Only Child

“How’s that work?” I asked her.

“Well, this one time, all we had to do was go to a club where a lot of girls hang out. Act real drunk. Then get up on the bar and take our tops off, dance around.”

“So the guy could film it?”

“Not film us. I mean, he found us because we were in films, already. No, see, our job was to get the other girls to take it off. What he said was, it’s completely legal. Because he was right out in the open with the camera. So they were consenting if they did it with him there; that’s what he said.”

“And there’s all that ‘upskirt’ squick, too,” Cyn said. “You know, little perverts walking around with minicams in their briefcases. They put them on the ground, film right up a girl’s skirt without her knowing. Then it goes straight to the Internet. You wouldn’t think anybody would want stuff like that, not when there’s a million girls who’ll let you film anything—anything—if you just pay them. But it’s a different head.”

“So you think this one...?”

“Who knows?” Rejji said. “In New York, it’s legal to videotape a person without them knowing, so long as there’s no sound track, can you believe it? There’s got to be some freaky politicians behind that law.

“Anyway, BDSM by itself isn’t illegal, even if you take money for it. And, this one here, there’s no sex in it. Like Cyn said, on the Net there’s a market for anything. There’s even sites for scumbags who beat their own kids and sell the pictures of it.”

“But you’re sure this one’s not faked? Not acting?”

“No,” Cyn said, certain-sure. “That was real. It happened.”

The people who spray-painted the synagogue were wearing ski masks.

The camera was in so tight on the nipple-piercing that we couldn’t tell anything about the girl.

The only way we knew the sex of the person carried into a darkened room was from her body—her head was hooded with a pillowcase. The girl was either drunk or drugged. That didn’t seem to bother the three males who took turns with her. The camera never went near their faces.

Michelle stood up suddenly, pointed at the VCR screen. “Whoever made these tapes, we know them,” she said. “We know who they are. We just don’t know their names.”

“This is the last one,” I told them.

We watched Vonni run a dozen times. The look on her face was pure terror.

“I cannot tell,” Clarence said.

“I say no, bro.” The Prof.

“I’m with the Prof.” Michelle.

Max shook his head “No,” agreeing.

“So this one’s the wild card,” Cyn said, speaking for us all. “This one’s a fake?”

“Maybe,” is all I could say.

“That has to be it,” I said to Max, pointing at a ramshackle house at the end of a long, straight block. In a better neighborhood, this would be a cul-de-sac. Here, it was as if the street had just surrendered to a prairie-sized vacant lot.

Abandoned cars lined both sides of the street, each one flying some kind of gang sign. Drugstores.

The summer sun that kissed the beach a few miles away was hostile here, bleaching everything into a single bleak tone. Heat waves trembled off the asphalt. The early-morning air was already sodden. Nothing moved.

For this run, I’d lost the eyepatch, the jewelry, and the fancy leather jacket, and switched back to the Plymouth. Max stayed with one of the sumo-sized Hawaiian shirts—I think he’d started to like the look.

As I pulled into the driveway, a brindle-colored blur shot around the side of the house and charged the car. The pit bull leaped onto the hood, slipped slightly, clawed its way toward the windshield, growling death threats. I could see a heavy leather collar around its neck, attached to a length of chain that could anchor a tugboat. I jammed the lever into reverse and hit the gas. The pit bull slid off the hood and hit the ground, then immediately pogo’ed up like it was on springs. Its huge head filled my window, enraged.

I backed off until the Plymouth was beyond the end of the pit bull’s chain. Looked a question at Max. He shrugged.

A tall, slope-shouldered black man wearing white painter’s coveralls and a matching cap strolled up to us. He’d come around the same side of the house the pit bull had materialized from. He walked down the driveway toward the car, ignoring the frenzied animal, making a motion for me to roll down my window. As soon as I did, the pit quieted down, as if this was a routine he knew well.

“What you want?” the man asked. His skin was light, covered with freckles, his eyes an unsettling stormy blue. I’d have given five-to-two the hair under his cap was red.

“Ozell,” I said.

“What you want with him?”

“I want to make some money with him.”

“Yeah? And how you going to do that?”

“Where I am right now, it’s the wrong address to discuss it.”

“What address you talking about, mister? You said you looking for Ozell, right?”

“Right man, wrong address,” I told him. “Where I’m sitting right now, like this, all this noise, people maybe watching, the address is Front Street, you with me?”

“You got the stones to get out that ride?”

“You tell me you’ll handle your bulldog, I’ll take your word.”

“Give me a couple of minutes,” he said. “Then walk around back. Walk slow.”

We gave him five and change. Then we moved out, Max going first. The man was in a backyard that stretched into the vacant lot, with no visible border between them. He was seated on an old couch that the pit must have used for a chew-toy. The dog was chained to a stake a little smaller than a cut-down telephone pole. A long cable ran from its collar to the man’s hand.

“Have a seat,” he said, indicating a couple of aluminum-and-webbing beach chairs.

We did.

“This thing I got here,” he said, holding up the cable, “all I got to do is push on it, that chain comes right off Azumah’s collar. You with me?”

“All the way,” I assured him.

“When I see Ozell, what you want I should tell him about the money you going to make with him?”

“I heard Ozell was the man to see if you wanted to give your dog a roll.”

“Not one word of that sounds like money to me, friend.”

“Anyone can make sounds,” I said. “When it comes to cash, what you want is sight, am I telling the truth?” Before he could answer, I pulled a thick roll out of my jacket pocket.

“I been to Chicago,” he said suspiciously. “Been to Kansas City, too.”

I tossed him the roll. He caught it with his off-hand, never letting go of the cable. He thumbed the rubber band off the roll.

“There’s all twenties here, look like.”

“Your money. If you can help us out.”

“Help you out how?”

“I want to show you a tape of a pit contest. And I want you to tell me—”

“Nah, man. I don’t eat no cheese.”

“Not what I want. Just look at the tape, let me ask my questions. You don’t want to answer them, so you wasted a few minutes. You do, we leave, and the cash stays.”