Dirty Harry 02 - Death on the Docks by Dane Hartman

dashed up to him and grabbed him on the arm so suddenly that Patel seemed ready to blow him away.
    “Not there, Officer,” the man cried. “Down to your right. That pawnshop. A spade and a white dude.”
    Patel turned and raced toward where the man had pointed. Harry by this time had parked his own car and was just half a block behind Patel. Much as he disliked Patel, Harry was prepared to back him up; he wasn’t about to let even a corrupt and arrogant cop get killed by low-lifes on the street if he could help it.
    A faint light shone through the rectangular window of the pawn shop, which was cluttered with clock radios, Motorolas, Sony color TVs, an electric typewriter, and a harpsicord, of all things. The iron grill fence that ordinarily protected the shop at night had been pulled half-way to the door. Maybe the pawnbroker had forgotten something while closing up and gone back inside. Maybe he was interrupted and forced back.
    In any case, you couldn’t really see anything. The interior was mostly bathed in darkness. The pawnbroker must have relied on a silent alarm under the counter, Harry thought.
    Patel, still unaware of Harry’s presence in the vicinity, moved cautiously into the doorway, flattening himself out against the narrow wall so as to avoid being spotted from within. Then, slowly, he took hold of the door knob and twisted it to the right. Nothing happened. It was locked.
    So Patel shot out the lock, kicked the door halfway open, and went down into a crouch.
    Reaction to this was practically instantaneous—not on the part of the two would-be robbers but from the store’s owner. The problem was that the robbers, still with their handguns directed on the pawnbroker, hadn’t yet mobilized themselves to deal with this latest threat. The pawnbroker, a corpulent figure who looked like he suffered from a terrible disposition, was certain that Patel’s invasion had given him the opportunity he was waiting for.
    Reaching below the counter he came up with a gun of his own.
    “Freeze! Freeze, you’re under arrest!” Patel was shouting.
    Harry was a couple of feet away from him, but stayed well to his right, not wanting to endure the barrage of bullets should the men fail to obey Patel’s instruction.
    And in fact, the two men would have frozen were it not for the pawnbroker who seemed reluctant to be deprived of his moment of glory. Evidently unappreciative of Patel’s rescue effort, he trained his gun on the white member of the pair and discharged it. They were so close to each other that only a blind man could have missed.
    The white, a bearded mother of around forty, staggered with the impact, but he wasn’t quite ready to lay down and die. He fired back, now at the pawnbroker, now at Patel. It was a Luger he had and while it was only firing .22s, it was making a huge racket. Patel had ducked back, out of the line of fire, shooting back but not with any great effect since he was unable to see around the corner and into the pawnshop.
    The pawnbroker, having the ill fortune not to have ducked in time himself, looked vastly surprised by the way everything had developed. How many times he’d been punctured by .22s was impossible to determine, but a ship could have set sail on the blood that rushed out over his clothes. He refused, however, to acknowledge defeat. He raised his gun with difficulty and was about to shoot again when a 9mm bullet pierced his head. He had gotten in the way of Patel’s fire. Harry was the only one to realize this but he was in no position to do anything about it—and come to think about it what could he do?—being forced to lay low while the wounded white partner in this misconceived operation continued to spray the street with a hail of bullets.
    What the .22s couldn’t do the 9mm cartridge surely did. The pawnbroker, astonished that life should terminate so abruptly and on this particular August night, lurched over and collapsed with a final groan.
    The white, himself