Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“These are kids, you stupid slut,” Cyn said. “We put word out that we’re shooting even softcore, that’d be the end.”

“I don’t want to look at...what did you call them, head shots?” I told them. “I need to talk with the...actors, I guess they’d be. Each one. Separately.”

“Cyn gets asked all the time,” Rej volunteered, “to do videos.”

“Asked isn’t the same as doing, bitch!” Cyn snapped at her.

“Uh, you think we could get back to my problem?” I asked them both.

“How about a joint?” Rejji said. “I always think better when I’m mellow.”

“None for me,” I told her.

“That’s my Burke,” Cyn said, giggling. She walked over and plopped herself in my lap. “Too bad Rej and I aren’t black girls. At least we could make an Oreo out of you.”

“Not me,” Rejji said quickly.

“Oh, lighten up,” Cyn said. “You’re as bad as he is.”

“You can’t be a director,” Cyn said, later. “I mean, sure, anyone with a camera can say he’s one, but somebody could just look you up.”

“They can’t all be registered.”

“I’ll bet the big ones are, someplace. Anyway, you said you had to talk to the kids, right? Directors, they might talk to the stars, but not to whole mobs.”

“Could I be a screenwriter?”

“When’s the last time you went to a movie?” Rej sneered. “ Anybody could be a screenwriter. They might hang around, trying to soak up ‘ambience’ or whatever—remember, Cyn, when that pathetic little dweeb spent all that time on our set ’cause he was writing some movie about making porno movies?—but it wouldn’t work. You want these kids to give it up, right? Listen, they’ll do anything—to anybody—if you whisper ‘movies’ at them. We saw that when we were out on the coast, virgins blowing Great Danes because some greaseball tells them that’s the way Monroe got started. But they’d have to believe you could make it happen. And a screenwriter can’t make anything happen.”

“What if I was a—?”

“Casting director!” Cyn blurted out. “That is just awesomely perfect. Right, Rej? Nobody knows their names, and they may not get the final say, but they thin the herd. If you don’t get past them, the director never gets to see your tape.”

“You’re a genius, Cyn,” Rej said. “Makes me want to crawl over there and kiss your ass.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her, Burke,” the blonde said. “This one’s our ticket, I know it.”

“How you going to know what a...what was that again, Schoolboy...a goddamn ‘casting director’ wears to work?”

“This isn’t the post office, Prof,” Michelle said tartly. “Everyone doesn’t wear the same uniform.”

“But I have to look like—”

“You don’t have to look like anything, baby. Trust the Mistress of the Wardrobe. What you have to look is cool. Hip, edgy, with it—understand?”

“I...guess.”

“Well, I can do it. All I need is—”

“I know,” I said, reaching into my jacket.

“Am I right?” Giovanni asked me.

“Nothing I found so far makes it seem so,” I said. “And I never thought you were, going in.”

He looked through the windshield of the midnight-blue BMW sedan, as if the answer were somewhere offshore. Even at three in the morning, the Brooklyn waterfront is never completely deserted, but Giovanni was calm and relaxed. Maybe because Felix was sitting behind me, where I couldn’t see him. Or maybe because of the two cars backed into acute angles from us, facing out. A burgundy Cadillac and a white Range Rover—one from each of their crews.

“But you haven’t found anything that would make me wrong?”

“No.”

“Even the cops didn’t?”

“Not in anything I saw. And I saw pretty much everything there was.”

“They think it was just some sex fiend?”

“It’s hard to tell what they think, from only looking at paper. But they’ve got no candidate, so that’s where they’d go, eventually.”

“Why would they be incorrect?” Felix asked.

“I didn’t say they would be,” I answered him mildly, not turning around.

“But if they were?” he insisted, his voice sable-silky. I guessed it wasn’t his mother who’d named him Felix.

“If it was someone the...If it was someone Vonni knew, that would make them wrong.”

“Yes,” he said patiently. “But how would they be wrong? Where would they be wrong?”

“They would be...if there was a relationship they didn’t know about. Or one they misread.”

“Such as...?”

“Such as someone she was...involved with outside the law.”

“What does that mean?” Giovanni, edgy.

“A married man, for example,” I said. “I don’t mean outside the law like adultery, nobody goes to jail for that. I mean outside the law because of Vonni’s age.”

“This happens,” Felix said, neutral.

“Happens with schoolteachers,” I said. “And coaches. And priests. And freaks who troll the Internet. And—”

“We get it,” Giovanni said. “But, something like that going on, what’s the chances of the cops missing it?”

“Dismal,” I said, holding back the card the boy Hugh had given me. Vonni’s “big day.” When it was over, she’d start being famous. Her last meeting hadn’t been a chance encounter. Couldn’t have been. Because whoever it had been with had never come forward. “But always possible.”

“Sherlock Holmes is dead,” Giovanni said.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,” I told them, “but the odds are way against it, especially in a homicide like this one. Front-page stuff, all kinds of personnel assigned—that’s a bright, hot light to be under. They’d pull out all the stops. I was looking for an Exceptional Clearance note, but—”

“What is that?” Felix asked, still soft-voiced. He was either naturally calm or a natural killer. Or both.

“When the cops know who did it but they can’t touch them,” I told him. “Just not enough evidence to act.”

“How could that be? The police do not seem to need...overwhelming evidence to make many of their arrests.”

“Not for some of them,” I agreed. “But Exceptional Clearance is just what it sounds like. It’s no run-of-the-mill thing. The cops can ‘clear’ a case without making an arrest if they can show their superiors a certain person did the crime, and also that they don’t have enough on him to make it stick in court. Sometimes they’ve got plenty of evidence but they can’t use it. Something they found during a bad search, maybe. Or off an illegal wiretap.

“The thing is, with a homicide, they could feel it’s better to wait. If they move too soon, force it to trial with shaky evidence, the killer beats the case, and they don’t get a second chance. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, so they don’t lose anything by holding back. If the guy had accomplices, or even if he had partners on other jobs, if he’s a gang member...You see where I’m going. They’ll figure like you said before, everyone says they can take the weight, until they step on the scales.”

“Loyalty is...unusual now,” Felix agreed.

“You said you looked for this Clearance thing?” Giovanni said.

“I looked for it. And it’s not there.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure I didn’t overlook it. And I’m sure that the paperwork I got was righteous. Stuff like that’s got to be double-documented, everybody playing CYA all the way up the command chain. If it was there, it would have been on paper. And—you know what?—if they had a candidate, they’d have leaked it to the press by now, if only to get some of the heat off themselves. You know, the old ‘umbrella of suspicion’ routine.”