The Magpye: Circus (8 page)

"Kingsmen?" asked Owen. "Is
that what they call you thugs?"

Garrity tossed his cigarette
away and pulled down the collar of jacket and shirt. On the side of
his neck, down past his collar line, Owen could see a small blue
tattoo of an inverted crown. "We're a lot more than thugs," he
said, and Owen couldn't help but hear a note of pride in his voice,
even in this place he was proud of his status and the criminality
that went with it. "This ink here? You'll find the same on a lot of
people. Important people, you understand me?"

"It's all one conspiracy..."
said Owen, recalling what the Magpye had said in the back of his
car.

"Now you're getting it," said
Garrity, pulling his shirt and jacket straight.

"Still doesn't answer why
you're telling me this," said Owen. "All you've done is point me in
the direction of a guy that no-one in the country and can pin a
thing on to. You think nobody knows about him? Get the internet,
Garrity, Cane King is conspiracy theory number one and there are
people who look into this stuff."

"Crazy people."

"Federal people," replied Owen
flatly. "Your guy isn't as untouchable as he might think. Come in,
put what you're telling me on record, and we can take him. I know
we can."

Garrity turned around and
started to walk away. "You're a fucking idealist White, and it's
going to get you killed. You really think that if there was
anything like real evidence that it wouldn't have surfaced by now?
The whole thing is too massive, too organised, and too damn deep.
It goes from the street all the way to the top, the real top."

"So your advice is to quit, is
that it?" said Owen angrily. "Or get as dirty as you, just shut up
and take the money and don't ask any more awkward questions?"

Garrity stopped. "No," he said
quietly, "That's not it. I'm trying to tell you your boy was right.
You got yourself a war. You got yourself your first casualty, in
case you forgot. You guys shot first, now he's shot back. But I'm
here to offer you a shot straight at Cane King himself, if you're
ready to take it."

"What do you mean?"

"Word on the street is that
you've been hitting King's lieutenants off the books as well as on.
Got yourself a little pet psycho who gets off his leash every now
and then."

Owen swallowed, caught his
breath. If this was real, if Garrity was offering what White
thought he might be offering, then it was the shot Magpye had been
looking for. There was no way that Garrity would put someone like
King in the cross-hairs unless it was legit, unless he really was
behind all the things he was rumoured to be behind. Unless, of
course, Garrity was wearing a wire and this whole conversation was
a set up. There were plenty of people who wanted to see the
President's initiative fail, plenty of people who didn't like the
new police rolling into town. One wrong word, and White would be on
the front of the papers for a completely different reason.

"I don't know what you're
talking about."

"Sure you don't," mocked
Garrity. "Or maybe there ain't no guy at all and it's you putting
on a gas mask and knocking over King's places, huh?"

"Like I said, I don't know what
you're talking about."

"Pity," said Garrity, a sneer
in his voice, "A pet psycho is just what you're going to need if
you want to take this shot."

"Who says I want to?"

"Your dead guy here, for one.
Look, I know how it is. You guys are supposed to be cleaner than
clean, but the fight went and got dirty on you anyway. We're more
alike than you might like to think, Owen White. I didn't start out
dirty, you know."

"No one does."

"Exactly," said Garrity.
Suddenly, he closed the distance between him and Owen. "But it's
what happens, isn't it? Nobody cleans up without getting a little
dirt on themselves, do they, isn't that what you said? Point is, I
know what you're thinking right now. You're thinking this is trick,
that I'm probably wearing a wire, or recording this on a cellphone,
or something. You want to take down King but you want to do it the
right way and if you can't... and you and I both know you can't...
then the last person you're going to tell about your little "side
project" is me."

Owen cocked his head to one
side. Garrity had nailed it, that was certain. He'd nailed him.
There was a little part of him that admired the dirty cop. He
wasn't all bluster and muscle and threats after all. This was a guy
who listened and watched and waited and learnt. You swim quietly
through the murky waters Garrity, thought Owen.

"So here it is, plain and
clear," said Garrity, shoving an envelope into White's hand.
"Cane's itinerary, travel arrangements, security, everything for
the next seven days. Enough time to mobilise your people, pet
psycho or no. Take him out, and put the cops back on top in this
town once and for all."

"And take the fall for it,
while you walk away clean?" said Owen sarcastically.

"Always plenty of guys in this
town due a fall, my friend. Cane hides in plain sight, but so can
you. Nobody's going to suspect the whiter-than-white super-cop, and
I've got a little list of people who are due a little... payback,
shall we say? I'll handle it."

Owen White wondered how many
bad deals had started with the Garrity saying "I'll deal with it".
He looked down at the envelope. If Cane King was everything that
people said, he was due a bullet. No trial, no chance to escape on
a technicality or a legal loophole. No crooked judge. No bribed
jurors. Just pull the trigger and make it final. Owen had never
drawn his weapon other than in self defence, but was pointing the
Magpye in the right direction really any different to pulling the
trigger himself? You couldn't clean up without getting dirty.

"Handle it," said Garrity
firmly, closing Owen's hand around the envelope. "For all of
us."

The river of ghosts did not
always rage. Even they, from time to time it seemed, got tired.
Sated on blood for now, perhaps, the ghosts left Able Quirk's mind
in quiet tranquillity. All except one, that was. Zip Nolan:
aerialist, pilot, and human cannonball. Quirk liked Zip. He liked
*being* Zip, liked slipping down inside him like freshly laundered
bedding and losing himself in the cool, still waters of Zip's
memories for a while. Zip was calm. You had to be, he said, to
spend your life being fired out of a cannon.

Zip also liked to keep busy,
which was something Able was incapable of but Marv told him was
"just the thing" for his "situation". Perhaps he thought that Able
might find a hobby and it would take his mind off the murder of his
family and friends, the razing of his home to the ground. You could
never tell with Marv, the master of misdirection never gave
anything away that he didn't want to.

The particular thing that kept
Zip busy more than anything else was fixing the blimp. She dated
back to World War Two, a 180ft long leviathan of rusting metal with
a rubbery hide that seemed to breathe in and out even when the
great beast was dormant. No one could remember when she had come to
the circus, but circus lore said that she used to fly over the city
to advertise the circus. She was one of the few things that hadn't
been burnt in the fire; her old hull looking mortally decrepit
which had probably saved her. She hadn't flown in years. Zip
dreamed of getting her air-worthy again though and, in lieu of any
dreams of his own, Able was happy to turn control of his body over
to Zip whenever he could for him to work on her. There was no
shortage of scrap metal and spare materials around now, if you
didn't mind the smell of smoke and the occasional blood stain and
Zip had repaired and restored nearly every inch of her now, working
slowly along the grand old cadaver of the thing. It felt good
though, even though the movements weren't Able's own, to feel tools
in his hands rather than weapons, to feel screws and bolts tighten
to his touch, rather than bones break and flesh tear. A lot of
others had thought Zip was crazy, to calmly do the things he did,
but he wasn't. Zip was meticulous and careful. Nothing was left to
chance, everything was taken in account. That was the difference,
Zip said, between being a cannonball and a stain.

Not that it had done him any
good, in the end. Able had found him burnt to death in his trailer,
a crowbar shoved under the door handle to stop him from getting
out. Able kept that memory pushed down deep, lest it disturb Zip in
his work.

"Able?"

Marissa had walked in behind
them. The memory river bubbled, but no new flotsam of thought was
brought to the surface. Whoever Marissa had been to Able, she was
so no longer.

Able, and Zip, turned as one.
Marissa was holding a steaming cup of something that smelt like
another one of Marv's stews. Able's stomach flipped involuntarily
and he considered telling her why he couldn't eat the food she
insisted on bringing him. The sacrifice, of course, would be to
lose the one person who still looked at him, at least sometimes,
like he was human. Marv didn't, the cops certainly didn't, and when
he looked in the mirror himself... well, what he saw there was so
far from human he couldn't even describe it. But she, Marissa, she
looked at him as if he were a person. Just one person.

"I brought you some soup," she
said gently, placing the mug down on the floor. "Keep you warmed
up, it's freezing out here."

"Thank you, miss. Going to keep
working a little longer yet though. She's not far from ready you
know."

It was Zip who spoke. The voice
was Able's, but the words were Zip's. Able chuckled, somewhere in
the deep vaults of his mind where he kept his sense of humour.
Given the chance to speak from beyond the grave, Zip talked about
his precious blimp.

"I'm sorry," said Marissa. "I
was looking for Able?"

She looked at him... him, not
Zip and not Magpye but at him. "Are you there, Able?" she asked
again.

How did she know? How could she
know? Marv must have told her something, of course, to explain his
moods, some of his more erratic behaviour. She knew he was somehow
different, of course she did. But that didn't explain how she knew,
of all the voices in Able's head, all the voices of The Magpye,
which she was speaking to.

Able forced himself to the
surface, like a sleeper trying to shake off a dream. Zip graciously
stepped aside, slipping down into the murky waters. "She's sweet on
you son," he said as he faded. "Just try to be nice."

Marissa smiled and, before Able
could say anything, took a step closer. "Ah," she said, "There you
are."

"How did you know?" said Able,
his voice trailing off the end of the sentence. How the hell was he
supposed to ask this question?

"Oh, it's obvious," Marissa
replied, "You really don't look like you a lot of the time, Able
Quirk."

"I'm... not myself...
sometimes?" he answered. The whole conversation was surreal, he
imagined what it would mean to tell her the whole truth and now
here she was and she seemed to know... everything?

In his pocket, Able felt his
phone, the Magpye's phone start to vibrate. He placed his hand on
it, willing it to stop. But it was too late. The others had heard
it to. The vibration in his pocket was like a dinner bell to a pack
of hungry dogs. Owen White was calling. They had work to do.
Bloody, awful work no doubt. The kind that the dead loved.

Marissa pulled away. "Like
now," she said. There was ice cold fear in her voice, and he almost
tripped as she pulled quickly away. "You don't look like you now.
Who are you? Who are you right now?"

Able didn't answer. He was
gone, submerged under the gestalt mind of the angry dead. It was
The Magpye in control now. And The Magpye didn't have an
answer.

He dug his phone out of his
pocket and answered in a voice that was barely Able's at all.

"Where and when?"

The tea shop was, for the
benefit of its very particular clientèle, almost devoid of
decoration. The walls were bare brick, thinly white washed, the
floors were bare boards. Tables and chairs were whitewashed too,
and everyone drank from the same featureless white china cups and
saucers. The aesthetics of it didn't matter. Neither, in truth, did
the tea despite the fact that the tea shop brewed some of the
rarest and finest blends there were. What mattered was that this
place, this white on white place, was safe.

Magicians were a dying breed,
and they took safety very seriously.

Grace Faraway sat and sipped a
pale green tea from a white china cup. She wore a high necked black
blouse, black skirt, opaque stockings and black leather heels. Her
tattoos bristled at her neck and crept up around her ears, hating
being confined and hidden from site. Patterns of any sort were
banned however, in the white on white neutrality of the tea shop. A
magician could easily hide a hex in even the simplest weave.
Through a sheer act of will Grace restrained the wild living ink
and forced it down away from her face, feeling it writhe beneath
her skin. Marv was late, which she was sure was intentional.

She didn't need to meet him.
She kept telling herself that. The trap was set, baited, and ready
to snap its jaws on the creature that plagued her precious Cane
King. The plan was good. Good, except for the fact that Grace
Faraway had no idea what, or who, it was she was trying to trap.
Magicians took safety very seriously, and safety took planning.
Safety required knowledge. No, she didn't need to meet him...

"Good afternoon, Grace," said
Marv, sliding into the seat opposite her. He was dressed in white,
an old type magician's stage outfit. Ever the purist, ever the king
of making an entrance. "I see you've dressed for the occasion."