The City Under the Skin (25 page)

“There,” said Wrobleski to Carla, “alone at last. I hate people who talk too much, don't you?”

Carla kept her silence.

“It's okay, I understand if you're shy.”

She looked for a moment as if she might attack him. “I'm not shy,” she said. “I'm pissed off.”

“Well, of course you are,” said Wrobleski smoothly. “You're just a kid. You expect your dad to protect you. But sometimes he can't.”

Carla already suspected this might be true, but hearing it stated by this weird stranger, a man to whom she'd been delivered in the middle of the night, having been dragged from her trailer, a man from whom she needed protection, made it all the harder to bear. She looked as though she might, after all, start crying.

“Laurel looked after you all right, didn't she?”

Carla shrugged.

“I'm not good with kids,” said Wrobleski. “Especially not girls. 'Specially not cute little numbers like you.”

Carla had a feeling she was being complimented, but she wasn't sure.

“Have I been kidnapped?” she asked.

“No,” said Wrobleski, feigning offense. “No way. If you'd been kidnapped, there'd be ransom notes and demands for money and I'd be slicing off your fingers and sending them through the mail. I'm not doing that, am I?”

“No,” Carla admitted. “Not yet.”

“Not ever. I just want your old man to see things my way.”

Carla wondered if that really made any sense.

“How long am I going to be here?” she said.

“Just until he arrives.”

“When's that?”

“That all depends on him, honey. He may have more important things on his mind than you.”

“No, he doesn't,” she said, and she very much hoped she was right about that.

She saw Wrobleski examining his own hand. Even at the very beginning, with everything else that was going on, she'd noticed the webbing on Wrobleski's hand was scarred with a set of teeth marks, some scabs, yellow staining.

“What's wrong with your hand?” she asked.

“Dog bite,” said Wrobleski.

“Not good with kids
or
animals.”

It was perfectly true, of course, but Wrobleski didn't care to admit it. He saw Carla staring vaguely at the relief map of Iwo Jima.

“It's not a model,” he said to her helpfully, “it's actually a map in three dimensions, and the scale of the elevation, the height, that's exaggerated to bring out the features.”

Carla sniffed.

“Come over here,” said Wrobleski. “Come and look, I can tell you're interested. That father of yours said you wouldn't be, but I knew he was wrong.”

Insulted, grudging, but not entirely unwilling, Carla got up and moved to the center of the conservatory, and stood a respectful distance from the case, looking down through the glass.

“Iwo Jima,” said Wrobleski. “World War Two. An island belonging to the Japanese. But the Americans took it away from them. They landed here and here and here.” As he spoke he used only his right hand to point at various places on the island: the left was hurting too much. “Here, this was an airfield. This was a dormant volcano. Here's an amphitheater. The Americans raised the flag here, but raising the flag didn't mean they'd won. The flag went up on day five: the battle went on for another thirty days.

“But here's the thing. The Japanese knew they were going to be attacked, so they'd already built a lot of bunkers and tunnels all through the island. When the battle ended, there were three thousand Japanese soldiers still in the tunnels. They'd lost the battle, but they didn't surrender. Some of them committed suicide, because that's what they were supposed to do, code of honor and all that shit. But some didn't. They decided to live. They stayed there in the tunnels underground, hiding, right till the end of the war. Here, the model even shows some of the tunnel openings.”

Carla scrutinized the island.

“I thought you said it was a map, not a model.”

“Very good, Carla, very good indeed.”

Carla inhaled damply. She didn't want to be told she was good.

“Do they still have geography in school?” Wrobleski asked. “Or is it all earth science and environmental studies these days?”

“They still have geography,” said Carla.

“So if I asked you what was the highest mountain in Africa, you could give me an answer?”

“Yes,” said Carla, though she didn't offer one.

“Or the longest river in Europe. Or the capital of Mongolia.”

“You can look all that stuff up online,” said Carla. “We do more creative stuff.”

“Do you?” said Wrobleski. “Creative stuff? You ever draw maps?”

“Sometimes,” said Carla, feeling it was a confession.

“Why don't you draw one for me?”

“Why?”

“Something for my collection. You could draw me a map showing where you live, where you go to school, where you go on the weekend, things like that, so I'd know all about you.”

“I don't want you to know all about me.”

“Ah, a girl after my own heart,” he said. “See. Aren't we getting on better now?”

“No,” said Carla.

“Oh, I think we are, and tell me, Carla, what's wrong with your arm?”

“Nothing.”

“Something must be wrong with it. You keep scratching.”

“Want to see?”

Carla didn't give him the choice. She rolled up her sleeve to reveal her bare arm. While they talked, she'd been worrying at her skin with her fingernails. The message
FUCK YOU
now stood out on her forearm in a bold, ugly, embossed rash of letters. She showed it proudly to Wrobleski, and he was fascinated rather than insulted.

“All right,” said Wrobleski, “dermatographia! Very interesting. I've never seen it before.”

“But you've heard of it?”

“Don't sound so surprised. I know stuff. I'm not an idiot. And I know that ‘fuck you' will disappear after a while, won't it?” said Wrobleski.

“Yeah, but I can make it come back any time I like.”

“You're good,” he said. “Obviously it doesn't run in the family.”

Wrobleski's cell phone rang. It was Akim telling him that Billy Moore and his Cadillac were approaching the gate and that Charlie was about to let them in.

“I'll be right down,” he said into the phone; then to Carla, “See, your father does care after all.”

And then he hesitated. He wasn't quite sure what to do with the kid. Should he lock her in here while he went down to confront Billy, have Akim or Laurel guard her? No, that didn't seem right. He should probably take her with him, to show that she was unharmed. He turned away from her, knowing he should have worked this out earlier. And then something hit him on the back of the head, something hard, loose, and dry: a fucking potted cactus, small enough for a child to hold in her hand, and in this case throw with great accuracy. He was outraged. If you couldn't trust a twelve-year-old, who could you trust? As he turned back to glare at her, a second pot hit him, this time full in his left eye. He winced, blinked, rubbed away the dirt, drove a few cactus spikes into his cheek, and when he looked up, Carla was at the center of the conservatory, her hands on the top edge of the glass case with Iwo Jima inside.

She pushed against it with all her strength, and the supporting wooden legs slipped on the conservatory floor and the case keeled forward, and although Wrobleski moved to save it, the surprise, the pain in his hand, made him too slow, as the case carved a painfully precise course through the air, a simple 90-degree curve, and then hit the ground hard. The glass shattered, and the skillfully molded plaster surface split open to reveal the innards, a rough construction of chicken wire and clumsily glued balsa wood struts. Involuntarily, pathetically, Wrobleski snatched at the fallen relief map, even as slivers of glass bounced across the floor. He succeeded only in catching a single shard that sliced into his left hand, agonizingly close to the throbbing dog bite.

“You know I've killed people for less than that,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Carla. “But I'll bet none of them were such cute little numbers, were they?”

The Cadillac's horn sounded down in the courtyard. The man was impatient; well, he had reason to be. Wrobleski flung his arm around Carla's middle, hard enough to knock the wind out of her, and to lift her off the ground like a bundle of laundry so he could take her with him.

“I blame the fucking parents,” he said as he strode out of the conservatory.

 

39. WROBLESKI DESCENDS

Billy Moore and Zak Webster sat in the Cadillac, in the courtyard, in the compound, waiting for Wrobleski to appear. The windows were up, and although Akim was visible through the windshield, he was keeping his distance, silent and sullen, looking as miserable as an emo teenager at a family Christmas.

“Is this too subtle?” Billy said to Zak. “Or is it not subtle enough?”

“It's not subtle at all,” said Zak.

“Okay,” said Billy. “That's the beauty of it, right?”

“Right,” said Zak.

This was the first time Zak had ever ridden in a Cadillac: he wondered what the odds were that it might be his last. And then Wrobleski appeared, shambling down a set of metal stairs from an upper level, moving awkwardly, gun in one hand, Carla Moore tucked under the other arm.

Billy and Zak eased themselves out of the car, walked slowly, measuredly, toward Wrobleski. Billy Moore was aware that he was trying to behave “normally,” though he had no idea what normal looked like when confronting a murderer who's holding your daughter like a rag doll.

“You all right, Carla?” he called out.

“What do you think?” Carla snarled back.

“Of course she's all right,” said Wrobleski. “She's hurt me more than I've hurt her.”

Billy looked at the damage on Wrobleski's face and said, “Well, good for her.”

Wrobleski checked angles, casing his own joint. The place was surprisingly, unusually empty. Where were those guys he paid to be there when he needed them? At least Akim, resentful or not, was a reliable presence.

“Who's this scumbag you've brought with you?” Wrobleski demanded. “Your bodyguard? Your boyfriend?”

“This is my pal Zak,” said Billy. “He knows a thing or two about maps.”

“Well, good for him,” Wrobleski said. “What's that he's got in his hand?”

Zak thought it best to speak for himself. “It's a cylindrical map case, leather, early twentieth-century…”

“I know what a fucking map case is,” said Wrobleski.

“And there's a map inside,” said Zak helpfully, nervously.

And then something clicked.

“Wait a fucking minute,” said Wrobleski. “I know you, don't I? Akim, you know this guy?”

Nothing from Akim.

“No, you don't know me,” said Zak, trying to sound as though he believed it.

“Yeah, you're the little fucker who climbed into my compound. You came back. You really are an imbecile. And this other imbecile brought you here. So what's this all about?”

“I'm a map dealer as well as an urban explorer,” Zak said.

Wrobleski looked at him with mild, generic disgust.

“So? What has this got to do with you, Billy?” Wrobleski demanded. “What the fuck has this got to do with you and me?”

“I work for Ray,” Zak said.

“Ray fucking McKinley?” said Wrobleski, becoming aware that this might actually be leading somewhere, though not anywhere he wanted to go.

“He's my boss. I work at Utopiates.”

“What, that crappy little shop he owns?”

“That's my life you're talking about,” said Zak.

“Zak has something we think you might like to see,” said Billy.

“What's this ‘we' all of a sudden?” Wrobleski said. “What the fuck are you two playing at?”

A vein danced in the flesh next to Wrobleski's eye. Billy could tell he was getting to him, confusing him: he liked that.

“Zak,” Billy said, “show Mr. W. the goods.”

Zak offered the map case to Wrobleski.

“Don't be a jerk. I've got a gun in one hand, a kid in the other. Hand it to Akim.”

Zak held the case upright, pulled out the scrolled map, buckled up the case again, and gently placed it on the ground at his feet. He handed the map to Akim, who raised it to the height of his shoulders and let it unravel in front of him like a narrow length of wallpaper. It didn't look like much to hide behind.

“The Jack Torry rape map,” said Zak.

“All right,” said Wrobleski, not entirely unimpressed. “I've heard of it. Not bad. In another time and place we might be doing some business. But in the current circumstances … so fucking what?”

“We thought you might like to have it,” said Billy. “For the collection. We're putting it on the table as part of the negotiation.”

“We're not negotiating,” said Wrobleski. “All you have to do is head down to the basement, do the job I've asked you to do, and you'll get your daughter back.”

“Everything's negotiable,” said Billy. “Everything's
renegotiable
.”

Akim continued to hold the map up, but he looked increasingly likely to screw it into a giant ball. Billy Moore took half a step forward, putting himself between Wrobleski and Zak, blocking the line of sight, so that Wrobleski couldn't see when Zak gently side-footed the map case under Wrobleski's SUV. If Akim saw it, he didn't care.

“Dad,” Carla pleaded, “don't negotiate with the bastard!”

“The kid has a point,” said Wrobleski. “You don't honestly think I'm going to take the map, give you your daughter, and say no hard feelings?”

“No,” said Billy. “I don't think that.”

“Then what do you think?”