The Skin Collector(Lincoln Rhyme)

Chapter 2





Billy Haven shut off his American Eagle tattoo machine to save the batteries.

He squatted back. He examined the work so far.

Eyes scanning.

Less-than-ideal conditions but the art was good.

You always put everything you could into your mods. From the simplest cross on a waitress’s shoulder to an American flag on a contractor’s chest, complete with multiple folds and three colors and blowin’ in the wind, you inked like Michelangelo laboring away on the church ceiling. God and Adam, finger skin to finger skin.

Now, here, Billy could’ve rushed. Considering the circumstances, nobody would have blamed him.

But no. The mod had to be a Billy Mod. What they called it back home, in his shop.

He felt a tickle, sweat.

Lifted the dentist’s face guard and with his gloved hand wiped sweat from his eyes, put the tissue into a pocket. Carefully, so no fibers would flake off. Telltale fibers that could be as dangerous to him as the inking was to Chloe.

The face shield was cumbersome. But necessary. His tattoo instructor had taught him this lesson. He’d had Billy slip one on before the boy had even picked up a machine for the first time. Billy, like most young apprentices, had protested: Got eye protection. Don’t need more. It wasn’t cool. Wearing a dorky mask was like giving newbies, in for their first inking, a p-ssy ball to squeeze.

Tat up. Get over it.

But then his instructor had Billy sit beside him while he inked a client. A little work: Ozzy Osbourne’s face. For some reason.

Man, the blood and fluid that spattered! The face guard was as flecked as a pickup’s windshield in August.

‘Be smart, Billy. Remember.’

‘Sure.’

Ever since, he’d assumed that each customer was ripe with hep C and B and HIV and whatever other sexual diseases were popular.

And for the mods he’d be inking over the next few days, of course, he couldn’t afford any blowback.

So, protection.

And he’d worn the latex mask and hood, too, to make sure he didn’t shed any of his abundant hair or slough off epidermal cells. To distort his features as well. There was the remote chance that, despite his careful selection of the secluded kill zones, he’d get spotted.

Billy Haven now examined his victim again.

Chloe.

He’d noted the name on the tag on her chest and the pretentious Je m’appelle preceding it. Whatever that meant. Maybe Hello. Maybe Good morning. French. He lowered his gloved hand – double-gloved – and stroked her skin, pinching, stretching, noting the elasticity, the texture, the fine resilience.

Billy noted too the faint rise between her legs, beneath the forest-green skirt. The lower line of the bra. But there was no question of misbehaving. He never touched a client anywhere he shouldn’t touch.


That was flesh. This was skin. Two different things entirely, and it was skin that Billy Haven loved.

He wiped more sweat with a new tissue, carefully tucked it away again. He was hot, his own skin prickling. Though the month was November the tunnel was stifling. Long – about a hundred yards – yet sealed at both ends, which meant no ventilation. It was like many of the passages here in SoHo, south of Greenwich Village. Built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these tunnels honeycombed the neighborhood and had been used for transporting goods underground to and from factories and warehouses and transfer stations.

Abandoned now, they were perfect for Billy’s purposes.

The watch on his right wrist hummed again. A similar sound from a backup watch in his pocket came a few seconds later. Reminding him of the time; Billy often got lost in his work.

Just let me get God’s knuckle perfect, just a minute more …

A clattering came from a bud microphone in his left ear. He listened for a moment then ignored the noise and took up the American Eagle machine once more. It was an old-style model, with a rotary head, which moved the needle like a sewing machine’s, rather than modern devices that used a vibrating coil.

He clicked it on.

Bzzzz …

Face shield down.

A millimeter at a time, he inked with a lining needle, following the bloodline he’d done quickly. Billy was a natural-born artist, brilliant at pencil and ink drawing, brilliant at pastels. Brilliant at needles. He drew freehand on paper, he drew freehand on skin. Most mod artists, however talented, used stencils, prepared ahead of time or – for the untalented – purchased and then placed on the skin for the inker to trace. Billy rarely did this. He didn’t need to. From God’s mind to your hand, his uncle had said.

Now time to fill. He swapped needles. Very, very carefully.

For Chloe’s tat, Billy was using the famous Blackletter font, known more commonly as Gothic or Old English. It was characterized by very thick and very thin strokes. The particular family he used was Fraktur. He’d selected this font because it was the typeface of the Gutenberg Bible – and because it was challenging. He was an artist and what artist didn’t like to show off his skills?

Ten minutes later he was nearly done.

And how was his client doing? He scanned her body then lifted her lids. Eyes still unfocused. Her face gave a few twitches, though. The propofol wouldn’t last much longer. But of course by now one drug was replacing the other.

Suddenly pain coursed through his chest. This alarmed him. He was young and in very good shape; he dismissed the thought of a heart attack. But the big question remained: Had he inhaled something he shouldn’t have?

That was a very real, and lethal, possibility.

Then he probed his own body and realized the pain was on the surface. And he understood. When he’d first grabbed her, Chloe had fought back. He’d been so charged he hadn’t noticed how hard she’d struck him. But now the adrenaline had worn off and the pain was throbbing. He looked down. Hadn’t caused any serious damage, except for tearing his shirt and the coveralls.

He ignored the ache and kept going.

Then Billy noted Chloe’s breathing becoming deeper. The anesthetic would soon wear off. He touched her chest – Lovely Girl wouldn’t have minded – and beneath his hand he could feel her heartbeat thudding more insistently.

It was then that a thought occurred to him: What would it be like to tattoo a living, beating heart? Could it be done? Billy had broken into a medical supply company a month ago in anticipation of his plans here in New York. He’d made off with thousands of dollars in equipment, drugs, chemicals and other materials. He wondered if he could learn enough to put someone under, crack open the chest, ink a design or words onto the heart itself and sew the victim back up. Living out his or her life with the altered organ.

What would the work be?

A cross.

The words: The Rule of Skin

Maybe:

Billy + Lovely Girl 4 Ever

Interesting idea. But thinking about Lovely Girl made him sad and he returned to Chloe, finishing the last of the letters.

Good.

A Billy Mod.

But not quite finished yet. He extracted a scalpel from a dark-green toothbrush container and reached forward, stretching out the marvelous skin once more.