Only Child (18 page)

• • •

"I
s 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.

• • •

"W
hat 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?"

• • •

"M
ichelle 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."

• • •

"Y
ou 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.

• • •

I
t 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."

• • •

"I
t'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."

• • •

"Y
ou're dead by NYPD," Wolfe said.
"
Dead
dead? Or just missing-and-presumed?"
"
Mondo morto
. They probably cleared a hundred cases behind your death. The last thing they'd want is for you to show up."
That's another way to get a case an Exceptional Clearance,
I thought,
when the perp's not alive to bring to trial.
"What kind of cases?" I asked.
"Hijackings, assaults, armed robberies. Like that."
"They didn't put me in any . . . ?"
"What? Sex cases?"
"Yeah. Or . . . ?"
"No. In some strange way, they were almost . . . respectful. Or maybe they were playing it straight, staying with cases in which you were actually a suspect in some way."
"There's enough of those," I acknowledged.
"Apparently," she said dryly. "Everything else is whispers. People say they've seen you. Or heard you were back in town. Nothing specific."
"Sure. That kind of talk . . . There's some saying Wesley's still walking around, too."
Wolfe shuddered. Gave me a long, cold look.
I took it, let it come into me. Stayed soft-eyed.
"Remember Colto?" she finally said, heavy on the Italian inflection.
"That blowhard? Sure."
"He's running around making noises about settling with you."
"That
proves
the street thinks I'm dead."
"He says you stole eight keys of pure from him a few years ago, and you've been running from him ever since."
"He's lying to his bosses the same way he lied to me. It was five keys. And it was stepped on, heavy."
"They must have believed him; he's still walking."
"I never thought they bought it, myself. But Colto's a decent earner. They probably figured he puffed up the amount to cover his own ass, sure, but he could make it back up to them, they gave him enough time. He's just huffing now, behind some rumor that I'm back. That's the kind of guy he is."
"Yes," she said patiently, "I know. But gangsters gossip worse than housewives. And you
are
working for . . ."
"How much do I still owe you?" I said.

• • •

"I
t's on," Michelle said. "Clarence and I hit six, eight different houses between ten and three o'clock."
"They all bought it?" I asked her.
"Sure. Like it was an everyday thing, some production company asking about renting out their house for a movie. They don't know anyone this actually happened to, but they know it happens. Besides, who's more charming than me?"
"Nobody. You let Clarence do any talking?"
"I was the driver, mahn," Clarence said. "A nice sleek Mercedes. Not so fine a ride as mine, but it made the impression."
I'd vetoed Clarence bringing his prize '67 Rover TC into the game. In some neighborhoods, a black Mercedes was as generic as a yellow cab in Manhattan, but the immaculate-as-new British Racing Green sedan would stick in the memory.
I didn't mind him just playing the driver, either. We couldn't know the racial attitudes of any of the households we'd picked at random. And if anyone caught a glimpse of the nine-millimeter under his arm, well, a lot of chauffeurs are armed these days.
"It worked just like you said, honey," Michelle said. "More than half of the houses, it was kids who answered the door. And even when we found an adult at home, it's like teenagers have a radar for the word 'movies.' They'd be in the living room in a heartbeat, soon as it came out."
"We've got to hope their grapevine cuts across class lines," I said. "The only way to make this scouting-for-locations scam sing is to pick either real big houses or those with great views . . . or plenty of land. That always means money. So the kids in those houses, they'll tell
their
friends, but I don't know how far it's going to travel."
"All high-school kids clique up," Michelle said. "But they read the same magazines. Watch the same TV. Listen to the same music. It'll go across, baby."
"And we've got that Internet thing, too," I added, hopefully.
"What is next, mahn?" Clarence.
"The mall," I said. "Tomorrow afternoon. Then we'll know."

• • •

"I
don't care
what
you heard," I told the mob of teenagers Michelle had herded over. I was sitting in a corner of the food court, with Cyn on one side and Rejji on the other. Max stood behind me, facing out. Better than a wall. "These are
not
auditions. What the company wants,
first,
is the right
look
. And the right
sound
. So you won't get any sides—"
"What's that?" a girl asked.
I exchanged knowing looks with Cyn, then went on talking as another teen snidely hissed that "sides" were pages of a script.
". . . because we need to get you on tape, being your
selves,
before anything else. The director is going to look at a
lot
of people. This phase is only about collecting
images,
so he can see who makes the cut. After that comes the readings."
"Who's the director?" a kid with horn-rimmed glasses asked.
This time, my look was exchanged with Rejji, who raised an eyebrow, dismissing the kid harder than a slap.
"We are
not
looking for extras," I went on, pointedly ignoring the uncool question, sending an etiquette message. "Not at this time. The film isn't cast yet. We're starting from scratch. But since it's going to be shot around here, and the script is written for teenagers, the director thought we might spend a few days surveying."
"Surveying?" a late-teens girl in a butterscotch blouse said.
"Shut up!" a younger girl in denim overalls hissed at her. "Let him talk."
I went on doing just that for a few minutes, verging just close enough on condescending arrogance to convince them I was the real thing.
"Anyone can try out?" a chunky girl with a round, shiny face and frizzy brown hair asked me.
"These aren't tryouts," I told her. "In the trade, we call this 'looking for the look.' It's our job to bring the director all kinds of different images. Like a list of ingredients, so he can decide what he wants to cook."
The chunky girl thought she heard a coded message in all that. Her face fell.
"I hope you can come," Michelle told her, voice carrying deep into the crowd. "You have
fantastic
eyes."