Only Child b-14

by Andrew Vachss

  “What’s that?”

  “An online thing. Pretty helpful for something like what you’re doing. What people do, when they hear a rumor, they ‘check it out on the Internet,’ see?”

  “But how do they know if—?”

  “They don’t. And it doesn’t matter. To them, if it’s on the Internet, it’s God’s own truth. ‘Cyber-chumps,’ that’s what I call them.”

  “That’s pretty slick, ‘cyber-chumps.’ You make it up?”

  “You ever go on the Internet?”

  “Me? No.”

  “Yeah, I ‘coined the phrase,’ as they say.”

  “Cool. Thanks for the TCB.”

  “That’s it?”

  “If you really got it done, it is.”

  “You’re dead by NYPD,” Wolfe said.

  “Dead dead? Or just missing-and-presumed?”

  “Mondo morto. They probably cleared a hundred cases behind your death. The last thing they’d want is for you to show up.”

  That’s another way to get a case an Exceptional Clearance, I thought, when the perp’s not alive to bring to trial. “What kind of cases?” I asked.

  “Hijackings, assaults, armed robberies. Like that.”

  “They didn’t put me in any...?”

  “What? Sex cases?”

  “Yeah. Or...?”

  “No. In some strange way, they were almost...respectful. Or maybe they were playing it straight, staying with cases in which you were actually a suspect in some way.”

  “There’s enough of those,” I acknowledged.

  “Apparently,” she said dryly. “Everything else is whispers. People say they’ve seen you. Or heard you were back in town. Nothing specific.”

  “Sure. That kind of talk...There’s some saying Wesley’s still walking around, too.”

  Wolfe shuddered. Gave me a long, cold look.

  I took it, let it come into me. Stayed soft-eyed.

  “Remember Colto?” she finally said, heavy on the Italian inflection.

  “That blowhard? Sure.”

  “He’s running around making noises about settling with you.”

  “That proves the street thinks I’m dead.”

  “He says you stole eight keys of pure from him a few years ago, and you’ve been running from him ever since.”

  “He’s lying to his bosses the same way he lied to me. It was five keys. And it was stepped on, heavy.”

  “They must have believed him; he’s still walking.”

  “I never thought they bought it, myself. But Colto’s a decent earner. They probably figured he puffed up the amount to cover his own ass, sure, but he could make it back up to them, they gave him enough time. He’s just huffing now, behind some rumor that I’m back. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

  “Yes,” she said patiently, “I know. But gangsters gossip worse than housewives. And you are working for...”

  “How much do I still owe you?” I said.

  “It’s on,” Michelle said. “Clarence and I hit six, eight different houses between ten and three o’clock.”

  “They all bought it?” I asked her.

  “Sure. Like it was an everyday thing, some production company asking about renting out their house for a movie. They don’t know anyone this actually happened to, but they know it happens. Besides, who’s more charming than me?”

  “Nobody. You let Clarence do any talking?”

  “I was the driver, mahn,” Clarence said. “A nice sleek Mercedes. Not so fine a ride as mine, but it made the impression.”

  I’d vetoed Clarence bringing his prize ’67 Rover TC into the game. In some neighborhoods, a black Mercedes was as generic as a yellow cab in Manhattan, but the immaculate-as-new British Racing Green sedan would stick in the memory.

  I didn’t mind him just playing the driver, either. We couldn’t know the racial attitudes of any of the households we’d picked at random. And if anyone caught a glimpse of the nine-millimeter under his arm, well, a lot of chauffeurs are armed these days.

  “It worked just like you said, honey,” Michelle said. “More than half of the houses, it was kids who answered the door. And even when we found an adult at home, it’s like teenagers have a radar for the word ‘movies.’ They’d be in the living room in a heartbeat, soon as it came out.”

  “We’ve got to hope their grapevine cuts across class lines,” I said. “The only way to make this scouting-for-locations scam sing is to pick either real big houses or those with great views...or plenty of land. That always means money. So the kids in those houses, they’ll tell their friends, but I don’t know how far it’s going to travel.”

  “All high-school kids clique up,” Michelle said. “But they read the same magazines. Watch the same TV. Listen to the same music. It’ll go across, baby.”

  “And we’ve got that Internet thing, too,” I added, hopefully.

  “What is next, mahn?” Clarence.

  “The mall,” I said. “Tomorrow afternoon. Then we’ll know.”

  “I don’t care what you heard,” I told the mob of teenagers Michelle had herded over. I was sitting in a corner of the food court, with Cyn on one side and Rejji on the other. Max stood behind me, facing out. Better than a wall. “These are not auditions. What the company wants, first, is the right look. And the right sound. So you won’t get any sides—”

  “What’s that?” a girl asked.

  I exchanged knowing looks with Cyn, then went on talking as another teen snidely hissed that “sides” were pages of a script.

  “...because we need to get you on tape, being yourselves, before anything else. The director is going to look at a lot of people. This phase is only about collecting images, so he can see who makes the cut. After that comes the readings.”

  “Who’s the director?” a kid with horn-rimmed glasses asked.

  This time, my look was exchanged with Rejji, who raised an eyebrow, dismissing the kid harder than a slap.

  “We are not looking for extras,” I went on, pointedly ignoring the uncool question, sending an etiquette message. “Not at this time. The film isn’t cast yet. We’re starting from scratch. But since it’s going to be shot around here, and the script is written for teenagers, the director thought we might spend a few days surveying.”

  “Surveying?” a late-teens girl in a butterscotch blouse said.

  “Shut up!” a younger girl in denim overalls hissed at her. “Let him talk.”

  I went on doing just that for a few minutes, verging just close enough on condescending arrogance to convince them I was the real thing.

  “Anyone can try out?” a chunky girl with a round, shiny face and frizzy brown hair asked me.

  “These aren’t tryouts,” I told her. “In the trade, we call this ‘looking for the look.’ It’s our job to bring the director all kinds of different images. Like a list of ingredients, so he can decide what he wants to cook.”

  The chunky girl thought she heard a coded message in all that. Her face fell.

  “I hope you can come,” Michelle told her, voice carrying deep into the crowd. “You have fantastic eyes.”

  “Police girl call.” Mama’s voice, on the cell phone.

  “Wolfe?”

  “What I say?”

  “Okay, Mama. What did she say?”

  “Say call.”

  “You were looking for me?”

  “Not me,” Wolfe said. “That person we talked about.”

  “Does he know where to look?”

  “You mean your...place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not unless you’ve been a lot more careless than you usually are.” Meaning: “Not from me.”

  “So where’s he doing all this looking?”

  “Remember Julian’s?”

  “Sure,” I said, mourning the passing of one of the City’s greatest poolrooms. Fourteenth Street wasn’t the same since it had disappeared.

  “A place in the same business. Only in a basement.”

  “I haven�
�t been there in—”

  “But you used to go there. People left messages for you with the old man who runs it. That’s what he did; he left a message.”

  “What does the mope think he’s doing, playing High Noon?”

  “It does seem...outlandish. So it’s probably not what it seems. But he is trying to make an impression. And I thought he might come to...that restaurant of yours.”

  “Even he’s not that stupid,” I said.

  “Does anybody—anybody—know I’m on your payroll?”

  “Only Felix.”

  “The first couple of times we met, you had people...you both had people around.”

  “That was so they’d think—”

  “Sure. I’m not criticizing your strategy. Only thing is, how sure are you of all the men who were there?”

  “Dead sure,” Giovanni said.

  “Yes,” Felix echoed. “Why do you ask all this?”

  “You know a guy named Colto? Works Queens, out of the old airport crew?”

  “I know who he is,” Giovanni said, waiting to see my next card.

  “A few years ago, he said Burke took him off for some powder.”

  “I heard about that. Heard the story, anyway. I don’t think his boss bought it.”

  “That’s how I got it, too. Thing is, this Colto, he’s been making the rounds, telling people Burke’s been on the run...from him. And now that Burke’s back, he’s going to settle up.”

  “Why do you tell us?” Felix said.

  “I tell you because, one, if he got the idea Burke’s back from one of your crews, it means things aren’t as tight as you think they are. And, two, he’s in the way. Of what I’m doing. About Vonni. You know what happens, a guy mouths off about something that sounds like business, sooner or later people pay attention. The last thing we want now is anybody paying attention to me.”

  “Colto’s a fucking pig,” Giovanni said. “If he was lying in the gutter bleeding to death, the whole neighborhood would send 911 a postcard. But, you know, he’s got a little button.”

  “I understand,” I told him.

  “No, you don’t,” Felix said. “And you don’t do anything, either. A balloon, it’s only the air that holds it up.”

  “But if he comes around...?”

  “You said enough already,” Giovanni told me.

  “Where’s your slips?” Rejji demanded of the two girls in matching red halter tops and jeans.

  “Slip?” one of them asked. “I didn’t hear anything about wearing a—”

  “One of these,” Rejji said, showing her a playing card. It had a joker on the face; the back was blank. “You have to have one of these, with a time and date on it. You know how many people we have to see? If they all came at once, this would be a mob scene.”

  “Oh,” the other girl said, crestfallen. “Nobody said anything to us.”

  “Come over here,” Rejji said, motioning them into a corner.

  “I’m seventeen, but I can play any age from—”

  “This isn’t an audition,” I said. “Not yet.” I went into my “looking for a look” spiel, as Clarence tapped a zebrawood pen on the blank page of an open calfskin notebook. “We’re just going to have a conversation. Like an interview, okay?”

  “Ask me anything!”

  “This is not about you,” I said, putting a thin edge on my voice. “It’s about how you come across. Do you understand the difference?”

  “Sure! Absolutely.”

  “Okay, let’s see. Talk to me about school. Are there a lot of cliques there?”

  “I’m going to have to go back into the City, shop around, if you want me to pick up all this stuff, Pop,” Terry said to the Mole, looking over a few pages ripped from a yellow legal pad covered with his father’s hieroglyphics. “It could take a couple of days....”

  “Karp’s Hardware,” the Mole said, not looking up from his bench.

  “What?”

  “In East Northport. Karp’s Hardware. It will be in the book. They will have everything.”

  “A hardware store?” the kid said, jaw dropping. “How could it possibly...?”

  “Everything,” the Mole assured him, still intent on his instruments.

  Hours and hours, one kid after another. Michelle was working one of the rooms, Cyn another. Clarence moved between the suites, taking notes. The Prof sat in a tufted easy chair, chain-smoking, being creative.

  The Mole fiddled with equipment I couldn’t begin to recognize. Occasionally, he pretended to listen to advice from the Prof. Rejji covered the door. Terry pulled kids aside for whispered conversations while they were waiting. Despite my telling him we wanted a representative sampling, his personal preferences seemed to dictate his conversational targets.

  At night, we sat around and talked over what we’d pulled out of the day. Between us, we’d heard about a dozen different kinds of drugs—chronic to crystal, E to H—and SATs, booze, football, shoplifting, AOL chat rooms, vandalism, cars, a “master race” graffiti gang, hip-hop, the NBA draft, love affairs, Jell-O shots, steroids, Amy Fisher—opinion seemed divided between Guido victim and skanky slut—chick fights, clothes, MP3s, asshole teachers, fucked-up DSL service, the tragedy of Napster, music I never heard of, tank parties, comic books, huffing, movies, drive-bys, computer gaming....

  The next day, two boys in blue varsity jackets with white leather sleeves got into some kind of argument with one of the girls waiting to be interviewed. “Say you didn’t! Say you didn’t!” the girl dared them. One of the boys stepped to her, shoulders hunched. Max cat-footed over to where they were standing, put his finger to his lips.

  “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” the taller of the two demanded.

  Max wrist-locked the kid to his knees, held him there effortlessly as he looked without expression at the other one.

  “What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened around here?” I asked some of the teenagers, randomly.

  Vonni’s murder came up in less than half the answers. Three different kids claimed her for a close friend, one girl getting teary-eyed when she said the name.

  But a year-old homicide generally didn’t have much of a chance against who was crushing who, what guy was pure butter, which girl was total ghetto, who always acted like a real crackhead at school, what BMX move was totally sick, which new computer game was ultra-mega, where the next rave was supposed to be.

  A few kids were focused elsewhere. Some talked about Columbine. Not about the slaughter scene, about poor Dylan and Eric.

  A teen with a military haircut and camo pants told me McVeigh had been framed. “Where’s John Doe Number Two?” he demanded, angry.

  Some were very deeply depressed about the new run of Buffy. “Now even The Slayer sucks!” one cracked. A girl with lithium eyes was upset at how much child support they were making poor Eminem pay.

  One kid had a “Death Before Dishonor” tattoo on his forearm. He told everyone who would listen that his brother was in the Marines, and he was going, too, as soon as he graduated.

  Two girls got into an argument about whatever. “Bring it, B!” one yelled at the other. The crowd of kids snarled at them collectively to take it outside. The girls headed for the door. Nobody followed. The two girls stopped in their tracks. Stared at each other, sharing disappointment.

  The ones we came to call the “movie kids” were surface-scarred by their marrow-deep smugness. So completely, condescendingly in the know that they felt comfortable pontificating about “gross points” and “final cut.” They breezily corrected each other about who was “A-list at Miramax,” and dropped names like “Denzel” as if he had been over for dinner the night before. But when it came to asking for credentials, they were all parties to a mutual nonaggression pact.

  No problem, until a girl in a Joan Baez outfit started ragging on some studio for putting out a horror movie directed by a convicted child molester. “They’re disgusting!” she said. “After what he did...”

  A twenty-
something with one of those lower-lip goatees and Buddy Holly glasses looked down his long nose at the girl, intoned, “Judge the art, not the artist,” and looked to Terry for approval. Terry gave the kid a bright-white smile...a red flag to Max, who stepped between them, put his arm around Terry’s shoulders, and muscled the kid over to where his mother was sitting. Quick, before life could imitate art.

  A kid sporting double wallet chains and a “WWMD” medallion said college was “grayed out.” Later, Terry translated. “WWMD” stood for “What Would Manson Do?” and “grayed out” meant “not an option.”

  A girl with a matchstick body and beta-carotene skin told us that we didn’t understand—before anyone asked her a question.

  One Goth boy, who looked like he’d played vampire prince so often that he’d ended up hematologically challenged, drove a black PT Cruiser, customized to look like a hearse, with “aRxthur Rxules” in neat white lettering on the fender.

  A good quarter of them started every sentence with “Basically,” as if it were some kind of verbal tic.

  Boarders and bladers stood apart from cyber-geeks. Poseurs, players, and self-proclaimed pimps got along—punks of a feather. Cheerleaders didn’t mix with cholas. But even whiggers and skinheads shared pieces of the same room without so much as an eye-fuck. “Reminds me how guys act in full minimum,” I told the Prof later. “Walking on eggs, right? They know one wrong move gets them sent back to the Walls.”

  They all talked different, but they all talked. And none of them said anything we needed.

  “We still have a ton more of them,” Michelle said. “How many of those cards did we spread out there? Thousands?”

  “Not that many,” Rej said. “But a lot. A real lot.”

  “Cyn?”

  “The girls talked about it more than the boys. But that’s natural, I think.”

  “They doing any speculating?” I asked.

  “The ones I talked to, they all seemed satisfied. Scared and satisfied,” Michelle offered.