The City Under the Skin (20 page)

Wrobleski always had a sense of the figure he was cutting, something monstrous yet also unavoidably comic: the Phantom of the Opera, Quasimodo, one of the mole people, a Morlock, accompanied by a sulky, rebellious assistant. As they negotiated their way down the steps, Wrobleski felt the rising coldness, detected the smell of dilute ammonia and maybe spoiled meat, and heard a thick roaring sound that grew louder with each step, as if he were entering the mouth of a gigantic seashell. Suddenly there was a muffled boom, something grand but far away inside the earth. There were noises like that down here all the time these days, muted blasts as they worked on the Platinum Line. Wrobleski refused to let it bother him.

Wrobleski and Akim pushed on, went deeper, through ash-gray concrete chambers, bunkers, rusted spaces that might have served as industrial bear pits, into a coarse intermeshing of tunnels that led ever farther into varieties of receding darkness. Wrobleski knew his way down here well enough, knew how to get in and out, how to get where he needed to go, but he didn't know what most of these masses and vacancies around him were, what they did, had no idea how they related to the world above. And he was content to keep it that way.

It was cold, and yet he was sweating, from exertion and adrenaline. The tunnel they were in changed its direction, ran away in a taut, vaulted curve. The lights on the helmets picked out a broad, deep, semicircular arch, simple, functional, its apex and keystone scarcely higher than a man's head, an entrance of sorts.

They stepped through the arch and out the other side, into a long, straight, white-tiled space, with a low ceiling, regularly placed pillars, a few broken benches here and there, some peeling advertising posters, a tattered map on the wall. They were standing on the platform of a long-abandoned subway station, the ground scattered with coils of wire and lengths of pipe, rat droppings and discarded paperwork that somebody must have once considered really, really important. The first time Wrobleski came down here, years ago now, the place had seemed infinite and unfathomable: now it was simply the place where he finished the job.

A part of him was struck by how absurd it was for the city to be building a new subway line while this old station lay disused and apparently intact and serviceable. And yet the reason why it had been abandoned was obvious enough. As the rails left the station and disappeared into the tunnel mouth, they were twisted as if mauled by some giant, casually destructive hand. There had been a deep settling in the floor of the tunnel, a shift in the earth, a subsidence: a sinkhole had appeared beneath the railroad ties, black, wide, jagged-edged, and although it was obviously not literally bottomless, it was cavernous and capacious enough for his ongoing needs. You could lose a whole army of dead bodies down there: Wrobleski had only accounted for a small platoon. They never came back, never reappeared elsewhere, and the pit was deep enough that even the stench of death seldom made it up to the level of the station. Akim shivered, waited.

They stood at the platform edge, and Wrobleski heaved Brandt's body off his shoulders like an outsized sack of coal or potatoes, something that had already once been in the earth. Akim again took the feet, Wrobleski the shoulders, and they swung the corpse until it had enough momentum to carry it forward, away from the platform, down between the distorted rails, then away into the silent void.

Wrobleski took a breath, but not too deep: there were plenty of things you wouldn't want to inhale down here, quite apart from flesh rot. He stood listening, heard only the usual sounds of the earth. He nodded to Akim, not exactly in thanks, but in recognition that for better or worse he needed him and his talents. The second part of the job was done too. Now he was ready to go back aboveground, to spend some time with his maps, the ones on paper rather than on flesh.

 

30. MARILYN GIVES AN INCH, ROSE SCARLATTI TAKES A FOOT

“Thanks for coming with me,” said Marilyn.

“Thanks for calling,” he said, and realized this sounded a bit weak. “I'd have called you, but I didn't want to seem … whatever.”

“You did the right thing. After a night like the one we had, I needed a little space.”

“And now you need me again.”

“I need you to be supportive, anyhow.”

“I don't
feel
very supportive. I really don't know what you're doing here.”

“Yes, you do, Zak. I'm going to get Rose Scarlatti to tell us more of what she knows about the compass rose tattoos, and why she reacted the way she did.”

Yes, he did know that, of course.

They were standing outside the lobby doors of the Villa Nova apartment building, waiting to be let in. Rose Scarlatti was being a little slow to answer the bell, though in Marilyn's eagerness they were a little earlier than the agreed time.

“And you really think that getting a tattoo from her is going to help?” said Zak.

“That's what she said last time. And if you can't trust an old lady tattooist, who
can
you trust?”

The lock on the building's front door buzzed and opened at last. The apartment door was already open when they got to Rose's floor, forbidding as much as inviting. Rose did not greet them. She was all business: her tattoo equipment—old-fashioned, workaday, looking like a gangly robot arm—was set up next to a hard, narrow daybed that had been moved to the very center of the living room. Her latex gloves were already on, the inks and needles laid out on a marble-topped table; a freshly lit clove cigarette was lodged tightly in the corner of her mouth.

“This is Zak,” said Marilyn. “He's here to be supportive.”

“Fabulous.” Rose looked at Zak the way she might have looked at a suspicious stain on the bathroom floor, then said to Marilyn, “No second thoughts?”

“No,” said Marilyn.

“And you only want a compass rose?”

“Right.”

“Nothing more ambitious, more tribal? A mandala? A burning lotus? Scenes from the life of Elvis?”

“No,” said Marilyn. “As agreed. Just a compass rose.”

Marilyn seemed more nervous, more tense, than Zak would have expected. While she carefully, anxiously arranged herself on the daybed, he tried not to wear his resentment too conspicuously, tried not to alienate Rose still further, tried not to get in the way. He looked around the apartment, and despite himself, he could see the fascination of the clutter, of all the souvenirs and exhibits. If things didn't work out in the map business, he wondered if there was a living to be made buying and selling antique tattoo memorabilia. No doubt there was, though probably not for him. He reckoned you'd need some extensive ink on your body before customers took you seriously.

“How about your man there?” Rose said to Marilyn. “Does he need one too?”

Zak thought it best to speak for himself.

“No thanks,” he said. “I had a grandfather in the navy. He had a ship tattooed on the back of his hand. He said it was the worst decision he ever made in his life.”

“Must have led a very tame life,” said Rose; then to Marilyn, “And you're dead sure you want it on the top of your foot?”

“Certain,” said Marilyn.

“And which way do you want north to be?” Rose asked. “Pointing up the leg or down?”

“Down,” Marilyn said. “That way I can point my toes toward the North Pole.”

Marilyn had already removed her boot, now she rolled off her sock and raised her long, lean, pale right foot. Zak didn't think its appearance would be improved one bit by the addition of a tattoo, but he was well aware that his personal tastes were not being pandered to here.

“At least a tattoo on the foot shows some commitment,” said Rose. “It's going to hurt like hell, you know that? Top of the foot's just skin and bone, no muscle, no flesh.”

“I know,” said Marilyn. “You told me.”

“And I don't want you wriggling, jumping around, making involuntary movements.”

“I won't wriggle,” said Marilyn. “Involuntary movements I can't do much about.”

“You'll be just fine,” said Rose, and she allowed herself the first smile of the day.

The tattoo machine buzzed into life. Rose cradled Marilyn's foot in one taut, nubbled hand, yet for all her talk of arthritis and unsteadiness, once she concentrated on the job, she was as sure and steady as a surgeon, or at least a pedicurist. She held the foot firmly and delicately, as though it were some small, nervous creature that needed to be soothed and calmed. She didn't use flash or a stencil, didn't even draw the design in advance: she was going freehand.

Rose's face showed determination and pleasure as the needles cut their first line into the flesh, drew their first ooze of blood. Zak found himself feeling just a little queasy as he watched, but fought against it: he was man enough not to throw up in the tattooist's living room. Marilyn felt as if her foot were being stung by an unusually active and persistent jellyfish, or perhaps by carefully aligned cactus spikes: she had no direct, personal experience of either, but she could imagine. She felt as though tiny licks of flame were sparking from her foot up her leg and into her core, but she managed to be a good subject, to keep her body still and controlled. She could even hold a conversation.

“Rose,” she said, “did you ever tattoo a treasure map on anybody?”

“How's that?”

“You know
x
marks the spot, buried treasure, pieces of eight, gold doubloons.”

“Like Long John Silver?”

“That kind of thing,” said Marilyn.

“Can't say I ever did. But I would have if anybody had ever asked me to, though it seems kind of illogical to get somebody else to tattoo a treasure map for you. It means there's at least one extra person who knows where the treasure's buried. Why wouldn't they go and grab the treasure for themselves?”

“Unless the map is coded,” said Marilyn.

It took a small effort on Zak's part not to insist that
all
maps are coded, but he knew he'd feel better for not saying it.

“A coded map?” said Rose. “What the hell is that? Still working on that ‘project' of yours, are you? How's it going?”

“It'll be going a lot better when you tell me what you promised to tell me.”

“Oh, you drive a hard bargain.”

Rose Scarlatti was silent for a good long time, and it did cross Marilyn's mind that the old lady might be about to welsh on the deal. It was too late for new negotiations: her foot already had some significant markings.

“Oh well,” said Rose, “maybe it's nothing. It means something to me, but it might not mean anything to you. A long time ago, there was a kid, a weird little kid…”

 

31. THE DISAPPEARING KID

He blamed his mother. Why not? Anyone would. Everybody does. She was the one who made a man of him. And sure, his father played a part, did things to the mother that made her do things to the son, but Dad wasn't around much, and then he wasn't around at all. She decided the son wouldn't be like the father. She didn't have specific ambitions for him, none of the familiar, self-serving hopes for success, money, a good wife. She just didn't want him to be a weak, useless man like his dad. That was her special project, to turn her boy into a little tough guy: after that he'd be on his own. Was it tough love? Well, it was certainly tough.

It went pretty well. The boy didn't resist. He learned not to be soft. He learned that if he got into trouble, he had to get himself out of it. He liked the karate classes, the playground scuffles. He wasn't the biggest, wasn't the most volatile, but when it came to it, he was the meanest. The little boy in him started to fade away.

His mother wasn't such a bad bitch, he would decide long after the event. She did what she thought she had to do. And gradually her project became more refined. Later, when he tried to work out exactly how old he was when it first happened, he couldn't. It seemed to have been going on forever, seemed always to have been a part of his life, so it must have started when he was what? Eight years old? Six? Was that possible?

They were in the car. Mother and son traveling fast, no seat belts, no conversation. He figured she'd been drinking. They'd been on an errand on the other side of the city, buying something, selling something, delivering something, and they were coming back through a neighborhood he'd been in before, though not often—crowded streets, rough at the edges, poor but striving, and still a good way from home—when suddenly she pulled the car over and said, “All right, time to get out.”

He wondered what he'd done wrong. His mother was an angry woman at the best of times. Anything might cause her to get mad: something somebody said to her, something she saw on TV, though more often than not it was his doing. But this time he was pretty sure he hadn't done anything wrong, and she didn't sound angry at all, which was even more scary.

“We're going to make a man of you,” she said. “Get out of the car. I'll see you when you've found your way home.”

She almost made it sound natural, like the kind of thing all mothers and sons might do, something that could be fun, a game, though since he was the only one playing it, he couldn't be sure about that.

“All right,” he said, because no other reply was possible, and he got out of the car. He was still hoping, well, fantasizing more than hoping, because he knew how unlikely it was that she'd smile and say forget it, it was a joke, a test, that she was trying to make sure he wasn't a crybaby, which he wasn't. But he stood in the street and watched as his mother yanked the car door shut and drove away. She didn't wave goodbye.

He remained on the sidewalk, alone, dry-eyed, a long way from home, and he knew that in some sense he'd always be that way. He'd find his way back home all right. Of course he would. He knew his address, had a little money in his pocket and a tongue in his head, he could ask people the way, he could walk, he could get on a bus. He'd be just fine. And anticlimactic though it felt, he
was
fine. He got home soon enough, without incident that time, and without much fear, and he supposed his mother was pleased to see him, though she didn't show it. A week later she did it again, and again the week after that, again and again, dropping him off in ever more distant, dubious, and unfamiliar parts of the city.