Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  “But when you said Blair Witch, I thought you—”

  “You thought we were looking ultra-low-budget?” I said, in disbelief. “No way! I mean, look, I won’t deny that this is a business. We’re here to make money. But we know you have to bring some to get some. Our company can’t finance some hundred-million-dollar spectacle. And we don’t want to. We were thinking of a moderate investment. Say, two and a half to, maybe, four. All on digital.”

  “That’s...”

  “What? Not enough? Listen to me, Vision. It’s more than enough, believe me. We’ve got the distribution contacts, the overseas market—this isn’t some straight-to-video pitch I’m making here.”

  “No. I mean, that could be...it could be plenty, if it was handled right.”

  “Take the contracts with you,” I told him. “But, first, tell me about your concept. Tell me everything. So we can fill in some of those blanks.”

  “My inspiration,” he said, leaning back, “my original inspiration was seeing one of those convenience-store holdups on videotape—not a re-enactment, the actual robbery—on one of those surveillance cameras they keep in those stores? I was struck by the...immediacy of it.”

  He leaned forward to light another cigarette, then leaned back again for the first drag, keeping the interviewer on “Pause,” just as he’d rehearsed it in front of his mirror a thousand times.

  Rejji came over, removed his near-empty tumbler, and deftly replaced it with a fresh drink, giving him a little extra wiggle, now that it was clear he was a VIP for real.

  “There’s a power to that kind of...performance,” he intoned. “An impact never duplicated in conventional cinema. I became a kind of connoisseur of the entire...genre, if you will. There was something about those tapes that was absolutely special. Unique. So I decided to deconstruct the tapes as a totality. Not in the formal sense, of course,” he said, breezily, “more in the way of disassembling the mechanism...isolating the elements to understand the gestalt.

  “From that work came my vision,” he said, in the solemnly portentous tone a pop star uses when explaining that global warming isn’t a cool thing.

  “And your name,” I said, saluting him with an upraised glass.

  “That wasn’t until later,” he corrected me. “Those surveillance tapes, the closest label you could put on them, artistically, would be a kind of cinéma vérité. But they’re not actually creations; they’re not even documentaries. Why? Because there’s no control—the filmmaker isn’t directing; it’s nothing more than the camera itself. Now, for some, that is the goal...to make the director disappear, so that the audience ‘sees’ directly into the life. But without control, there is no art. You might capture something fantastic on tape, but that’s just a question of being in the right place at the right time. That’s not art. It’s not even skill. Just dumb luck. The Zapruder film is world-famous, right? A piece of history. But nobody ever talks about his...gift. Or his art. And,” he said, in a tone of finality, “he never made anything else.”

  “But you can’t direct real life,” I said, gently fanning the flame.

  “No?” he said complacently.

  “Well, how could you?” I asked. “I mean, if you direct it, then it’s...acting.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” he said, his voice getting tumescent with confidence. He segued into full lecture mode. “I remember watching that robbery tape. Over and over. Thinking how much better it could have been if they’d positioned themselves differently. Or said different words. Because just because something’s real doesn’t mean it’s even interesting. Much less art. That’s when I began scripting. Before that, all my work was just...filming. Without any real...vision,” he said, chuckling at himself. He shifted his shoulders, positioning himself to deliver another dose of insight. “For a while, I did straight vérité. Have you ever seen a dogfight?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve heard about them, but...they’re...I mean, only hillbillies do them, isn’t that true? Like cockfights being a Hispanic thing?”

  “No...” He was starting to educate me, then caught himself before the topic veered too far from his favorite one. “Anyway, I filmed one. It was incredible. I filmed other things, too. Things you’d probably never see on tape in your life. But I couldn’t control any of it. So what I had was a lot of amazing footage, but none of it—even all of it together—would add up to a movie.

  “It all...evolved,” he said. “It took a long time. Years. My next stage was when I used actors to ‘be’ real. I’d put them in situations, and whatever happened, happened. Kind of vérité cranked up. And what I saw was that I had a lot of control but it cost me the realism. Like, have you ever seen a trial on Court TV?”

  “OJ,” I replied. “And when Frank Dux sued Jean-Claude Van Damme.” A safe Hollywood answer.

  “Do you think any of them would have behaved the same way if they hadn’t known the cameras were on them every second? The lawyers, the witnesses, even the judge? And those ‘reality’ TV shows. Survivor? Right! Big Brother? Sure! That Jenny Jones thing, where the guy thought he was going to meet someone who had a secret crush on him, and it turned out to be another guy? But on camera, what happens? Not so much. Off camera? He fucking kills the queer. Blows him away. You see what I mean? What if I’d had that?”

  I nodded, unwilling to interrupt the flow of something so important with speech.

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “Even if all I did was set the...boundaries, like, it still wasn’t real. Because, if they knew the camera was rolling, that changed everything. I threw most of that crap out. You know what I called it, finally? Faux vérité!”

  “Wow,” I said softly, overawed.

  “Everybody’s a screenwriter,” he said caustically. “They want to write ‘realism’ and call it their ‘creation.’ But they don’t get it. If you create the realism, it isn’t real!”

  “That is heavy,” I said. CV for cinéma vérité; FV for faux vérité. And NV...?

  “That’s when it came to me,” he said. “Can I show you something?”

  Without waiting for a response, he opened the flap on his shoulder bag and took out a cassette. I felt Michelle freeze next to me.

  “You’ve got a VCR here...?”

  “Of course,” Michelle assured him. She stood up and took the cassette from him, walked over to the console, turned it on, inserted the tape. She came back and handed the remote to Vision.

  “Thanks,” he said. Without further preamble, he pointed the remote at the console and kicked the tape into life.

  Darkness.

  The camera’s eye picked up a synagogue.

  “Jews!” a harsh, off-camera whisper. “Fucking Jews.”

  Figures running across an expanse of lawn.

  Heavy breathing.

  Swastikas springing from spray cans.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  “The white man is coming, kike bastards!” A different voice.

  Fade to black, deeper than darkness.

  In the silence, I said, “How did you know they’d be—”

  “What you’ve just seen,” he interrupted, “is a very early example of what I call noir vérité.”

  “I love that name!” Michelle.

  He bowed slightly, taking his due, but not finished opening our eyes. “With cinéma vérité, I had realism but not control,” he said. “With faux vérité, I had control but not realism. But with noir vérité, I finally had both.”

  “How is that...I mean, how is what we just saw...both?” I asked him, my tone a study in confused admiration.

  “How many actors did you see?”

  “Uh...four, I think, right?”

  “No,” he said. Waited a beat. “You saw one. One of them knew this was a movie. The other three, they thought they were going on an ‘action.’”

  “You mean they were set up to...?”

  “Not set up! They wanted to do exactly what they did. It was the actor’s assignment to get them to do it when they di
d it, and where they did it, that’s all. For the actor, this was a role. But for the others...”

  “I think I under—”

  “That was just the beginning,” he said. “The first step.”

  “Now, who was acting in that one?” he asked, eyes on Rejji, who he’d spotted sneaking peeks at the screen.

  “It can’t have been the one doing the paddling,” I said. “Why would the others have just gone along and—?”

  “This is the final stage,” he said. “Or nearly it, anyway. Because they were all acting. But only one of them knew the script.”

  “I don’t...”

  “Okay, look,” he said, leaning forward, intense. “They all thought they were acting. In a movie. The script was this sorority thing...like you saw for yourself. But the girl doing the paddling, she was told that this was a different movie. And the plot of that movie was a girl who wants to get even with another girl, so she makes up this whole ‘movie’ thing.”

  “Unreal!” I said.

  “Completely real,” he corrected. “The concept is that everyone knows they’re on camera, but only some of them know that the script isn’t really the script. But even the ones who think they know, they don’t understand that their role is another role. One that only the director knows. And when it all comes together, at that perfect moment, it’s totally real. And totally under my direction.”

  “Oh my God!” Michelle said.

  “Noir vérité,” he said proudly. “That’s why it’s always done with a single camera. The last thing I want is a Rashomon effect. Here, each of the actors has his or her own reality, but the only truth is what goes into the camera. And there can be only one truth. That,” he said, pausing, the way he’d rehearsed this moment before his mirror so many times, “was my vision.”

  “That’s...amazing,” I said. “So, in each movie you make, the star—”

  “The catalyst,” he said. “Not the star. In noir vérité, there are no stars. Because there are no limits, do you see?”

  “Not...really.”

  “The ultimate control is the director’s. In noir vérité, the director directs. Not just the lines, or the sets. He directs reality. The catalyst—there can be more than one—their job is to create the opportunity for conduct. But the conduct itself is real.”

  “So if you let the...person think they’re the catalyst, but they’re really playing the role of catalyst...?”

  “Exactly,” he said.

  “Everything I heard about you was gospel,” I told him, admiringly. “This is a new concept. Nobody’s got this one. And it truly has no limits. You could do...anything with it.”

  “No limits,” he agreed.

  “Couldn’t it ever get...I don’t know, out of hand?”

  “Even if it did,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “whatever happened, it wouldn’t be real. It would be something else entirely. My creation. Noir vérité.”

  Before he left, he inked the deal memo Michelle handed him.

  “I’ll just sign it ‘Vision,’ if that’s all right,” he said. “It’s the name I’ll be known by.”

  “Oh, you already are,” I promised him. “We just need your Social Security number for the accounting department. You know, the tax boys. You better get used to a lot of attention from them, Vision.”

  He put his copy of the contract into his briefcase, as Michelle tapped a single digit on her cellular.

  “Please bring the car around,” she said. “You are to take our guest wherever he directs.”

  “Better ring Fong, too,” I told her. “A little security wouldn’t hurt, considering...”

  “Considering what?” The Vision asked me.

  “Considering your signing bonus isn’t a check,” I told him. “Alana...”

  Michelle handed me a Gucci bag of soft blue leather. I unzipped it, so Vision could see the banded stacks of bills. Then handed the bag to him.

  He took it in both hands, torn. Then he made his decision and zipped it closed without counting. All class. Or maybe he wanted to keep the bag.

  I’d expected a man so driven, he’d be almost vibrating with barely contained power. A psychopath, radiating evil ki. Not this. Not this lethal little cliché.

  We shook hands.

  Michelle took him downstairs, to the waiting limo.

  “What if he—?”

  “There’s no way,” I said to Rejji. “Not now.”

  “Burke...”

  “They heard it all?” I asked Cyn.

  “Every word. I was right there.”

  “I stationed Max behind Giovanni, just in case.”

  “He didn’t move, Burke. Not a muscle. I don’t see how he did it. I wanted to...just...”

  “How do you think I felt?” Rejji said to her. “And I was close enough to do it.”

  “Why isn’t Michelle with you?” Cyn asked.

  “She stayed behind to clean up anything he might have touched. And to check out. She’s going to ride over with Mole and the Prof.”

  “And he can’t possibly...?”

  “There’s some reality he doesn’t get to direct,” I promised her.

  I pulled up to the barbed-wire-laced chain-link gate, flashed my brights three times.

  The gate swung back from both sides. I drove the Plymouth through. The gate closed behind me.

  “Watch those spike heels,” I told the women. “The ground here is all busted up.”

  We got out. Made our way over to a small building with a single gas pump in front.

  “You wait over there,” I told them. “Next to the car.”

  The white stretch limo ghosted up to the gate, flashed its brights three times.

  I watched as the gate swung back.

  The limo pulled into the shadows.

  The back door opened. The Vision climbed out, Max right behind him. The driver’s door opened, and Clarence stepped out, his semi-auto aimed at the ground.

  I slipped back into the shadows, got to the shack before they arrived.

  When the door opened, The Vision saw me sitting on an old office chair.

  “Have a seat,” I told him, pointing to the chair’s mate.

  “What...what are you doing? I thought we had—”

  “Sit down, Vision,” I said gently. “I’ll explain everything.”

  “People know where I am!” he said.

  “You don’t even know where you are,” I told him. Words I’d said to another man, years ago. Another man like him. “That’s part of all this. Your own concept, right?”

  His mouth opened, but he didn’t speak. His eyes were dull.

  “Come on, sit down,” I said. “I have one more thing to show you.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he said, fear spiderwebbing his voice like a rock against a windshield.

  “I know you didn’t,” I said, my voice wafting through the lattice of the professional interrogator’s faked empathy. “It was those insane twins, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what this is about? Those psychos? They’re steroid abusers. You know what that does to people. I never meant for them to—”

  “Oh, I know, Vision,” I told him. “It’s not your fault that you’re a genius.”

  “I’m not saying I’m a—”

  “Well, even if you’re not, I am. Because you are, my friend. Noir vérité. It’s so strong, it just takes over. You never filmed the actual killing, did you?”

  “No! I’m telling you, it wasn’t supposed to be...real. It’s...it’s like you said. They just got out of control. I wasn’t the director anymore. I wouldn’t film that.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re not a...producer, are you?”

  “That’s exactly what I am,” I assured him. “And your concept, it just killed me. In fact, we’re going to be doing one of your projects, and that’s a promise.”

  “Then all this...like, kidnapping stuff, you’re just...?”

  “Making a movie,” I said. “Getting the feel of what you told
us. Sorry if it looked scary. But I just wanted to see for my-self.”

  “Oh! Oh, I get it. So when do I—?”

  “Just sit here for a few minutes, Vision. I’ll have the car brought around for you.”

  He expelled a long breath, said, “I thought—”

  “Five minutes,” I promised him, and stepped out the door.

  It took less than that for the limo to vanish.

  I piloted the Plymouth carefully across the waste ground, the moon’s cold glare lighting the way.

  Rejji was sitting next to me, her trembling thigh pressed against mine. She pointed at the shadow-shrouded building. “For real,” she whispered.

  Giovanni and Felix didn’t come with us. The last I saw of them, they were putting on long black robes, adjusting the hoods over their heads.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social services caseworker, and a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series; two collections of short stories; and a wide variety of other material, including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Playboy, Esquire, the New York Times, and numerous other forums. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.

  The dedicated Web site for Vachss and his work is www.vachss.com.

  ALSO BY ANDREW VACHSS

  Flood

  Strega

  Blue Belle

  Hard Candy

  Blossom

  Sacrifice

  Shella

  Down in the Zero

  Born Bad

  Footsteps of the Hawk

  False Allegations

  Safe House

  Choice of Evil