The City Under the Skin (2 page)

Billy Moore opened the rear door and took the few steps necessary to get from one trailer to the other. With some ceremony he tapped on the glass of the small trailer's window, and a moment later Carla Moore, Billy's twelve-year-old daughter, appeared. She was wearing a school uniform, had her long black hair in a ponytail, glasses perched uncertainly on the end of her nose. She was holding a weighty math textbook, her thumb lodged inside to keep her place.

“Come on in,” said Carla brightly.

Billy let the social worker go first. She stepped inside, looked around at the fold-down desk with the laptop, at the well-stocked bookshelf, at a vase of flowers, some fringed scatter cushions, at a large cuddly koala bear perched on top of the mini refrigerator. There was a plate of oatmeal cookies and some freshly made peppermint tea, and classical music played in the background, its volume pitched perfectly between the audible and the unobtrusive.

“That's Bach,” the social worker said.

“Yes, it is,” said Carla. “Are you a fan?”

Mrs. Marcus surveyed the space again, more slowly this time.

“This,” she said, “this is quite lovely.”

“Isn't it?” said Carla.

The social worker sat down carefully, helped herself to tea and cookies: that occupied her for a while. At last she turned to Billy, crumbs still dusting the corners of her mouth, and inquired, “So how is Carla's … condition? You'll have to remind me of the name, I'm afraid.”

Carla was quite capable of describing her own condition. “Dermatographia,” she said.

Carla had already pushed her right sleeve up and was drawing on her bare arm with the end of a key. She drew a heart and a peace symbol. On healthy skin a brief white impression would have been left behind, fading and disappearing within seconds. On Carla's arm, however, the marks showed red, and a few seconds later cherry-colored wheals appeared in the exact shape of the lines she'd drawn.

“Dermatographia,” she repeated. “It's exactly what it sounds like. ‘Derma' means skin. ‘Graphia' means writing: skin writing. The classic medical photographs always show a patient who's had someone ‘write' on them with the wrong end of a pencil, so that the word ‘dermatographia' appears.”

Mrs. Marcus looked at the girl's arm, tried to appear sympathetic and understanding, though she feared she might be gawking inappropriately.

Carla continued, “The skin cells become oversensitive to what they call ‘minor trauma,' like scratching,” she explained. “When you touch the skin, the cells release chemicals called histamines. They're what cause the redness. But really, it's no big deal.”

“Does it hurt?” the social worker asked.

“No. It itches sometimes, but it's not really painful. And it never lasts very long, and in any case, the doctor says I'll probably grow out of it.”

“It must be a bit of a problem at school, yes?” said Mrs. Marcus.

Carla shrugged. “One of them,” she said.

“I hear there are worse problems in schools,” Billy Moore said, hoping he sounded intelligent. “There are worse problems everywhere.”

Half an hour later he was able to escort a satisfied Mrs. Marcus off the premises. She told him she was impressed by what she'd seen. If standards were maintained, if there were no “issues,” as long as Carla's “condition” didn't deteriorate, and as long as he didn't break the terms of his probation, she saw no reason why his daughter shouldn't continue to live with him, at least until his ex-wife was out of rehab, when the situation might have to be reassessed. For his part, Billy Moore told her that if she ever needed some good, secure downtown parking, there would always be a spot waiting for her.

He waved her off and returned to Carla's Lofgren Scamp, by which time his daughter had torn off the school uniform, thrown aside the nonfunctional glasses, and turned off the music. She had already opened a can of beer for her dad, which she now handed to him.

“The Bach was going a bit far,” said Billy.

“What?” said Carla. “You think subtlety's going to get us anywhere in this world?”

“Okay, probably not.”

“Just as well she didn't see my other arm,” said Carla.

She pushed up her left sleeve to reveal, on her skin, a hastily drawn, and now faded but quite distinct, skull and crossbones.

“Aren't I a pistol?” said Carla.

“That's one of the things you are,” said Billy.

“And as a matter of fact,” Carla added, “I thought the shirt and tie looked pretty sharp.”

 

3. OVER

Something is over: something has stopped. Not the pain, that's still completely with her, but for now there are no new shocks to the flesh. The process is finished, the damage has been done, though she can't tell the extent or even the precise nature of what has just happened to her.

She was walking home, and yes, it was late, and yes, she'd been at a party, and no, she wasn't completely clean and sober, and she was wearing heels, and she certainly knew the risks in this, or any other, part of the city. Perhaps she was trying to test herself, prove something about her toughness, her self-reliance, her ability to shrug off the all too obvious dangers, but when the moment came, toughness and self-reliance had nothing to do with it.

She had no sense that anything bad was about to happen. He was on her before she knew it. He came at her silently from behind and she never saw him, but she had the sense of a man who was strong rather than big, fiercely purposeful but not frenzied. He knocked her to the ground, pressed her down. She started to scream, not so much because she was afraid (though she was), but because she thought
he
might be and the screaming would scare him off, but it didn't, and already there was something being placed over her head, a bag, a fetish hood made of leather, no openings for eyes or mouth, but with a small rubber valve to breathe through. Apparently he wanted her alive, at least for the time being. The smell of cowhide and somebody else's sweat and saliva filled her nostrils.

She squirmed, tried to roll away, kicking as she moved, but he was ready for that too. He seemed skilled, practiced, keeping her immobile as he tied her wrists and ankles. He didn't speak, didn't threaten her, didn't press a weapon to her head or throat, didn't need to.

She assumed the obvious, that this was the prelude to humiliation, violation, rape at the very least, though since her ankles were tied and her face covered, she already had an inkling that he might have something specialized in mind. But first there was a journey. She was lifted up, then placed in the back of a vehicle, a van. The way he handled her wasn't exactly careful, but he didn't throw her around, expended no unnecessary energy. The doors slammed, and in due course the van began to move. The journey seemed a long one, and even though she wanted it to be over, she also knew that what came next would surely be worse.

The van stopped. He hauled her out. She was aware, briefly, of being in the open air and then inside a building and then being maneuvered awkwardly, half-carried, half-dragged, down a set of stairs into a basement. There she was lifted up again, set facedown on a metal bench, maybe an examination table, and belts or cords were strapped around her to hold her in place.

It hardly came as a surprise when her clothes were pushed aside, but they were not ripped, not pulled off; instead, they were carefully raised and folded back. She remained some way from being naked, but her back and buttocks were laid bare. She steeled herself for the touch of his hands, but it seemed some preparation was required. She could hear drawers and cabinets being opened and closed. Some kind of equipment was being set up. She wondered if he was going to play doctor and patient.

Then it started. She heard a drone, like a high-pitched dentist's drill, and then she felt something in her back, a precise line of pain. Was that a knife, a needle? A syringe? Was that the feel of drugs or chemicals entering her body? No, that wasn't it. It wasn't an injection, nothing so limited or clearly defined. Rather, something seemed to slice through her, repetitive, broad but not deep. She thought of a sewing machine, as if she were being stitched and patched. She considered several other possibilities before she thought of a tattooing machine, but then she knew that's what it had to be. She was being marked, inked, tagged.

It hurt, of course, but it was hard to separate the specific pain of the tattooing from the more general pain and degradation that went with being kidnapped, bound, hooded, bared, penetrated. The needles going into her flesh might have been bearable in themselves, no more than a long series of nasty stings, but not knowing how long it would go on and when, if ever, it would stop: that was excruciating.

She knew next to nothing about tattooing, but even so, she'd heard that sooner or later endorphins were supposed to kick in, that the pain became a kind of pleasure. But she didn't let it happen. She wasn't going to allow herself to experience relief, much less pleasure. Her back felt hot and cold, alternately then simultaneously. She knew her skin was wet, with sweat and blood and maybe ink and some liquid that he kept swabbing her with. She had no idea what design he could possibly be making. She tried to make sense of it, tried to envisage what the clusters and lines of pain might add up to, what private imagery they were mapping: cracked madonnas, orange-eyed felines, devil women, galleons with their black sails on fire. She knew she was close to hallucinating.

She had no idea exactly how long it went on. It seemed like hours, but it could have been much less, and as with the journey in the van, she didn't know what would come at the end. If he wanted to kill her, then there'd be no stopping him. She was his. Nobody was coming to save her, and she certainly wasn't going to be able to save herself.

At last the tattoo machine stopped. There was a silence and a stillness that seemed the most delicious she had ever known, a tide going out, a reprieve, even though her back and buttocks felt as if they'd been mashed into raw hamburger. Then there was the sound of the equipment being cleaned and stashed, drawers closing, water running, something being washed away. She felt her clothes being straightened and put back into place. The straps that held her to the table were removed.

Her hands and feet were still tied, and the leather hood remained in place as she was made to stand up. She could just about keep herself upright, but her legs felt elastic and newborn, and the ground seemed very far away. She was led up the stairs, back out onto the street, and again into the van. The anticipation of what might or might not come next was its own torture. The drive seemed shorter this time, the journey less urgent, until the van stopped and she was being hauled out, dumped on the sidewalk. The ties at her hands and feet were loosened though not removed. The hood was taken from her head, and she was pushed facedown onto the ground again so she couldn't see her assailant. Somehow the cold, abrasive surface of the street felt reassuring and solid, and there was air, not good air, not fresh air, but something wonderfully different from the inside of that hood. Before she could even sit up, she heard the van driving away, and it was gone before she could turn around and try to get a sighting of it.

She realized that with just a little effort she could untie herself. She still didn't know if this was a beginning or an end. And as she looked around her she realized he had delivered her to exactly the place he had picked her up, not far from where she lived. That indicated a fastidiousness, a kind of consideration that was deeply menacing.

She stood up. She was in one piece. She was herself. She hadn't even been robbed. Her keys, money, and cell phone were still in her pockets. She walked the short distance home, convinced that nothing worse could happen to her. She went inside, through the outer gate, up via the big, unstable elevator, into her own space. She sat on the bed, too hurt to cry, and at last, because she knew, however unbearable, it would have to be done, she went into the bathroom, stripped off the clothes that she knew she'd have to burn. She steadied herself, took a deep breath, and turned her back to the mirror so she could look over her shoulder and see what had been done to her.

 

4. HOW BILLY MOORE FIRST MET “MR.” WROBLESKI

A hulking, matte-black SUV stood at the center of the courtyard, customized to express deep aggression and luxury. The courtyard, a broad, wet, scuffed square of tarmac, was enclosed on three sides by several levels of solid, workaday buildings, a series of former workshops, offices, storage units, all linked by open metal staircases, decks, and catwalks. There were many doors, all of them shut, and all the windows were covered, in some cases barred. It was impossible to tell what went on here now, but certainly nothing explicitly industrial. A few guys in overalls who looked as if they might have jobs to do were standing around, conspicuously not doing them.

But one guy was working, which was why the tarmac was wet. A young black man, wearing shimmering orange shorts and nothing else, was cleaning the SUV, resentment oozing from his every pore. Above him, on a second-story deck, his boss, Wrobleski, was watching him intently. This car, these buildings, this whole compound, belonged to Wrobleski. This was the place he did a lot of business, and it was also where he lived. If you looked up to the rooftop, you'd see that along one side of the structure was an extra level, a lavish, hard-edged architectural addition. In a way this new part looked just as industrial as the buildings below, with metal girders, glass walls, exposed ducting; but it was an apartment, a penthouse. The girders were painted bright red, the walls of glass curved symmetrically, the ducting had a polished gleam to it. The corner of a domed conservatory was visible nearby on the flat roof.

Wrobleski could hear the sound of a car idling outside the solid, gray steel gate that separated the compound from the rest of the world. Charlie, a lean, rigid, sunburned old man, with impeccably disreputable credentials, had been employed by Wrobleski solely to open and close the gate, and now he performed his job with quiet, solemn efficiency, and saluted, not quite seriously, not quite playfully, at the car that entered the courtyard. It was a metallic-blue Cadillac, a good thirty years old, sagging, battered, with a scratch or dent on every panel. The car parked alongside the SUV as Charlie slid the gate shut. Billy Moore got out of the Cadillac, adjusted his leather jacket, as battered as the car, and readied himself.