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 dead using one of these tattoo stamps?”
“Call that respect, Sergeant Hatchet Face? Leonardo ever use rubber stamps in his pictures?”
“Stop calling her —” Dave began, but she caught his eye and shook her head. Let it pass, hot beaver. It isn’t that important.
“Then let me put it to you very respectfully,” she went on to Naismith, more sternly than respectfully, “you wouldn’t make one of these stamps even if somebody requested one? Offered you a lot of money for it? You wouldn’t see it as a challenge?”
“I’d see it as an insult. Like I hear you insulting me, Sergeant Hatchet Face.” Naismith glanced around at his third-hand furnishings and the pitiful stock of generic canned goods in his open shelves. “But if I ever did make an effing stamp for the money, even if I ever thought getting the equipment to make it would be halfway worth the expense, you can bet it’d have a lot more style than this piece of crap.” He took another glance at the tracing and thrust it back at Clayton. “It’d be something you could almost mistake for art. It wouldn’t be crap.”
Lestrade signaled her partner with a nod.
He held out the two photos they had gotten from the victim’s family. “Ever see this floater before?”
Naismith grunted and examined the first photo. Shuffled the second one out on top and examined it as well. Finally shook his head. “Guess I could’ve seen him around town. Yeah, I get out and around town sometimes. Never been in here to buy any tattoos from me, if that’s what you’re getting at. Why, what kind of rap you trying to pin on him?”
“Missing person. Just asking everyone we see. Routine. Well, thank you, M. Naismith.” Queen Hatchet Face deliberately bestowing mercy on a peasant. “I think that’s all. For today. We’ll see ourselves out.” Standing in the middle of the room, they were all of two steps from the door. Where did Naismith put his clients, whenever he had any?
Once outside, Dave smoothed the tracing out and studied it. “Doesn’t look all that bad to me.”
“Lady save us from the artistic temperament,” said Sergeant Lestrade. “Let’s hope the others are practical business people.”
CHAPTER 3
Still Monday, September 18
Closest to Naismith on the town grid was Elias Hammer, who was both legit in every sense and reasonably prosperous, with a two-story building to himself just off the main business district. Parlor downstairs front, looking out on the street like a police interrogation room. Office and supply rooms downstairs back. Living quarters upstairs. Everything clean, neat, and antiseptic as a hospital.
When Clayton gave him the sample book, he hesitated, took a second look at it, and said, “How come you’re handling this without gloves, Officers?”
“Offering to let us take your fingerprints, M. Hammer?” Lestrade replied experimentally.
They had in fact dusted the volume, cover and pages, for fingerprints first thing, and had the prints safe on file. But fingerprints helped with identification only when the parties’ prints were on record or could be readily supplied for comparison. And there were laws about whose fingerprints the police could take under what circumstances. The mere fact that a victim had borrowed a sample book of tattoo designs shortly before being murdered wouldn’t have constituted evidence for demanding to take the prints of any tattoo artist who might be the owner, unless the book had been found on the murder scene, preferably splattered with the victim’s blood.
“Sure, Officers,” Hammer said with a grin. “I’ll let you take my fingerprints if you’ll get a tattoo from me.”
Clayton said, “Gratis?”
But Lestrade said, “Why would we wear gloves to handle a lost-and-found item?”
“Yeah,” her partner
