The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 01-02

Callahan turned and looked at Parish again. "What are you doin' here, man?" he asked as he made an inventory of the man. "Maybe you should go wash up."

Parish brought his hands up to his face and looked at the plastered human debris there. "Smart kid. Sniper got him, I think. Took a round right outside the OR. Tried to save him, ya know? Nothin' there man. Nothin'. But we got a pulse, got him on a Huey, and I got some plasma in him, some D5W too, on the ride down. He bit it about five minutes out, didn't come back that time. Good kid. Working as a scrub tech, wanted to be a doctor. When he grew up, I think he used to say. Well, he's all grown up now...but this place has a habit..."

"You a doc?" Callahan asked quietly.

"Me? No way, man. I'm the boatman, I just carry these kids across the river," Parish said as he took his second cocktail from the waitress. "Purgatory, ya know? I help 'em on their way."

"Where you based?"

"Who? Me?" Parish sighed after his second scotch disappeared. "Nowhere, man. I'm a real nowhere man."

Callahan nodded, then saw blood running from an open wound under Parish's shredded tunic. "You know you've been shot?" Harry said, looking at muddy red stuff dripping on the floor.

"What? That?" Parish said absentmindedly as he poked at his belly. "Oh, that's nothing."

"It's bleedin' a little bit more than nothing, man. Can I take a look?"

"Nope. You can get me some more fuckin' whiskey, though."

An army kid in starched khakis walked into the bar and looked around, then walked up to Harry. "You Callahan?" the kid asked.

"Yup."

"I got your papers," the kid said as he tossed an envelope on Callahan's table. Before he could open the sealed orders the kid had turned and disappeared.

"So, where you headed?" Parish asked.

"Some place called Phu Bai."

Parish nodded as he quaffed another whisky. "Good. I can hitch a ride with you."

+++++

31 December 1971

Almost three years later and back in San Francisco, Callahan took the Police Department's sergeants exam and scored first; after sitting for the review board he was given his stripes and assigned to 'Deep Nights' in the Mission District.

'The Mission' was the City's soft underbelly -- little islands of rundown residential areas situated next to industrial warehouses lining the 280 and 101 -- and somehow the entire nature of policing was completely different here, and radically different from the easy predatory byways of the Tenderloin. Family disturbances -- most very deadly affairs -- were the norm on 'deep nights,' but so too were armed robberies and homicides. Broken dreams and drunkenness were the usual plague on these mean streets, so fractured teens took to the streets to console one another with random acts of violence. All in all, violence was -- on the surface of this underbelly -- appallingly bad day or night, but on 'deep nights' it tended to the ferocious.

And so all the cops assigned to work 'the Mission' were considered somewhat ferocious, as well. And after Vietnam Callahan considered himself well qualified to work the Mission.

Yet Callahan's job was fundamentally different now, too. He no longer answered calls, was no longer assigned a beat. He responded as a back-up unit on 'hot' calls, or assigned other free, unassigned units to respond as back-up on certain types of ambiguous calls. Several times a shift he had to meet up with squads and review paperwork, and units working complex events called him to the scene to ask questions or seek advice. He was no longer a 'hands-on' cop, but now more a supervisor -- and he hated it.

So when hot family disturbances came out he was often first on scene, and when these incidents resulted in extreme violence, notably homicides, Callahan often did a lot of the preliminary investigative legwork. And while this did not sit well with Callahan's immediate supervisors, several inspectors in Homicide took note. One in particular saw something interesting in Harry Callahan, a familiar resilience perhaps, and this detective began quietly asking discrete questions about the new sergeant working nights in 'the Mission'.

His name was Frank Bullitt.

+

And here ends the first two chapters; stay tuned for more.