Vampyres of Hollywood by Adrienne & Scott Barbeau Page A

But the moment I stepped into the darkened waiting room of Little John’s tattoo parlor, I heard the murmur pass to every guy in the place. There were four bikers in full regalia, two marines, a wrestler whose name I couldn’t remember, two blond-haired muscle-bound boys who screamed Aryan Brotherhood from whatever closet they were still in, and a trio of shaven-headed bodybuilders straight from Venice Beach who looked so much alike they might have been brothers but probably weren’t. The men were sitting on hard plastic chairs staring intently at a TV set bolted to the wall behind a mesh screen. The bodybuilders high-fived each other every time Magnum punched out a bad guy on some beach in Hawaii.
    Miss See was behind the counter. She’s a tiny Asian woman of indeterminate heritage and equally indeterminate years who had managed Little John when he was wrestling. Word was she’d kept difficult wrestlers in line with a Taser. Her reputation alone was enough to keep the waiting room orderly. I once asked her if she knew any martial arts. “Of course,” she said. “I protect myself. I have black belt in Mossberg.” Then she pulled out a twelve-gauge pump-action Mossberg riot gun from under the desk.
    “Detective King,” she said loudly, just in case anyone in the room hadn’t made me. The black unlit cigarette tucked in the corner of her lip didn’t move.
    “I need five minutes with Little John.”
    She glanced at the clock, then at the tiny TV monitor under the counter that allowed her to see into the back room where he worked. I leaned over to see what she was seeing. A skinny-shanked older man was climbing off the table; I wasn’t sure, but it looked like he’d just had Dale Earnhardt tattooed on his butt. “He just finish.”
    “How have you been, Miss See?”
    “You tell your mama stop sending my boy her catalogues. She getting lot of money out of him.”
    “I didn’t know my mother produced catalogues.”
    “Every month,” Miss See snapped. “And every month he buy.” She leaned forward, enveloping me in her cloying perfume that made me think of rotten eggs. “This month he buy Lil Dagover’s white nightgown, complete with certificate of authenticity.”
    I nodded blankly. I had no idea who Lil Dagover was.
    A huge hand caught the back of my neck and turned me around. “She starred in the original 1919 version of Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari. ” Little John’s voice belonged to a pre-pubescent teenage boy, but there was no one sitting in that room who was going to make a joke of it. He was wearing his basic biker’s costume—scuffed motorcycle boots with the toes showing metal underneath, leather trousers, and a leather vest over a completely hairless chest. Maybe there was some truth in his Indian heritage after all, with his high forehead, ridged cheekbones, and razor-thin lips. His Mohawk wasn’t gelled this time, just pushed back off his forehead with a tribal head-band.
    “How you doing, Little John?” I had to tip my head back to look in his face.
    “Good. You tell your mama to keep sendin’ the catalogues.” He turned to the room where everyone had turned away from Magnum and was regarding us—well, me—suspiciously. “This here is Detective Peter King,” he announced in his little-boy voice. “A good cop and a good man. He’s the one pulled that kid out of the river a couple years ago. Now he’s in charge of the Cinema Slayer case. He’s a friend of mine.”
    The room warmed considerably. I got a couple of nods from the beach boys and one of the bikers stuck out his hand.
    Little John motioned me into the back room and shut the door. He flicked off the camera, probably annoying Miss See no end. The walls were covered with drawings, transfers, and photographs of tattoos, ranging from the simple to the extraordinary, from the intricate to the excruciating. He had a gallery of the work he’d done on clients over the years. Shoulders, backs, ankles, biceps—all