The Trap (The Magnificent 12 2)

So Mack said, “Eb Magga Ull-tway!”

The wall, all one hundred by ten feet of it, tilted back and then slid straight down into the ground with a slight grinding noise.

A wide, dark staircase led into the earth.

“Oh, fine, it works for you.” Jarrah pouted. “Go or no go?”

Mack hesitated. If he kept going and didn’t get Stefan to a doctor immediately, Stefan might bleed to death.

Stefan had become a friend. That realization came as a shock to Mack. In the space of just a few days, really, Stefan had gone from bully to protector. Mack had realized that part, the bodyguard thing. But until this moment he hadn’t really noticed that he actually liked Stefan.

Stefan had been hurt protecting Mack. That had to count for a lot.

But the fate of the world might rest on this decision. And the single word trap was definitely bouncing around inside his head like a Ping-Pong ball with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Sure, Ping-Pong balls can have ADHD. Absolutely.

But this wasn’t the time for Mack to contemplate the problems of Ping-Pong balls. This was decision time.

Stefan was a friend. But he was a friend who would want Mack to save the world.

Mack tightened his supporting grip around Stefan. And he stepped across the threshold into an unimagined realm.

Chapter Ten

ABOUT NINETY YEARS AGO, MORE OR LESS . . .

After landing in America, Paddy Soon-to-be-Nine-Iron Trout had gone to the Toomany Society for some guidance and had learned that his best career option was crime.

The Toomany Society lady sent him to an address north of Wall Street, where all the best criminal organizations had offices. It was a place they called Five Points Hall.

Five Points Hall was a large, cavernous space built around a huge enclosed courtyard. In that courtyard were various booths, each with pamphlets and literature set out. Paddy walked wonderingly past the Wounded Chickens Gang booth with its promises of drinking, carousing, street fighting, and extortion; past the Black Hand booth, which focused more on exotic foods redolent of garlic and which offered a career in crime regardless of how fat you got; and the Kosher Nostra, where he stopped and spoke with their recruiter.

He learned that the Kosher Nostra engaged in every manner of crime except for the mixing of dairy products with beef.

“But afterward, we feel bad,” the Kosher Nostra recruiter said with a shrug.

“After you mix beef and dairy?”

“After we do crimes. These other schmendricks”—he gestured toward the Wounded Chickens and the Black Hand—“they do whatever, then they have a cannelloni or drink a bottle of whiskey. But us, we feel guilty.” He held out a plate of pastry. “Would you like a rugelach? Apricot. They’re to die for.”

Paddy decided this wasn’t quite the right criminal organization for him. Then he spotted the smallest of the booths. It was hardly a booth, in fact, just a card table manned by a sullen, furious-faced man in a too-large striped suit. The man was playing solitaire with a dirty, bent-up deck of cards. On the table was a half-finished bowl of something Paddy recognized: oatmeal.

“Aren’t you going to finish that?” Paddy asked boldly.

The furious-faced man looked up at him. Furiously. A sneer distorted his face, which was further distorted by what had to be a knife scar running from the corner of his left eye to his right jaw.

“No,” the man spat angrily. “It lacks any real appeal. Altogether a bland, unimaginative dish.”

“Try toasting some pecans,” Paddy said. “Toasted pecans, and instead of milk maybe a dollop of crème fraîche. Clover honey would sweeten it nicely.”

The man squinted at Paddy. “You’re not married, are you?”

“No.”

“Have a girlfriend?”

“No.”