Scarlett Undercover (3 page)

Gemma was still a little girl.

And I’d do whatever I could to help her stay that way.

D
elilah wouldn’t come near me, not even to bring the check. I left a ten on the table, headed to my office over the Laundromat, and looked up the address for Calamus Tattoos. It was at the corner of Third and Doyle, a part of town nice folks had given up on years ago. Next, I searched the city’s online public records database to see who owned the place.
RECORD NOT FOUND
was all that came back, which meant someone had lost the information, by accident or on purpose. Either way, it was a dead end.

The afternoon was getting old fast, and it crossed my mind that waiting until morning to visit Calamus
might be smart. But patience had never been one of my virtues, and smart only got you so far. So I grabbed my blackjack and headed out.

The blackjack was smooth and solid, just under a foot of polished wood that started narrow at one end and widened all the way to an inch and a quarter at the other. A stiff leather strap looped through the narrow part and fit around my wrist just fine. I’d found the thing in a junk-shop bin full of splintered wooden spoons and figured it must have belonged to a beat cop back at the turn of the century. It wasn’t as threatening as a knife or intimidating as a gun, but I was fast, knew where to aim, and could use it to knock a grown man out cold with one good whack.

Downstairs, Mook was in his usual spot on the stoop, smoking one of the black tobacco cigarettes he bought by the case from a guy who smuggled them in from Spain. All cigarette smoke turned my stomach, but these were a special kind of awful, like dead skunks in hot tar.

Mook had lived in the first-floor apartment behind the Laundromat for as long as I could remember. He was tall and wiry, with long black hair pulled into a ponytail at the nape of his neck. He wore his black
jeans, white tank top, and black leather duster like a uniform, never sweating in summer, never buttoning the duster in winter.

“Where are you headed,
akht
? Haven’t you had enough excitement for one day?” His dark eyes scanned the street as he spoke.
Akht
meant “little sister” in Arabic. He called himself my
mu’aqqibat
—my guardian angel. Mook was full of shit.

“Out,” I said. “I’m on the clock.”

“Be that as it may, you haven’t answered my question.”

“Gimme a break, Mook. I’m in a hurry.”

He swung his head toward me and hooked the cigarette between two long fingers. Mook reminded me of a raven, all scary-beautiful and hollow-boned.

“You wouldn’t be thinking of going to one of the less savory neighborhoods in our fair city, would you, my dear?”

“Why would I do something like that?” I said. “I’m working for a private school kid from over on North Daly.”

He took a drag and let the smoke hover around his half-closed eyelids.

“One of the conditions of our arrangement,
akht
, is
that you check in with me on a regular basis. You gave your word to your sister. Break it, and I’ll help her find a women’s college out in the middle of nowhere willing to give a smart girl like you a scholarship.”

Tantrums weren’t my thing. Drama, either. Still, Mook knew how to get under my skin like a bad case of splinters. How could he always tell when I was doing something I shouldn’t?

“I’ll be home before dark,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

“I never do.”

“Great. Can I go now?”

He took another languid drag and blew it out.

“We’ve chatted about respect before, haven’t we,
akht
? About how those who want it must show it first?”

The immediate response that came to mind was about as respectful as a pop in the nose. I kept my lips zipped.

One side of Mook’s mouth lifted into a smile. “Did that hurt?”

“Did what hurt?”

“Not saying whatever it was you wanted to?”

“Like you don’t even know.”

The smile spread to both sides of his face. He pulled another cigarette out and lit it from the stub of the old one.

“Those’ll kill you,” I said. My bus was rounding the corner.

“Go,” he said.

And for once, I listened.

As it turned out, the corner of Third and Doyle wasn’t just rough, it was flat-out scary. Even the bus driver must have thought so, because when I pulled the signal cord to get off, he asked what address I wanted, drove past the stop, and dropped me smack in front of Calamus Tattoos.

This part of Las Almas looked like it had been on the losing side of a war. Buildings sagged on crumbling foundations. Cardboard, tape, and rags marked the broken windows of apartments where people actually lived. The loose ends of those rags flapped in the late afternoon breeze like flags of surrender.

Except for a lone figure half a block over, wrapped head to toe in dirty fabric and swaying back and forth on its feet, the only sign of life I could find was a mangy street mutt watching me with the one eye left in its head. Dogs set me on edge, and this one was no exception. I
watched, making sure it wasn’t sizing me up for dinner. It didn’t move. I slipped my blackjack from my bag just in case and went up the stairs.

Calamus didn’t look like a tattoo shop at all. There were no neon signs, no painted windows to lure in drunks and bored housewives. In fact, the place was a church. Sure, it was smaller than most and had no visible stained glass windows, but there was no mistaking the central arch, broad columns, and rectangular towers flanking its main facade like sentries. The whole thing was built from blocks of granite dulled down to an ugly shade of crud by years of accumulated car exhaust and city grime.

I climbed thirteen stone steps and stood in front of big, arched double doors. They were wooden and looked half a foot thick, with heavy bands of metal stretching from the inset hinge, all the way across to the opposite side. At the center of the right-hand door was a small sign with
CALAMUS TATTOOS
written in swirling script alongside the etched image of a quill.

I weighed my options. Technically this was a kind of store, so walking in should be fine. And you didn’t have to knock before you went into a church, either. But the whole situation felt odd as rubber socks. Good
manners weren’t usually a concern of mine, but something kept me from barging into the place. Made me give a knock too timid for even church mice to hear. I tried again with the tip of the blackjack, but even then the door’s thick wood swallowed the sound. Short of beating on the thing like a fool, it was the best I could do. I rocked back on my heels. Looked up. Rocked back a little further.

Letters, airy and looping, were carved into the dirty stone over the doorway.
WE REMAIN UNVANQUISHED
, they spelled out. In Syriac.

Not that I was fluent in ancient Aramaic languages; I was a modern language kind of girl. But those particular words were engraved across the one thing of our father’s that my sister and I had left: a bottle forged of heavy, time-blackened metal, with a broad bottom, narrow top, and a thick lid I’d never managed to pry off.

A lid, I suddenly remembered, that was stamped with a deep impression of Solomon’s knot.

I thought about banging my head against the church’s granite, but since the dog and the swaying weirdo were still nearby, I settled for a quiet sigh of frustration.
That
was why I’d recognized the design from
Oliver’s door.
That
was why Deck’s line about mosque floor tiles hadn’t rung true. Solomon’s knot had been right in front of me my whole life, on an Egyptian relic handed down through my father’s family for centuries. Only I’d never bothered to notice it. To
really
notice it.

I knew the bottle was valuable, though.
Abbi
told us once that it was worth more than we could imagine, but that selling it would be the same as selling our past and future all at once. “Money can’t buy history,” he’d said. “Or peace.”

That was why, not long before he died,
Abbi
had hidden the real bottle in a safe deposit box and left two antique copies of it out in the open for the whole world to see—one in our living room curio cabinet, one on the crowded back office desk in his bookstore. The office copy had been stolen the night he was murdered. The other was right where he’d left it.

After
Ummi
died, Reem and I found the safe deposit key tucked inside the folded fabric of her best
hijab
. Tracking down which bank it belonged to had been my first successful detective gig. I’d taken the bottle home and tried to convince Reem we should sell it. As far as I was concerned, money would have made our lives a whole lot easier, and the only difference between the
real bottle and the fake we still had was a pair of hash marks cut into the original’s base.

Reem saw things differently. She dragged me to the bank, put the bottle back in the safe deposit box, and told me she’d kick my ass four ways to Sunday if I ever messed with it again.

A passing metro train shook the sidewalk grate behind me. I looked away from the doorway inscription and scoped out the street again. The swaying gray man and the dog had stayed put. The sun was dropping fast. A car backfired in the distance.

With my hand on the wrought-iron door handle, I told myself it must have been my
Qadar
that brought me to this place. My fate. Maybe I’d get lucky and find some answers inside. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t. After all, luck had never been my friend, and
Qadar
was a tricky thing.

Insha’Allah
, I whispered, pulling open the door.
If God wills it.

A
dim floor lamp cast shadows in the waiting area of Calamus Tattoos. It was a small space, partitioned off from the church sanctuary by a cascade of chipped wooden beads that hung in an arched doorway. Chairs covered in faded silk cushions lined the wall. A coffee table with curling legs and an inlaid top stood in front of one of the couches, stacked with ashtrays and old copies of
Inked
magazine. There was no rack of pre-drawn tattoo designs for customers to flip through, no cash register. Other than a few faded travel posters with pictures of sand dunes and Arabic writing, the walls were bare as toy store shelves the day after Christmas.

“Hello?” I said. “Anybody here?”

Footsteps answered.

The man who came through the beads was somewhere between short and tall, with skin the color of weak tea. Wavy silver hair fell loose from his widow’s peak to his shoulders. His mustache and goatee were just so, his faded jeans, leather vest, and long-sleeved black T-shirt hung easy from his lean frame. The faded logo of a thrash metal band peeked out between the buttons of the vest.

“
As-salaamu alaikum
,” he said. “Peace be upon you.” He gave me a once-over and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You’re too young for a tattoo.”

“
Wa alaikum as-salaam
,” I answered. “I don’t want a tattoo.”

He stared at me with uncomfortably intelligent eyes. They were brown. And gold-free.

“My name’s Scarlett,” I said. “I’m trying to help a friend.”

It was my standard introduction, since telling adults I was a private detective usually made them treat me like a toddler playing dress-up.

He kept staring.

“This is an interesting place,” I said. “You the owner?”

He tilted his head. It wasn’t much of an answer. I reached into my bag and took out one of the rubbings.

“Could you tell me about this design? A friend of mine from the East Side has it tattooed over his heart. He said he got it done here.”

I held up the paper and waited, ready to be just as quiet as the old man, and for just as long. Thirty seconds clicked by, feeling like a thousand.

“It’s just a design I do,” he finally said. “Nothing special. And as I told you, you’d be too young for me to ink even if it wasn’t
haraam
.” His deep voice seemed to come from the earth under his feet. Each consonant bounced off the top of his palate, each vowel echoed.

“I know tattoos are forbidden for Muslims,” I said, “but as I told
you
, that’s not why I’m here.”

He smiled faintly.

“Anyway,” I said, “I don’t think this
is
just a design. I think there’s a lot more to it than that.”

The smile disappeared. “If this knot is so important to your friend, why doesn’t he come ask me about it himself?”

“Because
she’s
only nine.”

He lifted his hand and smoothed his goatee, pondering. Exactly what, I couldn’t say, but the whole
process ended with a blink and a wave of his hand. “As I’ve pointed out, my dear,” he said, “you yourself are not of an age to be in this establishment. I suggest you leave now if you want to catch the next bus. Good day.”

He turned and walked out. Beads clacked in his wake. I gave the waiting area one last look and made peace with the fact that my bus fare across town hadn’t bought me any new info about Solomon’s knot.

Buck up, buttercup
, I told myself. Because new questions could be better than old answers, and I’d just gotten plenty. Like why a Middle Eastern, sharia law–spouting grampa would hang out in a tattoo parlor church. And how the hell he’d known I was a Muslim in the first place.

The street outside Calamus was empty except for the rag guy. The dog was gone. There were no tails or bogeymen waiting for me in the fading evening light. I tucked a clump of curls back into my tam, took my blackjack out of my bag, and slid it up my right sleeve. Its smooth wood was cold comfort against my skin.

The bus stop was a block past the rag man, and on the
same side of the street. If I crossed the road, he’d know I was trying to avoid him, and I’d just have to cross back anyway. Besides, I knew how to defend myself.
Don’t move, creep
, I thought.
Don’t freakin’ move.

I started toward him at a steady clip. The figure’s sway didn’t change. As the distance between us shrank, I could make out a long, dingy scarf wrapped around his neck and up over his nose. A brimmed hat with earflaps covered his brow. His gloves were filthy. Not an inch of flesh was visible. My hand tightened around the blackjack.

At first, the sound coming out of him was so quiet I assumed he was telling himself a tale. But the closer I got, the more it took on a musical drone. The rag man was singing.

Little fingers of caution skittered up my spine.

I kept walking.

The sound changed.

“Stay away,” he hissed, dragging his
S
through the rest of the phrase like a dying man’s last breath. “Stay away.…”

I gave the blackjack another squeeze, kept my feet moving, and didn’t stop until I’d reached the broken-down bus kiosk.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the rag man, still swaying. I knew he wasn’t going to come after me, knew it in my bones. Still, it wasn’t until I heard the whine of a bus engine that my grip on the blackjack loosened and my heart eased down out of my throat.

“Gettin’ dark,” the fleshy driver said when I climbed aboard. She glanced up into her rearview mirror at the empty bus. “Glad to have your company.”

“Amen to that,” I said, and settled into the seat behind her.