William Lashner - Marked Man

“Our discussion of Mr. Hewitt is at an end,” said Quick curtly. “Now, Victor, I want you to listen closely.” Quick leaned forward, sharpened his gaze until it nearly pierced my forehead. “You say that the murder of Mr. Ciulla was possibly a warning to your client. Have you considered that the warning might not have been meant for Charlie but instead meant for you?”

His stare was so pointed, and his voice suddenly so cutting, that I jerked back as if indeed I had been stabbed in the head. Where did that come from? I wondered. And when I looked at Jabari Spurlock, it seemed as if he were wondering the very same thing.

“I don’t know whatyou’re going on about so much,” said Skink. “It ain’t like you’re the only one what ever got hisself inked.”

“But I might be the only one who didn’t remember getting it,” I said.

“Oh, don’t give yourself so much credit, mate. If it weren’t for the mind-numbing effects of alcohol, half these joints would be out of business.”

By these joints, he meant tattoo parlors, because that’s where we were, in a tattoo parlor, or, to be more precise, a tattoo emporium, Beppo’s Tattoo Emporium. Tacked onto the walls of the cramped and dark waiting room were Beppo’s original designs: dragons and griffins, swords and daggers, religious icons, movie stars, insects and guns, dancing spark plugs, frogs and scorpions, skeletons and clowns, geisha dancers, samurai warriors, naked women in all manner of lascivious pose. Scattered about the waiting room were a few plastic chairs, a ragged coffee table with loose-leaf notebooks filled with art. The place smelled of ammonia and rubbing alcohol, of cigarettes smoked to the filter. From behind the curtain that covered the doorway came a steady buzz punctuated here and there by a whimper of pain.

“You find anything on that Lavender Hill yet?”

“I’ve been asking around.”

“And making noise about it, too. He is not happy.”

“It’s how you wanted it, mate. Apparently he has a hand in many pots and just as many names.”

“No surprise there.”

“Those what know him some think of him as a harmless fop with impeccable taste. But those what know him better are too scared to talk.”

“That’s troubling.” I thought of the outline of Ralph’s body on the carpet of his house. “Any reputation for heartless violence?”

“Heartless and otherwise.”

A yelp erupted from the back room. The buzz stopped for a moment. There was a loud slap, and then the buzzing started again.

“I had a friend once,” said Skink, “what got a tattoo of a rooster on his shin. The rooster had a noose round its neck. He said that way he could always tell the dolls he had a cock what hung below his knee.”

“He sounds like quite the ladies’ man. Anything yet on the federal investigation involving Bradley Hewitt?”

“I’m working on it,” said Skink. “We might have an errand to run in a few days that you’ll enjoy.”

There was another yelp and a falsetto curse, followed by a harsh “Calm your tools, we almost done,” before the buzzing started up again.

“You think this Beppo can help?”

“Oh, Beppo’s a pro, he is. The other artists in the city, they call him the dean. We’ve had no luck tracing the name, so we might as well trace the tattoo. He’s our best bet to pick who did the what on your chest. We find him that did it, we might find us some answers.”

“What’s there to find? I stumbled in drunk as a skunk and immortalized on my chest the name of a woman I hardly knew and can’t remember.”

“Well, mate, all that might be true. But the needle boy might remember who you was with and might be able to tell us how he was paid. Interesting, isn’t it, that your money was intact and nothing came up on your credit card?”

“Maybe she paid,” I said.

“Maybe she did, unusual as that might sound, and if she did, and paid with something other than cash, we might be able to trace her that way.”

“It’s worth a try, I guess.”

The buzzing stopped, replaced by a quiet, pathetic whimpering.

“How do you know this guy?” I said.

“I did him a favor once. While you’re in the chair, you want I tell Beppo to put a rooster on your shin?”

“No thanks, Phil.”

“It might help your social life.”

“My social life’s fine.”

“Oh, is it, now? You go out with that girl again?”

“What girl?”

“The one from the club, the one with the sister.”

“Monica? No, please. I didn’t go out with her in the first place.”

“You bought her dinner.”

“I paid the check at a diner. It didn’t mean we were dating.”

“What, you too good to date a stripper?”

“It’s not that.”

“I dated a stripper once. In Fresno. Nice girl, name of Shawna. Pious.”

“Pious?”

“For a stripper.”

Just then the curtain across the doorway swung open and a young kid in a T-shirt came out, his left arm hanging limply, a long white gauze patch covering his entire upper arm. His face was red and swollen, but it held a wide, helpless smile, like he was stepping out of his first whorehouse.

As the kid passed us by, a stocky older man came through the doorway, pulling rubber gloves off his hands. He had dark hair and big ears, a jutting jaw, the short, bow-shaped legs of a longshoreman. His thick arms were covered in tattoos from his wrists until they disappeared under his T-shirt. A cigarette dangled out of his mouth. He smiled when he saw Skink.

“You been waiting all this time?” he said. His voice had been burned rough by life and tobacco, and as he spoke, his cigarette stayed miraculously in place, as if glued to his lower lip. “I’da kicked it into third, I knew you was here.”

“Didn’t want to disturb the artist at work,” said Skink. “How’s business, Beppo?”

“I’m grinding them out.”

“What’s up with Tommy?”

“After you bailed out his ass, he up and joined the marines.”

“How’s he doing?”

“His second tour in Iraq. Maybe you should have left him where he was. So you the guy?”

“I’m the guy.”

“This is Victor,” said Skink.

“Where’s the piece, Victor?” said Beppo.

“On my chest.”

“All right, then,” he said as he held aside the curtain. “Strip to the waist and hop in the chair so I can get a look-see.”

The room behind the curtain was small and bright, with an overhead light and a chair in the middle that looked suspiciously like a dentist’s chair. I took off my jacket, my tie and shirt, and as I did, I had the uncomfortable sensation that I was exposing more than mere flesh, I was exposing a part of my inner life.

“Don’t be shy, Victor,” said Beppo. “I seen it all before, good art and bad art, the vile and the sublime.”

“You think you can identify the ink slinger?” said Skink.

“If he’s from around here, I can make an educated guess,” said Beppo. “I’ve seen the work of pretty much every shop in town. A big piece of my day is fixing up the mistakes of everyone else. If it’s an original, I’ll be able to ID it. Up in the chair you go.”

My shirt off, I slid into the dentist’s chair and leaned back. My jaw instinctively lowered.

“Close your mouth, I ain’t pulling molars,” he said as he slipped on a pair of thick glasses and leaned his head close to my chest. “Let’s take a look.” The ash of his cigarette teetered, he rubbed his fingers over my breast. His touch was strangely gentle. He made a sound like a failing carburetor as he looked over the work.

“No skin scratcher here,” he said. “This is nice work, made with a first-class iron. Classic design. Solid fill, the colors bright and even. Keep it clean, use the goo, and stay out of the sun. The sun fades everything. You look after that piece, Victor, it’ll stay sharp for years.”