Maxwell Street Blues (22 page)

We sat on the couch eating out of containers, making small talk, Susie purposely avoiding any discussion about my trip to L.A., which I appreciated. I asked about her life and she described a New England prep school education topped off with four years at Bryn Mawr. “I lived a WASP stereotype,” she said, “then I moved here and opened a business.”

“Your parents must’ve been proud.”

Susie almost spit out her food. “Oh, my god, no,” she said. “Opening a secondhand clothing shop in my family ranked just above running off with the circus.” That one sentence told me a lot about her life. I anticipated she would then ask for my story; instead she looked at her watch and said, “I gotta get back to the shop.”

We stood in the doorway anticipating each other’s body language. I wasn’t sure who made the first move, but my hands found their way to her waist and we kissed. “Call me when you get back,” she said and I watched her walk down the stairs.

* * *

I could see the setting sun as we landed. Through the smog it looked like a giant egg yolk. I had never been to Los Angeles, but I was used to navigating freeways, and I remembered L.A. had once mentioned her sea turtle tattoo would be the “envy of Echo Park.” The neighborhood was easy to find, as was a cheap motel on Sunset Boulevard called The Jenny, where I guessed, among other things, rooms could be rented by the hour. With a creepy yellow neon sign and purple stucco walls, how could I resist? Forty bucks a night sealed the deal. I slid three days’ worth of cash under the thick plastic window to an old man who said nothing as he pushed back a key.

Apart from some chipped paint and the graffiti on the small dresser, the room wasn’t that bad. A few blocks down the street, I found a vegan Thai restaurant and had a “tentil loaf” for dinner—the best tentil loaf I’ve ever had. A mix of white hipsters, Latinos, and Asians filled the sidewalks and neighboring streets, which bustled with bars, nightclubs, and music venues of every kind. A funky hip-hop-soul sound caught my ear. I followed the music across the street to a small club where a band from Seattle called Theoretics wowed the crowd. I leaned against the bar and ordered a Guinness on tap. I could nurse a Guinness for an hour and look like I belonged there.

A few minutes passed before I thought how absurd it seemed to have the feeling of being watched. Everyone watched everyone in a crowded nightclub. From the periphery, I thought I glimpsed a face and turned my head to see no one in particular. I moved to the other end of the bar, but the distraction continued. A pint of Guinness later, I was buzzed enough not to care about any trickery being played, imaginary or otherwise, and for a couple of hours enjoyed the idea of being a private investigator visiting Los Angeles.

The next morning I noticed my eye was turning greenish yellow. I had a late breakfast at the same Thai restaurant. From there I walked around the neighborhood looking for tattoo shops or perhaps a friendly tattooed person. The Los Angeles sunshine revealed the drastic contrasts of the area. Clapboard houses shared streets with craftsman bungalows and modernist lofts. Tacos and burritos lived alongside Maine lobsters and wasabi-marinated yellowfin tuna.

Finding a tattoo studio on Sunset Boulevard didn’t take long. A small business between Manny’s Laundromat and a newspaper/smoke shop was my first stop. From the sidewalk, I observed a Latino boy organizing ink cups and needles and putting tubes in a metal device I assumed was for sterilization. Two Latino men in white tank tops were
examining drawings on a display rack. Both were covered in tattoos from the elbows to the wrists. I walked in and waited at the glass counter. Neither man seemed to notice me until the boy walked over to them and whispered. They glanced my way and continued talking. A couple of minutes later one of them approached me.

“How can I help you?” he said.

I asked him if he knew a tattoo artist called L.A. and he said he didn’t. Then I described her as short with long black hair, and he laughed since I had just described his sister and all his friends’ sisters. “How about with red eyebrows?” I said.

The man thought for a moment and then yelled something in Spanish to the other man who shook his head. “Sorry, man. Can’t help. You a cop or something?”

I faked a laugh and said, “I’m just trying to find someone.” Then I handed him a card. “If you get any info or see this girl, there’s a hundred-dollar bill in it for you.” The man seemed unimpressed but took my card anyway. I thought two hours of pay was generous, but what did I know?

I stepped outside and, like the previous evening, a figure caught my attention from the corner of my eye. I turned my head to an empty sidewalk and just when I thought I might have developed some type of optical affliction, I noticed an old red sedan with tinted windows parked at the end of the street in the direction I had been drawn. I started a fast walk toward the car only to see the tires disappear in a cloud of dust before squealing onto Sunset Boulevard. Not yet twenty-four hours in Los Angeles and things had already gotten complicated.

Who knew I was in Los Angeles? Frownie, Susie, perhaps Tate. I continued walking. Four blocks farther I found another tattoo studio, Indra’s Tats, between a dental clinic and an unnamed restaurant with the words “Giant Tasty Burgers” on a banner hanging from the gutter. The façade of the clinic was decorated with a mural of smiling Anglo and Latino teens holding up the earth. The studio was modern and enormous with a dozen or so artists, each with their own work space enclosed in movable glass and aluminum walls. In addition to artwork, huge trophies lined shelves and countertops.

I was greeted by a pleasant young woman behind the glass counter who said an artist would be with me shortly and invited me to relax on one of the leather couches that surrounded a large glass table covered with copies of
Illustration Magazine
and a hardbound volume of
The Tattoo Encyclopedia
. After I sat, she offered a variety of coffee drinks. I declined and quickly explained the reason I was there. She smiled, nodded, and told me she was sure an artist would help me in just a few minutes. The staff was a United Nations of white, Asian, and Latino artists, all neatly groomed and dressed in sport shirts and khakis. Surprisingly, none had exposed tattoos. I began paging through
the encyclopedia, stopping at the section dedicated to symbolism. In particular, the ancient Greek utilization of moon phases interested me.

Nick, a husky Polynesian-looking guy, appeared. He shook my hand and sat on the couch across from me. “I’m sorry for bothering you,” I said. “I’m not interested in a tattoo. I’m just looking for a woman tattoo artist called L.A.”

Nick told me I had no reason to apologize. “People come in here all the time to chat, use the bathroom, ask directions. We’re not just artists; we’re part of the community. All are welcome anytime. As for this woman you’re looking for, I don’t know her. But it’s possible one of the other artists might. Why don’t you come back later when I have had time to ask around?”

I thanked Nick, and he walked me to the door as if I had been an honored guest in his house. If he had been any friendlier, I might have gotten a tattoo out of guilt. In the next two hours, I found four more studios. No one had heard of anyone named L.A. At each location I spotted the red sedan somewhere in the vicinity, either parked or passing by. Whoever was driving wanted me to know they were hanging around.

At the intersection of Sunset and a narrow, tree-lined side street, I was lured away from my present task with the promise of scenery that didn’t include murals of Jesus holding sparkling balls of light. The street bordered the top of a steep grade and was lined with garages underneath homes that must have commanded a fabulous view of what I thought was the park in Echo Park. I followed the street until the slope was shallow enough to easily traverse into an area of mature deciduous trees. From the shade, I looked over an empty parched landscape of brown grass that extended to the freeway at one end and a baseball stadium at the other.

Although I didn’t see any signs of life in the park, I felt uncomfortable, as if I had walked into a crowded room full of strangers. Back on Sunset Boulevard, I stopped at a lemonade cart. Both arms of the Latino man behind the cart were covered in tattoos. Within the collage, I could make out a skeleton wearing a sombrero, a bandito-like character riding a motorcycle, and the Virgin Mary. I pointed to the largest-sized cup, and the man smiled and nodded. I watched him cut a bunch of lemons in half and squeeze them into the juicer. Then he dumped in a sugary concoction, cold water, a scoop of ice, and turned on the blender. I said, “
Muchas gracias
”. He smiled and nodded. I turned to walk away and stopped.

“Where did you get your tattoos done?” I said. Again he smiled and nodded and I said, “
Dónde?
” and pointed to his arms. His face lit up, and he spoke rapidly in Spanish while pointing in the direction I was headed. I smiled and nodded.

It took almost an hour before I found the next studio. The building was tall and
skinny and looked like a converted three-flat. It stood alone between a used-car joint and the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse. I thought of fire-bombed cities where a lone chimney was all that remained. My lemonade and ice long gone, I urgently needed a bathroom. I stood outside the glass door and saw four white guys barely in their twenties. One was in the back working on the lower spine of a young woman. The other three were hanging around up front, leaning on the glass countertop. Their haircuts were either high-and-tight or crew cut. Each wore a light blue oxford cloth shirt and jeans. When I walked in, they straightened up in unison and looked at me as if I had caught them watching porn.

“Hi, guys,” I said.

“Can we help you?” one of them said.

“You’d help me big-time if you let me use your bathroom.”

Three smiles and three arms with pointed fingers directed me to the back. When I returned, I thanked them and asked if they knew an artist called L.A. They looked at one another and shook their collective heads. “She’s short with long black hair? Blue eyes?”

One of them coughed and then said, “Who did she apprentice with?”

His question surprised me. “You guys go through an apprenticeship first?”

They all kind of chuckled, as if they had a moron in their midst. Then one of them said, “Yeah, unless you’re just a scratcher.” They all laughed for real.

“And you guys don’t want to be a bunch of
scratchers
,” I said.

“Dude, our ink guns cost six hundred dollars apiece. That sterilizer? Five grand. The apprenticeship, ten grand—”

“Whoa. You
paid
someone to apprentice you?”

“Hell, yes. You’re paying to learn from a master who has the knowledge to pass on. It’s sacred shit. Have you ever heard of Hiroshima?”

“The city that got nuked?”

Loud laughter. “No, man. Hiroshima is a world famous tattoo artist in Japan. That’s who we apprenticed with. He gave us the knowledge to open up our own place.”

“You got cash, you get some knowledge, you got a career,” I said.

“Their parents are investors,” the girl shouted from the tattoo table and giggled.

There was an uncomfortable pause, and then I said, “You guys gonna do piercings, too?”

More loud laughter. “We are tattoo
artists
,” they said. “No blow-job studs or eyebrow rings.”

“That reminds me,” I said. “This L.A. woman. I forgot to say she has red eyebrows. Long black hair, blue eyes, and
red eyebrows
.”

The three guys still came up blank, but the guy in the back yelled, “I think I know her. She hangs out at that Adinkra Arts place.”

I walked to the back. He was coloring a winged heart just above the girl’s ass-crack. “How well do you know her?” I said.

“I don’t
know
her. I’ve just seen her around. Those red eyebrows are a trip. She hip-hops at this club we go to. She hangs with black guys. The guy she dances with is an artist at Adinkra Arts.”

“Is it far from here?”

He pulled a tissue from a plastic box of sterilized wipes and aggressively cleaned the excess blood off the winged heart. “It’s just down the street. Maybe half a mile. But the neighborhood changes. Not necessarily dangerous as long as you don’t act like a tough white guy.” The girl got up off the table, and they walked to a full-length mirror. She stood in front of it while the guy held up a small mirror behind her. She smiled and then threw her arms around him.

“What do you think of my tramp-stamp?” she said to me and then revealed her backside.

“Lovely,” I said.

“You got a ride waiting for you?” The guy pointed to the front where the red sedan was parked.

I could just make out a silhouette behind the wheel. “I’m not sure,” I said and wished the guys luck. I ran out the door straight into a hailstorm of dust and debris as the car peeled out down the street. Part of me welcomed the chicken-shit game being played. It gave me an excuse to lose my temper and act tough.

As I continued down the street, the red sedan appeared again, blazed past me, and turned sharply onto the next side street only to reemerge minutes later to perform the same maneuver. Block after block the car taunted me, and with each pass the routine became more juvenile than sinister—which pissed me off even more.

A hundred yards ahead I saw a large wooden circle above a storefront covered in strange black-and-white symbols. As I neared the façade of the building, I recognized the silhouette of the African continent. This time the red sedan sped by and turned onto the street that bordered the far side of Adinkra Arts. It was time to act out. I ran to the opposite side of the building, picked up a chunk of broken concrete, and waited behind a half-dead sumac tree. When the car turned the corner and raced to the stop sign at Sunset, I ran to the rear window and threw the concrete as hard as my aching ribs would allow. The pain was torturous, but the satisfaction of seeing the rear window explode into shattered glass eased my suffering.

Out jumped the driver, a skinny white boy with black-rimmed glasses and a pile of dark hair. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he shouted, and in that instant I recognized Ellis Knight, the reporter from
The Partisan
.