The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

Nathan was kneading the razor, then gripping it harder, Billy thought. The blade moved as twitchy and train-clattery as Bear-man's sentences.

'Nathan?' Billy asked.

The man didn't answer.

'Nathan. I didn't know this was your block. I just was doing my work, checking the pipes and valves and things. I want people to be safe down here.'

The razor hovered.

And Bear-man's breathing seemed harder now as he stared at the centipede. The red ink. The face, the fangs, the segments of the body.

The indecipherable eyes.

'Nathan?' Billy whispered. 'A tattoo. You want that tattoo?'

Because what utility worker doesn't cart around an American Eagle tattoo machine to ink people on a whim?

'I'll give you my best tattoo. Would you like that? It'll be a present. And the clothes and money I told you about? A hundred dollars.'

'It won't hurt?'

'It'll sting a little. But not bad. I'm going to get my backpack now. That's where the money and clothes are, and my tattoo machine. Is it all right if I reach into my backpack?'

'I guess you can,' Nathan whispered.

Billy slid the backpack closer and extracted the parts to his machine. 'You can sit down there. Is that all right?' The razor was still not far away and was still open. God or Satan or the ghost of Abraham Lincoln might tell Nathan to kill this interloper at any moment. Billy moved very slowly.

Hmm. It seemed that Nathan was receiving transmission from on high.

He laughed and whispered an indecipherable string of syllables.

Finally he dropped into a cross-legged position and grinned. 'Okay. I'll

sit here. Give me a tattoo.'

It wasn't until Billy too squatted on the packed-dirt ground that his breathing steadied and his thudding heart began to tap more slowly.

As Nathan watched carefully, Billy finished assembling his American Eagle. He extracted several vials and set them on the ground. He tested the unit. It hummed.

'One thing,' the man said ominously, the razor rising slightly.

'What's that?'

'Not a mole. Don't tattoo me with a mole.'

'I won't do a mole, Nathan. I promise.'

Nathan folded the razor and put it away.

CHAPTER 34

'We don't call them guns.'

'Yeah, yeah, I know. I forgot. I meant "machine". Tattoo machine,' Lon Sellitto was saying.

'And we prefer "skin art" or "work". "Tattoo" has a cultural connotation I'm not happy with.' The petite woman, highly tattooed (skin arted?), gazed at Sellitto from over an immaculate glass counter, inside which were neatly arranged packets of needles, machine-not-gun parts, books, stacks of tattoo stencils, washable pens in all colors. Draw first, ink later, a sign warned.

The parlor was as clean as TT Gordon's. Apparently legit skin artists took the disease stuff pretty seriously. You even got the impression that this woman would step out of the room to sneeze.