Schoenmacher burped.
Roberts checked his watch. “What do you say we start those steaks? John should be here any minute now.”
“Go for it.”
Schoenmacher leaned back, leaving his Birdy tattoo exposed to the sun.
Birds of a feather, Roberts thought, sizing up his friend.
IV.
Lockerman made his usual entrance, hurdling the low, whitewashed fence that separated his yard from Roy’s. The tall, bulky black police officer ignored the sprinkler water that drenched his gray tank top and blue satin jogging shorts, which clung to his dark skin like an extra layer, revealing muscular ripples. After walking through the muddy grass and stepping onto the porch, he stamped his running shoes onto the cinderblock floor of Roberts’ patio.
Lockerman grinned, his brown cheeks catching glints of sun. “Time to pay up.”
“I’m cookin’, I’m cookin’!” Roberts held up the burnt barbecue fork for evidence. He pointed with the two-pronged fork at the cooler. “Beer’s in there.”
“It’s good and cold for once, too,” Schoenmacher added.
Lockerman and Dan clasped hands, did a wrist roll, finger shake, and then shook palms. The rigmarole was like a club handshake, and in an odd way, the three of them were a club—a group of close friends who always seemed to end up together on weekends. If it wasn’t barbecuing, then it was skiing. If it wasn’t poker, then it was bowling. And if it was ever anything, it was always drinking. Drinking away the work week.
Three friends. One single male, one divorcee, one widower. A city news editor, a TV weatherman, and a cop. Two Caucasians, one Negro. Three close, but different, age groups. Two neighbors in a middle-class neighborhood, one closet yuppie from the posh other side of town. A weird mix of men, but their loneliness held them together like blood brothers.
The steaks were ready moments later—burned black on the outside, bloody red on the inside, crisp and soft just the way they liked them. They ate potato salad between bites of meat and swallows of beer. They dipped nacho chips into cans of sliced jalapeño peppers. They drank and John talked about the upcoming Bronco’s season and drank and Dan drooled over one of the neighborhood women and drank and Roy joked about Dan’s tattoo and drank some more.
Later, and because he was apparently the least drunk of the bunch, Schoenmacher went on a beer run to the nearby convenience store. Alone with Roberts, Lockerman looked uneasy. Almost scared.
“What’s the matter, John?”
“Nothing, man. Forget about it.” He picked up his near-empty beer bottle, shook the foam at the bottom, swallowed. “It’s the weekend.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Roberts tapped a cigarette out of its pack, lit it. “Smoke?”
“Nah. You know I quit.”
“You looked like you could use one.”
Silence cut between them, amplified by the sprinkler’s incessant hiss.
They stared at the plastic spigots spewing artificial rain atop the tips of grass peeping out like a million drowning men from beneath a lake’s worth of water. Roberts self-consciously stood, grabbed a metal rod, and walked swaggardly over to the sprinkler controls doing a Charlie Chaplin. He turned off the sprinklers and surveyed the yard. It looked like a Hollywood rice paddie.
Lockerman looked up at the sky, his eyes bloodshot. “We found another one.”
“Huh?” Roberts searched the sky, probing for the topic of discussion.
“Another tattoo victim.”
Tattoo victim. The words sounded silly, but Roberts felt the seriousness in Lockerman’s voice, and recognized the haggard look in his eyes. He tried not to sound like a reporter when he asked, “What happened?”
“Hooker, found in the dumpster behind that strip joint down on Nevada. She was really fucked up, man…” Lockerman looked away, as if ashamed of something he himself had done. “Tattoos all over her body, everywhere. She had a, uh, female organ inked into her forehead, this psychedelic flowerlike, butterfly-looking thing with fangs. There was something about that, man, that made me wanna puke…like it was alive or something.” Lockerman frowned and shook his head. “And that wasn’t the least of it. Penises drawn all around her mouth. Same thing on the insides of her thighs—dicks everywhere. Not just your average dicks, either. These were monsters, man, with teeth and arms and veins and dripping blood and all sorts of ugly shit. One mammoth cock down the center of her chest, sprouting from between her breasts. And it had wings, man, all veiny like a bat’s, and a giant rattler or stinger on its ass.”
Lockerman paused, swishing the foam in the bottom of his bottle.
“She even had tattoos inside of her, man. Inside her. Little dots with tails. Supposed to be sperm, I guess. Looked more like insects, spiders and bees, to me.”
“Ugh,” spilled out of Roberts’ mouth as the image of a woman so horribly defaced entered his mind. His stomach churned, bile and beer burping up into his mouth. Roberts grunted and swallowed—he wasn’t about to puke in front of his friend.
And then Roberts noticed the liquid in the pinks of Lockerman’s eyelids. “Are you…John! What’s wrong?”
Lockerman covered his face, ashamed. Roberts barely heard the words: “I knew her, Roy. She was an informant for me. Tina Gonzales. She was so sweet, Roy, so sweet. Tina didn’t deserve this shit. Her skin…so soft…”
Roberts gulped down a mouthful of spit, embarrassed at Lockerman’s outburst. It was the first time he’d ever seen his overtly macho buddy turn human enough to shed tears.
And from what he was piecing together, his friend—a respected officer of the law—had much more than just a business relationship with this prostitute. After all, Lockerman didn’t even cry, let alone blink, when his partner was shot to death during a robbery last year. And now he was bawling like a baby.
Lockerman briskly rubbed his face, and then turned vicious: “There’s one sick motherfucker out there, Roy. Some psycho bastard, and if I ever find him—and believe me, I will—I’m gonna personally tattoo him black and blue with my nightstick.”
Roberts leaned back, a bit frightened. He’d never seen John so violent—one second he was crying, the next he was insanely vengeful. And behind that anger in his voice, even something worse—fear.
Roberts slipped his hands behind his neck, sit-up style, to let the whole thing soak in. Moments later, he asked, “Are you telling me that the same guy who turned that Kuhlman guy into an ugly machine tattooed this hook—this Tina Gonzales woman, too?”
“No evidence, yet. But I can tell just by looking at the work that it’s the same guy. Realistic artwork that makes you do a double take. And sick as hell. Same M.O., too.”
“So that means that Kuhlman wasn’t a suicide. He was murdered.”
“We don’t know that.” Lockerman looked away again. “I’d lose my job if they knew I was telling you all this. But we don’t have shit for evidence. We don’t even know if Tina—my informant, I mean—was killed. She was shooting up, apparently, and overdosed. It could be another suicide. I know I’d put a gun to my head if I looked like that. Man…”
Roberts imagined he’d probably do the same thing.
Lockerman continued: “Either way, whoever did those tattoos is somehow responsible for their deaths. Those tattoos just aren’t the sort of thing you get done to yourself voluntarily. Some sicko is out there doing it, and I’m gonna find him.”
Schoenmacher returned moments later, struggling with a case of beer. He grinned drunkenly at them.
“Party’s over, Dan,” Roberts told him as they began to fill him in on the story.
FLASH
Again, the light, filling his mind. The naked form beneath his legs fades in the afterburn, the image replaced by a framed portrait in his mental gallery. And the portrait begins to move….
Alura Kilpatr
ick cradles Mark’s palm in her lap, looking sadly down at the burnt, branded flesh.
“It hurts, Momma.”
“I know, I know.” Momma releases Mark’s hand, allowing it to linger on her lap as she reaches for a nearby bottle of wine. She twists off a metal cap and sloppily gulps down several swallows from the bottle, some dribbling down its side. Then she rests the cool glass against her son’s hand. “Is that better?”
It stings him, the sticky alcohol on the side of the bottle burning into his wound. But Mark says nothing.
Momma looks down at her son’s black eye. “You know, your dad means well. He just wants what’s best for you.”
“But he broke my art project! I made it just for him, to show him that I could do it…”
Alura Kilpatrick continues, ignoring him, caught up in the wisdom of her own sage advice: “Sometimes pain is good. It teaches us things. To appreciate the pleasure. Like giving birth to you—it hurt like hell, but it was worth it. Wasn’t it?”
Like always, Mark doesn’t understand. Momma always talks to him as if talking only to herself. When she looks in his eyes intently, he knows she is really looking at her own reflection in the shiny lenses. She always had. Even at the beauty parlor where she worked—and Mark hated having to go to work with her—Alura would talk and talk to the person whose hair she was cutting or washing, looking at herself in the mirror more than the one she was trying to make look good. Mark looks down at his hand, his mother’s words drifting around the room like her breath. He feels uncomfortable, and shifts on the bed they are sitting on. He wonders if his sculpture is still scattered on the living room floor in a million pieces.
“Of course you understand. Of course you do. How is your hand? Does it still hurt?”
Mark nods. “It burns, Momma.”
Momma frowns at him comically.
“I wish…” Mark says, swallowing, “I wish Daddy wasn’t so mean. I wish we could leave, just you and me, Momma. I…”
Momma loses her frown, her face turns to cement.
“…never mind.”
Alura rubs the top of his head, rolling her eyes. “If only you could support me, baby.” She looks at her wine bottle, her voice trailing to a whisper. “Someday. When you’re the man of the house. Maybe…”
Alura takes another swig of wine. She lifts Mark’s pink and scabbed palm to her lips, gently kissing the wound. Her fake eyelashes brush the tips of his fingers, tickling him and dusting his hand with mascara. Mark giggles, hunching his shoulders.
She keeps her lips pressed against his hand as she speaks, sending cool shivers down Mark’s forearm. “You like that, don’t you? It feels good, doesn’t it? See what I mean about pain? It’s a funny thing.” His mother darts her tongue out and traces the raised flesh with the pink flap of muscle, her saliva mingling with his open sore.
Mark’s face colors, his black eye throbbing.
And something in his jeans throbbing, too.
Alura notices his reaction and tosses Mark’s arm down on the bed. Embarrassed, Mark slips his hands over his lap.
Momma gulps down the rest of the wine from the bottle. Then she scoots sideways on the bed, bringing one leg up to tuck underneath the other, Indian style. “Do you have a girlfriend, Mark?”
The thought of girls never crossed his mind before. His ears ringing with flushed embarrassment, Mark shakes his head from side-to-side, avoiding his mother’s eyes.
“No? Are you sure?” She stares at him, disbelieving, searching for evidence of a lie. “But you like girls, don’t you?”
Mark wants to leave. Something’s wrong here, he knows it. Momma’s acting like she does with Dad late at night. Giddy and girlish. Like in the movies.
Alura takes his branded hand into her own, once more. She bends forward, trying to catch Mark’s evasive eyes. Then she realizes something, and her eyes spark and dilate. “My God, we’ve never talked about the birds and the bees, have we? You must be confused as hell! Geez! I know I was when I was your age”
Silence fills the room like an odor. Uneasily, Mark breaks the silence: “What’s the birds and the bees, Momma? You mean that cartoon on Saturdays…”
“Oh, no, silly.” She grips his hand tightly, her fingertips digging into his wound. “This ain’t about no cartoons. The birds and the bees are, well…”
Alura wrinkles her eyebrows, unsure of how to begin. “Well…did you ever wonder how you were made? How your father and I created you?”
“Uh…”
“Oh, never mind. You’ll figure it out.”
Mark looks up into his mother’s thickly lashed eyes, confused. For the first time, she’s trying to talk to him, rather than just to herself. And now that she mentioned it, he was curious.
Momma smiles down at him, rolling her eyes.
Mark leans back. “What, Momma? What?”
“I can’t explain it. It’s something you don’t talk about. I can’t tell you what the birds and bees are about. No way. It isn’t something I can put in words, you know? I can’t tell you, but…”
A pause. “But what, Momma?”
And now Alura is blushing. “But maybe I could show you.”
“You want to play show and tell?”
Her knowing smile says it all.
Her hand stirs on his lap, lightly counting down his fingers. Her voice is in his ears, vibrating the walls of his brain: “This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed home. This little piggy had roast beef…”
Her hand moves to his jeans. “And this little piggy….”
Kilpatrick shudders, and the photograph spits out of the instant camera, floating down like a feather before landing atop the Hispanic hooker’s tattooed breast. He bends forward to pick up the photograph, and notices that his pants are wet.
And in his mind, another scab hardens and forms over the portrait—warm like clotting blood.
CHAPTER THREE
I.
Like writing a basic summary to a primary police report, Lockerman mentally went over the facts of the case.
Scenario:
Two similar deaths in most big cities would not be cause for alarm. But in Colorado Springs—which was a medium-sized, military-heavy city with one of the largest population growth rates in the state, and having a low crime rate despite those statistics—two was enough for the police force to begin a crackdown.
Warrants were drafted, tattoo parlors were raided, artists questioned, and business receipts called into question for evidence reasons. Both regulars and occasional customers in each shop’s records were phoned, questioned, and names were cross-checked over federal computers.
Nothing turned up that was usable in the case, though two shops were permanently closed down—one was found to be a front for a small drug dealership, another was found giving tattoos to minors.
Connections were sought regarding life histories of the late Jim “Coolie” Kuhlman and Tina Marie Gonzales. None were found, but most believed that Kuhlman had frequented the services of Gonzales, and speculations were rampant that her pimp—name unknown—was responsible for the tattoos. Some cops conjured up notions that a new sex scheme was in the works, where rich johns could get their rocks off on custom-made whores, tattooed to match whatever the buyers’ fantasies might be. But these speculations were not in print, and most of the higher-ranked officers thought that the whole idea was a straw-grasper. Such an operation was ludicrous—and Lockerman knew that it just didn’t match the demographics of the city; such a luxury as a “custom-tattooed” prostitute wouldn’t be affordable for even the richest of Forbes 500 wannabes in the city’s suburb of Broadmoor. And with the way those tattoos looked…it was impossible to imagine someone sick and twisted enough to be physically turned-on by such a sight.
Cheri Carvers was nowhere to be found. He
r call might as well have been anonymous. An look into her priors turned up the fact that she, too, was once an item in the meat market; she’d been charged with prostitution three years earlier, and thus, fuel was added to the “tattoo pimp” concept. Cadre officers were still not convinced, though some suspected Carvers herself to be the perpetrator. Investigators were sent to her last known home address moments after Kuhlman’s body was found, and it was discovered that her apartment complex had been condemned months ago. This was not unusual; it fit the profile of most prostitutes. A thorough search for her current whereabouts was at hand. Hopes were low.
Full autopsies were being conducted on the two bodies. These would not be completed for weeks, but the early results could point to nothing but suicide. Of note was the fact that the ink found in each victim was fresh; the needle-mutilated flesh was covered with thick, mushy scabs. But undeniably, Kuhlman’s death was a result of the raw voltage he self-activated, and it was obviously what pushed him over the edge. He had gone into shock both ways, and simply bled to death. The drugs found in his stomach contents hadn’t helped, either. The same rationale applied to Gonzales. She had taken a fatal dose of heroin, an overdose, and the track marks that covered the crook of her arm made suicide the inevitable conclusion. The question now was whether the suicides were accidental or premeditated. And with the initial M.E. reports reading like textbook case examples of suicidal causation, a murder one charge seemed impossible, even if the department did find the person who did the tattoos.
A lid was kept on the entire case, and even though Roy Roberts and Dan Schoenmacher at KOPT knew about the latest tattoo victim, a personal pact was made between the newsmen and Lockerman: no reporting was to be done on the Gonzales affair, and it was not to be leaked that there were two victims with tattoos etched horribly into their skins. The other newsrooms in the city were not informed of the circumstances regarding the latest death. Tina Marie Gonzales’ name appeared in the local newspapers, but only in the obituary sections, where her cause of death was merely listed as suicide. All policemen—even those who turned the tattoo shops and biker bars upside down—were ordered to not utter a word regarding the cause of the investigation, not even to their family members.
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