Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

“Never needed one.”

“Anything to eat or drink?”

“I didn’t come down here for a picnic.”

Carla turned and looked at him with what he couldn’t quite believe was sympathy, but she didn’t sound as though she was altogether mocking him when she said, “I’m sorry I broke your map. The one of Iwo Jima or whatever.”

“Are you really? Well, that makes everything all right then, doesn’t it?” he sneered.

“I wasn’t the only one doing the breaking, was I? Why were those women so angry? Why did they want to smash everything?”

“I guess they just hate maps.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Carla. “Nobody hates maps. I can see a lot of people don’t care one way or another, but nobody really hates them.”

Was she fucking with him? Or was she just being a kid? He held his silence.

“Why?” she insisted. “Tell me. Don’t treat me like a child.”

“Okay,” said Wrobleski: he could see she had a point. “Those women hate maps because they have maps tattooed all across their backs.”

“Why did they have them done if they hate them?”

“They didn’t choose to have them done. Somebody did it to them.”

“That’s creepy. Did you do it?”

“No, I did not.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know, but I have one or two ideas.”

“Want to share?”

Wrobleski didn’t answer. Carla had noticed that adults often behaved like this. They thought that if they didn’t answer, then you’d forget you’d asked the question. Carla never forgot.

“So what kind of maps?” she persisted.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yes, I do.”

What did it matter? Maybe he could freak her out a little, scare her into silence, if not submission.

“Murder maps,” he said. “Maps that show where certain murders took place, and where the bodies were stashed. Are stashed.”

“But who did the murders?”

“That’s something else you don’t want to know.”

“It was you, wasn’t it, Mr. Wrobleski?” His silence told her what she needed to know. “Boy, you really are a bad guy.”

He couldn’t understand why he needed to defend himself, but he said, “There are worse than me. Far, far worse.”

* * *

“That’s it,” said Zak. “That’s it. You finally got it, Billy. You finally became a cartographer.”

“You’re out of your mind. I’m trying to save my daughter and you’re fucking around talking about maps.”

“No. The thing you just said about mapping and asses. That’s what it’s all about. Wrobleski only uses one route down here.”

“How can you possibly say that?” said Billy.

“Because I’ve already seen the route he takes. And so have you.”

“That explosion fried your brains,” said Billy.

“And we have a version of the map with us. It’s on you, Marilyn. It’s in the tattoo. It’s in all the tattoos. That’s how the maps work. Above the waist they’re all different. They show different parts of the city, and more than that, each one shows where Wrobleski committed a murder, then the route he followed through the city, and where he brought the bodies, which in every case was to his compound. Then he brought them down here. The parts of the maps below the waist show what he did with the bodies, which is why the tattoos all look kind of the same in that area. He was always taking the bodies to the same single location, belowground, somewhere down here. We were half right about the compass rose marking the spot, but it’s not marking buried treasure, it’s where the bodies are buried. And that’s where he’s going now.”

Billy Moore said, mostly to himself, “And he’s taken my daughter to the place where he dumps the bodies.”

“Does this help us any?” Marilyn asked.

“Oh no,” said Zak. “It doesn’t help us in the least. I’d love to be able to look at your ass and work out the route … but you know, it’s a lousy map by a lousy mapmaker.”

“So you’re saying Wrobleski did the map?”

“I don’t know,” said Zak. “I don’t know if I’m saying that or not.”

* * *

“I think you’re kind of screwed, aren’t you, Mr. Wrobleski?” said Carla. “You’re sweating. I can’t tell if it’s a hot or a cold sweat, but you’re soaked, Mr. Wrobleski.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re just a big cowardly lion.”

“Shut up.”

She didn’t shut up. She said, “Your collection’s ruined. Your home’s on fire. The cops are all over the place. And meanwhile you’re hiding in a hole in the ground with a really annoying kid. And you can’t kill me because I’m your little human shield.”

“Don’t be so sure. Get up. Turn your back to me.”

“You’re going to shoot me in the back?”

“If I feel like it. Loosen your shirt.”

“Why?”

“You heard me.”

“You want me to take it off?”

“Fuck no,” he said. “What do you think I am, some kind of pervert? Just loosen your shirt and lift it up.”

“All right,” Carla said, frightened into compliance, and she gingerly turned her back to him, raised her shoulders a little, slowly untucked the rear of her shirt, hoisted it up as best she could. Goose bumps bubbled on her skin. A smell of rotting vegetables drifted along the platform. Wrobleski got to work. She could feel something pressing into her back, though she didn’t know what.

“What are you doing?” she asked, though she thought she already knew.

He didn’t reply. He was engrossed, serious. She could hear him breathing deeply, making a low, inarticulate humming sound. Her shirt kept rolling down her back, falling in the way of his handiwork. He pushed it up, got on with the job. And then he stopped, let the shirt fall back into place. It hadn’t taken long. She didn’t turn around: she didn’t want to see his face.

She sensed him move away. There was silence, nothing, a lake of dead time, and then came the explosion, the slam, the gunshot. She only knew that’s what it was because she’d heard Wrobleski fire his gun while they were up in the compound: more than a bang, more than a crack, very loud but brief and short-lived, like a radio being abruptly turned off. Here belowground the sound was louder still, but also more intimate, darker, more compressed by the narrowness of the station tunnel.

She felt something hot and wet running rapidly, thinly, down the insides of her thighs. She couldn’t tell what it was at first, which part of her body it was coming from. But she did know that she wasn’t in pain. She had no precise idea what it felt like to be shot, but not like this, surely. She was on her feet. Her body felt intact. And then she realized she’d peed herself with fright. But that was okay, right? If Wrobleski had really shot her, then she wouldn’t be able to feel herself pee, would she? Would she? Whatever Wrobleski had been shooting at, it wasn’t her.

* * *

Well, who needs a map on flesh when you have the sound of a gunshot to guide the way? Actually, Zak could have said that “sound mapping” was a growing field among the edgier kind of cartographer, but he knew this was not the time. The noise reverberated wildly, came and went and came again, but there was no mistaking its direction. Billy, Marilyn, and Zak moved toward it as rapidly as they dared, though they didn’t dare imagine what they might find when they got to the source. Billy called out, “Carla,” but there was no reply, nothing except his own boomeranging voice. He shouted, “Wrobleski,” and the absence of response seemed even more profound. They moved faster, dashing through the sodden dark, and at last came to the strange, low arch that looked like the improbable entrance to a station.