My Name Is Venus Black(79)

At the end of the day, I’ve only managed to find four galleries—mostly because I have to keep stopping and looking at my map. Usually, the artist isn’t around at the gallery and so I inquire with staff, giving them a description of the artist I’m looking for. No one recognizes our guy.



On day two, I continue my quest, but it feels stupid. After the last gallery leads nowhere, I drive up and down busy retail strips, trying to keep an eye out for a black truck with pretty doors—which is a dangerous way to drive and an act of foolishness, given the size of Oakland.

By the end of the second day, I know how to park a lot better. I’ve been honked at for going slow, and I’ve made several errors at complicated intersections. But I have to congratulate myself that I haven’t had an accident. As soon as it’s dark, I eat dinner at a diner and then fall into bed at the Holiday Inn I checked in to that morning. Tomorrow will be better, I tell myself.

Yeah, sure.

At least I sleep well that night, and I wake up ready to go again at 7:00 A.M. I eat breakfast from a snack machine at the hotel and hit the streets with forced optimism. But by noon, I start to flag, ready to quit. I’ve seen a lot of art, some of it good. I’ve found dozens and dozens of black trucks but none with a design on the door that looks like art.

Starving and discouraged, I stop for lunch at a pizza place in a run-down strip mall. As I’m heading inside, I notice a yellow Mustang in the parking lot, because it is decorated on the side with an advertisement: TATTOOS TO DIE FOR, surrounded by an image of razor wire and skeletons. As I approach the pizza place, I notice that next door is the tattoo parlor being advertised. Suddenly I stop in my tracks. My stomach flutters. What if Tony is a tattoo artist? What if, just like this guy, he advertises on his truck? That might explain why Inez called it “pretty.” Plus, what kind of guy, especially one who wears tattoos, would want something remotely pretty on the side of his truck unless it was an advertisement? It’s not any dumber a theory than the one I’ve been following.



I skip the pizza place and instead enter the fine establishment called Tattoos to Die For. As I push open the door, I’m greeted by a guy with a long beard and a big belly. Business is obviously slow.

“Looking for a tat, pretty lady?” he asks. “Name’s Bart.” He extends a beefy hand and I shake it.

“I’m sorry. No. I’m looking for a tattoo artist, though. Maybe you know the guy. His name is Tony and he drives a black truck.”

Bart pauses to think. “Nope. Don’t know him. But there’s a lot of tattoo parlors in this city.”

I’m disappointed but still intrigued by this new idea. After leaving Bart, I find a phone booth and look up the tattoo section. Bart was right—just a glance tells me there are tons of tattoo parlors in and around Oakland. It will take some time to phone each one and ask if there’s a Tony who works there.

I call Inez and run the idea past her. “Could he be a tattoo artist?”

“Well, like I said, he had tattoos. And I guess they might think they’re artists. And he did say, ‘Kind of.’ But still, I don’t think…”

“Why not?”

“He just didn’t have that vibe,” says Inez. “Apart from the bits of tattoo peeking out, he seemed so clean-cut. No piercings or weird stuff.”

“Maybe you’re thinking in stereotypes,” I tell her.

“Yeah, I guess,” she agrees. “Totally. But I hate to waste time going in the wrong direction.”

“You mean you hate for me to waste time.”

“Sorry, you’re right,” she says. “No luck at the galleries?”

“Don’t you think I’d have said so? Geez, Inez.”

“Any word from the police?” I ask, knowing the answer.

“Nothing yet,” Inez says.

“When you think about it, we don’t have much to go on,” I say. “The guy didn’t ask to see the garage and seemed sad in Leo’s room. That could mean a lot of things. Maybe he’d decided by then he didn’t want the house, so he didn’t need to see the garage. And maybe it was your imagination that he seemed sad in Leo’s room. What if we’re on a really stupid goose chase?”



Inez doesn’t answer for a moment. “I’m sorry, Venus,” she says. “I’m sorry about everything.”

Oh shit. I can tell she’s about to cry. “Don’t start with that,” I tell her. “Not now. We need to focus on finding Leo.”

After we hang up, I am so discouraged. I go back to have pizza at the place next to Bart’s Tattoos to Die For. I sit at a table facing the parking lot and force myself to finish the extra-large slice of pepperoni. Afterward, I return to the phone book and rip out all the pages for tattoo shops.

A clerk at a nearby market grudgingly lets me buy a roll of quarters from her.

Back at the phone booth, I take a deep breath and start calling shops, beginning at A. “Is there a Tony who works there?” I ask. I get all no’s, most of them gruff. I run out of quarters way too quickly. Plus, it seems this is a popular phone booth. I have to stop several times to let a lineup of shady-looking people take their own sweet time.

I get more quarters from the market and go back to the phone booth. Once, I call a shop where the woman who answers says, yes, they have a Tony who works there. “He’s not in today, though,” she adds.