Only Child

“Two, three hundred.”

“In one boat?”

“Sure. Not nice, but...”

“It might be nice for us,” I finished.

When I was a kid, I’d leaped from roof to roof across narrow alleys all the time. Never gave it a thought. Played chicken, my head on the subway tracks, facing another kid as poisoned with pride as I was. Death train coming, first one to jump back loses. Charged right at a boy from a rival club, even though he was holding a zip gun and all I had was a heavy length of chain. The zip misfired—most of them did—but the chain worked fine.

I even tried Russian roulette once, with an old revolver one of the guys brought down to the damp, ratty basement we called a clubhouse. We all took a turn, but I was the rep-crazy fool who went first.

I wasn’t faking then. Checking out didn’t scare me. It was the one sure way to guarantee that the...people who had hurt me would never get their hands on me again. Damaged kids learn quick: death trumps pain. That’s why some serial killers and some suicides are brothers—they were raised by the same parents.

Later, I learned. I learned to be scared. And I learned how to do a lot of damage. That’s when I stopped trying to run from the people who always hurt me. I wanted to get close to them then. Close enough to stop the pain.

But even back when I was one of those “don’t mind dying” young guns, deep water at night terrified me. I remember once when a whole caravan of kids from the City followed the lead car out to some beach on Long Island. It was summer. Hot and muggy. Howie, the guy who’d organized the whole thing, he told us that this Jones Beach was a ton better than Coney Island. No boardwalk, no rides, no hot-dog stands. Best of all, no crowds. Nothing to do but drink some wine, pass around the maryjane, and fuck. Like we owned the place.

Of course, that’s not the picture he painted for the girls. They thought they were visiting some special spot only rich people got to use...the kind of rich people who would actually pay attention to the BEACH CLOSED AT MIDNIGHT signs.

I was as up for the trip as anyone. But the night ocean was so monstrously deep, only your imagination could fill it. The minute you went in, it had you—you were surrounded by things you couldn’t even name, much less fight. The girl I was with, she waded in until the water got to her waist, then she just sort of lay down on her stomach and paddled around. I was too welded to my image to not go along with her, but I called it off as soon as I could.

On the blanket later, after we’d finished, I was lying on my back, finishing a joint. I should have been blissed out. My rep got me on that blanket that night. With my gang, with that girl. I was a man in all the ways we measured such things in my world. I knew how it worked.

But when I closed my eyes, I could feel that hungry black water moving. It...reduced me. I was a child in my mind. Back in that foster home they had sentenced me to. And every time the tide lapped up on the beach, searching, I felt the fingers probing under my covers, again.

That was a lifetime ago. Now I was standing on an outcropping of rock, overlooking the spot where Mama said the snakeheads made their landings, Max at my side. The ocean was calm as a storybook pond, preening in its finest Atlantic-gray coat.

It didn’t fool me.

Max tapped my shoulder, made a gesture of turning a steering wheel, then spread his arms wide. I nodded. Yeah, they’d need some big trucks. Even if they packed them tighter than a hooker’s skirt, two, three hundred head would take up a lot of space.

Mama had explained that the snakeheads didn’t operate like their counterparts south of the border. Mexicans coming across paid once, and they paid in front. So the coyotes didn’t care if their customers suffocated in the back of one of the rigs, or baked to death hoofing it across open desert. But snakeheads needed their cargo alive if they wanted to collect—no point bringing them all the way across the ocean, only to lose some at the end.

We’d already solved one part of the puzzle. The land we were standing on was private property. A desolate stretch without any real beach. I’d expected a fence. Or, maybe, dogs. But it was deserted. Part of the camouflage? No matter, we still had to figure on an armed escort any night they were due to make a drop.

Max made the first two fingers of his right hand into a swimming gesture, moving slowly toward his left, which he held flat and perpendicular. The swimming fingers crashed into the left palm, and burst into fragments. The Mongol shook his head “No.” Then he put his hands in the original position, but had the swimming fingers stop and tread water, while the left clumped into a smaller ship, heading out.

Sure. No way to bring the cargo ship right onto the shore—they’d have to go out with motor launches, bring a few in at a time. A big operation. Bigger every time we took a closer look.

Max tapped the first two fingers of his left hand with his right index finger, one at a time. Did it again. Then spread his right hand wide, tapped each finger and his thumb. I nodded glumly. Two and two was coming out five, all right.

“Everything like I say, yes?” Mama put it to me.

“It looks that way,” I hedged.

“But...?” Michelle asked.

“Fat lady in the circus ain’t got as much ‘but’ as there is in this mess,” the Prof said sourly. “There’s money there, sure. But there’s money in Fort Knox, too.”

“My father is right,” Clarence said. “Even if we had enough men—”

“Men?” Michelle asked, sweetly.

“Personnel,” I stepped in quick, before it escalated. “And it’s not just numbers, it’s logistics. They’ve got a stash house somewhere. Got to be pretty close by. We’d need one, too.”

“Maybe...scatter. Right away. Soon as they come off boat.” Mama.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “No way they’re all going to the same place. Not in the end. I can’t see them running a convoy of trucks out of there, then splitting up and going in all different directions. Their best play would be to keep them all in the same place, parcel them out a few at a time. The troopers won’t be stopping every car with a couple of Chinese in it.”

“That’s true,” the Prof said. “It ain’t like running niggers through New Jersey.”

Michelle raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. Caught my return look in time.

“If they were all in the same place...” the Mole finally spoke.

“All of the cargo, sure, Mole. But not all of the snakeheads.”

“So?” he asked, mildly, eyes calm behind the Coke-bottle lenses.

“Ah,” Mama said, approving.

The Prof nodded. We all knew what one of the Mole’s little gas globes could do in an enclosed space.

“But when they...the smugglers...when they came to, they would know it was no accident,” Clarence said.

“They wouldn’t know where to start looking,” Michelle said thoughtfully.

“Yeah, they would,” I told them. “The buyers. And they’d look hard. Nobody ever takes a hijacking lying down. It could bounce right back on us.”

“Not decide now,” Mama said. “Look for place first, okay?”

Max’s nod was almost imperceptible.

“Mama’s got her own in this,” the Prof said. It was much later that same night. We were in my place, deciding.

“Max thinks so, too,” I agreed.

“What is wrong with that, mahn?” Clarence wanted to know. “Plenty of times, Burke, you have your own in things we do, is that not true?”

“Yeah. It is. And I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it. But you see where it’s going, right?”