“What do you mean?” said Kiser.
“Just look. Normally a tattoo is intended to be viewed while a person is standing. But this one . . . and this one . . . and this one . . . are oriented sideways. So that if he were standing at rest, you would have to crane your head all the way to the side in order to look at them properly. Odd, right? But . . . consider this. If he crossed his legs, you see, this tattoo of the duck . . . it would be oriented toward his face. Now, here, this one is a Buddhist image known as Fudo Myo-o. The flaming bodhisattva with the rope and the sword. If he crooked his arm—as for instance laying it on a desk in front of him—this Fudo Myo-o tattoo on his forearm would also be oriented toward his face. And these oddly oriented tattoos are among the most intricate and beautiful on his body.”
Fisk nodded. “This guy did himself. He’s a tattoo artist.”
“Putting his best work on his own body. And not because he had to, by the way. A competent tattoo artist transfers a picture onto the skin and then just fills in the lines. Paint by numbers. No, he oriented them this way for his own enjoyment. He wanted to see the fruit of his own labor.”
Kiser said, “That’s something I can work with. And what about this last guy? The pale one. He’s got nothing except that bird.”
Cecilia Garza looked at the last corpse, the one with the small tattoo of the hummingbird between the shoulder blades. Her face momentarily showed . . . not sadness exactly, Fisk thought. But something close. More like a soul-deep weariness.
“I have seen this design before. Many times. This one was traced from an original design. Always drawn by the same hand. And this tattoo is a very accurate, careful representation of that design. It’s a faithful copy, if you see my point. It captures the gesture, the expressiveness of the original.”
Kiser looked skeptical. “I’m just following along, hearing what you’re saying. But I’m not sure I’m getting it yet.”
“He’s unusually pale,” she said. “No other blemishes. He is, if you will, a human canvas. See the sand from the beach still lodged in the design?”
Kiser cocked his head for a better look. So did Fisk.
Garza went on, “See where the hair was shaved, from just below the neck? A corona of redness beneath the skin around the design? That is not lividity. The blood has settled on the front.”
“It was a brand-new tattoo,” said Fisk, straightening. “He got this hummingbird right before he was killed.”
“It is a cartel signature, usually a ‘Z’ for Zetas, a ‘13’ for MS-13, something like that. The whole point of this . . . display . . . this work . . . whatever you want to call it, is to show us this tattoo. To frame it, to underline it.”
Kiser said, “And this bird means something to you.”
“Something,” said Fisk, going back to the presumed tattoo artist. He rolled him back onto his stomach, hairy buttocks in the air. “Look at this.”
Fisk pointed at his right shoulder. It was a tattoo of an attractive woman, the image rendered in impressive detail.
Fisk said, “He couldn’t have done this one himself.”
“No,” Garza said. “Most likely he did the drawing and had a colleague paint by numbers.”
Fisk snapped off his gloves and took out his phone. He snapped a picture of the tat.
“You don’t need to do that,” Kiser said. “I told you, forensics got photos of all the tats already.”
Fisk just nodded, returning his phone to his pocket.
Garza said, “I need to run those images through our database back in Mexico City.”
Kiser looked at Fisk. “What say you?”
Fisk said, “I don’t see any need for you to get any special authorization. This is about solving crime, right?”
“Well,” said Kiser, “actually it’s more about keeping my job. Kidding. Anything that puts me one step closer to understanding what I’m looking at is good. Can we go now?”
They stepped out of the morgue proper, into the outer offices. Fisk stopped Kiser. “As soon as we start pulling this together, you’ll know as much as we do. Meantime, not a word of this to anybody who doesn’t need to know, okay?”
“Sure. You got it.”
“The president of Mexico is in town to sign a major antinarcoterrorism accord. Today we find we have the top Zeta hitter—former top Zeta hitter—in town. I’m not going to draw any straight lines for you because I don’t know yet if they’re there to be drawn. But you can see where this is going, right?”
“Holy shit,” said Kiser.
CHAPTER 33
While Garza was pushing through the photos of the tattooed corpses to her people in Mexico City, Fisk e-mailed his photograph of the woman’s face to Intel.
His phone rang almost right away. It was Nicole. “What is this now?”
Fisk explained the photograph’s source. “It’s so photorealistic, I think you need to run it through the facial recognition program.”
“Well, it’s more detailed than a criminal sketch, but—”
“It’s worth a try. It’s never been a one hundred percent unique metric, but it can narrow down the pool of potentials. Bounce it through FBI and State. State has something like seventy-five million faces in their system, FBI not nearly as many. Every single American who has walked through a major airport in the past decade is in the database, for starters. They’ve got this new next-generation software that creates a three-D projection from an image. Maybe we get lucky.”
Nicole said, “If I can get tagged in all my friends’ photographs on Facebook, why can’t this work, too?”
Fisk said, “Exactly.”
CHAPTER 34
Garza came back with some information on the hooker, including a picture on her phone.
“Silvia Volpi. Missing since last February.” Garza looked up from her phone. “Trafficked up north.”
“Forced prostitution,” said Fisk. “She’s going to be tough to find.”
Fisk had her send him the photo, which he then submitted to Nicole at Intel.
Fisk said, “I think you should have your president moved from the Four Seasons.”
“Already have,” said Garza. “Plans are being made now. The problem is finding a suitable location last minute.”
“Tough week for hotels,” said Fisk.
Garza said, “We are doing it very quietly, while maintaining our reservation at the Four Seasons. We are running a program to make it seem as though President Vargas is still there, and swapping out agents on bogus errands in hopes they will be tailed. Maybe we can trap someone.”
Fisk nodded his approval. “Good one.” Fisk received the information on Silvia Volpi. The photograph was apparently from her quinceañera, the celebration of her fifteenth birthday. She was wearing a pink, promlike dress with a matching bouquet of pink roses, the photograph taken professionally. Fisk shook his head as he forwarded it along.
CHAPTER 35
Fisk’s greeting upon his second visit to the Secret Service’s New York field office in two days was not as cordial as the first. Dukes was even more tense than the day before.
“Christ, Fisk.”
“I know. I think we need to brief ICE, Customs, State, DEA, maybe Carlisle at the UN. Along with the Mexican contingent, of course.”
Dukes looked at Garza. “This guy Virgilio, why didn’t he register with us coming in?”
Fisk intervened. “Let’s work that out after we find him, okay?”
Dukes backed off after a moment, raising his hands, conceding the point. “We will get into it later, though,” he said to Garza. “We are, after all, the world’s premier agency at protecting government representatives. I get national pride and all, but . . .”