don't condone what happened to that animal Max Sanocre, but like I tol' ya, there come times I wanted to murder that low-life sonofabitch, I tell you. If someone was drove to it-and I'm not saying they were-well, I understand it. The man was the vilest thing walked on two legs in my experience.”
The tallest, oldest looking man on the porch stepped toward them, waving in a friendly gesture, asking them if he could help the pair, nodding to his cousin the officer, and adding, “Some reason you're out this way, Whitey?”
“Got some news, folks,” announced Frizzell in calmer tones than Houston's command control during a satellite launch, J. T. thought.
Everyone on the porch stared hard at the stranger-John Thorpe. The deputy hastily introduced J. T. as “A card-carrying G-man in search of a killer, maybe two, maybe three.” There were three adults in and around the porch, all standing and staring now like their small army of dogs. They all looked like they wanted J. T's blood.
J. T., through a thorough trek about the world of tattoo art-and gaining an education in the process-had convinced first one man to help him and then another until he learned of the signature artwork of Deltrace D'lazetti, and he'd had to travel to Missouri to meet D'lazetti who, after long searching in his files and mind, came up with “a guy more crude than Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stem rolled into one who treated women like… like g'damn meat loaf.” This identification led to Louisiana.
“Sure, I can clearly recall the artwork. Hell, man, it won me my first major prize,” D'lazetti had told J. T.
“Really?”
“At the state fair. Ever since, I've been highlighted in every major tattoo publication in the country. You kidding?”
“M.E.'s seldom kid around,” replied J. T., “and when we do chide, you'll know it.”
D'lazetti had grimaced, asking, “Chide?”
J. T. pushed on, replying with his own question, asking, “What more can you tell me about this man.”
“Such as?”
Man, this guy's stoned, J. T. recalled telling himself, wondering if it were a prerequisite of the artistic life to do drugs, or an affectation since Edgar Allan Poe's day. “Such as… such as his name,” replied J. T. “Right now he's a John Doe, and will be buried as such if we can't learn more about him in the next twenty-four hours. His time on the taxpayers' dole has run out, you see, and as such-”
“Dog or Maddog or Mean's Hell or Tough as Bison or something like 'at is all I can rightly recall outta my head, because I do remember this guy was an ass, a real creep. Mean as hell, and he made my skin crawl, and ain't too many can make my skin crawl, you know, but he was the best thing ever happened to me when I showed him at the fair.”
“Showed him?” J. T. flashed a mental image of the man's body art being displayed at a sideshow carnival.
“Well, not him, not really him, closeups of the art, man.”
“You have photos?”
“ 'Sat what they call irre-irrefusable evidence, man?”
J. T. stifled a laugh at the pothead. “Does his name and the date appear on the photos?”
“Name, date, dme, you name it.”
“We've got to find those pictures then.”
“Be my guest.” He pointed at sixteen shelves of photo records of his work. “Sony, been in the business a long dme. Started when I was just a kid, and I'm a damn sight older than I look. I think it's the small frame and height. People think I'm Michael J. Fox, you know, the actor? Hardly looks like he ages.”
“This could take a while,” J. T. said, staring at the books of tattoo artwork representing an obviously disordered life. There appeared no dates on the booklets.
'Take all the time you want.”
“I could use your help. Your country needs you.”
“My country? Hmmm. Never ever thought of it as my country. Strange world we live in, Dr. Thorpe.”
“Strange indeed.”
“Strange, strange world… Are you telling me that this guy's name is, you know, like a matter of like, you know, national security, something like that? This guy plotting some sort of McVeigh thing against the government or something?”
“Yeah, something like that.” J. T. hated to lie, but he saw no alternative. Already, the stoned artist had dismissed the fact J. T. had told him the man was deceased, a John Doe. Or perhaps the artist understood the term John Doe as little as he did the word chide.
Deltrace D'lazzeti metaphorically rolled up his sleeves like a farmer at this point, saying, “OK, let's have at it. But be forewarned, dude, records like CDs I can put my hands on, but records for business, I don't keep so good, so it could take a while.” J. T. offered to order a pizza and a jug of wine, if it would help. The artist liked the idea, and so they rolled up their sleeves and dug in.
They whittled it down to the approximate last time he'd done body art on “Horace” and the tattoo artist said, “That'd be the work I did on his ass. Can't be stoned when you're doing precision work, 'specially round the geni- till-ya area.”
“Now you're telling me more than I want to know,” J. T. replied, holding up a hand. “What exactly do you remember about him?”
“Disgust. Rock-bottom disgust, man. Guy disgusted me the entire way, man, and that's what I was thinking at the fair when I stood up to get the award, disgust.”
J. T. could not help but smile. He wanted to laugh.
D'lazetti continued, saying, “But, but, the dude paid in bread, real green, not like I get usual…”
“Drugs?” suggested J. T., wondering why in God's creation people allowed this guy anywhere near their bodies with a hot needle and ink while he was on PCP or some other potent drug.
“Sometimes drugs, yeah, but more oft than not, it's a damned Pomeranian puppy or a lousy canned ham somebody ripped off, a bottle of scotch, somebody's unused toys like once I got a fish tank for doing a big job.”
“So, you do remember this man?” J. T. held up the photos of Horace on the slab, and the close-ups of the artwork.
“The face, the ass, the art, the disgust… sure, but not the name.”
J. T. gnashed his teeth.
“It'll take the record to jog that back.”
The artist, typical of his peripheral world, managed, stoned, to hold himself together long enough to locate a billing file buried beneath a stack of newspapers and magazines-US, FAME, People, Fangoria, Scream Factory, USA Today. D'lazetti did this during the time that J. T. had begun on the photo collection. This collection of data he recalled after pizza and Pepsi. In the manner of an embarrassed teen, he showed the index cards to J. T. and said, “I think I found a shortcut. I try to keep the names and numbers of all my clients in here. If I filled out a card on him, it should take you right to the number of the book and the page where his photos are, if…”
The cards saved J. T. hours, and they did lead circuitously to the photo shoot and photos. On the billing card came the name, phone number, and address of Horace the Tattoo Man, which read Maxwell Sanocre, Rt. 4, Diamondback, Louisiana. On the card, the middle nickname didn't read Dog or Maddog or Maniac, but “Abominable.”
“Abominable” Max Sanocre. Actually the nickname was far from any of those proffered by the spongy-headed D'lazetri. But J. T. felt good, a sense of closure coming with this news, for finally, John Doe had an identity, such as it was.
QuesUoning of friends and neighbors in the small town of Diamondback had netted J. T. little information. The police stadon prided itself on the fact it was hardly needed and hardly the size of a pair of telephone booths stood side-by-side, and about as public. J. T. decided he wouldn't hold out too much hope of help here in Diamondback. The actual county sheriffs office lay some twenty-nine tarmac miles to the north, at the county seat.
However, J. T. puzzled together a broken picture of Sanocre's having “moved to Utah in search of open territory.” The story was told and retold by anyone J. T. or Deputy Frizzell had asked. J. T. gained the impression that even the local schoolchildren had been tutored in the same story about “Abominable” Maxwell Sanocre who, it
