The amusement rides were still roaring and screeching around their mechanical confinements. The Ferris wheel was slowly rotating, its size and the relative silence of its motion endowing it with a peculiar majesty among the lesser and noisier carnival contraptions. People were still moving in both directions on the circular concourse. Anxious parents were beginning to congregate at the railing, presumably to gather up their children as soon as they disembarked from the rides.
Gurney couldn’t wait any longer.
He gripped the Beretta in his loose sweatshirt pocket, released the safety, and made his way along the railing to a position a few feet behind Black Hoodie. Running now on little more than instinct and impulse, he began to sing softly.
Ring around the rosies,
Pocket full of posies.
Ashes, ashes,
All fall down.
A man and woman standing together near Gurney gave him a couple of odd glances. Black Hoodie didn’t move.
A ride called Wild Spinner rolled to a halt with the sound of gigantic nails on a blackboard. It disgorged a few dozen giddy kids, many of whom were hustled away by waiting adults—with the effect of clearing the area around Gurney.
With his hidden Beretta aimed at the back of the figure in front of him, he resumed his barely audible singing, maintaining the inanely lilting tune of the nursery rhyme as best he could, while adding his own words.
Perfect little Peter Pan
had the perfect murder plan—
till it all turned upside down.
Peter, Peter, perfect clown.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.
Black Hoodie turned his head slightly, enough perhaps to get a peripheral glimpse of the size and position of whoever was behind him, but said nothing.
Gurney could now see several dark red circular marks about the diameter of small peas painted on the side of his cheekbone in a way that reminded him of the tear-shaped tattoos gang members often displayed in that same place—sometimes as memorials to murdered friends, sometimes as advertisements of murders they themselves had committed.
Then he felt a small frisson—as he realized that they weren’t just little red marks, or even red tears.
They were tiny red flowers.
Black Hoodie’s hands moved slightly inside his garment’s bulky front pockets.
In his own pocket, Gurney’s right forefinger slipped over the trigger of the Beretta.
In the concourse behind him, at a distance he estimated at no more than a hundred yards, there was another explosion—followed by shouts, screams, curses, the sharp clamor of several fire alarms going off at once, more screams, someone wailing the name “Joseph,” the sound of many running feet.
Black Hoodie stood perfectly still.
Gurney felt a rising anger as he imagined the scene behind him, the scene that was provoking those cries of pain and terror. He let that anger drive his next words. “You’re a dead man, Panikos.”
“You talking to me?” The tone of the question was conspicuous for its lack of concern. The accent was vaguely urban, with a scruffy attitude. The voice was ageless—childlike in an odd way—its gender no more certain than that of the body it came from.
Gurney studied what little he could see of the yellow painted face in the black cowl. The garish carnival ride lights, the cries of dismay and confusion welling up from the explosion sites, and the acrid odor of smoke blowing in the wind were transforming the creature before him into something unearthly. A miniature image of the Grim Reaper. A child actor playing the role of a demon.
Gurney replied evenly. “I’m talking to perfect Peter Pan, who shot the wrong man.”
The face in the cowl turned slowly toward him. Then the body began to follow.
“Stop where you are,” said Gurney. “Don’t move.”
“Gotta move, man.” A whiny distress had entered Black Hoodie’s voice. “How can I not move?”
“Stop now!”
The movement stopped. The unblinking eyes in the yellow face were focused now on the pocket where Gurney held the Beretta, ready to fire. “What are you gonna do, man?”
Gurney said nothing.
“You gonna shoot me?” The style of his speech, its cadence, its accent, all sounded about right for a tough street kid.
But, somehow, thought Gurney, not quite right enough. For a moment he couldn’t identify the problem. Then he realized what it was. It sounded to him like the intonation of some sort of generic street kid, not specific to any particular part of any particular city. It was like the deficiency in the speech of British actors playing New Yorkers. Their accents wandered from borough to borough. Ultimately, they were from nowhere.
“Am I going to shoot you?” Gurney frowned thoughtfully. “I’m going to shoot you if you don’t do exactly as I say.”
“Like what, man?” As he spoke, he began turning again as if to face Gurney head-on.
“Stop!” Gurney thrust the Beretta forward in his sweatshirt pocket, making its presence more obvious.
“I don’t know who you are, man, but you are fucking nuts.” He turned another few degrees.
“One more inch, Panikos, and I pull the trigger.”
“Who the hell is Panikos?” The tone was suddenly full of bafflement and indignation. Perhaps too full.
“You want to know who Panikos is?” Gurney smiled. “He’s the biggest fuck-up in the business.”
At that moment he noted a fleeting change in those cold eyes—something that appeared and disappeared in less than a second. If he had to label it, he’d say it was a glint of pure hatred.
It was replaced by a display of disgust. “You’re gone, man. You’re completely gone.”
“Maybe,” said Gurney calmly. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe, like you, I’m going to shoot the wrong man too. Maybe you’re going to catch a bullet just because you ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That kind of thing happens, right?”
“This is bullshit, man! You’re not going to shoot me in cold blood in front of a thousand people at this fucking fair. You do that, that’s the end of your life, man. No escape. Picture the fucking headline, man—‘Crazy Cop Shoots Defenseless Kid.’ That’s what you want your family to see in the paper, man?”
Gurney’s smile broadened. “I see what you mean. That’s very interesting. Tell me something. How’d you know I was a cop?”
For the second time something happened in those eyes. Not hatred this time, more like a one-second hiccough in a video before normal play resumed. “You gotta be a cop, right? You gotta be a cop. Obvious, right?”
“What makes it obvious?”
Black Hoodie shook his head. “It’s just obvious, man.” He laughed humorlessly, revealing small, sharp teeth. “You want to know something? I’ll tell you something. This conversation is bullshit. You’re too fucking nuts, man. This conversation is over.” In a quick sweeping movement, he turned the rest of the way toward Gurney, his elbows rising at the same time like the wings of a bird, his eyes wide and wild, both hands still hidden in the folds of his oversized black shirt.