Only Child

pages of a script.

“...because we need to get you on tape, being yourselves, before anything else. The director is going to look at a lot of people. This phase is only about collecting images, so he can see who makes the cut. After that comes the readings.”

“Who’s the director?” a kid with horn-rimmed glasses asked.

This time, my look was exchanged with Rejji, who raised an eyebrow, dismissing the kid harder than a slap.

“We are not looking for extras,” I went on, pointedly ignoring the uncool question, sending an etiquette message. “Not at this time. The film isn’t cast yet. We’re starting from scratch. But since it’s going to be shot around here, and the script is written for teenagers, the director thought we might spend a few days surveying.”

“Surveying?” a late-teens girl in a butterscotch blouse said.

“Shut up!” a younger girl in denim overalls hissed at her. “Let him talk.”

I went on doing just that for a few minutes, verging just close enough on condescending arrogance to convince them I was the real thing.

“Anyone can try out?” a chunky girl with a round, shiny face and frizzy brown hair asked me.

“These aren’t tryouts,” I told her. “In the trade, we call this ‘looking for the look.’ It’s our job to bring the director all kinds of different images. Like a list of ingredients, so he can decide what he wants to cook.”

The chunky girl thought she heard a coded message in all that. Her face fell.

“I hope you can come,” Michelle told her, voice carrying deep into the crowd. “You have fantastic eyes.”

“Police girl call.” Mama’s voice, on the cell phone.

“Wolfe?”

“What I say?”

“Okay, Mama. What did she say?”

“Say call.”

“You were looking for me?”

“Not me,” Wolfe said. “That person we talked about.”

“Does he know where to look?”

“You mean your...place?”

“Yeah.”

“Not unless you’ve been a lot more careless than you usually are.” Meaning: “Not from me.”

“So where’s he doing all this looking?”

“Remember Julian’s?”

“Sure,” I said, mourning the passing of one of the City’s greatest poolrooms. Fourteenth Street wasn’t the same since it had disappeared.

“A place in the same business. Only in a basement.”

“I haven’t been there in—”

“But you used to go there. People left messages for you with the old man who runs it. That’s what he did; he left a message.”

“What does the mope think he’s doing, playing High Noon?”

“It does seem...outlandish. So it’s probably not what it seems. But he is trying to make an impression. And I thought he might come to...that restaurant of yours.”

“Even he’s not that stupid,” I said.

“Does anybody—anybody—know I’m on your payroll?”

“Only Felix.”

“The first couple of times we met, you had people...you both had people around.”

“That was so they’d think—”

“Sure. I’m not criticizing your strategy. Only thing is, how sure are you of all the men who were there?”

“Dead sure,” Giovanni said.

“Yes,” Felix echoed. “Why do you ask all this?”

“You know a guy named Colto? Works Queens, out of the old airport crew?”

“I know who he is,” Giovanni said, waiting to see my next card.

“A few years ago, he said Burke took him off for some powder.”

“I heard about that. Heard the story, anyway. I don’t think his boss bought it.”

“That’s how I got it, too. Thing is, this Colto, he’s been making the rounds, telling people Burke’s been on the run...from him. And now that Burke’s back, he’s going to settle up.”

“Why do you tell us?” Felix said.

“I tell you because, one, if he got the idea Burke’s back from one of your crews, it means things aren’t as tight as you think they are. And, two, he’s in the way. Of what I’m doing. About Vonni. You know what happens, a guy mouths off about something that sounds like business, sooner or later people pay attention. The last thing we want now is anybody paying attention to me.”

“Colto’s a fucking pig,” Giovanni said. “If he was lying in the gutter bleeding to death, the whole neighborhood would send 911 a postcard. But, you know, he’s got a little button.”

“I understand,” I told him.

“No, you don’t,” Felix said. “And you don’t do anything, either. A balloon, it’s only the air that holds it up.”

“But if he comes around...?”

“You said enough already,” Giovanni told me.

“Where’s your slips?” Rejji demanded of the two girls in matching red halter tops and jeans.

“Slip?” one of them asked. “I didn’t hear anything about wearing a—”

“One of these,” Rejji said, showing her a playing card. It had a joker on the face; the back was blank. “You have to have one of these, with a time and date on it. You know how many people we have to see? If they all came at once, this would be a mob scene.”

“Oh,” the other girl said, crestfallen. “Nobody said anything to us.”

“Come over here,” Rejji said, motioning them into a corner.

“I’m seventeen, but I can play any age from—”

“This isn’t an audition,” I said. “Not yet.” I went into my “looking for a look” spiel, as Clarence tapped a zebrawood pen on the blank page of an open calfskin notebook. “We’re just going to have a conversation. Like an interview, okay?”

“Ask me anything!”

“This is not about you,” I said, putting a thin edge on my voice. “It’s about how you come across. Do you understand the difference?”

“Sure! Absolutely.”

“Okay, let’s see. Talk to me about school. Are there a lot of cliques there?”

“I’m going to have to go back into the City, shop around, if you want me to pick up all this stuff, Pop,” Terry said to the Mole, looking over a few pages ripped from a yellow legal pad covered with his father’s hieroglyphics. “It could take a couple of days....”

“Karp’s Hardware,” the Mole said, not looking up from his bench.

“What?”

“In East Northport. Karp’s Hardware. It will be in the book. They will have everything.”