Andrew Vachss - Only Child

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 “aR xthur R xules” 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.

“Satisfied that some monster was just passing through?”

“Yes. And scared that he could come again. But not truly scared. More like...fascinated, maybe. A few even made Friday the Thirteenth jokes. Très chic .”

“You’ve got their pedigrees?” I asked Clarence.

“Mahn, this is a job for a clerk, that is all. Rejji gives them this form to fill out, and they do. Every single line. They want us to be able to find them, do they not?”

“Yeah. And you all put check marks on the ones who said anything about Vonni?”

Michelle and Cyn nodded.

“Terry?”

“I high-signed Clarence every time one of them said anything, too.”

“You do any better than we did?”

“No...but I didn’t push, either. Like you said.”

“I’ve got three for you to try up-close-and-personal, tomorrow,” I told him. “For now, let’s call it a night.”

“You like that mom-and-pop food, huh?” Rejji said, smiling at my blue-plate special of meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and chopped spinach.

“I like just about anything I can pronounce,” I told her.

“Bet he tops off with vanilla ice cream,” Cyn cracked.

“Why can’t we just stay at the hotel?” Cyn asked me on the drive back. “You already paid for all those rooms, didn’t you? I mean, we’re going right back there tomorrow....”

“If we tried to sleep there, we’d be bombarded by kids sneaking past security. I’ll rent a couple on another floor starting tomorrow, okay?”

“They really are insane about being in a movie, huh?”

“You talked to them, Cyn. What do you think?”

“Fetish is fetish,” she said, nodding agreement.

“Did anybody hear the name Vision?” Terry asked, the next night.

Clarence shrugged a “No.”

“Not me, honey,” Michelle said.

“I’m drawing a blank, too, kid,” I said. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just hanging out with some of the ones who were waiting, you know? One of them says to another, ‘I bet this is killing Vision—a real movie being made right here.’ And the other says he was in one of Vision’s movies. The first guy says, ‘For real?’ And the other guy says, yeah, the whole fraternity was, kind of.

“But when the first guy presses, the other guy says he’s not allowed to talk about the initiations. Then I had to go. One of the girls was saying—”

“Anyone else hear that name? Vision?”

“I did,” Cyn said. “Remember when you had that idea, do two or three of them at a time, get them talking to each other? Well, this Asian girl, Mei-Mei, she said she’d been in a movie before, and the other two gave her a ‘Shut the fuck up!’ look. I let it slide like I wasn’t paying attention.

“But then I got her alone later, like I wanted to see how she did with some other material, blah-blah, and I walked her around to this movie she was in. She says, ‘Oh, it was just one of Vision’s. A video, not a movie.’ I moved on, right over what she was saying, so she couldn’t even be sure I heard her.”

“You played it perfect, Cyn.”

She and Rejji mid-fived with their hips.

“So there is a young man making videos,” Clarence said. “What good could this be to us? Half of these children said they had made some kind of video.”

“Two people mention this ‘Vision’ guy,” I told him. “And, both times, someone asks a question, they dummy up quick. That gets my attention.”

“Probably makes porno,” Michelle said sourly.

“Can you come and see me, please?” Hazel Greene.

“Anytime. Just say the—”

“Right now. I know it’s late but—”

“I’ll be there in under an hour,” I told her.

“Ifound something,” she said.

“Something about—?”

“I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t know if it...means anything. But Vonni had it...hidden.”

“And you just found it, is that what you’re saying?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not to me.”

“Then why did you ask me?”

“Because, if you had it all this time, then you had your own reasons for not turning it over to the cops.”

“You...you would think like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Mrs. Greene.”

“What happened to ‘Ms.’?”

“I don’t...”

“ Ms. Greene is what you called me before.”

“My apologies. Just tell me which you prefer and I’ll—”

“I don’t care,” she said.

Not about that, I thought. Said, “All right. Do you want me to—?”

“Vonni was a good girl. I don’t mean a virgin—although she was, I would have known—I mean good in her heart and good in her ways. She was honest and kind and sweet. Everybody loved her.”

“I know Hugh sure did.”

“Yes. Lottie told me how you...That’s why I’m showing you this now. Of course, when your child di...is taken from you, people never want to say anything bad about her. But this was all before . The good things, I mean. Nobody killed my Vonni because they hated her; I know this.”

“People don’t have to have a good reason to hate, Ms. Greene. You should know that, too.”

“My...color, you mean? Yes. Yes, I know that. This isn’t what I wanted to tell you. I’m not making myself clear. I would trade it all. How good she was. How proud she made me. Everything. If I could have my daughter back as a prostitute or a drug addict or brain-damaged or...It wouldn’t matter; I would take her and love her and be grateful forever.”

“I know.”

“Do you? How could you? How could you know a mother’s feeling for her only child? Were you one?”

“A...?”

“An only child? Were you one?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. Thinking, She nailed it. That’s me. Only a child, once. And, now, even being back home, back with my family, an only child, forever. Hazel Greene will never have another child. Neither will Giovanni.