Ridley Pearson - Pied Piper

“This morning,” Boldt continued, “less than half an hour after the Boise pileup, another Spitting Image customer’s card was used to book an Avis rental from Boise to Reno. She knew we would quickly have the Lena Robertson ID. The name on this second card is Julie DeChamps. The same card-DeChamps-was then used to book a plane flight from Salt Lake City to Cancun.”

Daphne complained, “Cancun doesn’t fit the profile. They are not taking these kids into Mexico. They know the FBI is involved. Immigration officers are alerted. They’re not going to risk that.”

Boldt nodded agreement and said, “The flight makes one stop.” He caught Daphne’s eyes in the rearview mirror, acknowledging her.

“In New Orleans,” LaMoia guessed. “She rented the car in Boise with no intention of heading to Reno. She’s headed for Salt Lake, for that flight.”

“For New Orleans,” Boldt confirmed. “That flight will be short passengers on the leg to Cancun.”

Daphne said, “She’s going down there to sell Trudy Kittridge into adoption.”

“She thinks she is,” Boldt corrected, driving well above the speed limit in the HOV lane, his dashboard flasher pulsing blue against the glass. He pushed the Chevy a little harder.

LaMoia said, “We can’t stop her without putting Sarah at risk.”

Daphne suggested, “Maybe we don’t stop her. You can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

An uncomfortable silence-the silence of frustration-filled the car. “The thing about blackened catfish,” LaMoia told them, breaking that silence, “you either love it or you don’t. But if you don’t, you got no business being in the Big Easy.”

Boldt failed to see the romance of the French Quarter. For years he had heard stories about the mix of French and black cultures, of voodoo, umbrella drinks, of Creole bar girls with bodies like centerfolds, of blues and jazz drifting onto cobblestone streets at three in the morning and fresh oysters the size of golf balls. Instead, he saw only a giant tourist attraction, a Disneyland for alcoholics and unfaithful husbands masquerading as conventioneering businessmen. The locals provided color in street music, juggling and costuming, but to Boldt it felt contrived. The Quarter had been great once-it reeked of history-but the Chamber of Commerce and tourist board had cleaned it up for the McDonald’s crowd in a way that left it too slick, too polished, too Kodak, too little of the soul that had once fueled its engines.

The tattoo shop was called Samantha’s Body Art. Its wooden sign hanging out front depicted a large-breasted woman vampire clad in black lingerie and straddling a Harley holding a delicate paintbrush trained onto the naked form of a pale female ghost. Located outside the Quarter in an area of hairdressers, Tarot card readers and personal injury attorneys, the shop made the most of neon. The smell of pot and incense tainted the air.

Samantha did not exist. In a city of pretense, the tough behind the needle went by the name Maurice. He wore a silver stud in his left ear, had biceps the color and density of ebony and a shaved head that looked like an eight ball. He wore a T-shirt that showed two women fornicating in the palm of an outstretched hand. No explanation. The place was for bikers and sailors. Its walls bore hundreds of designs. It took Boldt a minute to locate the eagle, wedged as it was between the space shuttle and the butt end of a pig, but when he finally did identify it, the likeness to Tommy Thompson’s rendition was unmistakable.

“Help you?” Maurice asked. A voice dipped in roofing tar saturated by nonfilters.

“I’m interested in this design,” Boldt said, pointing out the eagle.

“You heat?”

“Who’s asking? And why?”

“You ain’t drunk enough and you ain’t young enough to be wanting something like that. As for what you is, you got the look, you know? I can spot that look.”

“Apparently you can,” Boldt agreed. “But you missed with me. I’m private heat.”

“Not from around here, you ain’t.”

“Not from around here, no.”

Boldt pulled a fifty dollar bill from his pocket that he had waiting. “A client of mine is interested in a man who’s wearing one of these birds on his forearm.”

“It ain’t a bird, it’s an eagle.”

“Do a lot of them, do you?” Boldt toyed with the fifty, a man who wasn’t certain if he would spend it or keep it.

“Not many.”

“I tell my client I paid fifty for information, and I get reimbursed whether I paid it out or not.” He slipped it into his pocket and then pulled it back out.

“That’s a good gig.” The guy liked the sight of the fifty. The public wasn’t exactly banging down his doors.

“I’d be pleased if you remembered a name or a face.”

“Bet you would.”

“A date, a time of year. Anything like that and the fifty’s yours.”

The man’s fingers reminded Boldt of chocolate candy rolls, thumbs like cigar butts. One of those fingers pointed out a half dozen black vinyl photo albums chained to the wall and sitting atop a small counter. The counter was pockmarked with an army of cigarette burns, lined up like a regiment. The man explained, “They sell better in person. Look better than hanging on the wall. Besides, guys get off looking at all the tits and ass-you wouldn’t believe some of the shit girls want, and where they put it. And we take pictures of all of it, man. ’Cause the way it works out-you think nobody never done something like that, but shit, then you see it there in the book and it don’t look half bad and you think, maybe you want one too. Least that’s the way it works out. Anything you can think of, it been done. And I personally have laid some art down on inner thighs, ass, pussy, tits, cocks-you name it. I seen it all, done it all.”

“These are photo albums?”

“Damn straight.”

Boldt opened one of the books. For shock value, he supposed, female genitalia and breasts occupied the first page. He blushed at what he saw exposed there, and what the owner of the tattoo had chosen to do to her body. One woman’s shaved crotch had been painted into a face with an obvious mouth. It stood out from the snake winding up to an enlarged nipple, the daisy around the navel, the hummingbirds in cleavage, and the inner thigh with Cupid’s arrow aiming at labia. “These are disgusting,” he said, “you don’t mind me saying so.”

“’Course I mind. It’s art, man. You’re looking all wrong. That there is quality work. Fine pitch, good solid color. A person wants to ’xpress hisself, that’s a good thing. It’s a free fucking country.”

Boldt leafed through the plastic pages of Polaroids. “They let you take pictures like this?” he gasped. Page upon page of buttocks and breasts, penises, ankles, necks, eyelids, fingers. Gray’s Anatomy courtesy of the Cartoon Network.

“It’s not like you know who they are.”

No, it’s not, Boldt thought, wondering why he would bother to look on. Driven by a voyeuristic curiosity, he did just that, landing on a page of motorcycles and nudes on forearms, male chests and biceps. The detail and color were in fact extraordinary for flesh art. “It’s good stuff,” he said conversationally.

“A couple my pieces been in a gallery down in the Quarter,” the man bragged. “A swan I done using a guy’s dick, and another of Van Gogh’s irises right up the bikini line, you know? This girl could’a walked the beach and you wouldn’ta even known she was bare ass.”

“Impressive,” Boldt muttered cynically. “You have repeats in here,” he said.

“Same artwork, different body location. The images look different, depending where you put them. We try to show it all.”