Only Child: A Burke Novel - Hardcover

Vachss, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375414878 ISBN 13: 9780375414879

Publisher: Knopf, 2002

Synopsis

After years on the run, Burke is desperate to return to his native New York, the only way he can reconnect with his outlaw “family.” But to survive in their part of the City, where reputation is everything, Burke must take major risks to reestablish his presence. So when a Mafia man contacts him about the murder-as-message of his sixteen-year-old daughter—the offspring of what he calls an “outside the tribe” affair that he must keep secret at all costs—Burke’s depleted bankroll persuades him to step out of the shadows and do something he hasn’t done in years . . . actually investigate a crime.

Burke needs cover to penetrate the teenage subculture of the Long Island town where the girl lived and died, so he puts together a crew of gifted role-players, including a pair of lesbian “power exchangers” who market their special brand of sex on the Internet. When Burke himself surfaces as a casting director, seeking tomorrow’s stars for a movie to be shot on location, the investigation quickly spins off into uncharted depths. What he discovers is a new kind of filmmaking, a new kind of violence, and a predator unlike any he’s ever known. When they meet head-on over a brutal work of cinéma vérité, only one of them will survive the final cut.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social services caseworker, a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for youthful offenders. Now a lawyer in private practice, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of numerous novels, including the Burke series; two collections of short stories; and a wide variety of other material including song lyrics, poetry, graphic novels, and a “children’s book for adults.” His books have been translated into twenty languages and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times, and numerous other forums. He lives and works in New York City and the Pacific Northwest.

From the Back Cover

“A barn burning deconstruction of . . . the hard-boiled detective novel–as well as a book that handily transcends it. . . . Vachss has the ability to stun the reader into empathy.” –Baltimore City Paper

“The New York Burke inhabits is not borrowed from anybody and shimmers on the page as gaudily and scarily as it does on the streets.” –New York

“Vachss’s writing is like a dark rollercoaster ride of fear, love and hate.” –The New Orleans Times-Picayune

“The Burke books make the noir-film genre look practically pastel. . . . The plot-driven stories churn with energy and a memorable gallery of the walking wounded.” –The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Vachss writes with a tougher-than-thou attitude . . . and an unerring ear for the language of the streets. . . . [Only Child is] filled with hardcore metaphors, tough-as-titanium dialogue and twisted behavior.” –Rocky Mountain News

"Many writers try to cover the same ground as Vachss. A handful are as good. None are better." –People

"[Vachss] writes a hypnotically violent prose made up of equal parts of broken concrete block and razor wire." –Chicago Sun Times

“Burke’s back for the 14th time, and he’s back in the Big Apple, too. Both are good news to fans of America’s knight in shining gunmetal steel, avenger of the abused and predator of the perverted.” –Huntsville Times

“Vachss's writing remains raw and hungry, with an epidermis of rage barely containing an infinite core of sadness." –Seattle Times

“A harrowing urban underworld ride that one won’t easily forget.” –Sanford Herald

“Only Child is brisk, wicked, biting, scary and a whopping good read.” –Statesman Journal

“There's no way to put a [Vachss book] down once you've begun . . . the plot hooks are engaging and the one-liners pierce like bullets.” –Detroit Free Press

“Vachss could send his hero Burke to Mayberry, and he'd still manage to uncover a dark underbelly of sin and corruption.” –The Capital Times

”As usual, Vachss is on the cutting edge of compelling crime fiction. [Only Child,] his latest hard-boiled effort, with a deliciously twitchy conclusion, is among his best.”–Lansing State Journal

“Starting a Vachss novel is like putting a vial of nitroglycerin into your pocket and going for a jog. You just know things are going to get interesting. Usually sooner than later.” –Rocky Mountain NewsAndrew


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Reviews

"Sherlock Holmes is dead," intones Giovanni, a New York Mafia boss who hires street criminal Burke-who's made a career of killing child murderers and molesters-to solve the murder of his illegitimate teenage daughter, Vonni. Indeed, the whole Vachss oeuvre (this is the 14th novel to feature the avenging angel Burke) is a reminder that Conan Doyle's fictional sleuth would be clueless in the violent, sordid world of today's hard-boiled mystery. Burke doesn't search for clues so much as extort them by combining street smarts, his formidable intelligence and a deeply rooted outrage at the victimization of the young. Burke's fans will be delighted that he's returned to his home turf-the gritty back streets of New York City-where he's welcomed into the bosom of his ragtag band of delinquent colleagues. The novel has a compelling plot line (like a police procedural without the police), but the narrative is far from seamless. There are a couple of false starts as Burke searches for something to occupy his time, and the references to earlier novels will probably baffle newcomers. More seriously, the elaborate ruse Burke executes to identify and trap the killer is barely credible. But the noirish prose (a man's eyes are "the color of old dimes") is a pleasure, and Burke is an antihero of the old school. Though it doesn't break new artistic ground for Vachss, the book is another harrowing glimpse of the urban underworld from an author who clearly knows his terrain and whose sympathy for the truly innocent-the children-is unstinting.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Vachss, an attorney who specializes in juvenile justice and child-abuse cases and who has written widely on child abuse and endangerment, brings his expertise to his fiction. His Burke novels, noir to the point of total eclipse, travel the sordid world against which the real-life Vachss crusades. Vachss does nothing to soften the lines or fates of his characters. Burke himself is hard to warm to; he's a sometime assassin and perpetual con artist. As a narrator, Burke speaks and thinks harboiledese to the point of parody ("I've been to that school. Paid what the tuition cost"). Only the people he deals with, the ones who hire him to find or kill criminals even worse than him, make Burke seem somewhat palatable. This time a mafioso hires Burke to revenge the murder of his teenage daughter. Predictably, this throws Burke into a sewer--sex sold on the Internet and teens recruited for violent porn films. Repellant stuff, as always, but it will be sought out by devoted Vachss fans. Connie Fletcher
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I'd been gone for years. Dead and gone, the whisper-stream said. But that stream always carries more than one current.

Just past midnight, I slipped back over the border, moving downwind out of the darkness. Because Hollywood's got one part right--the dirty, scheming, heartless bitch never does sleep.

Especially now.

The alley behind Mama's restaurant was as immune to time as the chamber of a pharaoh's vault. A pair of dull-orange oil drums stood sentinel. I nosed the Subaru's dechromed black snout carefully into the opening between them, over to an empty patch of oil-stained asphalt. On the filthy wall above it, a square of pure-white paint. Inside the square, Chinese characters, in perfect, fluted-edge calligraphy. It was signed with the chop of Max the Silent, the Chinatown equivalent of a skull-and-crossbones on an unmarked bottle.

I slid the Subaru against the wall, not bothering to lock it. Directly across from my spot was a rust-colored steel door with no handle. I slapped my hand against it three times, hard, and stepped back, slitting my eyes against what I knew was coming.

The door opened outwards. A sudden spray of grimy yellow kilowatts framed me in place. A man's shape, backlit, blocked my way. I slowly moved my hands away from my sides, keeping them down.

The man said something in Cantonese. I didn't move, letting him study me. The door closed in my face.

I heard them moving in behind me, but I didn't change position. Felt their hands going over me. Didn't react. The door opened again; no lights, this time.

As I stepped inside, I saw a man in a white restaurant apron standing to my left. He had a meat cleaver in his right hand, his left hand locked over the wrist. On the other side of the kitchen, two more men. One of them sighted down the barrel of a pistol, as if I were a piece of land he was surveying. The other flexed his hands to show me he wouldn't need anything else.

I heard the door shut behind me.

The men watching me were professionals, about as nervous as a yoga class on Xanax. More waiting. Not a problem for me; it's what I do best.

"You come home?" I heard her voice before I saw her.

"Yeah, Mama."

"Good!" she snapped, stepping out of the darkness. "You eat now, okay?"

My booth was the last one toward the back, closest to the bank of pay phones. It had the same look as my parking spot. Like it had been waiting for me to show.

I slid in. Mama stood with her arms folded. I hadn't heard her yell anything out to the kitchen, but I knew what she was waiting for.

The guy who hadn't needed weapons came to the booth, carrying a heavy white tureen in one hand--thumb on top, no napkin between him and the heat. He lowered the tureen gently to the table, underscoring the message he'd given me earlier.

Mama sat and took the top off in the same smooth motion, releasing a cloud of steam. No tea ceremony for her; she ladled out a small bowl of the hot-and-sour soup as quick as they ever had on the chow line back in prison. I took a sip, knowing better than to wait for her.

My sinuses unblocked as I felt the familiar taste slam home.

"Perfect," I told her.

"Everything same," Mama said, finally helping herself to a bowl.

I was on my fourth bowl--three is the house minimum--when Max materialized.

He stood there, looking down at me. Measuring.

"I'm all right," I signed to him.

He cocked his head.

"Yeah, I'm sure," I said aloud.

He bowed slightly, folding one scarred, horn-ridged hand over the fist he made of the other.

Mama gestured her order for him to sit and have soup. Max moved in next to her, never taking his eyes off me. He used two hands to show a tree springing up from the ground, then pointed where the roots would be, his straight-line eyebrows raised in a question.

I nodded, slowly. Yeah. This wasn't a visit. I was back to stay.

It was too late to reach out for the rest of my family. Not because they'd be asleep; the middle of the night was when they worked.

I gave the Subaru's keys to Mama. One of the gunmen had brought my duffel bag inside. Max shouldered it, and we hit the alleys.

The faint wash from the streetlights didn't penetrate much past the alley's mouth.

There were three of them. Too murky to pick out details, but they stanced young. I saw a glint of metal.

Max slipped the shoulder strap of the duffel and handed it to me. I pulled a hammerless .38 from its side pocket. A use-it-and-lose-it piece Mama had added to my take-out order. Dull blued steel, the butt wrapped in black electrical tape.

The three figures separated. Max moved to his left, I went to my right.

It was so quiet I could hear a rat doing what rats do.

We kept coming.

When we got close enough for them to see Max, they stopped liking the odds.

It was only a few more blocks to the building where Max lived. We went in the side door, climbed one flight up to his temple.

His wife, Immaculata, was waiting at the top. She held a finger to her lips, meant for me.

"Flower is asleep," she said softly.

"Okay," I whispered back.

"Oh, Burke," she said. "We never knew if you were--"

"I'm fine, Mac."

"My husband wanted to go and be there with you. But Mama said you were--"

"It wouldn't have been the play. And it doesn't matter now, girl. It's done."

"You are back for good?" she asked, echoing Max.

"Yeah. I don't know if this is the place for me, Mac. But I found out for sure there isn't any other one."

"Can you manage all right down here? Just for tonight? As soon as we tell Flower, you can--"

She stopped in response to Max's thumb touching the back of her hand. Max can't hear, but he reads vibrations like forty-point type.

"I already know, Mom!" Flower said, bursting into the room and running to me. I started to bend to scoop her up, but the little baby I had known from her first days on earth was a teenager now. She wrapped her arms around me, burying her head in my chest. "Burke, Burke..." she cried, hanging on to me like I was going to run out on her.

Mac told Flower I'd come a long way, and needed to sleep. Flower smiled sweetly and ignored her, demanding to know everything I'd done since I'd been gone, and who I'd done it with.

I fobbed her off with generalities, catching the caution lights in her mother's eyes.

"The last time I saw you was when you were so..." The girl's voice trailed away.

"I'm all right now, Flower. Just like I was before."

"You don't...look the same. Not at all."

"Hey! I paid good money for all that plastic surgery. What? You don't think I nailed the Robert Redford look?"

"Oh, Burke." She giggled.

"I didn't lose anything important," I said gently. "You understand?"

"I remember what happened," Flower said, as if reciting a lesson. "You were shot. You almost...died. They had to fix you. And so your face isn't the same, that's all. You look so much better than when you were here...before."

"Yeah. The doctors said I'd get better-looking every day. Money-back guaranteed."

"Mom! Make Burke be serious," she appealed to Immaculata.

"This is Burke, child. Your uncle that you missed so dearly. You know he is never serious."

The girl gave her mother a look much older than her years.

By the time I'd finished answering all Flower's questions, light was breaking through the high industrial windows. "I know!" she called to her mother, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek before she ran off to get ready for school.

Max gestured as if playing the bongos, looking from side to side. Telling me the word was going out.

I lay back on the futon. Closed my eyes, waiting for the drift-down. Wondering when I'd feel strong enough to face my hometown in daylight.

What I tell you, girl?" the small, handsome black man crowed. "Sweet-potato pie; the roots never lie. Didn't I say it? Rhymed the poem--Schoolboy's coming home."

"Yes, Prof," Michelle said. A wicked grin played below her loving eyes. "That's what you said, all right. Every single day since he's been gone."

"My father--" Clarence stepped in to defend the Prof.

"Oh, honey, please," Michelle cut him off at the knees. "Everybody knows the Prof can foretell the future and all that, okay? He was just a little out in front on this one."

We were in Mama's, at the round table in the corner. The one that permanently sported a fly-specked "Reserved for Party" sign. I never knew why Mama bothered--no tourist ever tried the food twice, and no local would risk it once.

"Give it up, pup," the Prof said, his hand flashing to my shirt pocket, just like old times. "Huh!" he grunted, coming up empty. "Where's your smokes, dope?"

"I don't puff for real, anymore," I told him. "Just use them as props."

"Your ticker? From when they..."

His voice trailed away. Clarence bowed his head, as if the man he called his father had blasphemed in front of a priest.

"It's okay," I told them all. "My heart's fine and"--looking around, to make sure they all got it--"I don't do flashbacks. It's just that, ever since it happened, cigarettes don't taste the same."

"Not even after...?"

"No, Michelle." I laughed.

"It's your call, Paul," the Prof said, reluctantly extracting one of his own hoarded smokes and firing it up.

It took a long time to satisfy them all. Michelle was the worst. Littl...

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375414878
• ISBN 13: 9780375414879
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288