Father's Day (13 page)

“Yeah, right, Freddie.”

“You didn’t hear it from me, my man.”

“Call me if you need a character reference. I’ll put in a good word with your probation officer.”

“Fuck off!”

Lou warmed up the T-bird, flipped open his cell and called Maggie. He listened to the phone ring, reached under the dash to feel the heat blowing against his hand. The blower whined. Maggie picked up on the fourth ring.

“Are you okay?”

“Of course, I’m okay. Where are you?”

“I’m parked on Market Street right now outside a cheap tattoo parlor waiting for my car to warm up. I figured I’d check on you and then I’m taking a scenic cruise through Germantown.”

“I thought you hated that place.”

“Hate is a strong word.”

“You sound like one of those people that are secretly attracted to the things they pretend to hate, draws them like a magnet.”

“Like a moth to a flame, dear girl, like trouble attracts you.”

“Don’t worry about me, Dad. I don’t plan on getting burned. I think you’re the one getting burned—burned out.”

“Have you been talking to your mom’s therapist again?”

“I’m trying to talk sense to you. You need to relax, slow down.”

“Why don’t we take a trip to the beach when this thing wraps up? We can stay at that hotel you liked so much when you were a kid.”

“The Pink Flamingo?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“I think that’s torn down, Dad. It’s all condos now.”

“Well, we’ll find a new place.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I’ll be home around nine. I love you, sweetheart.”

“Love you, too. Bye.”

The House of Ink
wasn’t very hard to find. It looked more like a nightclub than a tattoo parlor, with two floors of mirrored glass, wicked red lights, and heavy-metal music—a thumping bass was coming through the door like a sonic boom. The loud music was designed to drown out the incessant buzz, as if someone had turned a department store into a beehive. There must have been fifteen chairs, adjusted into a variety of different positions, not one of them empty. Walls of mirrors made the place look bigger than it was. A girl lay on a table in the center. She was completely naked. A bald man with a full goatee and three hoop earrings in each ear was hard at work putting a tattoo on her ass. He wore latex gloves and pressed his hands into her flesh as if he were molding clay, wiping the blood and excess ink away with dry gauze. It looked like the beginning of a butterfly with long black antennae like eyelashes and yellow wings like the petals of some exotic flower.

“You look for someone, sir? I help.”

Lou had walked right past him. He was standing by the
window, smoking a cigarette, watching the passengers coming down the stairs from the El train, hurrying to their cars. He put the cigarette out in a tall rectangular ashtray of black plastic and turned slowly. His hair was black, combed straight back, and gelled. It was shiny and slick, with a V above his forehead and flat on the sides. He wore a white oxford, unbuttoned at the neck, a silver cross dangling in his thick chest hair, the sleeves folded to the elbows. Lou couldn’t help notice the tattoos on his forearms and circling his fingers like dark, sinister rings. Skulls seemed to be the predominant motif. The man lifted his head, looked at Lou and smiled, not showing any teeth.

“Are you the owner?”

“I am manager. owner in Florida. Miami. It’s warmer.”

“Would you be willing to look at a few pictures? Tattoos. See if you recognize them.”

“What is there to recognize? We got books full of tattoos. We got pictures, all kinds. Where you get that?”

“It was on a dead man.”

“Dead? So what? Lots of dead men. Lots of tattoo houses.”

“This guy doesn’t have a name. He’s unidentified. He didn’t get this tattoo just anywhere.”

“Maybe he get tattoo in prison. Best place. Don’t cost so much.”

“That depends. Doesn’t it?”

Lou reached into his back pocket and pulled out a wallet. He stared at the three twenties. There wasn’t any more where they came from.

“You smart guy. Show me pictures.”

He glanced casually at the photographs, each picture showing the tattoo at a different angle, a little closer, a little farther away.

“Whad’ya think?”

“I think guy don’t look so good or you show me face to go with tattoo. You see any other marks on him?”

“He was burned badly.”

“This was on back, near shoulders?”

“Yeah.”

“What about neck? Nothing?”

“There was something on his neck. It’s hard to say what it was.”

“Was it snake, maybe?”

“No. It was more like a knife, a dagger.”

“Blood dripping from dagger?”

“I don’t know. What does it matter?”

“You want my opinion or no?”

“I’m listening.”

“This man predator. Sexual. Like wolf, prey on young girl.”

“He come in here?”

“Can’t say.”

“Can’t or won’t.”

“What it matter?”

Lou’s cell phone rang, the bell sounding like a fire alarm. The man smiled again, shrugged his shoulders, while he lit another cigarette. Lou pocketed the photographs and stepped outside. He flipped the phone open, relieved by the relative quiet of the street. It was Mitch’s voice.

“We got a name.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Wayne Tinferd. Last known address, Sun Hotel, down on Cedar. You know where that is?”

“I’ll find it.”

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“See you then.”

The Sun Hotel was in a part of town where the bars opened at six in the morning. Some stayed open all night. The streets were
empty by day, alive with the walking dead by night. It wasn’t a place on the map of attractions in Philadelphia.

It was a cheap rooming house with a bar on the ground floor and rooms by the hour or the day. It was a flop house, littered with bums and prostitutes. A month’s rent in advance was rare, not a permanent address for anyone. Addicts shot up in the hallway and pissed down the stairs. Twice a year they’d carry out a dead body after it had been sealed up in a room for three months. The smell of rotten flesh saturated the air. It was in the carpet and on the walls. Unmarked police cars were impossible to hide in that territory. Mitch parked his down the block and waited in the shadows.

“What can you tell me about Tinferd, Mitch?”

“He was dirty, a rap sheet as thick as the dictionary, going back to his juvenile days. He’d done time in three states for armed robbery, burglary, and theft. He’d also been charged with aggravated assault on a police officer and resisting arrest. Since he’d moved to Pennsylvania, he’d been convicted of all kinds of morals charges—corruption of minors, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and indecent assault. He was coming up for sentencing. If he’d been in jail, he might still be alive now.”

“Tough luck.”

“My understanding is that he’s got a long history of doing this kind of thing in West Virginia and getting away with it, victims too scared to testify. I suppose most of his crimes have gone unreported. It’s a disgrace that he hadn’t been officially designated a sexual predator. Apparently, he had a few political friends that have protected him, got him good legal advice.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“You haven’t heard the half of it. Tinferd did time at Wakefield State Correctional. As you know, the most corrupt facility in the state system. When the attorney general had it audited
two years ago, they found out the prison pharmacy was being run like a candy store and prisoners were being used as a private work force. Carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, and car mechanics were hired out to prison officials. A lot of people got a lot of work done. Nothing like cheap labor and the payoff was special privileges for the inmates, often in the form of women and dope.”

“Some people make their best connections in the joint.”

“Most do and it gets even better. The prison doctor at Wakefield was Dr. Gilbert Dodgeson. Dodgeson turns state’s evidence, rolls on everybody, and skates. Tinferd gets paroled and ends up working for Dodgeson and living at his place in West Virginia. This Tinferd becomes like the doc’s adopted son.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Six months after Tinferd goes to live with Dr. Dodgeson, the doc’s lovely, young strung-out wife ends up dead, killed by a shotgun blast to the face, point blank. Her body gets dumped in the Shohola Creek and found two weeks later by a couple of kids swimming in the basin downstream.”

“Swimming with the fishes.”

“You catch on quick. Anyway, the cops can’t figure it out until some slapstick sheriff starts nosing around and gets the bright idea to go after Tinferd. He figures the doc would be glad to throw Tinferd to the dogs if it got the law off his back. Let him take the fall and case closed. Instead, Tinferd suddenly has expert legal counsel. Your favorite hot shot Philly lawyer, Warren Armstrong. Gets him off clean and they all go on vacation.”

“This stuff ain’t on the rap sheet. Where you getting it from?”

“Remember Jack Weldon?”

“Sure. State trooper. Out in Media, last time I saw him.”

“He retired a few years back and took a job with Probation. It was as good as a lateral transfer and he’s still able to pay into his pension.”

“Good for him.”

“You said it. Jack keeps his ear pretty close to the ground. He can tell you shit that’s not in the computer.”

“Would he talk to me?”

“Jack? I’ll call him, tell him we’re coming.”

“First thing tomorrow. I’ll meet you at Heshy’s. We’ll get coffee first. I’m taking Maggie over. She’s going to be working there part-time.”

“Your idea or hers.”

“Don’t ask.”

“Let’s have a look inside.”

The front door was thick clouded glass that opened into a dark lobby. There was a large plastic mat over green carpeting on the floor. There was a small round table and a floor lamp to the right, two worn chairs standing guard on each side. On the table was an equally round tin ashtray filled with enough cigarette butts to start a four-alarm fire. The building must have been over a hundred years old. The ceiling was high and the walls were papered with turn of the century canvas that swallowed the little light in the room. A wide arch to the left led to the bar and ahead lay an equally wide stairway, its dark stairs disappearing upward into shadow.

By the looks on the faces of the afternoon drunks and the other degenerates half asleep at the bar, Lou and Mitch were made before the door shut behind them. They definitely weren’t guests. They weren’t johns looking to score and they certainly weren’t city building inspectors, although they were probably due. They could have passed for exterminators, depending on the size of the roach. They had “cop” written all over them, which meant trouble for someone. Those at the bar lowered their heads, trying to look inconspicuous, doing their best to melt into their stools.

Lou and Mitch didn’t linger in the lobby very long before
starting the slow climb up the stairs. Their presence was bad for business.

“Never too early for a drink.”

“I haven’t had my booster shot for hepatitis.”

Without an elevator in the place, Lou imagined some of the tenants, with varying degrees of infirmity, terminal or self-induced, were stranded in their rooms, resigned to tasting the air through a window screen and getting their liquid lunch delivered.

“You would think Tinferd could find better living arrangements.”

“Maybe he liked it here. He probably felt like King Rat, the highest-class patron of an aged and well-established shit hole.”

The stairs were soft and well padded under a fairly new carpet, a close match to the lobby floor but a shade darker. They avoided sliding their hands over the wooden banister, an easy way to pick up a nasty sliver or an incurable disease. There were small square landings between floors. The stairs turned sharply and the only light shone from thin bulbs, shaped like withering flames at the end of melting candlesticks. They reached the third floor without seeing a soul. Their labored breathing was the only sound.

Room three-oh-two was the first door at the end of the hall. The numbers were written in black marker on a wide strip of masking tape. The door was made of hollow, flimsy pressed board. Across the hall was a door marked with a red overhead exit sign. It led down a set of dark, narrow steps, as cool and inviting as an abandoned well. Mitch and Lou flanked the doorway and knocked softly, like the maid serving tea. They didn’t want to startle anyone and they weren’t waiting for an answer.

They put their shoulders to the door and gave it a gentle push. It opened with barely a complaint. It probably forgot
what it was like to be treated with a little delicacy. The room was bigger than they’d imagined. It reminded Lou of the efficiency apartments he’d seen people build in their basements to rent out and bring in extra money. It looked like whoever lived there expected to be back soon.

Mitch pulled open a dusty set of blinds and raised a squeaky window to let in some light and air. A frayed brown dishrag lay on a rusted sink piled with dirty dishes. Lou was already looking around, checking stuff in plain view but beginning to open drawers and turn things over. Mitch looked over the dresser top and pushed things around with a pen he held like a surgeon holds a scalpel. There were four or five prescription pill bottles and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s with about an inch of brown liquid left at the bottom.

The dresser itself looked like a cheap antique, nicked and dried out. Its next stop would be the neighborhood fireplace, thirty feet down, in a metal drum in the alley, keeping the boys warm who can’t afford to live in the Sun. An oval mirror hung from the back of the dresser, propped up by two, skinny, wooden arms, cracked and bound tightly with duct tape. The mirrored glass was scratched and dusty, chipped at the edges. The brass drawer handles were loose and dangling, the screws stripped. Mitch had the pill bottles open and was sifting through white, blue, and yellow tablets. The labels had all been scratched off.

Lou slid open a warped wooden drawer, pulled it right out, and set it on a wobbly table. The drawer was full of lingerie, black lace panties, thongs, and bras. He pulled out a couple of fishnet stockings, waving them like banners at the Rose Bowl. Mitch whistled. The closet door was off its hinges and leaned against the far wall. On the floor in the closet a variety of shoes lay in a pile, four-inch platform shoes with spiked heels, and knee-high black leather boots.