“Not directly, no. But our interests might intersect.”
“I save you some trouble. I never seen your girl, and I never seen your mark, and I don’t know who be doin’ all this. Hell, how I know you not the one behind it?”
“If I were, why would I be here?”
He got up and shambled over to the TV, pushed aside a rack of DVDs, and took a thick stack of banded bills from the wall safe behind it. He tossed it to me, and I caught it one-handed and flipped through it. All hundreds.
“That’s ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I bet you never seen ten thousand cash dollars all in one place.”
“Not true. I was Monopoly champion in third grade.”
He gave me a sideways glance. “Naw, you not the Monopoly type. You the dodgeball type.”
“Dodgeball was okay. My favorite was Manhunt.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Not much money in Manhunt.”
“Depends on who you’re hunting.”
He nodded toward the wad of bills. “My point.”
“I’m not that stupid. All I want to know is, who might be trying to set you up? You got any partners? Asian-looking guy? White guy with a manticore tattoo?” I showed him the drawing of the manticore.
“Ain’t got no partners. Don’t believe in ’em.” He looked at Simone, then at the girl on the couch. Jerked a thumb toward the hall. “Y’all get on up out of here now.”
As the women trooped out, Helix gave Khanh a pointed stare. She looked straight ahead, not acknowledging his nonverbal message, and when it became clear that she never would, he shrugged and turned his gaze back to me. When he spoke again, most of the gangsta schtick was gone. “I have a good lawyer, Mr. P.I. Had me out of jail before lunchtime. We beat this one, he says. But what about the next one? Some asshole kills a girl and puts my mark on her, he’s got a beef with me. You think he’s going to stop?”
“Maybe. If it did what he wanted it to.”
“I ain’t behind bars, which means the cops still be looking for him. So how could it do what he wanted it to? You in tight with the cops, Mr. P.I.?”
“Pretty tight, some of them.”
“Our interests intersect, you said.” He nodded toward the wad of cash in my hand. “You want to prove it, go to work for me. Five thousand now, five thousand when you bring me the guy who setting me up. Hell, you don’t even have to bring him to me. Just give me his name and address.”
I tossed the money at him. He wasn’t ready and had to scramble for it, tipped it with a finger, then got his palm under it and clamped his fist around it. He took two steps toward me, thunder in his eyes. “Something wrong with my money?”
“I don’t want to work for you.”
“I get it. You some kinda white knight. Think you better than me.” I didn’t answer, but he didn’t seem to notice. He loosened his tie, shrugged out of his jacket, and tossed it over the back of the couch. “Couple ways this can go, bro. One, I kick your ass, shove this money down your throat, and turn out your ugly-ass woman. Not many guys into that shit, but I know a few that are. Two, you kick my ass. Not likely, but you could get lucky. Three, you take the money and bring me the name of the guy who set me up. Everybody be happy.”
I shifted my weight forward and rolled my shoulders to get the kinks out. The arm in the cast throbbed. “I wouldn’t be happy.”
Helix bounced on the balls of his feet, clenching and unclenching his fists. “You find your girl, you gone find this asshole anyway, right? Then you gone get him arrested, and his name and address be public record.”
“You’ve got it all figured out. So why do you care if I take your ten thousand dollars?”
“Hell, I lose more than that between the sofa cushions. Ain’t nothing.”
Khanh touched my sleeve. “Ten thousand dollar, buy plenty medicine.”
I clamped my teeth until my jaws ached. It wasn’t my job to buy her mother medicine.
From the back of the house, the baby mewled. Helix and I studied each other from two feet apart. He spread his hands, his grin an arc of white and gold. “Say I been to your office last week and axed you to find out if my lady was cheatin’ on me. What would you have done?”
“I’d have taken your money. And then, when I checked you out, I’d have given it back.”
He shrugged. “Then you seriously stupid, man. Look, you can’t be a good person and do what I do. I know that. I’m okay with it. But I’m a nice guy, Mr. P.I. People like me. Hell, you spend a hour with me, you gone like me too. But you, you sure you’re so much better? You gone let your pride keep your lady here from getting her medicine?”
I handed him my card. “You think of anybody who might be setting you up, give me a call. Might be another wallet in it for you.”
“A man can always use a new wallet.” Smirking, he summoned Simone, who led us out, baby slung on one hip.
“That girl on the couch,” I said, as she walked us down the sidewalk. “How old is she?”
Simone’s smile was wry. “Twenty-one.”
“Sure she is.” I pulled another card from my pocket. “In case you think of anything that might help. Might be a reward in it. You could get out of all this.”
She gave a bitter laugh, but reached for the card. “Why would I want out of all this?”
She shifted the baby to the other hip and leaned against the fence again. Took a long drag from her cigarette. I watched her in the rearview mirror as we pulled away. She was blowing smoke rings at the baby’s face.
Khanh shook her head. “Ten thousand dollar.”
“It’s a lot of money.”
“You rich American. Easy say no.”
“Not so easy. But you work for a guy like Helix, pretty soon you only work for guys like Helix.” I put it from my mind and glanced at Khanh. “I’m sorry about what he said. When he was talking about turning you out.”
“You think I care some hậu môn say ugly? He nothing man. I not care what he say.”
I didn’t believe her. Small hurts could grind you down the same as big ones. They just took longer.
21
Art & Souls tattoo parlor was a well-kept secret, tucked at the edge of an East Nashville residential neighborhood. A neon sign above the door flashed the name, along with a wisp of blue light winding through the outline of a heart. In the front window, photos in thin black frames showcased the artists’ work—detailed renderings of wildlife, landscapes, and mythological creatures blended into custom artwork. Beneath each photo was a strip of white paper with a typed description of the traits symbolized by the tattoo. I found Salazar’s on the second row, the coiled snake looking curiously more alive than when I’d seen it in person. The tag beneath said: Unpredictable. Dangerous when threatened.
Beside it was a picture of a woman’s shoulder and upper arm. A spray of butterflies rose from just above the elbow to the top of the shoulder, then spilled across the shoulder to the neck, back, and collarbone. The tag said: Vibrant and ephemeral.
Inside, it reeked of antiseptic. More photos lined the walls, interspersed with cases filled with piercings. In one corner stood a workstation with a computer and a stack of papers. In another was a thick leather photo book on a podium. A vinyl-covered reclining chair dominated the center of the room, and beside it, on a rolling cart, was a collection of inks, tips, and disposable needles. A pudgy, balding man in a Comic Con T-shirt stood wiping the chair down with a paper towel and some pungent disinfectant in a spray bottle. As we came in, he glanced up, blue eyes looking bulbous behind thick lenses.
“Perfect timing,” he said, smiling. He stared intently, first at me, then at Khanh, as if he were memorizing us. “Which of you is here for the ink?”
“Neither, actually.”
“Too bad.” He glanced at Khanh again and opened a drawer on the cart. Pulled out an orange pencil and a sketch pad. “I know just what I’d do for you.”
A few sweeping gestures, and he exchanged the orange pencil for a blue one. Working swiftly, he
laid in outlines, then the broader strokes. Finally, he turned the pad so we could see a partial portrait of Khanh’s right side, beginning at the tip of her stump and ending just below her hairline. He’d drawn in the tattoo, a swirl of flames emerging from the stump and sweeping up toward the elbow, where a beautiful Asian woman with outstretched wings rose out of the flames. Her wings were ablaze, and fire raged around her, the rising flames entwining with a spray of morning glories. The final flower rested at Khanh’s temple, just above the place where her scars ended.
Rough as it was, it was stunning.
Khanh stared at the page, mouth open, as if she couldn’t decide whether to be pleased or offended.
I frowned. “That’s not—”
Ignoring me, he said to Khanh, “You been through the fire, and it made you strong. Or maybe you started strong, and that’s what got you through it. Either way, it tempered you.”
“Very observant.” The brittleness in my voice surprised me. “You’ll have to do better than that if you want us to believe this is some kind of psychic bullshit.”
He tore out the drawing and handed it to Khanh. “I never said it was psychic. It’s all there, the way she moves, the way she holds her mouth.”
I reached for the drawing, but Khanh turned away, moving it out of my reach.
“Beautiful,” she said. “Not like me.”
“It’s you, all right,” he said. “What I do, I help people see it.”
She held it out toward him, and he said, “Keep it. You decide you want to get it done, you know where to find me. One of a kind. I never do the same design twice.” He put the pad and pencils away and said, “If you didn’t come in for a tattoo, what are you here for?”
I showed him my license. “I’m looking for a guy who got a tattoo here. A manticore. He had a woman with him, and she got some ink too. A bird with a broken wing.”
“I remember,” he said. “It was about a year ago, but I still remember. Tell me he didn’t kill her.”
“Why would you think he might?”
He pulled off his glasses, rubbed at the lenses with his shirttail. The glasses had left deep gouges in the sides of his nose, but without the thick lenses, his eyes looked normal. “There was a coldness in him. You could see it in his eyes, the way he looked at her, the way he kind of put himself in her space. She didn’t want a tattoo, I could tell, but I was afraid of what he’d do to her if I didn’t go along. You know—if I let him know she’d given it away that she wasn’t completely on board.”
“You thought he was abusing her. Did you report it to anybody?”
“It was just a feeling I had. She didn’t have any bruises or anything.” He shoved the glasses back onto his face and sank onto the tattoo chair. “He did something to her, didn’t he?”
“I don’t know. We think he killed another woman, maybe two. And we’re looking for a third. Someone he or a partner might be holding captive.”
“Oh, jeez. She was a nice lady, too. But low self-esteem. You could tell she’d been through a lot.”
“It would really help if we knew where to find him.”
“I have a contact list. You know, for specials and stuff.” He pushed out of the chair. “I can pull it up on the computer, but he’s not on it.”
Beside me, Khanh let out a disappointed sigh.
I said, “Of course he’s not. That would be too easy.”
He held up a hand. “He’s not on it, but she is. She came back a few days later, looking scared out of her mind. Asked to be put on our mailing list. I asked if she was sure, and she said she was, that looking at the photos made her happy. She asked me to address it to Occupant, but I remember which one it was. If he finds out where you got it, though . . .”
“He won’t find out from us.”
“This girl you’re looking for . . .”
I pulled Tuyet’s picture up on my phone and held it up. A sharp breath whistled through his teeth. He glanced at Khanh, then back at the photo, then back at Khanh. “Similar bone structures. Your kin?”
Khanh nodded. “My daughter.”
With a wordless nod, he went to his computer, pulled up a database, then plucked a Post-It from a handy pad and scrawled an address. “By the way, the guy’s name is Karlo,” he said.
“A year ago, and you still remember his name?”
“He was kind of a joke around here for a while. Like, don’t steal my fries, man, or I’ll sic Karlo on you.”
“He made an impression.”
“Mister, he would have made an impression on granite. You know what I drew for him?”
“A manticore.”
“I showed him the picture, kind of worried because, you know, what if he didn’t like it? But he did. Ran his finger over it a few times and got this nasty grin on his face. Said, ‘You got it right. This is the soul of a man.’ That sticks with you, you know? ’Cause the whole point of a manticore is, it isn’t a man.”
“Part man,” Khanh said.
“Only the thinking part. The rest is all beast.”
“That tells us something about him,” I said.
“You got that right,” he said. “Only thing is, it’s nothing good.”
22
According to my reverse phone directory, the woman’s name was Leda Savitch. A quick background check revealed no visible means of support. She lived near midtown, a few blocks from Hillsboro Village, in a two-bedroom brick house with a peaked roof and cobalt shutters. A whitewashed railing ran along the front porch, and a set of tubular wind chimes hung near the door. A wooden porch swing swayed in the breeze. Rose bushes lined the front walk.
As I pulled the truck up to the curb, an itch started on my left elbow. I tapped the cast just over the itch, which moved a few inches to the right. I slid a finger into the cast with no appreciable effect, finally popped open the glove compartment and fished for a pen. Too short. I got out of the truck and rummaged behind the seat until I found my weather radio, then snapped off the antenna, slipped it into the space between the cast and my skin, and scratched vigorously. Ah.
The corners of Khanh’s mouth quirked. “You feel better?”
“A little.”
“Good. We go talk Leda Savitch now?”
I tucked the antenna into my pocket for future emergencies and said, “You sure you want to hear this? What if she thinks this guy Karlo walks on water?”
“I be very strong. Want hear what she say.”
We walked up the cobbled sidewalk to Leda’s front door and rang the bell.
A heavyset woman in her early forties answered the door, wiping flour from her hands onto a white lace apron. Her blunt features and solid build were reminiscent of Eric’s sketch of Karlo. Peasant stock. She might have been pretty once, but never beautiful. With her dyed blonde hair and her yellow sundress, she looked like a Marshmallow Peep.
The sleeveless dress showed the tattoo on her upper arm, the bird’s expression an unsettling combination of adoration and resignation.
Through the screen door, Leda Savitch said, “You are selling something? Magazines? Chocolate bars? I have no need of either.” Her eyes were wary, her accent heavy, Russian maybe, or one of the Balkan countries.
I held up my license. “We need to talk about Karlo.”
“Karlo?” The suspicion in her eyes turned to fear. “My brother is a good man.”
“I think we all know better than that.” I held up my phone with Tuyet’s picture on it. “This girl is missing. At least two others are dead. Don’t you think it’s time somebody stopped him?”
Her gaze shifted away from the photo. I moved the phone back into her line of vision. Her mouth trembled. She pressed a hand to her lips and closed her eyes. After a moment, she sighed, blinked, and fumbled with the latch. “I suppose you should come in. My apologies for the mess. I was making Kremšnita.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Custard cream cake in puff pastry, powdered sugar on top. Karlo is careful with his weight, but he love
s my Kremšnita.”
Despite her apology, there wasn’t much of a mess. The house was clean, bright, comfortable. It smelled of sugar and warm vanilla pudding.
I said, “You and Karlo are close?”
“We came to America together during the troubles. He has always taken care of me.”
“You aren’t married?”
“I was engaged once, back home. He died in the troubles.” She gestured toward the living room. “Please. Come sit down. I’ll make coffee. Then we can talk.”
While Leda puttered in the kitchen, Khanh and I settled ourselves on the living room sofa. The walls were pale yellow, splashed with fractured light from a row of prisms hanging in the window. A curio cabinet displayed a collection of blown glass sculptures, handcrafted wooden carousels, and several sets of Russian nesting dolls.
From the doorway, Leda said, “We left so much ugliness behind, I want only pretty things. Beautiful things, but fragile. Like life. Karlo thinks it’s silly.”
“Karlo is a practical guy?”
She carried a silver tray with three steaming cups and a china coffee service to the table, then dropped two sugar cubes into one and stirred in enough cream to turn the coffee the color of caramel. Sinking into the chair across from us, she set her cup on the table beside her and said, “Dead girls. A missing girl. This is a matter for the police, no? You are not police. So why are you here?”
I nodded toward Khanh, whose fist was clenched against her thigh. “Please,” she said. “He take my daughter. You tell me where he take her.”
“Why would Karlo take a woman?”
I said, “We think he sells them. He and some other men. From what you know about him, is that possible?”
Leda closed her eyes, steadied her cup and saucer on her knee. “These other men. Who are they?”
“An Amerasian. Maybe a black guy, calls himself Helix.”
Relief flooded her features, and her eyes opened. “Karlo would not work with a black man. This I know.”
“But an Asian, he might?”
“Perhaps. He would not like it, but he might. But . . . selling women?”
River of Glass Page 13
