Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

“Unless you think it’s too late for that.”

It sounded like a threat. Genevieve said, “What are you going to do to me?”

He looked at her with some sympathy. He accepted that was a fair question.

“I don’t know,” he said plainly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“What are the options?”

“I haven’t decided that either.”

“My glass is empty,” Genevieve said.

He filled it for her.

“Look, Genevieve,” he said, “you’re going to have to stay here for a little while. Out of harm’s way. Till I work out what’s best.”

“Best for who?”

“Who do you think, Genevieve?”

She looked across at Laurel, who was staring at her, offering what might have been a smile of welcome.

“You’re starting a harem?” said Genevieve.

“No. I’m not doing that.”

“A freak show?”

“Well, we’re all freaks, aren’t we?”

Suddenly Akim was there in the conservatory, standing beside Genevieve. He was holding a black silk robe, long, voluminous, embroidered with purple and red poppies, and he draped it softly over her shoulders, patting it around her with rather more attention than the job required.

“For now, Akim will take care of you,” Wrobleski said. “Akim’s good at taking care of things.”

A long basement room, not quite a cell or dungeon, but small and dark, with one narrow, high, barred window, a row of a dozen or so single beds, a TV playing in the far corner, and on the wall a framed cartoon map of Manhattan, faux 3-D, with a goofy King Kong hanging off the Empire State Building. It was morning and Genevieve had slept well enough once Akim had finished taking care of her.

She woke now because there was somebody standing in the room, the woman she’d seen briefly last night in the conservatory, Laurel, and she was carrying a tray, delivering breakfast, part maid, part jailor, part would-be friend. Laurel’s morning attire wasn’t so very different from her evening wear, heels, a backless sheath dress. She put the tray down and turned to make sure that Genevieve got a good look at her tattooed back. Genevieve scrutinized the tray and Laurel with equal suspicion.

“What’s this about?” she said.

“It’s just breakfast,” said Laurel. “It’s bacon and eggs. Want me to be your food taster?”

Genevieve shook her head and began to eat, slowly, methodically.

“I meant, what’s this whole thing about? Who is he? What is he? What is this place? Why did he have me brought here?”

“He’s Wrobleski. He’s a crook. This is his place. He had you brought here because of the tattoos.”

That answered all Genevieve’s questions, and it answered nothing.

“What? He really likes tattoos?”

“No, he really likes maps. But tattooed maps: those he doesn’t seem to like so much. They worry him. I don’t know why, but they do.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve all got our worries,” said Genevieve.

“Wrobleski doesn’t like being worried.”

Genevieve chewed sluggishly.

“Is that meant to sound scary?” she asked.

“Mr. Wrobleski can be very scary indeed.”

“What happened to you?” Genevieve asked, although she thought she already knew.

“I’m a call girl, okay?” said Laurel. “High class, whatever that means. I’m expensive. I’m tough. I got called to an address. I drove myself there, went alone. It wasn’t a bad part of town, but the address didn’t exist; the street did, but not the number. While I was wondering if it was my mistake, I got dragged out of the car, blindfolded, tied up, taken to a basement. And then this happened.”

“Sounds familiar,” said Genevieve. “You never saw his face, right?”

“Right. But I survived, and I had money, and I thought about getting the tattoos removed or maybe getting new tattoos done to cover up the old ones, but the weird thing was, while I was thinking about it, I found I could make more money with these crappy tattoos on me than I ever made without them.”

“Yeah? What’s that about?” asked Genevieve.

“I think it’s because most men are totally fucked up, and they like women who are totally fucked up too.” Laurel shivered just a little.

“So you kept the tattoos to make money?”

“And because the men are right. I am totally fucked up. Maybe the tattoos stop me forgetting what I am.”

“Who needs reminding?” said Genevieve.

“And then,” Laurel continued, “I got another call, to come here and service Mr. Wrobleski. His guy Akim made the arrangements, brought me here. And at the time obviously Wrobleski didn’t know about the tattoos, had no idea. But we started, and we did this and that, and eventually I got completely naked and he turned me over and started fucking me from behind. He must have seen the tattoos then, of course, must have seen them straightaway, but I guess he was distracted at first, didn’t take a really good look at them, or maybe it took a while for him to realize what he was looking at, but then suddenly he saw something there, something in the tattoos, and I didn’t know what, and I still don’t, but it made him go crazy. Totally fucking crazy. I thought maybe he was going to kill me then and there. But he didn’t, and I’ve been here ever since.”

“How long?”

“A couple months maybe. It’s hard to keep track of the time, you know. I’m like a trusty around here. It’s good to have some company.”

“Is he planning to kill me?” Genevieve asked.

“I don’t know about that. I honestly don’t. But at least he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry.”

“You think he really wants us dead?”

“I think it’s one of his options. But we could give him other options.”

Zak Webster got on with his life. What else was there to do? The events of the other night had been pretty strange, but he found it impossible to calibrate the degree of strangeness. Looked at from one perspective, it all seemed random enough, just big-city weirdness, but from another, there was something less than random about it, something ominously specific that seemed to involve him and Utopiates.

A couple of days passed. Zak did his job, sold a set of mid-priced eighteenth-century maps of Peru, talked to Ray McKinley on the phone, said nothing about the tattooed woman. He wouldn’t have known what to say, and why would Ray even have been interested? He got through the working hours, and the genuinely random universe seemed to be asserting itself. That was a good thing, right? And then there was a counter assertion.

It was another long, restless evening, and again it was nearly time to close the store, but then Zak glanced out the window and saw the battered metallic-blue Cadillac parked a short distance away. His heart sank. He felt disappointed, anxious, and somehow inexplicably angry. He looked up and down the street, thinking perhaps history was about to repeat itself, that perhaps some other tattooed woman was out there, just waiting to strip naked and show herself, but no, this time the street was thoroughly empty.

Zak watched as the driver got out of the Cadillac, strutted along the sidewalk, looked very briefly in the window of Utopiates, then ambled inside. Zak gave him a nod of tentative welcome, but initially the guy ignored both Zak and the contents of the store. He moved slowly and purposefully around the space, briefly entering the back room, as though staking it out, looking for exits or trapdoors or hidden gunmen. Zak suspected he might be in some trouble. Absurdly, he found himself saying, “Can I help you?”

The visitor didn’t reply at first, then asked, “How’s business?”