The Magpye: Circus Read Online Free PDF Page B

brake. The bag pitched forward,
bumping off the dashboard. The underside was slick with blood,
seeping through onto the seat next to Garrity.
    "Fucking Taylor," he
muttered.
    Up ahead, the precinct house
was lit up white and blue. There had been a time when those colours
had meant a lot to Garrity.
    The youngest of nine children,
he'd learnt about survival the simple way - when there wasn't
enough food at meal times, when there weren't enough clothes to
keep everyone warm. When you were the smallest, the weakest, you
learnt to be smart, you learnt to be fast, and you learnt that if
you had dirt on the bigger kids... well, they weren't that much
bigger after all. Garrity had learnt the subtle art of listening at
doors, of being invisible in corridors and corners. A peep, a
snitch, a snoop and, at times, a pervert, Garrity had learnt the
value of secrets. It was his trick to surviving. He'd gotten out as
soon as he could, left his family behind, and gone police at a time
when it was the worst career option in the city. But he was good at
listening, good at finding things out. He'd risen fast, got off the
street and got his shield, all fast enough to attract the kind of
attention that he'd wanted since his first day on the force. For a
master of secrets, the big secret that was Cane King had been
obvious for a very long time. And now Garrity wasn't the smallest
anymore, far from it, but he still amassed those secrets. Cane King
was tight lipped about his business, sure, but Garrity knew where
the bodies were buried. Hell, most the time, he'd buried them.
    The problem with King was, no
one knew how far his power went. His money could make you mayor,
his newspaper could see you stripped of office in a week. The
political press called him "King the King-Maker", such was his
power, his influence. Garrity wondered what secrets his boss had
been privy to, over the years. There was no way anyone, anywhere,
could think about turning state's evidence on Cane King. King had
the cops, he had the judges. He had the mayor, everyone knew that,
and he probably had the governor too. There was a joke that went
around that when Cane King had shaken hands with the president, the
caption in the newspaper had read "President meets most powerful
man in America."
    That was why Garrity knew the
only safe place was right by King's side. Quiet, efficient,
unquestioning and uncomplaining, utterly morally vacant. The
perfect lieutenant. It has taken a lot of secrets learnt and shared
for Garrity to rise to where he was today, and he wasn't going to
let some psycho like Jack Taylor bring the whole house of cards
down.
    No, if Garrity was going to
survive, he'd have to make sure King survived. Quietly, behind
closed doors and in corners, he was going to need to run a little
game of his own.
    Ten yards from the precinct,
Garrity reached over and opened up the passenger door of the van.
With a grunt, he shoved the bag out, letting it bounce into the
road. Palm jammed down on the horn, he gunned the engine and
vanished into the night.
     

FIRE
    The floor of the warehouse was
bare, dominated by a large metal cage. Inside, barely conscious,
were the children. Magpye couldn't count how many. Too many was the
only number that made sense. He'd expected them to be filthy,
dressed in rags, but they were all clothed in matching t-shirts and
jeans and seemed clean. Someone here took care of the merchandise,
Magpye supposed. They stared out of the cage with vacant eyes. They
should have been afraid, but whatever they were drugged with kept
them so insensate that even a man in a mask, splattered with blood,
was not enough to rouse anything in them other than dumb curiosity.
Magpye tore his eyes away from the strange, dead-eyed children.
They would be White and Blind's problems soon enough.
    Magpye had his own problems...
Beneath his feet, pungent gasoline sloshed and at the other end of
the warehouse floor there were six, maybe seven tanks of diesel
fuel. Used to refuel