He raised a toast to her photograph, and chugged straight from the mouth of the bottle.
Wiping his face, he looked drunkenly at the label: Johnnie Walker. It seemed like some sort of play on words, a combination of his own first name and Tina’s profession. Or even a name for the child they could have had together, if he had had the balls to marry her out of the gutter.
But he knew Tina would never have let that happen. It was the same story every time, making love together on her soiled satin sheets, sharing a bottle of Johnnie Walker, talking about the future. Lockerman would map out ways to get her act together, but Tina would wave such foolish notions away. “You can’t change me,” she’d tell him. “I have to change myself. And I’m not quite ready to do that yet.” She would then kiss him gently, maybe even play with the hairs on his stomach. “And I don’t think you are either.”
Lockerman rubbed the veins on his temples, wishing there was some way he could talk with her now—wishing he could go back to the past and rearrange it, make it better, make it right. If he only would have tried, none of this would have ever happened. She’d still be alive. She’d still be there for him. She’d still be Tina.
Or would she? Would he have changed her? Made her into a different person?
But now, Lockerman knew, someone else had gone ahead and changed her permanently. Whether the psychotic tattoo artist injected her or not, he’d killed her by forcing her to be something she wasn’t. Just like Lockerman himself probably would have done if he had been stupid enough to take the chance.
Lockerman took another bitter swig from the bottle. The liquor even tasted like Tina. He closed his eyes and wished he could join her, wherever she was.
VI.
Roberts was up at 8 sharp Saturday morning. Yet another fringe benefit of his job—an internal alarm clock that didn’t recognize weekends.
His tattoo was indecipherable. Squiggly lines were inked into his shoulder blade in a cloud of nonsense that hovered above the smiling typewriter. Staring at it in the bathroom mirror, Roberts was getting a headache trying to see between the lines, connecting the curves and dots and coming up empty-handed.
What’s Corky up to?
He showered off Friday night’s hangover, taking care not to get the fresh ink on his back wet. The shower water slapped like machine gun bullets against the piece of plastic trash bag Roberts had taped over the wound.
When he finished showering, he took two necessary aspirins.
Lockerman called and canceled the barbecue. Roberts passed word to Schoenmacher, who said he didn’t mind since he had some cleaning to do. Outside, the early morning rain pounded Roberts’ backyard, ruining his planned sequence for watering the grass. It would be another rice paddy in no time.
After lunch, he collected his keys and wallet, with the full intention of heading out to Corky’s to get some more work done on his back. The cipher of the tattoo was killing him—like a television show that ends “to be continued.” He was a bit reticent about returning to the shop, though: he prayed that Corky was no longer in the same mood he was last time. It was a little frightening watching the big biker get so angry—madder than even Lockerman had been—when he found out about the Tattoo Killer. And with the way Corky gutted that squid, he could easily picture Corky doing much of the same to whoever got in his way.
As he stepped through his front door, Roberts promised himself not to do so.
He drove swiftly to Corky’s shop. The rain couldn’t wash away the seedy look of Corky’s neighborhood. The emptiness of it all, coupled with the rain shower, made it look like a graveyard of sorts. As if the rain itself was purposeless as it pelleted the ground and empty storefronts, emphasizing that nothing could grow here. Especially as the water pounded into the open and glistening and unflinching eyes on the sign of Corky’s Tattoos.
But he didn’t let it bother him. Looks could be deceiving, no matter what Corky said about images.
Inside, Corky was reading the newspaper, which was wet around the edges. His long boots were propped up on his desk, like gigantic paperweights. He didn’t look over the paper as the cowbell clanged and Roberts stamped his boots on the floor.
“What’s doin’, Corky?”
“Not much, typewriter man.” Corky knew it was Roberts even without looking. “Just the usual in the news: bombings in the Middle East, food strikes in the Ukraine, corporate takeovers, columnists are making fun of their family and the president again…the usual. How about yourself?”
“More of the same, I guess.”
Corky finally put down the newsprint that had blocked his face, and looked at Roberts with puffy black eyes.
“Jesus Christ!” He did a double take. “Are those shiners?”
Corky grinned, happy to have shocked Roy. “Yep. After you left the other day—and I apologize for all that—I went out and found me an asshole to take it out on.”
Roberts couldn’t believe it. “How’s the other guy? Still among the living?”
“Fine,” Corky replied. “Just fine and dandy. I’m sure the nurses are taking good care of him.”
“Nurses?”
“Yeah, he’s in the hospital, from what I hear. Broken arm.” He chuckled.
Roberts laughed, too. “Looks like he broke it working on your face, buddy!”
Soon, Corky prepped the area on Roy’s back, rubbing alcohol into the sore, unwashed skin. The cotton ball he used came back black with inky scabs. “Geez! You get this thing wet? Looks like a sucking chest wound!”
“Nope.” Roberts recalled the morning’s shower—did those machine gun bullets of water open up the gauze pad and plastic? “And what’s a sucking chest wound, anyway?”
“When you accidentally bite your tongue.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” Corky shook his head slowly. “It’s just a bullet wound I saw a lot of in ‘Nam. Something I shouldn’t be joking about.” He cleaned up more goo from Roberts’ back. “This looks like shit! You’re not lying to me, are ya?”
“No, I swear! I hardly looked at the thing.” Roberts felt his ears turn hot as he lied. He’d stared at it for hours trying to figure out what the new tattoo was.
“Well, fuck.” Corky grabbed a tube of ointment, and rubbed it into the wounded flesh. “Looks like we’re gonna have to wait to finish your tattoo here. This zinc oxide ought to do the trick.” He finished, capped the tube, and handed it to Roberts. “Put that on it twice a day, and you’ll be squared away in no time. Say a week or so.”
Roberts cursed. “I’m dying to know what the hell it is back there! Now you’re telling me I have to wait?”
“That’s the way it goes, typewriter man. Shit, it’s your back, not mine. I told you to keep a lid on it, but you had to look at it, didn’t ya? Probably touched it, too.”
Now his nose felt hot, too, as his lie was exposed. “Well, can’t you at least give me a hint as to what you’ve got going back there? You got a picture—what do you call it?—a flash I can check out?”
“Nope, you’ll have to wait.” Corky returned to his desk, propping his hands behind his head as he leaned back and plopped his boots dramatically on the oak tabletop. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even know. I’ve just got a general idea, making up the rest of it as I go along.” He smirked.
“You’re what? Just doodling on my skin?”
“Like I told you…I’m doing a freestyle. What’s the matter? Don’t you trust me, typewriter man?”
Now the heat in his extremities was of anger instead of shame. He tried not to sound upset, though, in fear of getting on Corky’s bad side, reminding himself that this smart-ass biker had just put someone in the hospital on a whim. “No, it’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s just…”
“Well, fine. You just put that zinc oxide on your back, and everythi
ng’ll work out perfect. Trust me, man. You’re in good hands.”
Roberts nodded, putting on his shirt. He stood, anxious to leave.
“A little suspense never hurt nobody,” Corky said.
Roberts left, speechless, and he could hear Corky’s trademark chuckle as he walked out the door.
He decided to drive around town aimlessly, to work out his anger. Corky was right, of course: if his back resembled a bullet wound, then it was best not to stick a sharp needle full of ink into it. But he wanted to know what image would be stitched into his back for the rest of his life, and if Corky himself didn’t even know what it would be, then he wasn’t too sure it was worth having at all. You don’t get married to a stranger for life, do you? Of course not. Unless it’s a fixed marriage. So what kind of tattoo was Corky fixing him up with?
Roberts slammed on the brakes, almost hitting the fat rear end of the Audi in front of him. The traffic had stalled, and he noticed that cars were lined on both sides of the road, crawling slowly down the street.
He knew what had happened instantly: an accident.
When he was within viewing distance of the scene of the wreck, he noticed an old red truck with wooden slats of plywood stuck vertically in its bed had careened into the street corner, knocking over the signpost. The green lettering on the street sign was unrecognizable.
Because it was covered in blood, half of one of the metal plates stuck inside the rib cage of a poor, innocent kid.
Roberts winced. He pulled his eyes away from the scene, his inner journalist telling him Go ahead! Pull over, Roy, and get KOPT an exclusive scoop.
He wished he could punch that inner journalist in the face.
He continued driving, but traffic was so slow, holding him back at the bloody accident scene, forcing him to look. He took in the details: the boy’s face was cracked vertically down the top of his skull from being waylaid into the sidewalk, a farmer in overalls bent over his open and blood bubbling chest, a flourescent skateboard sat lonely nearby, the truck’s brick red hood was gaped open and smoking, a police car’s red-and-blue lights were whipping around and tinting everything in its path, the sign on the back of the truck said YOU ARE DOOMED, and…
Roberts did a double take. The plywood slats planted vertically in the bed of the truck like tombstones were signs, complete with Bible verses and admonitions in thick red letters. Roberts had seen similar trucks around town before—they belonged to the apocalypse criers and holy rollers who lived in town, preaching through their signs to the uncaring masses of Colorado Springs. Most likely, they were in response to the military establishment in town, Norad and the threat of nuclear holocaust that they lived with daily. An appeal to repent, a tactic of fear.
Finally, Roberts was able to pull forward, and the traffic resumed its normal speed. He was glad he didn’t blindly obey that inner journalist who tried to tug him into the story behind the accident. Three weeks ago, he would have—but he was different nowadays, changed. A change for the better, he believed.
There was something disturbing about the accident, though, something that bugged him. It could have been that the signs reminded him of the way that the Tattoo Killer signed his work, but that wasn’t quite it. And it wasn’t necessarily the admonitions about his doom, either, for he didn’t believe in Hell—he believed in a greater power than his own, true, but Hell was something that was self-created, a punishment of the soul’s own guilt.
And then he put his finger on it: he felt more sorry for the preaching farmer who survived the accident than the little boy whose life had been taken at such a young age. Because he’d have to live with that guilt, a living hell, for the rest of his own life. That he was blind enough to think that doom was spelled out by something other than his own hands at the wheel of his truck, and would now have to live the rest of his life questioning every belief he’d ever had, never being able to trust himself again.
It was much the same way that Roberts had felt ever since he found out about the Tattoo Killer.
VII.
Lockerman was at the museum, wishing he had a cup of coffee to clear his head. It was seven in the morning, and the people from the Gazette were all over him, asking him questions to which he didn’t have answers.
He twisted his neck toward the lobby of the museum: “Krantz and Collins! Get your asses over here and take care of these assholes!”
The two rookies—who had been chatting together near the vending machines—took their time walking over to the museum entrance where Lockerman had been dodging questions from the Gazette parasites. “Don’t let them inside, and don’t tell them anything. You got that?”
“Yes sir,” Krantz replied facetiously. His face was cratered with large red zits and yellowish pockmarks, like an overgrown teenager. Collins bobbed beside him, blatantly nervous and following his buddy’s lead for lack of any self-motivation. Lockerman hated them—they had been on the force for only two weeks, and acted like their whole job was one, big amusing joke. He knew they’d learn, as soon as something violent happened to them. Maybe they’d learn by one of them dying due to the other’s negligence. For some policemen, it took that much to turn them, to show them what it was all really about.
Lockerman turned and entered the museum, muffling the shouts of the press as the front door closed behind him. He’d been there since the belated answer to the 911 call—a hang-up which the operator had traced and disregarded, until Lockerman recognized the address. The building was empty, and a small crew of investigators were combing the scene for any evidence. Lockerman knew it was pointless; the Killer had never left anything behind, except for his trademark title and initials on the victim’s skin. But there was no victim here…there was nothing here. And that was what bothered him the most. When they answered the call, the museum was empty, the front door wide open, with no one there to guard the exhibits. Rodriquez was missing.
Rodriquez was no doubt dead.
Although there was nothing they could find to prove that it was the work of the Tattoo Killer, Lockerman knew the psycho had returned, because of one additional item that was in absentia: the Indian rain-dance dress which had covered the grizzly spot where the ugly “Ruler of Flesh and Ivory” once stained the gallery’s walls.
And because someone had informed the Gazette.
“Sergeant Lockerman, I think they found something outside.” It was Collins, leaning inside the front door to call for him, his cap crooked on his sweating, balding head.
He stormed outside.
The first thing he noticed was the flashbulbs, brightening the morning dawn like tiny suns. The people from the Gazette were leaning over the shoulders of one of the investigators, with Krantz standing behind the crowd, not even bothering to stop them from snooping.
“Get the hell away from there!” Lockerman shouted as he ran toward the scene, pulling his nightstick out from a belt loop. “Put those cameras away before I fucking…”
One of the reporters took one last photo, and then they were all running off, in a pack, like frightened dogs.
In their wake, Lockerman saw what they had clustered around: the back door of a red station wagon was open like a large mouth, and both Krantz and the investigator were staring into it, horrified.
“What the…” He looked inside. It took only a few moments for him to recognize the face of Rodriquez, tattooed with thick, sloppy red lines. His face was circumscribed with a ribbon-sized line of dark red, the color of blood, which rounded his visage in a perfect circle. In the diameter of the red circle, slashing diagonally over his nose, lips, and eye sockets, was a similar line, thick as packing tape.
Eye sockets. The eyes themselves had been completely removed.
His face had been transformed into a featureless DO NOT sign, the sort which smokers and reckless drivers loathed.
No Rodriquez.
As if his identity hadn’t been removed anyway, by the brief look Lockerman got of the tattoos that stained nearly every inch of his brown flesh. Lockerman’s eyes focused on his chest and groin when they slid the naked man out of the station wagon: a mural of pink, grotesque humans with pig snouts and curled tails, mating and writhing in a demonic orgy beneath a Technicolor sky of fire bolts and flames. A three-headed monstrosity loomed above the scene, licking Rodriquez’ purple nipples with razored, hairy tongues. One arm clutched a phallic thunderbolt—another reached back behind itself, disappearing over Rodriquez’ collarbone.
If it wasn’t for those dead purple nipples, Lockerman wouldn’t have known it was a human being at all that he was placing on the sidewalk. He couldn’t stand to look at it, and they turned him over to lift him into a body bag that one of the investigators had rolled open beside them. Usually, bagging a body was the worst part of a crime scene—it made the death all the more real—but this time it was a godsend. He couldn’t wait to cover it all up.
Against protocol, they placed Rodriquez inside the bag face down. There were more tattoos on his back, but they weren’t nearly as terrifying as the sickness on his chest.
A disgustingly hairy forearm—an extension of the demon’s arm on the front of the man’s body—clutched a gigantic and sharp silver broadsword. Rodriquez’ back, Lockerman thought, looked like the cover of some corny sword-and-sorcery book. Written on the bloody blade, as if engraved there, was a word in cold, white, capital letters, misspelled:
SENSWORD
Censored.
Lockerman zipped the body bag, wishing he could do the same thing to those bastards from the Gazette.
Grave Markings: 20th Anniversary Edition Page 17