Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  The guy didn’t know, but to shoot the required two out of three had odds of less than twenty per cent. Dusty had not only twisted the rim slightly, he’d bent it so it seemed wider at the front and had also over-inflated the balls. They fit through, but only just and then only if you got it exactly right. Rubes who were smarter than this guy often asked Dusty to put the ball through the net first, to prove it fit. He had a slightly smaller ball for that, and retrieved it if the shooter wanted it for a first throw, swapping it out for another as he schmoozed them. It was very rare that anyone noticed, and despite his age, Dusty was quick on his feet. Most people couldn’t throw for shit anyway.

  The blond man threw the first ball, and as expected, it bounced off the rim. ‘Ooh, close,’ Dusty said. ‘You’ll get it on the next one.’

  The same result, though this one almost went in.

  ‘You’re real close, Chief,’ Dusty said, taking the first two dollars. ‘I haven’t had someone get three all day. I think you’re the man.’

  ‘How long you been working the stall?’ the man asked, using the third as a free throw. It went the same way as the first one, hitting the rim and bouncing up before falling to the ground near Dusty’s feet.

  ‘All my life, man,’ Dusty breezed, being deliberately vague. ‘All my life. Time for your next three. You got the heat?’

  The man took the ball from Dusty. He made as if to throw, but then stopped before releasing the ball. He walked over to the adjacent stall and picked up a dart. It was for a balloon attraction, where the challenge was to pop one to win a prize. The darts were blunted and the balloons underinflated; to win, you had to throw one of those things like a rocket. The guy running the stall was too busy chatting up a local girl wearing a tiny pair of Daisy Dukes to notice.

  ‘Different game, Chief-’ Dusty said, but then watched the man take the dart and insert it into the valve for the basketball. Instantly, he heard a wheezing sound and saw the ball start to deflate slightly. ‘Hey, you can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not? You said shoot two out of three,’ the man said, smiling. ‘Ball goes in the net, I win.’

  He kept deflating for a bit longer, then put the dart down, looking at the tip then back at Dusty.

  He threw the ball from where he was standing and scored a basket.

  ‘I’ll take the same ball,’ he said, walking back.

  ‘These weren’t the rules.’

  However, Dusty ended up passing him the ball as the man waited. He threw and this time it was nothing but net. It was only two dollars, but Dusty’s mood soured and his friendly mask slipped slightly. He wasn’t used to being suckered. Then he saw the guy lift the lower hem of his shirt to reveal a police badge.

  Dusty’s smile completely disappeared.

  ‘This ain’t illegal,’ he said sullenly, adopting his usual wary attitude whenever law-enforcement came sniffing around. He’d learned a long time ago that some of these guys were looking for a pay-off. However, as he spoke, his eyes locked onto the unfamiliar shield, seeing it wasn’t NOPD or Lafayette, some local cop looking to get paid off. After a moment, he recognised it as NYPD, the logo familiar from catching CSI on TV with Gary Sinise. ‘You’re a long way from home, pal. Don’t come round here looking for juice and spoiling people’s fun. Be cool.’

  ‘I don’t care about what you’re up to.’ The man withdrew an A4 print-out from his pocket and after unfolding it, showed it to him. ‘You recognise this guy?’

  Dusty’s eyes moved to the photo, then glanced away. ‘No.’

  ‘Not recently. You might’ve worked with him as a kid.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Gerry McGuinness.’

  Dusty took a closer look then licked his lips.

  ‘You’re honest with me, you never see me again,’ the man said. ‘You lie or stay quiet, I’ll get the local police to bring you in for ripping people off.’

  ‘You spell his name with a G? Not a J?’ Dusty asked, trying to buy some time to think.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Dusty shot the cop a sideways look, trying to work out if he could shake the guy off, but realised it was futile. He swore. ‘OK. Better pull up a chair.’

  *

  Like at Kemah, lights flashed and pulsed in the dark as people squealed and screamed on the rides. Periodically, exhausted children were pushed by, slumped in strollers fast asleep or carried by their parents, several with rainbow colors smeared around their mouths from a popsicle or candy.

  Although it was a place of fun, there was an underlying atmosphere Archer couldn’t quite put his finger on. Possibly it was the vivid memory of Coney Island on the 4th and seeing Issy sell getting shot fresh in his mind, or maybe just knowing McGuinness had worked here, which Cynthia, the bartender’s colleague from Kemah, had told him was where the man had trained years before.

  We chatted over shifts and after work, she’d told Archer. Said he grew up in some family carnival that toured Louisiana. Did all kinda jobs for them. After some hard thinking, she remembered details that Archer wrote down like they were winning numbers for the lottery.

  Bilodeau Family Show, she said.

  That’s the company he worked for.

  Archer looked around the glittering, sensory overload of the Bilodeau touring carnival, and imagined a knife materialising out of the crowd, thumping into the wood beside his head. Or into his throat, like the guard at the theater in Manhattan. A learned skill.

  The carny from the basketball stand, who’d told Archer his name was Dusty, appeared from around the corner and took a seat beside the NYPD detective, dumping a drinks cooler on the grass. He took out several bottles of beer, Dixie printed on the label, which seemed to be the local brand; Archer had seen it advertised on billboards on his drive here from Houston. Dusty opened them both, passing one to Archer, who didn’t want to drink with how sharp he needed to be right now, but he took the beer anyway to keep the conversation greased.

  As Dusty sparked a smoke, Archer recognised a US Navy insignia on the Zippo he used to light it. ‘I enlisted,’ he said, seeing Archer looking at the lighter. He tilted his grip and showed a tattoo on his forearm. ‘Feels like a long-ass time ago, now.’ He took a long drag. ‘Why’d you play the game? You lost a couple bucks.’

  ‘To sound you out. I could talk to local law enforcement about some of the stuff you’re doing here, but you help me, like I said, you’ll never see me again. That’s a guarantee.’ Archer drank his beer. ‘A woman who works at Kemah in Galveston gave me some information. Said Gerry McGuinness told her he was trained in this show. I’ve spent most of the day on the highway trying to track down which town you were in.’

  ‘Why’d you pick me out to talk to?’

  Archer suddenly smiled. ‘You look like the oldest guy here.’

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ Dusty replied, but then grinned too. ‘Guess you ain’t lying. But listen, whatever this guy’s gotten into, I had no hand in it. I ain’t seen that kid in almost twenty years.’

  ‘I’m not here for you. Just tell me what you can about him.’

  Dusty took a pull from his beer. ‘When I got into this biz after I left the Navy, you started out at the bottom, like any job, ya know? Eighteen hour days. Feeding ponies and clearing their shit outta the stalls. Making sure concession stands have hot dogs, soda, treats. Bitchwork, but that’s how it goes. Learnin’ how the carnival runs and stays running.’ He dragged on the smoke, going back and forth between that and the beer. ‘We sleep in trailers or in tents. There ain’t no solitude livin’ like this, unless you pay out for a motel or something.’

  ‘What are the perks?’

  ‘Cash in hand work is always Uncle Sam friendly. We don’t have to shovel out for gas, utilities, insurance or pay rent. And it becomes a habit, stretching a dollar. Lot of us like the community too. There’s a reason we live on the road.’

  Archer noticed two workers from the carousel were leaning against the back of the attraction, both of them smoking. He’d sensed
them watching him but when he turned his head, they’d shifted their attention to eyeing up a couple of teenage girls walking past instead, the girls tossing their heads and pretending to ignore them.

  ‘I’m guessing not everyone who signs up for this life does it just to see kids having fun,’ Archer replied, watching the men.

  ‘Yeah. We get alky’s, junkies, ex-cons, washouts. Lot of them coming and going. People with other kinds of records. Getting a job in the nine-to-five world ain’t an option.’

  ‘Then I guess it can be dangerous?’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘So where did Gerry come from?’

  Dusty finished his beer and opened the cooler, swapping it for a new one. ‘His momma was one of them washouts. Molly McGuinness. Local girl, addicted to all sorts of shit, couldn’t hold down a job anywhere. She started working here around the same time I did, and stuck around. This was years ago. We’re talking thirty, maybe forty back.’

  ‘What job did she have?’

  ‘She was the target for our knife guy. He never put one in her, but half the men in Louisiana did, if you get me.’

  ‘Slept around?’

  ‘One of two habits she couldn’t shake,’ he said, tapping the crook of his arm. ‘Think she used to charge guys, and took that money to buy H. She got pregnant from one of them johns, and had a kid.’ He shook his head, drinking more beer. ‘Still let our blade guy throw knives at her when she had the boy in her belly. Act made a lot of money for those few months. Can’t imagine you’d get away with that these days. Health and safety, and all that shit.’

  ‘The kid was Gerry?’

  ‘Yeah. His mom got some bad sugar one night after a show when he was ten or eleven years old, and that was the last time she ever tapped a vein. She OD’d and before the cops came askin’, Gerry begged us not to let them take him away to child services. We all kept quiet, and they never knew she had a kid here with her on tour. He stayed with us.’

  ‘No records of him being born?’

  ‘He came out of her behind a tent. No hospital, no birth certificate. Probably why you been having trouble finding him.’ He sucked in cigarette smoke, and took another sip of Dixie. ‘We had another kid workin’ for us, doing the bitchwork I told you about. He was a runaway, and a couple years older than Gerry. We figured two backyard boys for the price of one was a good deal, so Gerry started helping the other boy out. Apprenticed on acts and stalls, did the bitchwork. Gerry ended up in the knife show after his momma died. He and the other kid both stuck round until they was nineteen or twenty or somethin’. That was the last I remember of them before the accident.’

  ‘Accident?’ As he asked the question, Archer’s eyes tracked a line of cars on the rollercoaster nearby as it roared past, carrying with it a chorus of screams and shouts.

  ‘Pins, wedges and r-keys hold those things together,’ Dusty said, following Archer’s gaze, both men watching the ride for a few more moments. ‘For a travellin’ show, we take the pieces off the trailer and assemble that shit on the ground. Place the center and build the track around it with sweeps connecting it all. Fix bull-plates-’

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘The platform the tubs sits on. They’re on wheels that roll along the track. We put the tubs on ‘em, then add the catwalk, front porch and exit. Takes seven or eight hours, total. All the pieces connect. Pins go in, then r-keys through the pins so they can’t slide out. Gets inspected, try a few test runs, then we’re ready to rock.’

  Another drag on his smoke. The ride roared around again, bringing with it another passing wave of screams.

  ‘We spent five or six hours every morning inspecting our big ride back then before use. Tested the system, and the cars did several runs without people. These days, if we get a mechanical fault or somethin’, we can shut the ride down immediately using the computer. Other safety measures like brake points and anti-rollback too. Got a catwalk so we can evacuate the ride easy if we need to get people off.’

  Like the bartender’s story of the missing kids at Kemah, this account was going somewhere unpleasant. ‘So it’s pretty safe,’ Archer said.

  ‘Less than five people die a year on rollercoasters in the country. That year- ‘96, I think it was - we offered up a full share with sides.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘We were up nearer Shreveport, but were on concrete, not on grass. The computer system we were using then malfunctioned on the main ride when people were cresting the upside-down loop. Locked up there, and part of the track fell apart. Load of restraints broke and people spilled out. Eight people died. A woman got her left arm taken off at the elbow and bled out. An old guy was decapitated.’

  ‘Was McGuinness there?’

  ‘Gerry was helping run the water gun stand and saw all of it. The people who fell splatted onto the concrete thirty feet from him. Carnival shut down immediately and police came in real fast.’

  ‘No outside help?’

  ‘Theme parks and midway carnivals don’t get serious legislation, man. And it varies State to State. They brought in internal and external investigators, and found some safety pins missing. Blamed it on the manager and our guy who ran the computer, some dopehead called Heywood. Both got six years inside and they made us pull the ride. Eight dead, fifteen injured; this was before the Internet and everyone filming that shit on their phones, so we survived, but still struggled like crazy for years. Kinda like some of the people who saw what happened that day.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘One of the ride jointys drank half a case of Dixie, took a wrong turn and drove into oncoming traffic on the freeway. This other backyard boy who worked with Gerry; Ruff. He’d been taking beans for a while-

  ‘Beans?’

  ‘Amphetamine. Speed. Lot of that shit here. The kid started taking more, his way of dealing with what he saw, but we got worried with how wired he was all the time. Stayed at a hundred, hyper, panicky, that kinda shit. One day he took off for New Orleans and that was the last we saw of him. Part of me always wondered if he knew more about what happened than he ever said. We never thought it was Heywood.’

  ‘How’d it affect Gerry?’

  ‘Didn’t. Not that we could see. Always was strange, even before his momma died. He had this weird stare, look right through you like you weren’t there; would freak you out. And he wouldn’t hear you unless you repeated what you said a couple more times, like his brain was focused somewhere else. Other guys thought he was slow, but I always had a feeling that kid was smarter than he let on. He bounced less than a year after Ruff. Never saw him again.’ Dusty looked at Archer. ‘What’s he been doing?’

  Archer considered what to reveal. ‘Killing kids. I think.’

  Dusty exhaled a long draw of smoke. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘A group of children went missing at Kemah in Texas around five years back, when he was working there. The disappearances stopped once he left.’

  ‘Kid Gerry as a chester. Who’d have thunk it?’

  ‘Chester?’

  ‘Child molester.’

  ‘You get a lot of them?’

  ‘In the crowds, sure. We’re always watching people, looking for rubes. Amount of kids that come through the show attracts a few weirdos. We see anyone lookin’ troubling, we get some muscle to escort them out.’

  ‘Do you get many chesters working in the shows?’

  ‘I guess. Like anywhere. I read about CEOs and politicians getting caught for that shit too.’

  ‘I’m not sure he’s molesting them. At least I don’t think so. I think he’s just murdering them. He’s shown serious skill at throwing knives too.’

  ‘That’ll be him. He took over from his momma after she died and spent time working with our knife thrower. Boy acted as the target.’

  ‘At his age?’

  ‘Told you ya had to earn your spot. But he did it different to his mom. Gerry’d do a headstand and our thrower would put a pair of blades in the target board. Gerry would split his
legs to touch them, and our guy would send a load of other blades along the inside of his legs. Created a V.’

  ‘And made the men in the audience sweat.’

  He nodded. ‘You could offer me six figures a show and you wouldn’t catch me doing that shit. Gerry learned to throw almost as good as our main guy. I thought he’d be a lock to take it over one day and make himself some good money, until people spilled outta that ride in Shreveport and he left.’

  ‘Is the thrower still here?’

  ‘Dwindel. Nah, gut cancer got him. He died ten years back. Show never hired anyone to take over the act.’

  ‘What other acts did Gerry work on?’

  ‘Most of them man. When he took over from his mom, he’d been with our fire breather for a year or so. Guy was a nutcase. Rumor was he was wanted in Jackson and Pensacola for arson. He used weird chemicals and shit for the act; make the flames different colours. Gerry stuck to him like glue.’

  ‘Different colours? How’d he do that?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Guy was a washout chemist from somewhere in Alabama. He was always mixing and cooking up shit. Taught Gerry a lot.’

  ‘You any idea where Gerry went after he left here? There’s a gap between him working here and showing up in Texas.’

  Dusty shook his head. ‘Don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Be great if you could ask around.’

  ‘I’ll do that, long as you keep that basketball score between us. But I got a feeling where you should look. I told you before, after the accident, load of our crew members said they were gonna try and catch work in New Orleans. The other kid who did the bitchwork for us, Ruffalo, went with ‘em.’

  ‘Work? You mean carnival stuff, like Mardi Gras?’

  ‘Nah, the big leagues. Amusement parks.’

  TWENTY SEVEN

  In Boston, Vargas was recuperating at a table inside a downtown hotel’s bar, and she had some surprise company. Archer’s sister Sarah was sitting opposite her, the D.C. law-firm partner having been in town for business. Vargas had a double pour of whiskey in a tumbler near her hand, listening on her cell phone, while Sarah sat opposite with a glass of wine, sipping it and waiting for Vargas to finish. The NYPD detective’s hand was wrapped in a bandage, with another around her tanned mid-forearm from where the acid had made contact.