“We ain't sure how much he's in command. He was celled with a tough lifer con, an armed robber by profession.
Very powerful criminal personality. We think Richard just got sucked up in it. Lamar has a way of getting people to do what he wants. He's the real monster.”
The young art doctor stared at the three drawings for a bit.
“This one isn't in his hand?”
“No. It was in an impression I found in a magazine that was in Lamar's possession in the pen.”
“It's traced. The line is heavy, crude, and dead.”
“I believe that's right. Never saw the original. It was etched in a Penthouse. The light caught it right and I brought it out myself.”
“Yes. But clearly the original drawing is Richard's.”
“Yes sir.”
“Yes. I see commonality. And this, this one, it's the one he worked on the hardest.”
“Yes sir. At the Stepfords'. They told me Lamar ordered Richard upstairs, to draw while looking out.”
“So it was an assignment?”
“Yes sir.”
“It represents… Lamar's view of himself?”
“Yes sir.”
“Very roman—look. Sergeant, you don't have to call me sir. Dave would be fine. Everybody around here calls me Dave.”
“Dave it is, then.”
“Good. Anyway… it represents Lamar's view of himself. Men who think they're lions see themselves as powerful, kingly, sexually provocative, very romantic in their own eyes. Incredible un self-cons ious vanity. Typical criminal personality, I'd bet.”
“Sounds pretty familiar.”
“Yes, I thought it might. And… it doesn't quite work. I think you see in the second lion something studied, perhaps too 'cute.” The first one is much cruder, but it's much better. Richard is trying to do too much in Number Two. He has conflicting impulses. It's very Renaissance, actually, very Italian. He's trying to please his patron, the powerful lord who doesn't know much about art except what he likes, and yet his own subversive interests keep breaking through. His talent is betraying him. He knows that the subject matter is beneath him. He sees through it, so he really can't force himself above the level of the commercial hack. He despises the material. It's so coarse: Viking—primordial warrior stuff, the killer elite at play in the fields of the Lord. Hmmm. What is it Arendt says about the banality of evil? This is it in spades, and Richard knows that. He doesn't like drawing it but of course he hasn't the guts to say no. What would happen if he said no?”
“You don't want to know.”
“I'll trust you on that one.”
“Is he any good? As an artist?”
“Well… there's something here, I don't know. He has technical skills, yes. And he doesn't want to do it, but he is doing it and that tension makes it somehow interesting.”
“How about the third one?”
“Ah—lots of vigor, dash, panache. Done offhanded.
With his left brain. Something else was on his mind.”
“He did it just before the robbery. They had him as lookout. If he'd have done his job right, maybe all them people wouldn't have died.”
“You don't like him, do you. Sergeant?”
Bud thought a moment.
“No, not really. He had choices. Lamar and O’Dell, they never had no choices. They were born to be trash. They learned at the toe end of somebody's boot. Richard could have done anything. What happened to him didn't have to happen. He was smart enough for it not to have happened.
That's what I despise about him. He's not even a good goddamned criminal. Lamar's a great criminal. Lamar's a pro. This poor pup, he's just what the convicts call a fuck boy "I can see how prison would be somewhat hard on him,” said Dr. Dickstein.
“And that's it?”
“Well—yes.”
“Thanks then. You've been some help.”
The museum director's eyes knitted up then, and he seemed to really throw himself at the three drawings.
At last he said, "You know—I don't know, there's one other thing.”
“Yes sir?”
“It probably doesn't mean a thing.”
“Maybe not. But tell me anyway.”
“What I see here is a process of—” he paused, groping for a word.
“What I see is a process of purification, somehow.
He's honing, reducing it, concentrating it, trying to simplify it. He's trying to reduce it to pure essence of lion for Lamar.”
Bud looked carefully at the drawings. From Number Two to Number Three it was true: same lion, same posture, but somehow simple, less fretwork to it, the lines bolder, the suggestion more powerful.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, he's getting close to cartoon almost, one could say. Or emblem.
He's reducing it to emblem or trademark. I don't know. But there's definitely a lot of work, a lot of practice, a lot of method gone into it. Now, he's nervous before the crime, he's not thinking, it's just come welling up. And he gets this one, which is by far the best.
Whatever he's reducing it to, he's almost there. Lamar will see that.”
Bud looked at the drawing. He was trying to figure out what it could be. Was Lamar going to put a trademark on his” crimes?
“I don't know,” said the doctor.
“It looks like something I once saw, but… Is there a visual tradition in criminal culture? Possibly it has to do with graffiti or hex signs or some such, some unique signature, some proclamation of deviance that says to the world, "I am the bad man'?”
He paused.
It looked like something to Bud, too.
Then he remembered the mottling of blue stains on Lamar's arms as Lamar bent to put a bullet into poor Ted and the f u c k and the y o u I Lamar wore on his knuckles.
It appeared to Bud perfectly formed and beautiful.
“It's a tattoo,” Bud said, astounded at his own insight.
“Richard is designing a tattoo for Lamar!”
CHAPTER 22
“Tattoo?” said Richard.
“Goddamn right,” said Lamar.
“That's what you been workin' on! And now, by God, you done it!”
What lay before them on Ruta Bern's coffee table was Richard's best and final lion, a beast so pure and fierce it leaped off the paper at you to tear your throat out. It sang of blood. Next to it was a beautiful young blond woman, tawny and silky and adoring, her arm around the king, lost in his mane. It was like a Nazi wet dream.
“I want to proudly wear that on my chest. I want a artist to put it there, in a nice parlor. Not no convict thing, like this here trashy shit on my skin now.”
“Lamar. I'm sure a good one could. I mean, I saw tattoos in Mcalester I wouldn't have believed. Evidently it's gotten quite sophisticated. It's not crude anymore. The artists are quite free with line and color.”
Lamar carefully unbuttoned his shirt and shucked it off.
Though he hadn't been working out regularly as in the Mac, his body was still sleek with muscle. On his pneumatic arms, the fading blue ink of prison tattoos that had lost their vitality spilled like stains. But on his hands, the f u c K and the y o u I still told the world who he was.
“See,” he said, "it's like it was meant to be. I never had nothing on my chest. I done that all on my arms and hands and back when I was young and stupid or young and drunk or high on crystal or all three.
But here, I'd like that lion, just as bold as bold can be.”
“Daddy,” said Ruta Beth, "that would be cool. That would be the coolest thing.”
“I think it would be, too,” said Lamar.
“See, I've always seen myself as a lion and this here thing is what would make it so. Baby O’Dell, what do you think? Do you think Lamar would look cool with a lion on his chest? You know, a real roaring lion, like the one Richard here been practicing to draw.”