Only Child (25 page)

• • •

"Y
ou're incredible," I said.
"That's the consensus." Michelle smiled. "Besides, we already had her name, from the yearbook. The rest was as easy as a crack whore."
"Where's this camp, exactly?"
"Up in Dutchess County," Terry said. "We could pick up Ninety-five North at—"
"We can't take a whole convoy up there, Terry."
"But . . ."
"Anyway, I need you here. You're our best bet at getting some of these kids to talk. If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't even
have
the yearbook."
"He's right, honey." Michelle.
"Pop?" the kid appealed.
The Mole caught Michelle's eye, quickly ducked his head and concentrated on his equipment.

• • •

"S
he was a senior in that yearbook, and that was over three years ago. So she's at least twenty now."
"Michelle said she's a junior in college. That sounds right," Cyn said.
"This camp, it's just a summer job. Supposedly, she's done it every year since she was fifteen. Pretty fancy place."
"We're not just going to walk up to Administration and ask for her, are we?" Rejji said.
"Last resort," I told them. "The map says there's a town about ten, twelve miles from the camp. I don't know what's in it, or even if the counselors get weekends off, but it's worth a shot first."
"You're going to pass yourself off as a college boy?" Cyn laughed.
I reached over to where she was sitting, pinched the top of one smooth thigh, hard. "I'm a casting director, you stupid bitch," I said.
Cyn squealed . . . a lot more than the pinch merited.
Rejji giggled from the back seat.
"I'll see
you
later, miss," Cyn mock-hissed at her.

• • •

"T
he bar is called The LSAT," Rejji said, the minute she walked into the motel room. "That's for 'Law School Admission Test.' The story is, the owners were planning on going to law school, but they got such a low score on this test— I guess you need to get a certain number to get into
any
law school— that they decided to open up this bar instead."
"And it's the right crowd?" I asked her.
"I think so," she said. "There's a little college not far from here, but it's pretty much closed down for the summer. So there's only the trade from the camp, and how much could that be? This isn't the kind of town where a lot of the young people stick around after high school. It's got a few bars, but they're either gin mills or topless joints— either too rough or too expensive for college kids to hang out in. No, this is the only one it could be."
"All right," I told them both, "let's play it that way. Tonight's Friday. We'll give it two nights. If she doesn't show, we'll take a ride over to the camp on Sunday."
"That's probably the worst time," Rejji said.
"Why?"
"Visiting day. The parents will be up, they'll have all kinds of activities. . . . No way the counselors would get any time off."
"You know a lot about this stuff, Rej?" Cyn asked her, curious.
"Yeah," Rejji said. She got up, went into the bathroom, closed the door.

• • •

"W
ant to dance?" The guy was standing at our booth, arms crossed so he could puff out the biceps his neatly cut-off sweatshirt displayed.
"I'm with him," Cyn said, pointing at me.
"What about you?" Muscles asked Rejji.
"Me, too."
"You're
both
with him?"
"Sure," Rejji said.
"You their father?" he asked me, leaning forward, locker-room aggressive.
I looked at his tanned-and-bland face, wondering if those big white teeth were caps. "Their manager," I said.
"Yeah? What do they do?"
"We're entertainers," Cyn told him, no smile.
"That means we get paid to entertain," Rejji said helpfully, her mouth as flat as Cyn's.
Muscles stood there for a minute, downloading. Then he went away.

• • •

R
ejji's hand, under the table, on the inside of my thigh, squeezing. "That's her! That's her!" she whispered.
"You sure?"
"Let me go talk to her, I'll tell you in a minute."
"You know what to—?"
"
Yes!
Let me out, Burke. Quick, before she gets stuck in a booth."

• • •

"I
don't know anything about a videotape," the girl said. Her long black hair and hawkish nose gave her a proud, near-exotic look, but her eyes were like tiny Japanese lanterns— bright light behind fragile paper.
"You brought me all the way up here for
this
?" I said to Cyn, sharp-voiced.
"You said yourself she'd be perfect," Cyn said, half-annoyed.
"But if she's not the same one who—"
"You don't
want
an audition?" Rejji asked the girl, brisk and businesslike.
"That was supposed to
be
an—" the girl said, then cut herself short as she realized what she had just admitted.
"I'm not responsible for amateurs," I said, clipped and impatient. "I have to look at
miles
of tape just to get a few winners, every time. That's the way it works. We've been casting for a few weeks now, and your loop turned up in a huge pile of stuff. Cyn over here, she spotted you first; got me to take a look. And I agreed, you
might
be perfect. But, you understand, those things are not my decision; it's the director's call."
She opened her mouth to say something. I held up a hand to cut her off, said, "Look, if it's not you on the tape, there's nothing to say. The camera loves some people. Others, it doesn't. I need the quality I saw on the tape. If that's not you, I'm sorry we bothered you. But if it
is
you, I hope you won't let whoever sold you a bill of goods spoil your chances in the business."
"What would you . . . ? I mean, if I was . . . ?"
"It's the same for everyone," I told her. "You know how it works. I'm the casting director. Myself and my crew interview the prospects. The best ones, the ones we think the director will
love
— those we put on tape. Free-form, no set lines. We're looking for a
quality,
not a specific performance. If you get through the interview, you go on tape. And if they pick you . . ."
"It was me," she said, biting her thin lower lip.

• • •

"D
on't go too heavy on the makeup," Cyn said to the girl through the open bathroom door. "When you get on the set, they'll create a look for you right there."
She came out, a little self-conscious, but not nervous. Maybe it was that half-hour she'd spent on the phone, on our tab, in one of the other rooms we rented. Or maybe it was the minibar we'd left her the key to. Cyn pointed her toward a chair with a spiral back and a round, padded seat. Rejji tightened the locknut on the tripod, adjusting the minicam, while Cyn rheostatted the lights up and down until Rejji nodded agreement.
"Come in
tight,
" I told Rejji. "Tight on her eyes, tight on her lips."
"She's not miked," Cyn reminded me.
"We need some tape of just pure expression," I said. "Eyes and mouth, that's what talks. It doesn't matter what they say. . . . What we're looking for is
expressive,
got it?"
I turned to the girl. "Tell me about your audition," I said. "Tell me with your
eyes
as you talk."
She arched her back, widened her eyes, said, "Well . . . it's a little complicated. It was a play-within-a-play, like
Hamlet
. Only it was a different form. Unique. We didn't really have lines."
"Like improv?" Cyn asked her.
"No. Not like improv at all. Because there
was
a script. Only I was the only one who knew what it was."
"How did that work?" I asked, making a "Give me more!" gesture toward my face.
"It's a new form of
vérité,
" she said, darting her tongue quickly over her upper lip. "Very complicated. They . . . the other girls . . . they were supposed to be auditioning
for
parts in a movie. I mean, the movie
was
that they were supposed to be auditioning. Like, that was the plot. Only, there were
two
plots. The
real
plot was that Adrienne had humiliated me at school, and I planned the whole thing to get even. The movie, I mean. It was all a fake. Am I telling this all right?"
"It doesn't matter," I assured her. "Just keep talking, so we get enough tape. And bring your hands into it a little. Just touch your cheek once in a while. Like . . . that! Yes, exactly!"
"Perfect,"
Rejji pronounced.
"
I
had the only acting job, actually," the girl went on in a cat-with-cream voice. "But the others never knew it. I had to make it real. Like, I really
had
set the whole thing up myself, just so I could give it to Adrienne. See, they were acting
like
they were acting, that was the script. The plot, I mean.
One
of the plots. But I was acting like I
wasn't
acting, see?"
"Ummm . . ."
"Vision was right, about what he told me. He said people want to be in the movies so bad, they use their fantasies like a shoehorn— they
make
things fit.
"I mean, Adrienne, nobody could see her face. What did she think she was auditioning for, ass model? So, if I
had
set the whole thing up, just so I could do that to her, it
would
have worked. In real life, I mean. The same exact thing. That's the
vérité
. I didn't
actually
set it up, but if I was a good enough actress, it would be just
like
I did."
The girl glanced over at Rejji, who gave her an encouraging nod. She darted her tongue again, went on:
"You know what I told him? Vision? I told him, if this was
really
real, like I had planned it all for revenge, you know what would happen? We'd have to do a lot of takes. So Adrienne's fat ass could get paddled over and over again."
"Was that what you did?"
"No," she said, pouty. "Vision said that the camera would know."
"What does that mean?" Cyn asked her, a reporter interviewing a star.
"Well," the girl said, tossing her hair slightly, "in real life, she wouldn't
start
with her ass all red, see? That would give the whole thing away. So we had to do it all in one take. And I did it, perfect," she said, chesty with self-satisfaction.
"What happened with your audition?" I asked.
"Well . . . nothing. Yet. Vision said, even if I didn't get picked for a part, my tape would make the rounds. He had more of me, too, in case they wanted to see other stuff. Like more of my face, like you're doing here. And I got paid, too," she said proudly.
"Is that right?"
"I made five hundred dollars," she said smugly. "Plus, I got to beat Adrienne's ass. And
she
didn't get paid a cent."

• • •

"W
hat's the score?" I said into the cell phone.
"I'm not gonna lie; we been playing for the tie."
"That's not us. We need another move."
"Got one," the Prof said. "But Michelle finds out what we running, she's gonna come gunning, bro."
"You got Terry out there
alone
?"
"What you want us to do, Schoolboy? Play ofay? This here's the boy's turf, not ours."
"But you've got Clarence close?"
"He's right here with me," the little man said. "Just a coupla niggers in the parking lot of this monfucious mall, anybody looks."
"Does the Mole know?"
"Man wants to speak to you," the Prof said, answering my question.

• • •

"Y
ou're a light sleeper," Rejji said.
"And you two would make lousy burglars," I told them, glancing at my watch— three-thirteen. "What've you been up to? This town can't have that much going for it."
"We were with Kori," Cyn said. "Playing sorority initiation."

• • •

"Y
ou're sure?" I asked Rejji, who was draped over the foot of the bed, on her belly, a pillow under her hips.
"She's an amateur," Rejji said. "But she knows what she likes."
"I appreciate you taking one for the team," I told her.
"Me? Please! We taught her a new game. It's called 'turning the tables.' Maybe you heard of it."
"Yeah. What did you get out of her?"
"You mean,
after
Cyn made her—"
"Rej, you can tell me all about it some other time, okay? But, for now, how about you go back to where you started?"
"She's not a rocket scientist, Burke. But she's smart enough to know when to be scared."
"Of this 'Vision' guy?"
"No. According to her, he's a real sweetheart. Butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. It's the twins."
"Who?"
"Stop teasing, bitch," Cyn said, walking over and giving Rejji a loud spank on the bottom. She sat down on the bed, facing toward where I was propped up against the headboard. "Twin brothers," she said to me. "Brett and Bryce Heltman. Used to be hot-stuff athletes, a few years ago. Big,
strong
boys. With really foul tempers. Kori says she heard they got away with murder when they were in school— they were seniors when she was still in junior high, so it's just rumors, but she sure believes every word."
"And they're with Vision?"
"Not 'with' him, like part of his crew or anything. But . . . And I want to tell you, Burke, this is
all
stuff she 'heard,' okay? So it could be one hundred percent bullshit. . . .
"There was this girl mad at Vision. Because of some video thing, Kori doesn't know for sure. The girl ended up gang-banged. They didn't just fuck her, they fucked her
up
. Broke her jaw and one of her arms. And they stuck a—"
"I get it. And word is that was these twins' work?"
"That's all it is, the 'word,' " she said. "The girl never . . . Well, it never went to court. The girl said she didn't know
who
did it. But, supposedly, she told one of her friends that it was the twins."
"Maybe it was. But that doesn't mean there was any—"
"Kori knows of at least two more."
"Girls who got raped?"
"No. People who got the crap pounded out of them right after they had some kind of beef with Vision. And here's what's
not
a rumor. Kori went to meet him, Vision, once. At the Tackapausha Preserve— that's, like, a big nature park, somewhere around where they live. She figured Vision wanted to tape her outdoors or something. When she got there, he walks her down this trail. At the end, sitting on a tree trunk, there's the twins. She said they didn't
do
anything, but they scared her to death— it was like being in a cave, back in those woods."
"What was Vision doing?"
"Taping."
"Taping what?"
"Taping her being scared, Kori said. And probably taping her when she ran away."