Inked

had music. We had each other. It was, for that time, as good a life as could be expected. Especially compared to what the Chinese suffered.”
    “My grandmother,” I said, perched on the edge of a pale blue sofa. I had been offered tea, and turned it down—as had Grant. No time for pleasantries, just patience. More patience than I could spare.
    Winifred gave me a long steady look. “You resemble her. Uncannily. Even if I had not…. tested you…your face would have convinced me.”
    “But you chose violence.”
    “Survival,” she replied without remorse. “Hit first, ask questions later. I’m meant to die, and I’m not ready.”
    She said it with a dull hard tone in her voice, eyes dark and pitiless; but it was her blunt acceptance that chilled me. Death was coming. She knew it. No whining, no bargaining or depression. Merely resolve.
    I had so many questions. Grant took over with the most basic. “Who wants to hurt you?”
    Winifred hesitated. “Ernie?”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could lie and tell her that he was still alive, charming hotel clerks and enjoying the sights of Seattle with his bundles of cold hard cash.
    Winifred closed her eyes, and suddenly all that hard strength seemed to melt out of her. She set down her tea, hand shaking so badly that dark liquid splashed over the rim into her saucer. “I told him not to go.”
    “Ms. Cohen,” Grant said again, his voice rumbling and persuasive. “Why did he die? Why do you fear for your own life?”
    “Because we helped her ,” said Winifred softly, with more than bitterness; melancholy, maybe, a profound sadness that was bone deep and weary.
    Images from those old photos flickered through my mind. Save them all, if you can. “My grandmother?”
    Winifred shook her head. “No. Another woman. She was called the Black Cat because in the late thirties she had been a hostess in a nightclub of the same name. A white Russian among Koreans. All the women who worked in that place had a black cat tattooed here.” Winifred patted her backside and gave me another long look. “By the time your grandmother met her, she had many more tattoos than that.”
    I was holding my breath, and released it slowly, painfully. I had been more afraid than I cared to admit of hearing that my grandmother had somehow contributed to this old woman’s trouble, and Ernie’s death.
    I considered the human skin in my backpack. “She can’t still be alive.”
    Winifred stiffened. “Of course not.”
    Grant studied her with a great deal of thoughtfulness. “What did you do for this…Black Cat…that would be worth your lives? Especially now, after all these years?”
    Coldness returned to her eyes. She stood slowly from her chair. He politely began to rise with her, as did I, but she waved us back with a faint hiss of her breath and left the room with a slow shuffling gait, as though her bones ached. Grant and I stared at each other.
    “What do you see?” I whispered.
    “Fear,” he murmured. “Guilt.”
    “She believes she’s going to die.”
    “It’s more than that,” he began, and then shut his mouth as Winifred returned to the room. She held a linen parcel, folded into a tight square, which she tossed down on the table in front of me. I unfolded it quickly, inhaling scents of lavender and something older, meatier, like death; and found myself looking at another block of thin delicate leather, tattooed in a pattern that resembled roses.
    Grant made a rough sound. I stared long and hard at the skin before turning my gaze on Winifred. She had fallen back into her chair, wrinkled hands resting in her lap; posture boneless, limp, her gaze so distant and empty, she might have been dead.
    “This is human,” I said, “but you knew that.”
    “All of us took a piece of that woman,” she said quietly, as though speaking only to herself. “We were told to by your grandmother.”
    I sat back. Grant cleared his throat. “How many of you?”
    “Just the four. Ernie, me, Lizbet, and Samuel.”
    “And where are the last two?”
    “Dead,” Winifred whispered. “They married, later, after their families came to the United States in ’47. Lived in Florida for the past ten years. Police found them shot to death in their home more than a week ago.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, as gently as I could. “But what made you and Ernie think their murders had anything to do with the both of you?”
    Winifred tore her gaze from the scrap of dried human skin.