Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  He’d checked about him nervously but had remained where he was, not wanting to find out what the consequences of disobeying his boss would be; he was able to hazard a guess. However, when he heard the second blast, followed by an anguished scream, he decided she’d want him to check it out, so left his post and walked deeper into the park to investigate.

  He had a pistol in his hands, his boots scrunching on debris as he walked.

  Then he saw movement to his right. He swung in that direction, weapon up, to see a black guy with greying hair limping towards the open mouth of an exhibit, the letters NOPD clearly printed on a bulletproof vest he was wearing. In the split-second before he opened fire, the cugine saw the guy was holding his arm, and seemed to be injured, his left leg jacked-up too.

  The cop saw him at the last second, and tumbled sideways into the exhibit as the young Baltimore gangster blasted at him, fragments of wood from the structure flying everywhere, splintering the stained, dirty mouth of the large jester laughing above their heads, his mouth so wide it looked like he was screaming.

  The cugine thought he’d hit him, but couldn’t be sure. He continued to fire until the pistol went dry, then ran to the side of a nearby building for cover and pulled the magazine before inserting a new one.

  But just as he slotted it home, he heard a sound directly above his head.

  When Bellefonte moved positions, Archer had been concealed on the roof covering him as planned, ready to drop any of the Baltimoreans or McGuinness if they appeared, unaware until he saw the NOPD detective that he’d been injured.

  He was about to whistle at him, but then saw the gangster appear and open fire. Once he’d made sure Bellefonte had got to cover, he saw an opportunity to knock this mobster off quietly while not giving his location away. The sound of gunfire being returned would act as a magnet to McGuinness or any of this guy’s friends.

  He quietly swung his legs over the edge of the roof as the younger man below reloaded, then jumped, his Timberland boots landing on the stranger’s head. He hadn’t been trying to kill the guy, just incapacitate him, but the mobster had heard a noise and was just starting to look up when Archer landed on him, his neck breaking instantly under the sudden pressure.

  On his haunches, Archer checked for a pulse, but found none; he hadn’t expected to, seeing the angle of the man’s head. So far, so good; he didn’t relish the violence, but it was either kill or be killed tonight, and that was another one down. The three police detectives on site had baited traps all over the park, and he knew from the location of the explosions that Vargas and Bellefonte had triggered a couple of them. The mob crew weren’t here for negotiation, so neither were the NYPD and NOPD cops. They were prepared to face the consequences of their actions later, just so long as they kept Issy and Sarah alive.

  But Archer wasn’t thinking about that right now; he was focused on McGuinness. He now knew the former carny was here, having seen Bellefonte with the knives in his shoulder and hamstring. Archer guessed what the child killer’s play was, to let the Baltimore mobsters make all the noise and attract the cops’ attention while he stalked the site and searched for Issy or tried to blindside Archer and Vargas.

  Not wasting any more time on the dead man at his feet, Archer looked towards the derelict building next door, Jocco’s Mardi Gras Madness, and gave a low whistle. A few seconds later, Bellefonte appeared out of the darkness. He gave the OK circle sign with his thumb and forefinger, as Archer looked at the knife jutting from the back of his shoulder.

  ‘Seems they didn’t show up to bargain,’ Bellefonte muttered, as Archer drew closer.

  ‘We need to get you to…’ Archer started to say, but then suddenly pushed the New Orleans homicide detective sideways and threw himself down, a split-second before two more blades glittered in the moonlight just above them. They both clanged into a metal ladder behind the two men, and Archer threw himself to the side just as another knife from McGuinness slashed through the air; this time he was a fraction too late and this one made contact, slicing open his calf, causing a searing flash of pain.

  Archer rolled into the shadows and fired at the mass-murdering former carny twice with his Sig, who had already taken cover. Bellefonte was scrambling for the darkness of Jocco’s again, when Archer saw movement to his left. Archer fired but the knife was already in the air, and a blade hit Bellefonte square in the chest, knocking him out of sight into the dark exhibit.

  Archer repositioned and using the wall of the building as cover, crept down on where McGuinness had been.

  But he wasn’t there, the man having melted away into the darkness again.

  As he looked around, trying to work out where McGuinness could have gone, the NYPD detective heard the sound of someone approaching, their feet crunching on the debris on the paths. He knew it was highly unlikely to be the carny, which meant Stefani had brought more men with her than they’d anticipated.

  He leaned back in the shadows and waited, his calf throbbing, anxiety rising.

  What was really worrying him now was McGuinness’ whereabouts.

  He was now in the park with Issy, who wasn’t hiding too far away.

  FIFTY THREE

  The eleven year old girl was on the west side of the Six Flags site, inside a small car on the Joker’s Jukebox ride of the DC Comics area, a section away from where Archer, Vargas and Bellefonte had laid the ANFO traps and where they thought she’d be safest.

  In the same way she’d curled up in the laundry basket that day when her family had been killed, she hugged her knees as she heard the occasional gunshots and explosions followed by screams. Suddenly she wished she hadn’t stayed with Vargas and Archer, that she’d done what they’d asked and stayed holed up in a hotel somewhere.

  They’ll protect you, she reminded herself, trying to curl up tighter into a ball.

  They always have.

  Then something unexpected happened. Issy had disassembled her cell phone when she’d fled the UK, but couldn’t bring herself to ditch it along with Chalky’s. She’d only just got it and found herself unable to just dump it in the trash. Vargas knew she still had it but what she didn’t know was that Issy had put it back together a few hours ago to play a game.

  Suddenly, the phone started ringing. Issy jumped and to her horror, realised she’d forgotten to turn it to silent. ‘No, no, no,’ she whispered, fighting to get it out of her pocket, the noise seeming to carry across half the park. This wasn’t part of the plan. She wrestled it out and killed the attempted call with shaking hands.

  But she knew it was too late.

  She panicked then started as the cell phone rang again. Issy dropped the device and slid out of the ride, her cap falling off her head. Leaving it behind too, she saw a mock Gotham City Hall forty yards away towards the main entrance and ran quietly towards it for the protection it offered.

  But away from hers, and now out in the open.

  Stefani was also on the east side of the park. She’d lifted the girl’s cell number from Vargas’ phone when they picked her up in D.C., and had called it on a whim, but then became aware of a faint ringtone to her right.

  She hobbled towards it, her leg injured from the ANFO explosion at the Mega Zeph, but slowed as she got close in case it was another trap. She tried calling again, following the ringtone to inside a carriage on some twisting ride.

  This one wasn’t baited with explosives, or it would have gone up by now. Blinking blood out of her eyes, Stefani wiped it away and smiled, seeing a red ball cap lying on the weed-entwined concrete.

  Carla’s girl had just been here.

  Across the park, Archer was racing to where Isabel was located, ignoring the pain in his calf, when he became aware of a tall figure in his peripheral vision. Knowing McGuinness was out there, Archer had deliberately kept to the shadows but threw himself down just before another knife buried itself into a wooden wall behind him, passing through the air where his exposed throat would have been a second ago. It was only a matter of time
before one of those blades struck home, and caused much worse damage than the slice across his calf.

  Archer rolled and fired his Sig, but McGuinness was as fast as his knife-throwing arm, and moving like quicksilver, had already ducked out of sight. The sound of Archer’s gunfire had attracted the attention of two of the Baltimoreans, who appeared around the corner of the building. They didn’t see Archer in the shadows but spotted McGuinness moving instead; thinking he was one of their targets, they mistakenly started firing on him and Archer saw the man stagger before ducking out of sight. It looked as if one of them had clipped him.

  As the two men walked down on where McGuinness had been standing, Archer used the moment to cut around the back of the worn, weathered Jocco Mardi Gras exhibit, intending to return to the roof and get a better angle top shot. He shoved the Sig into its holster and scrambled up the ladder to the roof, but as he rolled over the edge, the pistol slid out and tumbled to the ground below.

  Cursing, he was about to go back down for it, but then heard the sound of running feet and only just rolled back in time as bullets pinged off the top of the ladder.

  Ten seconds later, a mobster’s head appeared slowly above the level of the roof. He looked around but with the moonlight doing a good job of illuminating the space around him, saw there was no sign of the man he’d just shot at.

  Maybe he’d hit him and he’d fallen off the roof?

  Cautiously, he eased himself all the way onto the flat roof, weapon up, then started to search.

  Archer heard the guy pass by him, then silently swung himself back up onto the roof, having hung from the edge moments before the guy appeared, his camo-paint smeared hands not easily visible in the moonlight.

  He ignored the pain from his sliced-up calf as he stalked towards the mobster, the guy having almost reached the jester, the cartoonish, cracked face figure lurching over the edge of the roof.

  Archer was almost on him when suddenly sensing someone behind him, the man swung around; before he could fire, the NYPD detective tackled the mobster with a double leg takedown, knocking the man’s pistol from his hands. They rolled near the edge of the building, beside the jester’s leering face, where the mobster got a brief advantage, his hands crushing Archer’s throat as he pinned him down with his weight.

  Feeling the pressure of blood rising in his head, Archer caught sight of two Mardi Gras metal bead chains hanging from the jester’s hands. He reached out, and wrenching them towards him, quickly threw the beads around the mobster’s neck.

  Before the guy realised what he was doing, Archer quickly wrapped them round again and twisted hard. The pressure around his throat immediately slacked off as the big guy reared up, clawing at his neck; Archer used his knee to bump the man’s weight forward over him and then pushed him hard over his shoulder.

  The large mobster shouted as he was sent tumbling off the roof. He stopped falling with his feet six feet off the ground, the beads snapping tight; his hands had been jammed in the beads trying to relieve the pressure, which had prevented his neck being broken, but that probably would have been his better option. He thrashed and gargled, his feet slapping and pedalling trying to get a purchase on something, but there was nothing. Eventually, his weight ended up killing him as he slowly choked to death.

  Archer didn’t waste any more time on the guy, scanning the park from his vantage point above as the mobster below sagged then stopped moving, swaying slowly in the warm night air. While he was trying to decide his next move, he heard a scream from across the park, and instantly recognised it from nightmares Isabel had had when he’d lived with her.

  Archer raced across the roof and went rapidly down the ladder, before retrieving his Sig.

  However, he was too focused on getting to Isabel to sense the man lying in wait behind him.

  Stefani heard several more gunshots from across the park, but paid them no heed.

  She’d found Isabel. The child had been running towards the faux Main Street Square of the park when the mob queen spotted her and unloaded with her assault rifle, the muzzle flash providing a violent blast of fire and light as the shots echoed around the dark space.

  The patchy moonlight and Stefani’s messed-up equilibrium from being so close when the mannequin doll exploded meant her aim was wild, but it was close enough to cause the girl to scream and fall, before scrambling into an exhibit beside her. Adjacent to the DC Comics section, and before the faux French Quarter, bracketing the entrance, was one last attraction: The Versailles House of Mirrors.

  The House seemed to encapsulate the failed venture of the entire park. Already difficult for children to navigate, the maze inside had received its own special treatment from Katrina, all the mirrors inside now stained, some destroyed, a few cracked. Issy’s reflection shimmered and split as she ran inside the attraction.

  Stefani stopped just inside the entrance, reloading the magazine for the Galil with the last one she had, sending the working parts forward to chamber a round. She also activated the flashlight attached to the underside, and walked forward slowly, her body merging and melding in the stained mirrors.

  She found a slightly even section just before a concave one, and stopped, enough moonlight coming in from outside combined with the flashlight on her rifle, to allow her to see her reflection.

  The blast from the mannequin had added new injuries to the ones inflicted by the brat’s mother, which were now clearly revealed after the boggy swamp water had washed away the concealer and make-up she always wore.

  A stark reminder of Carla Lombardi.

  Looking at her reflection enraged her even more and she stalked deeper into the space.

  Hunting the daughter of the woman who’d destroyed her life.

  Cutting out of the shadows, Vargas ran to the ride where Issy had been told to hide, the Jukebox, and checked inside.

  ‘Issy,’ she whispered. ‘Issy!’

  The girl’s cell phone, her most prized possession, was resting on the seat, but there was no sign of the child.

  Her heart starting to beat faster from panic, Vargas looked around and saw her Liverpool ball cap lying in the weeds too. Like Archer, she’d also heard the scream but there was no sign of the girl.

  Had Stefani got her?

  Issy had her back to a corner of the mirrors, where it seemed that all the reflections were contained in this section. She could only just see herself from the moonlight filtering in, but even so, the reflections made her feel dizzy.

  She closed her eyes, praying another epileptic fit wouldn’t be triggered by any flashes of light, which were harsh as they pinged off the dirty glass. She’d taken her pill in Oxford this morning, but that was almost twenty four hours ago, and she knew their protection wore off.

  She heard the sound of movement inside the house, and froze, covering her mouth, knowing she mustn’t make any noise.

  But then her head snapped to the mirror on her right, which suddenly turned bright from a flashlight.

  Bianca Stefani was staring right at her.

  Issy’s screams were lost in the shots, which sent shards of the mirror walls flying, distorting her reflection into thousands of smaller ones, bent and twisted, all mirroring the abject terror on her face. But her survival instinct kicked in, the instinct that had got her to this night. Stefani had thought she had the girl, which was when she’d fired, but the reflections were deceptive.

  She obliterated five of the walls, putting bullets into the forehead of the reflection of the girl every time she saw her, but despite being shattered by the impact, enough of the mirrors were left for her to see her an even more distorted reflection, a grotesque parody of her former self, her bare, disfigured face everywhere she looked. She screamed in rage. It felt as if Carla was there taunting her, the woman right there with her, even now.

  But the reflection of the kid had gone. Frustrated, she started to move faster, bumping into the walls as she cut back and forth, searching, knowing it could only be a matter of time before she fou
nd Carla’s spawn.

  Ahead of her, Issy cut left and right, desperately searching for the exit, but when she found it, she stopped dead and gasped in horror.

  McGuinness was out there in the street. He hadn’t seen her yet but she was trapped.

  Whichever way she went, there was someone who wanted to kill her.

  She ran back into the House, whimpering in fear, then going to her right, stumbled upon another member of Stefani’s gang. However, this man was no threat, and never would be again; his boss’s wild gunfire had punched through the walls of the maze and the guy had been accidentally hit in the chest, now lying slumped on his side in a pool of blood. With a chill, she realised he’d been creeping in from the other side, and if Stefani hadn’t hit him, Issy would have run straight into the man as she tried to get away.

  Instead, she looked down at the pistol in his open palm. Vargas’ orders that she’d drummed into her, about never touching guns, echoed in her mind.

  The sound of the bullets that day her family had been destroyed, those images she was never able to un-see, watching the devastation guns could cause to human bodies through a crack in the bathroom door, and seeing it again during that night in the building in Harlem.

  You have to survive, she told herself. For them. Vargas would understand.

  She picked up the handgun, in time to see a reflection of someone behind her and spun.

  Stefani rounded the corner and found herself facing the child, who was holding a pistol.

  She stared at the youngest child of her nemesis, not even registering the dead body of her guy behind the girl.

  For one brief moment, it wasn’t Isabel Lombardi looking back at her, but Carla.

  The girl hadn’t raised the gun yet.

  Neither had Stefani.

  They kept staring at each other, jagged reflections around them, one wide-eyed and so young she’d never even held a pistol, never mind fired a bullet. The other with a face torn apart by the girl’s mother years before and with now even more damage from the ANFO explosion tonight, blood running down her neck and onto her chest from fresh injuries, a woman who’d lost count of the number of people she’d killed or had killed.