LITMIR.BIZ

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the police station themselves.

      People reacted in different ways. Harry’s mother turned white, left her husband to ask the usual questions of shock and disbelief and “no possible mistake?” and walked slowly out of the room. To return in a little under ten minutes, carrying a thick book that could have been from Ward and Roebuck but turned out to be a sample book of tattoo designs.

      She looked back and forth a couple of times between Lestrade and Clayton before handing her burden to the junior partner. “Just last Wednesday,” she told them numbly, “he borrowed this from a local tattoo artist. I don’t know which one. We…we’ve always been tolerant about it, it’s so popular what else do you do? but never really interested, nobody else in the family. Except Linda, who got a tasteful little rose last year. Along with the rest of her graduating class. Harry thought he had narrowed it down to Egghead McJones, the solar system as an atom, or…or…”

      Linda Jackson of the tasteful rose tattoo supplied, “Or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script.”

      “Or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script. I think he may have decided, forgotten to take the catalog back. It should go back now. This catalog. Harry was always so careful to get his library materials back on time. This should go back, too. I’m sorry, I don’t know which…body artist. Somebody local. I know it’s somebody local.”

      They thanked the family, explained about releasing the body as soon as they could…it might be two or three weeks, maybe even as long as a month, but it was absolutely necessary for them to keep it until it could get a second examination. Not necessarily a full autopsy, no, and everything would be kept as integral as possible, but these things needed a second opinion, and it’d be much better if they kept the body now instead of having to exhume it later. Meanwhile, could they have one or two recent photos of Harry?

      And, very sorry about this, M.’s, but some member of the family would need to come in to make the formal identification.

      Some families liked to hold memorial services right away, even if full interment had to wait.

      While Lestrade took her turn driving, Dave sat silently for a couple of miles through city traffic, the sample book in his lap. She knew he didn’t like informing the survivors any better than she did. Any polly who liked that duty, wasn’t fit to serve as a polly.

      At last, halfway to the station, Dave said, “Egghead McJones, the solar system as an atom, or ‘Love and Peace’ in Elvish script.” Her peripheral vision caught his slow headshake. “Nope. I can’t connect any of those with the one he actually has.”

      “I can’t either, Dave,” said Lestrade. “I can’t, either.”

      * * * *

      Chicago had a body artist on every corner, but Forest Green had four to serve the whole town and surrounding area. Tattoos were usually permanent, and people had only so much skin area to cover, no matter how popular good body art might be among about forty percent of the population. And then, there were some groups, like rolegamers, who as often as not preferred the paint-on or peel-off versions, so as to change their body art with the scenario.

      Three of the town’s body artists were as legitimate as their business. Only two of the fifty-five Reformed States had ever outlawed tattoos—Rhode Island, which probably did it to be quaint, and Texacali, which probably did it to give her tattoo enthusiasts the thrill of mild and harmless lawbreaking.

      Lestrade hated having that kind of law on the books. Helped blunt the force of the real laws, the laws every society needed. The law against murder, for one. The law against what had been done to Harry Carter Jackson.

      Come to think of it, about the only thing Rosemary Lestrade liked about her workline was getting to clear the occasional innocent party.

      Sydney Naismith was known only to his clients and the police. Thirty-eight years ago, when he was starting up in Toronto, he’d been a little too careless about sterilizing his needles, and tattoos had gotten infected. Three people needed hospitalization, one of them died, and Naismith ended up blacklisted for life by the International Association of Body Artists.

      Lestrade had decided to tackle Naismith first.

      Moving farther and farther down the ladder as his hair got thinner and grayer, he had sunk into a one and a half room basement apartment in what Forest Green liked to think of as its slum district: four square blocks that any self-disrespecting skid row in Chicago or New York would have labeled lower middle-class without a second thought. His bed was a fold-up, his kitchenette was on the street side of his living room, and…

      “Where are you hiding the equipment now, M. Naismith? Lestrade asked him, more curious than anything else.

      “We know you haven’t gone out of business,” Clayton added. “We ran one of our regulars in just last week, with a new flower on her ankle in your distinctive lack of style.”

      “Art. That’s why they call it ‘body art,’ Detective, and I don’t like you blighting it just because you don’t understand it. That’s why I ever got into the business in the first place. To practice art. Then one effing mistake and they try to kick me out for life. You don’t bottle art up, Sergeant Hatchet Face.” (Lestrade noticed with wry amusement that Naismith had slid from her junior partner to herself without a pause.) “Or it eats you alive from inside out,” he went on. “Like it says in the Gospel of Thomas, if you let out what’s inside, it’ll save you. If you don’t, it’ll destroy you. I’m an artist, pollies. You want the tools of my art, get yourselves a warrant and search the place. Shouldn’t take more than half an hour. Take you longer to get the warrant than it’d take for me to give this dump a whole new paint job, floor to ceiling, maybe put in new wood trim, too.”

      “I see you still like to go on talking half an hour after making your point,” Lestrade told him. “As it happens, today we aren’t interested in ferreting you out for the benefit of IABA.”

      “You’re safe enough in this town,” Clayton added, “until whatever you let out of you destroys somebody else.”

      “That was thirty-eight years ago, Pollydeck.”

      “Make it another thirty-eight, and we’ll get you into a museum,” said Clayton. “And don’t call Sergeant Lestrade ‘Hatchet Face.’ Here.” He produced the sample book. “This yours?”

      Naismith took it, riffled through it, shook his head. “Nope. Looks likes what’s-his-name’s style. Where’d you get it?”

      “Turned in at our Lost and Found,” Clayton lied easily.

      “Well, better try my…colleagues.” Naismith said the last word like an insult. “Especially…what’s-his-name, the one lording it off uptown.”

      “Okay, Detective Clayton,” said Lestrade. “Show him the design.”

      They hadn’t brought a photograph of the tattoo. A photograph would show part of the dead body. So they’d brought a tracing made from a photograph, using a pencil almost the same shade of blue.

      Naismith glanced at the tracing and said, “Looks like one of those effing stamps.”

      “Took a whole lot of time weighing that decision, didn’t you?” Clayton asked him.

      “How much time you think it takes to recognize a piece of mass-market crap?”

      Lestrade took over again, and deliberately used a term she guessed he wouldn’t like, just to feel him out a little more. “And you can tell how it’s punched in from a tracing?”

      “Why’d any self-respecting body artist take the time to really tattoo anything that’s going to end up looking like one more piece of mass-market crap? These stamps, you can call them ‘punching,’ if you want. I’d call it worse. But don’t you ever say ‘punching’ when you’re talking about real tattooing. You want respect from me, Pollydecks, you give my art some respect, too.”

      “I take it,” Lestrade commented, “you wouldn’t be caught

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