effect. Hennessey was resisting unconsciousness, but the struggle all but exhausted him. Each time he tried to sight Gallant, the man seemed to vanish on him, dissolving into the darkness.

Gallant hadn’t vanished, he’d simply shifted positions, like a ballet dancer. With only one man to worry about, he turned both his handguns on Hennessy and fired again.

Hennessy staggered back with the two additional wounds. His weapon slipped from his hand. He didn’t seem to want to die. He doubled up and crumpled to the floor. His blood began pumping out of his ears. He made an especially loud gagging noise as he choked on the blood leaking into his throat.

By the time Hennessy had breathed his last, Harry had arrived. He was out of breath from running up the stairs and he held his gun in his hand although the strain of maneuvering his fingers around it told on his face.

It was one hell of a mess, with two bodies, and all the blood, and the shattered windows and bullet-riddled furniture. Only two things were missing: the killer and an explanation.

C H A P T E R
E l e v e n

T
he day finally came when the beard was fully grown. The worst scars were well hidden. To his surprise, his face did look completely different, though Dr. Pine had only tampered with the angle of his nose and the set of his eyes. It was uncanny how a few alterations, and the growth of hair, could so alter one’s appearance. Similarly, his voice had a gruff quality to it that was also the result of Pine’s handiwork. When he listened to himself on a tape-recorder, he was forced to admit he would never have recognized his new voice.

Gallant didn’t know whether he liked the face Jonas Pine had given him. Nor was he convinced he looked any better than he had previously. Yet of one thing there could be absolutely no doubt, he could expose himself in public without the slightest fear that the police, or even an old acquaintance would identify him as James William Gallant.

When Turner sent for him, Gallant had a sense of what was coming. Now that the plastic surgery was finished, and his beard had thickened, he had expected this meeting any day. He assumed Turner would tell him his life at the shelter had ended, and he was soon to be assigned to the staff of Jay Silk.

Turner was in good spirits. For several weeks, he’d languished in seclusion, certain the failure of Mulqueen and Hennessy to kill Harry Callahan meant his downfall. Though he isolated himself from his followers, occasionally accusing them of deserting him, he never gave an indication he had any idea Gallant was responsible for killing his men. And how could he? Gallant had been careful to cover his tracks.

Yet the expected had not happened. Harry Callahan had not come crashing through his door with a warrant in one hand and a gun in the other. Harry was blamed for the killings, which only added to the controversy in which he was already embroiled. Rather than being restored to the force, as Turner had anticipated, Harry had simply disappeared. Gone underground. So while he held out little hope of locating him to make a third attempt on his life, Turner was no longer worried. If Harry was safe from him, it worked the other way too. He was safe from Harry.

When Gallant entered his private office, he looked up at him with a broad, slightly diabolical, smile. “You know, Jimmy, you don’t look half bad.”

Gallant shrugged. “I think sometimes my eyes are a bit too close together.”

“No, take it from me, you look fine. The good doctor has created a man who all the women will fall for.”

Not all the women, thought Gallant, just one will do.

“So, Grant, what happens now?”

“You’ve done your homework?”

“Homework?” He. realized Turner was referring to the concentrated course he’d given himself in collectibles. “Yes, I’ve boned up on what you wanted me to. I studied the fucking catalogues. I stayed up nights memorizing your bloody picture books. I spent hours with your paintings and chests and fucking tea sets. There’s nothing else to do around here.” Especially, he considered, since Turner had declared an end to the weekend entertainment now that there was no Samoan and no beach boy to do the singles bars and bring home a woman anxious to party.

Turner reached down below his desk and brought into view a small gold-framed painting. “Can you tell me who did this and in what period?”

It was a study of a group of bathers seated by a lake.

“Seurat. I’d say 1860,1865, somewhere around there.”

Turner nodded. “I’m impressed. You have done your homework.”

“That’s the test?”

“Short and sweet.”

“So I’m to go up there to Paradise Road and the man hires me.”

“Almost. But there’s one little thing that has to be done beforehand.”

Gallant knew it couldn’t be that simple.

“What is that?”

“You can’t become the family chauffeur until you dispose of the family chauffeur they already have.”

“You never mentioned that problem.”

Turner’s smile widened. “It was so minor I thought it could wait.”

The photograph that Turner had shown him hardly did justice to the Silk estate. Perched on a hillside, it commanded an imposing view of the bay. The mansion itself could not be seen from the road that ran below it. Pines, alder, and oak grew in such dense profusion they kept it entirely concealed.

Although Gallant saw no guards or patrols, he guessed that the security was tight and any intruder, even a stray hiker, would be stopped and questioned should he wander too far onto the Silk property.

At this stage, however, penetrating the security system was not what interested Gallant. He’d see the mansion and its grounds soon enough. For now, he was only concerned with the chauffeur and his comings and goings.

Turner had given him a black TransAm to use. He was scrupulous about keeping from sight. He’d park off the asphalt road that wound its way up the hillside toward the estate. With a pair of high-powered binoculars, he’d sit in his car from six-thirty in the morning all the way through the afternoon, through blazing sun and thickening fog, never removing his eyes from the road. After more than a week, he thought he pretty well had the chauffeur’s schedule down.

Twice during the week, on Wednesdays and Fridays, the long gray limousine would appear, with Silk himself. The limousine wouldn’t return until the evenings. Gallant assumed these were the two days that the retired Silk still went into town, maybe to his private club or to a business luncheon with his accountants. On the other days, the schedule was irregular, which may have been because it depended on the needs of whoever else lived on the estate. Very often, Gallant would observe Sheila riding in the back of the limousine, sometimes with her daughter, often alone. To Gallant, she always appeared preoccupied, her eyes directed straight ahead. She looked like a princess, detached and unattainable and more beautiful than when he’d first seen her after his escape. He was more resolved than ever to seduce her, and to make sure Harry became aware of it before he took his life.

But there seemed no opportunity to get close to the chauffeur so long as he was performing his duties. It was far better, Gallant reasoned, to kill him when he was on his own, relaxing. While he lived somewhere on the grounds of the estate, he did from time to time go into the city by himself. Naturally, for this purpose he wasn’t allowed to use the limousine. Instead, he relied on his own car. Gallant hadn’t seen a Shelly-Cobra GT in sometime which, so far as he knew, they’d stopped production on back in the mid-Sixties. The chauffeur had a love of old cars, he decided, maybe retooled them in his spare time.

He began following the chauffeur into the city to see where he went. The chauffeur seemed, from Gallant’s observation, to be a cautious man. He was probably armed, but only when he was acting in his official capacity. Out of uniform, he drove at an alarming speed with little thought to the traffic rules. Gallant trailed him all the way from Paradise Road to the corner of Columbus and Broadway, and not just once or twice, but three times, without the chauffeur ever giving any sign he was aware he was being followed.

The chauffeur liked to take in a few topless bars on his nights off. He was a tall strapping man, and it was unlikely anyone would give him trouble no matter how disreputable the clientele was that frequented such places.

A barker stood in front of a flickering neon sign ablaze in yellow and purple, proclaiming: GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS, motioning for passers-by to enter, assuring them, “No cover, no minimum, have a free look. Don’t be shy, step inside.”

The chauffeur, whose name Gallant had yet to find out, evidently suffered no feelings of shyness. He heeded the barker and walked into the arched doorway which Gallant supposed was meant to resemble Arab architecture.

Gallant followed a few paces behind. The barker gave him an encouraging gaze. “No cost to look,” he said as though he were worried Gallant might suddenly change his mind.

Inside, it was dim except for the stage which was bathed in a harsh pink light that made the three nude girls gyrating there look as though they were suffering from some tropical ailment that discolored their skin. The music was raucous and driven by a propulsive beat. It was originating from a jukebox by the entrance, and whenever there was a break between selections, the girls would stand around awkwardly, occasionally exchanging remarks with the customers below, until the music again resumed.

The chauffeur took a stool by the bar to Gallant’s relief. It was far preferable to make his approach at a bar, even one as uncrowded as this one, than to try to find a pretext to join a solitary man at a table for two.