Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“Sounds good. Can you do it?”

“Me? Why me?”

“That would be your choice, why you. It could be for money, or it could be for a favor.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah. A favor you do us means someday we could do a favor for you, see?”

“I...guess.”

“But it’s worth a thousand, if you just want the cash.”

He fumbled around, found one of his cigars. Lighting it up seemed to return him to his role, tranq him down. After a few puffs, he peered at me through the blue smoke, said, “‘Cash’ means not a check, right?”

“Is this going to be a permanent thing, that patch?” Wolfe asked me.

“It’s just for a job,” I said.

“A job for...?”

“Those same people.”

“It’s not exactly a disguise. I’d know you in a second.”

“You would,” I admitted. “But for people who’ve never met me, it might be all they remember.”

“And you want a driver’s license... another driver’s license? Same name, same everything, only the photo has you wearing the patch?”

“Yeah. I checked. You only need vision in one eye to get a license. I’ve got the photos right here....”

“Why did you come to me?” she asked. “Even with all the anti-terrorist squads on the job now, there’s still a hundred places in the city you could get something like this done.”

“I figured, it’s your paper I’m carrying, you’d want it to all be perfect.”

“Sure,” she said.

“And I wanted to ask you something else?”

“ Buy something else.”

“Yeah. That’s what I meant. I just...I just didn’t know if you maybe already had what I wanted to know about, or if you’d have to ask around. So I didn’t know how much it would—”

“I set my own prices,” she said, blowing a perfect smoke ring into the night air. “And I always give them in front. You know that.”

“Right. Okay, look, here’s what I need to know: how dead am I?”

“To who?”

“I’m not following you.”

“There’s a lot of wires. They don’t all route through the same terminals, understand? Which do you want me to check?”

“All you can.”

“That’s going to cost.”

“Everybody pays,” I said.

Her stare measured me for a few long seconds before she nodded an okay.

“What would we have to do?” Cyn asked, more than a trace of suspicion in her tone.

“You’d mostly be window-dressing,” I told her. “Atmosphere.”

“I’ve got citizen dresses,” Rejji said helpfully.

“What’s this ‘atmosphere,’ Burke?”

“It’s something to draw the eye,” I answered, thinking of the eyepatch. “These are going to be kids, mostly. No way a teenage boy is going to be watching me when he could be watching you two.”

“We don’t like boys,” Rejji said, licking her lips.

“So let the girls look, then. Just don’t touch.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Cyn said. “We only touch for money.”

“And you pose for money, too, right?”

“Yessss,” Rejji hissed. “And we are very, very good at it.”

“So think of this as posing, okay?”

“What exactly would we be doing?” Cyn wanted to know, still not mollified.

“Just dress up, prance around, act like you’re part of the whole deal. When I need you to do something specific, I’ll tell you.”

“See, Cyn?” Rejji crowed. “He’s not fooling anyone with that vanilla routine—Burke’s a closet dom.”

“Shut your silly mouth, slut,” Cyn told her.

Rejji stuck her thumb in her mouth, made loud sucking sounds.

Cyn turned to me. Made a little twitch at the corner of her mouth, said, “So. How much money are we talking about here, boss?”

“Michelle can bless any dress, but you can’t hide a ride,” the Prof said. “That rust bucket you been driving around, it’s not going to fly, Sly.”

“My father is right,” Clarence seconded the Prof’s notion.

“This doesn’t call for limo cover,” I said. “We want...Never mind, I think I know where we can get what we need.”

“You want...what?”

“Cars,” I told Giovanni. “Three, four of them. Not flashy. Classy. Like this one.”

“My BMW? Get out of town, Burke. What would I drive while you’re doing this, that junker of yours?”

“That junker could surprise you.”

“How? By not falling apart on the BQE?”

“It’d put this one on the trailer, easy.”

“I hope you know more about investigating than you do about cars, my friend,” he said, laughing. “This is an M5; you know what that means?”

“Yeah, sure. A factory–hot-rodded version.”

“Hot-rodded? This thing is put together like a Rolex.”

“Some Rolexes run slow.”

“So you’re saying you got a big motor. What’s that? I’m not talking about drag racing. There’s more to a car than quarter-miles.”

“Want to see for yourself?”

“Right now?” he asked, matador’s eyes glittering.

“Sure.”

“You know the Navy Yard?”

“Yeah.”

“Meet me over there, at the—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, a race. I said see for your self, that’s what I meant.” I pointed toward where the Plymouth lurked. “Key’s in the ignition,” I told him. “In the dash, not on the steering column.”

Giovanni strutted over to the Plymouth, Felix a dark, feline shape next to him. I watched Giovanni get behind the wheel, heard the big-cube Mopar’s muted throb when they fired it up. Giovanni gave it the gun. The Plymouth’s rear end kicked out slightly, but he got it under control and roared out of the parking lot.

It was about forty minutes before I saw the Plymouth’s headlights cut the corner and come my way. Giovanni backed it in slowly, exhausts gurgling like a powerboat’s. He and Felix climbed out, Giovanni pausing to pat the Plymouth’s fender like it was a racehorse who’d just given its best.

I was standing next to the BMW as they approached.

“ Dios mio, that is a stallion, ” Felix said. “A Ferrari would never defeat it.”

“Want to trade?” Giovanni asked me. “Right now? Even up?”

“No thanks,” I said. Lymon had promised me the Plymouth could pull an honest twelve-second quarter and top out at 150. I hadn’t seen for myself yet, but I suspected Giovanni had.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

“For what I do, the Plymouth is better. But for what I’m doing now ...”

“I get it,” Giovanni said. “And you got it. Make a list.”

“It’s out there,” Jerry the Journalist said.

“Any idea of whether it’s being picked up?” I said into the phone.

“It’s always picked up,” he answered. “True or false, smart or stupid, it’s all the same. For an extra touch, I even slipped it into the Internet Movie Database.”

“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.”