Grant smiled grimly. I shook my head. Maybe I had been too hasty in agreeing that he should come along. I was getting soft. Something I had been telling myself for almost a year now.
I dialed in the apartment number that Zee had given me and hit the buzzer. I let it ring until it choked off, and then tried again. No one answered. A deeply tanned, gorgeous young man—dressed like he was ready for a jog—exited the elevator, and pushed open the glass doors. He gave Grant a lusty smile, and with a lingering backward glance, strode down the sidewalk.
I stuck my foot in the doorway before we could be locked out. “Dude. You were just totally undressed.”
“Try not to be jealous,” Grant replied dryly, limping past me into the building. “I can’t help my unbridled sexual magnetism.”
We rode the elevator to the tenth floor. Seemed like a nice enough place. Quiet, clean, modern. I was no expert on apartment buildings, though I had inherited a place uptown, along Central Park. No strong memories of it, except that it faced the southeast, had a view of the trees, and had been bought by my great-great-grandmother during the Depression. I doubted seriously that I would be stopping by for a visit, though part of me wondered if some of my mother’s things would still be there, covered in dust after more than a decade of absence.
Winifred Cohen’s door was near the elevator. I lingered for a moment, simply listening, but heard nothing from within but the faint caress of soft music: violins weeping to Mozart.
Grant knocked. I nudged him aside. Safer than standing in front of a door when you did not know what was on the other side. Might not be Winifred. Maybe Winifred wasn’t Winifred. People were never who we thought them to be.
No one came to the door, though I sensed a presence inside that apartment; like a mouse hiding in a hole, whiskers quivering just enough for the big bad cat to hear.
I knocked again, and leaned close. “Winifred. My name is Maxine Kiss. I’m here because of Jean, my grandmother. And Ernie.”
Nothing. I shared a long look with Grant, and reached into my back pocket for the lock picks I had brought with me. “Winifred. If you’re in there, please say something. Or else I’m coming in.”
The music kept playing softly. No footsteps. No whispers of movement. But I felt something. She was there—or someone else was. I hoped it was not the latter.
It took me only moments to open the main lock, but there was a deadbolt on the other side, and probably a chain. No good way of undoing those without kicking in the door, and that was too much attention to bring on ourselves. I was ready to suggest that we wait another hour—until the sun went down—when I finally heard a faint shuffling sound on the other side. I stepped away, as did Grant, leaning against the wall beside the door while I stared at the peephole.
The locks clicked. Five metallic rasps as bolts and chains were thrown back. Then, nothing. Grant gave me a long look, and I shrugged. If she—or whomever—wanted to play games, then fine.
I opened the door. Found shadows in a long hall. Nothing but darkness, and the soft mournful keen of violins shrouding the air. I held up my hand to Grant, motioning for him to wait, and walked inside. Zee, sleeping between my breasts, began tugging gently on my skin. I ignored him, listening hard, but all I could hear below the music was my own pulse and the near-silent scuff of my cowboy boots on the hardwood floor.
Until cool air moved against my cheek and someone reached from the darkness to stab me in the throat.
The blade snapped instantly. I smelled perfume, heard the harsh rasp of someone breathing, and turned toward the darkened closet door that now housed a small hunched figure that swayed so unsteadily that I reached out, and brushed my fingers against a wrinkled elbow. My skin tingled beneath my tattoos; or maybe that was the boys, reacting. I felt strange, touching her. Light-headed.
The old woman began to back away, and then stopped, staring down at the broken knife: better suited for steaks than throats, though she’d had good aim. It took strength to cut into the cartilage of a human neck, but not if you stabbed at the soft part. Which she had. More knives, I thought, peering into eyes so dark they were almost black.
“Winifred, I presume,” I said quietly, as Grant entered the apartment and shut the door behind him, watching her warily.
“You really are her granddaughter,” replied the old woman, staring up at me with no small amount of wonderment and unease—glancing briefly at Grant with an even more troubled gaze. She had an American accent, though her vowels were tinged with the faint coil of another place and time. A stout woman with long gray hair and a round stomach that pushed against her blue housedress.
“Some test.” I took the remains of the steak knife from her hand. “Were you expecting someone else?”
Winifred Cohen gave me a profoundly bitter look. “I was expecting not to live out the night.”
And with that, she turned and shuffled down the dark hall.
Chapter 4
“You have to understand that we were children,” said the old woman some time later, nursing a cup of hot tea in her hands. “We knew there was a war raging, but to some degree we were insulated from it. Jewish refugees in Shanghai were tolerated, even encouraged to be enterprising. The Japanese thought our industry would help support their troops. We had school and synagogue. We 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.