Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  ‘I won’t, man. I swear.’ He dragged on the smoke again, and before he could stop himself, another question came out of his mouth. ‘Why’d you do it?’

  McGuinness glanced up at him with those empty dark eyes again.

  ‘Why not?’ he replied, the grin reappearing on his face as he started covering over the pins in the dirt.

  *

  ‘You two caused that incident?’ Archer asked, at Carousel Gardens, over two decades later. Ruffalo was now in cuffs slumped in a chair inside the manager’s office; standing beside Archer, Bellefonte looked thoroughly pissed off as he gingerly rubbed the side of his head where a nice bump was forming.

  ‘Way he sold it to me, we’d lock them at the top of the loop. Score some cash from spilled wallets maybe. Break up the boredom of working that shit, day in, day out. It was meant to be a dumb joke.’

  ‘Eight people died.’

  ‘The joke didn’t end up being funny. Not to me anyways.’

  ‘You’re selling it as all his idea,’ Bellefonte said. ‘So what’s with the shit you just pulled here? Minus the missing pins, it was almost exactly the same stunt.’

  The scowl on Ruffalo’s face deepened. ‘Before he kicked my ass out the house, my dad told me somethin’. A saying. Came from Ben Franklin, he said. Three people can keep a secret if two of ‘em are dead. Same goes for two people, I guess. Only me and him know what really happened with that coaster. When you showed up asking about Gerry, I figured you were gonna work it out. And that’s one step away from him comin’ to find me. I needed time to split.’ He paused. ‘And I knew how to mess with the ride. We had practice.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’ Archer asked.

  ‘Shit…must be coming up to twenty years.’

  ‘And you’re still scared?’

  ‘You would be too if you knew the guy. I thought I did, until I saw how he handled that accident. He tricked me into helping him.’ He sighed. ‘So I set up the same kind of safety bar release, just in case people like you came asking and I needed a chance to take off. I’m already going south once I die. What’s a few more bodies hitting the floor?’

  ‘You’re claiming pulling those pins back in ’96 was meant to be a prank,’ Bellefonte said. ‘But it wasn’t just that for McGuinness?’

  Ruffalo paused. ‘Collecting loose change or fallen wallets was a bullshit excuse to get me to help him out. I was a jointy on the ride back then, and showed him where the safety pins were when he asked. He had spatters of blood on him from where those people hit the concrete near where he was standing. He weren’t that close to where it happened by accident. He played me into helping him kill them.’

  ‘You spent a lot of time working there with him, according to Dusty,’ Archer said. ‘Paint us a picture of this guy. Who are we looking for?’

  ‘He grew up in the show and learned a lot of tricks. One of his best was how to play people. Con them. He worked with almost every attraction, so picked up a lot of skills.’

  ‘How’d he take his mom’s death?’

  ‘Don’t think he cared; always said she was a whore. Her kicking it got him a better spot in the show too. He never knew who his dad was. Don’t think she ever did, neither.’

  He paused.

  ‘Gerry weren’t a good person. When he helped out on stalls, he’d push shit too far and get into arguments with rubes. He wanted to fight ‘em, which was why he was moved around a lot on different attractions. And he was one mean son of a bitch.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘To anyone weaker than him. He used to attack smaller kids in the fairs, make them give him money, or just do somethin’ else to hurt ‘em. When we were fourteen or fifteen, one of the horses was found dead in its stall during a tour. Someone had gone at it with a knife. Cut its eyes out. Slashed it up and almost sawed its head off. Our trainer was real upset, he loved them animals, and we all got questioned. I thought it was probably Gerry but didn’t say shit. Didn’t want to risk him doin’ that to me.

  ‘He used to carry a knife around with him, one our knife thrower Dwindel gave him, and that day, I saw it had dried blood on it when he opened it to cut an apple.’ He paused. ‘Some people are just broken, you know? They don’t come out right. He was like that. There was somethin’ real wrong with him.’

  ‘Dusty said his mother was still doing heroin when she was pregnant,’ Archer said quietly.

  ‘Yeah. Maybe it were that, pickled his brain or something. I never met anyone like him before, or since. And don’t want to, man.’

  ‘So you came here after you got 86’ed from the Bilodeau show,’ Bellefonte said. ‘Your old buddy ever show up?’

  ‘Yeah, he came here about seventeen, eighteen years ago, looking for work. Almost shit myself. Thought he’d come to keep me quiet. But I’d never talked to anyone about what we did; he knew that. There was nothin’ for him here so he moved on. Last I heard, he took a job at Six Flags before the storm. Never saw him again after that. Thank Christ.’

  ‘Six Flags NOLA?’ Bellefonte asked.

  ‘No, Six Flags Wisconsin, dumbass. What do you think?’

  Bellefonte opened the door and spoke to two officers waiting outside. ‘Take this asshole to booking. We’re done here.’

  ‘What did Gerry do?’ Ruffalo asked, as they hoisted him up.

  ‘Let’s just say he’s upped his game,’ Archer said, stepping aside as Ruffalo was escorted away.

  Behind them, The Heatwave had been shut down and the rest of the park was closed off for the time being. The people who’d fallen from the ride were being loaded into ambulances to be thoroughly checked out at the nearest hospital; the boy who Archer had tried to save had landed right on the edge of the castle, bouncing off onto the ground, breaking an arm, a leg and some ribs in the process. But thanks to the NYPD detective, he was still alive.

  The torn, tattered bouncy castle which had saved them all was lying at the base of the loop of the ride, the thick PVC now completely deflated and spread out over the tracks. News crews were being kept at the gates, but were rolling footage already, unwittingly providing more media coverage to the Isabel Vargas case.

  ‘Miracle no-one was killed,’ Bellefonte said, staring over at the rollercoaster. ‘I’ve worked with police from all over the country over the years. You win the award for the most interesting so far, brother.’

  ‘How’s the head?’

  ‘Scratch tea, I could use a beer,’ he said, rubbing the bump again.

  Archer smiled. ‘So Gerry lit out for Six Flags NOLA,’ he said, getting back to their main focus. ‘That park must be outside the city centre? You said these Gardens was the only place with rides inside the limits.’

  Bellefonte nodded. ‘Six Flags is an official corporation. Wouldn’t his employment have been on his tax records that your people found?’

  ‘Maybe he used another name, or got paid cash in hand. I don’t know. He kept below the radar. Can we get over there and talk to someone at the park?’

  ‘Be kinda tricky, right now.’

  ‘Why? Ruffalo just gave us another link in the chain.’

  Bellefonte withdrew his car keys. ‘Come with me. You’ll see what I mean.’

  Further north in the country, as Archer and Bellefonte got into the NOPD detective’s car and Jax Ruffalo was being hauled off to custody after his last ever day of employment at Carousel Gardens, at a baseball park in Baltimore a young boy swung a bat and a softball cracked off the metal.

  ‘YEAH VINNY!’ his mother called from the bleachers, as other parents cheered, the little boy taking off for first base. ‘Run!’ He made it to 2nd before the other team collected the ball and got it to the baseman. The woman rose and cheered, clapping loudly before looking around for her husband, who was down behind the bleachers with his finger in his ear.

  ‘Where is she?’ Vincent Castelione Senior asked, ignoring the game as he talked on his cell.

  ‘I followed her to Boston and down to D.C., Vin,’ one of his guys replie
d. ‘She just checked into a hotel.’

  ‘What’s she doing?’

  ‘Doing what cops do, I guess. Being nosy. Stefani left a trail behind when she left New York all those years ago. This chick’s not only police, she’s the kid’s mother. Adopted her after her parents died.’

  ‘She was at McGuinness’ house in Boston?’

  ‘I think so. Our boy took out most of the SWAT team but that bitch got out of there somehow.’

  ‘Which hotel is she at?’

  ‘Marriott. Don’t know which room. Want me to stay on her?’

  ‘Yeah. Don’t lose her. She gets too close, we’ll push back or set our guy on her once he’s dealt with the kid.’

  He ended the call and walked back up the bleachers. When he sat down, his wife punched him in the arm. ‘Earth to douchebag. That’s your son out there. He just hit a double and you missed it.’

  ‘Good job, Vin,’ he called belatedly.

  ‘What’s goin’ on with you?’ she asked, sitting down as another child walked out to home-base, a large bat resting awkwardly over his shoulder.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Is it work?’

  ‘What have I told you asking me about that shit?’ Vincent Senior ignored her, watching the batter miss the first ball thrown to him. The ages of the kids down there ranged from nine to twelve, Little League which they played all summer.

  His eyes shifted to his son on 2nd base. Vincent had spoken with his usual confident attitude on the call, and would never have admitted it to the other guys, but the current situation with the hunt for Isabel Vargas was giving him sleepless nights.

  His son was his only child, after many years of trying. As he watched him, a picture flashed into his head of his boy lying dead on the grass, bullet-holes in his chest and forehead, blood seeping out onto the grass and turning it crimson.

  Or a knife going thump as it smacked into his forehead, blade first.

  His wife had no idea about the order to kill the Lombardi kid, but it hadn’t been sitting right with her mobster husband from the moment the hit had been ordered. He’d done a lot of bad shit in his time, but none of it had involved children; for him, when that order came out, a line had been crossed. He knew how it could escalate.

  ‘I gotta take off,’ he said, after another minute, his guy’s call from D.C. making it impossible to concentrate on the game.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘You like not having to work for a living? You know the deal.’

  ‘How are we supposed to get home, Vincent, if you’re taking the car?’

  ‘Hey Phil,’ he called to another parent, who turned round to look at him. ‘You do me a solid and drop my wife and kid off at home? I gotta take care of something.’

  ‘Sure thing, Vin.’

  ‘Problem solved.’

  His wife shook her head. ‘You’re sleeping on the couch tonight, asshole. When he sees you’ve left the game, Junior’s gonna be upset.’

  ‘He’ll live,’ the boy’s father replied, walking down the bleacher and stepping down onto the grass, heading towards where their car was parked.

  THIRTY ONE

  Just over a thousand miles to the south, Bellefonte parked his car in the Six Flags New Orleans lot. He and Archer sat there for a moment, looking at the site ahead of them, before opening their doors and stepping out.

  ‘Welcome to what happens when a hurricane hits an amusement park,’ the NOLA police detective said. Archer had wondered why the man had been so cryptic back at Carousel Gardens when he’d said it’d be difficult to talk to people working here.

  Now he saw exactly why.

  Hurricane Katrina had decimated the park, and it was clear there’d been no attempt to rebuild, the place abandoned and left to the elements. Archer glanced up at the main park entrance sign showing the Six Flags insignia and logo. CLOSED FO R STORM was printed underneath in blocky black lettering on a white background, similar to an old movie theater advertising what was showing on the screens inside, but with an extra gap in the lettering of the middle word. It looked as if it had been put up there in a hurry.

  ‘How was it levelled so badly?’ Archer asked.

  ‘Drainage pumps failed during the storm,’ Bellefonte said, starting to walk towards the entrance, Archer going with him. One other car was parked in the lot, occupied by a security guard who got out to intercept them, but as he approached, Bellefonte showed him his badge. The man stepped forward to check it, nodded and without a word, walked back and returned to his air-conditioned vehicle, picking up his newspaper and resuming where he’d left off. ‘We’re in a low-lying section of NOLA East,’ Bellefonte continued. ‘Meant this whole area was under six or seven feet of floodwater after the storm. That shit’s corrosive, brackish, full of bacteria. Dined out on the park like a free lunch.’

  ‘Was the place submerged?’ Archer asked. His footsteps trod down weeds that had sprouted through the cracks and spread across the concrete, nature reclaiming the deserted space.

  Bellefonte nodded. ‘For an entire month. Eighty per cent of the park buildings were totalled. All the flat rides too. Only large ride to escape a load of damage was Batman, which was over there.’ He pointed to the left side of the park. ‘Six Flags headquarters sent a team to pull it out and company salvaged whatever else they could. Ride parts, lights, security cameras.’

  ‘You know a lot about it.’

  ‘My kids loved coming here. And I read the papers.’ He looked at the scene and sighed. ‘You’re looking at $32 million worth of damage.’

  Archer didn’t reply. The two men walked into the park, through open empty turnstiles that once would have seen lines of people eager and ready for a day of fun ahead. Just inside the entrance, there were several low buildings with balconies either side, built in a style to mimic those in New Orleans itself. Due to their desolate surroundings and battered appearance however, they bore more of a resemblance to a deserted Wild West saloon town now rather than the French Quarter.

  Birds sang in the distance, a couple of crows cawing, as Archer stopped, taking it all in. The glass in the windows of the buildings inside the park was either completely gone, or all that was left were jagged fragments set in the frames. Slats of wood had been ripped away, blown off or torn from structures and were now scattered around the buildings and on the paths. He and Bellefonte’s feet crunched on the pieces of debris as they continued onwards.

  ‘How far are we from the city?’ Archer asked.

  ‘French Quarter is eighteen miles away.’

  ‘Ruffalo called this place Jazzland at one point.’

  ‘Previous owners. Six Flags took it over a couple years before Katrina. It’s still under their ownership. They’ve been trying to offload this place for years ever since. Bad timing, huh?’

  As they walked deeper into the site, a place where McGuinness had ended up working according to his old pal Ruffalo, Archer saw a lot of the walls were tagged with scrappy, ugly graffiti. Badly-sprayed sad faces, profanity; crude comments and questions. Dusty, faded soft toys, cuddly bears or cartoon fish, lay scattered on the ground alongside the occasional piece of plastic cutlery or teacups. Littered among them were empty bottles of vodka and old, used syringes, a lot of them cracked.

  Someone had spray-painted an outline of a person on the ground, in imitation of a crime scene.

  Archer wasn’t sure it was a joke.

  ‘So Lorenzo Cortese thinks Bianca Stefani relocated to somewhere in the D.C./Baltimore area,’ Vargas said, sitting inside the lobby of a Marriott hotel in the capital city. She’d checked herself in and was now on a call to her guys back at the Bureau.

  ‘What he told us,’ Josh said. ‘Swore he wasn’t lying.’

  ‘I’m gonna try to make an appointment with Metro,’ she said. ‘See if she’s known to the capital region, or has a record.’

  ‘I searched the National Crime database but she hasn’t been arrested since she lived in New York,’ Ethan said. ‘Wherever s
he’s been, she’s done a good job of laying low.’

  But she’s been able to order hits on eleven year old children, from wherever that might be, Vargas thought. ‘I could give the FBI a shot.’

  ‘They’ll want something in exchange,’ Shepherd said. ‘If they play ball, at all. There’s only so much we can tell them.’

  She understood what he meant. If this turned out to be a manhunt for an inter-State murderer, the FBI could pull rank and whip the case away from the NYPD, meaning Issy’s fate would be in other, anonymous hands. They’d also discover the fact the girl’s death had been faked, and the more people in the know meant an increased risk of the secret becoming common knowledge. Vargas didn’t trust anyone else with this and neither did Shepherd. Their next moves had to be very carefully thought through.

  ‘Any update from…the other side?’ she asked, avoiding mentioning a certain city.

  ‘Chalky called this morning,’ Shepherd said. ‘He and the girl are fine. She’s spending most of the day watching Wimbledon on TV. Has taken a shine to the food too, apparently.’

  Vargas smiled. ‘Anything with fries, she’s happy. I’ll call you back in a few.’ Hanging up, she rose and stretched out her back. Seven hours in the car had become almost eight with the Beltway traffic. She rose and started dialling Metro PD, considering how to best phrase what she was going to ask. Intercity police co-operation was rarely straightforward; the Boston task force’s cynicism regarding her requests before the acid attack had been pretty standard.

  Then a voice stopped her. ‘Yo. Detective.’

  She turned and saw a large, black-haired man wearing a Baltimore Orioles baseball jersey standing behind her. Immediately, she tensed; no-one knew she was here other than her team, and the attacks both on her and Issy had left her extremely edgy.

  She took a quick step back, her hand moving to her holster, the move unnoticed by the other people in the lobby; the man snapped forward and caught her wrist.

  ‘Relax,’ he said. ‘Relax. I’m not here to hurt you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked, his hand gripping her arm.