Only Child

hire. I’m not interested in anything they did. All I want is where to find the guy who makes the tapes.”

“It sounds so reasonable, mahn,” Clarence said. “But my father’s wisdom is a good guide. If they do not...accept you, you must be prepared.”

“Take Max,” Mama said, settling it.

“Max, Giovanni. Giovanni, Max.”

Giovanni extended his hand. Max shook it briefly, bowing his head a fraction of an inch.

“I heard about him,” he said to me. “Max the Silent.”

“He’s in the room,” I said.

“I’m sorry. I thought he...you couldn’t hear,” he said, turning to Max.

Max pointed to his lips, then folded his hands into a book, scanned it with his eyes.

“You read lips!” Giovanni said—delighted, like a kid who just got a present.

Max nodded.

“It’s better to gesture while you speak,” I said. “And you have to watch Max to hear what he’s saying, okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said to me, impatient. To Max: “You’re a karate expert, right?” stepping into a boxer’s crouch.

Max held his thumb and forefinger close together.

“He says ‘a little bit,’” I told Giovanni.

“I can see what’s he saying, Burke.” Giovanni took a coin from his pocket, held it out on his open palm. He made a gesture of snatching the coin away with his other hand, then extended the coin hand toward Max.

Max’s lips twisted. He made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, held it to one eye, and mimed cranking a reel with the other.

“Only in the movies!” Giovanni laughed. “I love it. Your friend is some—”

The coin jumped off Giovanni’s palm into the air. Max opened his fist. The coin was inside.

“Christ! How’d he—” Giovanni caught himself, turned to Max, said, “How’d you do it?”

Max handed the coin back to Giovanni. Opened his hand, tapped the palm. Giovanni nodded, replaced the coin in his own hand. Max moved his right hand, slow-motion, so we could see the middle two fingers welded together. He swept them beneath Giovanni’s palm, touched the underside of that same hand.... The coin jumped up like his palm was a trampoline. Max’s hand flashed, and the coin vanished again.

“Madonna mi!” Giovanni said. “I never saw it. Not any of it.”

“You never would,” I told him.

The joint was a free-standing one-story building in the middle of a partly paved lot. It looked like a warehouse wrapped in neon.

“He’s inside,” I said to Giovanni. I pointed toward the back, nodded a “Yes” so that Max could hear, too. “It’s him. Or, I should say, one of them. They’ve got him working the curtain.”

“Lowlife skell,” Giovanni muttered.

“We don’t care what he is,” I told him. “Just what he knows, remember?”

“I’m ice,” Giovanni assured me.

I turned to Max. Made a gesture of driving a ridge hand to the neck, shook my head “No.”

Max nodded, patiently. We’d been over it a dozen times. One thing I learned as a kid—even if you hit someone a good shot, especially with something like a tire iron, you never know the result. One guy gets a headache; another one gets dead.

“It’s a little after two,” I said to Giovanni. “I don’t know how long they keep a place like this open, but I figure we’re in for a wait.”

“Yeah. Maybe some of those hillbillies like to stay up late, catch the Grand Slam at Denny’s before work.”

“We’re not that far from Trenton here.”

“Far enough,” Giovanni said. “This is like something out of fucking Kansas, all those farms and crap.”

“If he lives close by, we’d have a lot of trouble tailing him, especially if it’s off one of those back roads we passed on the way in. I don’t want to spook him. So we’re going with the original plan.”

“You know what he’s driving?”

“No. But there won’t be many left in the parking lot after closing time.”

“I don’t see why we don’t just stick a pistola in his mouth. He’s a sex freak, right? I never heard of one of them that was a hard guy.”

“You watch too many movies,” I told him.

“What’s that mean?”

“I’ve known baby-rapers who were cold as winter marble, and twice as hard. Stereotypes can get you killed. We’re trying cash first.”

“You’re the driver,” Giovanni said, settling down in the back seat to wait.

I passed some of the time by taking a set of Velcro-backed New Mexico plates out of the trunk. They were handcrafted fakes—two different sets cut down the middle, with the mismatched halves epoxied back together. I slapped them over the New York ones that matched the Plymouth’s registration, using a simple loop. I didn’t expect anyone to be reading the numbers, but their sunburst-yellow color might stick in someone’s memory bank, give us a little edge.

My watch said four-nineteen when the back door opened and he came out. By then, there were only three cars in the rear lot: a black Lincoln Navigator; a turquoise Thunderbird, one of the new ones; and a red Mustang drop-top resting on huge chromed rims.

“Three to one on the Mustang,” I said to Giovanni.

“Go!” he whispered.

The target was wearing a waist-length white satin jacket, carrying what looked like a gym bag in one hand. I opened the door to the Plymouth. The dome light didn’t go on. I slipped out, leaving the door slightly ajar.

I hadn’t gone ten yards when I heard a sharp chirp! The Mustang sprang to life like something in a horror movie: the headlights snapped on, then the engine turned over. Was someone waiting for—? His arm was extended, holding something. Sure. One of those remote starter devices they sell to people in real cold climates, so they can warm up their cars without leaving the house.

I moved sideways until I was coming from behind him, as if I’d been inside the club all along.

“Mr. Heltman...?” I called out, in a respectful tone.

He whirled to face me, pulling the gym bag behind his hip like he was cocking a right hook.

“Who’re you?”

“My name is Casey,” I told him, closing the space between us. “I wonder if I could buy some of your time.”

“For what?”

“Just to talk. About a business proposition,” I said, still moving.

“I don’t know you,” he said.

I was close enough to see the thick veins in his neck. “Well, let me introduce myself,” I said. “As I said, my name’s—”

“Cocksucker!” he grunted, driving his left into my ribs.

I was already spinning away from him when the punch landed, but it still felt like an anvil on a chain. I went down, rolling. He charged, the gym bag held club-high in his right hand. I X-ed my forearms for protection, brought a knee up to shield my groin, just as he...made a strangled sound and staggered back. Max had him in a one-arm choke. But when he shifted his weight to lock it in, the twin screamed—and launched Max over his back like a catapult.