Harry arrived in New York City,<\/a> September two thousand and fourteen.\u00a0 The Big Apple, not his favourite City, for no particular reason.\u00a0 The traffic at home was just as bad.\u00a0 In truth, one big American City was much like any other once you peeled the wrapper back.<\/p>\nHarry had pulled the wrapper clean off his own City, seen it at its worst.\u00a0 But that had all been a long time ago.\u00a0 He knew what went on then, and it wasn\u2019t much different today, he reckoned.\u00a0 Just each generation thought they\u2019d invented it all for the first time.\u00a0 That they were somehow doing it differently.\u00a0 Better or worse at it or whatever hip phrase suited the times.\u00a0 It was all the same to Harry Callahan, a punk was a punk, and the law was an ass.\u00a0 But right was always going to be right.<\/p>\n
Wall Street; the guys down there, they made the guys he\u2019d dealt with back in the day look almost harmless.\u00a0 Harry\u2019s bad guys carried guns or knives and would accept they were bad guys.\u00a0 They would do bad stuff because that\u2019s how they got their kicks; got what they needed.\u00a0 Or just did it because they were made that way.\u00a0 Harry would catch up with them eventually. If they were operating in his precinct, then the outcome was always predictable.\u00a0 Punks might drag out the inevitable with fancy lawyers.\u00a0 They might even have the sense to change towns.\u00a0 If they persisted, it ended one of two ways.\u00a0 Jail was considered a better choice.\u00a0 Alive or dead, it hadn\u2019t mattered to Harry.\u00a0 Some in the force had suggested the later was his preferred modus operandi.<\/p>\n
By the end of the nineteen-eighties, twenty-five years ago, the politics of policing was changing.\u00a0 Harry was a dinosaur.\u00a0 He got results, but the press had his number, and he was becoming.\u00a0 No, he had always been an embarrassment for the department.\u00a0 The body count was just too high.\u00a0 Desk jobs didn\u2019t cut it for Harry.\u00a0 He\u2019d sat there for months, the paperwork piled up.\u00a0 His colleagues tried to help him with some of the rudimentary aspects like using a computer.\u00a0 The mouse and the clicking would take him deeper into the mess.\u00a0 The machine would be unplugged, and he would go for long walks.<\/p>\n
The weight in the shoulder holster always felt comfortable.\u00a0 The trouble was, Harry\u2019s radar never switched off.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t even go out for fresh air without picking up the tensions on the streets of San Francisco.\u00a0 Twice he\u2019d intervened in street robberies and once in a road rage incident at the traffic signals, not a hundred yards from the precinct building.\u00a0 Fortunately, he\u2019d not shot anyone dead, and Harry rarely did wounding.\u00a0 He just hated the paperwork survivors created.\u00a0 Deceased was so much easier.<\/p>\n
The road rage dude had been hanging out of his truck\u2019s window and screaming at the pizza delivery kid.\u00a0 The poor kid\u2019s tiny little motorcycle pinned between his large fender and the car in front.\u00a0 Harry had stepped up on the footplate, pushed the long black barrel onto the end of the guy\u2019s nose.\u00a0 The tip of the guy\u2019s proboscis was in the barrel, the calibre being so large, and he soiled himself right there in his seat.<\/p>\n
The following day the guy was in the station with his sweaty overweight lawyer, who could have been his twin.\u00a0 He\u2019d changed his pants, and his lawyer wanted blood.\u00a0 The pizza kid had vanished soon as the truck had backed up.\u00a0 Harry hadn\u2019t bothered to file a report.\u00a0 It was all about covering your back with paperwork.\u00a0 Harry\u2019s idea of covering your back was a good partner who knew how to operate the twelve-gauge Remington Pump.<\/p>\n
The Captain had suggested Harry leave the gun in his desk. It would be like walking down the street without pants on for Harry.\u00a0 Harry lived with the tool; to him, that\u2019s all it was, a work tool.\u00a0 A carpenter wouldn\u2019t arrive without a saw; an electrician needed a screwdriver.\u00a0 It was politely suggested he no longer worked on the front line.\u00a0 Harry was a cop; how could he walk away from something wrong.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, it was the way for the brave new world.\u00a0 It was changing and had changed forever.\u00a0 A doctor off duty was now walking past a road traffic accident.\u00a0 A bleeding person on the street would have to wait for the ambulance to arrive.\u00a0 The sacred oath taken by doctors, the Hippocratic Oath to protect life, was superseded by political correctness: PC and the fear of litigation.\u00a0 God help a passing medical practitioner who stopped the arterial bleeding of a man hit by a truck if later the guy got an infection in the wound.\u00a0 Forget he fully recovered from the infection a week later.\u00a0 The ambulance arrived after thirty minutes; the bleed out would have taken fewer than five.<\/p>\n
No argument, one would think, but then the law always was an ass.\u00a0 What chance did Harry have with his argument?<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, Harry, just leave it to uniform. It\u2019s not your problem.\u201d\u00a0 The repetitive drone from the commander.\u00a0 Harry hadn\u2019t lasted much longer.\u00a0 The department held a party, gave him a clock.\u00a0 Several of the guys suggested some security firms who hired ex-cops.\u00a0 Harry sat alone in the apartment on Jackson Street for days.\u00a0 He still went for the fitness run every day and kept himself in good shape.\u00a0 The problem was when he went out, he didn\u2019t have anywhere to go.\u00a0 San Francisco is a busy city; everyone is going somewhere to do something.<\/p>\n
Harry didn\u2019t have a life outside being a cop.\u00a0 His partners had been ok; some he\u2019d even liked.\u00a0 The trouble was they didn\u2019t live long. If they did, they stayed away from him.\u00a0 So, Harry went along to several interviews with the security firms.\u00a0 They were full of ex-policemen who pitched him about the merits of the job.\u00a0 The glossy brochures handed over; he was losing the will to live within minutes on each occasion.<\/p>\n
Harry had never spent his cop\u2019s salary; he\u2019d just banked it.\u00a0 The Marines pension went into the bank account on top.\u00a0 He was in no immediate financial crisis, he wasn\u2019t a materialistic man, and he had what he needed. He didn\u2019t want what he didn\u2019t need.\u00a0 No commitments, no car payments, no mortgage.\u00a0 The apartment he lived in had belonged to DiGiorgio\u2019s uncle.\u00a0 Who, even when he was alive, hadn\u2019t collected the rent.\u00a0 The letter from the solicitor had arrived several years back.\u00a0 The uncle had died and left the apartment to Harry in his will.\u00a0 Why had he done that?\u00a0 Harry didn\u2019t give it much thought; maybe he should go and check on DiGiorgio\u2019s widow one day.\u00a0 Harry had seen her only once shortly after the funeral.\u00a0 She\u2019d been ok, but he felt responsible for what had happened.\u00a0 He wasn\u2019t, but then Harry felt responsible for most things that weren\u2019t his fault.<\/p>\n
Harry hadn\u2019t taken up any of the employment offers.\u00a0 Mall-Cop wasn\u2019t going to cut it for him, even less sat on the reception desk of some firm he knew nothing about dressed in a fine and dandy uniform.\u00a0 Collecting badges and stars for the foreseeable future, like some tin-pot African General.\u00a0 Marching around some marble lobby telling people not to step on the cracks in the tiles.\u00a0 Exercising pointless and needless authority over visitors in some feeble attempt to extend a pencil-sized dick.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s what most of the burgeoning workers in the private security world appeared to be doing.\u00a0 Harry had once referred to a senior public official as \u2018pencil dick\u2019 in the Chief of Police\u2019s Office.\u00a0 He remembered that with his usual sardonic smile.\u00a0 The only other regular activity these days for Harry was his weekly trip to the police range.\u00a0 They still let him in for old time\u2019s sake, his most significant weekly expense now ammunition.\u00a0 Out of boredom, he\u2019d found himself hanging around the shooting range, making small talk with the other shooters.<\/p>\n
Most of the gunslingers were now using various flavoured autos.\u00a0 They would blast away, going for quantity down the range rather than quality.\u00a0 Harry watched some of the young officers unloading magazine after magazine.\u00a0 They would pat themselves on the back if they hit the target anywhere respectable, even just the once.\u00a0 Harry thought: he wouldn\u2019t want to be on the sidewalk if ever one of these guys had to use deadly force.\u00a0 The collateral would be extensive.\u00a0 Harry had killed plenty of people, but only the ones he\u2019d wanted to.<\/p>\n
There was a time when he\u2019d been recognised, even given some notoriety down at the range.\u00a0 No one paid him any attention now. He was just the big old guy down at the end with the even bigger old gun.\u00a0 Nobody knew he was even once a cop or how he came to be in there.\u00a0 But when he took the firing stance and the rhythmic boom of the six shots rang out, shooters would start to watch by the third or fourth load.\u00a0 The heavy calibre 44 magnum rounds just blew great holes in the crouched figure holding the rifle and coming on in an aggressive posture.<\/p>\n
It was known as the NATO figure eleven target.\u00a0 Harry could put them all through a single hole. \u00a0But he\u2019d taken to using the rounds to saw through the targets in various ways to amuse himself.\u00a0 It usually looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to the bodies.\u00a0 The head would be severed, or the hips cut away from the body, or maybe the arms lopped off.\u00a0 The line of shots was always perfect.\u00a0 Straight and equispaced to mercilessly dismember the cardboard targets.<\/p>\n
Harry had never been one for conversation, and there was little of his life he ever wanted to discuss with anyone still living.\u00a0 So, the only small talk was weapons.\u00a0 Occasionally, another shooter would try his piece; they never shot well with it.\u00a0 Too heavy and not the right balance, though they never said it.\u00a0 Usually, one pull of the trigger was enough for them to pass it right back.\u00a0 They all, without exception, proudly offered up their pieces for Harry to try.\u00a0 Generally, they felt small and weak, like little children\u2019s toys.<\/p>\n
Harry would let off a couple of rounds, get the feel of the recoil and the balance.\u00a0 Even the most diminutive pea shooter was accurate in his hand.\u00a0 He pointed without thinking, the gun was just an extension of his arm, and the bullets went where he pointed.\u00a0 The autos all held more rounds than his forty-four.\u00a0 So, after the first couple of shots, it seemed pointless to just dump more shots into the same hole, but he did it anyway.\u00a0 The owners seemed to like to see the gun emptied every time.<\/p>\n
Harry couldn\u2019t see the point of endless lead into the same spot.\u00a0 But then he\u2019d not seen too many of the young guys hit the target, let alone get two in the same hole, so maybe that\u2019s why they went for volume.\u00a0 It was the mathematical solution of probability they relied on.\u00a0 To be solved, he imagined some guys would need to look at much bigger magazines.<\/p>\n
Out of pure boredom, he treated himself to a European manufactured auto.\u00a0 Everyone had auto\u2019s, so why not; he looked at several.\u00a0 But he was already decided. He\u2019d thought if he was going to modernise, he\u2019d go the whole way, not just an auto but also a plastic gun.\u00a0 He\u2019d probably never need it for anything serious, but he had the money, and he was bored.<\/p>\n
Harry bought the Glock Twenty.\u00a0 It fired 10mm rounds, and the magazine held a respectable fifteen rounds.\u00a0 He felt almost trendy as he walked out of the gun shop with the Austrian made high tech piece, with several spare magazines and a case of ammo.\u00a0 Harry spent the next few years, not doing much.\u00a0 He took a few holidays.\u00a0 He even went to Europe several times.\u00a0 London, Paris, Edinburgh and Switzerland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Synopsis\u00a0 Dirty, Harry Callahan burst onto the scene in 1971.\u00a0 A tough, get the job done, San Francisco Homicide Detective.\u00a0 Harry had his own style of policing and got results.\u00a0\u00a0 Several villains tried to finish him in various ways.\u00a0 Harry proved to be more resourceful and resilient than any imagined.\u00a0 Unfortunately, he became a liability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":834,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=953"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":987,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953\/revisions\/987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bigfootwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}