Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  “Maybe,” is all I could say.

  “That has to be it,” I said to Max, pointing at a ramshackle house at the end of a long, straight block. In a better neighborhood, this would be a cul-de-sac. Here, it was as if the street had just surrendered to a prairie-sized vacant lot.

  Abandoned cars lined both sides of the street, each one flying some kind of gang sign. Drugstores.

  The summer sun that kissed the beach a few miles away was hostile here, bleaching everything into a single bleak tone. Heat waves trembled off the asphalt. The early-morning air was already sodden. Nothing moved.

  For this run, I’d lost the eyepatch, the jewelry, and the fancy leather jacket, and switched back to the Plymouth. Max stayed with one of the sumo-sized Hawaiian shirts—I think he’d started to like the look.

  As I pulled into the driveway, a brindle-colored blur shot around the side of the house and charged the car. The pit bull leaped onto the hood, slipped slightly, clawed its way toward the windshield, growling death threats. I could see a heavy leather collar around its neck, attached to a length of chain that could anchor a tugboat. I jammed the lever into reverse and hit the gas. The pit bull slid off the hood and hit the ground, then immediately pogo’ed up like it was on springs. Its huge head filled my window, enraged.

  I backed off until the Plymouth was beyond the end of the pit bull’s chain. Looked a question at Max. He shrugged.

  A tall, slope-shouldered black man wearing white painter’s coveralls and a matching cap strolled up to us. He’d come around the same side of the house the pit bull had materialized from. He walked down the driveway toward the car, ignoring the frenzied animal, making a motion for me to roll down my window. As soon as I did, the pit quieted down, as if this was a routine he knew well.

  “What you want?” the man asked. His skin was light, covered with freckles, his eyes an unsettling stormy blue. I’d have given five-to-two the hair under his cap was red.

  “Ozell,” I said.

  “What you want with him?”

  “I want to make some money with him.”

  “Yeah? And how you going to do that?”

  “Where I am right now, it’s the wrong address to discuss it.”

  “What address you talking about, mister? You said you looking for Ozell, right?”

  “Right man, wrong address,” I told him. “Where I’m sitting right now, like this, all this noise, people maybe watching, the address is Front Street, you with me?”

  “You got the stones to get out that ride?”

  “You tell me you’ll handle your bulldog, I’ll take your word.”

  “Give me a couple of minutes,” he said. “Then walk around back. Walk slow.”

  We gave him five and change. Then we moved out, Max going first. The man was in a backyard that stretched into the vacant lot, with no visible border between them. He was seated on an old couch that the pit must have used for a chew-toy. The dog was chained to a stake a little smaller than a cut-down telephone pole. A long cable ran from its collar to the man’s hand.

  “Have a seat,” he said, indicating a couple of aluminum-and-webbing beach chairs.

  We did.

  “This thing I got here,” he said, holding up the cable, “all I got to do is push on it, that chain comes right off Azumah’s collar. You with me?”

  “All the way,” I assured him.

  “When I see Ozell, what you want I should tell him about the money you going to make with him?”

  “I heard Ozell was the man to see if you wanted to give your dog a roll.”

  “Not one word of that sounds like money to me, friend.”

  “Anyone can make sounds,” I said. “When it comes to cash, what you want is sight, am I telling the truth?” Before he could answer, I pulled a thick roll out of my jacket pocket.

  “I been to Chicago,” he said suspiciously. “Been to Kansas City, too.”

  I tossed him the roll. He caught it with his off-hand, never letting go of the cable. He thumbed the rubber band off the roll.

  “There’s all twenties here, look like.”

  “Your money. If you can help us out.”

  “Help you out how?”

  “I want to show you a tape of a pit contest. And I want you to tell me—”

  “Nah, man. I don’t eat no cheese.”

  “Not what I want. Just look at the tape, let me ask my questions. You don’t want to answer them, so you wasted a few minutes. You do, we leave, and the cash stays.”

  He bounced the roll on his palm, thoughtfully. “I let Azumah loose and you going to be leaving anyway.”

  “You want us to leave, just say so. Toss the money back and we’ll be gone.”

  “I’m thinking, maybe that’s right. You should leave. And maybe I should keep something for my trouble, too.”

  “You don’t want to be like that,” I said. “We came here respectful. Don’t go all Bogart on us. It’d be a mistake.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” I said, sliding the pistol out of the same pocket I’d taken the money from.

  “Bullet wouldn’t stop Azumah,” he said calmly, “even if you could hit him on the run.”

  “I got a full clip,” I told him. “And that knife you’re holding somewhere won’t stop my partner.”

  The man tunnel-visioned in on Max, his pit-trained eyes measuring, adding up the score.

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you,” he said warningly. “Money or not.”

  “You won’t even have to get off that couch,” I promised him.

  “You want me to run it again?” I asked Ozell.

  “No need,” he said. “What you want to know? For your money,” he added, quickly.

  “You know where this was shot?”

  “Could be.”

  “Yes or no, friend.”

  “Is that enough? For the money, I mean?”

  “No. Look, I don’t need to know the exact location where it was shot. Just if you recognize it, so you remember if you were there for this particular bout.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, if you were, you saw somebody with a camera. The one who made this tape.”

  “That’s what you want, man?”

  “For the money,” I reminded him.

  “It was a white boy,” he said. “I don’t mean a white boy like you is a white boy. I mean a for-real boy. Punk-ass kid, couldn’t be more than, I dunno, twenty, twenty-two?”

  “He have a dog going that night?”

  “No, man,” he said, dismissing the thought. “He was just this weaselly guy. Comes up to me, asks can he shoot with that fancy camera? I tell him, he don’t get the fuck outta there, I throw his puny ass in the pit, too. He says there’s five yards in it for me. Says I can watch him close as I want—he’s only gonna shoot the dogs, not the people. I know he’s not The Man. So, I figure, why not?”

  “How long was he there?”

  “Maybe two, three bouts. Paid me up front. I didn’t even see him go. Be lucky if the pussy made it back through the parking lot, that place.”

  “Describe him.”

  “I told you, man. A gray boy. Nothing special about him. About your height, maybe a inch or two taller. He wasn’t fat and he wasn’t skinny.”

  “Hair?”

  “He had a cap on, man. Some kind of baseball one, I don’t remember....”

  “What about his face?”

  “Wasn’t like yours, man. No offense, but I’d know you, I ever saw you again. This kid was just...plain, like. He had, I think he had, an earring,” Ozell said, touching his own left ear, “but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  I didn’t trust his ghetto-game accent any more than I did those bad blue eyes. But I went at him another few minutes, and the vacuum bag didn’t get any fuller.

  “Thanks,” I told Ozell, holding out my hand to shake. “This guy ever contacts you again, you call that number I left you, there’s five in it for you, all right?” I said, leaving it ambiguous, five
hundred or five thousand.

  “All right,” he said, not going for the bait. He’d negotiate when he had something to trade, not before.

  “Yeah,” I said, moving very close to him. “And one more thing. You don’t want to be calling anybody else, Ozell. I wouldn’t forget your face, either.”

  “You like her in those?” Cyn asked me.

  Rejji pranced around the room in a pair of side-laced black boots that went to her knees.

  “I don’t go for those cloven heels,” I said. “Or those built-up soles, either.”

  “You’re old-fashioned. Miss the stilettos, huh?”

  “Maybe just old, period.”

  “No man’s so old that Rejji can’t make him sit up and pay attention,” Cyn said, smiling knowingly. “That bitch’s got a tongue so educated, she can lick up a bowl of fudge ripple and never touch the ripple.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want you to do that,” she said. “Just sit there, smoke your cigarette, and pay attention.”

  “Nothing,” Terry said, his tone somewhere between disgusted and offended. “Two of them, I don’t think they even knew her.”

  “It was odds-against,” I told him.

  “Worth a shot,” the Prof said.

  “The one girl, Heidi, I think she was a friend for real,” Terry said. “She was crying when we talked about it. But she said the cops had talked to her—talked to everybody in the whole school, she said. She didn’t know anything.”

  “That wasn’t our last chance,” I assured him.

  He didn’t look comforted.

  The girl in the pink T-shirt with a black “NHB” curling over her small, high breasts looked vaguely Hispanic. Maybe it was her long, dark hair, or the gold hoop earrings. But her voice was pure Ozone Park Italian.

  “You look like you’ve been in some,” she said, “but you’re, like, too old now.”

  “I’m the manager,” I told her.

  “Manager? You must have us confused with the UFC or Pride, mister. The purses here are five hundred dollars, for the top of the card.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You mean him?” she said, tilting her head in Max’s direction.

  “Yep.”

  “You look like a grappler,” she said to Max.

  He bowed his head, very slightly.

  “Doesn’t he speak English?” she asked me.

  “No,” I told her, truthfully.

  “He ever go No Holds Barred before? This isn’t karate, you understand. People get hurt....”

  “We understand.”

  “Well, you bring him around, I can make him a match.” She looked at Max appraisingly. “He’s what, two twenty?”

  “About that,” I agreed. “But we’ll go against whatever you’ve got.”

  “All right. Bring him down on Friday. Not this Friday, a week from.”

  “Uh, is anyone going to be taping?”

  “Taping? You mean like for TV?”

  “No. Just...You allow cameras?”

  “No. No, we don’t. The only video in there is what we shoot. If you want a copy, it costs—”

  “But, sometimes, you let other people tape, don’t you?”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  “Let me show you. I’ve got a machine in my car.”

  “Sixto!” she yelled.

  The sound of feet pounding on boards. The door in the back of the dojo opened, and three men walked in. Triangle formation. The guy at the point was half a foot taller than Max and a hundred pounds heavier, with a shaved head and keloid eyebrows. His arms were so densely covered in apolitical ink—crosses, daggers, skulls—that they looked black.

  “This guy’s asking questions about taping. He says he’s got something in his car...” the woman told him.

  “What is this?” the big man asked, moving closer.

  “I want to get my guy into a match,” I said. “So I brought him around, find out what the deal is. See, I heard about this from a tape....”

  “What fucking tape, man?”

  “That’s what I was trying to explain to this young lady. I watched a piece of tape. Looked pretty good. In fact, unless I miss my guess, you were in it.”

  “Me?”

  “Sixto, that must have been when—”

  “Shut up, Vicki,” he cut her off. Turned to me. “You trying to sell me something?”

  “The opposite. I’m buying, not selling.”

  “Buying what, man?”

  “Look at the tape first,” I said.

  “I never saw this before,” Sixto said, fascinated as he watched himself on the portable playback screen. “I took that motherfucker down!”

  One of the men with him slapped Sixto’s extended palm. Hard, signifying total agreement.

  “So you said you were buying something...?”

  “What I’m buying is, who shot that tape?”

  “This one here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “Couple a hundred.”

  “Yeah? Give me the money.”

  “When you’re done.”

  “I’m nobody to fuck with, pal. You just seen that for yourself.”

  “Right. And I’m not fucking with you. Who made that tape?”

  He stared at me, letting his eyes glaze and his breathing go short and sharp. Prison-yard stuff. I looked between his small, close-together eyes, waited.

  “I don’t know his name,” he finally said.

  “What do you know?”

  “I don’t...Vicki, you know?”

  “Yeah,” the woman said. “He paid us; remember, Sixto? To tape just one match. Only we had to let him right in the ring. Remember...?”

  “Yeah! Now I do. Sure. That little guy was in-fucking-sane! We warned him he could get himself crippled, doing that. But he said that was okay, it was his risk.”

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “He didn’t look like nothing, man. About like you.”

  “White man?”

  “Yeah, white.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Vicki?” he asked, his tone respectful, not role-playing anymore.

  “He had real nice teeth,” she said. “All white and perfect. I remember those teeth.”

  “Good,” I complimented her. “You have a fine eye. His face, did he have any scars?”

  “He didn’t look like you, if that’s what you mean,” she said, smiling.

  “What size was he?”

  “Next to Sixto, all men look small to me,” she said proudly.

  “Was he sporting gold?”

  “No. Not that I could see.”

  I stroked her for a couple of minutes more, but she was dry.

  “Appreciate it,” I told her, handing over the money.

  “What you said...when you came in, that was all bullshit, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’d he say, V?” Sixto asked.

  “He said this guy here,” pointing at Max, “wanted to get into one of our events. He doesn’t speak English.”

  “He’s got the look,” Sixto said. “You want to try me? Right here. We got a ring set up in back. Just for fun?”

  “No thanks,” I said. “We were looking for something a little more his speed.”

  “I spent a lot of your money,” Cyn said, pointing at a couple of cartons of videotapes. “I went as downscale as I could, but you can’t tell from the labels—a lot of stuff they call ‘amateur’ isn’t. True amateur stuff is actually more expensive, believe it or not.”

  “Did you look through it yet?”

  “I figured you’d rather do it yourself,” she said, grinning.

  “Wouldn’t you and Rejji recognize most of the...performers? If they were pros, I mean?”

  “If it’s our kind of stuff, we should,” Cyn agreed.

  “Then just save me the ones you don’t,” I told her.

  “You got a goo
d guinea suit?”

  “Guido, or top-shelf?”

  “Either one,” Giovanni said on the phone. “Just don’t get all Seventies on me, okay? I’m picking you up. One o’clock. Northwest corner of Hester and Broadway.”

  “One in the morning?”

  “The afternoon,” he said, sounding annoyed.

  “You look fine,” Giovanni said, taking in my loose-draped charcoal sharkskin suit and teal silk shirt, buttoned to the neck. “This hour, we take the West Side Highway to the Henry Hudson, we’re there in an hour, tops.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s not the place,” he said, “it’s the person. How you doing?”

  I knew he wasn’t social-dancing. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “There’s things that might lead us in, but I can’t tell. Not yet.”

  “You want to run anything past me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not asking for anything in writing, Burke. What’s your problem?”

  “The problem is, I have to ask you some questions. And the more you know about what I’m doing, the better the chance your answers won’t be as good to me.”

  “Asshole!” Giovanni muttered, stabbing at the brakes as a white Corvette shot across our bow, heading for the Ninety-sixth Street exit.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Good? What’s good?”

  “You’re good,” I told him. “A lot of guys would’ve lost it over something like that. Chased the jerk in the ’Vette down and—”

  “—and what, grabbed a fucking bat out of the trunk and crunched him? I’m a businessman, not some stupid cafone, throw my life away over shit like that.”

  “That’s what I mean; good. Something like...something like what we’re doing, a short fuse could knock it off the rails.”

  “What do you want to ask me?” he said, finally getting it.

  “You know anything about Vonni besides what her mother told you?”

  “I...No, I guess I don’t. You’re not asking me if I ever saw her alone, or anything?”

  “I’m asking you what I asked you, Giovanni. This isn’t some grand-jury perjury trap.”

  “I know she was—”

  “You know if she was gay?”