Heroin Annie by Peter Corris

Author:Peter Corris [Corris, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, FIC022000, General, Mystery & Detective, Large Print Books, Large Type Books, FIC050000
ISBN: 9781863400718
Publisher: Rainbow Publishing
Published: 1985-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

Three years' friendship with Primo Tomasetti seems like a lifetime; I park my car out behind his tattooing parlour for a modest fee and he bombards me with his ideas on the good life—they involve considerable strain on the liver and prostate. Besides tattooing and mural painting, both of which he has brought to a high and erotic pitch, Primo is a bloody good man with a pencil. I stuck the Falcon on the little concrete patch at the back and came up the rear steps into the dark den where Primo plies his trade.

He was tattooing a Kiss-type design on the face of a young girl and he winked at me as I came in.

‘What's her mother going to think of that?’ I said.

‘She never hadda mudder; she was too poor, right sweetheart?’

The girl didn't move a muscle. I watched it for as long as I could bear and then I went through to the kitchen and made coffee. Primo keeps an interesting collection of magazines back there, and I browsed through them while waiting for the coffee to perk. I made two long, strong blacks and took them back into the workshop. The girl was gone and Primo was holding his hands in front of his face and staring at them.

‘I hate what I do, Cliff’, he said. ‘It's a crime.’

‘Rubbish, you love it. And I know you, you put in that stuff you can wash out in six months. She was free, white and seventeen anyway.’

‘I suppose you're right. Thanks,’ He took the coffee and I arranged some cartridge paper and pencils on his work desk while we sipped.

‘You want a new name-plate designed?’ he said. ‘A black falcon, maybe?’

‘I haven't got a name-plate. When I need the name freshly written on an envelope to pin to my door I'll let you know.’

He blew steam off the surface of the drink. ‘You got no class, Cliff.’

‘True. How d'you reckon you'd go at one of those identikit jobs? I described the face, you do the drawing?’

‘Sensational! It's what I've always wanted to do.’

‘Drink your coffee and let's have a go at it.’

The floor was half-covered with crumpled paper when we finished a bit over an hour later. We got it right in the end — Primo prompted me and I abused him, and between us we caught the essence of the man I'd seen in Susannah Woods' house—his thin, peaked face, cupid bow mouth and dark, low-growing hair. I'd have known him from the drawing and I had to hope others would too. I thanked Primo and paid him a week in advance for the parking spot. He looked hurt.

After that I tramped the art galleries of the inner city for a couple of hours getting hostile head-shakes, propositions and indifferent shrugs. I couldn't tell whether or not they were lying, and by the end of the day I felt like a visitor from Mars. They were a strange lot; most of them expressed indifference to Susannah Woods and I began to wonder what they did care about but they gave me no clues.

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