Double Down by Gabra Zackman Page B

all, yet he felt it was his only chance to get the intel.
    â€œOkay, Birdsong. Let’s go. I hope it won’t take long.”
    â€œOh no, Chas. It’ll be quick and easy. Just how the Mob likes it!” Seeing the look on Chas’s face, he said, “I’m joking, old friend. Surely you don’t think I’d kill you? Too . . . pat. Wouldn’t you say? But do me one favor. Leave your weapon and phone on the dock. Wouldn’t want to have an accident on the open sea, right?”
    Now Chas really had cause to worry, but he needed to take the chance. Removing his gun and his phone, he handed them to Birdsong. Using a small key, he placed Chas’s belongings inside a lockbox he’d attached to the dock and locked it, slipping the key into his coat pocket. “Easy as pie, right, Chas? Now we can talk in peace.”
    Boarding the yacht, Chas looked up at the stars and thought about Susannah, praying he’d come back alive.
    â€¡â€¡â€¡
    The show had just begun at the Carnivale, and the Boss thought he might be sick. Jackson likewise looked ashen as they took in the scene before them. They were in a small Virginia town about an hour outside of D.C., in a back barn on an empty stretch of fields. They’d driven down roads that got smaller and windier with each turn. The community became more impoverished as they went; the number of small churches, old tractors, and malnourished horses increased the farther they veered off the beaten path. Jackson had driven, and kept quoting lines from the movie Deliverance . Susannah and Lisa Bee were creeped out by it, and the Boss had finally told him to cut it out.
    They’d gotten to the show just before eight p.m. The Boss had spun a story that they were traveling through town and had heard about the show; William Nants was only too happy to let them come in for the low price of twenty bucks. Lisa Bee and Susannah were parked several yards away in the surveillance van FTP owned; they were listening in and watching the scene unfold through surveillance equipment from Doc Scrubs, the Boss’s old friend. Doc Scrubs was a Baltimore heart surgeon who liked to tinker with spy gear; he frequently created devices that the Bod Squad made great use of. Right now Jackson and the Boss were wearing items from his “Slummin’ It” line: the Boss had a pack of Winstons in the pocket of his T-shirt that had cigarettes inside and a camera up top; Jackson was wearing a ragged-looking bolo tie with a scuffed ram’s head likeness in the center, the eyes of which recorded video as well.
    The barn they were in felt a bit like a circus tent. Bleachers had been set up, and they could see cages and ropes, smell animals and beer, and hear a rowdy noise from the crowd. The Boss unintentionally pissed Jackson off by saying it was like a rodeo—Jackson was a huge rodeo fan, always had been, and hated that the Boss compared his favorite sport to the depravity they could sense in the air.
    The Carnivale had begun. William Nants was a balding man with crooked yellow teeth. He wore an old jacket stretched over his large paunch, and his saggy neck looked like a goose’s wattle. He walked with a limp and used a cane. Everything about him was repulsive. But nothing was more repulsive than the show he ran. It was like a burlesque, but a burlesque of enslaved, damaged, and aging characters. There was Marina, who was kept in a cage; Paola, who juggled beer cans wearing a torn bustier; and Kristina, who walked, poorly, on her hands. After their acts, they were auctioned off by Nants, who hawked his wares like he was selling toys. Their time was purchased for very little by the assembled men, and they were taken off into the back of the barn to satisfy the buyers. The Boss thought he might actually throw up as he watched this, and heard Jackson muttering epithets under his breath.
    All the women were in bad shape, none more so than the