Sydney Naismith was known only to his clients and the police. Thirty-eight years ago, when he was starting up in Toronto, he’d been a little too careless about sterilizing his needles, and tattoos had gotten infected. Three people needed hospitalization, one of them died, and Naismith ended up blacklisted for life by the International Association of Body Artists.
Lestrade had decided to tackle Naismith first.
Moving farther and farther down the ladder as his hair got thinner and grayer, he had sunk into a one and a half room basement apartment in what Forest Green liked to think of as its slum district: four square blocks that any self-disrespecting skid row in Chicago or New York would have labeled lower middle-class without a second thought. His bed was a fold-up, his kitchenette was on the street side of his living room, and…
“Where are you hiding the equipment now, M. Naismith? Lestrade asked him, more curious than anything else.
“We know you haven’t gone out of business,” Clayton added. “We ran one of our regulars in just last week, with a new flower on her ankle in your distinctive lack of style.”
“Art. That’s why they call it ‘body art,’ Detective, and I don’t like you blighting it just because you don’t understand it. That’s why I ever got into the business in the first place. To practice art. Then one effing mistake and they try to kick me out for life. You don’t bottle art up, Sergeant Hatchet Face.” (Lestrade noticed with wry amusement that Naismith had slid from her junior partner to herself without a pause.) “Or it eats you alive from inside out,” he went on. “Like it says in the Gospel of Thomas, if you let out what’s inside, it’ll save you. If you don’t, it’ll destroy you. I’m an artist, pollies. You want the tools of my art, get yourselves a warrant and search the place. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour. Take you longer to get the warrant than it’d take for me to give this dump a whole new paint job, floor to ceiling, maybe put in new wood trim, too.”
“I see you still like to go on talking half an hour after making your point,” Lestrade told him. “As it happens, today we aren’t interested in ferreting you out for the benefit of IABA.”
“You’re safe enough in this town,” Clayton added, “until whatever you let out of you destroys somebody else.”
“That was thirty-eight years ago, Pollydeck.”
“Make it another thirty-eight, and we’ll get you into a museum,” said Clayton. “And don’t call Sergeant Lestrade ‘Hatchet Face.’ Here.” He produced the sample book. “This yours?”
Naismith took it, riffled through it, shook his head. “Nope. Looks likes what’s-his-name’s style. Where’d you get it?”
“Turned in at our Lost and Found,” Clayton lied easily.
“Well, better try my…colleagues.” Naismith said the last word like an insult. “Especially…what’s-his-name, the one lording it off uptown.”
“Okay, Detective Clayton,” said Lestrade. “Show him the design.”
They hadn’t brought a photograph of the tattoo. A photograph would show part of the dead body. So they’d brought a tracing made from a photograph, using a pencil almost the same shade of blue.
Naismith glanced at the tracing and said, “Looks like one of those effing stamps.”
“Took a whole lot of time weighing that decision, didn’t you?” Clayton asked him.
“How much time you think it takes to recognize a piece of mass-market crap?”
Lestrade took over again, and deliberately used a term she guessed he wouldn’t like, just to feel him out a little more. “And you can tell how it’s punched in from a tracing?”
“Why’d any self-respecting body artist take the time to really tattoo anything that’s going to end up looking like one more piece of mass-market crap? These stamps, you can call them ‘punching,’ if you want. I’d call it worse. But don’t you ever say ‘punching’ when you’re talking about real tattooing. You want respect from me, Pollydecks, you give my art some respect, too.”
“I take it,” Lestrade commented, “you wouldn’t be caught dead using one of these tattoo stamps?”
“Call that respect, Sergeant Hatchet Face? Leonardo ever use rubber stamps in his pictures?”
“Stop calling her —” Dave began, but she caught his eye and shook her head. Let it pass, hot beaver. It isn’t that important.
“Then let me put it to you very respectfully,” she went on to Naismith, more sternly than respectfully, “you wouldn’t make one of these stamps even if somebody requested one? Offered you a lot of money for it? You wouldn’t see it as a challenge?”
“I’d see it as an insult. Like I hear you insulting me, Sergeant Hatchet Face.” Naismith glanced around at his third-hand furnishings and the pitiful stock of generic canned goods in his open shelves. “But if I ever did make an effing stamp for the money, even if I ever thought getting the equipment to make it would be halfway worth the expense, you can bet it’d have a lot more style than this piece of crap.” He took another glance at the tracing and thrust it back at Clayton. “It’d be something you could almost mistake for art. It wouldn’t be crap.”
Lestrade signaled her partner with a nod.
He held out the two photos they had gotten from the victim’s family. “Ever see this floater before?”
Naismith grunted and examined the first photo. Shuffled the second one out on top and examined it as well. Finally shook his head. “Guess I could’ve seen him around town. Yeah, I get out and around town sometimes. Never been in here to buy any tattoos from me, if that’s what you’re getting at. Why, what kind of rap you trying to pin on him?”
“Missing person. Just asking everyone we see. Routine. Well, thank you, M. Naismith.” Queen Hatchet Face deliberately bestowing mercy on a peasant. “I think that’s all. For today. We’ll see ourselves out.” Standing in the middle of the room, they were all of two steps from the door. Where did Naismith put his clients, whenever he had any?
Once outside, Dave smoothed the tracing out and studied it. “Doesn’t look all that bad to me.”
“Lady save us from the artistic temperament,” said Sergeant Lestrade. “Let’s hope the others are practical business people.”
CHAPTER 3
Still Monday, September 18
Closest to Naismith on the town grid was Elias Hammer, who was both legit in every sense and reasonably prosperous, with a two-story building to himself just off the main business district. Parlor downstairs front, looking out on the street like a police interrogation room. Office and supply rooms downstairs back. Living quarters upstairs. Everything clean, neat, and antiseptic as a hospital.
When Clayton gave him the sample book, he hesitated, took a second look at it, and said, “How come you’re handling this without gloves, Officers?”
“Offering to let us take your fingerprints, M. Hammer?” Lestrade replied experimentally.
They had in fact dusted the volume, cover and pages, for fingerprints first thing, and had the prints safe on file. But fingerprints helped with identification only when the parties’ prints were on record or could be readily supplied for comparison. And there were laws about whose fingerprints the police could take under what circumstances. The mere fact that a victim had borrowed a sample book of tattoo designs shortly before being murdered wouldn’t have constituted evidence for demanding to take the prints of any tattoo artist who might be the owner, unless the book had been found on the murder scene, preferably splattered with the victim’s blood.
“Sure, Officers,” Hammer said with a grin. “I’ll let you take my fingerprints if you’ll get a tattoo from me.”
Clayton said, “Gratis?”
But Lestrade said, “Why would we wear gloves to handle a lost-and-found item?”
“Yeah,” her partner hurried to add. “The things people find and turn in at the police station! As long as we were coming out to see body artists anyway, we just thought ma
ybe we could bake two cakes in one oven.”
“Yeah, good thought,” Hammer agreed. “But what’ve we done to deserve your attention today, anyway?”
“Just looking for information, M.,” Lestrade told him. “What can you tell us about tattoo stamps?”
“Tattoo stamps? As much as any other tattoo artist, probably more than some.”
“Not above making the things, then?” she pursued.
“Sure, I make stamps. There’s a lot of tridols to be made out of ’em and I’m not above making tridols. Someday I plan on making enough of ’em to move out somewhere as posh as the Dupont-O’Toole establishment.”
“Ever seen this one?” Lestrade nodded at Clayton to show him the tracing.
He studied it a long time, glancing back up at the detectives every so often. Finally he handed the paper back and shook his head.
“Not mine, no. Maybe one of O’Toole’s. Not Fleur Dupont’s, I don’t think. Doesn’t quite look like her style. Maybe Naismith —”
“Who just told us he never debases his art with stamps,” Clayton remarked before Lestrade could cut him off. He was overdue for another dose of Why We Play Our Cards Close to the Chest. Did he have his whole mind on the job this morning? Or was part of it still on that nurse who gave the smoothest flu shots any floater ever enjoyed?
“Naismith told you that?” Hammer was saying. “Don’t believe him. He likes to eat. Or that —” He waved at the paper in Clayton’s hand—“could be one of those mail-order things. I can’t tell you who designed it…if you can call it a design, looks more like a frou-frou for cocktail napkins—but I can give you a guess who’d be likely to use it.”
“For cocktail napkins?” Clayton asked, with another look at the tracing.
“Cocktail waitresses?” Lestrade pushed Hammer. “Who?”
“Even a town this size has its population of perverts and smasters, Sergeant. They’re the ones you want to be looking hard at when you’re looking for murderers. These so-called ‘inferno clubbers,’ these violent rolegamers—they’re the ones you want to be looking at. Hard. Really hard.”
Lestrade didn’t even cock an eyebrow. “And they’d be likely to buy tattoo stamps, would they?”
“Without even blinking. They like to identify themselves. A different design for every subgroup—subhuman group, I’d call ’em. I’ve seen a few marked with three or four different stamped tattoos—that’s the expression, Detectives: a tattoo stamp makes stamped tattoos—showing themselves off as members of three or four smaster dens, sometimes all at once.”
“Hmm,” said Lestrade. “Thank you for the tip, M. Hammer. And you’ve seen these people how?”
“Some of the…some of them come in here to get an old stamp removed or covered up with real tattoo work. And I’ve also seen them around, Sergeant Lestrade. You wouldn’t believe the respectable places—the respectable covers—some of them use to pass themselves off as normal. But once you get an idea where to look, what to look for…” He let his voice trail away.
Lestrade repeated, “Hmm.”
Clayton pointed out, “Respectable people get tattoos, too.” Lestrade happened to know he himself had Yosemite Pete tattooed on one of his upper arms and Gargoyle Gertie on the other.
“Oh, yeah,” Hammer agreed. “Very respectable people. Doctors, bank presidents, school teachers, sweet little debutantes wanting flowerchain necklaces and bracelets in time for the Big Prom. Not many murderers there. The respectable people tend to want real, stencil tattoos.”
Lestrade decided to remark, “I hear you saying, Scratch a stamped tattoo and you’ll uncover a murderer. So why do you make any of these stamps at all?”
“Hey, Sergeant, I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. I’ve made ’em for high-school honor societies and graduating classes, service groups, bowling teams, once even a Presbyterian confirmation class, for Pete sakes! No, the stamped tattoos you want to check for murderers are the ones on these young floaters with sick, sick hobbies. I try never to make any for unwholesome types like that, but —” Hammer shrugged—“you never know. One or two might get past me. They can dress up like respectable people, when they want to.”
“That’s twice you’ve mentioned murderers,” Lestrade observed.
“And I’ll go on mentioning ’em until you start finding ’em. If you pollies aren’t out looking for whoever murdered that poor kid—what’s his name, Jackson?—who’s been all over the news today, what the hell are we paying you for?”
“Okay, fair enough.” Lestrade gave Clayton a nod to ask his prepared question.
“These stamps, M. Hammer. All the tattoos each one makes are identical as gingerbread bears, but what about the stamps themselves? Are any of them mass-produced?”
“They’d darn well better not be. Not if there’s any ethics left in the profession. Even the mail-order houses have got to live up to their promise of ‘every stamp unique’ if they want to keep their legal standing with IABA.”
Lestrade tapped her chin. “Two artists ever come up with the same design by serendipity?”
“Yeah, that’d be possible. Like it’d be possible to find two snowflakes identical. The Association keeps all the legit stamp designs registered to keep accidental duplication from happening, but there could always be a slip-up. Or an illegal copycat rip-off. And the more popular these things get, the more of them get on the market, the more likely you’re going to find two exactly alike.” Hammer paused. “Of course, sometimes you find two stamps similar enough, you’ve got to look real close to spot the difference. See here—let’s see that one you brought in, again.”
Clayton handed the tracing back over. Hammer squinted at it with a deep frown. “Yeah. Yeah, look here. These little lines petaling out. Each one of ’em’s got a couple of jags. Like little lightning bolts. Take a swirl with smooth curving lines, or just a single jag per line, and at first glance your average eyeball probably wouldn’t pick up on the difference. So round up all the smasters and perverts you can find, but check their symbols real close once you get ’em down to the station house. Not that the whole lot of ’em shouldn’t be put away, anyway. Anything else you’d like to ask me?”
Fielding her partner’s glance, Lestrade pretended to think for a few seconds. “Yes. Oh, yes. Missing person. We’re checking with everybody. Routine. Detective Clayton, show him the photos.”
Hammer took them, looked at them. Looked at them very closely. Very closely. Gave Lestrade a sharpish glance. Took another long look at the photos. “Still missing, you say?”
“That’s right. Ever see him around?”
“Maybe…like you always see people around…but never close enough to say hello. Sorry, Officers, can’t help you with this one. But I’ll tell you this—he looks like the type perverts and smasters go for. Even in a ‘safe’ little city like Forest Green. Anything else?”
Lestrade shook her head. “Not at this time. Well, good-bye, M. Hammer. Thank you for your time. We’ll remember everything you told us.”
* * * *
“Sheboygan!” Dave remarked once they were on the way to their last stop. “I think I preferred Naismith. At least he didn’t put most of his energy into badmouthing his list of potential clients.”
“Naismith may not have enough clients and potential clients that he can afford to insult any of them.” But Lestrade’s mind was only half on Sydney Naismith even as she answered Dave’s comment.
* * * *
The area nowadays called Vadnais Estates had been built in the Gilded Age as the neighborhood of the rich elite. After going through various hard times and slummy generations, it had been reborn, remodeled, redeveloped, repainted in the flower garden of colors they now called the true Victorian fashion, and once again occupied by the richest local elite. “Sheboy!” Dave remarked as they drove through. “Anybody hurting here, they sure don’t show it!”
“And if they lose weight, they pass if off as fancy spa treatment they’re not really getting?” Dave shrugged. “What price economy? Not all of them, though. Plenty of these have got to be rich in fact. Let’s see…” He read the names above the addresses, usually displayed in custom-brass signs. “Lang…Van Geldman…Imani…Fletcher-Symthe… Ah, here they are! Dupont and O’Toole.”
One more fenced estate of half a dozen treeful acres. The husband and wife team’s tasteful plaque, mounted on their glazed blue brick gatepost, read: “Dupont & O’Toole: Fine Body Art. By appointment only.”
“Guess these floaters aren’t hurting for tridols, anyway,” Dave remarked.
Lestrade replied. “One of them could have inherited wealth, maybe both.”
“And they just tattoo for the same reason Narjinski paints and Lulabelle dances?”
“Art is where you find it, Detective.” On the gatepost opposite the one with the plaque, Lestrade located an unobtrusive black doorbell button. She tabbed it. If the power line to the front door was still in operation, fine. Otherwise, they’d give it five minutes before walking up unannounced. There was a dog the size of a seeing-eye pony just lying there beneath the birdbath, looking at them lazily. A mixed breed, like ninety-five plus percent of the population, canine and human alike. Lestrade guessed this one was predominantly Labrador and Saint Bernard, spiced with almost everything else in the Big Dog genetic line-up. It looked friendly and, if it wasn’t, Dupont and O’Toole were due a crippling fine for leaving their front gate latched instead of key-locked.
“Speaking of body art,” she went on to her junior, “when and where did you get yours, Dave?”
“Yosemite Pete to mark my high-school graduation back in Rensselaer, Gargoyle Gertie to celebrate getting out of the Navy. Did you know I’ve also got a third one, Sarge?”
All But a Pleasure Page 3