“Hey,” said the one in the middle, “we got to move it, you guys. See you around, Mits.”
“Sure thing, Potsie. Have a nice day, guys.”
They worked their helmets on as they walked out, swung aboard, and started their engines, and after some deep garoong-garoong-garoong revvings they went droning and popping out onto the empty highway, turning toward the west, riding three abreast.
Mits gave me sly, glances as she cleaned the counter where they had been. I said, “Wouldn’t hurt to just let him know.”
“You selling anything?”
“I’m an old friend.”
She shrugged and went out. She was back quickly. “Hey, you can go in. He asked her and she said it was okay you could watch.”
“Watch what?”
“He’s into body art, and this one is kinda pukey, but it’s what she wants, I guess. Go on through to the second room there.”
When I opened the door and went in and shut it behind me, Ted looked up from his work and said our traditional greeting. “Hi, sarge.”
“How you, lieutenant?”
“Come see what you think of this.”
He had his wheelchair rolled up close to a cot which was elevated on four concrete blocks. A doughy broad-faced young girl lay on the cot. Her denim shorts were on a nearby chair. She wore a yellow T-shirt, and she was naked from the waist down. Ted had his tray of needles and dyes close at hand. There was a broad strip of masking tape placed to keep her big dark bush of pubic hair pulled down out of the way so that he could start his design right at the hair roots. It was almost done. It was a pattern of three mushrooms, growing up that white-as-lard lower belly, chubby romanticized mushrooms, the kind under which would squat a Disney elf. There was a book open nearby with a color drawing of three mushrooms growing in a cluster. Ted had simplified the drawing somewhat.
He went to work. The girl compressed her lips and closed her eyes. The needle machine buzzed. The window air conditioner rattled and thumped. She snorted and her belly muscles quivered.
“It’s wearing off again,” she said. “Jesus!”
“Almost through. Hang on.”
It took about five minutes more. The buzzing stopped. He caught a corner of the tape and ripped it free.
“Ouch! Goddamn it, that hurt!”
“Stop being such a baby, Lissa. Go look at yourself.”
She swung her legs off the couch and slipped down to the floor and walked over to a narrow wall mirror. She had a white hippo rump, a bushel of meat jiggling and flexing as she walked. She stared at herself and giggled and said, “Wow. This’s gonna blast ol‘ Ray right out of his skull.”
“I can believe it,” Ted said.
She came walking back and picked up her shorts. Before she put them on she gave me a speculative look and said, “Whaddaya think?”
“Well, I’d say it’s unusual.”
“You bet your ass it’s unusual. And I got your word of sacred honor, right, Ted? Nobody else gets the same thing?”
“Not from me, they don’t. Even if they get down on their knees and beg.”
She put her shorts on and fastened the snaps. He said, “Here, I forgot. Rub this into the design now and when you go to bed and in the morning. It’s an antiseptic cream. For three or four days. Don’t forget. No, go in the can and do it, hon. I’m a little tired of looking at you.”
She shrugged and left, slinging her big plastic purse over her plump shoulder.
When the door shut, Ted said, “Play your cards right, Trav, and you could cut a piece of that.” He rolled himself over to the sink with his tray of equipment.
“‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who’s the fairest one of all?’ I think I’d be overcome by all that gentle beauty. You know, you’re pretty good at that, Blaylock.”
“Necessity is the mother of income. Tattooing is very very big lately. You should see my dragons and snakes. The mushrooms took a little over an hour. For eighty bucks. I’ve got one crazy broad for a customer, I’ve put over a thousand dollars’ worth of dye under her hide. Very strange stuff. No anesthetic cream for her. The thing for her is that the pain of the needle is a turn-on. It’s all a marine motif. Dolphins and pirates and old ships; mermaids, things like that. I wish you could see her. Unlike dumpy little Lissa, she’s got a hell of a nice bod. Too nice for what she’s having done to it.”
I sat down beside his desk, and when he came rolling over I got a better look at him. He was even thinner than before. His color was bad and his thinning hair looked dead.
“You feeling all right?” I asked.
“Not too damn wonderful. Like they told me in the beginning, I’m severed so high up, I got what they called a limited life expectancy.”
“Where’s Big Bess?”
“Well, there was a very very flashy Colombiano pistolero came in, and he really took to her, she being about twice his height and weight, and she was tired of waiting on a paraplegic crip, so now he has her stashed down in the Hotel Mutiny there, eating chocolates and watching the soaps, while he is out around town gunning down the competition. But I’ve got Mits, my little Indian, and she is a wonder. She’s quicker and better and a lot cleaner than Bess. And my God, that little bod is strong. She can pick me right up and walk with me. Loyal as hell. I wonder why I put up with Bess for so long. Or she with me.”
“Business going okay?”
“Real well. I really like this body-art work.”
“You draw pretty pictures.”
“That was what I was going to be, several thousand years ago. I had two years at Parsons.” I knew we were both thinking of what had come after that. Basic training, OCS, battlefield promotion, and finally a morning of hard cold rain and incoming mortar fire when I had helped carry the litter down the hill and prop it in the weapons carrier.
“In the VA hospital,” he said, “I did a lot of sketches of the guys. I wanted to try to be a commercial artist-not enough mobility to make it. Then this came along. I studied up, mail-ordered the gear, started practicing on my friends. It’s a gas. Want one on the arm? Eagle? Anchor? Hi, Mom? Semper Fidelis? F.T.W.?”
“No, thanks a lot. I always figure a tattooed man either got so sloppy drunk he didn’t know what was happening, or he needed to have a tattoo to look at to reassure himself he was manly. That F.T.W. is what’s on the T-shirt out there, on Mits. What is it?”
“It’s been around awhile, Trav. It’s the outlaw biker’s creed. It stands for Fuck the World.”
“Oh.
“Something special on your mind?”
“I shouldn’t come out here and ask for favors.”
“This is the second time in… what is it?… Anyway, lots of years. I just hope to hell there’s something I can do.”
I leaned back and rested the heel of one boat shoe on the corner of his desk. “What I need to know is how much the bike clubs are into the drug traffic.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. It accentuated the death look of the long bones of his skull. “So far, the question is too loose. The answer is too complicated.”
“Ramble a little.”
“Well, take the Fantasies. The insignia is the black fist and the yellow lightning, with a red circle around it. With the local affiliated clubs they could maybe put five to six hundred machines on the road, as against the two thousand the Bandidos could mount out west. Now most of these guys are factory workers and warehousemen and mechanics and such. They have meets and shows, smoke pot, wear the sincere raggedy garments and heavy boots, get tattooed, sport a lot of chains and medals, grow big bushy beards, zoom around on weekends with their so-called foxy ladies hanging on behind, drink a lot of beer, smoke a lot of pot, blow coke. What they have, Tray, is a kind of brotherhood hang-up. Anybody is in trouble, they all help. They look a hell of a lot nastier than they are. It’s a charade. You get hard with them, they’ll stomp you flat into the ground. But if there’s no provocation, they have nothing to prove.