House Infernal by Edward Lee (14 page)

Ruth's eye opened wide. "Outside. She's looking out a
window and it's nighttime and there's a big bright moon and there's, like, a weedy field and a bunch of trees way
off, and-oh, wait, now she's walking out of some kind of
room and ... she's looking down over a rail and..."

"Yes?"

"She must be upstairs in a school or something, or
maybe an old hotel 'cos now she's looking down at a really big wide-open room with a bunch of furniture all
over the place, bookshelves surrounding every thing
and ... some of the furniture's covered by sheets and ...
looks like a bunch of old shitty pieces of carpet over this
really big floor...."

"It's not a school or hotel," Alexander informed her.
"It's a prior house built over forty years ago."

"The fuck's a prior house?"

"Like a monastery, a rectory, an abbey. It's sort of a multipurpose building, for the Catholic Church to use as it
sees fit. The reason Venetia's there is to help clean the
place up-or at least that's what she thinks. Let's just say
that my intelligence source has some better ideas for her."

Ruth didn't hear much of what he said; she was too excited to keep looking into this bizarre Demon-horn called
the Vox Unterwelt and see little slices of the world she
used to live in.

The world I took for granted, something caused her to add.

"Pretty cool little device, huh?"

"Oh, shit-yeah ..."

"Can't even imagine how much energy and Celestial
resources it took to make it and get it to me."

"Huh?"

"Just keep looking, Ruth," Father Alexander said with
some contentment, "and let me know when it looks like
she's getting ready for bed."

"What happens then?"

"That's when we get to talk to her .. .

"So you're telling me Freddie Johnson was a pretty
straight-up guy?" Berns said.

The captain's name was Desmond, a proverbial salty
dog. Old, bent, wizened, but tough from a lifetime of working the water. As he spoke with Berns, he was scraping
small barnacles off a crab trap with a wire brush, and had
an accent that sounded more like Maine than New Hampshire. "Ya mean did he steal? Naw, not that I ever heard.
He was a partier, sure, but who ain't in this business?"

Berns gazed off the dock into a deep blue bay. "Drugs,
you mean?"

"Naw, but he drank a lot of beer. Saw him with a bunch
of folks once drinkin' at Abney's one night, and now that
ya mention it, sure, they looked like druggers."

Important, Berns knew. "His friends-.-A girl and another guy?"

The leathery face squinted at the remark. "Yeah, I think
ya might be right. Skinny girl, dirty-blond hair, looks
forty but's probably thirty." Desmond picked up a
chewed cigar end that had been sitting on the raw dock, and put it in his mouth. "Can't really recall the other
fella."

"If I showed you mug shots, could you pick them out?"

A reluctance touched the old man's hooded eyes.
"Wouldn't wanna do that, memory ain't what it used to
be. Lotta folks come 'n go in this little town, lookin' for
odd jobs-not just crabbin', mind you. All's I remember is
the girl had tattoos, and the fella, too, I think. Guttermouthed, both of 'em. But I'd just be half-guessin' lookin'
at pictures."

"I understand," Berns said. People always liked to talk,
but never back it up. Too much responsibility. Not that Bems
had any mug shots anyway. "Tell me more about Freddie
Johnson."

"He was a damn good crabber-that's all we gave a crap
about." Desmond moved the brush to another trap, gnawing the cigar butt. "Me 'n the other captains would damn
near get in fights over him. But whoever's boat he went out
on always came back with a full load of Jonahs and Peekytoes. Some guys just have the knack, and that was Freddie
Johnson. Said he tweaked the bait, that was his secret, but I
just think he was lucky. He'd work for me a lot 'cos I'd always throw in a case of beer on top of his pay."

"How many commercial crabbers are there in Wammsport?" Berns asked. He watched another boat pull in as its
deckhands were sizing a trough of live crabs.

"Five or six-depends on the season. We're small-time
here. The big boats trap outta Portsmouth. But we do all
right. They got places in town that pay solid money for
live bushels of Peekytoe, then get a buncha illegals to pick
the meat 'n sell it to restaurants ... er-aw, shit, guess I
shouldn't have said that."

"Don't worry about it." Bems almost chuckled.

"That's why the crab cakes are so good 'round hereit's all fresh-picked meat. You eat a crab cake at Abney's
tonight and you can bet the meat in it was alive 'n in the
bay yesterday." The leathery face looked up. "You ever
had a Peekytoe crab cake, Captain?"

"Actually, no. Not into seafood."

"Aw, that's a shame. But anyway, that's how it works.
We sell off most of our Peekies around here. The Jonahs
go inland. And since you're so interested in Freddie Johnson, I can tell ya, I ain't never had a bad day on the water
when he was working my boat. He works hard."

Worked, Berns thought.

"I been doin' this over fifty years, crabbin' just like my
daddy did. In ails that time I never saw a guy could fill
traps like Freddie. If he weren't so damned unreliable, he
could make a fortune in this business, have his own boat
and crew."

Another interesting remark. "How was he unreliable?"

"He'd sign on for a week, two at a time, then the bastard wouldn't show up on his third or fourth day. He'd
have a good night playin' poker, or hustle some fellas on
the pool table or some such, and then he'd disappear for a
couple weeks and I'd have to take the boat out myself.
Like that, ya know?"

"Good old transient labor. They're great when they
show up."

Berns found himself repeatedly distracted by the environment. Forgot how beautiful New Hampshire is on the water ... Seagulls floated overhead, while smaller birds shot
down into the water on a split second's notice, then shot
back up with a minnow. He was taken aback by the clean
salt scent of the sea coming off the bay. As a violent
crimes captain, his duties almost never brought him to the
state's meager sixteen-mile coastline. "All right, so Freddie worked hard but hardly worked."

"Pretty much."

"And beered it up."

"Ee-yuh."

"You see him out in the bars a lot?"

"Not that much but I know he threw 'em back on account he smelled like beer whenever he worked for me. But
I never saw him out much in town, just that one night at the
bar I told ya about, and maybe a couple, three more times.
Come to think of it he hustled some guys on the pool table that one night, too-for a couple of hundred-and I was just
sitting there with my beer thinkin' holy shit, with them
winnings I'll bet my ass he don't show for work the next
momin'. Damned if I weren't right."

Berns knew the type-all cops did. But he needed
something new. The tattoos, he remembered. He mentioned
the girl had a lot of tattoos. He pulled out one of the booking
photos he'd gotten, surprised by the Lubec PD's thoroughness of photographing all identifying marks on the
arrestee. "The girl you saw him with-did she have a tattoo like this?"

The old man seemed to experience distaste when he
looked at a close-up photo of the bizarre tattoo on Freddie
Johnson's lower abdomen. "The hail's that? A fella's
stomach?"

"Freddie Johnson, taken the night he was arrested in
Lubec, Maine. Ever seen anything like that before?"

"You can bet not, son. The tattoos on that gal was all
silly shit like I told ya, skulls and such. Don't know what
that is."

"Neither do I." Berns reclaimed the photo and took a
glance at the strange spiral within the bordered rectangle,
and arrows pointing inward from three corners.

"Looks damned Satanic or somethin', don't it?" Desmond commented.

"Yes, sir, and I'm glad you mentioned that. Do you have
any reason to believe that Freddie might have been involved in any cult activity? Devil-worship, something
along those lines?"

The old man seemed addled by the question. "Like all
that heavy-metal shit, upside-down crosses? Shit, I don't
know. I never heard of nothing like that around here. It's
all out in California, I thought."

Desmond's friendly demeanor was rapidly eroding. Either I'm starting to annoy him, Berns thought, or the references to devil worship are getting under his skin.

"We'se just a bunch of watermen here, son." Desmond
slammed the lid down on a crab trap. "Northeast red necks. That means hard workin' and hard drinkin'. There
ain't none of that weirdo California shit here."

"How about-"

"And it ain't that I don't wanna cooperate with the
police"-Desmond wiped his slimy hands on his pants"but I'm a tad busy here. I told ya everything I know
about Freddie Johnson."

That's all I'll get out of him, Berns decided. "Thanks for
your time, Mr. Desmond. Oh, one last thing-"

The old man glared.

"Are there any tattoo parlors around here?"

Desmond began scraping the next trap, waving one
arm but not looking at Berns. "Across the street, son.
You're none too observant for a police captain, are ya?"

Jesus. Berns felt inept when he turned his head and immediately saw the shop. TATroos BY TERRY. "Thanks, sir."

"Yeah, yeah."

Berns walked quickly off the dock. Am I that irritating?
The sun was baking him in his drab sports jacket, but he
couldn't take it off due to his shoulder holster. While he
waited to cross the pierfront road, a dented pickup rumbled by with its stereo turned up so loud Berns had a mind
to write the driver a ticket for disturbing the peace. "Satan's
just around the bend!" wailed the singer. Great, Berns
thought. A shirtless, tattoo'd redneck in the driver's seat
sneered. Maybe that's one of Johnson's accomplices. Then he realized how ridiculous the notion was. This is a redneck Waterman town, and watermen all have tattoos.... Berns jaywalked
a moment later, yet movement behind him caught his eye.

He stopped in the middle of the street and turned.

A dock bum in rotten clothes dug through a garbage
can, but when his yellowed eyes caught Berns', he shirked
away.

"Get out of the road, ass!" someone yelled, leaning on
their horn. Berns almost shouted at the start, then felt
himself blush as he jogged across the street.

"Chowderhead!" yelled the driver. The arm crooked
out the window bore a tattoo of a grinning skull.

Great day so far ... He took out the photo of Johnson's
tattoo again. He remembered the convict's cryptic reply
when asked what the tattoo was: It's ... my trademark,
man, with that big gold-toothed smile. It's probably just
some death-metal logo. Probably a million people have the same
tattoo. He sighed in relief when the parlor's AC seemed to
suck him inside. Four walls and partition panels displayed hundreds of tattoo designs: flowers, crosses, Oriental characters, and the like. In the back was a counter
and a chair almost like a dentist's.

Anyone here?

"Don't tell me a police officer wants a tattoo," came the
voice of an energetic woman behind him. "That would be
a first."

Berns didn't like the surprise, nor the comment. One
look and I'm made, he thought, disgusted. But then a double take prevented him from saying anything right off.

A slim, very attractive woman in a blue bikini stood in
front of him, off-blond, big eyes, her hair pulled back. She
had no body fat at all, just tan curves and sleek, flawless
skin, and ... lots of upbeat tattoos. Big yellow, blue, and
red stars crawled up her legs, while pink kiss marks
crawled up her arms. Just above the waistband of her
bikini bottom were the words wE►..coi TO THE HAPPIEST
PLACE IN THE WORLD! Just to the left of it, Mickey Mouse
peeked out. Berns had to collect himself a moment.

"Are you the ... tattooist?"

"Yes, I'm Terry, " she said. "Are you going to let me ink
you up, Officer?"

Berns finally shook off the initial shock. "How did you
know I'm a cop?"

She giggled. "When that redneck almost ran you down
on Dock Street, I saw the gun under your coat."

"And tell me why you seem surprised that the tattooist
is a woman?"

Berns' thoughts bumbled; then he figured he'd just tell
the truth. "Not that the tattooist is a woman but a woman in a pretty tiny bikini. I don't see many bikinis in New
Hampshire."

She tapped a flip-flopped foot like someone who'd had
too much coffee. "Officer, there's only three months a
year when a girl can wear a bikini in this state. June, July,
and August. So every June, July, and August, that's all I
wear."

"I guess that makes sense. I'm Captain Berns, by the
way, Rockingham County Sheriff's Department. I'm in
charge of the violent crimes unit, and-"

She laughed out loud. "I'll bet that job sucks!"

"Uh .. ' Berns had no response. "I was wondering if
you could-"

Before he could finish, the lissome woman's eyes
darted to the photo in his hand. "That's not mine, is it?"
and she quickly snatched it away from him and rushed to
the wall.

Berns' thoughts bumbled again. What the ... His eyes
followed the sleek and almost-nude body.

"It's the same guy!" she exclaimed. "I have a picture
here that's almost identical! The blond guy, right? With
the gold-tooth, always smiling?"

Eureka! "He's a crabber named Freddie Johnson. Do
you know him?"

"Oh, no, I don't know him, and I never got any of their
names. But ... why do you have a picture of his tattoo?"

Berns noted now that the tattoo samples on that section
of the wall were actually polaroids. "It's part of arrest procedure, ma'am. He's in jail now, in Maine. And ... why
do you have a picture of his tattoo?"

"Most customers let me take a picture to display, if it's
an original or unusual design."