by Tom Barber
Not letting himself be goaded, Archer looked at Bellefonte. ‘We’ve been tracking your movements over the years.’
‘You don’t know shit.’ Pause. ‘Apart from Kemah. You got lucky there.’
‘I’ve got a load of knives sticking out of a door under an amusement park theatre telling me otherwise. And someone who told me he can ID you pinning an innocent guy to a ride. Just like you tried in New York, right? Shame for you she turned her head.’
Archer and Bellefonte glanced at each other again as the phone went silent.
‘Six Flags,’ Archer continued, glancing at the time. ‘Six hours. Come by yourself.’
‘I’m the one givin’ orders.’
‘Not this time. I’ll be there. So will the girl.’
‘You expect me to believe you’re just gonna hand the kid over when I get there?’
‘She’s Vargas’ daughter, not mine. And your employers have my sister. Unlike Isabel Lombardi, she’s my blood.’
Archer waited for a response. After a few moments of silence, there was a click.
‘He’ll know we’re planning something,’ Bellefonte said.
‘Maybe, but he’ll be there. And this time, we’ve got a brief advantage. He might believe what I just said about my sister and Issy, because that’s exactly how he’d think.’ Archer glanced around. ‘He’s not here already, or he’d be watching Arrivals and know Issy is with us.’
Bellefonte looked at his watch. ‘So we’ve got a few hours. At most.’
‘I heard a flight departure announcement over a tannoy in the background. Sounded like he’s in an airport somewhere.’ Archer’s eyes remained on the NOPD detective. ‘You still don’t like it.’
‘You heard what the stunt rider said. McGuinness worked in that park and lived there after Katrina. You’ve been out there twice, one of those times in the dark. Your colleague has never been. I ain’t familiar with the place as much as I need to be, but he’ll know it inside-out. That’s a huge advantage for him.’
‘Then we need to adjust the odds,’ Archer said. He whistled and waved to Vargas, who took the hint to get back inside the car with Isabel.
‘Are we leaving?’ Issy asked.
‘We’re going into the city, sweetheart. We’ll tell you the plan on the way.’ Archer glanced at Bellefonte. ‘Can you get us to a Walmart somewhere? We need ammo, and to mix up something more explosive than a bullet from a gun. Bait some traps of our own.’
‘I can do better than that.’
‘What do you mean?
Bellefonte opened the driver’s door. ‘You’ll see.’
Inside their real estate office in Baltimore, Marco’s cell rang. Stefani’s eyes snapped over to him as he answered, the other men in the room quietening down to listen.
‘Yeah,’ he replied, then listened. ‘What time?’
They all waited.
‘McGuinness,’ he told Stefani when the call ended. ‘Said the kid’s in New Orleans with her cop mom and the brother of the wheelchair lawyer.’
‘We know where?’ Stefani asked.
‘They told him to meet them tonight at the old abandoned Six Flags down there. Looks like the leverage worked. They’re gonna hand her over.’
She rose from her seat immediately. ‘Then why are we still here? We’re going to the airport.’
At Dallas Ft Worth International, McGuinness stared at his cell after making the call to his employer’s muscle in Baltimore. Still determined to bag the girl himself, he’d considered the use Stefani’s gang could play in this and whether he was even going to tell them where the meet had been set up, the money no longer the driving force, but then he’d decided they could provide a valuable distraction and keep the cops occupied, who he had no doubt were prepping an ambush. He knew the Brit cop from New York wouldn’t just hand over the kid and the woman definitely wouldn’t. If they were there together, McGuinness was sure he could stalk them down, knowing the place as he did and get them to reveal where the child was. He had a talent of pulling information out of people.
He felt a rush of anticipation; they’d brought the fight to his backyard, which was a cataclysmic mistake.
But something inside him sounded a small voice of caution.
That cop on the phone had known about Kemah. The theater at Six Flags. The ‘accident’ with Ruffalo at Bilodeau back in 1996.
Far more than he should have known.
The lanky carny-turned-serial-killer checked the short haul flights and saw one for Louis Armstrong, an hour and twenty minute journey which would get him there before 11pm. Taking apart his phone then breaking it into pieces, he wiped them down then hid the fragments under some discarded newspapers in the trash before walking towards the ticket machine, having ditched the wheelchair.
He wasn’t concerned about his lack of weapons. All he’d need would be knives.
And he had a couple of special sets still hidden at the park that the New York cops wouldn’t know about.
FIFTY
‘Did she get out?’ Chalky asked from his hospital bed in London, lying back on the pillows, the time now past midnight after a dramatic day. He’d been operated on in Oxford to repair the damage to his shoulder caused by the knife and to remove the shotgun pellets from his thigh, but had then been released into the care of a hospital in the capital, the doctors only letting him out of the John Radcliffe on the understanding he would remain under medical supervision for at least twenty four hours, despite him declaring he was ready to get back to base. Once he’d understood he wouldn’t be transferred unless he agreed, Chalky gave in.
‘Yeah, she did,’ Fox told him, standing beside the bed. Cobb had agreed one of them remain on duty with Chalky until they’d located his attacker. ‘She made it onto a plane to New Orleans.’
‘Did we have anyone pick her up? At the other side?’
‘Archer sent Port a text which indicated he’d be there,’ Fox said. ‘She’ll be with him now we hope. Plane landed almost two hours ago. Resourceful kid.’
‘You have no idea.’ He frowned, and looked up at Fox. ‘You said, we hope. Haven’t you heard?’
‘Not a peep.’
‘Something must be wrong, then.’ He started to struggle to sit up.
‘You need to rest, mate,’ Fox said, putting his hand on Chalky’s uninjured shoulder. ‘They’re an ocean away. And there’s nothing more you can do. You’ve done your bit.’
Chalky sagged back onto his pillows and as he looked at his hands, an IV connected into a vein on the left, saw Take Tablet scribbled there. He remembered writing it this morning in the café, sitting with Issy, who was now on another continent, that psychopath still searching for her. ‘Do they know yet how the carny…found us?’ he asked on an exhale, leaning back as he closed his eyes.
Thankfully, before Fox had to answer, Chalky had drifted off to sleep.
*
‘I feel like the kid in Home Alone,’ Vargas told Bellefonte, an hour and a half later at Six Flags, as they prepared to confront the man who’d been responsible for so much misery and death, and who was now intent on killing her adopted daughter. They were placing a small carton full of a bulk compound explosive at the support joists of the Big Easy Ferris wheel, near the inlet from Lake Pontchartrain.
On their way to Six Flags, Bellefonte had taken them to a giant Walmart, Issy staying in the car with Vargas who used the time to try and memorise the layout of the park at Archer’s request, using a map Bellefonte had saved onto his phone. Once the two men had walked the aisles and bought the necessary supplies, the group had stopped at some offices for what looked like a construction company; Bellefonte had emerged after almost five minutes carrying two white sealed bags with an orange hazard label printed front and centre in one hand, other items in a black bag slung across his shoulder.
‘What are in those?’ Issy had asked as he got back into the car.
‘Fireworks,’ he replied, with a brief smile.
As expected, two guards were i
n the front parking lot when they’d arrived, one of them recognising Archer and Bellefonte from his duty the night before. Bellefonte took the men inside the park on some made-up excuse to inspect something that he said had been worrying him since the previous evening, while Archer and Vargas used the opportunity to sneak their supplies through the gate, Issy staying close to them.
Having sent the guards off on a wild goose chase, knowing he didn’t need to deal with them yet with time still on their side, Bellefonte had re-joined the two NYPD detectives a few minutes later, saying he was going to take responsibility for planting what was in the white bag. Ammonium nitrate, or ANFO, according to what was printed on the outside. As she knelt beside him, Vargas studied the pellets inside warily, well aware of their capability and power.
‘What’s in the other bag?’ she asked.
‘Blasting caps. Oklahoma City bomber used this stuff,’ Bellefonte said, pouring pellets into an empty Tupperware container. ‘Mishandle it, we’ll be meeting him real soon to swap notes.’ He eased back from it carefully. ‘Seen enough building foundations blasted post-Katrina to know how much to use and where to place it.’
‘How do you have access to this stuff?’
‘My brother’s worked in mining for years and demolitions since the storm. Those were his offices that we stopped at.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve got a key.’
She looked at the plastic bags from Walmart beside them; they mostly contained ammunition, Bellefonte having collected a semi-automatic rifle and some empty magazines from his home in the Garden District on the way over. As well as water and some slow-release energy bars, Archer had also picked up face-paint so they could camouflage themselves. The forecast was for a full moon.
Vargas looked at the assembled supplies; the weight of what they were doing and the consequences if it went wrong hit her. ‘McGuinness has run circles around us,’ she said, looking around at the bleak, desolate place. ‘And we’re in his lair.’
‘I think Archer’s right in that we can use that against him. He won’t be expecting what we got planned.’ He glanced around the empty park, free of potential casualties save for the three of them and Issy. ‘Least I hope not. And you’ve managed to keep that girl alive, despite all his efforts. He didn’t bag her yet. Don’t forget that.’
He carefully placed the small tub of ANFO close to a lower joist for the wheel, a cell phone strapped to the outside. He looked at the screen and saw there were two bars of signal. Enough.
‘Long as we stay on the Batman side of the park, we should be OK,’ Bellefonte said. ‘McGuinness worked in Looney Tunes. From what the stunt rider was saying, that was where he gravitated back to when he was living here after Katrina. That’s the part of the site he knows best.’
Looking over at The Mega Zeph coaster almost a hundred yards away, Vargas could make out two figures on top, Archer and Isabel, the former having already set traps on the other side of the park. They’d sketched out the rough details of their plan to the girl in the car, but now as agreed, Archer would be giving her the specifics while trying to keep her calm. They’d originally planned to hole her up in a hotel in the city with Bellefonte’s colleague Ruiz standing guard, but she’d become almost hysterical at the thought of being parted from them, all the pent-up fear and worry from last few days released in one major meltdown. The result was they’d unwillingly agreed she could come with them, on the strict understanding she obeyed them to the letter.
Her being here made Vargas especially nervous, and she felt that weight of worry again. Having a child, especially her child, on an operation like this went against every instinct. She took out Bellefonte’s back-up sidearm which he’d loaned her, since Stefani’s men had taken her NYPD-issue pistol, and unloaded the magazine to count the bullets. As she did so, Bellefonte’s cell rang.
‘It’s Ruiz,’ he told her, as he pressed the green button. ‘Johnny boy, talk to me.’
‘I’m at the Terminal, Detective. No sign of your man, but I just saw a load of other people roll out through the United exits. You’ll be interested in some of them.’
‘Who?’
‘I think it’s the crew from Baltimore, from the pics you showed me. One woman and a load of tatted-up big mofos. I counted ten. Sent you a shot.’
Bellefonte checked the phone; he clicked onto an image, twisted the phone and showed Vargas the screen.
‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘Shit, she’s already here.’
‘They’ll need to pick up weapons from somewhere,’ Bellefonte told her. ‘But McGuinness must’ve told them where we are.’
‘I didn’t see him,’ Ruiz said, hearing his comment to Vargas.
‘If they’re on their way, you can bet your ass he will be too.’
‘Want me to get over there and help you? Or call in back-up? Just say the word.’
‘Stay on the airport. We need to know the moment McGuinness shows up. Wait for my call, then we’re gonna need back-up here, fast. But we can’t spook ‘em yet. Nothing until I give the word or the woman dies.’
‘Got it. I’ll make it happen. Just let me know, when the time comes.’
’10-4.’ Bellefonte ended the call. Finishing counting her ammo, Vargas felt her heart skip a beat from anxiety as she glanced up to where Issy was sitting with Archer. Beside her, Bellefonte finished his preparations at the base of the wheel a few moments later.
‘Better start getting ready,’ he said, and she nodded, reloading her handgun. As he gathered up the leftover plastic bags, she unscrewed the lid of a small metal flat canister and started to smear camo paint across her face.
‘Finished,’ Isabel said, on top of the Mega Zeph. Archer took his phone, activating the camera then pressed the reverse lens option so he could see himself. When Issy had learned of Archer’s plans for engaging the mobsters, and discovered he and Vargas were buying face paint to camouflage themselves, she’d had another idea and he’d let her try it out, knowing it would keep her distracted.
However, she’d done one hell of a job. He peered closer.
‘They taught you this at the theater?’ he asked.
‘I taught myself.’
‘It’s perfect.’
‘Better than smearing a load of black across your face. It’s scary.’
‘That’s what we want. Might take people by surprise,’ he said, thinking about how he could use what she’d done to his advantage. He put his phone away as Issy leaned against him; he could feel her body trembling slightly. The weight of responsibility for her and what lay ahead were at the forefront of his mind, as the minutes ticked by.
This was his idea; if it all went wrong and Issy or Sarah died, it was on him. No-one else.
So handle it.
Behind them on the tracks, he could visualise the ghosts of the thousands of rides from years gone by rushing past. All those men, women, and children, screaming, laughing. He then thought about the souls of the people who McGuinness had killed, not just here but elsewhere in Louisiana, Texas, Oxford and New York, and maybe other places he didn’t know about. Some of them had died right here in the park, one for certain pinned to this very ride below them, another dragged off to meet what was certain to have been a horrific fate.
And then there was Gino and Carla Lombardi. A mob husband and wife, dead now for several years but their actions still haunting their daughter.
He felt Issy’s trembling increase slightly beside him.
‘They’re coming here to kill us,’ she said. ‘And all we can do is sit here and wait.’
‘We’re ready,’ he told her. ‘You’re ready. We can do this. Finish this, for good.’
Her chin shook. ‘I just want to be normal.’
‘You will be after tonight, kiddo.’
‘I’ve seen McGuinness. What he does…what he did to Chalky. I don’t want him to hurt you too.’
‘He won’t. I can beat him, Is. We can, together. But you’ve got to stay where we told you. No bright ideas like your morning trip onto the subwa
y before we knew what this was. OK?’
She looked up at him and nodded, but he saw fear and doubt on her face. He’d never admit it, but it unsettled him, and he wasn’t feeling as confident as he sounded. He was well aware how dangerous these people were. ‘He’s so smart. He always seems to know where I am.’
‘I’m smarter. Even though my grades when I was your age never showed it.’ She managed a tiny smile, then looked away again. They heard footsteps coming up the gantry behind them and turned to see Vargas climbing towards them, any white on her clothing covered, her face, legs and arms flecked with dark camo paint.
Isabel rose as her adoptive mother bent down and held the girl in a hug as she looked at Archer. What Issy had done to his face took her by surprise.
‘Might come in handy,’ he told her.
‘You did that?’ she asked Isabel, who nodded.
‘Told you I was learning things from the internet. Not just watching crap.’
Vargas smiled briefly, then looked at Archer. ‘Ruiz called from the airport. He’s keeping a lookout for McGuinness but saw someone else we were expecting.’
‘Stefani?’
‘And some of her men.’
He felt his adrenaline rise. ‘They’ll have to tool up, which’ll buy us time,’ he said, as Vargas nodded. ‘I thought McGuinness might have wanted this party all to himself.’
‘Probably not his call. But you can bet he’ll have a plan to use it to his advantage.’ She held Isabel tight. ‘Even though Stefani will plan to finish this herself.’
Together, the three of them looked at the nightlights of New Orleans in the distance; the cell tower lights in the foreground flashing, the city beyond descending into another night of revelry, the beams of headlights heading along the far-away highway.
‘Time for you to go hide, kiddo,’ Vargas told Isabel. The girl gave Archer a final hug, taking care not to smear the paint on his face, and kissed his cheek.
