“At taxpayers' expense,” Frizzell finished for J. T.
“-in, I was going to say, a potter's field full of John and Jane Does. This way he can be buried at the local churchyard or wherever the family wants.”
“Can't 'magine any church 'round here'd want his carcass stinkin' up the ground, not even the pet cemetery'd take him'd be my guess.” He chuckled at his little joke.
“He was hated that much?”
“Hate ain't narry a strong enough word for what folks thought of Sanocre. He was Satan walkin', that man. I thought a killin' 'im myself once or twice, if you want the God's honest truth.. J. T. suspected that Frizzell had often wanted to make good on his thoughts. The lawman's sense of legality or fear or both likely held “Whitey” in check. He dared not ask the man with the guns, but he did ask, “Was there any saving grace, any trace of good in the man you might point to?”
“None by me. Certainly none by his family. Tell you what, Dr. Thorpe, when no one in your own family can stand the sight of you, maybe you ought to go off and get yourself killed up in New England, ahhh, Jersey.”
“So you think my bringing news to these people about Max Sanocre's death and possible murder is a mistake?”
The deputy had been bitching, moaning, complaining, and whining the entire way out to the house in the cypress wood, the deputy's car now rounding a tight bend in the dirt road, red-rimmed and clay-colored, giving way to sand, loose and pulling. He whined about too much rain, the flooding in the bottom land, crop failures, something about a bovine disease and scrawny hogs this year, went on about too much humidity, not enough wind, the condition of Fords, that Chevys had gone “commie” and foreign trade would one day destroy all that America ever stood for. He bitched about the squeak in his right rear tire, the distances he had to cover in his work, the long hours, short pay, lack of help and understanding from the sheriff to his wife, and that he feared his wife hated being married to a cop. He bemoaned the fact he hadn't ever seen New Jersey or New York or none of them New places up North until he finally, winding up with an enormous sigh, wound down like a clock gone dead, his entire, hefty chest deflating in balloon fashion with a few remnant words: “Well, here we are. The Sanocre place.”
Medical Examiner John Thorpe, riding in the passenger seat, had squirmed into the small Nissan and felt jammed next to the officer's thirty-ought shotgun, which the deputy nervously and often fondled. J. T. looked up now at the Sanocre house, a shack really. One could hardly call the place a house. Weathered clapboards put together like so many cards in the wind, it leaned to one side as if more fatigued than any living thing on earth.
Pecan trees intermingled with willows and cypress; Spanish moss tossed about like salad leavings everywhere, including the front porch and yard. A pastoral place for a lovely home if one were to build here, he thought. As J. T. climbed from the patrol car, he found himself out of his time, staring at the old shack of a home on cinder blocks and yes, about to topple, and then there were the Snuffy Smith characters arrayed on its peeling, cracking porch. FBI Agent and Medical Examiner John Thorpe wondered if he'd stepped out of the legal boundaries of the United States of America. Somewhere along the line of his trek to discover the truth about Tattoo Man, the flight he'd taken from New Orleans International airport on a private carrier, had landed in Gator Head Bayou-Home of Snoutnose, The Largest Alligator in captivity in America. All the cliches and nightmares J. T. had ever heard about or entertained regarding Louisiana proved true in this patch of place. From the single strip, dirt airport, they had taken the long, winding car ride into the interior of Diamondback, Louisiana. And wasn't Diamondback in America? Wouldn't a postage stamp cost the same here as anywhere? Sure-he silently answered his own thoughts-if you could locate a stamp machine in Diamondback. While J. T. amused himself with his own musings. Deputy Sheriff Frizzell continued the touchy-feely with his shotgun, his fingers displaying indecision on whether he should or should not unfasten the lock and take the hefty and quite visible weapon with him to the front doorstep of this place.
J. T. felt bemused by the local color, from the deputy down to the hanging vines, the huge cypress knolls and the gnarled and bubbled, toiled and troubled roots of trees here which he guessed the obvious residences of gnomes. J. T. had asked on local law-enforcement authorities in New Orleans to pave his way. Frizzell had been waiting for him at the local airport. For all Frizzell knew, the people here at the Sanocre home might well be harboring a murderer.
J. T. had made clear his suspicion that someone who knew Max Sanocre had had a hand in his death, someone who also knew dogs, and from the moment they pulled up to the front yard of this place, dogs appeared and approached, some on four legs, some on three, some inching forward, some crawling on their bellies, some straight up and fast, while others held back in the shadows. It gave J. T. a strange feeling, as if the dogs lived here and ran this place, and the people on the porch were being held hostage by man's best friend.
Dog attacks being on the rise all across America, J. T. hesitated at the side of the car undl Deputy Frizzell finally came out on his side, deciding to leave the shotgun, while unbuckled, on its pedestal between driver and passenger seat. J. T. noticed that the deputy had also unfastened his. 38 where it rested on his hip.
“Are you expecting trouble?” J. T. asked.
“Always prepare with these kinda folk for any possibility. You learn that when you've been here for long.”
“Then you're not originally from around here?” J. T. asked.
“Didn't saya that.” The deputy pulled up his pants and started to part the dogs, a few of them growling, and Frizzell in turn barked like a madman at the dogs, laughing at their cowed response. He then told J. T. to follow him up to the porch.
“I 'spect one or more of them that's living in Max's old shack here's done him in. Is that what you boys in Quantico wanna hear?”
“No, we don't wanna hear anything.”
“What you think, I mean. Is-at what ya think?”
“Yeah, some of us suspect family involvement in the murder, but first I just want a family member to ID the corpse from photos.”
“If he had no identification on him, how'd you trace him back to here?” asked the deputy, his nasally twang reaching to the family on the porch, all engaged in watermelon and lemonade, it appeared.
Some children waved madly at the deputy, shouting that they wanted to hear the siren blast. J. T. heard the children shout at the deputy as “Uncle Whitey.”
“You're related to the family?”
“I am. Something of a cousin to 'em. Kids I know from after-school programs, fund-raiser and like that.”
J. T. felt suddenly vulnerable. If the entire town knew that Maxwell Sanocre had disappeared one night, then tacidy covered it up, and the helpful law agent is part of that conspiracy against the hated Sanocre, then what might they do to a stranger from “New England” to shut him up? A cover-up of a cover-up, the family secret growing ever deeper with J. T. six feet deep?
As if reading J. T.'s visage and understanding his thoughts, Deputy Frizzell quickly and firmly assured him, “I don't condone what happened to that animal Max Sanocre, but like I tol' ya, there come times I wanted to murder that low-life sonofabitch, I tell you. If someone was drove to it-and I'm not saying they were-well, I understand it. The man was the vilest thing walked on two legs in my experience.”
The tallest, oldest looking man on the porch stepped toward them, waving in a friendly gesture, asking them if he could help the pair, nodding to his cousin the officer, and adding, “Some reason you're out this way, Whitey?”
“Got some news, folks,” announced Frizzell in calmer tones than Houston's command control during a satellite launch, J. T. thought.
Everyone on the porch stared hard at the stranger-John Thorpe. The deputy hastily introduced J. T. as “A card-carrying G-man in search of a killer, maybe two, maybe three.” There were three adults in and around the porch, all standing and staring now
like their small army of dogs. They all looked like they wanted J. T's blood.
J. T., through a thorough trek about the world of tattoo art-and gaining an education in the process-had convinced first one man to help him and then another until he learned of the signature artwork of Deltrace D'lazetti, and he'd had to travel to Missouri to meet D'lazetti who, after long searching in his files and mind, came up with “a guy more crude than Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stem rolled into one who treated women like… like g'damn meat loaf.” This identification led to Louisiana.
“Sure, I can clearly recall the artwork. Hell, man, it won me my first major prize,” D'lazetti had told J. T.
“Really?”
“At the state fair. Ever since, I've been highlighted in every major tattoo publication in the country. You kidding?”
“M.E.'s seldom kid around,” replied J. T., “and when we do chide, you'll know it.”
D'lazetti had grimaced, asking, “Chide?”
J. T. pushed on, replying with his own question, asking, “What more can you tell me about this man.”
“Such as?”
Man, this guy's stoned, J. T. recalled telling himself, wondering if it were a prerequisite of the artistic life to do drugs, or an affectation since Edgar Allan Poe's day. “Such as… such as his name,” replied J. T. “Right now he's a John Doe, and will be buried as such if we can't learn more about him in the next twenty-four hours. His time on the taxpayers' dole has run out, you see, and as such-”
“Dog or Maddog or Mean's Hell or Tough as Bison or something like 'at is all I can rightly recall outta my head, because I do remember this guy was an ass, a real creep. Mean as hell, and he made my skin crawl, and ain't too many can make my skin crawl, you know, but he was the best thing ever happened to me when I showed him at the fair.”
“Showed him?” J. T. flashed a mental image of the man's body art being displayed at a sideshow carnival.
“Well, not him, not really him, closeups of the art, man.”
“You have photos?”
“ 'Sat what they call irre-irrefusable evidence, man?”
J. T. stifled a laugh at the pothead. “Does his name and the date appear on the photos?”
“Name, date, dme, you name it.”
“We've got to find those pictures then.”
“Be my guest.” He pointed at sixteen shelves of photo records of his work. “Sony, been in the business a long dme. Started when I was just a kid, and I'm a damn sight older than I look. I think it's the small frame and height. People think I'm Michael J. Fox, you know, the actor? Hardly looks like he ages.”
“This could take a while,” J. T. said, staring at the books of tattoo artwork representing an obviously disordered life. There appeared no dates on the booklets.
'Take all the time you want.”
“I could use your help. Your country needs you.”
“My country? Hmmm. Never ever thought of it as my country. Strange world we live in, Dr. Thorpe.”
“Strange indeed.”
“Strange, strange world… Are you telling me that this guy's name is, you know, like a matter of like, you know, national security, something like that? This guy plotting some sort of McVeigh thing against the government or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.” J. T. hated to lie, but he saw no alternative. Already, the stoned artist had dismissed the fact J. T. had told him the man was deceased, a John Doe. Or perhaps the artist understood the term John Doe as little as he did the word chide.
Deltrace D'lazzeti metaphorically rolled up his sleeves like a farmer at this point, saying, “OK, let's have at it. But be forewarned, dude, records like CDs I can put my hands on, but records for business, I don't keep so good, so it could take a while.” J. T. offered to order a pizza and a jug of wine, if it would help. The artist liked the idea, and so they rolled up their sleeves and dug in.
They whittled it down to the approximate last time he'd done body art on “Horace” and the tattoo artist said, “That'd be the work I did on his ass. Can't be stoned when you're doing precision work, 'specially round the geni-till-ya area.”
“Now you're telling me more than I want to know,” J. T. replied, holding up a hand. “What exactly do you remember about him?”
“Disgust. Rock-bottom disgust, man. Guy disgusted me the entire way, man, and that's what I was thinking at the fair when I stood up to get the award, disgust.”
J. T. could not help but smile. He wanted to laugh.
D'lazetti continued, saying, “But, but, the dude paid in bread, real green, not like I get usual…”
“Drugs?” suggested J. T., wondering why in God's creation people allowed this guy anywhere near their bodies with a hot needle and ink while he was on PCP or some other potent drug.
“Sometimes drugs, yeah, but more oft than not, it's a damned Pomeranian puppy or a lousy canned ham somebody ripped off, a bottle of scotch, somebody's unused toys like once I got a fish tank for doing a big job.”
“So, you do remember this man?” J. T. held up the photos of Horace on the slab, and the close-ups of the artwork.
“The face, the ass, the art, the disgust… sure, but not the name.”
J. T. gnashed his teeth.
“It'll take the record to jog that back.”
The artist, typical of his peripheral world, managed, stoned, to hold himself together long enough to locate a billing file buried beneath a stack of newspapers and magazines-US, FAME, People, Fangoria, Scream Factory, USA Today. D'lazetti did this during the time that J. T. had begun on the photo collection. This collection of data he recalled after pizza and Pepsi. In the manner of an embarrassed teen, he showed the index cards to J. T. and said, “I think I found a shortcut. I try to keep the names and numbers of all my clients in here. If I filled out a card on him, it should take you right to the number of the book and the page where his photos are, if…”
The cards saved J. T. hours, and they did lead circuitously to the photo shoot and photos. On the billing card came the name, phone number, and address of Horace the Tattoo Man, which read Maxwell Sanocre, Rt. 4, Diamondback, Louisiana. On the card, the middle nickname didn't read Dog or Maddog or Maniac, but “Abominable.”
“Abominable” Max Sanocre. Actually the nickname was far from any of those proffered by the spongy-headed D'lazetri. But J. T. felt good, a sense of closure coming with this news, for finally, John Doe had an identity, such as it was.
QuesUoning of friends and neighbors in the small town of Diamondback had netted J. T. little information. The police stadon prided itself on the fact it was hardly needed and hardly the size of a pair of telephone booths stood side-by-side, and about as public. J. T. decided he wouldn't hold out too much hope of help here in Diamondback. The actual county sheriffs office lay some twenty-nine tarmac miles to the north, at the county seat.
However, J. T. puzzled together a broken picture of Sanocre's having “moved to Utah in search of open territory.” The story was told and retold by anyone J. T. or Deputy Frizzell had asked. J. T. gained the impression that even the local schoolchildren had been tutored in the same story about “Abominable” Maxwell Sanocre who, it appeared, had terrorized this hamlet from the day he was bom.
And so now, here they stood, Deputy Frizzell, his thumbs in his waistband, buried below his protruding stomach, and J. T., looking out of place from his Ralph Lauren glasses to his expensive leather shoes, marking him as a visitor from Mars, standing before the platform porch of the place where Abominable practiced being abominable the most-on his own family.
Now more young people, large burly men and boys, spilled from the doorways of the house, over the porch and into the yard, all wanting to know why their deputy cousin and uncle had come in the company of this obvious outlander. What had happened and what was going on telegraphed from every hang-mouth face.
Deputy Frizzell explained the situation bluntly and without fanfare. The news garnered no tears, but it did get a pair of whoops and yahoos and
curses. One of the boys said, “Damned glad to hear it, Dr. Thorpe. Thank you.” The implication being, “You can go now,” J. T. thought.
Another of the sons asked, “But why'd you come all this way to tell us about it when you coulda' just phoned it in?”
“Did he ever make it to Utah? That where he died?” asked another of the younger boys who'd missed the earlier conversation about the mysterious death in New Jersey that had led J. T. to their doorstep.
One of the older siblings, a girl holding firm to a baby, brought her little brother up-to-date with a few choice words: “Don't be stupid, Kyle.”
J. T. added, “You see, the body went unidentified, and it took a great deal of detective work, using his tattoo art, to trace it-your father-”
“Gran-pap,” corrected the younger boy.
“Yes, of course, pardon.”
“You think he was murdered up there in New Jersey?” asked the young woman with the child in her arms as she stepped forward, the baby cooing mam-mam-mam! in her ear.
“Matter of fact, yes.”
“How was he kilt?” asked the older woman who hadn't budged from her porch chair.
“Are you Mrs. Sanocre?” J.T. asked.
“That'd be me.”
“We need to talk.”
“About?”
“Arrangements, return of Mr. Sanocre's remains.”
“We don't want his cussed remains here,” said one of the youngest boys.
“He were the Devil,” said the young girl with the babe in her arms. “Ever'body knows-sit!”
J. T. saw it flicker in her eyes, the hatred, yes, but also the truth. “You killed him, yourself, didn't you, young lady. I read you like a book.” She done nothing of the kind!” defended one strong-armed fellow instantly at her side who didn't have the same coloring or hair shade as the others.
“Your husband, Miss Sanocre?” asked J. T. of the man. “Yes.” 'Tell me, son. You own any of these dogs?” asked J.T.
“What's going on?” asked Mrs. Sanocre from the porch chair.
“That bastard broke my mama's legs, both of 'em, just outta meanness and evil. If he got killed, it was God put him dead, not us,” said the young girl.
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