Only Child

“Burke didn’t,” Michelle said brightly.

“What’d you crack, Jack?”

“I’m not sure,” I told the Prof. “Where’s Cyn and Rej?”

“I’ll get them,” Terry volunteered, ignoring his mother’s look.

“Those codes must mean something,” I told them. “And Cyn and Rej may have given us a roadmap.”

Rejji ducked her head, modestly. Cyn crossed her long legs, displaying the pronounced flex-line on her thigh.

“The NV and the CV ones, they look alike, right?” I said. “Real. Like someone snuck a camera into whatever was going on. Only what this Kori told us, the NV one—the one she did, anyway—it was a scam. A production, all right, but not the one the players thought it was. And one of them, Kori, she was in on it from the beginning. An acting job. For her, not for the rest, no matter what they thought. If we assume all the NV ones are the same game, then one of the spray-painters was in on it with Vision, but the others thought they were making a movie. Acting.”

“Or maybe they didn’t know at all,” Cyn said thoughtfully.

“But what would be in it for—?” Michelle asked.

“For Kori, it was doing something she wanted to do, any-way,” I said, as Cyn nodded agreement. “And getting paid for it. Plus believing that she was the only one doing the real acting. That’s a big-hit trifecta. It could be the same for the play-Nazis, if one of them wasn’t playing. Let’s say he wants to be the leader of some ‘white power’ crew, but he doesn’t have what it takes to pull that off. Vision tells them that they’re acting, okay? Auditioning for the movies. But the guy, the one who’s in on it, he gets to be what he wants, if only for a little while. Just like Kori did. And the tape is the proof.”

“That young woman. The one trying on the dungarees. She was alone, mahn,” Clarence pointed out.

“I think I have that one scoped, too,” I said. “None of these loops have titles, or credits. I don’t know whether we’re seeing the whole thing, or just some snip out of the middle. But it could have been a deal where the script is supposed to be some girls playing a trick on their friend, sticking a little camera in their pocketbook, so they made a tape of her changing. Then they post it on the Internet or something.”

“If that was the script, then which one would be the actor?”

“Not the one we saw,” Cyn said. “Not the girl pulling her pants down, the one taping it. I’ll bet there was more to it. The stripper knows it’s a ‘movie,’ so she takes her pants off while ‘acting’ like she doesn’t know she’s being taped. But the one doing the taping, she’s doing the real acting, because her job is to get those pants off. Same as with Kori, see?”

“Huh!” I said as it hit me.

Cyn put her arms over her head, stretched luxuriously. “I just look like this,” she said. “It’s not all I know.”

“Tell him!” Michelle applauded.

“But what do they get from this, mahn?” Clarence asked me. “The tape would be the same if the girl was acting or not, yes? All the cameraman wants is to see her pants come down.”

“No,” I said, “he wants more than that. I’m just not sure what.”

“I got it! I got it!” Terry said, running over to the VCR and hitting “Pause.”

“What do you have?” the Mole asked.

“‘CV.’ I know what it stands for. All those tapes, they weren’t acting, right? They were just real things, that the guy taped. Cinema verite!”

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“Just what’s on those tapes, Burke. Like Frederick Wiseman did in Titicut Follies.”

“Terry, I got no idea who...”

“No, listen to me,” the kid said, all worked up. “Cinema verite just means, like, super-realistic. You watch it, you don’t know if it’s a documentary or a story. That’s what all that stuff was like, right? The pit bulls and the fighting and stuff?”

“Yeah...”

“And ‘CV’? Come on!”

“I am certain he is correct,” the Mole said.

“When’s the last time you watched a movie?” Michelle said to him. “But he is so right,” she said to us.

“Okay...But, if the CV stuff is real, and the NV stuff is acting, at least for some of the players, what’s FV?” I asked the room. “Because that’s the only one Vonni’s in.”

Nobody said anything.

“I never heard of them,” Wolfe told me.

Rain slanted across the windshield of her battered old Audi. Bruiser was lying across the back seat, a thick blot of darkness in the shadow.

“I’m not looking for their reps,” I told her. “What I need is their location.”

“So you can...?”

“Ask them some questions.”

“I know who you’re doing this work for, remember?”

“I’d never ask you to put someone on the spot.”

“Ask me? No, you wouldn’t do that. What you’re offering to do here is pay me.”

“If I was doing it so I could take them out, you’re the last person I’d bring into it,” I told her, truthfully.

“And why’s that? Because you respect me so much?”

“You know that’s true,” I said, ignoring her tone. What I didn’t say was the other truth—if I used Wolfe to bird-dog a hit, I knew exactly how she’d pay me back.

“You think it’s someone from our world?” Cyn asked me that night.

“Your work world?”

“Yes. Power power power.”

“I don’t see how, Cyn.”

“There’s those who say violent porn causes people to...”

“That’s not your world.”

“No, no; I didn’t mean me and Rejji, the way we play. But...you know about our Internet business?”

“No.”

“The deal is, we live together—which is the truth—and I own her—which is true—and if you’re a subscriber —we take credit cards, checks, and money orders—you can dial up our daily channel and watch me discipline her. If you’re a premium subscriber, you can tell me how you want her disciplined, and watch it on a private channel.

“It’s simple enough. We seeded the ground with a few pictures. I have a special boudoir chair I punish Rej in. It kind of makes her lean way forward....”

Rejji got up off the floor, walked over, and sat on a straight chair so she was facing backwards, her legs positioned outside the rungs. She turned her head to the side, arched her back deeply so her bottom protruded over the edge.

“See?” Cyn said. “That’s a good example. And there’s plenty of others. Always a market for le vice anglais. Me birching her, topless, that was our best seller.”