Marked Man

by William Lashner

  “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.”

  “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.”

  29

  I don’t normally take a 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.”

  “You gave them my name?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Thank you for that, you little snake. What they say about me?”

  “They want to talk to you, to ask some questions. A detective named McDeiss. He’ll give you a square deal.”

  “He’ll get me killed, is what he’ll do.”

  “Who’s after you, Joey?”

  “I told Ralph to be careful, that we were stepping back into it all. But he always thought he couldn’t be touched.” He snatched another drink from the flask. “You should have seen him play football for good old Northeast High. He played huge.”

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Yeah. We’re all sorry, but that’s not helping Ralph none, is it? Who’d them cops think done it?”

  “They don’t know. But it looks like Ralph knew who killed him.”

  “Of course he did. The ghosts have come back, boy. Avenging ghosts from Nightmare Alley.”

  “And you think a bullet from that little gun will stop a ghost?”

  “Don’t know, never shot one before.”

  He took a drink from his flask, wiped his mouth with his sleeve. The car swerved before righting itself. The drinking didn’t seem to be helping his fear or his driving.

  “You spend all of Ralph’s cash yet?” I said.

  “How you know that was me?”

  “Nothing else was stolen but the money clip. No ring, no watch. You were the only one who had seen the cash in the money clip.”

  “I took the money ’cause I knew I’d be running and I’d need it. Ralph would have understood. But I didn’t shoot him.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were old, easy friends. You finished each other’s sentences. You couldn’t have hurt him.”

  “He was more a brother than my own brothers.”

  “You came to his house after the murder, saw him dead on the floor, panicked, took the money and ran. A few minutes later, you stopped at a pay phone and called it in to the police. But what I don’t understand, Joey, is why you ran. Why not call from the house, wait for the cops, tell them what you knew, save yourself from being on the run?”

  “You just don’t get it. I ain’t running from the cops, fool. That’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s something after me.”

  “The ghosts?”

  “Laugh all you want, but they’re after me, they are. And it ain’t just me that needs to be running. When I took the money, I took this, too.”

  He reached a hand back and handed me a piece of notebook paper, folded in half, badly creased and spotted with blood. Carefully, using only my fingertips, I unfolded it, read what was scrawled in a thick black marker.

  “Where did you get this?” I said when I had started breathing again.

  “It was right on top of Ralph when I found him.”

  “Left by the guy who killed him,” I said.

  “You catching on,” said Joey.

  I looked again at the sheet and the rough printing on its face, among the creases and spatters of blood:

  WHO’S NEXT?

  “Can I take this to the police so they can get it processed for prints?” I said.

  “Do what you want, boy. I done my duty to Charlie by giving you the warning. Rest is up to you. But the killing won’t stop with Ralph. We’re cursed, all of us.”

  “All of who?”

  “You know, the five of us. That’s who the message is for. Ralph and me, Charlie, too, and the others.”

  “Hugo and Teddy?”

  He didn’t answer, he just took another swig.

  “What did you guys do that’s got you so spooked? What happened thirty years ago? Do you think the painting is cursed?”

  “Not the painting, just us. Teddy was giving us a way to save our lives, that’s what we thought. That’s what he said.”

  “In the bar, when he came back into town?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What happened in the bar that night, Joey?”

  “He rubbed our faces in our own damn crap, that’s what happened,” said Joey. “He told us he was ashamed of us. That we had let life happen to us in the worst possible way. Right there, in that back booth, he told us we was a bunch of losers going nowhere but to the corner tap in hopes of drinking enough to forget all we hadn’t done with our lives.”

  “That was pretty harsh,” I said.

  “But it was the truth. We were failures, all of us. We told him we had our reasons for the way things had turned out, but he didn’t want to hear it. Told us that nothing consumed a man’s soul more than the easy excuse. And then he put the lie to them excuses, Teddy did, starting with Charlie.”

  “What about Charlie?”

  “He said Charlie let his mother rule his life like a dictator because it was easier than stepping out and making decisions on his own. He told Ralph he threw his money away on women so that he wouldn’t have to see if he could really make it on his own. And that Hugo quit school not to take care of his family but because no matter how hard it was hauling those sacks of cement, it was easier than matching his brain up against the suburban kids who thought a college education was a birthright.”

  “What about you, Joey?”

  “Said that me going crazy and getting myself hauled up to Haverford State was a ready-made excuse for not even trying. Called me crazy as a coward.”

  “What did you guys do?” I said.

  “We went after him, we all did. I even tried to slug him, but not because the son of a bitch was insulting my integrity. I wanted to slug him because he was right. We were, the four of us, drowning in our excuses, even as we drowned our sorrows in our beer. When it all calmed down, he said he had learned something out there in California. He had learned that we had to do anything necessary to take hold of our dreams, and sometimes that meant taking hold of our lives and becoming something new.”

  “Something new?”

  “That’s what he said, and then he started talking crazy talk. About ropes and apes and supermen. He said we were hovering over some great hole—an abyss, he c
alled it—and we could either go back to the failures we was or go forward and become something new. He said the only answer was to cross that abyss with a rope. But not any rope. He said we was the rope. He said we had to climb over the losers we had become in order to get to the other side. I didn’t understand a word of it, but it felt true, you know what I mean? It was like a part of the Bible I never heard before.”

  “And what was there on the other side?”

  “Our fool’s dreams, made real.”

  “Someplace over the rainbow.”

  “Sure, but then he described them to us in a way that made us believe it all could happen. Hugo was a business school graduate, running some huge company, flying about in the corporate jets, letting the congressmen and senators wait for him in his outer office while some lackey shined his shoes. And Ralph had his own shop, taking orders from all over the country, never touching the metal himself. And his secretary was way hot, and Ralph was banging her on his desktop every lunch hour. And Charlie was running free like a feral cat, doing whatever the hell he wanted, and his mother was happy about it, because he had finally become a man.”

  “What about you, Joey? What were you doing on the other side?”

  “I was driving the fastest rod on the East Coast, going town to town, racing and winning on makeshift tracks, with my own garage and a staff of forty mechanics to keep my baby humming. And, you know, the way he was telling it, he made it come alive. I could see it there, my future, shimmering in the distance. It was dazzling. I could see it clear, just there, beyond the horizon. I still can.”

  “And all you needed was a way to get there.”

  “That’s right. And then Teddy, he gave us the way. He said we needed something that purified and burned at the same time, an opportunity clean enough and hard enough to transform our lives. And he said he might have the right opportunity in mind.” Joey took a long drink from his flask. “And he did, didn’t he?”

  “The Randolph Trust job.”

  “Had it all worked out from the start. And when he was through preaching to us, we was converts, all of us. It didn’t take too much convincing after that to get us on board.”

  “The power of Nietzsche.”

  “Who?” said Joey.

  “Some German philosopher. All that stuff about the abyss and the rope, it came from him. Friedrich Nietzsche, the patron saint of disaffected adolescents who want to cast off their chains and become supermen.”