Only Child

“You know how to do it, baby. You have to let it come to you.”

“Sure,” I said, not hopefully.

Michelle walked across the room, perched herself on the broad, padded arm of an easy chair, crossed her spectacular legs.

“Tell Little Sister,” she said. “Just tell me until you get stuck.”

“The tapes, the ones Vonni had...”

“Yes...?”

“They were real. I mean, as far as we can tell, those things happened. I spoke to those people—not an actor in the bunch. The pit-bull guy, that’s what he does, I saw it for myself. The underground fights, same thing. And Max says the jump-in was real, too, remember?”

“I remember.”

“That sorority stuff, Cyn didn’t recognize any of the players. And she even said it looked like someone stuck a camera through a keyhole, but...”

“But what, honey? It was only the one camera, like you said before. Maybe whoever made the tapes was a fly on the wall.”

“No, girl. He paid to be around at least a couple of the others, remember?”

“You’re thinking he didn’t pay everybody, right? Not all the people on those tapes? And that’s the way in?”

“I don’t know. But that’s not the...Damn! Michelle, you remember that Puerto Rican Day Parade riot a few years ago? When all those girls were getting grabbed and groped? Assholes ripping their tops off, spraying them with those water cannons?”

“I remember that very well. Probably no one would ever even have been arrested for it except...Oh, Burke! That’s right! The cops made the cases from the videotapes.”

“Yeah. Amazing how many good citizens bothered to tape it, instead of trying to stop it, huh? What a shock. And how often every station in town ran some footage of it. But the thing is...remember what Cyn and Rejji told us? About shilling?”

“You don’t think it was a setup, that whole thing? Just so someone could tape it?”

“The parade? No. But I think I know what the difference is now.”

“The difference between what and what?” she asked, impatient despite herself.

“That thing at the parade, it just...happened, I think. A few punks get out of hand, and the mob goes right with it. Even sheep can kick you to death when they stampede.

“Okay, now take the dogfights. That was no accident. If you were tipped, you knew it would be at a certain time and a certain place. It was a planned event.”

“And the thing at the parade wasn’t. So...?”

“So what about the jump-in tape? And when they sprayed those swastikas?”

“Those had to be planned, too. You don’t just suddenly—”

“Planned, sure. But not announced. You had to be a...member, I guess, to even know when it was going down, much less be right there on the scene.”

“Freaks film themselves,” Michelle said, her voice a cold reminder of our childhoods. “You know that as well as me. They take trophies, so they have what they...do, captured forever. And for Nazi graffiti, it’s perfect. No matter how quick someone repaints the church, on the tape the crap they sprayed is always there. You think the scumbags who knocked down the World Trade Center and killed all those people don’t get their rocks off watching the videotapes, over and over?”

“That’s right. They tape everything, right up to rape and murder. One of those tapes was a rape, it looked like—that girl with the hood over her head, she must have been drugged or drunk. But people tape themselves for fun, too, right? Just for their own private use.”

“Like Pamela and Tommy Lee?”

“I don’t know why they made those tapes, girl. Do you?”

“There’s that,” she conceded.

“Anyway, just because we found them all in one place doesn’t mean the same person made them, I know. But that tape of Vonni? Where she was running? It’s not right.”

“I don’t get you. Because it’s a fake, like Cyn said?”

“Not only that. It’s just a snip. Like a sample, or something. All the rest are...stories. Not that they have a beginning and an end, but you can always tell what’s going on. What you’re supposed to be seeing. Except for Vonni’s. It’s a mystery, what she’s running from. And it’s the only mystery in the whole stack.”

“What are we going to do?” Michelle said, standing up. The way she always does.

“Not what’s on the tapes, Mole. The tapes themselves. The whole package.”

“There are no good tests for that,” he said. “Not precise enough ones. I won’t be able to tell you much from —”

“Just take them apart,” I said. “And tell me what you can.”

“I got yearbooks,” Terry said, bursting into the suite. “Look!”

“You did not steal them?” the Mole asked.

“No, Pop. I just borrowed them. I’ll bring them back.”

“That is too much risk,” the Mole said. “Once you have—”

“No, I really borrowed them! From a couple of girls I met. I’ve got this year’s, and...a few others, too.”

“They know you have them?”

“Yes,” Terry said, patient with his father.

“Oh,” the Mole said. And went back to his work.

Every working professional keeps some sort of Rolodex. Mine’s in my head. That “expectation of privacy” crap is fine for attacking a search warrant, but by then the cops already have the info. And that smoke never goes back into the cigarette.

I’ve got a list of experts. In all kinds of things. Carefully culled over the years. Because one thing I’ve learned: just knowing things doesn’t make a person useful.

When I was on my first bit, a group of researchers came into the prison, looking for volunteers. By then, I already knew enough to pay attention when certain people had something to say. Tucker was an old veteran con who’d jailed down south when he was a young man. He was always telling us that New York joints were country clubs compared to The Farm at Angola. There, Tucker said, they used to give you time off your sentence if you let them experiment on you—a new yellow-fever vaccine, stuff like that. But the courts made them stop doing it. I guess they figured, when you spend your life as a work animal in the fields, whipped by freaks who love their work, you spell “volunteer” a little differently.

But some stuff was still okay, like the psych “studies” they were always doing on us. They told us that we wouldn’t get anything if we participated. So, naturally, every con in the house figured the parole board would mark you lousy if you didn’t, and there was never a shortage of “subjects.”

I remember one time, especially. All the visitors wanted was a blood sample and an interview. Big deal. Anyway, everyone said the nurse drawing the blood was a real piece.

That part turned out to be true. She was a Puerto Rican woman, slender, with big brown eyes and wicked thighs. And she smelled like flowers I’d never know the name of. That needle sliding into my vein was the gentlest touch I’d felt since they’d locked me down.

The interviewer was a young guy, only a few years older than me. Bushy-haired, with wire-rim glasses. He was wearing a blue work shirt under a putty-colored corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. He told me I had an XYY chromosome. I didn’t know what that was, but I could see it made him very excited.

“We can’t be sure,” he said. “The data aren’t all in yet. But this is some of the most important work that’s ever been done in the field.”