Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

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.

He didn’t especially want to be here. This whole part of the city was alien territory as far as he was concerned. He had got here only by obeying the instructions of his GPS, a bit of modern gadgetry his daughter had insisted he buy. He was glad he hadn’t had to think his way here, through the old meatpacking districts and between the abandoned factories and the gravel pits. He didn’t belong here at the edge of things, where the city was all but exhausted, close to the docks, in sight of power stations and rail yards, near dumps, landfills, and recycling facilities that used to call themselves junkyards. He couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to live here, although he knew that these days, in this city, people lived in all kinds of postindustrial wastelands and considered themselves very fancy indeed.

Certainly Wrobleski’s place was close to fast roads that might take you to bridges and tunnels, to airports and ferry terminals, a good place to be when you needed to be somewhere else in a hurry. But Wrobleski didn’t look as if he needed to be anywhere else, and he definitely didn’t look like a man you could hurry. Today he was wearing one of his better suits, charcoal-gray mohair with a bright blue pinstripe, single-breasted, single-buttoned, single-vented, all the edges scalpel-sharp, but he was wearing it for his own pleasure, certainly not in anticipation of meeting Billy Moore. Wrobleski eyed the battered Cadillac, and disapproval registered briefly on his face, but the look was gone before Billy Moore had crossed the courtyard. Billy raised his eyes toward Wrobleski, and Wrobleski beckoned him up to the open second-floor deck.

This was not in the strictest sense a first meeting, and Billy had heard plenty about Wrobleski long before he saw him in person. He was quite a legend in some of the dubious worlds into which Billy had occasionally strayed, considered to be a mad dog, way out of Billy’s league, in a league Billy did not aspire to join.

Their actual first encounter had taken place at a real estate auction. Billy Moore was there to buy a piece of land suitable for turning into a parking lot and home for a couple of trailers. Originally he’d had his eye on a plot out by the shuttered women’s reformatory — there was talk of turning that place into a boutique hotel or maybe live/work spaces — and he’d registered his interest with the auction house, but right before the bidding was due to start, one of the auctioneer’s flunkies asked him to step aside for a “private word.”

The flunky was tall and lean to the point of chemical imbalance. In a low-ceilinged, institutional-yellow corridor outside the main auction room, as people pushed and milled around them, the flunky said, “This is slightly delicate. One of our special clients has his eye on the same plot as yourself. We think it would be better if you didn’t bid against him.”

“What?”

“In exchange he won’t bid against you on the lot at the corner of Hope Street and Tenth.”

“I’ll bid on what I want.”

“Of course, but if you bid on the reformatory lot, you’ll only drive up the price, and in the end you still won’t get it. And if you then try to buy the Hope and Tenth lot, our client will most likely bid against you and ensure that you don’t get that either.”

“Who is this jerk?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“And why do you care?” said Billy. “Don’t you want the price as high as possible?”

“Sometimes there are other considerations.”

“Why don’t you tell this special client to go fuck himself?”

The flunky winced, and something he saw over Billy’s shoulder caused him to cast his eyes down. Under his breath he said to Billy, “The other bidder, the special client.”

A voice behind Billy said, “Who’s telling who to go fuck himself?”

Billy turned and looked at a man he’d never seen before, large but compact, serious, dangerous-looking.

“Who are you?” said Billy.

“My name’s Wrobleski,” said the man.

“Okay,” said Billy calmly, cautiously, as several important things clicked into place. “Well, only a damn fool would tell the great Mr. Wrobleski to go fuck himself.”

“So you’re not a damn fool,” said Wrobleski, and if he was the kind of man who smiled, he might have done it then.

They took up seats on opposite sides of the auction room. The bidding went fast. Wrobleski got what he wanted, and Billy got the lot at the corner of Hope Street and Tenth, and he did get it cheap. In the end there was nothing to feel bad about. The thing that surprised him most was that a guy like Wrobleski was involved in anything so small-time as buying pieces of land. The Wrobleski of his imagination inhabited a quite separate world, one of speedboats, limos, assignations in foreign hot spots. He was even more surprised when word came through, sometime later, that Wrobleski wanted to see him. A part of him was flattered, and in any case, there was no way he could have refused to go, even if he’d wanted to. Wrobleski was a man very few people got to meet, and certainly there were quite a few who never met him more than once. Even so, as Billy climbed the metal staircase that led to the second-floor deck of the compound, where Wrobleski was waiting for him, he thought it unlikely that this meeting was going to be either pleasurable or straightforward.

Billy put out his hand for the expected handshake, but Wrobleski declined it. “Billy Moore,” he said quietly. It wasn’t quite a greeting, more a simple acknowledgment that Billy Moore existed. If the president and first lady had turned up at his gate, Wrobleski would have addressed them in the same easy, gruff tone of voice.

“Do you want my man Akim to clean your car for you?” Wrobleski asked.

Billy had a feeling that something might depend on his answer, that with Wrobleski there would never be anything so simple as a direct yes or no, and simultaneously he realized he might be overthinking this whole business.

“He’s very good,” Wrobleski added.

Billy said, “Okay then, sure.”

Wrobleski peered down into the courtyard where Akim was already moving sullenly toward the Cadillac, bucket, hose, and chamois at the ready. Without saying more, Wrobleski turned and walked away along the deck, and Billy could only follow.

The layout of the place was confusing, walkways and staircases running up and down and across, some open to the elements, some enclosed, leading into inscrutable hallways and landings, and everywhere more blank doors and windows. Wrobleski opened one of the doors, at random, as it seemed to Billy, and they went into an unexpectedly welcoming space, not so industrial after all, carpeted, carefully lit, with groupings of leather chairs and couches. It looked like a waiting room, though Billy couldn’t imagine who’d be waiting here or for what, and he didn’t have much time to think about it before he was distracted by what was on the walls: a multitude of framed maps, and of course Billy had seen framed maps before, in hotels and in certain kinds of bar, but he hadn’t seen any quite like these.