The Apostle. J. Kerley A.

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       1

       Miami, April

      “I’m putting in the last of Christ’s blood.”

      Raoul Herrera studied the slender needle for a long moment, assured himself it was the right choice, then bent forward, his skilled fingers guiding the needle into flesh, adding a bright highlight to a plump drop of red dripping from a thorn. Herrera dabbed a cotton ball in antiseptic, blotted his client’s scapula, then leaned back and studied his work.

      “Done,” he said.

      Herrera flicked off the instrument and admired the most fantastic tattoo he’d ever created, a masterwork of detail that had stretched his talent to its limits, making him develop new ways of adding depth to color, motion to stillness, beauty to horror.

      Yet all the tattoo consisted of was the back of a head. Not inked on the back of a head, an illustration of the back of a head.

      The client had entered Skin Art by Raoul six weeks ago. The tattoo artist was alone in the back room, sanitizing equipment and preparing to close for the evening when he’d walked into the reception area. Though the door rang when opened, the bell had not sounded. Yet a man stood in the center of the Oriental carpet, utterly still, eyes staring into Herrera’s eyes, as if knowing the precise space the tattooist would occupy.

      Herrera’s heartbeats accelerated. There was nothing but night outside his window and the neighborhood was dangerous in the dark. He kept a .38 pistol in back and Herrera mentally measured his steps to the gun.

      “I’m closed,” he said.

      The man seemed not to hear. He looked in his mid-thirties, hard-traveled years, lines etched into his angular face, his eyes tight and crinkled, as though he’d spent a lifetime squinting into sunlight. He was small in stature, wearing battered Levis and a faded Western-style shirt with sleeves rolled up over iron-hard forearms. His face was small and flat and centered by a nose broken at least once, the hair a tight cap of coiled brown that fell low on his forehead and gave a simian cast to his features. His eyes were the color of spent briquettes of charcoal.

      “I said I’m done for the day, man,” Herrera repeated. “Come back tomorrow.”

      Again, the man seemed deaf to Herrera’s words. Work-hardened hands unfolded a sheet of paper and held up a richly detailed illustration of Jesus inked into a man’s bicep, a work by Herrera that had been featured in a tattoo artists’ publication.

      “Did you do this?” the man said. “Do you claim it yours?”

      “It’s my work. Why?”

      “It ain’t quite real yet, is it?”

      Despite his uneasiness, Herrera felt his ability challenged. “You won’t find better, mister. Not that I figure you could afford it.”

      The man balled the page and tossed it to the floor. “It ain’t there yet. It looks like Him. But He ain’t in it.”

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