Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  ‘Why am I carrying this shit?’ his friend, Chace, asked, straining under the weight of the metal.

  ‘I’m pulling it up, whiteboy. Go take it outside.’

  ‘How am I gonna get this to the truck?’

  ‘Take time-outs. And keep a lookout for five-oh.’

  Chace left, struggling to carry the heavy metal in his arms, stumbling as he made his way out of the abandoned attraction. He tripped and swore, not being able to see clearly in the fading light, but managed to keep his balance. As he got closer to the exit, he spotted a shopping cart lying on its side; relieved, he put down his heavy load, righted the cart then dumped the stolen metal inside. This was gonna make transporting it to their ride outside a helluva lot easier.

  Now alone, Laroy picked up his flashlight and checked out the tracks disappearing into the darkness of the ride, seeing nothing but dollar signs. Scrap went from anywhere from thirty cents a pound for aluminium to a couple bucks for Bare Brite copper. It was chump change for some, but for guys like Laroy and Chace, it could land them a score, as well as buying food and cans of Dixie for a while. Laroy could stretch a twenty for two weeks, and if he could get a good price for this shit, they could get themselves hooked up with some decent brown sugar for a couple months even.

  He had his own supply right now, and Chace had had no part in raising the funds which had paid for it, so he wasn’t planning to share. In the dark, the flashlight in his mouth, Laroy quickly tied off, filled a needle and shot up, and then realised he’d scored big.

  The H slowed everything down, that orgasmic rush of pleasure flowing in his veins like he’d died and was in heaven, nothing but ecstasy. The flashlight dropped out of his mouth, rolling down his body and came to a rest on the ground beside him.

  He slumped over to one side, chewing his lip slowly, and passed out.

  Sometime later, he came to, woken by something hitting and tinkling down the tracks.

  The flashlight was still on, but the light was dimmed, almost dead. Laroy picked it up and directed the fading beam where the noise had come from, fumbling around him until he found the socket wrench he knew was there.

  The flipside of the euphoric pleasure from a full needle was the feeling he had now, an overwhelming sinking low, the misery that would only bounce when he could get his hands on more heroin. But where the hell was Chace? He should’ve been back by now. Not knowing what had caused the noise he’d just heard, but suddenly very sure that he didn’t want to be in here by himself, Laroy scooped up the remaining scraps of metal and went out the same way his idiot friend had gone.

  He made it back outside into the failing dusk. His eyes immediately darted around, looking for any sign of guards or NOPD, listening for the giveaway sounds of jingling keys or boots on the ground.

  He heard nothing but the rustling wind. He turned and saw the jester Jocco grinning down at him from above the entrance to the exhibit. With a heroin comedown, to Laroy the face looked menacing. They’d come here in an old flatbed truck Chace had lifted from his uncle, but with sense returning post-shoot up, he found himself worrying that his partner-in-crime had driven back to the city without him. Laroy didn’t want to spend all night out here in the park. He wasn’t a man given too much imagination but even so, this place gave him the creeps.

  Laroy hurried away from the attraction, looking for Chace, not wanting to call out and alert any guards. But as he walked towards where they’d left their vehicle, he came across Chace’s scrap metal.

  It was scattered everywhere on the weed-ridden path ahead.

  A shopping cart he’d clearly dumped it in to get it to the truck was tipped over onto its side.

  But there was no sign of Chace. His dumb ass musta got picked up, Laroy thought, looking around; he decided to go and load up the truck before getting outta here. In his world, it was every man for himself. He righted the old cart and started loading it. But glancing back over his shoulder, checking around him carefully for any sign of police or wandering guards, he thought he saw movement in the distance.

  He stopped what he was doing, squinting into the lowering sun to see if it was Chace, his eyes stinging as he suffered his heroin comedown.

  The Mega Zeph ride was directly ahead, an intricate coaster with no loops but undulating ups, downs and humps, going up high into the sky. It was supported by a network of struts, which meant Laroy could see through them.

  What caught his attention was something on the lower section of the ride, that he knew hadn’t been there before.

  Laroy lowered his scrap and walked closer, curious to see what it was. As he drew closer, he went cold. His breathing became ragged and his stomach turned to liquid.

  It was Chace. He had a gag tied around his mouth, but it wasn’t his mouth that Laroy was looking at.

  His friend had two thick knives driven through his palms, securing him to the wooden struts of the ride.

  Chace’s pain-filled eyes looked past Laroy, who spun round to find himself looking up at a lanky man, spinning a knife with a finger ring at the end of the hilt.

  Before Laroy could react, an uppercut punch connected under his jaw, snapping his head back and shutting off the remaining daylight.

  Across the park, the former Bilodeau Family Show worker who’d entertained thousands of people on his bike as Batman for the DC exhibit hadn’t been as lucky lately as Laroy in scoring heroin, but he’d take that any time over what he saw happening by the Zeph.

  He was coming back from some food stores, as many canned goods as he could carry crammed in plastic bags, when he rounded the corner in time to see the punch. The junkies and lowlifes hanging out here kept out of each other’s way, but he’d seen Laroy and Chace occasionally and knew who they were. The ex-bike rider dropped one of the bags in shock, spilling cans to the concrete, as he saw the tall figure grab the collar of the unconscious Laroy and start dragging him, while Chace writhed in agony, pinned to the ride.

  The rider then realised the man might look this way, and started frantically picking up the cans he’d dropped, not wanting to show any sign he’d been here. Gathering them up, he ran into an empty stall. Through the slim gap between two broken slats of what used to be the gift shop, the stunt rider saw the man stop dragging the unconscious junkie for a moment and look around, a sixth sense seeming to warn him he was being watched.

  In those few seconds, the bike rider got a good look at the tall man’s face.

  ‘You?’ he whispered, recognising him as one of the backyard boys from Bilodeau.

  Then the guy continued to pull the junkie he’d just hit into one of the buildings and they disappeared from sight.

  *

  The former rider tapped the piece of paper Archer had brought from Kemah. ‘It was him. No doubt. Got a good look at his face, and remembered him from Bilodeau. Hard to forget with how tall that son of a bitch was, even as a teenager.

  ‘Back then, I always stayed on the DC side and slept in the Gotham exhibit. Used to go to the food stores over on the east to get supplies, but that was all. Never tried to collect scrap or take pieces off the other rides.’ He wiped sweat off his neck. ‘I used to hear shit, too. At night.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ Bellefonte asked quietly.

  ‘Screams, from somewhere. Always thought it was bad H or my mind playing tricks when I was unable to score. Then I saw those two guys, one of them pinned to the ride by what looked like knives or something. Don’t know what happened to the other one, but it weren’t gonna be anythin’ good. Realised then, them screams might not have been in my imagination. I hustled my ass outta there that night. Got arrested a couple weeks later trying to buy and got clean in the joint. But I never went back to the Six Flags. Never want to either, man.’

  ‘Did you ever tell police what you saw?’ Archer replied.

  ‘So they could try to pin any missing persons on me? Forget it. I was already sent down for hard time. Didn’t need to give ‘em any extra reasons for a life sentence or pushing for a
death penalty if they think I killed those guys.’ He tapped the photo with his finger. ‘But this son of a bitch; I remember him being real weird at Bilodeau. Was having a beer with another guy from the tour who got a job at Six Flags working the Flyer. He knew your boy better than me. Said he asked McGuinness how he got a job at the park; we all knew he didn’t have no birth certificate, no school education. Turns out he paid some fraud thief in Slidell to get him a fake certificate, social security, all that shit, so he could work places.’

  ‘Know what name he was using at the park?’ Archer asked. ‘He used McGuinness in Texas, but there’s no record of SFNO employment on that same man’s tax records.’

  ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid. Avoided him any time I saw him, and never got close enough to see his nametag. But I ain’t surprised you’re looking for him.’

  ‘Have any murders been reported out there?’ Archer asked Bellefonte.

  ‘Nothing like what he just described,’ Bellefonte said. ‘Few bodies have been dumped in the parking lot by gangs. But no-one killed inside, as far as we know.’

  ‘There are still hundreds of people unaccounted for after Katrina,’ the former stunt rider said. ‘Hundreds. That ain’t including the homeless or the forgotten. Someone with prospects wouldn’t be living in a flooded-out, rusted Six Flags. If these kinda people went missing, no-one would report it, so you don’t know.’

  ‘For missing, read killed, you mean,’ Archer asked. The man nodded. ‘You stayed mostly on the DC Comics side, right?’

  ‘Yeah. The west.’

  Archer pulled up a map of the amusement park on his phone. ‘Do you know where exactly you saw this guy dragging the junkie?’ he asked, showing the former stunt biker rider the screen.

  ‘Yeah, around here, I think,’ the man said.

  His finger was pointing at the Looney Tunes area, the southeast section.

  ‘Where the young kids hung out with their parents,’ he added, unknowingly echoing what Archer had said earlier when they were searching for the man’s employee record. ‘Might be wrong, but pretty sure I saw him working around there when the park was open too.’

  THIRTY EIGHT

  ‘This couldn’t wait til morning?’ a guard on night duty asked Bellefonte, as the NOPD homicide detective showed him his badge. Archer shut the passenger door, the two men having returned to Six Flags within an hour of meeting the bike rider. The guard on duty tonight had walked across the parking lot towards them with his hand on the grip of his pistol. Like his colleague earlier in the day, he was private security, not NOPD.

  ‘If it could, we wouldn’t be here,’ Bellefonte replied sharply. ‘Take your hand off your weapon.’

  ‘Just doing my job,’ he said sullenly, letting go of the grip. ‘What you looking for?’

  ‘Info we need to follow up on,’ Bellefonte told the man. The guard watched as the NOPD detective and Archer went to the back of their car, clearly still curious about what had brought a pair of cops out to the park at this time of night. Bellefonte opened the trunk and took out two flashlights he’d collected from his Division earlier. They clicked them on then off, testing them, the beams lighting up police vests also in the trunk. Archer looked at Bellefonte.

  ‘Might be an idea to vest up,’ he said. ‘We come across anyone in there, they might not roll out the red carpet.’

  Bellefonte nodded, taking the two he had stowed inside and passed one to his NYPD colleague. Once they were strapped up, Archer pulled his Sig and checked the chamber, Bellefonte doing the same before the two men looked at the dark abandoned amusement park, a relic of a happier place and time.

  They walked towards the entrance as the guard continued to watch them curiously, having returned to his car across the lot. Bellefonte’s cell went off just as the two men moved inside, and he answered quietly as Archer took point, the two men walking through the faux French Quarter then taking the overgrown path to the right, retracing their steps towards the east section where they’d been earlier in the day.

  ‘Ruiz is burning through the employee records focusing on the young kids’ section,’ Bellefonte told Archer, ending the call. ‘Still hasn’t found McGuinness, though.’

  ‘OK. This is where we’re at, right?’ Archer said, looking at a zoomed-in map of the park on his cell phone as Bellefonte looked over his shoulder. They were facing New Orleans East with their back to the water inlet from the Pontchartrain which the park had been built around. ‘Looney Tunes to the right,’ Archer said, looking in that direction, where old abandoned rides cast shadows in the moonlight. He glanced beyond them, and saw a derelict ice cream store, restrooms and a kids’ theater which was blocking off the view of the main entrance.

  In Looney Tunes, a small coaster called the Road Runner Express was directly ahead of Archer and Bellefonte, positioned twenty yards in front of what had once been Pepe Le Pew and the Swings de Paris. The seats had been removed, rust setting in, the chains for the swings hanging down forlornly, never to be used again. Some occasionally brushed against each other and tinkled in the warm night breeze.

  Beyond the old chains was a small Ferris wheel and another cart ride named after the Tasmanian Devil. ‘I’ll head over there and scope it out,’ Bellefonte said, nodding to his right. ‘Gimme your cell number, just in case. Realised I ain’t got it.’

  Archer texted it over, relieved to see the phone had a good signal; after Bellefonte drop-called him so the NYPD detective had his number in return, Archer walked off to the left, heading up the east side of the park as Bellefonte went south to look around Looney Tunes, where the bike rider said he’d seen McGuinness in the months after the storm.

  What are you hoping to find? Archer thought. McGuinness was here thirteen or fourteen years ago, if what Bruce Wayne said was true.

  But if he killed people in the park, he had to dispose of the bodies somewhere. Even someone as warped as this man clearly was, wouldn’t want decomposing corpses taking up his space. Archer thought of those dancing black and white voodoo figures painted on the wall of the coffee shop where he’d first met Bellefonte this morning. Skeletons. He guessed there could be quite a few here if they only knew where to look.

  But right now, he was trying to gain a sense of where McGuinness had lived while he was here. The north-east section of the park had been called Mardi Gras. To Archer’s right was a coaster with a crescendo loop, like The Heatwave at Carousel Gardens. Archer looked at the high outline of this ride, called The Jester, and remembered climbing onto the upside down cart in City Park earlier in the day and feeling the brakes give way. He then retraced his footsteps from his earlier visit that afternoon, but this time had the map to hand and information from the stunt bike rider.

  He stopped on the weed-ridden path with a water ride to his left, the Spillway Splashout, but his eyes were concentrating on his right. His pal Jocco was grinning down at him above the Mardi Gras Madness attraction, the entrance to the ride under his cracked smile black and empty. Archer pulled his Sig Sauer and moved forward, holding the pistol in one hand and his flashlight at shoulder height with the other. He directed the beam into the ride, then hearing a sound, swept it around him in a wide arc. He had no intention of being jumped by some hopped-up junkie thinking NOPD was here to arrest them.

  Nothing. He looked to his left and fifty yards down the path, saw the outline of the wooden coaster The Mega Zeph, the ride where a man had been pinned to the wooden struts according to the bike rider. He briefly holstered his Sig and taking out his phone again, scrolled with his thumb, checking out the map. Looking back, he saw the DC Comics section was on the other side of the park.

  A sound came from inside Jocco’s. Pushing his phone back into his pocket, Archer pulled his handgun again in one smooth movement and shone the light in another wide arc.

  Moments later, he saw a raccoon wriggle out of the entrance and scurry away out of sight.

  As he lowered his weapon, Archer’s phone buzzed and after checking it, saw a message from Bellef
onte.

  Inside kid’s theater come quick.

  As he headed towards the Looney Tunes section again, he was running through various scenarios. Bellefonte with a gun to his head, someone forcing him to text to lure his fellow cop in maybe; with what the stunt rider had told them vivid in his mind, he approached the theater quickly but cautiously.

  ‘Took your time,’ a voice said from behind him. Archer jolted and snapped around. Bellefonte smiled and clicked his flashlight on under his own face, lighting himself up. ‘You’re jumpy, brother.’

  Archer put his weapon back down. ‘Could’ve shot you, idiot. What is it?’

  Bellefonte’s lowered the flashlight. ‘Come take a look at this.’

  He led the way into the back of the theater. The space reminded Archer of the school in Chelsea, only this place was decayed and forgotten, dust everywhere. The floorboards creaked as Bellefonte went up onto the stage, and Archer watched as he knelt beside a trapdoor.

  He twisted a flattened metal O handle and pulled it up, the hinges not making a sound.

  Bellefonte glanced back at Archer as he lifted the door back and forth. ‘Everything else in this park has gone brown from rust or is falling apart. But someone’s oiled these hinges so they move silent.’

  ‘You gone down there?’

  ‘I was waiting for you.’

  Archer smiled. ‘Appreciated. After you.’

  ‘This is your case, my friend.’

  ‘This is your city. And your find.’

  Bellefonte muttered some words under his breath and shone the flashlight down under the stage. An angled wooden step ladder was positioned underneath. Bellefonte laid his flashlight on the stage facing the rear wall, eased himself through the narrow space and started to climb down, before collecting his flashlight again. Archer glanced back at the theater entrance, in case their arrival had attracted attention from anyone lurking around the park. But there was no sign of anybody.