Dirty Harry 12 - The Dealer of Death (6 page)

He extended his arm until his hand was poised directly over the gun.

Just then he heard the door to the child’s room close quietly. He’d been concentrating so much on Harry that he’d completely forgotten about Sheila.

There was no time to take the gun, leave the bedroom, and vanish down the corridor without running right into Sheila. The only thing he could think of to do was to drop down where he was and slide under the bed.

Presently, Sheila reappeared. “Harry? Harry, are you awake?” she asked, but all she elicited was a barely audible groan that might or might not have been intended as a response. “That’s all right,” she said, “go back to sleep.”

The bed sagged slightly as she got into it. While Harry lay motionless, she seemed to take forever returning to sleep. She tossed and turned, and just when Gallant was convinced that she finally was asleep, she’d move again. All he could do was stay where he was, trying his best to subdue his mounting panic. He kept imagining her insomnia would keep her awake until dawn, and even if she dropped off, Harry would wake, and he would never have the opportunity he desperately needed to make his escape unobserved.

But then it seemed that she had fallen asleep. When ten minutes had passed without any movement on her part, he decided he would risk crawling out again. He poked his head out. When nothing untoward occurred, he went further until he was completely revealed. He was relieved to see Harry had turned again so his face was no longer visible.

Without rising to his feet, Gallant raised his hand and groped till his fingers touched the Magnum. He took hold of it as though it was a treasure of incalculable value. And in a way it was, if only to him and Harry.

Even though it was a temptation, he suppressed the urge to stand up and run for the door. Instead, he painstakingly remained on all fours, gradually inching his way toward the exit. In one respect, fate had continued to be good to him. Sheila had left the door partially open, probably so she could hear her daughter should she awaken again. Little did she realize, the nightmare was not in her daughter’s head, but right here, in her own bedroom.

He looked back once he reached the door, but there was no indication that he’d disturbed either Harry or Sheila. They slept on as peacefully as the dead.

One night, he thought, resting his eyes on Sheila’s unconscious form, he was going to take Harry’s place in her bed.

Notwithstanding his tiredness, Gallant was far too exhilarated to sleep. Having achieved so much success in such a short period of time, he felt it was only appropriate to celebrate. On Lombard he found a little place that was still open and serving although it was apparent from the doleful look on the bartender’s face that it wouldn’t remain open very much longer. Gallant sped up his celebration and drank fast.

By the time he had set loose enough Cuervo Gold in his system to intoxicate a regiment, he realized that he could not wait until the following day to institute his plan. No, there was no sense in delaying. It was a little short of three-thirty in the morning. He wanted it so that when the hour of seven struck, and Harry was ready to rise and face the day, it would already be too late.

Six years gives one a lot of time. Gallant was remembered by his fellow cellmates as something of a student although as a high school dropout, his scholarly habits were a recent acquisition. Be that as it may, Gallant spent as many hours as he was permitted in the prison library. What particularly compelled his interest were old newspapers, especially the local ones. That way he could keep track of Harry. He could also keep track of Harry’s enemies.

Now he intended to do what Harry never could, whether because of the constraints of the law or reasons of simple humanity. He was going to kill off all of his enemies—one by one.

C H A P T E R
F i v e

E
dward J. T. Gallagher was getting on in years, and needed little sleep. Four o’clock in the morning would often find him seated in his study, reading obscure interpretations of the law or revising decisions he would soon hand down in his court.

Gallagher was a senior judge on the appeals court and in the twenty-one years he’d served on the bench, he had always managed to provoke controversy. Denounced as a liberal do-gooder, a friend of the criminal, the judge had weathered a great many storms in his time. He had even survived several attempts on the part of outraged legislators to have him impeached and removed. His critics accused him of setting low bail for murderers and rapists, of letting hardened criminals off either with light sentences or else setting them free on probation. There were many who thought him senile and this opinion had been commonly held even when the judge was two decades younger.

Gallagher and his wife of thirty years lived in a modest frame two-story house a few blocks up from Hyde Pier. The study was on the first floor, the bedroom on the second.

The judge was too absorbed in his work to take notice of the sound of the backdoor lock clicking open. It was possible that even if his concentration had not been so pronounced, he wouldn’t have heard for he was partially deaf. This handicap, when it became known to his detractors, was taken as further indication of his incompetence. The reason, it was said, he handed down such light sentences was because he never really heard the testimony.

Not until Gallant was standing right in back of him, no more than a dozen feet away, at the doorway to the study, did Gallagher sense something was not quite right, and turned around.

He lowered his glasses, because they were meant for reading, not for seeing anything farther away than the page, and stared at the intruder.

“Who the hell are you, sir?” he demanded, showing not the slightest sign he was frightened.

“A dead man,” the intruder replied.

The judge frowned. This was not the sort of response he’d expected.

“What are you doing in my house? If you don’t leave right away, I mean to notify the police.”

The judge couldn’t identify the intruder though there was something vaguely familiar about the man. That the stranger had not yet produced any weapon he felt was reassuring. But what did he want? If he had come to rob his house surely he would have started to do so by now.

When the man did not reply, the judge asked, “Were you ever in my court?”

“No,” the man said. “I was in a lot of courts in my time, but never in yours.”

The judge shook his head. Sometimes, the people whose trials he presided over sought him out for one thing or another, believing mistakenly he could function in the role of a social worker or psychiatrist.

“Then what can I do for you?”

At that moment, his wife called to him from upstairs. “Ed, what is is? Is someone there?”

“It’s all right, dear,” he shouted up.

It was then Gallant slipped his right hand underneath his jacket and removed the .44.

Gallagher paled when he saw the gun. In all the years he’d been on the bench, nothing like this had ever happened to him. Now he was convinced the man was dangerous.

“Whatever you want, please, we have so little, but you are welcome to it all. But please, please don’t hurt us. I am an old man and my wife . . .”

Gallant was disinterested in listening to his feeble appeals for mercy. “You know a friend of mine named Callahan, Harry Callahan?”

“Callahan,” the judge said, rummaging through his memory to place the name. “Yes, I believe I once . . .”

Again, Gallant wouldn’t allow him to finish a sentence. “Well, then, this is for him.”

The .44 was much louder than Gallant had expected. The recoil was so powerful that it nearly threw him off balance. He wasn’t used to handling a gun so big.

When he recovered from the shock of the blast, he looked to the chair where the judge had been sitting. The judge wasn’t there any longer. He was sprawled out on top of the desk which had, in turn, toppled over to the floor. Blood soaked through his bathrobe and his arms were splayed out so he seemed to be assuming the posture of Jesus on the cross. His eyes were still open but they were rapidly filming over. There was no question he was dead. Out of the wound blood was slowly leaking onto the pages of a California statute book.

Not unexpectedly, the blast had been audible upstairs. Rather than stay put, which would have been the wisest course of action, Gallagher’s wife had come rushing down to see what had happened and she now stood at the door to the study, horrified by the sight of her murdered husband. Her eyes bugged from their sockets, her jaw gaped open, and it seemed she was incapable of producing any sound.

She was in her mid-fifties, by the looks of her, a woman who had never been beautiful. Gallant had only come to kill Gallagher. He hadn’t even known he had a wife, hadn’t even considered the possibility.

Had he been wearing a mask, he might have permitted her to live. But the fact was he wasn’t. Until Turner had his face altered, as he’d promised, he could still be recognized.

“I hate to do this,” he said apologetically.

Too late, she reacted, and turned, and tried to run from him.

With no urgency at all, Gallant raised the .44 and, sighting it on the back of her head, on the bun of coarse graying hair, he fired.

This time he was better prepared for the recoil, and it didn’t unbalance him the way it had before. Betty Gallagher seemed for an instant to rise in the air, like a marionette suddenly tugged up and offstage. Her head blazed as though fire danced from it. But it wasn’t fire, it was blood. A torrent of blood.

Something sticky had gotten on the legs of his pants. He looked down and saw it was a part of what had been inside the woman’s skull. He did his best to expunge the stain with soap and water, but it only seemed to make it worse. A conspicuous dark oblong patch remained. It was a good thing, he thought, that Turner had given him several changes of clothes.

Especially, as this was only the beginning. There was much to accomplish before the sun came up.

Morris Page lived in a crumbling building in an area guidebooks, if they described it at all, referred to generally as “seedy.” It lay in sight of the Yerba Buena Project and the new Moscone Convention Center which was still under construction. From what Gallant could determine, the building was a transient hotel. There was a sign to that effect hanging over the doorway, but it was so faded it was impossible to know whether it applied any longer. Here and there the windows were lit, but mostly they were dark. The shades were pulled down against the chill nighttime air.

Gallant had never met Page, yet he believed he knew him as well as anyone. For the fact was, Page was a man much like himself, a convicted murderer, a loner, a loser in the eyes of the world. Unlike Gallant, however, he was out of jail legally, having served only three years of a five year sentence, meted out by none other than the late Judge Gallagher.

Page had plea-bargained, ratting on his accomplices, and consequently escaping with minimal punishment while his companions were put away for life. Page and his luckless companions were found guilty of holding up a branch of the Bank of America and killing one of the guards. Page pointed out at his trial that he wasn’t the one who had pulled the trigger. Gallant believed the only reason he hadn’t was the lack of opportunity. Page was not bound by conscience certainly. Nor was he given to sudden fits of compassion; it wasn’t in his nature.

Of course, it had been Harry who’d arrested Morris Page. It was no secret that Harry opposed the mitigation of his sentence.

So they did have something in common, Page and himself: a hatred of a homicide investigator and several years wasted behind bars.

Gallant found the door unlocked and stepped inside a hallway that smelled like eggs gone bad. An imitation Tiffany lamp was suspended over a desk to his right. A register was open on the desk, but there was no one there to tend it.

Behind the desk, Gallant saw a succession of mailboxes. The names and room numbers were inscribed on adhesive tape below each of them. Morris Page was listed as residing in Room 310. His box was empty.

As he ascended the stairs, he began hearing voices, raucous and loud, and punctuated by frequent bursts of laughter. It seemed even at this late hour a party was in progress. The party turned out to be going on in a room just down the hall from 310.

Well, it didn’t concern him. In fact, the noise might be helpful. It would drown out the sound of a gunshot. Bending over, he looked under the door of 310 but could see no light. He concluded that Page must be asleep.

Nonetheless, he was as quiet as he could possibly be. He tried the door, and to his surprise, found it open. With the .44 in hand, he entered the room ready to fire on the sleeping figure he anticipated seeing. But the bed was empty.

He risked flicking on the overhead light. A predictably dreary room was revealed. Cockroaches lined in formation along the wall mirror, scurried quickly back into the haven of the darkness.

There was no bathroom—that must be down the hall somewhere—but there was a sink, whose drain was ringed with a yellowish stain, attesting to the use to which it was put late at night when Page balked at leaving his room to relieve his bladder.

Gallant was far more disappointed than he thought he’d be. To have come all the way to this part of town, and come so close, he could not bear the idea of being denied his victim. Extinguishing the light, he left Page’s room. A haggard old man with the blood vessels broken in his nose, was shuffling down the corridor, clad only in a sleeveless undershirt, and carrying a dirty towel.

“Old man, you know Morris Page?”

The man stopped and screwed his eyes up at Gallant as though he’d just arrived from Mars. He grunted and indicated the door from which all the loud voices and laughter were originating.

As soon as he vanished into the bathroom, Gallant stepped up to the door marked 322. Listening attentively, he determined there were four, possibly five, men inside. From the desperation of their laughter and the shrillness of their voices, Gallant sensed that they’d been drinking quite heavily, and for so many hours, they would be slow to react to any danger.