The Magpye: Circus (7 page)

Cane turned away. "No. Adam
bought into all this occult nonsense, that was his thing. The
family, the bloodline. He was obsessed with it. That's not me."

"So why did you kill him?"

"Because of that fucking
woman!" Cane snapped, smashing his fist into one of the frosted
mirrors. "Her and her fucking kid! Do you know what that could have
done to us? To the business, to our future, to... to..."

"To the bloodline?"

Grace raised an eyebrow and
another icy smile spread across her face like a frost. Spirals of
strange symbols danced up her neck and flourished on her face,
making her look even more unreal than normal. She watched as King
nursed his bloodied knuckles. The fire was there, she thought, the
fire that made a real King. It just needed to be fuelled. He needed
to burn.

"I'm not taking this family
back to the dark ages," King said firmly. "I don't deny what you
can do, but I want no part of it. I'm dragging this family into the
21st century by its balls. Just do this one thing for me, take care
of this guy, and then we are done. Name your price, whatever it
takes, but then we are done."

"You know my price, Cane,"
Grace said seductively, "And you're not getting any younger. It's
past time you fathered an heir."

Grace's hands slid across
Cane's shoulders, moving like ice cold worms on his flesh. He
shuddered involuntarily.

"How do we catch him?" he
asked, his voice hushed.

"With bait," whispered Grace in
Cane's ear. "With something he can't resist."

There should have been rain.
That was the only thought that Rosa Blind could muster as she
watched the coffin slowly descend into the ground. Instead, there
was an unseasonable heat that made everyone uncomfortable in their
dress uniforms, that scorched the grass and made the ground hard
underfoot. She was sweating, she hated sweating. There were no
tears behind her sunglasses as her fellow officers lined up one by
one to scatter dry earth on the coffin, just inexorable
calculations of her machine-like mind. The result? There definitely
should have been rain.

Rosa hated the cemetery, jammed
in behind one of the city's remaining churches. She had thought
they were lucky to find a plot, until she found out that the church
kept a special allocation for police. What the hell kind of town
was this, she'd wondered, where even in death the police needed to
keep a low profile?

Low profile, that was the exact opposite of what they were
supposed to be. The incorruptible super
-
cops, dropped
into failing police departments all over the country, all part of
the presidents "Clean up America" campaign. It was ridiculous. A
cowboy policy for a cowboy president. She'd thought it from the
beginning, but she'd still signed up. To be incorruptible you
couldn't have anything, or anyone, in your life that the criminals
could reach. You had to have nothing to lose.

What the hell did they think
would happen, rounding up all the people like that and giving them
bigger guns and shinier shields and telling them to clean
house?

Rosa looked at them one by one,
her analytical mind churning out vital statistics, facts and
figures.

Reginald, the book worm. Near
photographic memory and a competition speed reader. In as much as
she was capable of liking anyone, Rosa liked him. Owen said he
couldn't shoot for shit though. That was probably why he'd been
partnered with Cooper. Ex-Navy, the guy could fight like a pirate
and busted up bar brawls for fun.

And then, of course, there was
Grice. He was the social one. He'd always said they should get
together more, be more of a unit. He was always trying to organise
dinner, or drinks. He didn't get that forming friendships would
make them weak. Rosa suspected that that was another factor that
had been taken into account. They hadn't just chosen people without
family and friends, they had chosen people who chose not to have
family or friends. That made Grice the wildcard, and a liability.
Maybe whoever had killed him had known that too. Maybe they wanted
to cut the heart out of the unit, and Grice was the closest thing
they had to that.

"No family," said Owen. "Just
like the rest of us."

"Not for want of trying, I
think," replied Rosa. "He doesn't fit the profile, you know."

"He's dead, Rosa," replied Owen flatly. "You can stop
profiling him now. Somewhere in this god-damn city someone cut him
up into pieces and put him in a bag to deliver to us. You ask
me?
I'm
glad
he
didn't
have any family. How
the hell do you explain something like to someone's wife, to
someone's kid?"

"That was the point wasn't it?
No family, no friends means no leverage, sure, no way to get to us.
It also means that if one of us gets killed, well, who's going to
make a fuss?"

"I am," said Cooper, pushing his way in between them. "You
say there's no leverage? That's bullshit. That's your leverage
right there, in a fucking pine box! Someone finally realised that
there's always a way to get to someone. You just
get
them
.
I always said we should just go
straight at these guys ourselves."

"You're drunk," said Rosa.

"What if I am?" sneered Cooper.
"What difference does that make? We're paying our respects to a
good soldier today, a man who died on the line."

"We're police, not soldiers,"
interrupted Reginald, pulling his partner away. "Your way works in
a bar fight or on a street corner, but if you want to go to court,
if you want to put these guys away, then you have to think like a
lawyer. You need to make sure you're unimpeachable. And you need to
sober up."

"This town ain't like that,"
said Cooper with a shrug. "This town is like the fucking old west.
The gun is the law here, nothing else. Grice is dead because we all
thought we were bigger than it, thought we were special. Well,
surprise surprise folks... we're not. Like it or not, we are all
soldiers now, because this just got turned into a fucking war!"

Cooper stalked off before any
of them could reply, kicking out at the old gravestones on his way.
Reginald wondering how many of those gravestones told stories just
like theirs, down over the years. Cops who died doing what they
thought was right, cops who couldn't turn a blind eye to what went
on in this cesspit of a city.

"Reg, you want to go after
him?" asked Owen.

"Someone has to," replied the
bookish cop. "But not everything he said is wrong, White. If this
is a war, we all know who fired the first shot."

Owen didn't answer. He just
clenched his fists and held back the part of him that wanted to
punch Reginald right in the face. They couldn't turn on him, not
now. He wouldn't, couldn't let them. He just watched Reginald jog
out of the cemetery in pursuit of Cooper, his blood boiling. On the
other side of the open grave, the others were watching.

"Any of you got something to
say?" barked Owen. "Because now's the time, you understand?"

"Nobody blames you," said
Rosa.

"Bullshit! You all blame me.
Well you were all happy when I was putting us on the front of the
newspapers with the big busts. So guess what guys? The bad guy hit
back. And yeah, they hit back harder and more bloody than we
thought they would, but that's the god-damned job. That's why we're
here. They picked us because we had nothing to lose, no reason to
back down. If that's changed for you, you need to walk away
now!"

Rogers, Hartley, and Nutt all
looked at each other. There was no answer. When Owen had first told
them about the Magpye, some lunatic in a mask and big coat who was
going to go the places that they couldn't, had they even believed
him? If some mental patient wanted to put himself in the line of
fire instead of them, what did it matter? That was the gap in the
plan, the reason for wildcards like Grice. People who don't have
people don't tend to have much in the way of compassion either.
That made Owen White a wildcard too. He cared about this city, he
cared about his team. He'd come here as a man with nothing to lose,
and found himself with a cause and with a family not of his
choosing.

It was Rogers who spoke,
breaking the silence. "We're still with you boss, for Grice if
nothing else."

"Me too," added Rosa.

Owen smiled. "Well then, I
guess we'd better do what Grice would have wanted."

"What's that?" asked Burns.

"We go and find a quiet bar and
we drink until we pass out. For Grice."

"For Grice," they all replied
in unison. Owen's smile stayed fixed on his face. Maybe this was
what they needed. Men who had nothing to lose were dangerous. Men
who had lost something, men who were looking for payback... they
were deadly.

"I'll catch you up, Rosa," said
Owen, sending his partner on her way with the others. He watched as
they filed out of the cemetery, one by one. Seven of them. If it
weren't for the Magpye, it would be a suicide run now no matter
they chose to do. The only option would have been to quit and to
put as many miles between them and this forsaken city as possible.
But with the Magpye, Owen thought there just might be a chance.
He'd seen him do impossible things.

The cemetery was silent for a
moment, just the sound of Owen breathing. And one other.

"You can come out now Garrity,"
the cop said calmly.

Mick Garrity stepped out from
behind a tree, hands in his coat pockets.

"What are you doing here?"
asked Owen.

"Paying me respects," replied
Garrity, looking down into Grice's grave. "He was a cop and no cop
should go like that, no matter what."

"You're no cop, Garrity,"
growled Owen. "You're a lackey and a hood for whoever's lining your
pockets."

"Prove it."

Owen grabbed Garrity and
slammed him against the tree he had been hiding behind. Nose to
nose, he snarled at Garrity.

"I've spent my life in and out
of departments like this and there's an easy way to find the
dirtiest guy... you just look for the guy with the cleanest sheet.
No cop works a city like this for as long as you have without
collecting a little dirt, Garrity, but your file is the most
pristine I've ever seen. Clean sheets mean dirty cops, every
time."

Owen only stopped talking when
he felt the sharp nudge of Garrity's gun in his ribs.

"Then why don't I kill you here
and now and toss you in with your boy there?"

Owen let go of Garrity, shoving
him one last time against the old tree.

"Not your style," he said
dismissively. "You don't get your hands dirty, do you?"

Garrity straightened himself
up, took his hands from out of his pockets, holding them up for
White to see.

"Look, we're all friends here,
OK?" he said, "You don't like me, fine. But I meant what I said,
Grice was a cop and a cop is a cop no matter what. Dirty or clean,
good or bad, you put on a shield and you're one of the brotherhood
until the end. You might think that's old fashioned, but that's how
it is here."

"So what is this?" asked Owen,
"You here to say you're sorry that nobody had my guy's back?"

Garrity pulled a pack of
cigarettes from his back pocket, pulled one from the packet.

"Nobody's got any of your
backs," he said grimly, lighting the cigarette with a match. "You
guys rode into town with a presidential seal and expected everyone
just to roll over. Fucking super-cops, getting your faces in the
papers, calling out every scum-bag and lowlife you could name. We
tried to warn you. What's going on in this city, it's different to
anything you've ever seen, I don't care how many places you've
worked. The Kings own this town and everything in it and nobody
goes up against the Kings. I mean nobody."

Owen frowned. "The Kings? As in
Cane King?"

"Cane King," replied Garrity,
taking a long drag from the cigarette. "Our lord and master and the
guy who told the guy who told the guy who pulled the trigger on
your friend here."

"Then it's true..." muttered
Owen. Rosa hadn't believed Magpye when he'd named Cane King as the
one behind it all and Owen, well, he'd only entertained the idea
because he thought feeding Magpye's delusions kept him on side. But
here was Garrity, the dirty cop among dirty cops, naming names.

"You're either very confident
or very scared, telling me this," said Owen.

"Neither," replied Garrity.
"What I'm telling you ain't no secret in the department. Ain't no
secret most places in the city, if you take the time to ask. That's
the trick, see? He hides in plain sight, so big and so loud that
nobody takes anything they hear about him seriously. What's he
doing, playing both sides like that, it's impossible... right?
That's what everyone thinks."

Not everyone, thought Owen.
There is someone who's got Cane King right in his sights, someone
else with a stake in doing impossible things.

"So why tell me?" asked
Owen.

"Because of this," said
Garrity, jabbing his cigarette at the open grave. "It's a step too
far. Over the line. King runs this town, sure, but a cop is still a
cop. If that stops meaning something then we're all going to hell a
lot faster than I'd like."

"So, what? You turning state's?
Is this you asking for help?"

Garrity laughed, a gurgling throaty laugh like someone
drowning in a bucket of bile. "Christ, no. This is
me
offering
help
."

"Same difference," said Owen
flatly, "If things are going south like you say, turning state is a
way out for you."

"You think the Kings ain't got
people on the inside?" scoffed Garrity. "Trust me, there's plenty
of guys doing time right now that would love to know that they were
in the Kings' good graces. Kingsmen live a little differently, even
in prison, you know what I'm saying?"