The Butterfly Forest

NINETEEN

“Where’s Inkman?”

“He’s back in his room. Each artist has his own set up. Different inks. Different styles. You know, different strokes for different folks. C’mon back. ” He sucked the last quarter inch of cigarette down to the filter, held the smoke deep in his lungs before exhaling through his nostrils. I followed him down a hall. A woman was coming our way. She was thin. Red, blue and yellow hair. Faced filled with metal. Wide, deep-set blue-green eyes. Long sleeves. A wet stain the size of a dime on her right sleeve. She smiled at me and said. “Are you here for a piercing?”

“I have too many scars already.”

She grinned. “And I have eight years experience. Very gentle, and specialize in doing genitalia and nipples.”

I smiled. The Led Zeppelin song, A Whole Lotta Love, seemed to ricochet down the hall lined with poster art. In the corner of the hall, I saw a dead cockroach lying on its back. Looked at the woman’s fingernails painted black and said, “Maybe next time.”

She smiled, dimples popping, hugged her arms and walked toward the front.

We entered Inkman’s den of colors. After Gary made introductions, I looked at the samples of art on the walls. Hundreds of framed drawings. Inkman was older. Mid-fifties. Thin face. Indian nose. No metal in his skin. Gray hair slicked straight back, and tats covering both arms from the wrist to the shoulders. Some of the blue ink was faded and smeared from age and time. He wore a tank top stretched over the broad chest of a long-time gym rat. Scarred knuckles. Hands of a boxer. His voice was straight out of Brooklyn. “How ya doin’? So sit down. First time, eh?”

I glanced toward the door and said, “Thanks, Gary.” He nodded, fished for a cigarette in his overalls and left. I turned back to Inkman. “Yeah, it’s my first time.”

He looked at me, his eyes probing, rubbing a wide finger down one ink-smeared arm. “So, what did you have in mind?”

“I hear no one can draw a woman or a fairy better than you.”

His pupils narrowed for one heartbeat. “That’s what you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Now, where would you hear that?”

“Your art speaks for itself. I saw it. You didn’t sign it, but I know it was yours.”

“You’re a cop.”

“You think?”

“Thirty years in this business, I can tell. I’ve had you guys sniffing in more shops than I remember. Not everybody in skin art is selling drugs.”

I looked over to a framed sample of his work. Unlike the tattoo I saw on Soto’s arm, in this picture, the fairy was clothed. But the unmistakable style of a master artist was the same. The delicate features of her face, that of a beautiful lady and a mischievous woman, angelic, playful and sensuous. The dark blue wings, large like a rare butterfly’s wings embroidered in iridescent shades of sky blue.

“You have a lot of talent,” I said.

“Why you here?”

“You tattooed a man recently. His name is Frank Soto. Gave him an image on his upper left arm a lot like the one on your wall. His was of a nude woman. She looked younger than the one in your frame. But I can tell it came from the same hand. Your art is like a fingerprint. It’s an artist’s statement and, Inkman, yours has a very stylistic flair.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“What did Soto tell you? Why did he choose the fairy on his arm?”

“I don’t ask my customers why they want what they want. It’s none of my fuckin’ business, and it’s none of yours.”

“When he pulled a pistol in the faces of a mother and her daughter, Frank Soto made it my business.”

“Hey, man, I’m just an artist, not some shrink.”

“And I’m just a guy trying to prevent a double homicide.”

“What?”

“That’s right. We have reason to believe the asshole you inked will return and finish the job. People talk when they’re getting a tattoo. Sometimes it’s to help tolerate the pain of the needle, but most of the time it’s to give the artist a better understanding of the importance of a new portrait they’ll wear for life. What did he tell you?”

Inkman was silent. His jaw line popped. A muscle moved like a worm embedded beneath his left eye. I said, “Your jewelry princess is a junkie. Did she get her morning needle in here? In that chair? You’ve got syringes in the garbage, and I’m betting those customers who walked out when I walked in bought more than incense. You tell me now. I leave. I won’t come back. Won’t come back with dogs, warrants and reasons.”

His black eyes turned to marble. I said, “And now, Inkman, you have a chance to do something that can bring a fairytale ending to a potential horror story. You can be a silent hero. Prevent two innocent killings. What was his reason?”

Inkman lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and leaned against the arm of the leather chair used by his customers. “The dude said he wanted the tat as a souvenir. Said he saw something down in the forest.”

“Saw what? What forest?”

“Ocala National.”

“What’d he see?”

“Some kind of religious ceremony. Said the women were dressed as fairies. Lots of drums beating all night. He said the women were like fireflies around the light of the bonfire. He mentioned he was on his way to meet somebody when he saw all these fuckers, Rainbow people, or whatnot. Anyway, they were pulling their beat-up vans and trucks way the hell down in the forest for a week of fire and drums. Looks like this guy sort of stumbled among them. Said he took some hits. Some kind of sage, sort of like acid, called it a salvia plant. But he said it was like nothin’ he’d ever done before, he thought he’d traveled back in time, you know like some fuckin’ land of druids. Said in that land women are for the taking. So he took one. That’s all he said. He took one. He wanted a tattoo to keep her close. Now what the fuck is that suppose to mean?”