Motive (27 page)

Could Kleffer and Corey have met up somehow and devised a homicidal tit-for-tat?

I carve up your girlfriend, you shoot my wife
.

And let’s toss in a couple of other women just for laughs
.

But so far no link had arisen between Kleffer and Corey and there didn’t seem to be an avenue to search for one. Still, I wrote down Kleffer’s name followed by a chunky question mark.

Flora Sullivan had dined out in style with her husband and her boyfriend. On the face of it that meant nothing. But she was Frankie DiMargio’s link to a building that was looking more and more like a death-trap. Was
she
the link to the dinner scenes? Malignant foodie with a hobby other than pleather? Had we been too hasty eliminating her?

Next: the Corey sisters. Recent expenses placed them clear out of the country, in Vancouver, Canada. They’d purchased only small stuff, nothing close to the cost of a room. Crashing with friends?

If they were worried about their safety, why hadn’t they contacted the police? Could they have been criminally involved? Professing love and grief for their mother but secretly allying with their father?

Had he used them, only to turn?

Bad man seeking a new life. Did that include a new love slave? Another victim already culled from the herd?

One thing seemed certain: Richard Corey
was
at the hub of all this evil. If nothing else proved it, the horses did; there
was
something about cruelty to animals that alerted you to a psychopath on duty, and Corey’s casual dispatch of his daughters’ beloved pets spoke to a special brand of callousness.

That fit the exploitation of Kathy Hennepin and Frankie DiMargio. Shy, withdrawn women vulnerable to the advances of even an awkward man like Corey? But Corey as a lothario was hard to picture.

That brought me squarely back to Grant Fellinger, a man able to overcome homeliness and bed a beauty like Ursula Corey. Smooth and aggressive and willing to use his legal training to battle a mentally ill homeless woman who’d yelled at him.

Bringing about her terrible death. Because killing was fun.

Maybe we’d been right about Fellinger from the beginning.

Food and death.

I looked down at my notes.

One name stood out: Darius Kleffer.

I tried to reach Milo, got voice mail everywhere, left multiple messages but didn’t hear back until he texted me that evening:

Advil was starting to look like a dandy appetizer.

Eventually, I cleared my head and focused on a limited issue: Why hadn’t Frankie DiMargio been spotted at any tattoo parlors near her home or her work?

Maybe because my circle had been too narrow. Using my phone and the Internet, I expanded by several miles, composed and printed a list, left and began dropping into establishments staffed by people with high pain thresholds.

Smelling enough blood and electricity and rubbing alcohol to last a lifetime.

The prevailing attitude was surly mistrust of anyone with unbroken skin. Some of that receded when I explained that Frankie was a murder victim. But no one recognized her or the inkwork visible on her DMV photo.

I asked several artists about the quality of the work. Quick consensus: the kind of stuff anyone could achieve with stencils.

A couple of needle-wielders thought it likely that she’d frequented more than one source. I took that as a positive: more shops meant a higher probability of success. But a full day of searching proved futile.

I returned home and used my phone.

Clara DiMargio answered. “You found something!”

Feeling like a jerk, I said, “We’re moving along, Mrs. DiMargio.”

“Oh.” Deflated.

“Could I ask a few more questions?”

Long sigh. “Sure.”

“Did the money you and your husband give Frankie pay for her tattoos—”

“No way,” she said. “Even if I agreed to that, which I wouldn’t, my husband would have hit the roof. We paid her rent and her utilities—her phone when she still had one. Would there be enough left over for
that
garbage? I don’t think so.”

“Any idea how Frankie did pay?”

“You’re saying someone else gave her money? Maybe the same person who … oh my God, why didn’t I think of that? Where
did
she get money for
that
?”

“How recent was her last tattoo?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know—hold on, maybe I do. A couple of months ago she came in with an especially ugly one, a snake around her neck,
just crude and nasty and ugly. Bill got mad and asked where she was getting the money to waste. Frankie turned around and left.”

Muffled sob. “I’d baked peanut butter cookies, Frankie loved them when she was a little girl. They went untouched. I tossed them in the trash. Oh, sir, everything just fell apart.”

A control freak financing fresh ink might want to be on the scene to supervise.

I printed an L.A. street map and plotted, marking the epicenter between Frankie DiMargio’s rented garage in Mar Vista and Even Odd, then radiating outward.

Plugging in the locations of tattoo parlors I’d already visited was discouraging: I’d covered more ground than I thought, with only a narrow band of untraveled territory remaining.

But that blade-shaped bit of terrain included a cluster of ink shops on or near Fairfax Avenue.

The fourth one I visited was called Tigray Art set between two Ethiopian restaurants and my hopes rose when I spotted an antiques shop called Nocturna sharing the space.

The room was divided by a waist-high partition of plywood stapled with sheets of black velvet. To the right were jumbles of junk, including some mangy-looking stuffed birds in cheap cages. To the left an old barber chair, porcelain chipped, steel oxidized. An ominous-looking needle replacing the dental drill dangled overhead.

The wall was papered with patterns and stencils. Monsters, demons, African animals, space aliens, nothing that matched the ink on Frankie DiMargio’s DMV shot.

No customers in either side today. The proprietor was a huge black man wearing a red jersey tank top, green lederhosen, and knee-high riding boots. His own body art was done in an iridescent pale blue that created a head-to-toe brocade over dark skin. The effect was like viewing him through lace.

His earlobes were stretched to three times their normal size by studs and chains and a pair of rings pierced his septum—doing Bekka from Even Odd one better. Both eyebrows were paralleled overhead by seams of tiny diamonds embedded in his flesh. His welcoming smile flashed upper incisors filed to points.

Gesturing to the chair, he reached for the needle.

When I showed him Frankie DiMargio’s picture both movements froze. “You want low-level like this? Don’t do it, man.”

I said, “Not up to your standards?”

“This is mundane, brother.”

“Any idea who—”

“Don’t waste my time.” He turned away.

“This woman was murdered.”

He stopped. Metal clanked. “You a cop?”

Pondering truth versus falsehood took less than a second. I flashed my useless consultant badge. Most people aren’t attuned to details. He didn’t even bother to look.

“Well, I don’t know her, man.”

I stepped forward and held the photo closer to him. “You have any idea who inked her?”

One of the diamond trails above his brows arced. The effect was a burst of miniature fireworks in a starless sky.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe or definitely?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m talking my brother.”

“A colleague?”

“No, man, my brother, like he’s Cain to the Abel.”

“Your real brother?”

“Same mommy, different daddy. I taught him everything and he goes off on his own and does
that
?”

“He opened a competing business.”

“Competing? I don’t think so, man. That’s like finger-painting competing with Michelangelo.”

I glanced at the junk-pile portion of the store. “Does he also do antiques?”

“He does crap is what he does.” He took Frankie’s photo from me, studied, sneered. “Yeah, he did a lot of
this
crap. Like, that butt-ugly snake. Ever seen an asp looks like that? More like a toad with anorexia—this, too.”

He pointed to a row of dots diagonally sectioning Frankie’s chin. “And look at that bug, that qualify for Egyptian scarab? More like a cockroach. That over there is Khepri.” Pointing to a design on his wall. “Mofo tries for scarab, ends up with a diabetic cockroach. He’s got no visual perception, man, couldn’t draw a scarab if you held a gun to his head.”

“Where can I find your untalented brother?”

“Where else?” he said. “The Valley. He’s 818 consciousness from the get-go.”

“Could I have his name and address, please?”

“She really died? Huh. Well I don’t think
he
killed her.” Laughing. “He’s too chicken-liver for that, his work’s like …” jabbing the photo. “Look here, all wispy, no meat and potatoes. Too scared to dig in and get
down
.”

“See what you mean. His name—”

“I called this place Tigray, know what it means?”

“Tiger?”

“No, man, that’s Spanish, with an ‘e.’ This is with a ‘y,’
that
my tribe. Tigray nobles from Eritrea. All my life I’ve had lucid dreams informing me I’m from the union of Sheba and Solomon.”

I nodded.

“You don’t believe me,” he said, “that’s
your
problem. The day will come when monarchs arise and the truth blinds.”

“Hope it helps with the traffic problem.”

He stared at me. Cracked up. “Okay, you’re a comedian, I like comedians, did a few in my day.” Rattling off a series of names, some famous, others obscure.

“Mostly,” he said, “they do it hidden. What I call MBA ink.”

“Like a mullet,” I said. “Business in front, party in back.”

“Mullet’s for rednecks.” He poked Frankie DiMargio’s photo. Her image rippled. “Sorry for her, she looks like she was a serious chick. Good bone structure, I could’ve done her proud. Tigretto wasted her time.”

“That’s the name of your brother’s shop.”

“No, man, that’s what he calls himself. Tigretto aka Little Tigray. Like we’re Italian or something. The shop is Zanzibar. Like he’s
from
there.” Laughter. “He’s from Pasadena.”

Thirty-five minutes later I was facing a soft-bodied, light-skinned black man with a baby face. A shaved head helped foster the image of an overgrown infant. So did his voice. Michael Jackson in a hurry.

His layout was identical to his brother’s, tattoos plus random junk. When he saw Frankie DiMargio’s picture, he said, “Oh, sure, the quiet one. She send you?” Looking me over. “You want MBA ink?”

“Unfortunately, she’s dead,” I said. “Murdered.” Anticipating his next question, I flicked the consultant’s badge. He gaped, paid no attention to my insufficient qualifications.

“Murdered? Oh, no, by who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

Tigretto’s eyes moistened. “I’m so sorry for her, she was a great customer.” Pointing. “I did that and that and that.”

“Who did the rest of it?”

“No idea.”

“How long has she been coming in?”

“A few months.”

“Did she ever come in with anyone else?”

“With a guy,” said Tigretto. “Her boyfriend, he knew what he wanted for her. Him I knew before because he came in with another chick. Total virgin, she was going to make the plunge but wimped out.”

“When was that?”

“Hmm … I’d say maybe … a year ago? Less, six, seven months. Then he came in with Frankie and she went all-out. I figured maybe that’s why he found himself a new chick, the first one didn’t cooperate.”

“Can you describe the first one?”

“Hell, yeah, I got great visual perception and memory. White, straight, not bad looking. Quiet. She never argued with him and she actually got in the chair but then, just as I was about to start, she just up and split.”

I said, “Stay put,” left his shop, hurried to the Seville, and found Katherine Hennepin’s photo in the pile of case material I kept in the trunk.

Tigretto said, “Yeah, that’s her. No reason for her to wimp, I use topical numbing cream. Except for people who come in not only for the art but also for the pain.”

“Was Frankie like that?”

“You know,” he said, “she was. She said the pain made her feel real.”

“Tell me about the guy with her.”

“Knew what he wanted.”

“How so?”

“She’s the one getting inked but he’s directing. What to draw,
where to put it, what color. And unless he’s MBA’d under his clothes, he’s got no ink of his own. I asked him if he wanted something for himself, doing a couples thing, some people find it romantic, you know? He shakes his head and points to Frankie and tells me she’s the canvas.”

“That’s the word he used? ‘Canvas.’ ”

Nod. “Like he thinks he’s the artist when I am. But he had the money so I got going. It took time, that Nile asp was big and complicated, Cleopatra would be proud.”

He beamed.

I said, “Frankie tolerated it well.”