Dirty White Boys (34 page)

“These boys ain’t so romantic.”

“No, I don’t suppose they are,” Dr. Dickstein said.

Richard slid out the photograph. He stared at it with some incomprehension; its details were exact and knowable but they had been arranged into a pattern that made no sense at all. He saw a bedroom slipper, a bedroom, a bed, two sleeping forms, a nice nightdress, a bathrobe.

Then he realized that the room in the photograph was the room he was at that moment in. And that the bed was the bed that still lay between the two windows, which Ruta Beth and Lamar now so placidly shared. In fact, the photographer had been standing almost exactly where Richard now stood, except that he had been perhaps three or four feet closer to the foot of the bed than Richard now was.

Involuntarily, Richard took the steps over the hardwood floor until he stood in the exact spot. He looked at the bed, which was ever so neatly made, so tidy, with a white bedspread with little rows of red roses on it. He looked at the wall above the bed, white and blank and formless.

He looked back in the picture. It was the same, except that the two people in the bed weren’t sleeping, they were dead. Someone had fired something heavy—even Richard knew enough to suspect a shotgun—into them as they slept. The shells had destroyed their faces and skulls, and the inside of their heads, like fractured melons, lay open for all
the world to see. Jackson Pollock at his most amphetamine-crazed had contaminated the wall: flung spray, spatter, gobbets of flesh, patches of skin, a whole death catalog of the contents of the human head displayed on that far wall, which was now so tidily cleaned up and repainted.

Richard felt woozy. Ruta Beth’s parents, obviously; the tragedy she had so glumly and vaguely referred to in her letter was a murder. Someone had broken in and blown Mother and Daddy away. Ruta Beth had probably discovered them like this; that explained her weirdness, her craziness, her strange devotion to a man like Lamar who, whatever else, could protect her.

But … she stayed in the same house?

She slept in the same bed?

Richard shivered.

He looked back at the picture. Blood, blood everywhere, a carnivore’s feast of blood, the triumph of the lion over its prey.

Something in him seemed to twitch or stir. He noticed that—good heavens!—he was getting an erection.

Quickly, he put the photograph back in the envelope and the envelope back where he had found it. He returned to his desk. The blood sang in his ears.

The lion. The lion.

His pencil flew across the page.

Bud opened his briefcase and spread the three drawings out on Dr. Dickstein’s desk: the crude tracing he’d found among Lamar’s prison effects, the drawing from the Stepfords, and the doodles on the placemat at the Denny’s crime scene.

“He studied at a place called the Baltimore Institute. Is that good?”

“The Maryland Institute. It’s a fine school,” said Dickstein.
“You know, this is very unusual. If you study the lives of artists, indeed you find violent and maladjusted men. But almost always their rage is directed at the self. The ear, you know, Van Gogh, that sort of thing. It’s rare that they express their hostility to the world at large. I suppose they’re too narcissistic.”

“We ain’t sure how much he’s in command. He was celled with a tough lifer con, an armed robber by profession. Very powerful criminal personality. We think Richard just got sucked up in it. Lamar has a way of getting people to do what he wants. He’s the real monster.”

The young art doctor stared at the three drawings for a bit.

“This one isn’t in his hand?”

“No. It was in an impression I found in a magazine that was in Lamar’s possession in the pen.”

“It’s traced. The line is heavy, crude, and dead.”

“I believe that’s right. Never saw the original. It was etched in a
Penthouse
. The light caught it right and I brought it out myself.”

“Yes. But clearly the original drawing is Richard’s.”

“Yes sir.”

“Yes. I see commonality. And this, this one, it’s the one he worked on the hardest.”

“Yes sir. At the Stepfords’. They told me Lamar
ordered
Richard upstairs, to draw while looking out.”

“So it was an assignment?”

“Yes sir.”

“It represents … Lamar’s view of himself?”

“Yes sir.”

“Very roman—look, Sergeant, you don’t have to call me sir. Dave would be fine. Everybody around here calls me Dave.”

“Dave it is, then.”

“Good. Anyway … it represents Lamar’s view of himself. Men who think they’re lions see themselves as powerful, kingly, sexually provocative, very romantic in their own eyes. Incredible unself-consious vanity. Typical criminal personality, I’d bet.”

“Sounds pretty familiar.”

“Yes, I thought it might. And … it doesn’t quite work. I think you see in the second lion something studied, perhaps too ‘cute.’ The first one is much cruder, but it’s much better. Richard is trying to do too much in Number Two. He has conflicting impulses. It’s very Renaissance, actually, very Italian. He’s trying to please his patron, the powerful lord who doesn’t know much about art except what he likes, and yet his own subversive interests keep breaking through. His talent is betraying him. He knows that the subject matter is beneath him. He sees through it, so he really can’t force himself above the level of the commercial hack. He despises the material. It’s so coarse: Viking—primordial warrior stuff, the killer elite at play in the fields of the Lord. Hmmm. What is it Arendt says about the banality of evil? This is it in spades, and Richard knows that. He doesn’t like drawing it but of course he hasn’t the guts to say no. What would happen if he said no?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I’ll trust you on that one.”

“Is he any good? As an artist?”

“Well … there’s something here, I don’t know. He has technical skills, yes. And he doesn’t want to do it, but he is doing it and that tension makes it somehow interesting.”

“How about the third one?”

“Ah—lots of vigor, dash, panache. Done off-handed. With his left brain. Something else was on his mind.”

“He did it just before the robbery. They had him as
lookout. If he’d have done his job right, maybe all them people wouldn’t have died.”

“You don’t like him, do you, Sergeant?”

Bud thought a moment.

“No, not really. He had choices. Lamar and Odell, they never had no choices. They were born to be trash. They learned at the toe end of somebody’s boot. Richard could have done anything. What happened to him didn’t have to happen. He was smart enough for it not to have happened. That’s what I despise about him. He’s not even a good goddamned criminal. Lamar’s a great criminal. Lamar’s a pro. This poor pup, he’s just what the convicts call a fuckboy.”

“I can see how prison would be somewhat hard on him,” said Dr. Dickstein.

“And that’s it?”

“Well—yes.”

“Thanks then. You’ve been some help.”

The museum director’s eyes knitted up then, and he seemed to really throw himself at the three drawings.

At last he said, “You know—I don’t know, there’s one other thing.”

“Yes sir?”

“It probably doesn’t mean a thing.”

“Maybe not. But tell me anyway.”

“What I see here is a process of—” he paused, groping for a word. “What I see is a process of purification, somehow. He’s honing, reducing it, concentrating it, trying to simplify it. He’s trying to reduce it to pure essence of lion for Lamar.”

Bud looked carefully at the drawings. From Number Two to Number Three it was true: same lion, same posture, but somehow simple, less fretwork to it, the lines bolder, the suggestion more powerful.

“Why?” he asked.

“Well, he’s getting close to cartoon almost, one could say. Or emblem. He’s reducing it to emblem or trademark. I don’t know. But there’s definitely a lot of work, a lot of practice, a lot of method gone into it. Now, he’s nervous before the crime, he’s not thinking, it’s just come welling up. And he gets this one, which is by far the best. Whatever he’s reducing it to, he’s almost there. Lamar will see that.”

Bud looked at the drawing. He was trying to figure out what it could be. Was Lamar going to put a trademark on his crimes?

“I don’t know,” said the doctor. “It looks like something I once saw, but … Is there a visual tradition in criminal culture? Possibly it has to do with graffiti or hex signs or some such, some unique signature, some proclamation of deviance that says to the world, ‘I am the bad man’?”

He paused.

It looked like something to Bud, too.

Then he remembered the mottling of blue stains on Lamar’s arms as Lamar bent to put a bullet into poor Ted and the
F U C K
and the
Y O U
! Lamar wore on his knuckles.

It appeared to Bud perfectly formed and beautiful.

“It’s a tattoo,” Bud said, astounded at his own insight. “Richard is designing a tattoo for Lamar!”

“A
tattoo?” said Richard.

“Goddamn right,” said Lamar.
“That’s
what you been workin’ on! And now, by God, you done it!”

What lay before them on Ruta Beth’s coffee table was Richard’s best and final lion, a beast so pure and fierce it leaped off the paper at you to tear your throat out. It sang of blood. Next to it was a beautiful young blond woman, tawny and silky and adoring, her arm around the king, lost in his mane. It was like a Nazi wet dream.

“I want to proudly wear that on my chest. I want a
artist
to put it there, in a nice parlor. Not no convict thing, like this here trashy shit on my skin now.”

“Lamar. I’m sure a good one could. I mean, I saw tattoos in McAlester I wouldn’t have believed. Evidently it’s gotten quite sophisticated. It’s not crude anymore. The artists are quite free with line and color.”

Lamar carefully unbuttoned his shirt and shucked it off. Though he hadn’t been working out regularly as in the Mac, his body was still sleek with muscle. On his pneumatic arms, the fading blue ink of prison tattoos that had lost their
vitality spilled like stains. But on his hands, the
F U C K
and the
Y O U
! still told the world who he was.

“See,” he said, “it’s like it was meant to be. I never had nothing on my chest. I done that all on my arms and hands and back when I was young and stupid or young and drunk or high on crystal or all three. But here, I’d like that lion, just as bold as bold can be.”

“Daddy,” said Ruta Beth, “that would be cool. That would be the coolest thing.”

“I think it would be, too,” said Lamar. “See, I’ve always seen myself as a lion and this here thing is what would make it so. Baby Odell, what do you think? Do you think Lamar would look cool with a lion on his chest? You know, a real roaring lion, like the one Richard here been practicing to draw.”

Odell’s damaged mind grappled with the concept and at last grasped it.
Picture. On. Skin. Lion
. Grrrrrrrr.
Scary. Pretty
.

“Too! Too!” he said, so excited he sprayed Frosted Mini-Wheats and milk with each syllable.

“He wants one, Lamar, that’s what the boy’s saying,” said Ruta Beth. “Can he get one?”

“Well, sure. Maybe not when I do it, because somebody’ll have to stand guard. But later we’ll get him a right nice one. Odell, what you like your tattoo to be?”

But Odell did not want a lion. He wanted something else.

“Doggy! Mar, me doggy. Doggy Dell. Yoppayoppa?”

“Yes sir, Baby Odell, we’ll get you the goddamnedest best doggy ever there was. Right, Richard. You could design a doggy just like you done a lion, Richard, couldn’t you?”

“Of course, Lamar.”

“Daddy, I want one, too.”

“Of course, honey.”

“I want a picture of my mother and daddy. On my back. And a raven. I want it on my right shoulder blade.”

“Bet Richard could do that too, huh, Richard?”

“Ah—yes.”

Actually, Richard thought he was going to faint. Ever since he was a boy Richard had hated needles. What was tattooing, as he understood it, but ordeal by needle? Just sitting there, the tattoo artist would puncture and puncture and puncture, injecting a small permanent blot of color under the skin, until some hideous banality like a skull and cross-bones or a battleship or
F U C K
and
Y O U
! was formed. He knew he couldn’t get through it.

But he also knew this is why he was here. In some way, his skill with the pen had jiggered something deep and yearning in Lamar. It had drawn Lamar to him, made him important, even magical, to Lamar. It had, he supposed, saved his life.

“Richard, I want your help.”

“Help?”

“Be the foreman. Son, you worked so hard on the drawing and now I would say it’s perfect. I want you to work with the skin artist and get it exactly that way. I don’t want no slipups!” His mood turned briefly dark. He pulled the muscle of his biceps until they could see where drops of blood, once red but now faded pink, dripped off a tattooed slash in his arm, opened by a dagger. It was a trompe l’oeil of some earnestness but not much skill. However, what infuriated Lamar was the third drop from the wound.

“See that one? Look, see it?”

They all crowded around.

“Yes sir, Daddy,” said Ruta Beth. “What’s wrong?”

“See how it goes
out
All the others go
in
. That’s what’s wrong.”

But Richard realized it wasn’t a mistake. The tattoo artist,
whoever he was, was trying to make the spurts of blood slightly more authentic by varying their configuration and modulating their placement in the stream, knowing instinctively that irregularity meant realism. If he’d done it the way Lamar had assumed he’d do it, it would somehow be deader. It was the endless battle between the patron and the artist for control of the work! It was the Pope versus Michelangelo!

“I suppose I’d have to do some research. I’d have to find a guy with the skill. You can’t just walk in on these things. I’d have to see samples of his work. I think they have magazines full of tattoos. You could find a guy from them. And then we could—”