‘Right. High. Easy to hide. Guy’s got two point three children, or will have in the next couple years. Went to Columbia or NYU. Lawyer or accountant.’ A shake of the head. The ponytail swung. ‘Tats used to be insidious. The inked were bad boys and girls. Now getting a work’s like putting on a charm bracelet or a tie. There’s a joke somebody’s going to open a tattoo franchise in strip malls. Call it Tat-bucks.’

‘That’s why the rods?’ Sellitto nodded at the bars in Gordon’s head.

‘You have to go to greater lengths to make a statement. That sounded effete. Sorry. So. What can I do for you, Officer?’

‘I’m making the rounds of the big parlors in the city. None of ’em could help so far but they all said I had to come see you. This’s the oldest parlor in the city, they said. And you know everybody in the community.’

‘Hard to say about the oldest. Inking – I mean modern inking in the US, not tribal – pretty much began in New York. The Bowery, late eighteen hundreds. But it was banned in ’sixty-one after some hepatitis outbreaks. Only legalized again in ’ninety-seven. I found some records that this shop dated back to the twenties – man, those must’ve been the days. You got a tat, you were Mr Alternative. Or Miss, though women rarely got works done then. Not unheard of. Winston Churchill’s mother had a snake eating its tail.’ He noted that Sellitto was not much interested in the history lesson. A shrug. My enthusiasm isn’t your enthusiasm. Got it.

‘This is, what I’m about to tell you, this’s confidential.’

‘No worries there, dude. People tell me all sorts of shit when they’re under the machine. They’re nervous and so they start rambling away. I forget everything I hear. Amnesia, you know.’ A frown. ‘You here about somebody might be a customer of mine?’

‘Don’t have any reason to think so but could be.’ Sellitto added, ‘If we showed you a tat, you think you could tell us something about the guy who did it?’

‘Maybe. Everybody’s got their own style. Even two artists working from the same stencil’re going to be different. It’s how you learned to ink, the machine you use, the needles you hack together. A thousand things. Anyway, I can’t guarantee it but I’ve worked with artists from all over the country, been to conventions in almost every state. I might be able to help you out.’

‘Okay, here.’

Sellitto dug into his briefcase and extracted the photo Mel Cooper had printed out.