Robert Walker - Blind Instinct

J. T. felt bemused by the local color, from the deputy down to the hanging vines, the huge cypress knolls and the gnarled and bubbled, toiled and troubled roots of trees here which he guessed the obvious residences of gnomes. J. T. had asked on local law-enforcement authorities in New Orleans to pave his way. Frizzell had been waiting for him at the local airport. For all Frizzell knew, the people here at the Sanocre home might well be harboring a murderer.

J. T. had made clear his suspicion that someone who knew Max Sanocre had had a hand in his death, someone who also knew dogs, and from the moment they pulled up to the front yard of this place, dogs appeared and approached, some on four legs, some on three, some inching forward, some crawling on their bellies, some straight up and fast, while others held back in the shadows. It gave J. T. a strange feeling, as if the dogs lived here and ran this place, and the people on the porch were being held hostage by man's best friend.

Dog attacks being on the rise all across America, J. T. hesitated at the side of the car undl Deputy Frizzell finally came out on his side, deciding to leave the shotgun, while unbuckled, on its pedestal between driver and passenger seat. J. T. noticed that the deputy had also unfastened his. 38 where it rested on his hip.

“Are you expecting trouble?” J. T. asked.

“Always prepare with these kinda folk for any possibility. You learn that when you've been here for long.”

“Then you're not originally from around here?” J. T. asked.

“Didn't saya that.” The deputy pulled up his pants and started to part the dogs, a few of them growling, and Frizzell in turn barked like a madman at the dogs, laughing at their cowed response. He then told J. T. to follow him up to the porch.

“I 'spect one or more of them that's living in Max's old shack here's done him in. Is that what you boys in Quantico wanna hear?”

“No, we don't wanna hear anything.”

“What you think, I mean. Is-at what ya think?”

“Yeah, some of us suspect family involvement in the murder, but first I just want a family member to ID the corpse from photos.”

“If he had no identification on him, how'd you trace him back to here?” asked the deputy, his nasally twang reaching to the family on the porch, all engaged in watermelon and lemonade, it appeared.

Some children waved madly at the deputy, shouting that they wanted to hear the siren blast. J. T. heard the children shout at the deputy as “Uncle Whitey.”

“You're related to the family?”

“I am. Something of a cousin to 'em. Kids I know from after-school programs, fund-raiser and like that.”

J. T. felt suddenly vulnerable. If the entire town knew that Maxwell Sanocre had disappeared one night, then tacidy covered it up, and the helpful law agent is part of that conspiracy against the hated Sanocre, then what might they do to a stranger from “New England” to shut him up? A cover-up of a cover-up, the family secret growing ever deeper with J. T. six feet deep?

As if reading J. T.'s visage and understanding his thoughts, Deputy Frizzell quickly and firmly assured him, “I don't condone what happened to that animal Max Sanocre, but like I tol' ya, there come times I wanted to murder that low-life sonofabitch, I tell you. If someone was drove to it-and I'm not saying they were-well, I understand it. The man was the vilest thing walked on two legs in my experience.”

The tallest, oldest looking man on the porch stepped toward them, waving in a friendly gesture, asking them if he could help the pair, nodding to his cousin the officer, and adding, “Some reason you're out this way, Whitey?”

“Got some news, folks,” announced Frizzell in calmer tones than Houston's command control during a satellite launch, J. T. thought.

Everyone on the porch stared hard at the stranger-John Thorpe. The deputy hastily introduced J. T. as “A card-carrying G-man in search of a killer, maybe two, maybe three.” There were three adults in and around the porch, all standing and staring now like their small army of dogs. They all looked like they wanted J. T's blood.

J. T., through a thorough trek about the world of tattoo art-and gaining an education in the process-had convinced first one man to help him and then another until he learned of the signature artwork of Deltrace D'lazetti, and he'd had to travel to Missouri to meet D'lazetti who, after long searching in his files and mind, came up with “a guy more crude than Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stem rolled into one who treated women like… like g'damn meat loaf.” This identification led to Louisiana.

“Sure, I can clearly recall the artwork. Hell, man, it won me my first major prize,” D'lazetti had told J. T.

“Really?”

“At the state fair. Ever since, I've been highlighted in every major tattoo publication in the country. You kidding?”

“M.E.'s seldom kid around,” replied J. T., “and when we do chide, you'll know it.”

D'lazetti had grimaced, asking, “Chide?”

J. T. pushed on, replying with his own question, asking, “What more can you tell me about this man.”

“Such as?”

Man, this guy's stoned, J. T. recalled telling himself, wondering if it were a prerequisite of the artistic life to do drugs, or an affectation since Edgar Allan Poe's day. “Such as… such as his name,” replied J. T. “Right now he's a John Doe, and will be buried as such if we can't learn more about him in the next twenty-four hours. His time on the taxpayers' dole has run out, you see, and as such-”

“Dog or Maddog or Mean's Hell or Tough as Bison or something like 'at is all I can rightly recall outta my head, because I do remember this guy was an ass, a real creep. Mean as hell, and he made my skin crawl, and ain't too many can make my skin crawl, you know, but he was the best thing ever happened to me when I showed him at the fair.”

“Showed him?” J. T. flashed a mental image of the man's body art being displayed at a sideshow carnival.

“Well, not him, not really him, closeups of the art, man.”

“You have photos?”

“ 'Sat what they call irre-irrefusable evidence, man?”

J. T. stifled a laugh at the pothead. “Does his name and the date appear on the photos?”

“Name, date, dme, you name it.”

“We've got to find those pictures then.”

“Be my guest.” He pointed at sixteen shelves of photo records of his work. “Sony, been in the business a long dme. Started when I was just a kid, and I'm a damn sight older than I look. I think it's the small frame and height. People think I'm Michael J. Fox, you know, the actor? Hardly looks like he ages.”

“This could take a while,” J. T. said, staring at the books of tattoo artwork representing an obviously disordered life. There appeared no dates on the booklets.

'Take all the time you want.”

“I could use your help. Your country needs you.”

“My country? Hmmm. Never ever thought of it as my country. Strange world we live in, Dr. Thorpe.”

“Strange indeed.”

“Strange, strange world… Are you telling me that this guy's name is, you know, like a matter of like, you know, national security, something like that? This guy plotting some sort of McVeigh thing against the government or something?”

“Yeah, something like that.” J. T. hated to lie, but he saw no alternative. Already, the stoned artist had dismissed the fact J. T. had told him the man was deceased, a John Doe. Or perhaps the artist understood the term John Doe as little as he did the word chide.

Deltrace D'lazzeti metaphorically rolled up his sleeves like a farmer at this point, saying, “OK, let's have at it. But be forewarned, dude, records like CDs I can put my hands on, but records for business, I don't keep so good, so it could take a while.” J. T. offered to order a pizza and a jug of wine, if it would help. The artist liked the idea, and so they rolled up their sleeves and dug in.