Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  Fancy dished it out, in full costume. Her sister, Charm, took it. Fancy held the whip, but Charm held the handle. Tricks and games, but not fun ones—the roots were too twisted.

  Strega would do anything for me. A lot of women say things like that. The way Strega meant it scared me as much as it drew me.

  Gem would say, “Yes, master,” slyly, expecting a smack on the bottom as a response. But she’d been her own boss since she was a baby. She’d had to be—her childhood had been the Khmer Rouge, hunting and haunting.

  Belle and Candy were dead and gone. If there’s anything to the Bible, they’d gone in opposite directions.

  Fancy was just gone, leaving Charm just dead. I didn’t know where Strega was, but that wouldn’t stop her if she wanted to see me.

  One way or another, women always left me. They didn’t all die. Sometimes, when whatever brought us together was done, so were we.

  Gem didn’t end like that. I’d left her. In Portland. I told her I couldn’t send for her until I knew how it would be for me back home. And now I wondered if I would ever know.

  Or if she’d still be there when I did.

  Who’d want one of those “true submissives” that inadequates are always trolling for, anyway? “Every man wants to spank a domme,” Michelle had told me years ago, winking as if she knew something more than she was saying. And maybe there’s some truth in that. At least it would be special. Just for you. A person, not a role.

  I like spike heels and seamed stockings. On some women. If their legs are too thin, the seams don’t look erotic; they look like huge varicose veins.

  I like bratty, sometimes. Hate bitchy, all across the board.

  I knew a girl, years ago. She’d spent years as a slave to some guy, wearing the collar, living the life. When he told her he was “moving on,” she Swiss-cheesed him with his own custom-made shotgun. Stupid bastard died because he’d never learned the first rule of survival when your girlfriend’s a borderline: abandonment is a capital offense.

  If the only way you can make it work is with a woman who lets you tie her up, that’s one thing. But if the only women you can get are those who’d let anybody tie them up, then who’s the one in bondage?

  No matter what any chump thought he was buying from their Internet business, Cyn and Rejji were true partners. And the bond between them didn’t come in leather.

  I found the house easily enough; it looked like it had been the first one in the neighborhood to surrender.

  The woman was expecting me. Short and stocky, dressed in an orange jumpsuit that looked like it was on loan from the county jail. She opened the huge white floor-standing freezer and took out a plastic bag that was sealed crooked at the top. Not a Ziploc, one of those do-it-yourself jobs they sell on infomercials.

  The woman laid the bag on a fake-wood chopping block, and sliced open the top with a Ginsu knife. She poured the contents onto a sheet of imitation Saran Wrap, folded it over lightly, then tossed it in a grungy gray microwave. When the oven beeped, she opened the door, unfolded the wrap, and rolled some of whatever was in there into a cigarette. She lit the confection with a Zippo lighter sporting the Harley-Davidson logo. “Very collectible,” she assured me.

  “My man? Rodney? Did you know he used to be with another woman? But when he lost his arm in that motorcycle accident, she up and left him.”

  “Because he had to go on disability?” I played along.

  “Nah. Because he couldn’t applaud with only one hand,” the woman said, cracking herself up.

  “That’s a good one,” I told her. “And that’s the kind of material you did for Vision?”

  “Yep! The way he explained it, we’d both get what we want. I’d get an audition tape I could send around to the clubs. And he’d get White Trash Wanda on tape before I get famous. You have any idea of what tapes of Roseanne before she made it would be worth?”

  “A lot, no doubt about it,” I said, paying the freight. “So how do you get in touch with Vision?”

  “Oh, I don’t,” she said loftily. “As soon as he’s finished with the editing, he’s going to bring it by.”

  “Did you ever wonder how we knew where to find you that first time?” Cyn asked me that night.

  “I do work,” I said. “People—some people—know.”

  “There’s plenty of men who...I mean, when that...happened to us, we could have gotten ourselves a—”

  “You could have gotten yourselves in a worse jackpot, and you knew it,” I said. “You wanted a man for hire, a professional. Someone who does his work, gets paid, and gets gone.”

  “That’s why you did it, for the money?”

  “Why else?”

  “We’re doing all...this, with you, now, aren’t we? And we’re getting paid, too, sure. But the money’s not that great. And we’re not making anything out of our business while we’re helping you.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Just what we heard—that you take money, but certain kinds of stuff you like doing. Just like us.”

  “What difference? As long as I get it done.”

  “I...don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure. Rejji and I, we love to play. And getting paid for it, that’s perfect. I always thought, if we didn’t love it, maybe we wouldn’t do it so well on camera, understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “Except that’s not...Well, what I mean, I see now, it wouldn’t matter. If Rejji didn’t like it, there’d be a buyer for that. That was what Gresham...”

  “You say that name too much,” I told her. “Isn’t that what you told Rejji when I first came to see you?”

  “This is different,” she said, brushing aside what was in her way. “You, you’re doing this for that girl, no matter what you say. The way you’re doing it, it’s like the way you were when we...”

  “She’s right,” Rejji said over her shoulder, from the corner where she was standing. “And that’s part of the word on you, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked them both.

  “You got it bad for...certain kinds of people.”

  “Gresham was just a freak. Nothing personal. A job. I didn’t feel anything for her.”

  “You felt something for us,” Cyn said. “Tell the truth.”

  “That’s me, all right, Cyn. A knight in shining armor.”

  “Oh, you’ve got plenty of armor, all right,” Rejji said.

  “Somehow, I never pictured you as a sports nut,” Cyn said later.

  “You ever watch this?” I asked her, pointed at the screen where Bryant Gumbel’s Real Sports was running on HBO.

  “No. We don’t like—”

  “Shut up and give it a chance.”

  “Ooo! You better do it, Cyn,” Rejji teased. “You know what Burke’ll do if you’re a bad girl.”

  “You silly...” Cyn stopped herself, caught by the images on the screen. Children playing baseball together. Lots of children, with all kinds of disabilities. Blind, in wheelchairs, brittle-bone syndrome, muscular dystrophy. Something they called the “Miracle League,” organized by a bunch of parents who just wanted to give the kids a chance to play. Each kid had a special buddy, another kid, an athlete who went every step of the way with the kid who needed it, from helping to hold a bat to pushing a wheelchair around the bases.

  Rejji came over to see what we were looking at. She sat down, and watched, transfixed, until it was over.

  “Some people,” she said, choked up, “they...they torture their own kids. And these ones, they...”

  “Makes you think there’s two different species, huh?” I said.

  “There are,” Cyn said, holding Rejji’s hand.

  I spent the next day working the phones. Calling in favors. Hard to do secondhand, but Mama was an ace at relays.

  The strip mall a few minutes away had a halfway-decent deli. I had them make me a rare roast beef on rye with a slice of red onion and Russian dressing. A side of potato salad, and a bottle of Dr. Brown’s black c
herry. Picked up a copy of the Post, took it all back to my room, and sat down to watch the news.

  It was the usual mulch. My eyes drifted back to the paper. I was deep into a self-righteous article about “unprovoked” shark attacks when the TV suddenly blurted something about a “daring daylight assassination” of a “known mob figure.” I dropped the paper, upped the volume. The victim had been sitting at the wheel of his white Cadillac SUV—in a no-standing zone in midtown, the announcer said, as if this confirmed some significant point—when someone walked by and put a single slug into his left ear. A police spokesman solemnly announced it “had all the trademarks of a professional killing.”

  It had gone down in broad daylight. Nobody had seen or heard a thing, not even the SUV’s passenger. He had just stepped into a local store for a few minutes, asking the driver to wait. Found the body when he came back out.

  The screen showed a close-up photo of the dead man. He had a round face that made his little eyes look even smaller. The announcer asked anyone with information to call a special number the cops had set up. The name of the victim was in bold black type beneath his photo. Vincente “Colto” Zandrazzi.

  I was still watching television, thinking maybe the late news would have more on the killing, when the connecting door between our rooms opened and Rejji crawled in.

  She came over to where I was sitting, said, “Cyn told me I had to—”

  “You don’t have to do anyth—”

  “I need to tell you a secret,” she said. “Please?”

  “Rejji, I don’t want—”

  “I know. Please...?”

  “What?”

  She crawled over to the TV set, poked around until she found the switch, turned it off. The room went into darkness, except for the light spilling from the connecting door.

  She crawled back to where I was sitting. “I have to stand up to tell you, all right?”

  “Sure.”

  She stood up, bent over so her lips were right against my ear. I thought of Colto.

  “I want to do this,” she whispered. “I want to see what it feels like. I want to know. But I can’t just...Cyn has to make me. But not really. You know what I’m...”

  “What about me?” I asked her.

  “What?”

  “What do I want to do, Rejji?”

  “Do me,” she whispered.

  “Not with—”

  “She won’t come in,” Rejji said. “And I won’t look.”

  “Uh! Uh! Uh!”

  Rejji, on her hands and knees, blindfolded, making an explosive little noise, somewhere between a grunt and a squeal.

  I was right behind her.

  “Don’t untie me,” she whispered, dropping her shoulders to the bed. “Not yet, okay?”

  “It was like...a string of little firecrackers, going off in me.”

  “Did you find out what you wanted to know?”

  “Yes. Cyn was right.”

  “About what?”

  “You know,” she said. “Can she come in now?”

  “You know what I do hate,” I said to Cyn, much later that night. “Movies.”

  “Movies?” she said, propping herself on one elbow. “You mean some movies, right?”

  “Remember what you always said is the answer to every question?”

  “Power power power,” Rejji whispered, from the foot of the bed.

  “Yeah. You ever see a movie called The Bad Seed? An old one, from the Fifties, black and white...but they show it all the time on TV, still.”

  “I did!” Rej said. “It was the scariest movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “I’ve seen it, too,” Cyn said. She reached out one hand, pulled on Rejji’s chain so that the dark-haired girl came closer to her.

  “You think it was true?” I asked them both.

  “You mean, like, based-on-a-true-story true?” Rejji asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think it probably was,” Cyn said guardedly. “Parts of it, anyway.”

  “So you think that little girl, the one who committed all those murders, she was born the way she was?”

  “She was,” Rejji said. “It...skipped a generation, like. Wasn’t it her grandmother who was also—”

  “I don’t even remember,” I said. “What I do remember is the whole idea of the movie. Some people are just born evil; it’s in their genes. It doesn’t matter how they’re raised, or who raises them; they are what they are. Destiny. That little girl in the movie, she had great parents. They adored her. Even the neighbor, some woman, she was mad about the kid. They gave her everything.”

  “Why does that make you so furious?” Cyn asked, tuned in now.

  “Because it’s the dirtiest fucking lie ever told,” I said, remembering the calico cats. “The worst one of all. No kid is born bad. Or born good, either. There’s no genetic code for rapist, or serial killer.”

  “But there’s been kids from good homes who—”

  “This isn’t about some abuse-excuse rap,” I said. “Some people turn out to be no fucking good no matter how they’re brought up. But they weren’t born to it. There’s nothing about their DNA that makes them that way.”

  “Why is that so important?” Cyn asked.

  “Because that one miserable fucking movie probably did more to condemn kids than anything the government ever did. You think people on juries get their information from scientific studies? They get their ‘knowledge’ from movies. You just proved it, the both of you.”

  “Well, how are we supposed to—?”

  “I’m not blaming you, Cyn. I guess I’m agreeing with you. It’s all about power. And the movies have it, in spades.”

  “Well, there isn’t a lot you could do about that, honey, is there?”

  “We can find this Vision,” I told her.

  “Vision?” the Prof scoffed, the next morning. “Motherfucker’s name should be ‘Invisible,’ hard as we’ve looked for him.”

  “We don’t know the turf,” I said. “It’s not like any tracking we ever did.”

  Cyn and Rejji sat quietly, together, listening. Michelle was off somewhere with the Mole. Terry was out working the teens.

  “You think the children know, mahn?” Clarence.

  “You know what, brother? I did think so. But now I don’t. Whoever he is, he rides the thermals, drops down whenever he sees something he wants, then skies away. I think the mistake we’ve been making is assuming he’s like other freaks—the kind we’re used to. You see what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, Schoolboy. You can always tell where they going by where they been. Not this boy.”

  “Not this boy,” I agreed.

  “Come on with it,” the Prof encouraged me. Like he’d been doing since I’d hit the prison yard that first time.

  “It’s not a new thing, right?” I said. “Cameras. They’ve been used as everything from lures to kill-props since they were invented. When I was just a little kid, I remember hearing about this maggot. Glatman, I think his name was. He did it real simple. Just put an ad in the papers for photo models. He was smart. Worked L.A.—that’s a refugee camp for pretty girls from everyplace else. When a woman would answer his ad, he’d tell them he was on assignment from one of those ‘detective’ magazines they had back then. Needed some damsel-in-distress stuff...no nudity, just a little cleavage. And some ropes.

  “The ones who went for it, he just drove them to the ‘location,’ out in the desert, tied them up, did what he did, then left them there, dead.”

  “There’s always been that,” the Prof agreed. “Most of it’s not about murder. Sometimes, it’s just a scam to get a woman’s clothes off. And some cockless motherfuckers, they need the prop, you know? Remember when the Times Square joints used to have those ‘camera clubs,’ son? You could rent a camera from them, pose the girl the way you wanted. Only thing they wouldn’t let you in those rooms with was a roll of film.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But we don’t know what this Visi
on guy wants,” the Prof said, tapping one temple.

  “Not yet we don’t,” I said. “But I’m sure of one thing. That camera of his, Prof, it’s no prop. He’s not faking. Whatever he wants, he wants it on tape.”

  “Burke! Wait till you hear this!”

  “Calm down, Cyn. What’s so—?”

  “We went back to see Kori...the paddle girl...again,” Rejji said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Cyn always knows,” Rejji said. “And she was right.”

  “You found out where this Vision...?”

  “No,” Cyn said. “She really doesn’t know any more about that than she told us. But you know what she does know?”

  “Cyn...”

  “She knows about a guy who pays teenage girls to pose. Just like that Glatman freak you were telling us—”

  “Bondage photos?” I asked her, listening hard now.

  “No...” Cyn said reluctantly. “‘Naughty schoolgirl’ stuff.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Oh, you know, Burke. A cheerleader lifting up her skirt to show her panties, like that.”

  “So what makes you think—”

  “Well, he only uses actual schoolgirls. He has to see a birth certificate, a photo ID from school, and even a report card! He’s only into the real thing....”

  “That’s a long ways from homicide.”

  “But, come on, he might know something, right?” Cyn said, almost pleading with me.

  “Tomorrow afternoon,” I promised her. “Now let me get some sleep.”

  I didn’t even try.

  One of the channels had a story about this guy who killed his girlfriend and stuffed her into a trunk in his apartment. He was a well-connected rich boy, so they gave him bail. He jumped bond and made it out of the country. Ended up living in France. Living good, too. For years, the French wouldn’t extradite him, because he was facing the death penalty here, which went against their high moral principles. France is famous for protecting people from oppression. Ask Roman Polanski.