Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  “With kids? How in hell would we ever—?”

  “I think I know,” Terry said.

  We all looked at him. Nobody spoke. He flushed, not used to the spotlight. But he squared up, said, “I’m in science, right?” nodding at the Mole. “But I’m not on another planet. On campus, I know maybe two or three kids who want to write books. And a half-dozen who write poetry, okay?

  “But I must know a hundred who’ve already written screenplays. I was talking with a girl at school...” He caught Michelle’s look, reddened even more deeply, but soldiered on. “...and you know what she said? ‘Movies are amazing.’ You see where I’m going?”

  I shook my head “No.” Michelle widened her eyes and clasped her hands, the universal girl-signal for “Keep talking.” The Mole’s face was a mask, as if he feared any expression would divert his son.

  “Movies are amazing,” Terry said. “Not any particular movie, just ‘movies.’ That such a thing could even exist. To this girl, whoever invented movies made a greater contribution to civilization than movable type.”

  “So what does one airhead have to do with—?”

  “She’s no airhead, Mom,” Terry said. “I mean, well, maybe she is, but that...attitude, it’s like, everyone has it. Religious. Movies, they’re something...different from anything else. Some guys, they’re fans of bad movies, and people think that’s way cool.

  “Kids blow off some kinds of movies. It’s not, like, edgy to go for those Tom Hanks–Meg Ryan flicks. Extreme uncool. But it’d be like...heresy to put down movies themselves.

  “And you know what else?” he said, sure of his ground now. “Everybody wants to be involved with them. It’s not just the performing-arts crowd. Even the suit-and-tie kids, they want to produce movies...or own a studio, or whatever. The techie kids just love them. The stoners. The jocks. Everyone.”

  “See?” Michelle said, glowing at her son.

  “Is it really you?” the tall, slim blonde asked, cocking her head like a dubious bird. Even that slight movement sent her improbably huge breasts quivering.

  “It’s him or his ghost,” the shorter, muscular brunette said, through a mouth that looked like a soft bruise. “Who else would know about what happened to Gresh—?”

  “Shut up, Rejji,” the blonde snapped. “You want to tell the world, why don’t you just take out an ad in the papers?”

  “Oh, chill,” the brunette replied. And “Come on in,” to me.

  I sat down on a canted-back couch, glanced over at the side table, located an ashtray, and lit a smoke. The Burke they knew smoked, and, where they came from, nobody ever broke a habit.

  “You’ve got to give us more,” the blonde said.

  “Where’ve I heard that before?” the brunette mock-giggled.

  “Rejji...”

  “All right. Fine. I’ll go gag myself.”

  “Bitch.”

  The brunette grinned, stuck out her tongue, and runway-walked out of the room.

  “What do you want me to show you, Cyn?” I asked the blonde.

  “I’m not...sure, exactly. Scars all look alike to me. But I know you...Burke...didn’t have that tattoo on his hand.”

  “It’s new,” I said quietly. “Like my face. But I’m still me.”

  “Prove it,” the blonde said, vainly trying to cross her arms over her chest. “I don’t mean to sound...ungrateful, or anything. We both...Ah, never mind. Just prove you’re who you say you are, and we’ll do what you want.”

  “How do you know what I—?”

  “Whatever it is,” she cut me off. “Maybe I don’t know your face—the face you have—but I remember what you...what Burke did. So...?”

  “You and Rejji are in the—”

  “Don’t tell us about us. We already know about us.”

  “And you don’t really know anything about me,” I said. “So how am I supposed to...?”

  The blonde didn’t say anything. The brunette came back into the living room, fastening a ball gag behind her head the way another woman might adjust a piece of jewelry. She dropped to her knees, pulled the red ball portion away from her mouth, looked up at me, said, “You like me in this shade?”

  That’s when the key to their lock dropped into my hand. “Thanks, Rej,” I said. I turned to the blonde. “The last time I was here, you told me I was so vanilla that, if I walked into a room and saw a woman all bound and gagged, the first thing I’d do would be to start looking around for the villain with the black hat and mustache.”

  “It’s you,” the blonde laughed, coming over to the couch. She bent down, kissed the side of my mouth.

  “You’re the closest thing to movie people I know,” I said, after I told them how I wanted to go in.

  “We don’t do mainstream,” Rejji said. “But...well, two things: One, we do what we do for money. So, if anyone paid us, we would; it’s not some artistic thing. Two, movies are movies, I think. They make them all the same way. The budgets are different, maybe. The scripts are for damn sure different. But the process, I think it’s close enough.”

  “So you think we could fake it?”

  “Fake what?” Rejji asked. “Fake making an adult video? Why would anybody fake that? I mean, how could you tell? Maybe somebody watching it later, maybe they could tell. But when you’re making the movie, you don’t know how it’s going to look. Only how it feels. Sometimes, if it’s no good, not even that.”

  “These are kids, you stupid slut,” Cyn said. “We put word out that we’re shooting even softcore, that’d be the end.”

  “I don’t want to look at...what did you call them, head shots?” I told them. “I need to talk with the...actors, I guess they’d be. Each one. Separately.”

  “Cyn gets asked all the time,” Rej volunteered, “to do videos.”

  “Asked isn’t the same as doing, bitch!” Cyn snapped at her.

  “Uh, you think we could get back to my problem?” I asked them both.

  “How about a joint?” Rejji said. “I always think better when I’m mellow.”

  “None for me,” I told her.

  “That’s my Burke,” Cyn said, giggling. She walked over and plopped herself in my lap. “Too bad Rej and I aren’t black girls. At least we could make an Oreo out of you.”

  “Not me,” Rejji said quickly.

  “Oh, lighten up,” Cyn said. “You’re as bad as he is.”

  “You can’t be a director,” Cyn said, later. “I mean, sure, anyone with a camera can say he’s one, but somebody could just look you up.”

  “They can’t all be registered.”

  “I’ll bet the big ones are, someplace. Anyway, you said you had to talk to the kids, right? Directors, they might talk to the stars, but not to whole mobs.”

  “Could I be a screenwriter?”

  “When’s the last time you went to a movie?” Rej sneered. “Anybody could be a screenwriter. They might hang around, trying to soak up ‘ambience’ or whatever—remember, Cyn, when that pathetic little dweeb spent all that time on our set ’cause he was writing some movie about making porno movies?—but it wouldn’t work. You want these kids to give it up, right? Listen, they’ll do anything—to anybody—if you whisper ‘movies’ at them. We saw that when we were out on the coast, virgins blowing Great Danes because some greaseball tells them that’s the way Monroe got started. But they’d have to believe you could make it happen. And a screenwriter can’t make anything happen.”

  “What if I was a—?”

  “Casting director!” Cyn blurted out. “That is just awesomely perfect. Right, Rej? Nobody knows their names, and they may not get the final say, but they thin the herd. If you don’t get past them, the director never gets to see your tape.”

  “You’re a genius, Cyn,” Rej said. “Makes me want to crawl over there and kiss your ass.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to her, Burke,” the blonde said. “This one’s our ticket, I know it.”

  “How you going to know what a...what was that again
, Schoolboy...a goddamn ‘casting director’ wears to work?”

  “This isn’t the post office, Prof,” Michelle said tartly. “Everyone doesn’t wear the same uniform.”

  “But I have to look like—”

  “You don’t have to look like anything, baby. Trust the Mistress of the Wardrobe. What you have to look is cool. Hip, edgy, with it—understand?”

  “I...guess.”

  “Well, I can do it. All I need is—”

  “I know,” I said, reaching into my jacket.

  “Am I right?” Giovanni asked me.

  “Nothing I found so far makes it seem so,” I said. “And I never thought you were, going in.”

  He looked through the windshield of the midnight-blue BMW sedan, as if the answer were somewhere offshore. Even at three in the morning, the Brooklyn waterfront is never completely deserted, but Giovanni was calm and relaxed. Maybe because Felix was sitting behind me, where I couldn’t see him. Or maybe because of the two cars backed into acute angles from us, facing out. A burgundy Cadillac and a white Range Rover—one from each of their crews.

  “But you haven’t found anything that would make me wrong?”

  “No.”

  “Even the cops didn’t?”

  “Not in anything I saw. And I saw pretty much everything there was.”

  “They think it was just some sex fiend?”

  “It’s hard to tell what they think, from only looking at paper. But they’ve got no candidate, so that’s where they’d go, eventually.”

  “Why would they be incorrect?” Felix asked.

  “I didn’t say they would be,” I answered him mildly, not turning around.

  “But if they were?” he insisted, his voice sable-silky. I guessed it wasn’t his mother who’d named him Felix.

  “If it was someone the...If it was someone Vonni knew, that would make them wrong.”

  “Yes,” he said patiently. “But how would they be wrong? Where would they be wrong?”

  “They would be...if there was a relationship they didn’t know about. Or one they misread.”

  “Such as...?”

  “Such as someone she was...involved with outside the law.”

  “What does that mean?” Giovanni, edgy.

  “A married man, for example,” I said. “I don’t mean outside the law like adultery, nobody goes to jail for that. I mean outside the law because of Vonni’s age.”

  “This happens,” Felix said, neutral.

  “Happens with schoolteachers,” I said. “And coaches. And priests. And freaks who troll the Internet. And—”

  “We get it,” Giovanni said. “But, something like that going on, what’s the chances of the cops missing it?”

  “Dismal,” I said, holding back the card the boy Hugh had given me. Vonni’s “big day.” When it was over, she’d start being famous. Her last meeting hadn’t been a chance encounter. Couldn’t have been. Because whoever it had been with had never come forward. “But always possible.”

  “Sherlock Holmes is dead,” Giovanni said.

  “I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,” I told them, “but the odds are way against it, especially in a homicide like this one. Front-page stuff, all kinds of personnel assigned—that’s a bright, hot light to be under. They’d pull out all the stops. I was looking for an Exceptional Clearance note, but—”

  “What is that?” Felix asked, still soft-voiced. He was either naturally calm or a natural killer. Or both.

  “When the cops know who did it but they can’t touch them,” I told him. “Just not enough evidence to act.”

  “How could that be? The police do not seem to need...overwhelming evidence to make many of their arrests.”

  “Not for some of them,” I agreed. “But Exceptional Clearance is just what it sounds like. It’s no run-of-the-mill thing. The cops can ‘clear’ a case without making an arrest if they can show their superiors a certain person did the crime, and also that they don’t have enough on him to make it stick in court. Sometimes they’ve got plenty of evidence but they can’t use it. Something they found during a bad search, maybe. Or off an illegal wiretap.

  “The thing is, with a homicide, they could feel it’s better to wait. If they move too soon, force it to trial with shaky evidence, the killer beats the case, and they don’t get a second chance. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, so they don’t lose anything by holding back. If the guy had accomplices, or even if he had partners on other jobs, if he’s a gang member...You see where I’m going. They’ll figure like you said before, everyone says they can take the weight, until they step on the scales.”

  “Loyalty is...unusual now,” Felix agreed.

  “You said you looked for this Clearance thing?” Giovanni said.

  “I looked for it. And it’s not there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I didn’t overlook it. And I’m sure that the paperwork I got was righteous. Stuff like that’s got to be double-documented, everybody playing CYA all the way up the command chain. If it was there, it would have been on paper. And—you know what?—if they had a candidate, they’d have leaked it to the press by now, if only to get some of the heat off themselves. You know, the old ‘umbrella of suspicion’ routine.”

  “So either they missed one of these...relationships, or it was someone she didn’t know—that sums it up?” Giovanni said.

  “Yeah.”

  “And if it was someone she didn’t know, the way the cops would have doped it out, they’d make it for a sex fiend, like we said before.”

  “Exactly. And that seems like it’s where they ended up. There’s no local suspect.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure of this: They called in the FBI, looking for a profile of the killer. And they asked the feds for pattern work, too, to see if there were any similarities between the way this was done and other...ones. All around the country, going back a number of years. It could be that they were just going through the motions, covering themselves with paper. But I don’t think so.”

  “Why?” Felix asked.

  “The locals wouldn’t go that far unless they were serious. And empty. This wasn’t a ransom kidnapping. No evidence that she was taken across a state line. No reason for the federales to have jurisdiction. And that would be the way most local departments would want it. They talk cooperation, but they’re always worried about credit-stealing, especially when the feds have better access to the national media. So, if the locals asked for help, that tells me they really wanted to crack it.”

  “The feds,” Giovanni muttered, half to himself.

  “Not New York feds,” I reminded him. “And not DEA,” I put in, for Felix.

  “I know,” Giovanni said. “But what do they have, for all this? Nothing. Not a single—candidate, you called him, right?—not a single candidate in Vonni’s life. And no ‘pattern’ they can link to a serial killer or whatever. You said it was maybe more than one, don’t forget. To me, it still looks like just what I said. A hit. A hit to send me a message.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I said.

  “You got a plan, don’t you, Burke?” he asked, more anxiety in his voice than he realized.

  “It may not be much of one....”

  “Yeah. Me and Felix, we don’t know you, know you, see what I’m saying? But we know of you. Of your ‘brother,’ anyway, okay? We asked around, people who know. You got a lot of rep. For different things. One of them is, you see a chance to open a money vein, you stick in a big damn needle. So, sure, you got a plan. Only it’ll cost a lot of coin, try it out; am I right or wrong?”

  “You’re right. And all that means for sure is that the plan happens, not the result. I’m not making any promises.”

  “That’s what a reputation is,” Felix purred. “It makes the promises for you. And you have more than one reputation, Burke. This kind of thing. A child. You have a reputation about such things.”

  “Oh, I want him, all r
ight,” I admitted.

  “Whoever he is?” Giovanni asked.

  I turned to hold his eyes. “If he was Christ on the fucking cross,” I said.

  When you’re on the run, “safe sex” is the kind you pay for. When you go anywhere near women you know, what you can’t know is if they’re going to keep it to themselves. Maybe they grapevined into a reward-money rumor; maybe they’ve got a case on them—there’s all kinds of reasons, and it never takes a good one.

  But buying sex doesn’t buy you loyalty, and hustlers are always hustling.

  So the best bet is strangers.

  I’m good at being a stranger. It comes naturally to me. I’ve got a drifter’s mind, and I’ve been enough places so I can speak “not from around here” convincingly, even half a dozen blocks from wherever I live.

  You have to pick middle-tier spots. Upscale joints attract ambitious women, and even the most self-absorbed of those ask enough questions to see if you’re going to be a good investment. The other end of the road is landmined so deeply you’d have to step on one to know it’s there. Roadhouse girls are some of the sweetest ever put on this earth, but you never know whose woman you just made a mistake with, until you hear the bottle break on the bar.

  Turned out Long Island has a cottage industry in cheaters’ bars, catering to the daytime trade, before husbands get home from work. They all seem within easy driving distance of a motel, too.

  But, after the first three, I figured out it wasn’t sex I’d been missing.

  “Two G’s for...this?”

  “Quite a bargain, yes?” Michelle said, cat-grinning to show she was misunderstanding me deliberately. “Bally makes such beautiful things.”

  “It’s just a leather jacket,” I said.

  “Oh, pul-leeze! Feel it.”

  “It’s awful thin for so much—”

  “That is how it’s supposed to be, you dolt. This is summer leather. Soft as butter, isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Aren’t the gussets behind the shoulder a perfect touch? And that color...”