To Thine Own Self Be True (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-Five

I guess the day was clear, with the sun glaring off the snow, but I remember it that way because I know I needed my sunglasses. My mind was so full of information and anxiety I couldn’t take in any unnecessary detail. I was lucky I made it to Morgantown in one piece.

A family place, highlighted by its namesake turning slowly above it, the Windmill Family Restaurant smelled like sausage and home fries. When I stepped in the door my stomach rumbled, despite the fact I wasn’t hungry. I stood inside for a moment, eyes adjusting from the outside light, and looked around the room.

At the far end, his back to the wall, sat Dennis Bergman, looking just like his photos on the web. I started toward him, then stopped. There was someone sitting with him. A man. The man turned to look at me.

It wasn’t Wolf.

It wasn’t Rusty.

It was Trevor Farley.

I stood in place so long a waitress nudged my arm. “Sorry, hon,” she said. “But I need to get through.”

I stepped to the side and she eased around me, laden with a heavy tray of eggs, scrapple, and baked oatmeal. Bergman and Farley watched as I slowly came to my senses and moved toward them. I stood beside their table.

“Have a seat,” Bergman said.

I stayed standing. “What the hell is this?”

“Please,” Bergman said. “Sit.” He leaned over and pushed out a chair.

I sat. A waitress came over immediately, holding a pitcher.

“Coffee?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Glass of milk would be nice.”

“Sure.” She warmed up the cups of the two men. “Ready to order?”

Bergman looked at me.

“Go ahead,” I said.

“Stack of blueberry pancakes, side of sausage,” Bergman said. “And a slice of shoo-fly pie.”

Farley declined to order, as did I. The waitress picked up the menus and left.

“I gather you recognize him,” Bergman said, his eyes flicking toward Farley.

I looked at the senator. It was obviously Farley, but not quite the man I was used to seeing on TV and in the papers. This man lacked the sheen, the self-confidence, and the energy. Even his salt-and-pepper hair looked dull.

“Sure,” I said. “I know him. What I don’t understand is what he’s doing here, with you. Aren’t you guys sworn enemies?”

Bergman smiled slightly.

Farley looked down at his coffee.

“You study the news articles enough,” Bergman said, “as well as my arguments, you’ll see I never attack the senator. Just the tattoo bill.”

I thought back to my research. He was right. I couldn’t remember one instance of Bergman running down the senator himself.

“And you’ll notice,” the senator said quietly, “the same on my end. I’ve never once said anything negative about Mr. Bergman.”

I sat back and closed my eyes briefly. “Okay. But I don’t get it.”

Bergman’s mouth twitched. “Most people don’t. Why do you think we’re meeting here, and not closer to the capitol?”

I glanced around the restaurant, where no one paid us any mind. They didn’t have a clue who was sitting there. Together. As far as the other diners knew, Bergman and Farley were just a couple of guys, having breakfast.

“So what’s going on?” I asked. “Do you know where Wolf is? Or Rusty?”

“Rusty?” Bergman asked. “Rusty Oldham?”

“Yes,” I said. “He’s missing.”

Bergman’s mouth formed an O, and he breathed in deeply.

“Who’s Rusty Oldham?” Farley asked.

I tapped the cow skull on my neck. “Tattoo artist. He’s been working with me, trying to find Wolf Moore.”

Farley’s face paled even further, until I was afraid he was going to keel over into my lap. I know politicians are actors, but from these guys’ reactions, I realized they had no idea about Rusty’s disappearance. My heart dropped.

“When?” Farley croaked.

“Last night. He made a phone call, then took off, telling his wife he’d be late. He never came home.”

Farley ran his hand over his face and focused on something outside the window. Bergman lifted his coffee cup as if to take a sip, but set it down before drinking anything.

“Here you are.” The waitress cheerfully plunked Bergman’s plate in front of him. “Anything else I can get anybody?” When we offered no response, she drifted away. Bergman looked at his plate. From the expression on his face, he was no longer hungry.

“You think it’s to do with Mandy and Wolf?” Farley asked.

I looked at him. “You tell me. Two tattoo artists disappear and a body piercer is murdered, all within a week. Seems to me they have to be related.”

Farley’s shoulders sagged and he looked up, meeting Bergman’s eyes. “Is it because of us?”

Bergman jerked his head no. “How could it be?”

Farley’s eyes sparked, if only for a moment. “It’s a definite possibility, and you know it.” His eyes darted toward me. “She knows it. It’s why she wrote to my office. And why she contacted you.”

Bergman shifted in his seat. “But I still don’t see—”

“Mandy had something on you,” I said to Farley. “She was going to tell Artists for Freedom the night she died.”

The men shared another look.

“Did she know you tried to back out of the bill?” I asked Farley.

His head snapped back. After a moment he said, “How do you know that?”

I stared at him. “Was it? Did she die because you changed your allegiance?”

He rested his face in his hands, silent.

“Okay,” I said. “If you won’t tell me that, at least tell me why you started the bill to begin with.”

He remained quiet.

I glanced at Bergman, who watched Farley. I tried another tactic. “I know about your daughter’s tattoo.” If the
Enquirer
article was true. “She got a crummy tattoo from a hack and ended up in the hospital. Is that what sparked your anti-tattoo agenda?”

Farley sighed deeply, his eyes closed, then lifted his face toward the ceiling. When he brought it back down, he focused on the table’s sugar container. “It was the final straw. I’d considered it for years, but it wasn’t until Diana ended up in the hospital that I put it into action. And for a while it was good.” He stopped.

“But then?” I said.

“But then other people cut in. I wanted the bill to be about safety. About regulating health standards. I never meant it to become a way for the government to censor body art.”

Bergman leaned toward me. “We all know there are folks claiming to be tattoo artists who have no business marking up people’s skin.”

I nodded. “Sure.”

“But after I drafted the bill,” Farley said, “people kept tacking on more and more regulations—room specifications, FDA-approved ink, the notarized doctor’s statement… I couldn’t get them to understand that the legitimate tattoo artists, the professionals, want the scratchers out as much as everybody else. It became a full-out war on alternative art. I couldn’t stop the ball from rolling. I’d begun it, but it was clearly, and quickly, out of my hands.”

“So you tried to step back.”

He nodded. “Told my campaign manager I couldn’t support a platform I didn’t believe in.”

“Gloria Frizzoni.”

He glanced at me. “You talked to her?”

“She’s how I knew you wavered.”

He made a face, unsurprised. “Horrible woman. Don’t know why I ever hired her.”

“Because she’s good at what she does,” Bergman said. “You couldn’t help it she was a freaking nutcase.”

“Yeah, sure.” Farley’s voice was thin with weariness.

“But you came back on board,” I said.

“I did.”

I waited.

Farley continued. “I thought I had enough other good things to do in office. An education reform bill, some work on drug rehabilitation. Healthcare issues. I decided the tattoo bill might just have to go on, no matter how I felt.”

“And sacrifice the livelihoods of artists all over the state.”

He flinched. “It’s awful, I know.”

I looked from him to Bergman. Bergman met my gaze steadily.

“And your part in all of this?” I asked.

He nodded toward Farley. “The senator and I got talking early on, at an informal debate. We continued our conversation long after the crowds had gone home. We found our ideas to be much alike.”

“And joined forces?”

“In a sense. We couldn’t declare it, but we’ve shared information.”

I stared at him. “So
you’re
the spy in Artists for Freedom?”

He smiled twistedly. “Kind of strange to put it that way, seeing how I’m in charge of it all.”

“You betrayed your people. Your colleagues.”

His face darkened. “I was after what was best for us all. I never compromised our anti-bill campaign.”

I wasn’t so sure. I sat quietly for a moment, trying to digest everything I’d heard.

“So if Mandy had confronted you about this?” I finally asked Farley. “If she had gotten to the meeting and Bergman let her go with it, telling the group about your waffling?”

He smiled, but without humor. “In a way I would’ve welcomed it. Maybe Artists for Freedom could’ve exposed the bill for what it was. Exposed me for what I am.”

I studied Farley. “And just what are you? Why write the bill in the first place? You said your daughter’s tattoo was the final straw. What came before?”

He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Then he reached up to loosen his tie.

“Senator…” I said.

He shook his head.

Once the tie was undone, he undid the top few buttons of his shirt and reached up to pull back the shoulder, along with the white T-shirt underneath. He turned his back toward me, and I looked at his exposed shoulder blade. An ugly tattoo of a devil, about the size of my fist, defaced his skin. It was a crude design, the colors faded and non-distinct. The lines were rough, the details, what there were, ill-defined.

“Wow,” I said. “That’s one ugly tattoo. I can see why you want to put non-pros out of business.”

“I was in college,” Farley said, turning back around. He buttoned his shirt, but let his tie hang loose. “My buddies and I went to Atlantic City, back in, oh lord, the seventies. Found a guy on the boardwalk who agreed to do us all cheap.”

I winced.

“Yeah,” he said. “It was a bad decision. I found out way too late that not only am I stuck with this hideously ugly tattoo, I’m also stuck with something worse.”

I looked at him.

“Because of this ugly tattoo,” Farley said, “I now have hepatitis C.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Bergman let me use his cell phone to call home before I left. There were no messages. Rusty was still missing.

Outside the diner I watched as Bergman and Farley, undeclared partners, got into Bergman’s car. Bergman held up a hand as they pulled away, but Farley’s eyes were focused somewhere else. To think that up until an hour ago I’d been thinking of him as the bad guy. Now I saw that in a lot of ways he was yet another victim in an often unjust system.

I got in my truck and drove home, not much more aware of my surroundings than on the way to the restaurant. Lucy and Tess were gone when I arrived at the farm, with a note tacked to the fridge saying they’d gone to lunch with Lenny but they’d be back soon. Ignoring the small pang of feeling left out, I picked up the phone and dialed Detective Shisler’s number. It took her a few rings to answer this time.

“Anything going on?” I asked.

“Lots, but nothing productive.”

“So no Rusty?”

“I’m sorry.”

“And no luck with any of the guys you checked out? Gentleman John? Tank?”

“Nothing. But then, we didn’t get a look in their houses. Both were pretty annoyed to be wakened, although you’d already done that with Mr. Snyder, and neither were conducive to letting us search their premises. Couldn’t blame them, really.”

“You can’t just go in? You do have reason to believe one of them might have him.”

“Unless we have good reason to go busting in, hard evidence, we can’t. It’s all about rights, Stella.”

“What about Rusty’s right to live? And Wolf’s?”

“I know, I know. We’re doing our best. You have to believe that.”

I did. But I also believed it wasn’t good enough.

“What about the phone call? Have you found out yet who Rusty called?”

“Oh, yes. He actually made two interesting calls. The last call was to John Greene. But before that he talked to Lance Thunderbolt.”

“
Lance Thunderbolt
?” The wussy tattoo artist who’d taken Wolf to court. “But he was out of town when Mandy was killed.”

“Right.”

Unless his family really was covering for him.

“So what did he and Rusty talk about?”

“Making an appointment to get together.”

Why was Rusty wanting to see him? That must’ve been the idea Rusty had had the night before, because we hadn’t talked with Thunderbolt at all.

“And did they set a time?” I asked.

“Apparently not.”

“Why not?”

“Thunderbolt didn’t know. Said Rusty hung up on him in the middle of the call.”

“Have you been out to see him, or did you just talk to him on the phone?”

“We saw him at his shop in Pennsburg. He obviously doesn’t like cops, and we couldn’t get him to sway on his and Rusty’s conversation. Said he couldn’t remember anything more.”

“Did you believe him?”

“I had no choice.”

I needed to talk to Thunderbolt.

“And Gentleman John? If he was the last one to talk to Rusty, it makes sense John would know where Rusty went.”

“Mr. Greene says he never talked with Mr. Oldham. Says Rusty left a message telling him they needed to talk about Thunderbolt. He doesn’t have the message anymore, but the phone records back it up, since the call lasted less than half a minute.”

I thought about it. “If Rusty found out something about Thunderbolt, he might call Gentleman John to check it out, if the guys knew each other.”

“Maybe. But Greene’s not saying, and neither is Thunderbolt.”

“Maybe I’d have better luck.”

“Maybe. But we don’t know what went on with Thunderbolt and Rusty. If there was a problem, I don’t want you walking into it.”

“Sure.”

Shisler was quiet. “You won’t do anything stupid?”

“Of course not.”

Shisler promised to keep in touch, asked the same of me, and hung up.

I looked at the clock. It was now past noon, and I prayed Thunderbolt hadn’t gone out for lunch. I found his number and dialed.

He answered, sounding disgruntled. “Cops were already here,” he said. “Can’t you guys leave me alone?”

“I’m not a cop,” I said. “I’m Rusty’s friend. And Wolf’s.”

“Well, goody for you. I’m not.”

“Look, Thunderbolt, all I want to know about is your phone call with Rusty.”

“What about it?”

“He hung up on you?”

“Yeah. Said he wanted to make an appointment, but never did.”

“Why?”

He was quiet. “Look, I’m in the middle of a tattoo. The cops already got me behind schedule, ’cause I had a before-hours appointment they messed up. If you want to talk, you’re going to have to call back. Say in an hour or two.” He hung up.

I stared at the phone and thought that Mandy’s name for Gentleman John would fit this jerk, too. But I was damned if I was going to sit around waiting to call him. I put my coat back on, trotted out to my truck, and took off for Pennsburg.

Thunderbolt’s shop sat on a side street with only one lane plowed open. I circled around the block until I found a place to park. I wasn’t sure it was a legal spot, but if they wanted to ticket me, they could go ahead.

By the time I got to the parlor, my cheeks were numb and my eyes watered from the brisk wind that had started up. I pushed open the door and stepped inside, where I halted in surprise. Besides being warm, the parlor was also clean and well-lit. Flash decorated the walls, and while Thunderbolt’s art lacked the fire and detail of Wolf’s or Rusty’s, it was at least semi-interesting and well-organized.

A small waiting area held a leather couch, with a colorful mat covering the floor. A bookshelf with photo albums sat beside the couch, along with a few tattooing magazines on a small table. Behind the waiting area in an open work area Thunderbolt—for it had to be him—was bent over a woman who lay on her stomach on a padded table. Lance was tattooing a Native American design on her lower back, made up of reds and greens, and from what I could tell, it looked okay. Her upper back was covered with a sheet, and her legs with a warm blanket.

Thunderbolt glanced up. “Be with you in a minute.”

I stood there, watching and studying the tattoo artist. He was a tall, fit-looking man, his long black hair lying in a braid down his back, his skin unseasonably dark. A tanning booth or self-tanner, I figured. Trying to look deserving of the ancestry he claimed.

There weren’t any other closed doors in the place, except for one proclaiming itself a bathroom.

“Okay if I use that?” I asked, pointing at the door.

He looked up. “Sure. Be my guest.”

I walked toward the bathroom, taking a moment to peer into a back room which had no door shutting it off. Chairs, a little kitchen area, and an autoclave. No kidnapped tattoo artists.

Getting to the bathroom, I opened the door and stepped inside. It was exactly what it claimed to be, with no room to hide anything, let alone a person. I studied the insides of the medicine cabinet for a minute—ibuprofen, hand cleaner, and Band-Aids—before flushing the toilet, in case he was listening for it. I headed back out to the main room.

Thunderbolt leaned close to the woman’s back, working on a small detail, so I stood in the waiting area and thumbed through what looked like the newest photo album. Lots of roses, barbed wires, and crosses. Competent work, but nothing real imaginative. I stopped when I found a photo of a teen-ager with a swastika on his neck. I glanced up at Thunderbolt, disgusted he’d stoop to doing hate work. When I looked back at the photo, I paused again. The kid looked familiar. Dark hair, dark brown eyes…

“Take a rest for a little bit,” Thunderbolt said to the woman. “I’ll be right back.”

He walked over to me, his assessment taking in the tattoo on my neck. “What can I do for you?” he asked, pulling off his latex gloves.

“Stella Crown. We talked on the phone a little while ago.”

His face hardened. “I told you to call me back later.”

“I know. But Rusty and Wolf are missing, and I can’t wait any longer.”

He rested his hands on his hips and looked around the room, his nostrils flaring. “Fine. You can talk to me while I work.” He went back to the woman and sat in his chair, pulling on another set of gloves and picking up the machine. I hoped he wouldn’t take his irritation out on the poor customer.

“Rusty called you last night?” I asked.

He grunted affirmation.

I continued. “He was going to make an appointment to come see you today. Talk to you about your problems with Wolf.”

His head jerked up and the woman on the table flinched. “
Problems
? You call stealing flash a
problem
? I call it a felony.”

I resisted telling him his work wasn’t worth stealing. “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you want to call it. You stopped legal proceedings a while ago. October?”

He looked down at the woman, but didn’t seem to be really seeing her. She, however, was entirely too aware of him and what he held in his clenched fingers. She met my eyes with her wide, fearful ones, and I raised my eyebrows, thinking she was crazy for staying anywhere near that needle.

“October?” Thunderbolt said. “That sounds right. Finally realized the wheels of justice weren’t going to turn for me. I was spending a fortune for recognition that wasn’t ever going to come.”

I tried not to let my feelings show on my face. “And have you spoken to Wolf since then?”

He looked down at the machine, as if wondering what it was doing in his hand. “Not that I can remember. If I did, it wasn’t about him stealing flash.”

“So you haven’t been threatening him?”

“
Threatening
him?”

“He’s missing, and Mandy’s dead.”

He spun around. “Look, lady, the most I threatened him with was suing his ass. Not hurting him or his old lady.”

So Rusty had remembered that right.

“What were you telling Rusty last night that made him hang up on you?”

He shifted in his chair, like he was going to start tattooing the woman again. “Nothing, really. I can’t remember.”

I stepped forward into the tattooing area. “Don’t even try that bullshit with me. You know good and well what you were talking about.”

Thunderbolt froze, the needle almost touching the woman’s back. “I’m telling you—I. Don’t. Remember. It wasn’t a big deal.”

I moved closer and leaned over Thunderbolt, my face inches from his. “You gave that line to the cops because it’s the sort of thing you do. It’s not going to work with me.” I stood there, unmoving, until the woman on the table rolled out from under Thunderbolt’s hand.

“I’m outta here,” she said.

“Wait,” said Thunderbolt. “I’ll finish it.”

“Not till you’re done talking. Tell the woman what she wants to know, or I’m getting somebody else to tattoo me.”

Thunderbolt stared at her for a few moments, then lowered his face to his hand and rubbed his eyes. “Fine. Take a seat in the waiting area, and I’ll be with you in a couple minutes.”

She wrapped the sheet loosely around herself and stalked over to the couch, where she chose a magazine and rolled onto her stomach to read.

“So?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

He leaned back in his chair and rolled it away. “Rusty and I were talking about Wolf and Mandy.”

Big surprise.

“What about them?”

“Rusty thought I might know where Wolf was, and who killed Mandy. Or at least have some ideas.”

“Did you?”

“Sure. I mentioned that political group they’re involved in, whatever it’s called.”

“Artists for Freedom.”

“Yeah. That. Plus, I heard there were some guys they’d pissed off. Well, Mandy had done most of that, I guess.”

“Names?”

He shook his head. “Just stories that came down the grapevine. Gangbangers, drunks. Dopeheads.” He stopped.

“That’s it?” Not enough to cause Rusty to go storming off, not telling Becky where he was going.

Thunderbolt stood up and walked around his chair toward a shelf, where he fiddled with instruments as he spoke. “He asked me about some guy named Tank, who I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet.”

“Not really a pleasure, believe me.”

“Yeah, well, and he asked me about Gentleman John.”

“What about him?”

“Rusty seemed to think he had a lot of motive, with Wolf and Mandy going after his business. But a lot of people wanted to see John go down. I don’t know why it would be just the Moores he had a problem with.”

“You know him pretty well?”

“I guess. We went to a convention together a little while ago. Since his wife left him we bunk together sometimes, save money on hotels.”

I remembered John’s ringless fingers. “When did John’s wife take off?”

“A while ago. Last year sometime, in the middle of all his lawsuits. We actually saw her at a convention this summer, since she took up with another artist. Pretty uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I thought about John’s wife. “Did John blame Wolf and Mandy for his wife leaving him?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He mentioned them, but he talked about lots of other people, too. He blames the entire community.”

Gee, he wouldn’t want to blame
himself
for bad business practices.

Thunderbolt continued. “His daughters left him, too, you know.”

I remembered their pictures, two ordinary, teen-age girls. “He said they graduated, and that’s why they moved out. They wanted to be in Philly.”

He snorted. “They’d barely thrown their grad hats in the air before they were outta there. The penny-pinching and lawsuits had gotten to them, too, just like with their mom.”

“And this is what you were talking about when Rusty hung up?” I asked.

He made a face. “I guess. I really didn’t think about it any more.”

I raised my hands to press on my temples, and Thunderbolt flinched. “I mean it. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”

“Rusty didn’t say anything more about coming over here?”

“No.”

I studied Thunderbolt’s eyes for a hint of deception, but all I saw was irritation.

“Now can I get back to my customer?” he asked.

I sighed. “I guess.” It’s not like he was going to admit to me that he’d kidnapped Rusty and was hiding him out back.

I guessed I should check out back.