Dirty Harry 08 - Hatchet Men (8 page)

“I’m willing to pay for what I get.” Harry reached into his pocket and extracted a wad of bills. The ample roll was supplied by Harry’s own pocket money—which he never kept in his wallet—and by cash the smuggling ship’s captain was willing to lend him after Harry found out the kidnapping van was found in Chinatown.

“So what kind work you want, American?” the codger mused, drinking in the money with his eyes as if he had X-ray vision. “A tall, straight man like you does not want to poison his body. He would want to use it, eh? Follow me.”

The bent old caricature of a Chinaman led Harry through the first room, through a pair of curtains—one cloth, one beaded—and into a classic opium den, looking to be right out of a bad movie or men’s magazine from the 1940’s. Through another double curtain and Harry was standing before a line of painted Oriental Jezebels. The small, delicate-looking girls were done up as a bigot might have expected them to be.

All their faces were masterpieces of makeup; disguising their ages perfectly. In the dim red light, it was even possible that they were wearing extremely realistic masks; not one of their visages expressed anything but a single, flat emotion. One girl was decked out like the Dragon Lady—cigarette holder and all. Another was wearing the latest lingerie from “Victoria’s Secret,” including the garter belt, ultrahigh heels, and frilly, push-up, peek-a-boo bra. Another was outfitted like an Oriental schoolgirl, with pigtails, white shirt, pleated skirt, white socks and bobby-soxer shoes. Finally there was a full-fledged geisha girl—complete with wooden slat sandals.

“You have a preference?” asked the codger.

“I’ll go traditional tonight,” said Harry, pointing at the geisha. She bowed subserviently toward him. The cop figured she would take longer getting out of her uniform, giving him more time to set up his next move.

“Ah, Ling,” the codger named her. “A wise choice. Now please. Enter the first room on your right. She will be in presently.”

The old Chinaman pointed to an ornate, soot-covered white doorway to the right of Ling, the geisha girl. Harry looked down the length of his arm, then at the door, then back at the man’s face. The codger was hunched over so all Harry saw was the top of his white-haired head. The cop nodded and went toward the door.

“Oh,” said the Chinaman just before he reached it. “American.” Harry turned. The codger was smiling and holding out his hand. Callahan walked slowly back and put the wad of cash in the thin, wrinkled, slightly quivering palm. The codger smiled and Harry went back to the door.

“American?” the codger called again, his voice even higher this time, as if he were saying “aren’t you forgetting something?”

Harry stopped and slowly turned. The Chinaman was smiling even wider and humbly. “Your gun?” the codger said.

The old man was not as innocent as he seemed. Harry had to chalk it up to the corduroy jacket. His own clothes were altered so his piece wouldn’t make a crease in his outerwear no matter where he stuck it. Having little choice, he reached back, pulled the Magnum gingerly out and tossed it onto the seat of an overstuffed chair next to the Dragon Lady.

“All set?” he asked patiently, his hands out.

The Chinaman smiled and nodded. Harry entered the room. It was surprisingly big, considering the utility of all the other rooms. It was surprisingly sumptuous as well. It was decorated in the style of turn-of-the-century San Francisco, up to and including the unused gas lights on the wall. The room’s only present illumination came from the working fireplace on the left wall. The centerpiece of the room was the plush, big canopied bed. It sat like an overrich sacrificial altar in the middle of the rear wall.

The place was surprisingly comfortable. Harry felt unusually at ease in the room, as if he had been born a hundred years too late. He moved away from the door, taking off the corduroy jacket as he went. With the .44 gone, there was no longer any reason to keep it on. Throwing it on an antique chair between the bed and the fireplace, Harry started circling the room nonchalantly, looking as if he were merely checking out the furnishings, when actually he was searching for the peephole or bugging devices he knew had to be there. A prostitute’s privacy was a thing of the past. The best whorehouses now had video surveillance equipment to back up the girls.

Harry stopped when he heard the door open behind him. He was looking down the lamp on the table next to the bed when he heard the entrance. He turned, smiling, fully expecting to see Ling. He was not pleased when he saw three burly Chinese men carrying nunchakus instead.

The nunchaku was obstensibly a martial-arts training device. In use, however, it combined the best attributes of both a chain and two clubs. Or the worst attributes, depending upon whether one was the nunchaka or nunchakee. Essentially, it was two tapered foot-long clubs connected by a few inches of steel links. Bruce Lee had made them famous in his
Enter the Dragon
movie and now every hopeful kung fu killer wanted a pair.

Unfortunately, the three men facing Harry looked like they knew how to use them. And by the expressions on their faces, it looked like Harry would have no choice but to see just how well.

Moving until he was midway between the chair and the middle of the bed, Harry looked upon the trio with a placid expression. “Now the way I see it,” he said quietly. “You guys can mess with me, and everybody is going to get hurt. So why don’t you just say your piece; I’ll take my gun and get out of here. You can keep the bullets and the money.”

The Chinamen weren’t buying. As soon as Harry had finished, the man on the left screamed a karate yell and charged, his nunchaku swinging up over his head, held by his right hand.

Harry immediately bent his right knee and dropped his shoulder so he fell away from the swinging club. At the same time he grabbed the topmost bed cover with his left hand and hurled it up in the air like a net. It was a perfect hurl. The blanket spread out like a hand and covered the top of the attacking man’s torso. The nunchaku slapped harmlessly on one of the canopy’s columns and Harry swung his right fist into the Chinaman’s covered jaw.

The crack of the club on the canopy was echoed by Harry’s hard punch, which dropped the first attacker like a side of beef. The middle Chinaman took no time in backing his fallen comrade up. He came in from Harry’s right, hoping to swing the nunchaku into the side of the cop’s ducking head. Only Callahan dropped completely onto the floor at that moment, letting the club whiz over his head. He rolled, and before the second man could retreat, Harry swung up and punched him right between the legs.

Harry felt the testicles and penis get smashed under his knuckles and the pained exhalation of air the man made when doubling over. Callahan wrenched his hand back and threw himself away from the second attacker’s contorted face. Landing on his back, he kicked both feet into the crippled Chinaman’s head. The bent-over attacker snapped straight and kept going, nearly knocking over the third man in the process.

The last Chinaman shouted, dodged to his left and ran at Harry from in front of the fireplace. While getting to his feet, Harry pushed the chair with his jacket on it over in front of the man. The third Chinese nimbly hopped over it, swinging the nunchaku as he came. Harry raised his arms and met the man halfway. He felt the nunchaku slam into his side and snake around across his back as his fingers sunk into the last man’s face.

As burly as the Chinaman was, he was no match for the weight and strength of Harry’s brawny, tightly muscled frame. Even though the Chinese was jumping forward, Harry’s thrust lifted him up and back. Harry’s weight broke the chair as he fell across it, but his straight arms and clawlike fingers sent the last man’s head and shoulders into the fireplace.

The nunchakus were all but forgotten as the man’s oily black hair burst into flames like a pile of hay hit by a meteor. He reared up, screaming, as the fire crawled across his clothes. Harry jumped up too, grabbing the flaming man by the shirt front and throwing him onto the bed. The cop then ripped all the bed covers out and flung them over the third Chinese to suffocate the flames. He wrapped the screaming man up like an egg roll and threw him back to the floor. He pushed the writhing body back and forth until his hair and flesh was smoldering.

At that moment, the door burst open again, and in came another Chinese with a fire extinguisher, followed by the codger who had sent him into the trap. The younger man doused the smoking hulk of sheets and blankets as Harry rose ominously toward the codger.

“Unh, unh, uh,” said the old man, pointing Harry’s .44 at the cop’s chest. “What do you really want, American?”

“I want to see Cheh,” Harry said between deep breaths. “Huang Cheh.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?” the codger demanded, his voice cracking.

“Would it have done any good?”

The codger shrugged. “Probably not. We would have sent these men after you in any case.” The Chinese lowered the gun. “Follow me,” he concluded.

Once more Harry followed the wizened old man as he was led out of the prostitution section, through some narrow, bulb-lit hallways and into an elevator at the end of the line. The codger accompanied him as they rose several floors. Finally the small, weathered elevator stopped, and the door creaked open to reveal one of the grandest, plushest, most ultramodern offices Harry had ever seen.

There was a thick white carpet on the floor with glorious rugs on one wall and a breathtakingly beautiful metal sculpture of a dragon taking up most of the opposite wall. A long curtain covered the far wall, and in front of that was a large, shining desk. The high-backed chair behind the desk was empty.

The old codger entered first, wandering off to the left, and Harry followed, impressed by the obvious wealth of the inner office. He looked to his right to see the wall next to the elevator crammed full of the latest electronic equipment. There was a stereo outfit, a projection TV, rows of video screens, several videotape machines, a video disc system, a home computer linkup, and every other imaginable gadget, many not yet available in this country on the retail market.

Many of the screens were on, revealing what was going on in all the den’s rooms. Harry saw gambling, whoring, and drug taking. His eyes settled on the row of prostitutes plying their wares. The sets were in color and it was like watching all the triple-X movies ever made all at once. Harry shook his head in amazement. He just didn’t get out enough, he told himself, just like he always did when situations like this cropped up.

Not wanting to look away particularly, Harry asked, “Where’s Cheh?”

“Right here, Harry,” came the Chinatown crime lord’s voice.

The cop spun around to see that the left section of the wall next to the elevator had been pushed back to reveal a combination bar and bathroom—minus the toilet. The old codger had straightened up, removed his false set of teeth, pulled off the wisps of hair under his nose and chin, then tugged off the white wig. Although hunks of spirit gum and latex makeup still hung onto his face, the caricature Chinaman had undeniably transformed himself into Huang Cheh.

“I’ve been here all the time,” the crime boss informed him with a slight smile.

Harry refused to react to the charade. “You’ve changed,” he said deadpan.

“It has been sometime since you visited me last,” Cheh explained, moving toward the desk while pulling his fake eyebrows off. “And these are strange times we are living in. Have a seat, Harry.”

Cheh moved around to his chair behind the desk as the cop walked up and took a red plush one to the left of the Chinaman’s position. It was a long time since Harry had last seen him. That was shortly after Cheh had arrived in this country a broken, scarred man. The Saigon, Tokyo, and Hong Kong crime hierarchy had not been nice to him. Their retribution against this second-rate hood had continued once Cheh had tried to escape to the States.

Through pure chance, Harry had been in Chinatown and accidentally saved Cheh from a group of thugs. At that time, the then drunken, terrified man had sworn eternal thanks to the lanky, laconic cop. Callahan had put Cheh’s pledge down as the ravings of a man at the end of his rope, but almost right after that incident, Cheh’s luck began to change. As time went on, he gained more and more power in Chinatown while Harry battled his way up the police force’s chain of command.

Harry had reached his apex as inspector. With his violent record and reputation for biting ass rather than kissing it, it was highly unlikely that he would get much further. Cheh, on the other hand, just kept getting stronger, a fact that put a severe strain on their relationship. Harry had accepted an invitation to sup with the new crime lord only to make it clear at the meal that he had no intention of being friends with the guy. He said that he would use him if it ever became necessary and warned him that if Cheh ever overstepped his boundaries, Callahan would be on him like a ton of bricks.

Cheh considered it bad manners to speak of such things at the dinner table, but he promised to try and forgive the cop. Their previous parting could have been termed frosty at very best.

But time seemed to heal those wounds. Harry had been impressed how careful Cheh had been over the years. He was practical and effective, never letting his business dealings lead to an innocent injury. He treated his people well and annihilated anyone who sought to rock his profitable boat.

“You’ll want this, no doubt,” Cheh said, tossing Harry his .44 as he sank into his chair. Harry caught it to find that it was still fully loaded. “So to what do I owe this unusual visit?” Cheh continued from behind his shiny desk. “Has the time come to finally ‘use’ me?”

Harry laid the Magnum on his lap. He was sure that its return wasn’t merely a show of trust. He harbored no doubts that there were enough offensive weapons in Cheh’s desk to turn him to ashes before he even aimed the revolver. “You said it was strange times,” Harry answered, turning the question into another question. “I need to know what is going on in Chinatown. I need to know why the crime lord is answering the door disguised as a dirty old man. I need to know why two Chinese teenagers were brutally murdered at the wax museum tonight. I need to know why a Japanese woman was kidnapped by three masked terrorists on her way to my apartment.”