Only Child

by Andrew Vachss

  I knew all that. I was schooled by the best. I’d been putting money aside from every score almost since I started. But when I had to disappear, most of it got eaten up during the hunt. And I didn’t have another twenty years to rebuild my stake.

  When I was a young man, rep was all a lot of us had. Heart. We tattooed it on our souls, a prayer never to be forgotten. Paying with our lives for the sacramental wine poured into an “X” on callous City concrete by those who had watched us go. Whenever his brothers pooled their cash for a bottle of T-bird, the man who had proved his heart in battle always got the first taste.

  I’d lost that need for a two-minute tombstone a long time ago. The reason I’d rather go out quick than rot to death on Welfare hasn’t got anything to do with pride. Some pain is easier to manage, that’s all.

  This isn’t Willie Sutton’s world anymore. Banks aren’t where the money is—at least, not money you can get at in a quick-hit robbery. Casinos and racetracks have tons of untraceable cash. But there’s no way to ease it out, and it would take a military assault to take it by force. Kidnappings always come unglued at the exchange. Blackmail’s hit-or-miss; mostly miss. Jewelry’s easier, but it has to pass through too many hands before it turns into cash, and each one cuts a slice off the loaf.

  The whisper-stream is always vibrating with rumors of open contracts. A Central American druglord is offering millions for any crew that can break him out of a federal pen. A collector is offering more than that for a certain painting under museum guard. Some shadowy zillionaire has a huge bounty out on whoever the hate-flavor of the moment is.

  There’s always enough shreds of truth clinging to stories like that to make some retardate act on faith. Ask James Earl Ray.

  The surest proof that Ray acted alone is that nobody ever ratted him out. Ask the church bombers. Or McVeigh.

  But I wouldn’t go there. I’ve been to that school. Paid what the tuition cost.

  So I knew who to ask.

  “Snakeheads,” Mama said.

  “Is there really that much in it?” I asked her.

  “Always money. Just not...” she said, snapping her fingers to say “immediately.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Snakeheads like farmer with cows, okay? Cow meat worth not much; cow milk, very good. Get all over again, every day, understand?”

  “The people they bring over, they pay off their debts by working? Takes a long time, but the money keeps coming in...?”

  “Yes. Small payment, each week. But many make payment, so plenty money, see?”

  “Sure. But where do we come in?”

  “To snakeheads, people...cargo, okay?”

  “But it isn’t cargo you can hijack, Mama. What could we do with—?”

  “Plenty...what you call ‘societies,’ here. In America. They, how you say, sponsor people.”

  “Pay their way over?”

  “Yes. Like ticket.”

  “Why?”

  “Many reasons. Some good, some not so good.”

  If you’re ever fool enough to let Mama know anything she says isn’t crystal-clear, she gets offended. It’s okay if you don’t get it, so long as it’s not her fault.

  Only silence works. So I just ate a little more of my fried rice with roast pork and scallions. The minute Mama’s satisfied you don’t want an explanation, she always explains.

  “Sometimes, family, okay? Relatives. Sometimes, just want to buy girl, like for wife.”

  “They wouldn’t need to smuggle anyone in for that. Seems like half the women in Russia under thirty are registered with some broker. It’s a big business now.”

  “Not like for...American wife,” Mama said, venom-voiced. “Not like for...marry. To use. You understand.”

  That wasn’t a question.

  “And war,” she went on. “In Vietnam. Plenty brothers, sons, fathers...never come home. Not dead, maybe. Nobody know for sure.”

  “MIAs?”

  “Maybe,” Mama shrugged. “Nobody know for sure,” she said again, as if I’d missed it the first time. “Always rumors. People in the camps, they hear. If you say you know where American soldiers still in Vietnam, then, maybe, people sponsor, bring you here, so you say where soldiers still kept, see?”

  “What camps are you talking about, Mama?”

  “Always camps,” she said, no expression on her face. “Always fighting. So—always refugees. Cambodia, Laos, Burma. On Thai border, plenty place to hear whispers.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “I heard about some of those hustles. I guess, if you had one of your own go MIA, you’d listen to anyone who claimed to have seen him, pay to bring him over.” I thought of Robert Garwood, a Marine who had spent fourteen years in Vietnam. He was either a POW or a collaborator, depending on whose story you bought. The smart money had it that he’d originally been grabbed by the VC, then changed sides while in captivity.

  Years after the U.S. pullout, he came back, and the military put him on trial. Found him guilty of collaboration, but not desertion. Maybe because they’d never listed him as a deserter, even after returning POWs reported that he’d gone over.

  One of those stories you never know the truth of, I guess. But for those who want to believe that some of the American soldiers listed as MIA are still alive, Garwood’s tales of “live sightings” are precious gospel. To those folks, Garwood couldn’t have been a collaborator; he had to have been a prisoner. Because, if he lied about one thing, then...

  “Other societies, too,” Mama said. “Chinese. Not want coolies. Want doctors. Scientists. Computer people. Pay very good money.”

  Is she talking about the Taiwan government? “But if they already—”

  “No, no. Same deal. Societies never trust snakeheads. Nobody trust snakeheads. Same deal. Must see before payments start. Only payments bigger, see?”

  “But why should they pay us?”

  “They pay everybody,” Mama said, explaining natural law. “Pay for paper, like green card. Pay lawyers. Pay, how you say, political people. Always pay, what difference? Pay whoever has cargo, okay? Pay snakeheads maybe hundred dollar a week. Forever, pay that. But pay you ten thousand. One time, all done, see? Everybody happy.”

  “But even at...How many could the snakeheads possibly bring over at one time?”

  “Two, three hundred.”

  “In one boat?”

  “Sure. Not nice, but...”

  “It might be nice for us,” I finished.

  When I was a kid, I’d leaped from roof to roof across narrow alleys all the time. Never gave it a thought. Played chicken, my head on the subway tracks, facing another kid as poisoned with pride as I was. Death train coming, first one to jump back loses. Charged right at a boy from a rival club, even though he was holding a zip gun and all I had was a heavy length of chain. The zip misfired—most of them did—but the chain worked fine.

  I even tried Russian roulette once, with an old revolver one of the guys brought down to the damp, ratty basement we called a clubhouse. We all took a turn, but I was the rep-crazy fool who went first.

  I wasn’t faking then. Checking out didn’t scare me. It was the one sure way to guarantee that the...people who had hurt me would never get their hands on me again. Damaged kids learn quick: death trumps pain. That’s why some serial killers and some suicides are brothers—they were raised by the same parents.

  Later, I learned. I learned to be scared. And I learned how to do a lot of damage. That’s when I stopped trying to run from the people who always hurt me. I wanted to get close to them then. Close enough to stop the pain.

  But even back when I was one of those “don’t mind dying” young guns, deep water at night terrified me. I remember once when a whole caravan of kids from the City followed the lead car out to some beach on Long Island. It was summer. Hot and muggy. Howie, the guy who’d organized the whole thing, he told us that this Jones Beach was a ton better than Coney Island. No boardwalk, no rides, no hot-dog stands. Best of all, no crowd
s. Nothing to do but drink some wine, pass around the maryjane, and fuck. Like we owned the place.

  Of course, that’s not the picture he painted for the girls. They thought they were visiting some special spot only rich people got to use...the kind of rich people who would actually pay attention to the BEACH CLOSED AT MIDNIGHT signs.

  I was as up for the trip as anyone. But the night ocean was so monstrously deep, only your imagination could fill it. The minute you went in, it had you—you were surrounded by things you couldn’t even name, much less fight. The girl I was with, she waded in until the water got to her waist, then she just sort of lay down on her stomach and paddled around. I was too welded to my image to not go along with her, but I called it off as soon as I could.

  On the blanket later, after we’d finished, I was lying on my back, finishing a joint. I should have been blissed out. My rep got me on that blanket that night. With my gang, with that girl. I was a man in all the ways we measured such things in my world. I knew how it worked.

  But when I closed my eyes, I could feel that hungry black water moving. It...reduced me. I was a child in my mind. Back in that foster home they had sentenced me to. And every time the tide lapped up on the beach, searching, I felt the fingers probing under my covers, again.

  That was a lifetime ago. Now I was standing on an outcropping of rock, overlooking the spot where Mama said the snakeheads made their landings, Max at my side. The ocean was calm as a storybook pond, preening in its finest Atlantic-gray coat.

  It didn’t fool me.

  Max tapped my shoulder, made a gesture of turning a steering wheel, then spread his arms wide. I nodded. Yeah, they’d need some big trucks. Even if they packed them tighter than a hooker’s skirt, two, three hundred head would take up a lot of space.

  Mama had explained that the snakeheads didn’t operate like their counterparts south of the border. Mexicans coming across paid once, and they paid in front. So the coyotes didn’t care if their customers suffocated in the back of one of the rigs, or baked to death hoofing it across open desert. But snakeheads needed their cargo alive if they wanted to collect—no point bringing them all the way across the ocean, only to lose some at the end.

  We’d already solved one part of the puzzle. The land we were standing on was private property. A desolate stretch without any real beach. I’d expected a fence. Or, maybe, dogs. But it was deserted. Part of the camouflage? No matter, we still had to figure on an armed escort any night they were due to make a drop.

  Max made the first two fingers of his right hand into a swimming gesture, moving slowly toward his left, which he held flat and perpendicular. The swimming fingers crashed into the left palm, and burst into fragments. The Mongol shook his head “No.” Then he put his hands in the original position, but had the swimming fingers stop and tread water, while the left clumped into a smaller ship, heading out.

  Sure. No way to bring the cargo ship right onto the shore—they’d have to go out with motor launches, bring a few in at a time. A big operation. Bigger every time we took a closer look.

  Max tapped the first two fingers of his left hand with his right index finger, one at a time. Did it again. Then spread his right hand wide, tapped each finger and his thumb. I nodded glumly. Two and two was coming out five, all right.

  “Everything like I say, yes?” Mama put it to me.

  “It looks that way,” I hedged.

  “But...?” Michelle asked.

  “Fat lady in the circus ain’t got as much ‘but’ as there is in this mess,” the Prof said sourly. “There’s money there, sure. But there’s money in Fort Knox, too.”

  “My father is right,” Clarence said. “Even if we had enough men—”

  “Men?” Michelle asked, sweetly.

  “Personnel,” I stepped in quick, before it escalated. “And it’s not just numbers, it’s logistics. They’ve got a stash house somewhere. Got to be pretty close by. We’d need one, too.”

  “Maybe...scatter. Right away. Soon as they come off boat.” Mama.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “No way they’re all going to the same place. Not in the end. I can’t see them running a convoy of trucks out of there, then splitting up and going in all different directions. Their best play would be to keep them all in the same place, parcel them out a few at a time. The troopers won’t be stopping every car with a couple of Chinese in it.”

  “That’s true,” the Prof said. “It ain’t like running niggers through New Jersey.”

  Michelle raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. Caught my return look in time.

  “If they were all in the same place...” the Mole finally spoke.

  “All of the cargo, sure, Mole. But not all of the snakeheads.”

  “So?” he asked, mildly, eyes calm behind the Coke-bottle lenses.

  “Ah,” Mama said, approving.

  The Prof nodded. We all knew what one of the Mole’s little gas globes could do in an enclosed space.

  “But when they...the smugglers...when they came to, they would know it was no accident,” Clarence said.

  “They wouldn’t know where to start looking,” Michelle said thoughtfully.

  “Yeah, they would,” I told them. “The buyers. And they’d look hard. Nobody ever takes a hijacking lying down. It could bounce right back on us.”

  “Not decide now,” Mama said. “Look for place first, okay?”

  Max’s nod was almost imperceptible.

  “Mama’s got her own in this,” the Prof said. It was much later that same night. We were in my place, deciding.

  “Max thinks so, too,” I agreed.

  “What is wrong with that, mahn?” Clarence wanted to know. “Plenty of times, Burke, you have your own in things we do, is that not true?”

  “Yeah. It is. And I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it. But you see where it’s going, right?”

  “I do not,” Clarence said, his West Indian accent even more pronounced through the formal style he always adopted when he felt the need for distance.

  “One sure fact in every jack,” the Prof said softly. “There’s always the chance some people ain’t coming home from the dance.”

  “I know,” Clarence said, waiting.

  “Only there’s no ‘chance’ in this one,” I finished it up. “Even if we could locate the barn where they’ve got the cargo stashed, they’d have guards all around. What’re we going to use on them, tranquilizer darts?”

  “Max could...”

  “Max could ninja one or two, sure. But the Mole’s no stealth-meister, Clarence. He’d need time and access to set up his stuff. And what if there’s more guards posted inside? Or if they have dogs? This whole thing, it’s nothing but a damn jailbreak. And if the wheels come off, there isn’t a single hostage worth taking.”

  The young man went quiet. We joined him, waiting.

  Finally, he said, “So the only way is to...?”

  “Leave them there,” I told him. “All of them. Not gassed, not tied up. Permanent.”

  “That is insane, mahn.”

  “It is,” I agreed. “And Mama’s not. So I say we take a look.”

  First thing, we needed a local base. A place where any of us could come and go without attracting the spotlight. You can buy some privacy just by living in certain areas. But that also buys you regular police patrols, maybe even some private security force thrown in. And, worse, the kind of neighbors who act neighborly.

  Gated communities and trailer parks share the same secrets. Humans hurt their babies everywhere. Beat their wives, violate their daughters, sell their sons. But we wanted an area where people worried about the DEA, not the IRS.

  Michelle rented us a house in a little village nestled between two other towns, one white and one black. I didn’t know much about Long Island, but I’d done enough business with assorted racist groups from out there so that I wasn’t surprised by the clear division.

  Max and I made the drive out in my new ride. I’d taken the Honda back to the M
ole. Told him it just wouldn’t work for what I needed it for. And that was true. What I didn’t tell him was that a few weeks of driving that mobile appliance was squeezing the sap out of my tree.

  I got the new car for eleven hundred bucks. One grand was the finger’s fee for the sweet spot he’d scoped out—an underground parking garage in a small apartment building on the East Side. Room for only about three dozen cars, most of those belonging to tenants. The open rental slots were always full by nine. By ten, ten-thirty every day, the NO VACANCY sign would be out. And the lone attendant would be having his coffee and a buttered roll, faithfully delivered by the Korean kid from the nearby deli. The extra hundred was for the kid’s college fund.

  By noon, the attendant would come around, probably figuring he’d just dozed off for an hour or so, big deal. I’m sure the cops hadn’t arrived until the owner of the brand-new Porsche 911 Turbo came to pick up his car that evening. And started screaming.

  By then, the Porsche was all pieced out. And I was driving my barter, a l969 Plymouth two-door post that had gone through half a dozen life changes since it rolled off the assembly line as a Roadrunner. Its last owner obviously had been in the long-haul contraband business. The beast’s undercarriage was a combination of an independent-rear-suspension unit pirated from a Viper, and subframe connectors with heavy gussets to stiffen the unibody...and let it survive a pretty good hit, too. Huge disks with four-piston calipers all around, steel-braided lines. The cavernous trunk had plenty of room, despite housing a fuel cell and the battery, but I didn’t find the nitrous bottle I’d expected.

  Maybe that was because a 440 wedge, hogged out to 528 cubes, sat under the flat, no-info hood. I’d balked when Lymon first told me it was a crate motor, but he’d jumped all over my objections, taking it personally. Lymon’s a car guy first; thieving’s just his hobby.