Stanley disappeared to the rear of the shop. The man with the mustache placed a sheet of paper on a clipboard and handed it to me. “You know the drill. Can’t be pregnant, drunk, or under the influence of stupidity. Sign this.” He extended his hand. “I’m Kit, by the way.”
I shook his hand. After filling out the form, Braxton and I meandered to the rear of the small shop. A station with fitted with a leather chair and old-school operating table flanked Stanley’s work area, but the lack of supplies, ink, or tool chest left me to believe it had been abandoned.
I glanced at the various Japanese-style portraits on the walls. Watercolor paintings of snakes, koi fish, dragons, and colorful flowers were situated between the small displays of tattoo flash.
“Did you paint those?” I asked.
Preparing his tattoo machine, Stanley gave a nod. “That’s how I spend my spare time.”
I glanced at the empty work station. “Are you the only artist?”
“I’ve had a few people work here,” he replied. “I’m a perfectionist, and I expect other artists to be the same. So far, I haven’t found one.”
I took a seat in the chair beside Stanley, and Braxton pulled up a chair at my side. After cleaning and shaving my arm, Stanley sketched his version of my idea on my forearm with a pen.
“What do you think about that?” he asked. “Check it in the mirror.”
I looked it over. Far more detailed that I expected, the design was intricate and beautiful. “It’s perfect.”
Stanley stretched rubber gloves over his hands. “Let’s do this.”
The three of us sat silently during the application of the tattoo’s outline. When finished, Stanley wiped the area with a paper towel, and then peeled off his gloves. “Doing Japanese work beats the hell out of birds flying across some eighteen-year-old chick’s back with a Latin inscription across her shoulders.”
While he filled plastic cups with ink, I glanced at the outline. “Why do you like Japanese-themed work?”
“It’s got so much meaning,” he replied. “People get the tattoo, and they probably don’t even realize it. The water, for instance. Japanese work often has water incorporated into it. Japan is an island, and the people rely on the ocean to bring them food. The water represents life, and the wave brings death. Life changes like the sea, and death can come at any moment. That’s the reality of life in Japan. Without words or a written description, the water in a Japanese tattoo represents that belief. Then, I’ll have some college kid come in here and get life tattooed on one forearm, and death tattooed on the other. The water and waves of a colorful sleeve has so much more depth.”
“I didn’t realize the meaning behind it,” I admitted.
He stretched a new set of gloves over his hands. “The Koi, for instance. In the winter, it attempts to swim the Yellow River, upstream. Japanese myth believes if it can overcome the challenge, it transforms into a dragon, as a reward. It makes the Koi a perfect tattoo for anyone attempting to overcome a struggle.” He tilted his head toward my forearm. “I’m sure there’s a story behind this piece. At least you didn’t come in here and have me tattoo a date on your forearm in Roman numerals.”
“How’d you know it was a date?” I asked.
He traced his gloved finger over the tattoo. “This isn’t my first tattoo. You wanted a specific number of blossoms. August eighth, 2009.” He looked up. “How’d I do?”
“You’re right.”
He picked up the tattoo machine. “Date’s got some meaning, huh?”
I saw no harm in being honest. Telling Hap and Braxton about Shelley helped matters slightly. Telling Stanley couldn’t hurt.
“A girl I knew committed suicide on that day,” I said.
He lowered the tattoo machine and shook his head. “Dude. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” I murmured.
“Suicide’s a beast,” he said. “Kit’s cousin was a Marine. He came home from Iraq and spent all his time in his bedroom, drunk. Wouldn’t talk to anyone about it. Then, one day, he hung himself. They found him at dinnertime.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. Suicide sucks.” He nodded toward the tattoo. “You ready?”
“Whenever you are.”
The needle dug into my flesh, which was sensitive from earlier session. I closed my eyes and took my mind to a place where pain didn’t exist.
I couldn’t say with any degree of certainty that I loved Shelley. I barely knew her. Nevertheless, the impact she made in the short time we were together was so deep that I considered a future with her.
Before her, women had been nothing more than a night or weekend of sex. My choice of work didn’t lend itself to having a woman in my life on a permanent basis. Yet. I had no more than met Shelley and I began to look at my future and how I could fit her in it.
I didn’t know if the current level of affection I felt toward her developed entirely during the time we spent together or if it blossomed after her death.
The year after her suicide was difficult for me to remember, now. I spent most of it in seclusion, attempting to process the loss. With each year that followed, her loss seemed to become more significant. I questioned everything from what we did and where we went to why I didn’t offer her into my home the morning that followed our walk along the beach.
I opened my eyes. “I didn’t invite her to come to my house.”
Braxton looked up. “What’s that?”
“Shelley,” I said. “The sun was coming up. We laughed that we’d walked around talking until morning. She said, what now? I said, I suppose I should go home and get some sleep. I didn’t invite her to come over. If I had—”
“If you had, she might have lived another day. Maybe another few hours. What she did is out of your control,” he replied. “The sooner you understand that, the quicker you’ll recover from her loss.”
I wanted him to be right, but I didn’t feel that way. He was correct in his earlier assumption that I felt guilty. In fact, the guilt was crushing me.
“I suppose,” I muttered.
“When it comes to controlling the actions of others, we have limitations,” he said.
It wasn’t the response I’d hoped for. I was wallowing in guilt, and for whatever reason, it seemed that was where I was most comfortable. I stared at a painting of a tiger on the opposite wall and brewed.
“Do you believe in God?” Braxton asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“God loved her more than anyone,” he said. “Despite the extent of his power and the depth of his love, he was powerless over preventing her death. For you to think there was anything you could do to change the outcome is saying you’re more powerful than The Almighty. You’re an intelligent man, but you’re not God.”
As I chewed on Braxton’s statement, Stanley patted me on the shoulder. “Have a look at it.”
It seemed that he’d just started. I looked at my arm. A limb from a cherry tree forked into three much smaller branches. Gathered on each branch were delicate clusters of pink blossoms. The color against the otherwise black tattoo caused the flowers to be a definitive focal point.
“It looks awesome,” I said. “Better than I expected.”
“If you’re happy, I’m happy,” Stanley said.
After Stanley applied a dressing to protect the wound from the elements, we talked about women, basketball, tacos, the best place to surf in SoCal, motorcycles, and of the difficulties the living have in dealing with the death of a loved one, especially after suicide.
Braxton and I walked across the street. My stride was lighter. My vision, which had been limited to what was directly in front of me, now included full peripheral. Be it marking my skin permanently with recognition of my loss or Braxton’s explanation of me not being God that caused the process to begin, I’ll never know.
But I knew one thing.
A transformation was taking place.
13
Reggie
Stand
ing at the kitchen countertop, my father stirred his coffee. “After you left here on Sunday you went home and had a bonfire in your back yard. Tell me how that was a good—”
“It wasn’t a bonfire,” I argued. “We weren’t roasting marshmallows and hotdogs or having a kegger.”
He faced me and took a sip of his coffee. “You had a fire in your back yard. Big enough that someone called the police. Bonfire or not, what’s the difference?”
“Huge difference,” I said. “If it was a bonfire, it would be an irresponsible act. The fire in question? It was an evil necessity.”
He gave me his signature stink eye. “Evil necessity?”
My father and I had a rather unique relationship. He was undoubtedly my parent—and acted as such—but we were also friends. I couldn’t imagine a life without him in it, nor could I fathom having a relationship with him other than the one we had.
“It was Jared’s stuff,” I explained. “The stuff he left in the house. All of it was crap I hated.”
“Those facts made it an evil necessity?”
I hadn’t lied to my father about Jared, I simply chose not to tell him the complete truth. From the beginning, he didn’t like Jared. His cop intuition wouldn’t allow him to. He explained that he saw through Jared no differently than if he were transparent, and that he didn’t like what he saw.
Admitting the truth would allow my father to say I told you so.
Clutching my cup of coffee between my hands, I let out a long breath. Sooner or later, he was going to say it, anyway.
“Do you remember Brandon?” I asked. “The guy that’s marrying Tina?”
“Big kid? Kind of dopey acting?”
“He’s nice. He’s just. I don’t know. Slow to react.”
He chuckled. “He’s slow.” He sat down across from me. “Let’s leave it at that. What about him?”
“They were having a bachelor party at that strip club in Oceanside, because that’s what guys do. When they were leaving, Brandon saw Jared in his car in the parking lot. He was with one of the strippers—”
“With one how?” His posture straightened. “What were they doing?”
“They were having sex, dad.”
The veins on his neck jutted out. His fist clenched the coffee cup so tightly I felt that it would shatter any second. His face flushed crimson.
He stood.
Following a few audible breaths through his nose, he cracked his knuckles. “I’m going to break that little prick’s neck.”
“I’m over it, and you should be, too,” I said. “Sit down. Please.”
With reluctance, he eventually did as I asked, and sat. “If I ever see that little prick, I’m going to…”
He shook his head but failed to complete his sentence. He didn’t need to. I knew what he’d do, and it wouldn’t be pretty. He earned his nickname, Tank, for a reason.
“That’s why the fire was an evil necessity,” I explained. “I was bringing our relationship to a close. I told him whatever he left at the house would be burned, and that’s what I did.”
With his eyes fixed on the center of the table, he sipped his coffee. I knew to give him his space and allow him to digest my breakup with Jared however he must. I watched the clock on the microwave tick away the time. After three minutes passed, he looked up.
“You’ve never been one to make idle threat,” he said.
I raised my index finger. “If I say it…”
“I mean it,” we both said at the same time, reciting the second half of the phrase my father used repeatedly.
He let out an audible sigh, which wasn’t really like him. He normally didn’t hesitate to say anything, nor did he express a tremendous amount of emotion, excluding anger or frustration.
“I’m sorry, and I’m not,” he said. “Eventually, you two were going to break up. It was inevitable. I’m sorry for how it came about, but I’m glad it happened before you two were married.”
“Yeah, me too—”
“Or had a kid together.” He wiped his brow. “That would have been a goddamned disaster. Having that turd coming by for the next eighteen years to share custody of a child he fathered? That’s been a nightmare of mine for the past four years.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about that.”
“Thank God.” He leaned back and gave me a look. “So, what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Meet a surfer boy at work? Single for a while? Online dating? What’s the plan for your relationship future?”
I felt compelled to tell him about Tito, but for no other reason than to allow him to see I was truly over Jared. After a little thought, I opted to keep my mouth shut.
“Single,” I responded. “At least for a while.”
“Don’t sulk over that piece of shit,” he said. “He’s not worth it. At least get out and meet a few people. It’ll be easy to get in an emotional rut after a long-tern relationship. If anyone knows that, I do.”
My mother left when I was twelve. My father claimed it took him until midway through my high school years to recover. I often wondered if he ever truly recovered.
“I won’t sulk,” I assured him. “Don’t worry.”
“You’re my only child,” he said. “I worry.”
“I went on one date right after Jared left.”
His brows knitted together. “How long’s he been gone?”
“Ten days.” I shrugged. “Give or take. Sunday before last.”
He smiled a prideful grin. “You’ve already been on a date?”
I’d managed to go there and wished I hadn’t. I decided to keep it short. “Yep. I think Mel and I are going to go up to wine country next weekend and have a little weekend wine-fest.”
“What was he like?” he asked. “Nice guy?”
“Who?” I asked, even though I knew what he was asking.
He scowled. “The guy you went on a date with.”
“He was nice. Intelligent. Polite. He had a great moral compass. I got drunk, and he didn’t try to take advantage of me.”
“Sadly,” he said. “That’s a plus. Especially in this day and age.”
It wasn’t as rocky as I thought. Glad that it was over without incident, I gave a nod. “I agree,”
“What was his profession?”
I should have known it wasn’t going to be so easy. In high school, he demanded that he meet everyone I’d gone on a date with. In college, he did the same—if I made the mistake of mentioning them. He said his exposure to all walks of life prevented him from trusting any man who wouldn’t look him in the eyes and shake his hand.
“He manages carwashes,” I muttered.
He seemed entertained by my response. He cocked his head to the side. “High-end car washes? Detailing Bentleys and Lamborghinis?”
“No,” I responded. “The self-serve type.”
He scowled at me. “No one manages self-serve carwashes. He’s either unemployed, or he’s a criminal.”
I felt a compulsion to defend Tito, and I didn’t really understand why. Nevertheless, I did so with vigor. “Someone’s got to manage them,” I argued. “And, that someone is him.”
“If his job is managing carwashes, he’s a criminal.”
“What if he really manages carwashes?”
“Car washes manage themselves,” he replied. “An owner has a contract with a firm for the products they use: soap, wax, and cleaner, and they come by once a week or whatever and check the levels. They’ll have a contract with the water filtration rep for their deionized water, and they’ll have a maintenance contract with a company for their pumps. Nobody works at a self-serve car wash except for the owner, who typically uses the all-cash business as a means to launder money.”
“No everyone’s a criminal,” I said.
“Laundry mats, flea market vendors, carry-out restaurants, taco trucks, some hair salons, nail salons, these are typical all-cash businesses,” he said, counting on his fingers as he spoke. “They all clai
m to make no profit whatsoever. Across the board, they evade taxes by claiming little income and inflating their expenses. The typical car wash owner, however, has a lucrative business that thrives. At least that’s what they claim at tax time. How can their all-cash business thrive, while all the others make no profits? Because their income is shit, and they use the carwash to filter their ill-gotten cash, claiming tremendous revenue. The business is a front for them to launder hundreds of thousands of dollars through, and there’s no one to question them. If they own multiple car washes, they have a means to launder millions.”
I stared blankly. Being the daughter of a detective was exhausting. “When are you going to retire?”
He smirked. “After I catch the little clique I’ve been chasing.”
He’d been trying to catch the same elusive street gang since I was in college. As certain as he was that they were a criminal enterprise, he couldn’t do so much as confirm their existence, let alone prove they’d committed a crime. His “instinct” continued to drive him to pursue them.
I looked at him and sighed. “Do you ever turn it off?”
“What?”
“Being a cop?”
“I can’t,” he said dryly. “It’s who I am.”
“Well, he’s nice. You don’t have to believe him about the carwash thing, but I choose do.”
He looked me in the eyes. “Bring him by.”
“We’re not dating,” I said for clarification’s sake. “We went on one date.”
“You said he’s nice, Not, he was nice,” he argued. “You’re planning on seeing him again.”
“Stop interrogating me,” I huffed.
“Stop withholding the entire truth.”
“I may see him again, I may not,” I admitted. “I’ll have to see.”
“What does he drive?” he asked. “What did he pick you up in?”
I should have known that’s where he was going to go. I considered lying, but just for an instant. Telling him the truth was going to start a full-fledged investigation into everything related to Tito. Nevertheless, I couldn’t lie.
“A Harley,” I muttered.
“Tattoos?”
Tito Page 9