Only Child

It was about forty minutes before I saw the Plymouth’s headlights cut the corner and come my way. Giovanni backed it in slowly, exhausts gurgling like a powerboat’s. He and Felix climbed out, Giovanni pausing to pat the Plymouth’s fender like it was a racehorse who’d just given its best.

I was standing next to the BMW as they approached.

“Dios mio, that is a stallion,” Felix said. “A Ferrari would never defeat it.”

“Want to trade?” Giovanni asked me. “Right now? Even up?”

“No thanks,” I said. Lymon had promised me the Plymouth could pull an honest twelve-second quarter and top out at 150. I hadn’t seen for myself yet, but I suspected Giovanni had.

“I don’t blame you,” he said.

“For what I do, the Plymouth is better. But for what I’m doing now...”

“I get it,” Giovanni said. “And you got it. Make a list.”

“It’s out there,” Jerry the Journalist said.

“Any idea of whether it’s being picked up?” I said into the phone.

“It’s always picked up,” he answered. “True or false, smart or stupid, it’s all the same. For an extra touch, I even slipped it into the Internet Movie Database.”

“What’s that?”

“An online thing. Pretty helpful for something like what you’re doing. What people do, when they hear a rumor, they ‘check it out on the Internet,’ see?”

“But how do they know if—?”

“They don’t. And it doesn’t matter. To them, if it’s on the Internet, it’s God’s own truth. ‘Cyber-chumps,’ that’s what I call them.”

“That’s pretty slick, ‘cyber-chumps.’ You make it up?”

“You ever go on the Internet?”

“Me? No.”

“Yeah, I ‘coined the phrase,’ as they say.”

“Cool. Thanks for the TCB.”

“That’s it?”

“If you really got it done, it is.”

“You’re dead by NYPD,” Wolfe said.

“Dead dead? Or just missing-and-presumed?”

“Mondo morto. They probably cleared a hundred cases behind your death. The last thing they’d want is for you to show up.”

That’s another way to get a case an Exceptional Clearance, I thought, when the perp’s not alive to bring to trial. “What kind of cases?” I asked.

“Hijackings, assaults, armed robberies. Like that.”

“They didn’t put me in any...?”

“What? Sex cases?”

“Yeah. Or...?”

“No. In some strange way, they were almost...respectful. Or maybe they were playing it straight, staying with cases in which you were actually a suspect in some way.”

“There’s enough of those,” I acknowledged.

“Apparently,” she said dryly. “Everything else is whispers. People say they’ve seen you. Or heard you were back in town. Nothing specific.”

“Sure. That kind of talk...There’s some saying Wesley’s still walking around, too.”

Wolfe shuddered. Gave me a long, cold look.

I took it, let it come into me. Stayed soft-eyed.

“Remember Colto?” she finally said, heavy on the Italian inflection.

“That blowhard? Sure.”

“He’s running around making noises about settling with you.”

“That proves the street thinks I’m dead.”

“He says you stole eight keys of pure from him a few years ago, and you’ve been running from him ever since.”

“He’s lying to his bosses the same way he lied to me. It was five keys. And it was stepped on, heavy.”

“They must have believed him; he’s still walking.”

“I never thought they bought it, myself. But Colto’s a decent earner. They probably figured he puffed up the amount to cover his own ass, sure, but he could make it back up to them, they gave him enough time. He’s just huffing now, behind some rumor that I’m back. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

“Yes,” she said patiently, “I know. But gangsters gossip worse than housewives. And you are working for...”

“How much do I still owe you?” I said.

“It’s on,” Michelle said. “Clarence and I hit six, eight different houses between ten and three o’clock.”

“They all bought it?” I asked her.

“Sure. Like it was an everyday thing, some production company asking about renting out their house for a movie. They don’t know anyone this actually happened to, but they know it happens. Besides, who’s more charming than me?”

“Nobody. You let Clarence do any talking?”

“I was the driver, mahn,” Clarence said. “A nice sleek Mercedes. Not so fine a ride as mine, but it made the impression.”

I’d vetoed Clarence bringing his prize ’67 Rover TC into the game. In some neighborhoods, a black Mercedes was as generic as a yellow cab in Manhattan, but the immaculate-as-new British Racing Green sedan would stick in the memory.

I didn’t mind him just playing the driver, either. We couldn’t know the racial attitudes of any of the households we’d picked at random. And if anyone caught a glimpse of the nine-millimeter under his arm, well, a lot of chauffeurs are armed these days.

“It worked just like you said, honey,” Michelle said. “More than half of the houses, it was kids who answered the door. And even when we found an adult at home, it’s like teenagers have a radar for the word ‘movies.’ They’d be in the living room in a heartbeat, soon as it came out.”

“We’ve got to hope their grapevine cuts across class lines,” I said. “The only way to make this scouting-for- locations scam sing is to pick either real big houses or those with great views...or plenty of land. That always means money. So the kids in those houses, they’ll tell their friends, but I don’t know how far it’s going to travel.”

“All high-school kids clique up,” Michelle said. “But they read the same magazines. Watch the same TV. Listen to the same music. It’ll go across, baby.”

“And we’ve got that Internet thing, too,” I added, hopefully.

“What is next, mahn?” Clarence.

“The mall,” I said. “Tomorrow afternoon. Then we’ll know.”

“I don’t care what you heard,” I told the mob of teenagers Michelle had herded over. I was sitting in a corner of the food court, with Cyn on one side and Rejji on the other. Max stood behind me, facing out. Better than a wall. “These are not auditions. What the company wants, first, is the right look. And the right sound. So you won’t get any sides—”

“What’s that?” a girl asked.

I exchanged knowing looks with Cyn, then went on talking as another teen snidely hissed that “sides” were