Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“Does anybody— any body—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.