Jane Carter Investigates Episode One-Hundred and Twenty-Nine
Mr. Pruitt motioned for me to follow
him to the front of the shop. He offered me a chair which sat under a row of
dirty, smeary bottles of chemicals on a shelf above my head.
“Now let’s take your first question,”
said Mr. Pruitt, seating himself opposite me. “I can’t tell you how to
tattoo—that’s a secret of the profession.”
“How much do you charge for one?”
“Depends upon how much a fellow is
willing to pay. Take this town—it’s a cheap place. Nobody has any money. The
King of England paid fifty dollars for his tattoo and what do I get? I’m lucky
if it’s a dollar. And mostly hoodlums to work on. You can’t give a man much of
a tattoo for a dollar.”
“Do you ever remove tattoos, Mr.
Pruitt?”
“It’s against the law,” the man replied
briefly.
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “Why?”
“Crooks can be identified by their tattoos.
Oh, it’s easy for a fellow to get one on, but not so easy to get it off.”
“But it can be done?” I persisted.
“Have you ever removed one?”
“I’m the only man in the state who can
take off a tattoo so it doesn’t show,” boasted Mr. Pruitt. “Surgeons sometimes
try, but you always can see where it was.”
“Tell me about some of the tattoos
you’ve removed,” I urged.
“I’ve told you more than I should
already,” said Mr. Pruitt.
“This will be strictly confidential,” I
promised. “I’m not a reporter. I deal in pure fiction.”
“It’s this way,” Mr. Pruitt said. “I
never do any work for crooks—not me. But if a law-abiding, respectable citizen
comes here and says he’s sick of his tattoo, then sometimes I take it off for
him if he’s willing to pay the price. Fact is, I’m workin’ on a mighty
interesting case right now. It’s a design that’s rare—an octopus.”
I did not trust myself to speak for a
moment.
“How interesting, Mr. Pruitt,” I said
as casually as I could manage. “An octopus tattoo? Was the man a sailor?”
“He’s an old salt all right, though he
denies it.”
“What is his name?”
“I couldn’t tell you that,” Mr. Pruitt
demurred. “I have to protect my customers.”
“Tell me more about the tattoo,” I
urged.
“It’s just a figure about so large—”
Mr. Pruitt demonstrated with his hands, “on the man’s back. Funny place for a
tattoo, ain’t it?”
“I should say so. Is it merely a figure
of an octopus? No words or anything like that?”
“There are two words. I took ’em off
last week.”
“Two? What are they, Mr. Pruitt?”
“They don’t make sense. The words are For One.”
“I once saw an octopus tattoo such as
the one you describe,” I said. “But I distinctly recall that the design used
only a single word. It was One.”
“Is that so?” said Mr. Pruitt. “Maybe
the tattoo isn’t as uncommon as I thought, but I never saw one like it before.”
“I wonder what those words mean?”
“I was asking my customer about it. He
pretended he didn’t know, but I figure maybe he and some buddies had a sentence
tattooed on ’em.”
“You mean that if one were able to read
several tattoos together, the words would make sense?”
“That’s right,” nodded Mr. Pruitt. “I
don’t know about this octopus tattoo, but I figure it may have been that way.”
“Did your customer have any other
tattoos on his body? An anchor, for instance?”
“Didn’t notice ’em if he did.”
“I suppose it takes a long while to
remove a tattoo. Does your customer come often?”
“Every Tuesday and Thursday night. He
complains because I don’t do the work faster, but I tell him if he wants a good
job it has to be done carefully.”
Before I could ask another question,
two young sailors swaggered into the shop. Ellis Pruitt, scenting business,
immediately arose.
“Be careful what you include in that
yarn of yours,” he warned as he left me. “There’s been a lot of news articles
on tattooin’, but not a one that’s right. It just ain’t possible for a reporter
to write a true story unless it’s about a murder or a fire! Maybe you novelists
can get it right for once.”
“I’ll be careful,” I promised.
I didn’t believe Mr. Pruitt could have
been mistaken about the words which were incorporated in the design, and I was
equally certain I wasn’t mistaken about Anchor Jim’s tattoo. It had only the
single word, One. Mr. Pruitt’s declaration that his customer
was not the possessor of a tattooed anchor caused me to doubt if the person
could be Jim Loewen. However, the man was wanted by government agents, and it
seemed reasonable to believe that he might seek to remove tell-tale markings. I
decided that on Thursday night I’d watch Mr. Pruitt’s shop. I might succeed in
identifying his mysterious customer.
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