by Ang Pompano
The old man was a collector but by no means a pack rat. Everything had a place. Most of his mementos were on a floor-to-ceiling bookcase in his office that took up one wall of the small room. I looked at his shelves trying to get a hint of who he was. At one point, I didn’t give a damn about knowing, but things had changed.
Judging from some of the things he kept, the guy that I thought was a hardnosed private investigator had a sentimental side. Although I couldn’t be sure why he kept some of the things he did. I wondered if they had to do with cases he worked on or something more personal. There was a lump of grey volcanic rock, pretty heavy for something that could fit in the palm of your hand. An eight-inch statue that looked like an Aztec god had me stumped. Maybe he was into Mesoamerican religion. I turned the statuette over and found the word Mexico scratched in the bottom of the terra cotta piece and decided it was a souvenir. In a Plexiglas stand, there was a Joe Montana football card. The plaque read “Upper Deck Promo Card Limited Edition of 1991.” Funny, Montana was a hero of mine in those years when my father was gone. I had the same card. I don’t remember who gave it to me. I think my mom said some relative who lived far away sent it to me. Another small statue, this one of Sherlock Holmes—the one played by Basil Rathbone, my favorite Holmes. The old man’s books could have come right off my own shelf; everything from forensics to biographies of Mark Twain and the Beatles, to mysteries by McBain, Chandler, and Christie.
In a shirt box on the top shelf was a stack of papers about an inch thick. I leafed through them. His PI license and several awards, one from the grateful state of Georgia for finding the Granville kidnapper.
There were also a couple of diplomas and course completion certificates in criminal justice. I had a little more respect for him that he didn’t hang that stuff on the wall. Then to my surprise, I found a small picture in a plastic frame with no glass. I knew the picture well. It was my sixth-grade class picture—a chubby kid with curly hair and a big smile. How the hell did he get that? He had been long gone by the time I was in the 6th grade.
From the second shelf, I picked up a plastic Magic 8 ball. Was this how he solved his cases?
I held the ball in my left hand and put my right hand on top of it.
“Will I be able to straighten this mess out and get on to L.A. soon?”
I turned the ball over and gazed down. A blue triangle floated into the window in the ball: DON’T COUNT ON IT
*****
Well, I was going to count on it. My goal of closing the office and getting my ass out to L.A. had not changed, even though it seemed to be getting further and further away from me. Now I had to either clear my father of murder or prove that he was a killer. Did he murder Andy Keller or not? Johnson had a pretty good amount of circumstantial evidence that he did. And as far as I knew, he did not know that my father went missing from the gallery a little before Hicks was killed. Could he have gotten hold of a gun and killed Hicks? Did he bring one with him? At this point, I was even beginning to doubt that he had Alzheimer’s. If he did do it, there was nothing Johnson or I could do to help him. I found myself nodding and decided I couldn’t put off going to sleep any longer.
29
EARLY THE NEXT MORNING I was back at the coffee table where I found a list of things that Greenleaf had left for me that needed attention. This stuff wasn’t going to finish itself up. I started by writing up a report on a case I had recently finished, a premarital investigation that my father had started for a Savannah socialite’s family. The future husband wasn’t a gigolo as suspected, and in fact, he had more money than she did, which made her father happy. I didn’t feel the need to tell them that the future groom was running the same investigation on the socialite through another agency. Who was I to plant a seed of doubt in a romance between two equally shallow lovebirds?
I finished the report just as I heard Greenleaf come in. I went out to the front office and handed it to her.
“One more down. Get it off please so we can get a check,” I said.
“I didn’t hear from you all day yesterday. I thought maybe you took off for California.”
“I wound up in Hilton Head with my father. We found Hicks.”
Greenleaf looked pleased. It’s not a look that I’d seen from her often. I knew it was because she approved of me bringing my father along.
“So I heard.”
Of course, she did. Max must have been keeping her up to date from the time we spoke on the bridge until we got back.
“So, you know Hicks was murdered?”
She bobbed her head. “But, there’s something more. I can tell. What is it?”
“Why do you say that?”
Greenleaf sighed. “You must suck at poker. I can read your face like your thoughts are printed there in a Tahoma 14 font.”
“Okay, okay. Now that Hicks is dead, Johnson has decided that the Keller case is murder.”
“Well, that’s what you wanted right along. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but he’s focusing on Big Al.”
Greenleaf sat down hard into her seat. Her face was pale. “What are you looking at?”
“Did you know that brass ring that you kicked under the bush was from Big Al’s cane?”
“Are you saying I kicked it away to hide it?”
“Did you?”
“No. Of course not. I didn’t even know I kicked it.”
“But you recognized it when I showed it to you.”
“I thought there was something like it on Big Al’s cane, but I thought it was impossible that it was from his. I still do. Maybe someone else lost it.”
“Do you believe that?”
“At this point, I don’t know what to believe,” she said.
For once, Greenleaf and I agreed on something. “Are you all right, Greenleaf? I have to go check something out.”
The color returned to her face and she sprung from the chair like a superhero. “Do what you have to do and clear you father. I’m holding down the fort here.”
I didn’t want to get into it with her, but I was going out to see what I could find out about the guy with the bullet hole tat. If it implicated my father further or cleared him, I wasn’t going to worry about it.
30
HOW HARD COULD IT BE to find a guy with such a ridiculous tattoo? The tattoo still had some outline that had to be inked in, so I assumed that the guy was working with a local tattoo shop. There was no guarantee, but it was a place to start.
I thought I’d seen a sign for a tat studio in the Village Plaza when I had gone to the Post Office. I never noticed the actual studio, but then the Post Office wasn’t easy to find either. It was conveniently tucked in the back of the drugstore next to the pharmacy counter, which struck me as a clever way of tempting tourists to buy Ava Island Beach T-shirts and beach towels when they came in to mail post cards. For all I knew, the tattoo studio was tucked into the Post Office, too.
I pulled into the Village Plaza on Ocean Boulevard to find the only available parking space blocked by a plastic sandwich board with the warning that the lot was reserved for plaza customers only. It seemed counterproductive to waste a space like that and I was about to get out and move the sandwich board when I caught a glimpse of a guy in a green shirt coming out of Cafe Garbanzo at the far end of the shopping center. I saw him get into a boat of a car, a white ’61 Pontiac Catalina convertible. The car was older than I was, but even from across the lot, I could see it was still a sweet vehicle with a huge hood and trunk.
I drove over and grabbed the space. Once parked, I noticed the lot attendant, a little guy in a florescent safety vest, writing down my plate number. He must have been no more than five-six, but with his aviator sunglasses and the cock of his cap, he carried himself as if he were a foot taller. I walked over to him.
I got the impression that he took his job of keeping the lot open for the
store customers seriously.
“Where’s the tattoo shop?”
“Inside the drug store,” he said with a deadpan look on his face.
“Are you kidding me?”
He broke into a grin. “Of course, I am. You’re standing right in front of it.”
I looked at the covered walkway that ran the length of the U-shaped shopping plaza. The tattoo parlor was marked by a small wooden sign that hung from the rafters: The Golden Osprey Tattoo Studio.
“Right.”
“I’ll bet you’re one of those guys who needs his wife to find the mustard for him because he’s too lazy to move things around in the refrigerator.”
Yeah, and I’ll bet he wasn’t. “If I was married, maybe I would be.”
As I walked up the steps to the walkway, I could feel his eyes on my back. I’m sure he thought I was parking illegally in the lot and going someplace other than to the tattoo shop.
When I went in The Golden Osprey, it seemed more like an art gallery than a tattoo shop. A large open space with light oak floors and upholstered benches situated so you could sit and admire photos of tattooed bodies as if you were in an art museum. I walked around the room admiring the pictures. There was one of a female back with the Mona Lisa. Another showed someone’s shoulder decorated with the Hands of the Creation. Then there was a beautiful woman’s breast inked with a depiction of Starry Night, an ankle with Picasso’s Peace Dove, a Monet on an instep, a Dalí on a thigh, an Andy Warhol Soup Can on a butt.
A man with graying temples dressed in an expensive looking blue suit greeted me.
“Take your time and look around. If you find anything that interests you, or if you have questions, feel free to ask,” he said.
“I do have a question,” I said to the man. “Do you do bullet holes?”
“If you’re asking if can I do bullet holes, the answer is I can do anything. Will I do them?” He glanced around the room at his neatly framed works of art. “I’m afraid bullet holes would not be suited to my clientele.”
An uppity tattoo artist. What do you know?
“So, if someone had such a tattoo, it would be safe to say he didn’t get it here.”
“As I said, not my clientele. Could I interest you in something perhaps a bit more enlightened? Maybe Munch’s The Scream.” He pointed to a photograph of an upper arm with the faithful representation of the painting. “That’s actually my arm. I had that done to celebrate firing my shrink and opening this business.”
Why didn’t I think of that when I fired my shrink? I passed on the tat. I already had a ring on my finger that brought back nothing but bad memories, and that was enough body art for me. “I’m looking for a guy with a bullet hole tattoo. So, I take it you don’t know who I’m talking about.”
“Afraid not.”
“Any ideas where someone might get the type of tat I’m talking about?”
He wrinkled his nose as if he were smelling low tide. “You can try Beach Inks down by the UPS store on Beach Street. But I’m telling you now, you won’t get the quality you’ll get here.”
*****
I left the Golden Osprey irritated, and when I’m like that I get hungry. I saw a kid walking by with a donut and the power of suggestion made me crave one of the great cinnamon sugar donuts that Max had told me they sold across the street at the Mini Donut stand.
I didn’t think it would hurt to make a quick dash over and grab half dozen for the road and maybe bring one to Greenleaf, too. I hadn’t counted on a long line. I must have waited all of ten minutes but it was worth it. Bag of donuts in hand, I headed back to my truck in the lot across the street.
When I got to the parking lot, the guy in the florescent vest was standing behind my truck and writing in his pad. He didn’t say anything but apparently my time in the parking spot was about up. As I drove out of the lot, I noticed a small folded piece of paper under my wiper blade. My first thought was that it was from whoever had been taunting me about being a lousy detective. I drove through the village until I found a parking space on the side of the road down by Ava Island Beach. I got out and read the note. Friendly Reminder. The Ava Island Village parking lot is for customers of the plaza only. It was signed D. Weeks.
Busted for getting my donuts. Technically, I was a plaza customer since I went into the tattoo shop. So I spent a little time across the street at the Mini Donut stand. What’s the big deal? I balled the note up and threw in on my seat. Then I ate a donut as I drove toward Beach Street.
The ride should have taken five minutes, but because of the beach traffic, bicycles, pedicabs, and jaywalkers, it took almost twenty minutes. I could have walked it faster.
Beach Ink was a small storefront place with a dusty parking lot that it shared with three other businesses.
When I opened the door to the shop, a bell rang and I walked into a room with walls covered to the ceiling with paper diagrams of tattoos to choose from—not unlike one of the many T-shirt stores on Ava Island, but instead of cute sayings and pictures of anchors and palm trees, these were mostly Gothic representations of bloody knives, skulls, dragons, and bats. I was sure I was in the right place.
I could hear talking and a buzz from a machine in the backroom. It seemed to be a one-man operation so I took one of three chairs by the window to wait.
“I’ll be done in about ten minutes.” It was a female voice that came over a speaker. It was obvious that I was being watched on CCTV. Almost exactly ten minutes later, a young woman came out of the back room. The first thing I noticed besides her orange hair was that she had a full sleeve of tattoos on her left arm. I got up as she walked toward me.
“Hi, I’m...”
“Lo,” she said and walked out of the door.
Realizing she was a customer, I sat down and thumbed through an Inked magazine. The next person who walked out of the back was a tall woman with jet black hair. As far as I could see, there wasn’t a tattoo on her. I lowered my head and went back to the magazine.
“Are you here to read or to get a tat?”
“Neither. I need information. Are you the owner?”
She took a step back and her eyes narrowed.
“Yes...”
“Al DeSantis.” I put out my hand.
“You a cop?”
“Private investigator.”
“Ah. A cop without a health plan. Malaysia Streetbridge.” She took my hand. She had a grip like a longshoreman.
A college-age kid came in. He had a tattoo on his neck that said Tina Forever. There was a line drawn through the name Tina that looked like it was done with a ballpoint pen.
“Am I late? I’m psyched about the next session.”
“You’re fine,” she said. “This won’t take long.”
Malaysia turned to me. “Now what’s this about?”
“I’m trying to get a lead on a guy. I don’t know his name but he has a distinctive tattoo: a bullet hole.”
“No exit wound?”
“Yeah, that too. Have you done one like that?”
“More like twenty. Where is it? Shoulder, stomach, groin, all of the above?”
Groin? Who the hell would get a bullet hole there?
“On his shin. This is a young guy. Know him?”
She thought a moment. She stuck her hands in her pockets. “Look, I’m a licensed tattoo artist. I do everything by the book and that includes keeping my client’s confidentiality. Nice talking to you, Mr. DeSantis.” She glanced at the customer as if she were looking for approval.
He grinned.
“I’ll be right with you. Let me go in the back and set up,” she said to him.
First a tattoo artist with a stick up his ass, and now one with high ethics. I would have never guessed it was such a noble profession.
As I was about to get into my truck, the customer with the neck t
attoo ran up to me. “Yo Dude, wait up. Couldn’t help hearing.”
“You know the guy I’m looking for?”
“I could give you a hint if I could remember.”
I reached into my pocket and took out a twenty. “Memory coming back?”
“Another twenty might do it.”
“Not for a hint.” I took out another ten.
“Okay. I was here when a dude was getting a tattoo like that.”
“A bullet hole?”
“Yeah. He had these powerful legs like he was a cyclist. And I heard him complain about how he hoped the pain wouldn’t give him a problem at his job.”
“And his name?”
“Who did you say you were looking for?”
“A guy named Davis,” I said.
“Yeah, Davis. That was his name.”
I folded up the money. “Listen, wanker. I don’t have time for games.”
“No, no, no, no, no! All right, okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t get his name. But he sounds like the guy you’re looking for.”
“Where can I find him?”
“No idea.” He was holding up his hands palms out. “Straight talk. I’m sure he bikes. I wouldn’t lie.”
“That’s it?” I took the ten and stuffed it in his shirt pocket. The twenty went into my own pocket. “Tina is a lucky girl to be rid of you. Get out of here.”
The little twerp went back into the tattoo parlor without another peep.
31
I PULLED UP IN FRONT of the porch at the Blue Palmetto and was about to bring a donut in to Greenleaf when the note on the seat caught my eye. Mr. D. Weeks seemed to see everything that goes on in that parking lot. I wondered if he ever noticed a bicyclist with an inked bullet hole on his leg. I started the truck and ate two more donuts as I drove back to the village.
A huge white 4-wheel drive was pulling out of a spot shaded by a tree draped in Spanish moss in the center strip of the Village Plaza parking lot. The guy behind the wheel was trying to back out while holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I waited patiently. The laid-back Georgia lifestyle must be taking the edge off of my attitude. Back in the northeast, I would have called him a jerk or worse and given him the finger. Maxine would be proud of my new-found self-restraint. When he left, I took the parking space.