William Lashner - Marked Man

“That’s comforting.”

“This Chantal lady, she must be very special to you.”

“Oh, she’s special, all right.”

“Any ideas?” said Skink.

“Not right off. The quality is high, and I think I seen the design before, but I don’t recognize it as from one of the local artists. Haven’t seen one exactly like this in years.” He leaned closer, peered through his glasses, pawed at the skin. “Wait a second. Wait a freaking second. I’ll be right back.”

He skittered through a bead curtain at the back of the room. We could hear him climbing a set of stairs, then footsteps and voices above us.

“He lives up top,” said Skink.

“Handy.”

“That’s his girlfriend he’s talking with,” said Skink. “She’s sixty-eight. The girl he cheats on her with is fifty-four. And then there’s a piece what he keeps on the side.”

When Beppo came back down, he had a fresh cigarette dangling from a victorious smile and he carried a big black book cracked open.

“I know the puncher what created the design on your chest,” he said.

“Who’s our boy?” said Skink, rubbing his hands.

“A fellow name of Les Skuse.”

“Skuse?”

“Yeah, with a k . Skuse. I knew I had seen that exact tat before. I been keeping a record of all the designs I seen since I started in this business. And I have a couple of pages of original Les Skuse designs. Let me show you. Right here.”

I sat up in the chair as he dropped his book on my lap. The pages were encased in vinyl covers. One page held a dozen designs of coiled snakes and dripping swords, of spiders and birds and skulls. The other page had hearts, all kinds of hearts, hearts with daggers through them, hearts being held aloft by fresh-cheeked cherubs, hearts with flowers, with arrows, with kissing figures above a banner reading TRUE LOVE. And then, in the corner, a familiar design, my design, a heart with flowers peeking out of either side and a flowing banner with the words ANY NAME.

“There it is,” I said.

“That’s the one,” said Beppo. “See how even the colors on the flowers match? Yellow and red on the one, blue and yellow on the other.”

“So Les Skuse is our guy,” said Skink. “Give me a where, Beppo.”

“Bristol.”

“Bristol, Pennsylvania?”

“Nope. The other Bristol.”

“England?” I said.

“Exactly so. Les Skuse was the self-labeled champion tattoo artist of all Britain. I met the man once. Quite a brute.” Beppo rolled up his sleeve, pointed to an eagle spreading its wings amidst a veritable zoo on his arm. “He did this. He’s a legend, all right. But even if you go out that way, you’d have a hard time finding him. He up and died a good long while ago.”

“I don’t understand how that’s possible,” I said.

“Well, he was getting up there in years. He was already old when he did my eagle, and being by the sea, he spent a lot of time in the sun.”

“No, what I’m asking is how-”

“I knows what you’re asking, Victor,” said Beppo, letting out a raspy laugh. “You should get out more, lighten up. You got a girl?”

“No.”

“Walk around without your shirt, you’ll find one. Nothing draws the girls like a tattoo.”

“But how did this design end up on my chest?”

“Somebody swiped the design, is how. It’s no crime. I done it myself.”

“Any idea why he’d pick that one?” said Skink.

“Sure,” said Beppo. “You see, every artist got his own style. It can’t help but come out, even on something as simple as a heart. Little telltale things like shading and shape, the way the barbed wire winds around it. As identifiable as a fingerprint.”

“Unless you copy someone else’s heart,” said Skink.

“There you go, Phil. The slinger who inked your tattoo, Victor, he picked this design because it’s the kind of thing you ink if you don’t want anyone to know who it was that done the inking.”

“He didn’t want me to find him,” I said.

“That’s right, and I suppose that means he knew you’d be looking, too.”

“Why would he want to hide?” I said.

“How the hell would I know?” said Beppo. “Ask Chantal.”

I don’t normally takea taxi to work, being that my office is only a few blocks from my apartment and that I am so tight with a buck, my wallet squeaks when I walk. So on the morning after my disturbing visit to Beppo’s Tattoo Emporium, I didn’t take much notice of the battered old taxi passing down my street. When the taxi stopped and backed up toward me, I figured the cabbie needed some directions. I stepped off the curb, leaned into the window, and felt a shiver of fear when I saw Joey Pride, his right hand on the wheel, his blue captain’s hat pulled low over his brow.

“Get in,” he said.

“That’s sweet of you, Joey, really, and I appreciate the offer, but my office is only a few blocks-”

“Shut up and get in.”

I took a step back. “I don’t think so,” I said.

“You’re right to be scared, Victor,” he said as he turned his face in my direction, “but however scared you are, you not half as scared as me.”

His eyes, peering out from beneath the brim of his cap, were moist and red. Fear, like pain pure, rippled the flesh between his eyes. He was right, he was more scared than I, at least he was until he showed me the gun, held unsteadily in his left hand. A revolver, small and shiny, aimed through the open taxi window smack at my forehead.

“Get in the back. I got something to show you, something that will get you scared good and proper.”

“Is that the gun you killed Ralph with?”

“Don’t be a donkey. I didn’t kill Ralph. I loved the man. That’s what we need to talk about. Now, get the hell in the cab. I got something to show you. Something it’s worth your boy Charlie’s life to see.”

I thought about it a moment, considered running to get the hell out of there. In a split second, I imagined it all – my briefcase flying, the soles of my shoes hammering the pavement, my suit jacket fluttering behind me like a cape – the whole scene came clear. But something was missing. And I suddenly knew what it was and why. Joey Pride wasn’t shooting at me in my imagining because Joey Pride wasn’t out to kill me in real life. The gun, too small and of the wrong caliber to have killed Ralph Ciulla, was just another element of his fear, not of mine.

“All right,” I said. “Put the gun away and I’ll get in.”

The gun disappeared. I looked around before slipping into the rear of the taxi. The cab slowly drove off and turned left.

“I’m the other way,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then where are we going?”

“Around,” he said, as he snatched a small silver flask to his lips.

“Shouldn’t there be a Plexiglas barrier between the passenger and the driver?” I said. “I’d feel more comfortable with a Plexiglas barrier.”

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

However beat the cab was on the outside, on the inside it was worse. The vinyl of my seat was mended with silver duct tape, the walls of the doors were stained with the sweat and grime of thousands of indifferent passengers. The cab smelled of gasoline and grease, of smoke and bleach and boredom. It had the pinched feel of a soul that had been waiting too long for not nearly enough.

“The cops called you out to Ralph’s house the night he got hit,” said Joey.

“That’s right.”

“What they want with you?”

“They found my card in Ralph’s wallet. They wanted to know what I knew.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“Just that the three of us had met that afternoon.”