Only Child (17 page)

• • •

W
hen you're on the run, "safe sex" is the kind you pay for. When you go anywhere near women you know, what you
can't
know is if they're going to keep it to themselves. Maybe they grapevined into a reward-money rumor; maybe they've got a case on them— there's all kinds of reasons, and it never takes a good one.
But buying sex doesn't buy you loyalty, and hustlers are always hustling.
So the best bet is strangers.
I'm good at being a stranger. It comes naturally to me. I've got a drifter's mind, and I've been enough places so I can speak "not from around here" convincingly, even half a dozen blocks from wherever I live.
You have to pick middle-tier spots. Upscale joints attract ambitious women, and even the most self-absorbed of those ask enough questions to see if you're going to be a good investment. The other end of the road is landmined so deeply you'd have to step on one to know it's there. Roadhouse girls are some of the sweetest ever put on this earth, but you never know whose woman you just made a mistake with, until you hear the bottle break on the bar.
Turned out Long Island has a cottage industry in cheaters' bars, catering to the daytime trade, before husbands get home from work. They all seem within easy driving distance of a motel, too.
But, after the first three, I figured out it wasn't sex I'd been missing.

• • •

"T
wo G's for . . . this?"
"Quite a bargain, yes?" Michelle said, cat-grinning to show she was misunderstanding me deliberately. "Bally makes such beautiful things."
"It's just a leather jacket," I said.
"Oh, pul-leeze!
Feel
it."
"It's awful thin for so much—"
"That is how it's
supposed
to be, you dolt. This is
summer
leather. Soft as butter, isn't it?"
"I guess."
"Aren't the gussets behind the shoulder a perfect touch? And that color . . ."
"It's white."
"It is
not
white, you heathen; it's eggshell. White is the opposite of black."
"And this is all I need?"
"We're making a statement," Michelle said, total confidence. "You can wear any damn thing, a T-shirt and jeans for all I care, so long as you wear this jacket. And you wear it
casually,
please. Just toss it over the back of the nearest chair. Anybody who knows what to look for will know you're a man who's used to the best."
"These are going to be kids, Michelle. They'll be looking for Tommy Hilfiger or the Gap, right?"
"No, no, no, honey. If you were one of
them,
sure. But you're not. And not trying to be. You're a
movie
person. That's a deity to them. You don't take your cues from them; they take them from you. They may not recognize the brand but, trust me, girls know how to tell 'expensive' at a very young age."
"And the boys?"
"Boys never know anything," she said. "Now pay attention. We're not done. Just a couple of more touches. How do you like these boots?"
"They look okay, I guess," I said, holding a pair of plain black ankle-high lace-ups with a one-piece sole-and-heel.
"Those are Mephistos."
"What?"
"It's a brand name," she said, tolerating my ignorance with an effort. "This model is called the Naddo. Supposed to be the most comfortable shoes on earth."
"They look like upper-class Doc Martens."
"See? Even
you
can tell they're high-end."
"Yeah, all right," I surrendered. "What else?"
"You need some kind of jewelry. A ring or . . . a bracelet, maybe."
"I'm not buying any damn—"
"Oh, Mama will have something," Michelle said breezily.

• • •

T
he Mistress of the Wardrobe marched up and down in front of us, inspecting her troops. Clarence was all in black, right down to the buttons on his silk shirt. Max's massive torso was draped in one of the most garish optical assaults ever to come out of Hawaii. Terry had a bleached dungaree jacket over a Dark Horse Comics T-shirt. The Mole wore his favorite dirt-colored jumpsuit, a thick tool belt around his waist.
The Prof had carried her deep into the late rounds, but Michelle had finally TKO'ed him. The little man reluctantly sported a royal-blue knee-length Nehru jacket with thick white vertical stripes. Me, I had my white leather jacket and black boots. A pigeon-blood ruby ring on the little finger of my right hand. And a heavy chain Mama said was platinum on my left wrist, right next to a chunky, beat-up Casio multi-screen watch on a wide black nylon band. "The contrast makes the look," Michelle had assured me.
"Everybody got their roles?" I asked them.
"I am an executive producer, mahn," Clarence said, as if daring anyone to dispute it.
"Right. Max is security. The Prof is part of the . . . What did you call it again, Michelle?"
"The creative team," she sighed.
"Uh-huh. Okay, the Mole is tech. You can work that whole video rig we got, right?" I asked him.
He gave me one of his particle-accelerator looks, didn't answer.
"Terry, you're a studio intern. You're sure you can talk the talk?"
"We're going all-digital," he said smoothly. "It's the only way to get the
immediacy
the director needs for this project."
"Beautiful," I told him.
"Ah, you'll see, Burke," he said, with his mother's trademark self-confidence. "
They're
going to be the ones doing all the talking."
"Good enough. Michelle, you'll be my girl Friday."
"I will not. I should be at least a—"
"You don't look old enough to be someone high up," I said quickly.
"Oh. Well . . . you may have a point."
"A very good point, that is the truth." Clarence took my back.
"And what do
you
think?" she asked, turning to the Mole.
"What?" he answered vaguely, eyes blinking rapidly behind the Coke-bottle lenses.
"Do you think I look too young to be someone important at a studio?"
"How old would someone important at a studio be?" he asked, proving you can be a genius in some areas and an imbecile in others.
"You look like you're, maybe, twenty-nine, Mom," Terry jumped in gamely. "No more than that."
The Mole caught the signal, went from blinking to nodding until Michelle finally turned her attention back to me.
"You need one more thing," she said.
"What now?"
"This!" she said, pulling a black eyepatch out of her purse.
"Why should I wear an—?"
"Honey, ever since the . . . ever since what happened, you can't see out of both of them, right?"
"Not at the same time."
"And when they . . . fixed you up, all that plastic surgery, they didn't put it in . . . the same."
"So?"
She came over, stood next to where I was sitting. "Before it hap—"
"Before I got shot in the head, Michelle. You can say it," I told her. They could say anything they wanted about that night. Anything except Pansy's name.
"All right, baby. Before you got shot, you had the perfect con man's face. It wasn't . . . It didn't make a real impression, and it didn't stay with you, either. But now you look . . . distinctive. The scar," she said, sad and sweet, touching the spot on my right cheek. "Your eyes don't line up. And they're two different colors, too. The skin on one side is a little . . . tighter than the other. Your hair has those long streaks of white in it. And the top of this ear . . ."
"I get it."
"But, honey, listen. You wear this eyepatch and that's all people will see. It draws attention to one thing, takes it away from the rest. Anyone asks for your description, they'll say 'the man with the patch.' Let them focus on that instead of . . ."
"It's a good idea," I told her, to take away some of her pain. "And when we're done, and I take it off, it'll be like a new face."
"I didn't mean . . ."
"I
like
it," I said. "It's a good play, girl. Let me try it on."

• • •

"H
ow did you know where I live?" the pudgy-faced guy said, standing in the doorway of his Chelsea walk-up.
"I can explain better inside," I said.
"Maybe I don't want—"
I turned to go, rolling my right shoulder away from him as I brought my left hand off the door jamb to smack softly against the side of his exposed neck, shoving him to the side, letting my momentum back me into the space he vacated. "Thanks," I said.
He retreated a few steps. I didn't move. He brought his hands up in front of his face, then dropped them immediately so I wouldn't think he wanted to fight.
"Stop it," I told him. "If I wanted to hurt you, you'd already be hurt."
"What do you want here?"
"I don't want anything
here
. I want something from you. And here is where you are."
"I didn't tell anyone—"
"What? That I came to you, asked you for a friendly favor? Who'd care?"
"Then why are you mad?"
"I'm not mad, Jerry. I'm just in a hurry."
"You didn't have to threaten me," he said indignantly. He walked over and dropped himself into a canvas beanbag chair.
"What are you talking about?" I said.
"That man who called me. Your 'reference.' He said if I didn't 'help you out'— that's the words he used, 'help you out'— then I'd better find a good morphine connection. Because the hospitals, they never really give you enough for internal injuries."
"You probably misunderstood him," I said, as I walked over to a blue Naugahyde recliner and sat down. I lit a cigarette, looked around for an ashtray.
"There's one on the shelf behind you," he said.
"Thanks," I said, now that I'd been upgraded from invader to guest. "Anyway, Jerry, here's the thing. I don't think I'm going to make it as a journalist, but I do keep my ear to the ground. I hear things, you know?"
"So?" he said, still resentful.
"So I need to ask your advice. About how to use this . . . thing I heard."
"We only publish material that we can—"
"I wouldn't want
your
magazine to publish this one," I said, sniffing out the ego issue and running with it. Violence or con job, it always comes down to the same thing— reading the other guy. "It's just a rumor, and I know you don't trade in rumors. Only facts. But the way I figure things, just because you wouldn't go near something doesn't mean you don't know how it works, right?"
"I don't think I under—"
"Okay. There's going to be a movie shot out on Long Island. Sort of a horror flick, but with a love story, too. The whole thing takes place at a high school. An independent production company has this dynamite script, and they're looking for actors. Only thing is, they have to be pretty much unknown, and they have to be local . . . for the accents and the look and all. And to stay within budget."
"So?"
"So the casting director is going to be looking for talent, but their team doesn't want word to get out. You know how they'd be swamped with all kinds of stage mothers and agents. They want to keep it low-key until they get the film mostly cast."
"What's this got to do with—?"
"You know the Internet, right? How it works?"
"I'm not a geek, I'm a journalist. The Internet is just the
forum
we use," he said self-righteously.
"Sure, I understand. But I'm not talking techno here. I'm talking about the
medium
. What I want is to get the word out about—"
"You said they
didn't
want—"
"That's them, Jerry. That's not us."
"Us?"
"You and me. And my partners. You know . . . you spoke to one of them. And what
we
want, we want the word to sort of
dribble
out there. Just a little. So it has to be planted in places where only kids from the local area would pick it up. We're not looking for national, see?"
"Sure," he said. Confidence returning. "And there's ways to do that
somewhat
. But the Internet is like a forest fire, especially when it comes to rumors. And when you add fucking
movies
to the mix, it'll spread, no matter what you do."
"How would you do it?"
"Me? One thing I
wouldn't
do is have a Web site. That would be fatal. What you want is a couple of little posts, maybe in one of the local newsgroups or on a message board. Not saying it
is
happening, just that they
heard
it might be, and could anybody help? You know, give info and stuff."
"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?"