Shockwave (12 page)

“Wouldn’t need to ask me any questions.”

“Yeah.”

He nodded again. Then he picked up the money.

“T
he best way to tell is the depth.”

“All professional tattoos are the same depth?”

“They should be. Damn close, anyway. But just about anyone can get a license, so …”

“Are there any sure tells?”

He gave me a puzzled look.

“Any way to see if they
weren’t
the correct depth?”

“Look at this,” he said, holding up a knurled metal knob. “Watch.” He pushed, and a needle popped out of the front. Just the tip of a needle, really.

“That’s not a needle,” he said, as if he could read what I was thinking. “A pro’s set is actually several small needles—we call them ‘sharps’—attached to a needle bar—what we call a ‘configuration.’ You use different ones depending on whether you’re going for lining, shading, or solid color. And that’s just where you
start:
the better the quality, the more expensive the set.”

“If anyone can get a license, anyone can spend money, too.”

“Fair enough. Try this, then: You can adjust the depth of a needle, but you still need to keep that as uniform as possible. Especially if all the work’s being done on the same canvas.”

“Skin?”

“Skin,” he confirmed. “First the epidermis, then
just
into the dermis. Never more than slightly deeper than the thickness of a dime.”

I didn’t know what that would look like sideways, and let the confusion show on my face. He pulled a few hairs loose from his ponytail, deftly laid them together to form a single
strand, then placed the result flat against a white plastic tray. “Not much more than this,” he said, putting the tray on my lap.

“Got it.”

“Okay. Only the very best artists work freehand. At that level, there has to be real trust between the artist and the client. People always have some kind of … image inside their heads. No matter what they say—you know, ‘Just give me something cool,’ like that—they still have a picture in their minds. That’s why we use stencils, so they can see for themselves what the finished product is going to look like. Then all we have to do is make a transfer, and fill it in.”

“So if it’s blurry …?”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean a thing. Some people, they
want
blurry. The street racers love it when you fade their cars from crispy front to what we call ‘moving’ out back. But the quality of the work, that doesn’t necessarily mean the artist even has a license. It’s like anything else—there’s jailhouse lawyers who know more about the law than anyone at the PD’s Office.”

I watched his eyes, saying nothing. So he went on: “When you say ‘amateur,’ you mean ‘prison,’ right?”

It was my turn to nod.

“That makes it easier.”

“Okay,” I said. I was there as a buyer, not a trader.

“You can put on a prison tat one of two ways. The hard way is just draw on the skin with a Magic Marker, dip a mini-spike in ink—you can make one out of damn near anything—and just keep planting it until the whole thing’s done. But, doing it that way, you either have to go deep, or keep hitting the same spot, over and over.”

“A lot of pain?”

“For some, that’s what they want. Not the pain. They want proof that the tattoo was more important to them than the pain.”

“And that other way?”

“You can make a machine—what we call a ‘rotary.’ Those actually work, if they’re put together right. You just get some very fine wire—like from a transistor radio or a cassette recorder—and wrap it around any little screw you can find. Now you’ve got your relay, but you still need a bristle from a wire brush, the kind you use for scraping off heavy coats of paint; they always have those in one of the prison shops. You use a mechanical pencil—the best one you can get your hands on—for the cylinder, and you make an arm with anything flexible and a little magnet. Then you need another transistor radio to power it.”

“Hurts less?”

“A lot less. But it’s a bumpy ride—you have to be
really
skilled to use one. You can make ink out of … well, even ink from a ballpoint, or a melted-down piece of plastic. Checkers are better than chess for that—nobody wants white ink, but red and black, those are the big sellers.

“The
real
danger is always infection. Even if you hold the spike in flame first, dip it in alcohol, and
then
hold it under a lit match, it’s still not truly sterile. Even in shops, you can’t be sure. Here, we use a needle once, we’re done with it. And we buy them presterilized, in individual blister packs.”

“Infection? Like …”

“It’s prison, man. Hep C, if you’re lucky. HIV if you’re not. Remember, in there, they use the same needles, over and over.”

“Could you tell by looking at a picture of one?”

“Probably … But if the job was decent and the picture of it wasn’t, I’d be guessing.”

I took out the whole array I carried with me and spread it out on the plastic tray.

He didn’t say a word. Just got up, walked over to what looked like a hand-built wooden tool chest, and came back with a rectangular magnifying glass.

“This one for sure,” he said, pointing at a swastika.

“Not just because of what it is, right?”

“You think people don’t walk in here and ask for that Nazi stuff? No, that doesn’t mean anything. Look for yourself—see how the outline has those little ‘bubbles’ in some spots? If I had to guess, I’d say the outline was spiked in by hand, and the fill was with a machine. No shop would do it that way.”

“What about the other ones?”

“This one’s the most obvious, but none of them look like inshop work—even a crappy shop would have better equipment. But if this here is all the tats he had, I might be able to tell you something.”

“That was all.”

“No spiderweb on the elbows? Probably not a skinhead, then.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. Anyone who first inked up in prison, he couldn’t fly that flag—the spiderweb, I’m saying—unless he came in already wearing it.”

“Want to say why?”

He shook his head. Then, in one fluid motion, he whisked the five hundreds off the chair’s arm and into the side pocket of his red smock, telling me he’d already earned it.

M
y plan was to walk out of the tattoo shop and disappear.

It was less than three blocks to an alley that led to the “men’s hotel” where I’d spent the previous night. I didn’t have to check out—I was already carrying everything I’d brought with me in a shoulder-strapped duffel.

I’d only rented the room for one night. “In advance,” the clerk said, not looking up from whatever he was reading. “Checkout’s at noon. You don’t come back in time, the room
gets padlocked. You come back later than that, costs you another night’s rent to open the lock.”

I’d picked that misery-smelling SRO because it had two things I needed: not only was it close to the tattoo parlor, it was also just a few blocks from the bus terminal. I didn’t have any reason to suspect the needle artist would want to tell the cops a stranger had been around, asking strange questions, but taking risks you don’t need to take is a stupid habit I’d avoided ever since I’d been told it was. The safest way to learn such truths is to listen to a man who’d learned them from experience.

If the cops
did
come looking for me, they’d check the outgoing bus schedule first. It wouldn’t be any more helpful to them than the hotel clerk would be.

I didn’t have any illusions that desk clerks on that side of town would feel some sense of solidarity with a man on the run—that was for “noir” movies, not for the world I lived in. But how cooperative could the guy be, even if he wanted to? I didn’t look like anything special; he’d made an effort
not
to look at my face, and the slab of scar tissue on my left wrist was invisible under my jacket.

When I first got to that town, I’d looked around, always on foot. It’s the best way to learn any city, if you have the time. London cabbies have to pass a test harder than the ones they give people who want to be lawyers—they have to know a city so full of twists and turns that a GPS signal would eventually hit a wall. So they ride around on bicycles or scooters for a solid year, minimum. One of them told me about it. During a long ride, a long time ago. He said that was why they call prepping for that exam “getting the knowledge.”

Once I found that tattoo joint, I’d stayed in a different dump every night, working my way closer and closer. Then I kept watch a few more times, to be reasonably sure he’d be alone in the mornings.

The bus station being so nearby was just a piece of luck, but it had settled where I’d spend that last night.

H
e’d been in the background for days, so I wasn’t surprised to pick him up again.

What he didn’t know was that I’d spotted him the first time he’d broken the background pattern. Not much of an edge, but …

I didn’t know his real name any more than he knew mine, but I knew his face. I’d met him a long time ago, when he was in charge of one of the “commando” units in Africa I’d just signed on with. Called himself “Brander” at the time. Dutch, I think. Or maybe a displaced Boer.

I don’t remember what name I’d been using. Nobody in the field cared, and all the sign-up man would know was the numbered bank account to wire your pay into. Less than a minute after it hit that account, it would be vacuumed out. Same bank, different account number. That was before the Swiss wall of
anonymat
had started to show a few cracks.

I didn’t learn until a few weeks later that what he called himself wasn’t just the name he was using; it was what he did. By then, I wasn’t surprised at anything mercs would do. To themselves, to the enemy … even to their “comrades,” if they detected a weakness not masked by the killing gear we all carried.

Why a man would be insane enough to leave his personal mark on the bodies of the enemy was beyond my understanding. Still, the knowledge wasn’t without value—it wouldn’t be
my
mark the enemy would find. And if the outfit I signed on with promoted men as seriously bent as this one, I knew I’d have to find new work soon.

Now, another thing I knew was that he hadn’t been tracking me on contract. He’d seen me several times, and I’d deliberately wandered into a filthy SRO a couple of days ago, baiting the trap in case someone was paying him for my life.

With a man like him, not many possibilities in play: if he wasn’t being paid to take me out, he was looking for me to lead him to a payday.

So the only thing I had to find out was whether he’d just recognized me by accident, and kept watch to see if there was something in it for him, or if he knew who I was—who I was
now
—and planned on selling that knowledge.

When the product is knowledge, the seller wants to know its maximum depth and width before wrapping the package. If he saw me as a product, he’d want some idea of value before sale. And if someone had hired Brander, I’d need
that
name before I sent him over.

Just the thought of my Dolly’s name in his mouth meant he was already dead.

I
didn’t know the town, so I couldn’t suggest the kind of bar where people made it their business to mind their own.

And if
he
knew his way around, any suggestion he made would be a mistake—too many variables. Best not to approach him at all. Find the right spot and wait.

I know how to do that. Both parts of that.

I
knew where a man like him would feel most comfortable approaching me, so I just kept on walking until I was outside the city limits.

Less than ten kilometers, judging by my normal full-pack
pace, then subtracting the much lighter weight of the duffel I was carrying.

The railway underpass was as good a spot as I’d be likely to find. Hoboes might use it for shelter at night, especially if it was raining. Winos might be there
anytime
, but it was too exposed for a crackhead to pipe up in—none of them would have the patience to wait, anyway.

Anyone looking to hop a freight would know the train schedule, but the whole area was empty, except for what was left of the man sprawled in a pool of liquid I knew wasn’t water, wine, or blood.

I hunkered down against the wall, lit a distracting cigarette. If Brander was following, he’d be along soon enough.

H
e wasn’t far behind, so he’d probably kept me in sight all the way.

No real choice about that—he could read trail signs in a jungle, but tracking a man using roads was damn near impossible, even when they were dirt.

I saw him coming. That couldn’t have been a mistake on his part. He wanted to make sure he didn’t spook me into rabbiting. Or shooting.

“Hey,” he said, as he came close enough to speak, hands open and empty. “Remember me?”

“No. Should I?”

He casually dropped into a squat on my left side, as if I’d asked him to take a seat. “Come on, André. It’s me, Brander. We served together in—”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Okay, I remember you.”

“I’ve been watching you.”

“Okay.”

“I figure you gotta be here for the same reason I am.”

“Is that right?”

“I’ve been here five fucking weeks,” he said. “Came in after a little stopover in Japan. The whole Triangle, that’s played out now. I heard, if you wanted some action, there’s people hiring here, looking for men with Darkville experience. Only, I can’t find anyone to ask.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I need work. I’m not too old for the field,” he said—so defensively that I knew everyone hadn’t shared his opinion—“but what I’d really like is a nice training gig. Heard they got all these ‘militia’ morons out this way—good money, if you can prove you’re the real thing.”

“Okay.”

“And I figure you heard the same thing, am I right?”

“No.”

“Come on, man. We
served
together. I haven’t found any of these militia guys. Not yet, anyway. But you’ve been here much longer than me, I’m thinking. Not in this stupid little town, in this country. So I’m just out strolling and I spot you, packing some gear. I tell myself, ‘Brander, you just struck gold.’ There’s got to be enough for both of us. Maybe even more, if we partner up. Am I right?”