“Oh, well, that’s not so long. My husband died twenty-three years ago and it still seems like yesterday.”
Everything in my past was beginning to feel like yesterday. “I’m sorry, ma’am. You were saying you should tell me…?”
“Yes, yes. What I meant was, I’m no expert in tattoos. I don’t have one myself, but of course, as an obstetrical-gynecological nurse, I have seen a few.”
“I figured,” I said, and we both smiled. She was indeed a blabbermouth, as Mom had said.
“Now,” she said, “are you interested in what sorts of tattoos I’ve seen? Or the most, shall we say, interesting places women have them? Oh, oh, I remember a woman-Doris, yes, Doris Kellogg-an exceptionally large woman who had a tattoo of a large beautiful butterfly right where her-”
“Actually, Mrs. Lowinski, I have a specific tattoo in mind. We, uh, we have a photograph of a tattoo we’re trying to identify. It’s quite pretty and we’d like to contact the owner.”
“Please call me Gloria. Are you going to put me in the paper again?”
“We might.”
“Good,” she said. “Because, if I may say so, it sounds a bit, shall we say, farfetched, that there would be some local collection of tattoos”-she raised an eyebrow-“but if you’re looking to quote an expert, or, maybe not an expert but certainly an observer, then perhaps I can help you. If it’s a woman and she’s local, chances are I’ve seen her and her tattoo.”
“Of course. I’m sure you can help.”
“Can I see the photograph?”
“Unfortunately, no. I don’t have it with me.”
“Well, whose collection is it? Why wouldn’t they know whose tattoo it is?”
“That’s a little complicated, Gloria.” I was dancing as fast as I could. “I’m really not at liberty to say.”
“Are you sure the tattoo is from someone around here?”
“Pretty sure.”
I described the tattoo I’d seen on Blackburn’s films. Though I’d thought at first that it was a four-leaf clover, I’d caught a few other glances of it during the films, including one fleeting close-up, and decided it actually looked more like a star with something inside it. Gloria listened. I tore a page out of my notebook and drew a crude version of it for her. She took one look and gave me a sly smile.
“You’re not really doing a story, are you?” she said.
“Pardon me?”
She leaned closer. “You are a devil. Are we-are you playing a practical joke? Is it a certain someone’s birthday?”
“Uh, no, I’m not sure what you’re-”
“Come on, Gus. There’s only one person in this town with a tattoo even remotely like that, and you darned well know who she is.”
I wasn’t going to say it.
“Why don’t you guess?”
“I’d rather not, Gloria. Guessing gets newspaper people in trouble.”
“Really?” she said, laughing. “You are a devil. You’re here enchanting me with a chance to get in your paper again, but really you have some other secret agenda. OK, I’m game. It wouldn’t be the first time a man has bamboozled me.”
“So,” I said, totally unsure of myself now, “can you tell me?”
She shook her head and laughed again. “Hand me one of those.” She meant the People magazines stacked on the end table. “Any of them.”
I gave her one. She flipped through it, came to a stop, and showed me a photograph. “Here’s a clue,” she said. In the photo a young actress I didn’t recognize was stooping to admire her freshly implanted star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
I looked up at smiling Gloria Lowinski.
“That’s what your tattoo looks like, doesn’t it?” she said. “Makes sense, doesn’t it? How else could our beloved beauty queen have gotten one of those?”
“Right,” I said.
Gloria stood. “You’re not going to put me in your paper, but this was fun anyway. And what a coincidence! She was just here the other day, sitting on that very chair.”
I didn’t really need further confirmation. But inside my truck, I flipped back to the notes I’d taken in my semistupor the night before. I wanted to see if I had written down the brand of the whiskey in the bottle standing on the shelf in the background. I had. My barely legible note read, “gntlmn jac.” Or, as Soupy put it that night on my stairway, “Gentleman-fucking-Jack,” the brand of Starvation Lake’s very own beauty queen, Tillie Spaulding.
twenty-six
Some things were beginning to make painful sense. Now I understood why Tillie had been behaving strangely, why she’d been so protective of the photo files, why Soupy had always resisted meeting me at the Pilot. Blackburn had stashed his film at the paper so Tillie-a movie star at last, in thrall to her director-could keep watch.
I was glad to see she wasn’t in yet when I got back to the Pilot. I was a little angry and a lot uncomfortable and I might have fired her on the spot, which would have been foolish. Better that she didn’t know what I knew, at least for now, although she had to be suspicious if she had noticed the missing films.
Joanie sat reading Newsweek with her feet up on her desk. Her clutter didn’t usually allow space for feet, but today she appeared to have cleared her desk onto the floor. I walked up and stood silently regarding the mess.
“In case you’re wondering, those are my notes from the story we’re supposedly covering,” she said, without looking up from her magazine.
“Nice. Why not just toss it all in the garbage?”
“I’ll get around to it.” She snapped a page back. “By the way, there’s a press release in the pile about some New York bank buying a bunch of little banks up here. Sounds like something tame enough for us.”
On my desk lay that morning’s paper. Across Tillie’s wrestling story Joanie had scribbled in red ink, “Pulitzer?” Higher up the page, that old picture of Blackburn in his slicked-back hair stared up at me. The caption read, “JACK BLACKBURN, Jan. 19, 1934-March 13, 1988.” Something about it bothered me.
My message light was on. I dialed voice mail. Kerasopoulos had called at 7:14, saying, “Please call the minute you get in.” I wandered back over to Joanie. I didn’t blame her for feeling the way she did. But I needed her to get over it.
“Hey,” I said. “I got a jailhouse interview with Campbell.”
“Great. You can add to the pile.”
She kept reading. I stooped down to look at what was on the floor. Seven or eight notebooks, half a dozen file folders, a smattering of other papers. One was a photocopy of a tax document that had to have come from the county clerk’s office. I picked it up.
“This from the old Blackburn land?” I said.
“If it’s that Richards Company, yep.”
“Boy. The assessed value’s almost five hundred grand.” My eyes went to the line identifying the owner. “It’s actually Richard Limited, singular, not Richards,” I said. There was an address in Springfield, Virginia.
“Who cares?”
I stood, letting the paper drop. “So what are you doing today?”
“Hmmmm. First I thought I’d finish reading this story about how everyone’s going to get rich selling poodle sweaters on the Internet. Then I was thinking maybe Audrey’s for a leisurely brunch or maybe just straight to Enright’s for a double Bloody Mary. Maybe Dingus’ll join me and I can at least tell him what I know.”
“That reminds me,” I said. I grabbed Joanie’s phone and dialed the county clerk’s office, hoping Vicky would answer. I was in luck.
“It’s Gus Carpenter,” I said. “How are you?”
