Only Child (20 page)

• • •

"I
've seen a million of these," Cyn said, pointing at the screen, where a slender girl was bent over, palms against the wall, her shorts and panties around her ankles, being paddled by a taller girl in a sorority sweater and pleated skirt, while a bunch of other girls watched. "It used to be a big deal, to do the real thing, no acting. Years ago, some of the product even came with warranties. You know, 'All the girls in this session were
really
spanked.' But now there's so many subs going into the business that there's no market for fakes. This one doesn't even look professional."
"Because of the single camera?"
"No. Most of the digital stuff— you know, for the Net— is that way. But the camera doesn't come in on her ass, to show you it really is red from the punishment. And the paddling doesn't last very long. It doesn't even
look
like a good hard one."
"So you couldn't sell this?"
"Oh, you could sell it, all right. There's one thing about it that's different from the commercial stuff."
"The look?"
"No," Cyn said. "It's that they're
all
so young. I can't tell their ages . . . and you can't really see their faces, but those are high-school girls. Or maybe college. Anyway, it looks like whoever shot this was hidden. As if the girls didn't know they were on camera. For that, there's a
real
market."
"Yeah. Remember when that guy paid us to shill?" Rejji said.
"How's that work?" I asked her.
"Well, this one time, all we had to do was go to a club where a lot of girls hang out. Act real drunk. Then get up on the bar and take our tops off, dance around."
"So the guy could film it?"
"Not film
us
. I mean, he
found
us because we were
in
films, already. No, see, our job was to get the
other
girls to take it off. What he said was, it's completely legal. Because he was right out in the open with the camera. So they were
consenting
if they did it with him there; that's what he said."
"And there's all that 'upskirt' squick, too," Cyn said. "You know, little perverts walking around with minicams in their briefcases. They put them on the ground, film right up a girl's skirt without her knowing. Then it goes straight to the Internet. You wouldn't think anybody would want stuff like that, not when there's a million girls who'll let you film anything—
anything
— if you just pay them. But it's a different head."
"So you think this one . . . ?"
"Who knows?" Rejji said. "In New York, it's legal to videotape a person without them knowing, so long as there's no sound track, can you believe it? There's got to be some freaky politicians behind
that
law.
"Anyway, BDSM by itself isn't illegal, even if you take money for it. And, this one here, there's no sex in it. Like Cyn said, on the Net there's a market for anything. There's even sites for scumbags who beat their own kids and sell the pictures of it."
"But you're sure this one's not faked? Not acting?"
"No," Cyn said, certain-sure. "That was real. It happened."

• • •

T
he people who spray-painted the synagogue were wearing ski masks.
The camera was in so tight on the nipple-piercing that we couldn't tell anything about the girl.
The only way we knew the sex of the person carried into a darkened room was from her body— her head was hooded with a pillowcase. The girl was either drunk or drugged. That didn't seem to bother the three males who took turns with her. The camera never went near their faces.
Michelle stood up suddenly, pointed at the VCR screen. "Whoever made these tapes, we know them," she said. "We know who they are. We just don't know their names."

• • •

"T
his is the last one," I told them.
We watched Vonni run a dozen times. The look on her face was pure terror.
"I cannot tell," Clarence said.
"I say no, bro." The Prof.
"I'm with the Prof." Michelle.
Max shook his head "No," agreeing.
"So this one's the wild card," Cyn said, speaking for us all. "This one's a fake?"
"Maybe," is all I could say.

• • •

"T
hat has to be it," I said to Max, pointing at a ramshackle house at the end of a long, straight block. In a better neighborhood, this would be a cul-de-sac. Here, it was as if the street had just surrendered to a prairie-sized vacant lot.
Abandoned cars lined both sides of the street, each one flying some kind of gang sign. Drugstores.
The summer sun that kissed the beach a few miles away was hostile here, bleaching everything into a single bleak tone. Heat waves trembled off the asphalt. The early-morning air was already sodden. Nothing moved.
For this run, I'd lost the eyepatch, the jewelry, and the fancy leather jacket, and switched back to the Plymouth. Max stayed with one of the sumo-sized Hawaiian shirts— I think he'd started to like the look.
As I pulled into the driveway, a brindle-colored blur shot around the side of the house and charged the car. The pit bull leaped onto the hood, slipped slightly, clawed its way toward the windshield, growling death threats. I could see a heavy leather collar around its neck, attached to a length of chain that could anchor a tugboat. I jammed the lever into reverse and hit the gas. The pit bull slid off the hood and hit the ground, then immediately pogo'ed up like it was on springs. Its huge head filled my window, enraged.
I backed off until the Plymouth was beyond the end of the pit bull's chain. Looked a question at Max. He shrugged.
A tall, slope-shouldered black man wearing white painter's coveralls and a matching cap strolled up to us. He'd come around the same side of the house the pit bull had materialized from. He walked down the driveway toward the car, ignoring the frenzied animal, making a motion for me to roll down my window. As soon as I did, the pit quieted down, as if this was a routine he knew well.
"What you want?" the man asked. His skin was light, covered with freckles, his eyes an unsettling stormy blue. I'd have given five-to-two the hair under his cap was red.
"Ozell," I said.
"What you want with him?"
"I want to make some money with him."
"Yeah? And how you going to do that?"
"Where I am right now, it's the wrong address to discuss it."
"What address you talking about, mister? You said you looking for Ozell, right?"
"Right man, wrong address," I told him. "Where I'm sitting right now, like this, all this noise, people maybe watching, the address is Front Street, you with me?"
"You got the stones to get out that ride?"
"You tell me you'll handle your bulldog, I'll take your word."
"Give me a couple of minutes," he said. "Then walk around back. Walk slow."

• • •

W
e gave him five and change. Then we moved out, Max going first. The man was in a backyard that stretched into the vacant lot, with no visible border between them. He was seated on an old couch that the pit must have used for a chew-toy. The dog was chained to a stake a little smaller than a cut-down telephone pole. A long cable ran from its collar to the man's hand.
"Have a seat," he said, indicating a couple of aluminum-and-webbing beach chairs.
We did.
"This thing I got here," he said, holding up the cable, "all I got to do is push on it, that chain comes right off Azumah's collar. You with me?"
"All the way," I assured him.
"When I see Ozell, what you want I should tell him about the money you going to make with him?"
"I heard Ozell was the man to see if you wanted to give your dog a roll."
"Not one word of that sounds like money to me, friend."
"Anyone can make
sounds,
" I said. "When it comes to cash, what you want is
sight,
am I telling the truth?" Before he could answer, I pulled a thick roll out of my jacket pocket.
"I been to Chicago," he said suspiciously. "Been to Kansas City, too."
I tossed him the roll. He caught it with his off-hand, never letting go of the cable. He thumbed the rubber band off the roll.
"There's all twenties here, look like."
"Your money. If you can help us out."
"Help you out how?"
"I want to show you a tape of a pit contest. And I want you to tell me—"
"Nah, man. I don't eat no cheese."
"Not what I want. Just look at the tape, let me ask my questions. You don't want to answer them, so you wasted a few minutes. You do, we leave, and the cash stays."
He bounced the roll on his palm, thoughtfully. "I let Azumah loose and you going to be leaving
anyway
."
"You want us to leave, just say so. Toss the money back and we'll be gone."
"I'm thinking, maybe that's right. You
should
leave. And maybe I should keep something for my trouble, too."
"You don't want to be like that," I said. "We came here respectful. Don't go all Bogart on us. It'd be a mistake."
"Is that right?"
"Yeah," I said, sliding the pistol out of the same pocket I'd taken the money from.
"Bullet wouldn't stop Azumah," he said calmly, "even if you
could
hit him on the run."
"I got a full clip," I told him. "And that knife you're holding somewhere won't stop my partner."
The man tunnel-visioned in on Max, his pit-trained eyes measuring, adding up the score.
"I ain't going nowhere with you," he said warningly. "Money or not."
"You won't even have to get off that couch," I promised him.

• • •

"Y
ou want me to run it again?" I asked Ozell.
"No need," he said. "What you want to know? For your money," he added, quickly.
"You know where this was shot?"
"Could be."
"Yes or no, friend."
"Is that enough? For the money, I mean?"
"No. Look, I don't need to know the exact location where it was shot. Just if you recognize it, so you remember if you were there for this particular bout."
"Why?"
"Because, if you were, you saw somebody with a camera. The one who made this tape."
"
That's
what you want, man?"
"For the money," I reminded him.
"It was a white boy," he said. "I don't mean a white boy like you is a white boy. I mean a for-real boy. Punk-ass kid, couldn't be more than, I dunno, twenty, twenty-two?"
"He have a dog going that night?"
"No, man," he said, dismissing the thought. "He was just this weaselly guy. Comes up to me, asks can he shoot with that fancy camera? I tell him, he don't get the fuck outta there, I throw his puny ass in the pit, too. He says there's five yards in it for me. Says I can watch him close as I want— he's only gonna shoot the dogs, not the people. I
know
he's not The Man. So, I figure, why not?"
"How long was he there?"
"Maybe two, three bouts. Paid me up front. I didn't even see him go. Be lucky if the pussy made it back through the parking lot, that place."
"Describe him."
"I told you, man. A gray boy. Nothing special about him. About your height, maybe a inch or two taller. He wasn't fat and he wasn't skinny."
"Hair?"
"He had a cap on, man. Some kind of baseball one, I don't remember. . . ."
"What about his face?"
"Wasn't like yours, man. No offense, but I'd know
you,
I ever saw you again. This kid was just . . . plain, like. He had, I
think
he had, an earring," Ozell said, touching his own left ear, "but I couldn't swear to it."
I didn't trust his ghetto-game accent any more than I did those bad blue eyes. But I went at him another few minutes, and the vacuum bag didn't get any fuller.
"Thanks," I told Ozell, holding out my hand to shake. "This guy ever contacts you again, you call that number I left you, there's five in it for you, all right?" I said, leaving it ambiguous, five hundred or five thousand.
"All right," he said, not going for the bait. He'd negotiate when he had something to trade, not before.
"Yeah," I said, moving very close to him. "And one more thing. You don't want to be calling anybody else, Ozell. I wouldn't forget
your
face, either."

• • •

"Y
ou like her in those?" Cyn asked me.
Rejji pranced around the room in a pair of side-laced black boots that went to her knees.
"I don't go for those cloven heels," I said. "Or those built-up soles, either."
"You're old-fashioned. Miss the stilettos, huh?"
"Maybe just old, period."
"No man's so old that Rejji can't make him sit up and pay attention," Cyn said, smiling knowingly. "That bitch's got a tongue so educated, she can lick up a bowl of fudge ripple and never touch the ripple."
"I'll take your word for it."
"Oh, I wouldn't want you to do that," she said. "Just sit there, smoke your cigarette, and pay attention."