Trick Turn

by Tom Barber

  Issy brought the gun up, at the same time Stefani did hers, but the mob queen fired first.

  Click.

  Issy hadn’t expected her to pull the trigger so fast, and braced herself to die; it took a couple of seconds to realise an empty magazine had saved her life.

  Stefani’s face twisted as she dropped the gun to the ground, looking at the girl.

  ‘So do it,’ she said quietly.

  Issy’s fingers tightened. She was breathing so fast, it almost felt she was hyperventilating. Moonlight pinged off the glass, and she thought she could smell almonds, her trigger for a fit.

  But she didn’t drop to the ground.

  The gun did instead.

  She couldn’t do it. She stood looking in terror at the woman ahead; smiling in triumph, Stefani pulled a shard of broken mirror from the wall. She lunged forward and grabbed Issy by the hair, who’d tried in vain to run.

  ‘Not your mother’s daughter,’ she hissed, jamming the glass against the girl’s throat to cut it from ear to ear.

  ‘No she’s not, you bitch,’ Vargas said, appearing behind the woman in the exit, her reflection on the wall behind Issy. Stefani spun as Issy dropped and Vargas fired twice with her handgun, hitting the woman in the chest with both shots.

  The bullets cutting through her, Stefani dropped to her knees, looking at Vargas in surprise, then slumped over. The NYPD detective lowered her gun, looking at Issy who’d crawled around the corner and was peeking back around it, about to come out.

  But her daughter’s eyes widened, and Vargas saw a reflection of someone appear behind her, too late for her to turn.

  FIFTY FOUR

  Inside Jocco’s, Bellefonte was on the floor but still alive, the last knife from McGuinness having hit him in the vest. But the fall backwards had pushed the other blades further into his shoulder and hamstring, and his arm had stopped working. Despite the pain, he didn’t want to remove them, knowing that could mean he’d bleed to death.

  I ain’t dying in this place, he thought angrily. Not tonight. He’d heard more gunshots and screams, and knew he and the NYPD team were in trouble. ‘Code three, kid,’ he told Ruiz, on the radio. ‘At least one officer down. Ignore previous instruction. We gotta take the risk.’

  ‘Copy that! Hold on!’

  Bellefonte tried to haul himself up, wanting to get to Looney Tunes, where Archer had laid out a final ‘Alamo-style’ plan if they were in trouble against the Baltimoreans or McGuinness.

  He knew they’d need his help, but he felt dizzy and slumped back down.

  ‘Why’d I stop drinking…caffeine,’ he muttered, trying again to haul himself back to his feet.

  Having done battle with Archer and Bellefonte, and being winged by one of Stefani’s moronic team, McGuinness had retrieved some of the knives he’d thrown earlier, pain pulsating in his shoulder from the gunshot wound. He was stalking past some of the buildings in the faux French Quarter in a black rage, his determination to find the girl now at fever pitch, when he heard a noise behind him.

  He spun, ready to throw, but then saw the man who’d hired him, Marco, dragging Isabel’s adoptive mother out of a building into the street, a gun to her head.

  ‘Where’s your boss?’ McGuinness asked.

  ‘This bitch killed her,’ Marco said, bleeding heavily from the first blast by the Mega Zeph but not as badly injured as Stefani had assumed. Vargas struggled and he cuffed her over the head with his pistol hard. ‘Call for the kid,’ he told her, pulling her back up by her hair as a thin stream of blood started to trickle down her neck.

  ‘She’s got company,’ McGuinness said, scanning the park around them for any sight of the blond cop, the one he’d spoken to on the phone. ‘Keep your eyes-’

  Then a figure appeared to their right, from the Looney Tunes section. Holding tight to Vargas, Marco shifted his aim that way, as McGuinness turned but they saw it was one of the Baltimore mobsters, not the cop.

  ‘Yo, Marc, come see this,’ he called, waving the men over.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We got him good. Just come see it.’

  Marco dragged Vargas with him, McGuinness following, and when they reached the clearing, both men heard her gasp.

  The group saw a body suspended upside down from the carousel chains, the corpse limp, his arms hanging down lifelessly.

  McGuinness stopped and stared at the unexpected sight.

  It was the cop he’d seen on the news that day when the girl’s fake death had been orchestrated at Coney Island. The blond man, who McGuinness had talked to on the phone earlier in the day, and who he’d almost skewered with one of his knives ten minutes before.

  The guy had several bullet-holes in his head, his eyes open and vacant as he hung from the chain, his body rotating slightly in the breeze.

  McGuinness stared at the dead cop. ‘Who got him?’ he asked.

  ‘Must’ve been one of the boys,’ the big tattooed man said, moving forward and nudging Archer with his assault rifle. He laughed. ‘Strung him up, Wyatt Earp style.’

  ‘Shout for the kid,’ Marco said, switching his attention to Vargas, pushing his gun tighter against her head. ‘Last time I ask.’

  ‘She don’t need to,’ McGuinness said, Marco and the other mobster swinging around to see what he was looking at.

  Forty feet away, Issy had just appeared on the side of the ramp tracks for a wooden ride, The Road Runner Express, her eyes as wide as saucers as she saw the scene in front of her. She’d been following them silently, but was now looking beyond McGuinness and staring at Archer.

  ‘No,’ she whimpered.

  Marco moved his gun away from Vargas’ head towards the child, but McGuinness stepped forward to push the barrel back down.

  ‘Mine,’ he said quietly.

  Then grinning as widely as he had at the theater in Chelsea, McGuinness took a pistol from the belt of the goon beside him, then began stalking towards her, knife in one hand and gun in the other, sliding each way to block her as she looked at ways to get past him.

  ‘Please don’t,’ she begged, her voice shaking from terror, not taking her eyes off the man as she backed up. ‘Please. I never did anything to you.’

  ‘You thought you could run from me forever?’ he asked, throwing the knife in his hand up and catching it again with practiced ease.

  She kept going backwards, now stepping onto the tracks of the low ride.

  ‘And you and your friends thought you could trick me here? In my place?’

  During the conflict between the NYPD and the Baltimore Italian mob outfit, both sides had pulled the unexpected in their quest to either kill or protect the girl.

  The surprise knife throw at Nassau. The Venus flytrap hidden in her bed. The fake death at Coney Island on July 4th, and McGuinness’ arrival in Oxford to finish the job.

  Due to either luck, intelligence or twists of fate, none of the tricks and traps had worked.

  Up until now.

  Bellefonte had told Archer you could never con a carny; Archer had gambled his life on the fact you could. Ever since the NOPD detective had made that comment, a piece of Archer had known to beat this man, they were going to have to outsmart him. After he’d dealt with the mobster lying in wait for him below Jocco’s, rolling the moment he sensed the man and shooting him before the guy could get a shot off himself, Archer realised if they ended up chasing each other around the park all night, sooner or later McGuinness was going to get one or all of them. Archer knew he wasn’t going to defeat him without something extra.

  He’d come to a rapid decision, then quickly headed for the kids’ section where the former carny had worked before torturing and killing so many innocent people. This was the place Archer knew the man’s confidence would be the highest and therefore where he’d be more likely to gravitate to. He needed to catch the man off-guard and get close enough to disable or kill him. No more chasing him through the shadows.

  He’d jumped up and looped the chain around his
feet, then fired a couple of shots before stowing his pistol in the back of his waistband and hanging down limply, pretending to be dead.

  It was possibly the biggest risk he’d ever taken, and that was saying a lot, but he had to lure the killer in and catch him completely off guard if they were going to have any hope of getting him.

  But that roll of the dice had worked, partially because Issy had appeared, something that wasn’t part of the plan.

  Her arrival had distracted everyone.

  As the two mobsters, Vargas and the carny killer watched the girl back away, Alice moved her head slightly and her eyes flicked Archer’s way, the man holding her too focused on the confrontation with Issy and McGuinness playing out in front of him to notice. She’d seen Archer with the face-paint applied earlier, but although knowing it wasn’t real, she wasn’t sure if this was a trick or he really was dead.

  Moments later, she got her answer.

  Behind them all Archer tensed his abdominal muscles and slowly, silently, raised himself up.

  The two bullet-hole make-up and fake blood on his face, painted on by Issy when they were on top of the Zeph, was so realistic it had fooled them all.

  The big man just in front of him heard the chains tinkle and started to look around, but Archer was ready and broke his neck with one violent wrench. As the mobster fell, Archer was already pulling his Sig Sauer hidden in the back of his own waistband. Marco turned, taking his gun from Vargas’ temple to switch aim, realising it was a trick, but she slid down instantly in his grip and Archer dropped him with one shot to the head.

  As Issy froze in shock, realising Archer was still alive, McGuinness swung round to face the carousel.

  And realised too late he’d been conned.

  ‘Issy, down!’ Vargas screamed, the girl standing in the line of fire beyond the man trying to kill her and the man trying to protect her.

  The girl did as she was told and leapt off the ride to the ground as Archer fired three times and hit the murdering carny in the chest, drilling him backwards. He fell, then tried to rise again, his hand slowly going towards the last two knives at his belt.

  But then a final shot from Vargas, using Marco’s pistol, hit him in the head.

  The ex-carny turned killer-for-hire splayed back on the tracks, his lifeless eyes staring up at the dark sky. With Marco’s blood on her neck and side of her head, Vargas stayed where she was for a few more moments, then ran over to Issy. Not sure if there were more mobsters out there, Archer curled up and quickly released himself, dropping to the floor of the carousel.

  Vargas ran forward and helped Isabel away from the tracks, stepping carefully around McGuinness’ body, then moved back towards Archer, who was studying the area around them carefully.

  ‘What the hell were you thinking?’ she asked, hitting him in the shoulder. ‘You scared the shit out of me. And you’re hurt.’

  ‘It’s fake,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s fake.’

  ‘Not your face, idiot, I know that. I mean, that,’ she said, and Archer looked down, seeing the blood on his calf from the knife wound.

  ‘I’ll live,’ he told her. ‘Did we get them all?’

  As they were talking, both became aware of the familiar sound of approaching helicopters in the distance, as well as sirens from the highway, apparently speeding towards the abandoned Six Flags site.

  ‘Who made the call?’ Archer asked worriedly, looking up at the choppers and thinking of Sarah. ‘Leo?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ she replied, but as she spoke, Archer looked beyond her to see Bellefonte stagger into view from the Mardi Gras section, then collapse onto the path. He ran over to the man, constantly checking around them, but there was no sign of any more of Stefani’s men. ‘I contacted Ruiz,’ Bellefonte said weakly, as Archer helped him up. ‘Thought we were losing it.’ He looked at the knife in his leg. ‘The…carny?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  Bellefonte sighed and shook his head. ‘Like I said…you win the award for most interesting visitor, brother.’

  Archer smiled briefly, just before the choppers’ spotlights lit them up and Vargas waved her arm, cruisers pulling into the lot followed by the sound of doors opening and closing. But Sam pulled out his cell phone and called Shepherd, picturing his sister and the danger he was sure she was still in. The night was far from over.

  In fact, unknown to him it was, thanks to the persistence of Marquez and Josh back in New York City. Around the time that McGuinness was shot in the head, one of Stefani’s remaining men at the docks in Baltimore heard the sound of another beating taking place from inside the main office and spat, hoping they were making Vincent suffer. He deserved everything he was going to get. He looked over at their other man acting as another lookout further down the port.

  When he checked back twenty seconds or so later, the man was gone.

  He frowned and flicked away his smoke, but before he could make another move, he was caught in a chokehold and dragged backwards into the darkness.

  After the injuries to the team in Boston, Baltimore QRT, their version of SWAT, were taking the NYPD’s warnings very seriously. And they relished any opportunity to put moves on organised crime in the city.

  The rear window to the main office disintegrated from the small place charge put there, and before Stefani’s two men could react, they were both shot as they lifted their weapons to fire. Beside them on the floor in the office, Vincent and Sarah both curled up and closed their eyes as the front door was breached and the task force entered, securing the location.

  ‘The woman’s here,’ one of them called back to the door. ‘She’s safe.’

  FIFTY FIVE

  Once the New Orleans Police Department took over Six Flags and were fully briefed by Archer, Vargas and Bellefonte, they’d brought in cadaver dogs and then carried out excavations all over the site. With the inter-State nature of the man’s crimes, the FBI had taken over the official investigation, and with the CT Bureau’s help, were able to track McGuinness’ path since he’d left the touring Bilodeau Family Show as a late teenager, almost twenty years before.

  Fourteen skeletons were found at Six Flags, and the bones of four children were found in the excavated basement of the house McGuinness had rented in Almeda, Houston. DNA tests revealed they were the kids who’d gone missing from Kemah Boardwalk. At Six Flags, other missing persons were also ID’d using DNA testing but several sets of bones remained unidentified; the police said it was likely they were homeless people and junkies who’d lost contact with their families years before, so were impossible to trace. All of whom had made the mistake of going out to that park after the hurricane, when McGuinness had been lurking in the shadows waiting for victims.

  Nine of Stefani’s men and the woman herself had died at the park, but knowing how the mob worked, the FBI had followed through with Vincent Castelione’s promised relocation. Feuds were passed on through generations and memories were long, as Natalie Cortese had told Vargas and Marquez earlier in the week. In return, once he’d recovered from his severe beating by Stefani’s men, Vincent had come up with a full testimony. He confirmed that Bianca Stefani and her husband Rossi Fusella of the Baltimore Italian mob had disappeared from Maryland four years previously when both federal heat on them was cranking up and Stefani had tried to not only have Carla but also two of her children killed. The Feds were told about Stefani’s erratic progress across Europe, including where to find two bodies in a lake in Iceland and another outside Copenhagen, followed by her return to Baltimore in May and subsequent relentless pursuit of Isabel Vargas. Vincent also told them he’d been the one who’d revealed her location in Iceland to the old mob family in Italy who were hunting for her. He’d wanted her gone, intending to take over the lead role for himself.

  Half of that wish had ended up coming true. He and his family were gone from Baltimore by the start of the following week.

  ‘For someone who was kidnapped at gunpoint, you seem to be taking this pretty w
ell,’ Sarah’s partner in their D.C. law firm said, looking at his colleague as she sat in her wheelchair behind her desk. The desk out front was vacant right now, their secretary Kelly recovering from being hit over the head by the Baltimore gangsters when they’d shown up to kidnap her boss.

  ‘You learn to, when you’re related to my brother,’ she said with half a sigh. ‘But this time it wasn’t about him.’

  ‘The girl?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s safe. Thank God.’

  ‘What happened to the gang in Baltimore?’

  ‘Dead or disappeared. Sam told me their leader wanted all traces of the little girl and her family wiped off the map. All she ending up doing was destroy her own organisation and get herself killed.’

  ‘How’s the girl doing?’ Sarah’s legal partner asked.

  ‘Fine, I think. She’s back in New York City.’

  ‘They’re not relocating her? She must’ve been through a hell of a lot.’

  ‘No. They think she’s safe now. No need to hide anymore.’

  Her colleague nodded. ‘Good.’ With that, he left the office, but Sarah didn’t immediately go back to her work.

  She lifted her skirt slightly and stared at the mark the cigarette burn had left when the Baltimore mob guy had stubbed it out on her leg.

  Just as she’d been doing the day they’d come here for her, she stared at her feet.

  Did I imagine it? she told herself.

  She reached forward and removed her high heel, looking at her pantyhose-covered foot. Sitting back, she stared at her big toe, concentrating. She sent a command via the synapses in her brain and body.

  Something happened.

  She stared at it, then focused and tried again. And succeeded again.

  She covered her mouth, tears brimming in her eyes. She hadn’t imagined the sensation from the cigarette.