The City Under the Skin (10 page)

“You know who did this tattoo, don't you?”

“I don't know anything.”

“Why don't I believe that?”

“I don't care what you believe. And if you're not going to believe me, you might as well get out of my apartment.”

Rose distracted herself briefly by lighting a fresh cigarette. She inhaled deeply, then released a swirling band of smoke. She didn't quite blow it in Marilyn's face, but she might as well have.

“Rose, I'm sorry,” said Marilyn. “I didn't mean to offend you.”

“But you did.”

“And I'm sorry, I apologize. There's lots more I want to ask you.”

“Yeah, well, I got nothing more to say.”

“Please.”

“Another time maybe. Or maybe not.”

“Rose, I really am sorry.”

“So you keep saying.”

“Is there nothing I can do?”

“Not unless you're prepared to let me put some ink on you.”

Marilyn slowly stood up, gathered her belongings, made a move toward the door.

“I'm going to have to think very long and hard about that,” she said as she departed.

 

15. RAY OF LIGHT

Zak Webster lolled at his desk. His head and eye and back all ached, his mind was full of things he might have said or done to avoid getting a beating yesterday, and also of the things he might have said or done to make Marilyn declare, “I have a meeting with a tattooist tomorrow, but what the hell, let's make a night of it.” He had not come up with any of the right imaginary words or deeds before he saw Ray McKinley's sleek, butter-colored convertible pull up outside the store. Ray was making one of his irregular and unscheduled visits. That would be a distraction, though not of the kind Zak wanted.

He dreaded these visits. Ray was loud, vulgar, wealthy, all too keen to make sure Zak knew it. His conversation was full of expensive restaurants he'd been to, new cars he'd bought, and short, madly exotic weekends he'd been on that cost more than Zak earned in a year. And although Zak didn't doubt that Ray was telling the truth when he said that Utopiates was one of his least important enterprises, did he have to say it quite so often?

Ray's business card announced that he was a property developer, and maybe there was always something murky about that business. You didn't hear of real estate empires built by lovable nice guys who got where they were by being compassionate and unassuming. Maybe you had to play rough; still, Zak thought Ray reveled in it a little too much. There was often gloating talk of evictions and repossessions, and when a local journalist described Ray as a “slumlord,” he reacted as though it was the greatest compliment he'd ever been paid.

Ray also liked to insinuate that somewhere farther offstage he had an even darker life. Details were always kept sketchy, but he liked to drop hints about money laundering, political bribery, connections to some very dangerous elements. Zak had no idea whether any of this was actually true.

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.