Hold ’Em Hostage (10 page)

“Joe and I are chasing down information on the tenants in the building where Carey last saw your stalker. I'll see you back at the hotel in a couple of hours.”

“I ran into one of your old friends.”

I could hear Joe in the background calling Frank's attention away. “Really? I want to hear all about it when I see you. Have fun getting your tattoo.”

Typical man, so titillated by the image of me getting a tattoo in the mystery place he wanted it that it never occurred to him that we were going to be doing investigative work. Because if it had, Frank would've never let me go.

I handed the phone back to my brother and offered him my arm. “Lead on to the best tattoo parlor in Vegas!” There was no doubt that Ben would know exactly where that was.

A
fter spending my whole life imagining a tattoo parlor
as a dark, dirty hole-in-the-wall, the Tattoo Palace was a revelation. Cleaner, more welcoming and more well-appointed than most spas I'd frequented, it was also the size of a department store. And, it was packed.

The clientele might be generally a little rougher than the spa, but not entirely. A fiftyish country-club wife walked by wearing Burberry and carrying Prada, and flashed the Chanel logo newly tattooed on her upper thigh. I almost swallowed my tongue.

“I want to be classy even with nothing on,” she slurred, winking at Ben.

“I wonder what she's going to think about that once she sobers up and gets home to Cleveland?” Ben said in aside to me as he returned her wink.

I suppose there would be no better place to have a tattoo business than Vegas—where people were more spontaneous due to the gambling windfalls, the flowing liquor and the sexual aura surrounding the city. Face it, whether you like them or not, want one or don't, tattoos are sexy.

While we awaited our turn, Ben wandered away and I saw him a few minutes later talking intensely on the phone. When he returned, he was frowning again. While it was gratifying to see that he was working on putting some character lines on that perfect face of his—it worried me.

“Who were you talking to?”

“You know, Bee Bee, some things are none of your business,” he snapped.

Dr. Jekyll was back. But before I could delve deeper into his emotional state, a woman who was tattooed from fingertip to toenail appeared in a flimsy dress. We could see straight through it, although her voluptuous body was so artfully covered with ink that you couldn't tell where her private parts began and ended in the mass of serpents and flowers and leaves. I think it was a scene from the Garden of Eden. Wow.

I must have been staring with my mouth wide open. Ben was panting, I think. She let us look, paid no doubt more for her advertising abilities than her secretarial ones. After a few moments, she snapped her fingers in Ben's face. “Roll your tongue back in.” She jabbed me in the shoulder with her index finger. “Get a move on, Joaquin is ready.”

She led us down a hallway decorated with photo after photo of tattooed skin. Not just a catalog, this was real photographic art of subjects in poses that juxtaposed and confused, enlightened and engrossed the audience. Woman, man, human or animal, sometimes combinations of all of the above—it was often impossible to tell. I paused at one and studied it. “This is a litter of piglets.”

I swallowed. Tattooing seriously smarted from what I understood. Poor little porkers. “Who would do that?”

A young Native American man poked his head out of the next private suite.

“Someone with vision. Cool, huh?”

Our escort left us without an introduction, and we were ushered into the suite. Full body, Joaquin was a human art form. He wore his hennaed hair in a modified Mohawk, with a ponytail cascading down his back. His skin told the story of warriors through history—not only various American Indians but Viking, samurai and even an Amazon. I strained to see the images stretched from his shoulder to his back.

“They made a helluva ear-shattering noise when we took the needle to them, though,” he said, breaking into my fascinated examination.

“Who?” I asked, imagining the samurai brandishing the sword, mouth gaping in a scream, on his left pectoral.

“The piglets.”

“Oh,” I answered, nonplussed.

“So,” Joaquin asked. “Who's becoming art today—the tattoo virgin, or you? Nice work on your tricep by the way.”

Ben smiled, rolling up the sleeve of his golf shirt to expose his new tree frog (that was
not
where I'd guessed it would be). “Virgin.” He chuckled in my direction. “I guess Bee's Harley shirt didn't fake you out, huh?”

Joaquin rolled his eyes. “It's like comparing a comic book to a Jackson Pollock.”

Okay. “Ready for another Pollock?” I looked at Ben but he waved his palms at us.

“No more for me. Three is my lucky number.”

No problem, I'd planned for this. If Ben had gone for it, I was going to interrogate Joaquin about Dragsnashark while he drew a picture in permanent ink on my brother. If Ben chickened out on me, then I was going to fake like I was going to get the needle, but slide my questions in before it made a mark.

“I guess I'm up then.”

Joaquin's black eyes lit up with an excitement that was a bit disturbing. “Awesome. That alabaster skin, so smooth and perfect, will be a challenge. Heady.” He started nodding to himself. I think he had a thing for tattoo virgins. I was close to losing my nerve.

“What do you want?” Joaquin asked. “And where?”

What did I care, I wasn't really going to do it. I shrugged and waved a hand in cavalier fashion. “What do you think?”

Ben smiled and leaned down to whisper in Joaquin's ear. He nodded. “We can do that.”

“It's what her boyfriend wants,” Ben elaborated.

Uh-oh, but I thought Joaquin would be less on guard for the interrogation if I played up the dumb bimbo routine. “What Frank wants, he gets.” I giggled.

Ben raised his eyebrows, then narrowed his eyes, suspicious. I must have gone a little overboard. “That's not like you, Bee Bee.”

“Love does funny things to a person,” I responded glibly.

Ben looked pensive for a moment, shocking in and of itself, then walked to the door. “I'll leave you to it then. Let me know when you're ready to head back to loverboy.”

I held my breath, waiting for the word on where the tattoo was supposed to go and hoping that I wasn't going to have to disrobe too seriously for the tattoo artist. If I was dropping my pants, I might have to speed up the questioning.

“Lie down on the futon,” Joaquin instructed as he moved to the table and began to examine a table full of tools, one of which looked extremely sharp. I swallowed hard as I stretched out on the pad.

“Now, turn over,” he instructed.

Ack. I took my time arranging myself on the table, unable to swallow around the fear lodged in my throat. This was going way, way too fast.

I heard the door open and a woman old enough to get a double senior citizen discount at the movies entered, nodding to me. What was someone's grandmother doing at a tattoo parlor? “Milne is here to do the prep work, then I will draw your art.”

Milne gently pushed up my Harley shirt and began swabbing the small of my back with a soothing cool liquid. Humph. This wasn't just Ben's bright idea, after all. Frank really had told him what his favorite place on my body was. It only made me more nervous. Yet, I had to get my mind back in gear. I hadn't expected much interrogation time and I'd better make the most of it.

“So Joaquin,” I said, as he inspected his tools with a disconcertingly loving touch. “I hear most tattoos carry a hidden meaning. Is that really true?”

No eye rolling allowed. Remember, I'm supposed to be playing bimbo.

“Sure it is. There are volumes written and more legends told than we have time for today.”

Joaquin's voice sounded like he'd been smoking some of the incense burning in a pot in the corner of the room. He pulled out a pad and started sketching with a charcoal pencil.

“Wow,” I breathed. “I wish we had all night to talk about it.”

“We do, baby, you got a lot of skin just waiting for my instrument.”

Ook. I stifled my gag in a cough. Milne patted my back. “Do you want an arnica smoothie to soothe your throat, dear?”

“No, thanks. I'm going to be okay.” I sucked in a breath to fortify myself to address Joaquin again. “What does a dragon/snake/shark creature mean?”

“Where is it?”

I told him.

“That's quite unusual. I have heard of it, but let me give you some background. The Western dragon is wicked, a destroyer, representative of greed, wealth. But in the East, it can represent great wisdom and power. The shark is the pure predator, vicious, often striking with no provocation and without mercy. The snake is the most difficult to discern. How was he represented?”

I paused to remember, then explained the head, the open mouth. “The snake is probably the most controversial of all tattoos—it can reflect a myriad of meanings. It can reflect the evil in the Bible, but even there, the snake was very smart as well, wasn't he? It can represent wisdom. Gangs can use them to show their ferocity. Or, convexly, it can reflect the positivity of nature. Even poisonous snakes rarely strike unless provoked, so what does that mean? It's a popular tattoo because it's difficult to interpret. Many don't want you to know why they wear on their skin what they do.”

Wow. I was impressed with the deep meaning behind something I'd always considered a bit of a boneheaded, often drunken branding. “Thanks for your insight. You said this tattoo I mentioned was unusual, but you'd heard of it?”

The door clicked.

“I think I've found him.” Ben said as he let himself back into the room.

Thank God. The suspense of whether I was going to finish asking the questions first or he was going to finish the sketch and move to the needle first was killing me. I relaxed only to feel a burning sensation on the small of my back.

 

“A
nd I thought the pigs were bad.” Joaquin shook his
head as we walked down the hallway, following Ben.

“Very funny,” I muttered. I'd screamed when the tattoo needle hit home. I would be the only woman in the world with a single dot of ink on the small of my back because I had news for everyone—I was never ever, ever doing that again. I hadn't had the guts to look, even though Joaquin had offered the mirror.

“No, it wasn't funny, actually. I think my eardrums are bruised,” Joaquin groused.

“Oh?!” Milne appeared at his elbow. “Do you want an arnica salve?”

Joaquin sent her off with a polite refusal. I looked at him with raised eyebrows. He shrugged. “She thinks arnica is a cure-all, kind of like my grandmother thought of Phillips' Milk of Magnesia.”

Ben and I both smiled. So even this new age hippie tattoo artist and I had something in common besides two legs and two arms. Huh. Go figure.

“Now, who do you think you know in our gallery?” Joaquin asked Ben.

Ben led the way in the opposite direction from the way we'd entered. Around a corner was a collection of portraits with particular themes. Stars, butterflies, flowers, frogs, moons, Celtic art, Chinese, it was a huge space full from floor to ceiling with photos. Ben walked over to the freestyle tattoo wall and pointed. There he was, Dragsnashark.

Joaquin pursed his lips then turned to us. “It's the tattoo of the Medula, a low-profile but powerful gang. I don't know what they want it to mean. They designed it and keep their own in-house tattoo artist. You take what I told you and I'm sure it's supposed to mean all that and more.”

 

B
en refused to tell me how far Joaquin had gotten
with the needle on my back or what Frank had asked for in the first place. My skin still burned where the needle seared it.

We made it to the seventeenth floor, and I let us into the room. Frank held his cell phone to his ear as he paced. He acknowledged us with a passing glance, then did a double take, especially at my arms. Oops. I'd forgotten about the Harley shirt. I heard the caller trying to get his attention, but Frank remained silent as he walked shell-shocked over to us, sparing a glance that bespoke both amazement and irritation at Ben.

Running his hands from my elbows to my wrist he found the seam and lifted it, still not convinced that I wasn't a hogette convert. He apologized to whomever was on the other end of the line and pulled at the fabric one last time. Finally satisfied, he spun me around and peeked under the shirt at the small of my back. He raised his eyebrows in question.

“It's a long story,” I mouthed.

Frank looked like he probably didn't want to hear it. Then, he urged the caller to continue, kissed me on the top of the head and stalked back over to the window where he looked out at The Strip, not seeing anything but what the caller was saying, forgetting there was anyone else in the room. I sighed, envying that ability to compartmentalize at the same time as hating being the victim of it. Multitasking was way overrated, if you asked me. I think it's generally bad for my mental health and my physical beauty. Look at Frank, for instance. Sure, he had wrinkles, but they were the sexy kind—not the worrywart, ugly kind like I had from trying to juggle too many things in my mind and my emotions at once.

Ben marched straight to the bedroom I was sharing with Shana and knocked at the door. When there was no answer, he let himself in. He'd become distracted again on our journey back to the Mellagio. Fleetingly, during our foray into tattoo land, he'd seemed himself. Now he was back to Brooding Ben, a brother I didn't know and didn't know how to deal with. I realized I constantly complained about having a narcissistic twin but I have to admit, I have learned to manage him in a way I've become accustomed to. This mute time bomb was scaring me.