Only Child

screenwriter. They might hang around, trying to soak up ‘ambience’ or whatever—remember, Cyn, when that pathetic little dweeb spent all that time on our set ’cause he was writing some movie about making porno movies?—but it wouldn’t work. You want these kids to give it up, right? Listen, they’ll do anything—to anybody—if you whisper ‘movies’ at them. We saw that when we were out on the coast, virgins blowing Great Danes because some greaseball tells them that’s the way Monroe got started. But they’d have to believe you could make it happen. And a screenwriter can’t make anything happen.”

“What if I was a—?”

“Casting director!” Cyn blurted out. “That is just awesomely perfect. Right, Rej? Nobody knows their names, and they may not get the final say, but they thin the herd. If you don’t get past them, the director never gets to see your tape.”

“You’re a genius, Cyn,” Rej said. “Makes me want to crawl over there and kiss your ass.”

“Don’t pay any attention to her, Burke,” the blonde said. “This one’s our ticket, I know it.”

“How you going to know what a...what was that again, Schoolboy...a goddamn ‘casting director’ wears to work?”

“This isn’t the post office, Prof,” Michelle said tartly. “Everyone doesn’t wear the same uniform.”

“But I have to look like—”

“You don’t have to look like anything, baby. Trust the Mistress of the Wardrobe. What you have to look is cool. Hip, edgy, with it—understand?”

“I...guess.”

“Well, I can do it. All I need is—”

“I know,” I said, reaching into my jacket.

“Am I right?” Giovanni asked me.

“Nothing I found so far makes it seem so,” I said. “And I never thought you were, going in.”

He looked through the windshield of the midnight-blue BMW sedan, as if the answer were somewhere offshore. Even at three in the morning, the Brooklyn waterfront is never completely deserted, but Giovanni was calm and relaxed. Maybe because Felix was sitting behind me, where I couldn’t see him. Or maybe because of the two cars backed into acute angles from us, facing out. A burgundy Cadillac and a white Range Rover—one from each of their crews.

“But you haven’t found anything that would make me wrong?”

“No.”

“Even the cops didn’t?”

“Not in anything I saw. And I saw pretty much everything there was.”

“They think it was just some sex fiend?”

“It’s hard to tell what they think, from only looking at paper. But they’ve got no candidate, so that’s where they’d go, eventually.”

“Why would they be incorrect?” Felix asked.

“I didn’t say they would be,” I answered him mildly, not turning around.

“But if they were?” he insisted, his voice sable-silky. I guessed it wasn’t his mother who’d named him Felix.

“If it was someone the...If it was someone Vonni knew, that would make them wrong.”

“Yes,” he said patiently. “But how would they be wrong? Where would they be wrong?”

“They would be...if there was a relationship they didn’t know about. Or one they misread.”

“Such as...?”

“Such as someone she was...involved with outside the law.”

“What does that mean?” Giovanni, edgy.

“A married man, for example,” I said. “I don’t mean outside the law like adultery, nobody goes to jail for that. I mean outside the law because of Vonni’s age.”

“This happens,” Felix said, neutral.

“Happens with schoolteachers,” I said. “And coaches. And priests. And freaks who troll the Internet. And —”

“We get it,” Giovanni said. “But, something like that going on, what’s the chances of the cops missing it?”

“Dismal,” I said, holding back the card the boy Hugh had given me. Vonni’s “big day.” When it was over, she’d start being famous. Her last meeting hadn’t been a chance encounter. Couldn’t have been. Because whoever it had been with had never come forward. “But always possible.”

“Sherlock Holmes is dead,” Giovanni said.

“I’m not saying it couldn’t happen,” I told them, “but the odds are way against it, especially in a homicide like this one. Front-page stuff, all kinds of personnel assigned—that’s a bright, hot light to be under. They’d pull out all the stops. I was looking for an Exceptional Clearance note, but—”

“What is that?” Felix asked, still soft-voiced. He was either naturally calm or a natural killer. Or both.

“When the cops know who did it but they can’t touch them,” I told him. “Just not enough evidence to act.”

“How could that be? The police do not seem to need...overwhelming evidence to make many of their arrests.”

“Not for some of them,” I agreed. “But Exceptional Clearance is just what it sounds like. It’s no run-of-the- mill thing. The cops can ‘clear’ a case without making an arrest if they can show their superiors a certain person did the crime, and also that they don’t have enough on him to make it stick in court. Sometimes they’ve got plenty of evidence but they can’t use it. Something they found during a bad search, maybe. Or off an illegal wiretap.

“The thing is, with a homicide, they could feel it’s better to wait. If they move too soon, force it to trial with shaky evidence, the killer beats the case, and they don’t get a second chance. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, so they don’t lose anything by holding back. If the guy had accomplices, or even if he had partners on other jobs, if he’s a gang member...You see where I’m going. They’ll figure like you said before, everyone says they can take the weight, until they step on the scales.”

“Loyalty is...unusual now,” Felix agreed.

“You said you looked for this Clearance thing?” Giovanni said.

“I looked for it. And it’s not there.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure I didn’t overlook it. And I’m sure that the paperwork I got was righteous. Stuff like that’s got to be double-documented, everybody playing CYA all the way up the command chain. If it was there, it would have been on paper. And—you know what?—if they had a candidate, they’d have leaked it to the press by now, if only to get some of the heat off themselves. You know, the old ‘umbrella of suspicion’ routine.”

“So either they missed one of these...relationships, or it was someone she didn’t know—that sums it up?” Giovanni said.

“Yeah.”

“And if it was someone she didn’t know, the way the cops would have doped it out, they’d make it for a sex fiend, like we said before.”

“Exactly. And that seems like it’s where they ended up. There’s no local suspect.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure of this: They called in the FBI, looking for a profile of the killer. And they asked the feds for pattern work, too, to see if there were any similarities between the way this was done and other...ones. All around the country, going back a number of years. It could be that they were just going through the motions, covering themselves with paper. But I don’t think so.”

“Why?” Felix asked.