Read Tattoo for Free Online Page B

suddenly whirled around and chopped the other man hard across the neck. He staggered backwards, and Carvalho was on him, connecting with a right and a left to his face. Neither the girl’s screams nor Charo’s protests could stop him. Carvalho bent over the pimp, grabbed him by the hair, and beat his head against the wall. The pimp slid down until he wassitting on the floor. Carvalho went through his pockets, his waistline, under his arms, and the lining of his shoes. He took a folded switchblade from somewhere. Then he stepped back and from the middle of the room glared at the three women to prevent them protesting. Charo was paralysed by indignation and fear. The girl from Andalusia seemed to be preparing some sort of explanation; the other girl had her arms round her bloody and battered boyfriend.
    ‘I told you your pimps were not to set foot in here!’
    ‘I thought he’d been arrested!’ moaned the tearful girl as she knelt beside her man. Charo kept saying over and over like a stuck record that Carvalho should go with her into the bedroom, because she had something she wanted to tell him. He pushed her away.
    ‘The cops aren’t joking. People are being swatted like flies, and here you are playing at sisters of charity.’
    Carvalho led Charo out into the kitchen. He did not offer her the chance to complain, but gave her a stark picture of what was happening in the city. Charo began to be less frightened of him and more worried about what might happen to her if she got mixed up in what was going on. ‘But in any case, that’s no reason to treat that boy the way you did, Pepe,’ she said.
    ‘I can’t stand pimps.’
    ‘He’s not a bad sort. He really loves her. She would have ended up badly but for him.’
    ‘They need to understand things one way or another. Did you find out anything for me?’
    Charo had been able to talk only to five brothel madams. One of them from Calle Fernando thought she remembered a guy who had a strange tattoo, though she wasn’t sure that it was exactly that one.
    ‘There’s no brothel in Calle Fernando.’
    ‘Well, in that short dead-end street. I can never remember its name.’
    ‘Is that where she lives?’
    ‘No, she lives with her son in an apartment in La Ronda. Near San Antonio market. She told me that some time ago a man fitting the description you gave me went to the brothel a few times. He always asked for the same girl. One they call Creamy or Frenchy. She pretends she’s French, and she’s always carrying round creams to sell to her clients to make a bit of extra. Apparently this Frenchy told her he was a really strange guy with a very strange tattoo. But he’s not well known round here. Nobody else remembers him.’
    ‘How can I meet this Frenchy?’
    Charo left the room, but came back a minute later.
    ‘They say you should ask in a bar that’s almost on the corner of Calle Fernando. It’s one of the few they haven’t closed, though the girls have gone.’
    ‘OK, but I’ve got to go abroad for a few days anyway.’
    Charo stood in his way in the kitchen door and kissed him on the mouth, then whispered in his ear for him not to be too hard on the others. Carvalho moved her aside gently and went into the living room. The young pimp still looked completely out of it, though the two women were busy trying to bring him round with wet flannels.
    ‘When he’s feeling better, turf him out. And if you two won’t see reason, you’re out as well. I’ve already told you, I don’t want Charo mixed up in all this.’
    Carvalho sounded almost amiable, so the girl from Andalusia decided it was time to deliver her sermon.
    ‘Look, Pepe. There are lots of ways to say things, and you could have come in politely and said this is what I want, rather than getting violent about it. We’re all in thistogether, and we have to help each other out, Pepe. Show a bit of solidarity …’
    ‘As much as you like, but as soon as you’ve patched up our friend here, throw