The City Under the Skin

by Geoff Nicholson

  Now, scarcely inside the door, Ray began a monologue about a sushi restaurant he’d been to the previous night, and he was some way into a detailed description of fatty toro, sea urchin, and monkfish liver (“so fucking pricey, so fucking worth it”) before he noticed Zak’s black eye.

  “What happened to you?” Ray asked.

  It was a question vague enough to allow Zak to answer in any way he saw fit.

  “I walked into a door,” he said, not expecting to be believed.

  “A door with knuckles,” said Ray. “That’ll happen. Anything I need to know about?”

  Zak still didn’t know if it was really any of Ray’s business, but since the whole drama had unfolded in and around the store, it didn’t seem unreasonable to mention it.

  “Maybe,” said Zak. “Do you know a guy who drives an old blue Cadillac? Wears a beat-up leather jacket. Isn’t afraid to hit women.”

  “That’s not a lot to go on,” said Ray.

  “In that case, do you know a woman with a map tattooed across her back?”

  Ray laughed, arched his eyebrows high and wide.

  “Sounds like something we could sell. But no, afraid not.”

  “Then you know even less than I do, Ray. And it’s probably best to keep it that way.”

  Ray looked at Zak with amused interest. “You know, I always hoped you might have a secret life. Well done. But seriously, Zak? Want me to get you a Taser, a sawed-off shotgun?”

  “No,” said Zak.

  “If you want me to deal with this, I can. I don’t like people hassling my employees. I know people, right?”

  “I think that might make things worse.”

  Ray shrugged: it was a point of view, though not one he necessarily shared.

  “You’re going to rely on your intelligence and charm, are you?” he said.

  “It’s served me well enough so far,” said Zak, though this wasn’t exactly true.

  “Okay, we’ll leave it there. Now let me show you the latest treasure you’re going to sell for me.”

  He handed Zak a cylindrical map case, sometimes called a kit case: a leather-wrapped tube finished with straps and brass buckles, four inches in diameter, perhaps two feet long.

  “Tell me what you think of this,” said Ray.

  Zak unbuckled the case, extracted a scrolled map from the felt-lined interior, and opened it out across the width of his desk. The map was complex, hand-drawn in multiple colored inks and pencils, of a city he didn’t recognize: no labels or street names, no unmistakably defining features. It didn’t look especially well done, obviously not the work of a professional mapmaker. In fact, there was something very naïve, perhaps primitive about it; still, it was appealingly detailed and obsessive, and dotted all over: not at random, though without any obvious pattern, were squares, circles, stars, triangles, diamonds, in various colors and sizes.

  “So what do you think?” asked Ray.

  “I don’t know what to think,” said Zak.

  “You ever hear of Jack Torry?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not surprised. He wasn’t one of your A-list psychos. He never even killed anybody, though he came close. Basically he was ‘just’ a rapist, but prolific, a volume dealer, at least a hundred. And he was clever. There was no pattern to give him away, no standard operating procedure. And apart from being a rapist, he was clean, he wasn’t in any of the files.

  “Maybe the cops would have caught him eventually, but in the end they didn’t need to. He turned himself in. Confessed to everything. Maybe he had a conscience, couldn’t live with himself. That’s the charitable explanation. But maybe he wanted everybody to know what a big shot he was.

  “Of course he didn’t know the names of most of his victims, but he knew where and he knew when, so he drew the cops a map—that’s what you’re looking at, Zak.”

  “What do all the symbols mean?” Zak asked.

  “That’s the big mystery. He didn’t provide a key. Age, race, hair color, how many times? Your guess is as good as anybody else’s. Maybe you can sit there and stare at it and you’ll be the man to crack the code.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Zak.

  “Whatever. Still, quite an item, isn’t it?”

  “Kind of disgusting,” said Zak.

  “Or titillating, depending on your point of view.”

  “How did you get this?” Zak asked.

  “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  “No. And I don’t really want to be in the business of selling it, either.”

  “But you will, Zak, because that’s your job. Not much of a job, I know, but it’s all you’ve got.”

  Zak wondered if he might “lose” the map somehow, destroy it and claim it was taken by some brilliantly clever and compulsive map thief: there were plenty of those around, preying on libraries and archives as well as stores. But no, he was too conscientious for that as well, and Ray McKinley knew it.

  “You think you can find a customer for it?” Ray asked.

  “Maybe,” said Zak wearily. “There’s always Wrobleski.”

  “No, I don’t think it’s his kind of thing.”

  Zak thought it was precisely Wrobleski’s kind of thing, but he didn’t argue.

  “I’m not very happy with our Mr. Wrobleski right now,” Ray said, by way of unexpected explanation. “I want you to try one or two others first. Call ’em up. Give ’em some patter. See if you can get a couple of ’em interested, play ’em off against each other, drive up the price.”

  “Yes, Ray, I know how this works.”

  “Of course you do, Zak. And by the way, don’t be surprised if you hear a bit of a ruckus down here in the next night or two. I’m having one of my soirees.”

  Zak knew all too well what he was talking about. A couple of weeks after Ray took possession of Utopiates, Zak was woken in the middle of the night by a racket going on in the store below. There were voices and laughter and the sound of breaking glass. Zak immediately thought burglary, but what kind of burglars made that much noise?

  He got out of bed, got dressed. The apartment didn’t connect directly with the store—access to Zak’s living quarters was through a separate rear entrance—so he had to go outside, walk around to the front of the building, and peer in through the store window. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or not to find Ray partying in there: he’d only met him once or twice at that point. Ray was with a handful of other guys and a couple of women, and it seemed they were playing strip poker. Zak didn’t think grown-ups ever really did that. Ray saw Zak’s face staring in at him, got up from his chair, and lurched toward the window, beckoning for him to come in. Ray was shirtless and Zak saw he had a couple of nipple rings: hardly a shocker, but something he’d have preferred not to know about his new boss. Zak suspected that Ray was glad enough when he declined to join them. Zak was in no position to complain about these nocturnal gatherings, but given the number of properties Ray McKinley owned, it was hard to believe that this dingy little map shop was the best venue he could find for them.

  “Well, Zak,” Ray said now, “gotta get going. Can’t spend too much time on this irrelevant little outpost of the McKinley empire.”

  He took a last, admiring look at Zak’s black eye and said, “There are supposed to be techniques where you can beat people up and it doesn’t leave any marks. Nice trick if you can do it. But of course a lot of people don’t want to. You should find someone to kiss it better.”

  “I think maybe I’ve already got someone,” Zak said, sounding a good deal more confident than he felt.

  16. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LOFT

  Billy Moore was on the morning run, driving his daughter to school, when the second phone call came from Akim. “Call me back in fifteen minutes,” he said into the phone, and put it away.

  “Who was that?” Carla asked.

  “One of my parking associates,” said Billy. “I didn’t want you to have to listen to all that boring business stuff.”

 
“Are you keeping a secret?”

  “Yeah right,” said Billy. “The parking business is full of classified information. Hey, when are we going to go buy me that suit?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “You noticed. So when?”

  “This weekend—if you don’t chicken out.”

  “Are you calling me chicken?”

  “Of course not—so long as you buy that suit.”

  “You know, for a twelve-year-old, you’re pretty much manipulating at an adult level.”

  “Oh, Dad, you say the sweetest things.”

  He delivered her to school. He was pleased that he and his Cadillac looked so completely out of place amid the clean, safe, caring parents and their clean, safe, caring cars: not that Billy wasn’t caring. In fact, he reckoned he cared a hell of a lot more than most of these smug civilians. And as he drove away, with just the slightest hint of tire squeal, his phone rang again.

  Akim said, “I don’t like being told to call back.”

  “You know, I didn’t think you would,” said Billy.

  “Your second job,” said Akim. “I’ve made you an appointment.”

  “What kind of appointment?”

  “To see a property. One o’clock. Banham Towers. There’ll be a realtor there to show you a waterfront loft. She’ll be expecting you. Her name’s Isabel Sibrian. She’s the one, even if she doesn’t look like it. She’s been told your name’s Smith.”

  “Very inventive,” said Billy.

  Akim ignored that. “She may be a more difficult customer than the last one. But you’ll deal with it. You’ll bring her here.”

  “That’s what I’ll do, is it?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And what if I say, ‘I’m going to have to turn down Mr. Wrobleski’s kind offer’?”

  “It’s already too late for that. Clear?”

  Billy Moore knew better than to challenge Wrobleski, but he had no such inhibitions with Akim.

  “Some of it’s clear, some of it isn’t clear at all.”

  An impatient grunt indicated that Akim didn’t have much interest in clarifying things for Billy’s benefit, but Billy wasn’t deterred.

  “You see,” Billy said, “I get it that Wrobleski is way too grand to run around picking up these tattooed women.”

  “Very perceptive,” said Akim.

  “But what I don’t get is why he needs me to do it. Why doesn’t he have you pick them up for him, since you seem to know where they are?”

  An insulted silence rippled through the phone and Billy thought Akim might hang up on him, but he didn’t. Perhaps he was the one who needed to get things clear.

  “Dragging women into cars,” said Akim, “isn’t really my style.”

  It sounded like the only answer Billy was going to get.

  “Let’s hope your style doesn’t go out of fashion, Akim,” he said.

  Billy got the address of Banham Towers, one he vaguely recognized as part of an ongoing dockland development, a cluster of former bonded warehouses that were being converted into luxury apartments that people with real money and a taste for real luxury wouldn’t have used to kennel their dogs.

  He drove out there a little before one. It was evidently some way from complete or habitable, yet there was no construction work going on, no activity whatsoever. There was just one car in the parking lot: the realtor’s, he assumed. He made his way inside the building and followed some freshly printed signs up to the show apartment on the second floor.

  The woman waiting for him was tall, fleshy, with an artful tangle of dense, ink-black hair. She looked businesslike, though glamorous in a way, and overdressed for the occasion, as though she might be going to a gala afterward. There was a scent of lilacs about her, and her heels clacked on the loft’s hardwood floor. Hollow light flooded the room, picked out some long, low, cut-rate furniture, and the angular, anonymous art on the walls. Yes, there was a cheapness to it, and a brittle fakery, but there was certainly a lot more room to stretch yourself here than in a trailer.

  “Miss Sibrian,” said Billy.

  “Mr. Smith,” she said.

  “I thought a loft would be on the top floor,” said Billy.

  She smiled unconvincingly. Maybe she’d heard that one before. She was some way from being friendly, and Billy reckoned she must have made up her mind about him the moment she saw him, realized he wasn’t a serious buyer, which of course was perfectly accurate. Even so, she went through the motions, showed him a thick, intensely colored, embossed brochure demonstrating the virtues of the place, which she then spelled out, talking about the apartment’s many advantages, the “flow” from kitchen to living room to balcony, the quality of the soundproofing, the neighborhood, a little frayed at the edges right now but changing; a mall was planned, wine bars were opening, there was a fitness center, and, of course, the new Platinum Line subway would run close by. But her heart wasn’t in it.

  “I can see you’re not impressed,” she said, without any particular disappointment. “That’s okay. If the place isn’t right, it isn’t right. We can work together. What are you really looking for?”

  Billy could see it might help to play along.

  “I guess I’m looking for something more … genuinely industrial.”

  “Yes? There’s a new development in the old steel mill a couple of miles up the road. Can’t get much more industrial than that. I can take you there now if you like.”

  “Okay, but we go in my car. I don’t like riding bitch.”

  She laughed, not sure if he was joking.

  “It’s a little phobia of mine,” he said. “Call me crazy. I don’t like being driven by other people. Indulge me. I’ll bring you right back.”

  It seemed she was prepared to indulge him. Maybe it had something to do with his smile, and after all, a potential sale was a potential sale.

  As she was locking up the show loft, Billy said, “Do you always work alone?”

  “Pretty much,” she said. “Realtors don’t usually hunt in packs.”

  “Don’t you ever worry about what might happen?”

  She gave him a frank, questioning look.

  “What do you think might happen?” she asked.

  Billy gifted her his smile again.

  “Anything might happen,” he said.

  “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Smith?”

  “Sure. It’s what I do.”

  They took the elevator down to ground level, went out to the parking lot. Isabel Sibrian eyed the Cadillac and was not impressed. She hesitated, took half a step toward her own car.

  “What?” said Billy. “My car’s not good enough for you?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “So, we’ll do it now, right?” he said. “You can trust me. I’m a good guy. I have my own business. I have a daughter.”

  “Well, I…”

  She didn’t get in with any enthusiasm, but she got in. Billy slid into the driver’s seat, locked the doors, but left the windows open: the smell of lilacs was getting to him. He lurched the car into life, and Isabel Sibrian gave him some overdetailed directions to get to the steel mill development. He tried to look as though he were listening.

  “You were right,” Billy said as they drove away. “I do think that apartment’s a piece of expensive crap.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah, and I think you know it too.”

  “We all have to make a living.”

  “That’s so true.”

  They drove for a while in silence. She looked out of the side window. They were passing a cemetery, a fire-damaged mall, some freshly built big-box stores. He was no longer following her directions. She hadn’t a clue where they were. She suddenly got very nervous.

  “Why don’t you stop,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Let me out here and now if you’re not interested.”

  “I am interested. But I’m not here because of any apartment. I’m here because of the tattoos.”


  The woman’s fear arrived like a rolling wave.

  “What tattoos would those be?” she said with forced, exaggerated calm.

  “The ones on your back.”

  He wondered if she’d deny it. He even wondered if he, or Akim, might have got the wrong woman. But no.

  “How do you know about them?” she said.

  “Why? Is it a secret?”

  “From most people, yes. What do you know?” she demanded. The fear hadn’t completely blotted out her essential curiosity.

  “Less than you do, that’s for sure.”

  “Do you know who did it to me?”

  “No,” said Billy. “I kind of want to know. But then again, I kind of don’t. In any case, I’m here to take you to somebody who knows a lot more than I do.”

  “You’re really freaking me out here, you know.”

  “I’m not trying to, but it’s all the same whether you’re freaked out or not.”

  “Stop the car. Stop the car. Please.”

  “Please is nice, but it won’t do it.”

  He saw her hand snake into her purse and she took hold of her cell phone.

  “You know that’s not going to work either,” said Billy.

  He stopped the car for a second, grabbed her hand, peeled her fingers from the phone, and tossed it out the side window before driving on.

  “Why don’t we try again?” she said. “Why don’t you tell me what you want? Is it money? Is it sex? Everything’s negotiable.”

  “Don’t insult me,” Billy said. “I’m not some fucking … opportunist. I don’t want money or sex from you, right? I just want you to come quietly. And look, if I were really a bad guy, I’d have walked in there, knocked you unconscious, and then carried you out to the car.”

  She gave him a look of finely regulated distaste and condescension, and then her hand was in her purse again, grabbing something small, black, and cylindrical: a pepper spray.

  “Now that’s just annoying,” Billy said, and he slammed on the brakes again.