Read Dirty Harry 04 - The Mexico Kill for Free Online Page A

eyes on Harry the way an interrogator might. “Do I shock you?”
    “I’m not sure shock is the right word for it. I don’t know whether there’s a word in the English vocabulary that’s the right word for it. Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned, that could be it.”
    “As soon as Harold and I work things out I’ll find myself a new situation.”
    Harry didn’t know that people talked about new situations in that manner unless they were characters in the nineteenth-century novels he was compelled to read in high school.
    “And how long do you think that’ll be?”
    “Hard to tell with this yacht thing,” Wendy said. “Once everything’s settled and he’s got the Hyacinth back and the pirates put behind bars then maybe I’ll move out. He’s still my friend, he’ll always be that, and I wouldn’t want to desert him now.”
    “It’s heartening to see there’s no animosity.”
    She looked offended. “Between Harold and me? Never.”
    “Tell me, Wendy, what do you think is Harold’s uppermost priority—getting his boat back or finding the men who killed his crew? That is, if they were killed.”
    It was hard to tell what she was thinking by the mysterious look on her face. Nor would she answer his question directly. All she said was, “Why do you think I want a divorce?”
    Harry understood—or thought he did at any rate.

C H A P T E R

F o u r
    T hat same evening, when the sky was flushed with a soft amber light that was the sun’s final legacy, Harry settled down behind the wheel of his car and started down Columbus on his way to the Marina Yacht Harbor. Beside him were the documents and photos provided by Keepnews. He was not certain how he would get on board The Sojourner nor how he would uncover the hard evidence that would identify it absolutely as the Hyacinth. He would have to do what Sonny Rollins was doing to “My Old Flame” with his tenor saxophone on the radio—improvise. Sonny had his horn, Harry had his gun, but they were each only instruments; it was the mind, the imagination, that indefinable something that made it all work. Or not. It depended sometimes on the adrenalin in your blood, on the time of day or night it was. There were occasions when everything looked wrong and you couldn’t see how in the world you would make it, and still it worked, held together and miraculously clicked. Of course, there were those occasions when the exact opposite happened. Dangerous occasions when it all looked perfect, then blew up in your face.
    No one in the Broadway area was waiting for darkness to overtake them. Already the strip joints and the peep shows were going full-blast, pouring music and florescent colors out into the street. High-strutting hookers who you’d never catch in the light of day were parading in twos and threes, down the avenue, black and white and yellow with hair crowded thickly on their heads. Their pimps hung back in the shadows, contemplating the next several hours’ profits. Youths, their minds gone blank with ludes and angel dust, roamed up and down, dazedly peering into the topless bars where the girls were bathed in harsh pink lights and compelled to writhe in simulated passion to the same jukebox tunes they’d writhed to the night before. Tourists, thinking there was some sort of new thrill to be discovered here, bore the expression of Alice in Wonderland just before she went through the looking glass.
    It was only when he was close to the junction of Bay Street that he realized he was making the man in back of him angry by being in his way. A green Chevy showed up in his rearview mirror, and from what he could see there were three men in the vehicle, two in front, one in back. The driver was doing everything he could think of to pass Harry, veering into the adjacent lane, risking oncoming traffic, blasting his horn so that Harry would pull over and let him by, and, when that didn’t work, he began tailgating him, drawing so close that as soon as Harry