by Jeff Johnson
I sat my bag down in the living room and got a beer out of the fridge, carried it into the spare room. I sipped and looked the books over for a minute, then pulled down a coffee table volume entitled Vintage Tattoo Art, Volume Three. It had come out a year ago and somehow I wound up with a free copy. It was yet another art book showcasing the pitiful stylings of early tattoo artists, now in vogue for commercial reasons. I sat down and cracked it open.
They were definitely far from the great illustrators of their day. The majority of the work was poor beyond belief, almost as if monkeys had been given blunt crayon nubs and ether and then been pointed at a blank wall, but the author had included a vast amount of interesting historical information, painting a blurry, distorted portrait of an era in tattooing few people alive could remember. Tattoo culture should have been using it as an example of something unfortunate that had been overcome—like a crippling childhood learning disability or devastating juvenile obesity—but instead it was being spin-glorified because it was easy, and easy made stupid-level money fast for the new legion of rookies. It was how Ed Hardy got into the mall. Buttons came in and wound his wet body around my leg, then flopped out on the floor at my feet, trilling softly. I opened the book to the page I’d almost torn out when I first saw it.
On page 127 was a single image from a sheet of Roland Norton flash found in England. It was a splendorously ugly watercolor thing, featuring a few lopsided anchors, a lame spider web, a crooked star, and an androgynous skunk with a flower in its three-fingered cartoon paws. Coffee stains. A patch of mold on one corner. Yellowed overall. Underneath it was a caption, ‘Roland Norton, Panama, 1955.’ Even the handwriting was kindergarten. Just like mine, but not from my collection.
It had taken me three weeks to track down the contributor, an English tattoo artist by the name of Wes Ron working in the outskirts of London. Like me, he had inherited a checkered slice of tattoo history when his mentor retired. I’d only told Delia what I had learned next, after I’d sworn her to multiple levels of secrecy. It was the reason she was concerned enough to want to tag along on a twelve-hour drive.
“Piece of old-school shite, mate,” Wes Ron said when I’d finally gotten a hold of him. “I don’t know where we got it, just mess from the old boxes in back. But I tell you what, when that Vintage Tattoo book came out some wog bought the piece, twenty thousand US. Nip in San Francisco. Maybe Chinese. Only one I had, fuckin’ pity too.”
I told him that I had a few pieces lying around to pump information out of him. His advice:
“I tell you what, mate. Lot of calls after the nip. Some of ’em offered larger figures than what I got. Who the fuck knows why anyone would want that old stuff, but the value is going up, up, up. Hold out for the highest bidder. Wish to fuck I had.”
I snapped the book closed. Buttons looked up at me and blinked.
Old-school flash had been going up in value for the last decade or so, but I’d never heard of any of it trading hands at those prices. Up until Bling’s theft was discovered, I’d felt reasonably secure in displaying the originals in my collection at the Lucky. They were bolted behind Plexiglas and too high up to reach without a ladder. And of course the Lucky was almost always open and staffed by some hard boys and girls. In the few hours in the dead of the early morning, when it was closed, it was still reasonably secure. The new cops were the only cars out at that time, and the big windows gave them a good view of the interior of the tattoo shop. The doors were reinforced, and the windows themselves were skyscraper stock, bordering on bulletproof. They were the building’s most modern feature, installed at Wally’s behest before he left, one of the few sensible things he’d ever done, though since it had been my idea I’d been the one to arrange the entire thing. One of Nigel’s ex-girlfriends had bounced a brick off one of the windows only two weeks ago and managed to knock herself out when it hit her in the head. The only person I’d ever known who could break into the Lucky was me. And I knew lots of people.
So the only way to steal original art, a rare tattoo machine, or even a ballpoint pen from the Lucky during Bling’s time was to work there. He’d run the Monday day shift solo. I imagined he’d shown up early for once and in a mad scramble unbolted the covers on the Norton collection, copied them at one of the dozens of places downtown that could pull it off, and then made the switch. In my mind’s eye I could easily see him, sweating, giggling to himself, dragging the ladder back and forth while he snorted coke off the back counter. It was an eight-hour window, more than enough time. Everyone estimated that even a moron like Bling could have pulled off the entire operation in less than three. Nigel could have done the entire thing in forty minutes. Bling had left on a Monday night, probably on the same day he’d made the copies.
And he’d vanished without a trace. All of my people at the Lucky had called every tattoo artist they knew across the country and put the word out that we were looking for him, and for a time we were sure that he’d turn up somewhere. We even sent out pictures. But the months began to stack up. People forgot. Other weird things happened, and after a while only a handful of artists were on the lookout for a tall, mouthy kid with some old-school flash and a ridiculous name, one he’d probably changed anyway. We had turned over every stone to find out what his real name was and came up with more than a dozen possibilities. At some point I’d given up any hope of finding him without ever even knowing it.
I shook my head. Bling had probably lost himself in the endless labyrinth of shops on the East Coast for as long as he could stand it. It had been a mistake to come back west, but after two years he probably thought it was safe to work out of a small beach town in central California. Chances were that Bling had seen the book, but Wes Ron had no memory of ever speaking to him, though he allowed that it was certainly possible. Like many industry hacks, Jason Bling had been extremely fond of old-school tattoo designs, naturally because they were so incredibly easy to do and it made him look good when he did marginally better. It also didn’t bode well that he was so close to San Francisco, a place where a person with a known interest in collecting the obscure Roland Norton could be found. In that light, it was entirely possible he’d sold the pieces off more than a year ago.
I sipped beer and listened to the rain on the window, the purring of feckless Buttons. The refrigerator clicked on. It was peaceful. Dusty. Dark and calm and quiet. It made me sigh.
I had to go and find out. I drained the rest of my beer and let my gaze wander over the other books. If Bling still had the flash, fine. I’d take them back because they were mine. If not, I’d find out who he’d sold them to and take it up with them. They were stolen, after all. I didn’t want to get the law involved in anything I was involved in, but I would if I absolutely had to. However unprecedented it was, it seemed like I might actually have some legal legs to stand on. It seemed at least remotely possible that I wouldn’t be arrested instantly, though remotely was the key descriptor. I almost always got arrested, and every time it added to my record, making it more likely in the future. I’d seen my record, and there were things on it I had absolutely no memory of ever doing. Thinking about it made me shake my head. I’d arrest me too, and I knew it. I had a completely unpredictable track record. In the best light, it was possible that a jolly cop with Santa Claus qualities would just think I scored high on whimsy. But there were no best lights, and no cheesy sheriffs either.
And there were other reasons to be concerned, of course. Equally serious ones. Another thing that worried Delia, even though she hadn’t said it out loud, was that I’d trusted Bling. I’d given him a shot, tried to nurture him, and generally done the best I could by him. And the fucker had burned me. Beyond vengeance, there was the simple fact that from a purely business point of view, I couldn’t let it slide. The only reputation you could have in the tattoo world that was worse than a thief was that of an easy mark. Jason Bling had duped me and he had to pay. My reputation was at stake.
The code of the gentleman tattooer—or lady tattooer�
��was a work in progress, and no one had written the definitive pamphlet as of yet, but the salient points were gradually becoming more common. Much of it stemmed from the paranoia of the inheritors of tattooing’s Golden Stone Age, a loose and lawless period between the beginning of time and 1990.
Shit-talking had taken on an entirely new mysterious form, for instance. If you knew, to the point of being positive, that something potently shitty was going down at another tattoo shop, you were supposed to be deliberately vague and noncommittal, to the point where it looked as though you had suddenly spaced out. It was intended to send a simple message: I am in no way associated with that place. This was generally and often accurately reinterpreted as, “That hell pit is on a well-deserved doomsday death spiral and it will suck you in if you approach. Red flag! Red flag!”
It went on and on. The knowing look paired with “people sometimes work there for years” meant a happy, stable outfit. “That’s a lively place” meant someone was drinking way too much, and the awful admonishment “The kids these days, aw man, to be twenty-five again” meant obnoxious galore, you will be babysitting the boss’s new tattoo protégé, who will lecture you at length about how great he is, how he’s as tough as Bruce Lee, and how there are two full moons every month, but people are too stupid to figure it out. No amount of money is worth turning into a killer.
The traveling tattoo artist is common enough and always had been. It’s America. People move, sometimes freely. But subconduits existed inside the greater information superstructure, a changed thing with the Internet. So there was a chance that the Bling scenario could have this conclusion:
X: “Going to Portland. Might hit up the Lucky Supreme, see if they need anybody. You know anyone there?”
Y: “Nah. They were looking for some dude a few years ago.”
X: “Really? Why?”
Y: (darkly) “Dunno.”
Translation: Someone stole something valuable and they got away with it. And if X just happened to be the wrong sort of character, it retranslated as “Suckers.”
I pulled out my cell phone and scrolled through the numbers until I found Obi’s. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey boss, you get the rockin’ good news?”
“Yeah.” Obi still called me boss. “You’re absolutely sure it’s him?”
Obi laughed. He had a good laugh, a deep, joyful thing that never had anything bitter in it. Delia thought he was on the simple side, but he was happy, so she was only half right at best.
“Oh yeah, I’m positive. I’d recognize that douchebag anywhere. He’s a little fatter now and he lost that white rapper thing he had going, but it’s definitely Bling. He’s all gussied up like a fifties Pony Boy greaser now. Even picked up a restored Chevy lowrider somewhere. Real fire-breathing monster with his dream couch for a backseat.”
“Did he see you?”
“Not even, man. I was surfing outside of Santa Cruz all morning. Around noon I went to get a burrito and saw this new tattoo shop in a fucking mini mall. I was going to check it out when Bling pulled up, fucked with his hair for a minute and then unlocked the place and put out the OPEN sign. I watched for a little while just to make sure it was him and then I split. You’re coming down, right?”
“First thing in the morning. Should be there around ten tomorrow night.”
“Right on, man. You wanna crash at my place? You have to. When was the last time you slept on anyone else’s couch?”
Obi’s wife was a truly lovely woman, warm and kind, but also the worst cook I’d ever encountered. Portland could make a food snob out of anyone, except for that one woman. Worse still, she didn’t seem to know it, and Obi was too nice of a man to ever tell her. Her famous olive and onion casserole was a thing that left the tongue version of an afterimage. They also had a kid now, a little girl named Lisa. They called her Gigi. They had a happy life. There was no point in getting them close to anything like Bling.
“Nah,” I said. “I don’t want you involved. I’ll get a hotel in Monterey and visit Bling the day after tomorrow. I can’t risk staying in Santa Cruz. I don’t want to run into him before I’m ready.”
“Suit yourself,” Obi said. “Call me when you get in and we’ll meet up for drinks.”
We talked a little longer about his wife and their daughter. He told me once again at great length about her first smile, the state of her newly emerging teeth and what he was doing to comfort her in that regard, the varying quality of her poop, how she was progressing with various educational toys, and finally how he wanted to design a line of clothes for toddlers with tattoo motifs.
It was a little after ten by the time I finally got off the phone. I stepped out onto the porch and lit up a smoke and watched the rain. My thoughts rambled slow and directionless as I watched infrequent cars hiss down the street. Gradually, the happy vibe Obi had left me with dissipated.
Delia was right. I was five nine and 160 pounds. Jason Bling was fifteen years younger than me, several inches taller, and at least twenty pounds heavier, and he was a dumpster-style brawler who was fond of guns. His wicked temper ran right alongside his total lack of common sense. So there was little doubt it was going to be ugly. And it had to be, just because of the ambiguous gentleman’s code, and characters X and Y. Because it had to play out as X, “They were looking for some guy (no name) who had some of their old flash. They have a rad collection. Check it out.” Translation: They got their stolen stuff back. Those guys and gals roll solid. Serious inquiries only.
That translation was a big part of my job.
I seldom use an alarm clock, so when it went off at six a.m. it shocked the cats nearly to death. For an instant I thought the awful beeping siren meant that a dump truck was backing into my house. I ripped the cord out of the wall and briefly marveled at the cruelty of the machine. It had a backup battery in it, so it kept going. It seemed unreal to think that anyone had invented it, and ghastly and absurd that most people woke up to one of them every morning. The cats settled back down into their warm spots, sullen and suspicious, once I had well and truly broken the clock. It was a questionable start.
I made coffee in the dark kitchen and dressed quickly and pulled on a worn pair of steel-toed engineer boots. When the coffee was ready, I filled up a thermos mug and sipped from it as I packed my duffel bag. I tossed in enough clothing for three days, as I doubted I’d be gone longer. If I was, I could always do laundry at Obi’s and risk his wife’s poisonous vegan hospitality. I added my sketchbook and a few mechanical pencils in case I got bored, plus two steel ball bearings from a merry-go-round for when Bling got mouthy.
In every way, a gumball-sized ball bearing is a superior weapon. You can throw it at point blank range to great effect, hold it in the sleeve of a sturdy jacket and use it as a sap, or even wrap your fist around it and hammer away at the soft parts of a person. It wiped off easily with a little spit or some rainwater, and if you ever got caught with one, it was much less of a hassle to explain than a blatantly obvious weapon like a gun or a knife. I always claimed that I’d just found it and thought it was cool, and it worked because it was. Delia said she could hide an even dozen inside of herself somehow, and maybe, maybe she meant her stomach. A metal ball also bounces off of things, like people for instance, so you can pick it up and use it again. A bullet cannot be fired twice. A metal ball can be hand fired forever, again and again, and it won’t break, catch, run out, or backfire, and it doesn’t need a silencer. It could roll right through the grates in a rain gutter. It did weird and unpredictable shit to the underside of the car behind you on the freeway if you dropped it out the window. It’s dependable that way. Plus the ball bearing has epic style, which appealed to my vanity. It had in fact become a symbol for me.
It was still dark and raining when I started the BMW. I stopped by an ATM and withdrew a couple hundred bucks and then headed in the direction of the Lucky Supreme to drop off my spare key for Delia.
When I drove over the Burnside Bridge I looked do
wn at the river, just like I always do. The Willamette was a wide, slow expanse of black, dappled with the reflection of the gold and white pre-dawn halo of downtown. Sometimes at sunset, if the angle of the light was just right, you could see big gobs of oil rising from the bottom and dispersing on the surface in vast, prismatic pancakes. A massive Korean tanker was docked at the grain silos on the east side. They had always been a good source of premium hash and opium, back when I cared about that kind of thing. According to Nigel, the Russian tankers were the new smorgasbord. Every drug known to man, explosives, and they filmed their own porn on location.
Old Town began at the west end of the bridge and spread north. I drove slowly through the crumbling Chinese dragon gates and angled up to Sixth Street. It was a strange wedge of city at any time, but it was particularly unusual just before sunrise. The streets were nearly empty, so the place had an eerie, post-apocalyptic ghost town feel, mostly because all of the trash was new: a visual paradox. The nightlife had wrapped it up and vanished like roaches into the bigger cracks, and the daytime office crowd had not yet put in their manic appearance. Flaco’s Tacos was sealed with battered aluminum slats. The Rooster Rocket was dark, the front door triple locked and chained. It looked like it had been abandoned for years. The fluorescent banks in the Korean mini-mart were out, and it looked like a derelict junk shop full of broken plastic patio furniture. It took light to bring that place anywhere close to convincing. Only the Lucky’s neon and the streetlights burned at that hour.