Only Child

“One,” I said, holding up a finger, “it was a random thing. Young girl’s out, doing whatever, runs into Mr. Wrong. Anyone from a roving tramp to a Ted Bundy. Two, it was somebody in her life,” I went on, “somebody she knew. The way she was killed, it fits either one. Serial killers, it’s nothing unusual for them to be in a rage when they work, right? And a boyfriend, or anyone who thought he’d been betrayed, they might get into a frenzy, too. But the third choice is what my clients themselves suspect—a professional job. Someone sending Giovanni a message. ‘We know everything about you. And we’re very serious people.’ Killing a daughter nobody was supposed to know he even had, that would make both those points.”

“And Antrelli, he thinks it’s the feds?”

“That’s maybe not as crazy as it sounds,” I said, catching the defensiveness too late to choke it off.

“The feds hiring psycho sex-killers?” she said, the sarcasm all the heavier for its absence in her tone.

“First of all,” I told her, “the feds are masters of the means-justifies-the-end strategies. How many times have they left a child molester running around loose, even when they knew he was doing kids left and right, because they wanted to build a case against some of the people in his ring? Or just gather more evidence, make a stronger case? They let Klansmen they had in their pockets go along on lynchings, didn’t they? They stirred up that war between the Panthers and Karenga’s group—a lot of bodies behind that one. I don’t know about outright assassinations, but how many people did Hoover get dead with the games he played?”

“You’re a historian now?” she said, letting the sarcasm surface. “And you actually think they’d sex-murder a teenage girl just to drive a wedge between some narco-traffickers?”

“A whole agency? No way. Even if some supervisor had an aneurysm and hatched a plan like that, they’d put him in a padded room. But Giovanni thinks it’s a rogue.”

“In the FBI?”

“Ask the agent doing life for selling secrets to the Russians. What’s his name, Hanssen?”

“Yes. But he was a whore. This, what you’re talking about, it would have to be personal.”

“That’s what Giovanni thinks, too,” I said. “But if he’s telling it straight, it’s nothing more than a feeling—he doesn’t know anything.”

“Does he have someone in mind?”

“Not even a guess. He’s...confused, is the best way I could put it. If someone in law enforcement hated him that bad, why not just take him out? Trap him in an alley, ventilate him, flake the corpse with whatever they need—pistol and powder would do it—and walk away giggling. If a beat cop guns down a homeless black guy, there’s people in this city who’ll get in the street behind it, raise all kinds of holy hell. But a known gangster? A made man? Where’s the Al Sharpton for that? Columbo tried it years ago. And remember how he ended up.”

“So it’s some kind of deeper game, and the girl was a pawn?” Wolfe asked, hunter’s eyes hard under skeptically raised eyebrows.

“Maybe,” I said, not committing myself. “That’s if it wasn’t a random freak, or someone with a specific motive to kill her. Giovanni’s big reason for believing it was aimed at him is the biggest reason for anyone else believing that it wasn’t.”

“That nobody knew she was his daughter?”

“Yep.”

She shifted in her chair to face me more squarely. The Rottweiler did the same from the floor. “You said, on the phone, that this was back to being what you once were.”

“I did.”

“That’s a long jump. What’s so high and mighty about this job that gets you there?”

“I’m not saying anything like that. You know I used to...look for kids, things like that. I know this one’s dead. So it’s not about protecting her, sure. But this isn’t crime I’m doing, right? A job like this, it’s about as legitimate as a man like me could ever hope to get.”

“A man like you?” She dry-laughed.

“What do you want from me?” I said.

“From you?” she said, icily. “Half up front, half when I deliver.”

Every time I see Wolfe, it’s always the same. And after she leaves, it’s always a Patsy Cline night.

I know how to wait. It’s just time, and I’ve done enough of it. And, now that I was home, I had plenty of things to help make it pass.

Not TV. That’s the same all over. What I’d really missed was my newspapers. There’s nothing like the New York tabs, especially when they’re in one of their turf wars.

I hit the mute on some sit-com, improving it considerably. Then I fixed myself a rye toast with cream cheese, added a big glass of grape juice, and settled down with the Daily News and the Post, glad to be back with journalism where all murders are “brutal,” all prosecutors are “tough,” and all blondes are “attractive.” And any lawyer who cooperates with the reporter is “high-powered.”

The ex-mayor, a guy who usually had all the charm of a public housing project, had stepped up big after the World Trade Center destruction, and the papers were covering his endless divorce with a lot less intensity now.

A genetically engineered football player, whose gigantic neck made his head resemble a shot put stuck in a pool of mud, hospitalized his girlfriend.

A pattern rapist was terrorizing Queens. The DA promised “the maximum penalty” when he was caught. Sure...if he pleaded to it.

Two broken-synapse robbers killed four people “execution style” in a convenience store in Corona.

Some addled actor who played a doctor in one of those made-for-cable movies was giving a speech at NYU on the need for Medicaid reform.

Politicians kept “calling” for different things. Nobody ever seemed to answer.

The gossip columns were the usual mix of pipe jobs and courthouse-bin scavenging, with a little credit-card info thrown in for seasoning.

A couple of buffoons were running for some state-senate seat just vacated by the incumbent’s prison term. One accused the other of being “against the Internet”—a knockout punch in a world where whole hordes of humans think better sex is a faster modem.

There were five separate heavyweight champions of the world.

The Twin Towers were gone forever, and the debate about what to put up in their place had turned sanctimonious and ugly at the same time.

Various humans called each other racists.

A rap star got arrested for keeping it real. And a comedian for child abuse.

Four more celebrities went into rehab, one for the third time.

A man, despondent over his mother’s suicide, swan-dived off the Throgs Neck Bridge. Didn’t even break a bone.

A fourteen-year-old got twenty-eight years in prison for shooting his teacher. Part of his sentence was he had to take anger-management classes. I hoped someone was going to teach him knife-fighting, too.

On the international front, Cambodia was still selling its children as prostitutes, and the Sudan was selling its children, period. There were anti-immigrant riots all over Europe, the swastika out of the closet. The Middle East was as stable as nitro in a Cuisinart.

The boss of the Olympics cartel said the games were the world’s greatest single opportunity to advance the cause of international human rights. Which is why they picked Beijing to host them in 2008.

A five-million-dollar federal study announced that the latest stats showed crime was way down in America. I guess that’s what Bush had meant by “faith-based.”

“What is that, mahn?” Clarence asked the next day, pointing to the walls I’d covered with white posterboard.