Andrew Vachss - Only Child

“Marcella was crying like she had a stake in her heart. I ran up and clocked him a beaut, right in the eye. Fat Vinny knows he can’t throw with me, so he keeps rushing, trying to get me on the ground. I know what he’ll do then, so I keep slashing at him. But I’m getting tired.

“All of a sudden, there’s a guy holding me. Holding me back, I mean. And the same with Vinny. A man comes across the street. Slow, like he’s a fucking king, you know? Who’s this? Fat Vinny’s father! And he’s a goddamned capo! I didn’t know any of that before....

“He asks, What happened? And Vinny tells him I sucker-punched him with a brick in my hand!” Giovanni said, as outraged at the injustice as if it were yesterday. “I wanted to tell my side, but Marcella had run home. I didn’t blame her, she was so humiliated by what that fat fuck did. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to tell this guy, Go ask Marcella, she’ll tell you. So I just say, Yeah, I clocked Vinny. I hate the fat piece of shit, I say, but it was a fair one—I didn’t hit him with nothing but my hands.

“That’s when Uncle T runs up, all out of breath. I remember he was wearing his apron, still had an awl in his hand—from working on the shoes. He says to Fat Vinny’s father, ‘I’m Giovanni’s uncle, what is all this?’ And that fat fuck Vinny tells his lies again. But this time, I know someone’s going to listen to me, so I tell Uncle T what really happened.

“We’re all standing there, like frozen. The capo looks at T. He says, ‘You know who I am?’ And I remember, I swear, I can see it as clear as through this windshield right now, Uncle T, he says, ‘I know who you are.’ But the way he says it, Burke. Like, I know it’s Wednesday. A fact, that’s all it was.

“The capo says, ‘He needs a good beating.’ Meaning me. Uncle T grabs me by the neck—his hands, they were like the leather he worked with—tells me to come with him.

“And that was it. I never got that beating. Uncle T makes me tell the whole story. When I finish, you know what he says, my uncle? He says, ‘Giovanni, you were a real man, protecting that girl. I’m proud of you.’”

Tears came down Giovanni’s cheeks, but his voice stayed steely, and his hands on the wheel never moved.

“ That’s the kind of man he was, Burke. You understand?”

“I wish he’d been my uncle,” I said, every word a separate truth.

Giovanni pulled into the side-street lot where I’d left my car. He turned off the ignition, looked at me.

“You’re wondering why I brought you up there, right?”

“He’s your polygraph,” I said. “And you wanted his read on me.” When he didn’t say anything, I went on: “I don’t care why you did it, Giovanni. I meant what I told him. It was an honor to meet him. I just didn’t know how much of an honor it was when I said it.”

“After that, Fat Vinny went away,” Giovanni said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “He never came back to school in the neighborhood. I don’t know where his father put him, but the next time anyone saw him, you wouldn’t recognize him. He was, I don’t know, seventeen, eighteen years old. Not an ounce of fat on him; he was buffed out like Schwarzenegger.”

“Did he make a move on you?”

“No. He pretended like he didn’t even know me. He was already working for his father then. Going places. But he was still a punk in his heart. He changed his body. He even changed his name. But he was still the same fuck who did that to Marcella. That’s what I wanted to tell T.”

“I don’t—”

“Fat Vinny,” Giovanni said, dropping his voice so I’d listen close, “when he changed his name, he told everyone to call him Colto.”

Igot into the Plymouth, started it up. Just as I was ready to pull away, I saw Giovanni walking toward me. I rolled down the window, waited.

Giovanni leaned in, close. “My Uncle T, he loves me,” he said. “I’m his son. His only child. Anything I ever did, it would be all right with him.”

“I know.”

“No, listen to me. This isn’t about Colto. Things like that, I tell my Uncle T all the time. But...the other thing, I never could have told him, Burke. Not when it first happened. Not now.

“I trust my Uncle T with my life. He’d never say anything, no matter what anybody did to him. It’s not for me I don’t tell him; it’s for him. It would...it would hurt him to know. Hurt him deep in his heart. I could never do that to him.”

On the drive back, I wondered which of Giovanni’s two secrets he believed would have hurt the old man the most. And if he wasn’t disrespecting his uncle’s love, by believing that proud old man would have given a damn about either one.

“You think there’s a key, don’t you, honey?”

“I know there’s one,” I told Michelle. “And I know I’m right next to it. But when I reach out...”

“You know how to do it, baby. You have to let it come to you.”

“Sure,” I said, not hopefully.

Michelle walked across the room, perched herself on the broad, padded arm of an easy chair, crossed her spectacular legs.

“Tell Little Sister,” she said. “Just tell me until you get stuck.”

“The tapes, the ones Vonni had...”

“Yes...?”

“They were real. I mean, as far as we can tell, those things happened. I spoke to those people—not an actor in the bunch. The pit-bull guy, that’s what he does, I saw it for myself. The underground fights, same thing. And Max says the jump-in was real, too, remember?”

“I remember.”

“That sorority stuff, Cyn didn’t recognize any of the players. And she even said it looked like someone stuck a camera through a keyhole, but...”

“But what, honey? It was only the one camera, like you said before. Maybe whoever made the tapes was a fly on the wall.”

“No, girl. He paid to be around at least a couple of the others, remember?”

“You’re thinking he didn’t pay everybody, right? Not all the people on those tapes? And that’s the way in?”

“I don’t know. But that’s not the...Damn! Michelle, you remember that Puerto Rican Day Parade riot a few years ago? When all those girls were getting grabbed and groped? Assholes ripping their tops off, spraying them with those water cannons?”

“I remember that very well. Probably no one would ever even have been arrested for it except...Oh, Burke! That’s right! The cops made the cases from the videotapes .”

“Yeah. Amazing how many good citizens bothered to tape it, instead of trying to stop it, huh? What a shock. And how often every station in town ran some footage of it. But the thing is...remember what Cyn and Rejji told us? About shilling?”

“You don’t think it was a setup, that whole thing? Just so someone could tape it?”

“The parade? No. But I think I know what the difference is now.”

“The difference between what and what?” she asked, impatient despite herself.

“That thing at the parade, it just...happened, I think. A few punks get out of hand, and the mob goes right with it. Even sheep can kick you to death when they stampede.

“Okay, now take the dogfights. That was no accident. If you were tipped, you knew it would be at a certain time and a certain place. It was a planned event.”

“And the thing at the parade wasn’t. So...?”

“So what about the jump-in tape? And when they sprayed those swastikas?”

“Those had to be planned, too. You don’t just suddenly—”

“Planned, sure. But not announced . You had to be a...member, I guess, to even know when it was going down, much less be right there on the scene.”