Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Three hundred and fifty thousand. Almost double your rate.’

  ‘She’s worth that much to your client?’

  ‘Dead in a box, yeah. This kid’s mother and my boss have a history.’

  ‘How quick does she want it done?’

  ‘Soon as possible.’

  ‘No. I meant, how quick does she want the child to die?’

  Marco paused. ‘We’ll leave that up to you.’

  ‘Leave the file there,’ he said, tapping the space on the bench between them, not taking his eyes off the soccer game ahead. He tossed the last two M&Ms, catching both in his mouth effortlessly, then rolled up the empty wrapper into a tight ball and threw it into a trash can, dead center.

  ‘You’ll call to confirm if you’re interested?’

  The man didn’t respond, and Marco got the message the conversation was over.

  *

  ‘The former leading FBI agent’s name is Benjamin Tamaloa,’ Vargas told Vincent in the lobby of the hotel, ten minutes after the Baltimore mobster had finished explaining how Marco hired the hitman. She’d called Shepherd and asked him to get Ethan to check the details of the FBI agent’s child’s murder. ‘Still lives in D.C., about thirty minutes away. I’m gonna go get some clarification. If what he tells me matches up, I’ll believe your story.’

  ‘You still don’t trust me?’

  ‘You arranged to have my child killed, asshole. What do you think?’

  ‘I just gave you all this because I can see where this is going,’ Vincent told her, the tension between them flaring again. ‘Your kid gets wiped out, then someone hits back the same way and that becomes the new normal. I got my son to think about. But if my people discover I ratted them out, me and my family are gonna be next on the tall man’s shit-list. Don’t get my kid killed to save yours. Appreciate the risk I’m taking and respect what I just told you. I didn’t have to do this.’

  ‘You didn’t need to unleash this monster on an eleven year old girl either. Seven people are dead already because of him.’

  ‘Wasn’t my call, lady. You got plenty to run with. But I want something too, before I give you more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get the FBI involved in witness protection for me and my family. You do that, I’ll provide the lowdown on Stef and where she’s been for the last four years. About some unsolved homicides too. Certain couple foreign countries in Europe might be awful interested in what I have to tell you.’

  ‘Wit-Sec? She’s got you that worried?’

  ‘You’ve never met the lady. And I’m done with her bullshit.’ He looked at his watch, then looked around. ‘I’m going back to Baltimore. You go talk to this former agent who’ll back up what I told you. Then call the Bureau to start setting up protection and contact me. Take down my number.’

  The friction between them had eased off slightly during the latter part of the conversation. She took out her phone and tapped it in. ‘How’d you know I was here in the first place?’

  ‘One of my guys followed you from New York to Boston, and back down here. Relax, he’s gone,’ he said, seeing a flush of anger return to her face. ‘Sent him home.’

  ‘Baltimore’s got an Italian-American community but never had a big mob scene,’ Vargas said, saving his number. ‘So if your neighborhood-fresh-recruit theory is right, apart from you, where’s the big mafia presence there?’

  ‘Guy said once, there are too many potential rats in Baltimore for the mob to trust anyone.’

  Vincent put his sunglasses on and nodded.

  ‘Guess he was right,’ he added, as he turned and left.

  While Vargas was talking to the mobster, further south in the New Orleans area Archer and Bellefonte had scaled the catwalk at Six Flags on one of the large remaining coasters and were studying the landscape.

  The sky looked as if someone had painted a watercolor of blue and purple, with flashes of orange, above the horizon. The wind rustled through the reeds and trees beneath them in the park, the sound of distant doors and shutters bumping or tapping against their frames in the breeze. Traffic moved along a highway in the distance, lights flashing on and off periodically on cell towers beyond them. Archer hadn’t wanted to leave the place yet; something about it was unnerving, yet he felt compelled to stay; it was as if he could sense McGuinness’ presence here from long ago somehow. His Kemah employment file said he’d started working in Galveston in summer of 2007; assuming he’d stayed at Six Flags until Katrina in August 2005, there was an almost two year gap in the former carny’s life.

  ‘How’s this one still standing?’ Archer asked, quietly rapping his knuckles on the wooden hand support for the walkway on the coaster.

  ‘The Mega Zeph, it’s called. Steel inner frame, wooden exterior. Built to survive hurricanes.’

  Archer stared out at the landscape again and the townships between where they were and the city centre. A long way from Queens and Manhattan. ‘What kind of area is New Orleans East?’

  ‘Low-income, dangerous. Second highest homicide rate in the area behind Algiers. Part o’ the reason why Six Flags didn’t bother rebuild, I guess. This place was one of their least profitable parks before the hurricane.’

  The two men went quiet again, looking at New Orleans ahead.

  ‘How much did you lose in the storm?’ Archer asked.

  ‘A lot. Some of that shit you can’t replace, you know?’ His eyes studied the city in the distance. He sighed, quietly. ‘Lot of people lost more than that, though. You said your cop partner’s from down here?’

  ‘Yeah. That’s right.’

  ‘I used to dream about leaving this place. But I’ll never do that now. I don’t want to. Louisiana’s made me who I am, good and bad. Only took that bitch Katrina for me to realise that.’

  ‘Before Ruffalo told us the accident at the Bilodeau show in ’96 was intentional, I almost felt bad for McGuinness,’ Archer said. ‘Seeing what he’d gone through at that age, like my colleague’s daughter. Bad parents, no choices. Mother using heroin regularly when she was pregnant with him.’

  ‘Tough break.’

  ‘So I thought. But knowing now that he planned that accident? Took pleasure in it? It wasn’t a teenage prank gone wrong. McGuinness always intended for those people to die.’ He leaned his forearms on the guard rail lining the walkway. ‘Like those four kids who went missing at Kemah after he started working there. I’m sure he was responsible. I know it in my gut.’

  ‘Well, we missed him here by almost fifteen years,’ Bellefonte said, glancing around them at the abandoned park, the two men casting dark shapes against the skyline.

  ‘Can we get access to employee records for this place?’

  ‘Sure. They’ll be on the city files somewhere. You don’t want a break or something?’

  Archer gave him a smile. ‘I didn’t come here to sleep,’ he said, and started walking back down the old catwalk towards the ground, Bellefonte following.

  THIRTY THREE

  Vargas had driven across the capital to Alexandria, calling former FBI agent Tamaloa’s home address on the way. She’d asked if they could meet for thirty minutes or so, saying she was police from New York and wanted to pick his brains about a former case; she found the man working a mower on his front lawn in the warm July late afternoon, a strimmer resting on the grass near the hedge. American flags were still pinned on lawns or hanging from porches after the July 4th celebrations, the lines of mailboxes and neatly cut grass showing this was an upscale neighborhood.

  After she pulled up, Tamaloa turned off the mower as she exited the car and walked down the path in the centre of the garden towards him. He lacked some of the bulk usual in a man with his Polynesian heritage, but then, his family tragedy may have played a part in that if what the mobster from Baltimore had told her was true. Grief had a way of whittling a person down. ‘Detective Vargas?’

  She nodded, shaking his hand.

  ‘You got here fast.�
�

  ‘Dealing with a ticking clock on this case.’

  ‘What’s it concerning?’

  ‘Organised crime.’ She considered how to phrase the next part as sensitively as she could. ‘The Portella gang. They showed up in D.C. a few years ago-’

  Tamaloa’s attitude changed, and the sunglasses went back in place. ‘This talk is over, lady. Goodbye.’

  ‘The man who killed your son is trying to kill my daughter,’ Vargas said desperately, as he walked away. She realised she’d given away that detail of her still being alive, in her desperation to get him to talk. Hopefully he didn’t press.

  He stopped at the mower, his hand closing into a fist as it rested against the handle.

  He knocked it a few times gently then turned and looked back at her. ‘Did you just say you know who killed my boy?’

  ‘I think so. And we’re doing all we can to catch him before he does it again.’

  Ten minutes later, they’d re-located to a local bar a few blocks away at the former FBI man’s request, saying he needed a drink and something to eat: if Vargas wanted to talk, they had to do it while he did both. It was still early, so the place wasn’t crowded and they could talk without being overheard. Tamaloa ordered a Sam Adams and Cubano sandwich, Vargas settling for a glass of OJ and some peanuts from a bowl at the bar. The constant threat to Isabel had been killing her appetite. ‘First beer I’ve had for three months,’ Tamaloa told her. ‘All your fault.’

  ‘If this is too diffic-’

  ‘Nah, I’m OK. If someone learns something from what happened to my son, that’ll accomplish something at least.’ His first sip of the beer turned into a three second pull, and he used the sleeve of his shirt to wipe sweat from his forehead. ‘Know how when a person dies, everyone talks about what a good, kind person they were?’ he told her.

  Vargas recalled Issy’s funeral. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Yeah, well my son wasn’t a good kid. He was once, and maybe he coulda been again one day, but in the years before he died, Michael was an asshole.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He wasn’t always bad. But he was always an average kid. Never shone at anything. Two people have a child and somehow hope they’re gonna throw the ball like Tom Brady or play the piano like Mozart. Some people have better genes than others, I guess.

  ‘He tried hard at things when he was young, but nothing ever worked out. I think he began to figure what’s the point? Busted him smoking some of my cigarettes when he was eleven. He and his friends got suspended for drinking booze in the toilets at school a year later; got picked up for shoplifting and stealing bikes. Nothing major but it was becoming a pattern. I saw him sliding, but none of the discipline worked.’ He looked at her. ‘You ever get bullied?’

  ‘Think almost everyone has been, at some point.’

  ‘Not anymore though, right.’

  ‘No. Not anymore.’

  ‘Well, Michael turned into one of the bullies. I never wanted to hurt him, but comes a point, talking doesn’t work anymore, ya know? I was pulling eighteen or twenty hour days at the Bureau, then coming home to find him being disrespectful to his mom. But one day he hit her. Culture I come from, that’s where you step in. I’m not proud of what I did, now he’s gone. But you don’t treat your mom like that. I gave him a beating. He left that night and that’s the last time he ever slept in our home.

  ‘Back then, I was running a squad dealing with organised crime and we had a new target. These Italians you talked about, the Portella gang. They’d shown up from the old country and were doing some bad shit near the Navy yard, setting up gambling rings, threatening businesses if they didn’t pay tribute, shit like that.

  ‘But then they started killing people. Anyone who challenged them. They got into it with a gang from across the Anacostia, and strung up some of their guys out of windows in project housing by their feet after they’d shot them in the head. Public warning. I was in the middle of trying to smash them back to Europe while Michael started causing more trouble. He and his girl found an old abandoned place in the bad parts of the lower Wards and they were squatting there, I think. She was shooting up heroin. He started too.’ He swallowed and drank more beer. ‘According to his autopsy.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘His girl gave us the lowdown, after police found her. She said they were outside the city on the way to some ditch spot they used to hang out at when some guy waved them down with what looked like a broken-down truck. They were out in the middle of nowhere. She told us they stopped to help, but that’s bullshit. She admitted that later under questioning. Said Michael decided to rob the guy. Easy mark, he thought.

  ‘Anyway, this asshole stun-gunned her and when she woke up, she was tied up in the trunk of his car. She heard Michael screaming. Managed to bite and wriggle out of her binds, popped the trunk from the inside and ran for her life. Passing car picked her up. Crime scene team found Michael buried out there in the woods a couple days later.’ He swallowed. ‘Whoever killed him stabbed out both his eyes and cut off his balls, before they sawed off his hands and head. He must’ve been alive for a while before the end. I try not to think about that part.’

  ‘The girl. What happened to her?’

  ‘She lives with her grandma now, out in West Virginia. Don’t bother going over there trying to get something outta her. Grandma told me she don’t speak much and never goes outside.’

  He finished the beer and the bartender came over with his food. Tamaloa ignored it.

  ‘Day after the report was out they found a body, my cell goes and a voice on the other end says if I don’t drop the case against the Portella boys, my daughter’s next, and then it’d be the children of my team. No brain required for that decision.’

  ‘You didn’t report the call?’

  He shook his head. ‘I lost one kid. I wasn’t about to lose another. Came up with some bullshit reason and shut down the case. Buried some evidence we had, and the squad ended up working new targets once I was gone. I resigned six months later and the Italians got what they deserved a couple years after. Ended up in a shootout with a gang from the projects who wanted payback for what they did to their friends. Most of them died. Those who lived went to prison.’

  He glanced over and fixed her with pain-filled eyes.

  ‘No-one’s ever caught the man who took my son’s life. Now you’re telling me you know who he is?’

  ‘Before I give you any information, did Mike’s girlfriend describe him to police? Physically, I mean? His build.’

  ‘Only thing she said was that he was real tall. And that she heard him laughing when Mike was screaming.’

  In Oxford, Chalky and Isabel had been shopping in the city’s Covered Market, an historic indoor space with many unique, family-run businesses. Having stopped for lunch, Issy was munching her way through a sausage roll and watching a TV showing an early round game at Wimbledon. One of the men’s top seeds was gliding around the court against a valiant but severely out-matched lower ranked player. A case of the inevitable.

  In front of her, Chalky was eating a sandwich, constantly aware of the people around them, his Glock ready to hand as always but hidden out of sight. ‘Vargas told me people dump on the Brits for their food, but I love it,’ Isabel said.

  ‘Archer ever cook for you when you lived with him?’

  She paused. ‘He ordered pizza.’

  As Chalky’s smile widened to a grin, he heard his phone ringing and answered. ‘Hey ma,’ he said, seeing his mother’s name on the screen. She lived in London, still in the same house he’d grown up in; across the table, he saw Issy smile and pretend to clutch her heart. How sweet, the gesture said. He tossed a small piece of bread crust at her. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Where are you, Daniel? I just called you at home.’

  ‘I’m out at the moment, but I’m around,’ he said. ‘Just taking a few days off. Using up some leave I never used.’

  ‘I’d love to see you. Tell me where you a
re.’

  ‘Next week, maybe. I’ll be in touch after the weekend, Mum. I’m with friends right now, I need to go. Everything OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. Speak soon.’

  Inside her home in London, having done her utmost to hide any trembling in her voice, Chalky’s mother hung up, looking at Gerry McGuinness standing over her.

  A wickedly sharp knife in his hand was resting against the side of her neck, the sharp steel on her carotid artery pressing so hard that she was afraid to swallow in case the movement punctured it.

  She was so scared, the seat below her darkened as her bladder betrayed her.

  McGuinness stared at her for a few moments. Then he pointed at the computer in front of her.

  ‘You said you’re his next of kin.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So log into his bank account,’ he ordered.

  ‘I’m not sure-’

  ‘I’ll put every sharp knife in that kitchen in your body. Every place I can think of. Y’all won’t be the first person I’ve done that to this week. Stop wasting my time. Move.’

  She went to the computer and sat down, shaking so hard she could barely type. Despite it being strictly against the rules, she knew her son’s details; Chalky occasionally needed her to do some banking on his behalf when he was going to be out of contact for any length of time on an operation. Right now, she thanked God he’d told her, but even so, it took her the last attempt before she was logged out before she was successfully able to access the account, her fingers tapping the wrong keys in her terror.

  Keeping the knife to her neck, McGuinness leaned in and looked at the recent transactions for the debit card. He pushed her out of the way and scrolled through the rest of the statement, finding what he was looking for.

  Receipts from card payments at cafes, bus stops and food stores, a lot of them with the tag of the specific location.