A Plunder by Pilgrims (8 page)

"Dude," Tim said, "I thought I told you never to bring your sorry ass in here any more!  Get the hell out!"

Gage cringed.  He guessed that "liking everybody" only extended so far.

Chapter 6

IT WAS GOING ON ONE O'CLOCK when Gage left the tattoo shop.  Thin vapors streaked the sky like scratches on blue enamel.  A plastic Safeway bag bounded over cars and concrete barriers, a pair of cawing seagulls in hot pursuit.  He caught the scent of grilling beef from the fifties nostalgia joint on the corner of the parking lot and his stomach grumbled.

Realizing he hadn't eaten anything since the bagel that morning, he grabbed a burger, then used the phone book at a pay phone to make a list of all the tattoo shops up and down the coast.  He was already exhausted—so much had happened during the day already—but there was no point in stopping now.  A cold trail would only grow colder with time. 

After a quick call to make sure Mattie was still fine (she complained about the food, but did so with plenty of gusto), he got in his van and headed south on Highway 101.  He planned to start with the two shops in Sandy Cove, and continue snaking down the coast, hitting the other half dozen shops through Waldport, Yachats, and Florence.  If that didn't work, tomorrow he'd head north up towards Tillamook, Seaside, and Astoria.

Usually, Gage enjoyed the drive.  The coastal highway in Oregon was one of the best in the world; he remembered a long ago road trip when Dad piled them all in the station wagon and they drove from Montana to Oregon to see the ocean.  The impressive vistas along the coast had made a lasting impression on him.  It was no different now.  The two-line highway slipped back and forth from the high bluffs over the water and the dappled shade of firs and pines.  The ocean, wrinkled with white seams, stretched out like a newly made bed.

But instead of enjoying the view, he drove in a silent funk.  He'd decided to take the case, and once he'd decided he always saw it through, but he felt far more uncertain than in years past.  Where was his usual confidence and verve?  Too much time holed up in that cave had made him uncomfortable outside it.  He felt like an old sailboat left tied to a dock, ignored for years, covered with grime and scum from disuse, and now was out in the open water without anyone even unfurling the sails.  He didn't feel ready.  He didn't know if he could handle the open seas.

 The first stop, at Zander's on the outskirts of Sandy Cove, left him even more dispirited.  None of the three tattoo artists recognized the tattoos or the girl.  They wouldn't even let him look at their release forms.  The second one, Ink and Exile, down at the seaport where the smell of fish was heavy in the air, yielded no better results, though they were more friendly. 

It was only when he was getting back into his van that he finally got some information.  A rail-thin woman in black clothes and blond dreadlocks—one of the tattoo artists he'd talked to inside—charged out of the store, waving her tattooed hands at him.  He rolled down the passenger window.

"Glad I caught ya," she said.

"You remember her?" Gage said.

She shook her head, her dreadlocks bouncing around like Medusa's snakes.  "But I know somebody who might.  If you head east on Highway 20, in about ten miles you'll come to a little town called Kooby.  Not much there, but there is a pawn shop.  Don't remember the name, but the guy who owns it is this fat Indian.  He did tattoos a couple years.  Not very good at it, and I don't think he does it no more because there's no neon sign in the window last time I passed, but you should try him."

"Thanks," Gage said, "I'll do that."

It was more like twenty miles to Kooby than ten, but the pawn shop was still there, at the top of the forested range that separated the coast from the Willamette Valley.  The blocky mud-colored building was squeezed between a single-pump gas station and a string of manufactured homes that looked like hastily stacked playing cards.  The words PAWN SHOP were written in black paint on the upper floor windows of the three-story building, windows cracked and streaked with mud.  When he parked in front of the building, he saw that below the flat roofline were the words KOOBY HOTEL, barely visible in a slightly darker brown, where the now departed letters had protected the paint from years of sun exposure.  His was the only vehicle there.

A fat, dark-skinned man slouched in a rocker next to the glass door, chewing a blade of grass.  His hair, slicked straight back, was as dark as crow feathers, and his skin was gnarled and reddish brown like the stump of a sequoia.  The rocking chair barely held his girth, his dirty overalls straining against the sides.  His red plaid shirt was unbuttoned all the way down to the navel, revealing a wrinkled but hairless chest.

Gage parked right in front and got out of the van.  The air, appreciably cooler than on the coast, nipped at his cheeks.  In the shadows of the building, frost glazed the gravel.  "You the owner?" he said.

The man went on chewing his straw for so long that Gage almost spoke again.

"Who's asking?" he piped up finally.  His voice sounded like water gurgling through a pipe.

Gage shut the door and limped over to him, careful where he planted his cane on the gravel.  He held the manila folder under his arm.  "Name's Garrison," he said.  "I'm looking for information about a girl."

The man stared fixatedly at Gage's cane instead of his face.  His eyes were grayish black, like the charcoal remains of a long dead fire.  "We don't got no hookers here," he said.

"No," Gage said, "it's not like that.  It's about the girl who died on the beach."

The straw stopped moving and the man gazed at him as if seeing him for the first time.

"What girl?" he said.

"The one who washed up on the beach in Barnacle Bluffs last week.  It's been all over the newspapers."

"I don't got time to read newspapers."

"I can see that.  She had a tattoo on her ankle.  Somebody said maybe you did it."

He squinted at Gage suspiciously.  "Who said that?"

"Just somebody."

"Who?"

"What does it matter?  Can I show you a picture to see if you know her?"

The man was silent.  An RV pulling a fishing boat rumbled past on the highway, kicking up a cloud of dust. 

"I don't know," the man said.

"It would sure be a help."

The man shrugged.  "I guess it don't hurt none to look.  I haven't done no tattoos in a over a year, though.  Don't know what the person who sent you here was thinkin'."

Gage opened the folder and pulled out the picture of the girl.  "I appreciate your time," he said, then added:  "Mister . . . ?"

"Call me Otis," the man said.

Gage handed him the glossy print.  Otis looked at it for only a moment, squinting at it through the corner of one eye, then handed it back.

"Yeah, I remember her," he said.

 The answer came so quickly that Gage assumed he'd said
didn't. 
He nodded, slipping the photo back into the folder, then stopped when he realized what Otis had actually said.

"You do?" he said.

"Yeah.  Don't remember her name or nothin'.  It was a year back maybe.  Yeah, it was February, right after President's Day, cause I remember thinking how the traffic was not nearly as good as the week before.  She was a bit heavier than in that photo.  Think she wanted some butterflies on her leg."

"How about dolphins around her ankle?"

The man nodded.  "Yeah, like I said.  Dolphins."

Gage took out the photo of the girl's tattoos and held it so Otis could see it. 

"Yep, that's my work," he said, nodding.  "Pretty nice, huh?  Shame I had to give it up cause of my 'thritis." 

"You don't happen to know her name?"

Otis shook his head.  "Nah.  She didn't talk all that much."

"Do you keep release forms?"

He looked confused.  "Release what?"

"Some tattoo shops have people sign a release form consenting to the tattoo before they do it."

"Oh."  He scratched his chin.  "No, nothing like that."

"Was she with anybody?"

"No.  That's why I remembered her.  I remembered thinking she was kinda young to be by herself."

"What kind of car was she driving?"

"She wasn't.  She was hitchin'.  When she left, I saw her out front.  I went into the back of the store, and when I went out there later, she was gone."

"And you don't remember anything else?"

He shook his head.  "Sorry."

"All right," Gage said, "I appreciate your time.  I might call on you again if I have other questions."

"You can't call on me cause I ain't got no phone."

"Well, I don't have one either, " Gage said.  "It's just a colloquial expression."

"A what?"

"Never mind."

Otis went back to chewing his straw, looking thoughtful, as if this was a turn of phrase that would take the rest of the afternoon to ponder.  Gage ambled to his van.  He was putting the key in the ignition when Otis waved at him.  Gage assumed he was waving goodbye and waved back, but Otis shook his head and pointed at the van. 

Gage rolled down the window.  "Yeah?"

"I do remember somethin'," Otis said. 

"What's that?"

"I asked her why she like dolphins.  She said they were smart.  And I said, oh yeah, as smart as humans?  And she said smarter.  Dolphins don't hurt nothin' on purpose.  Then she said they was the first thing she wanted to paint when she got to the coast.  And I said, oh yeah, you a painter then?  And she nodded.  Then I said, well, you know they got no dolphins in Oregon.  It's too cold.  And she was real disappointed about that so I says, you want me to draw you some orcas instead?  But she still wanted the dolphins."

"You just remembered all that just now?"

Otis shrugged.  "Wasn't like I been waiting around here my whole life just for you to ask me about it, you know?  I got a busy life.  Stuff like that just kind of blurs together."

"I suppose so," Gage said.

* * * * *

The sun was dipping beneath the ocean by the time he got back to Barnacle Bluffs.  The swath of fiery orange along the horizon was like a crack in a potter's kiln.  It was too late today to make use of what he'd learned, but that was all right.  Gage's spirits were considerably buoyed, and he actually found himself tapping the wheel and humming—at least, until he realized what he was doing and felt mildly annoyed at himself.  There was still a nameless girl in the county morgue, after all.

But there was something about having a lead, any
lead, that was immensely satisfying.  What had he learned?  She'd come from the east about a year earlier.  She'd been heavier.  She'd been by herself and she'd hitchhiked.  It wasn't much, but it did flesh out the picture of her a little, and that was a step in the right direction.  He hadn't felt satisfied about
anything
in a long time.

It was like welcoming back an old relative, one he'd sworn would never grace his doorstep again, and yet now he couldn't remember why he'd wanted them out of his house in the first place.

Still, in addition to the satisfaction there was another feeling—a yawning loneliness that made the idea of returning to his empty house depressing.  Instead, he made a pit stop just south of town. 

Half the shops in The Horseshoe Mall—consisting of a dozen little ma and pa stores in a dilapidated, U-shaped building—were already closed.  Few, Gage knew, even kept regular hours.  When Gage entered Books and Oddities, the stacks were dark, the only fluorescent light the one over the front counter where Alex was closing up his till.  The shop smelled of musty books and dust, barely five hundred square feet of retail space and every square inch packed with merchandise.