Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

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

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?”

“I think this. What if I do the killings like you ask, and let’s say you even give me Carla, though there’s no guarantee you will, well, that’s not going to be the end of it, is it? What’s to stop you turning me in for the murders?”

“Beats me,” said Wrobleski.

“I think you want a fall guy. You want those maps gone, those women gone, and then you want me gone. You can see why I don’t find that very appealing.”

Out of the corner of his eye Wrobleski saw a movement up on a higher level of the compound, a flash of light. It was a distraction he didn’t need.

“So where do we go from here?” said Wrobleski. “Akim’s got the map, and I’m still the one with the gun and the girl.”

Billy was not stupid enough to put his hand in his pocket, to appear to be reaching for anything. Instead, he placed his right palm against his chest, as though he was about to make a plea for mercy and decency, as though he was about to speak from the heart. He pressed harder, pressed through the leather onto the electronic trigger lodged inside his jacket.

The world around him, around all of them, seemed simultaneously to implode and explode. Sound waves, hard as rock, slammed against his ears. The SUV flipped up weightlessly in a violent cloud, ash gray and burnt orange, showering glass, steel, and automotive innards. Billy and Zak made a dive for the ground. The front end of the vehicle was hefted sideways, slamming against an internal wall of the compound, punching a hole as big as a double garage. Blue-black smoke and a film of shimmering gasoline fumes veiled the air.

Akim fell on his side, the map draping him like a scorched towel. Wrobleski staggered backward, crouching, choking, but he stayed on his feet. A weaker man would have let go of the girl, but he only held on tighter. He fired his gun impotently in the air, not at anything in particular. But with Zak and Billy still on the ground, he was able to dance away through the smoke, and as he went, he became aware that the explosion had caused small, localized fires in various places around the courtyard. He had people to deal with that, right?

He saw Akim crawling across the tarmac, dragging himself to his feet, finding his way to one of the fire extinguishers. It wasn’t much: preventing your place of work from burning down seemed like the minimum requirement of any job, but it was more than he was getting from his other goons, now entirely absent. Akim brought the extinguisher to life, but then Wrobleski realized that he wasn’t trying to put out the fires, he was simply clearing a path for himself as he headed for the gate. There was a brief, fierce argument between Akim and Charlie the gateman, but Charlie was no hero, and he didn’t just let Akim out of the compound, he followed, letting the electronic gate shut itself behind him. And was Wrobleski imagining it, or did he hear an approaching siren, maybe more than one?