Geoff Nicholson - The City Under the Skin

Billy Moore was surprised by this admission. It suggested that Wrobleski wasn’t quite the swirl of deranged impulses and killer instincts he was reputed to be. That he was prepared to admit to a degree of weakness and powerlessness only made him stronger in Billy’s opinion, though he was well aware that his opinion counted for absolutely nothing.

“I’ve got a job for you, Billy,” Wrobleski said. “Or for someone like you.”

“What’s the job?” Billy asked.

Wrobleski offered a deep sigh as his first attempt at a job description.

“It seems that Laurel here isn’t the only one with these tattoos. And okay, I know every slut in the world’s got tattoos nowadays, but not like these.”

Billy stopped himself from asking, “Like what?” He couldn’t tell what the tattoos’ defining characteristics were, but maybe that wasn’t his business. Instead, he said, “How many women are we talking about?”

“You ask all the right questions, Billy. And I wish I knew the answers. The job is open-ended for now. But if I give it to you, it’ll happen like this. You’ll get a phone call from my man Akim. He’ll tell you there’s a tattooed woman who needs to be brought in. He’ll tell you where she is. He’ll have found her. He’s good at finding things. You’ll go get her and bring her to me. I’ll do the rest.”

“It sounds too easy.”

“Yeah, doesn’t it?”

“Will these women want to come?”

“Not necessarily,” said Wrobleski. “That’s where it might get less easy.”

He looked away again, out through the glass of the conservatory, at a soft, broad, fading indigo sky, and at the city beneath, at an office block in the process of being demolished, at an Erector Set skyscraper rising stealthily beside it. Billy looked in the same direction and tried not to jump to conclusions.

“Is something bad going to happen to these women?” Billy asked.

“Something bad has already happened to these women.”

Billy was mystified. He knew he was supposed to be mystified.

“Look,” said Wrobleski, “unless you’re a complete maniac, killing people really takes it out of you.”

He said it carefully, as though it were something he’d discovered only recently and hadn’t completely understood as yet. He got up, walked out of the conservatory onto the roof terrace. Billy followed. He didn’t want to be left alone with Laurel and the cacti and the relief map of Iwo Jima.

“I hear you’re not a complete maniac, Billy, and neither am I, despite what you might have heard. Trust me. Or don’t. It’s all the same, really.”

Wrobleski fell into silence.

“So what happens next?”

“You go away,” said Wrobleski, “and if I decide you’re the right man, then you’ll get a phone call, and if you want the job you’ll say, ‘Yes, I’d love to work for Mr. Wrobleski.’ And if you don’t want the job you’ll say, ‘I’m going to have to turn down Mr. Wrobleski’s kind offer.’ But I don’t think you’ll turn me down, Billy. Any more questions?”

“Money?” said Billy.

“Money won’t be a problem,” said Wrobleski.

“And why me?” Billy said.

Wrobleski didn’t quite have an answer to that.

“Maybe I like the cut of your jib,” he said dismissively. “Or maybe you remind me of me. Isn’t that the kind of shit people say in interviews?”

“Sure,” said Billy. “People will say anything in interviews.”

And then it was over. Wrobleski had no more to say, and he led Billy Moore down to the courtyard where his Cadillac was waiting for him. It had obviously been given some attention, since it was still wet and there was water on the ground surrounding it, and yet as Billy looked at the car, it didn’t appear to be any cleaner than before: if anything, it looked dirtier. Was that possible? Was it intentional? Meanwhile, the SUV was so clean, so densely black, it seemed to suck in the light.

“Nice ride, I know,” said Wrobleski. “I’ve got a lot of nice things. I was serious about showing you my map collection sometime.”

“Great,” said Billy, and he hoped he managed to disguise his lack of interest. Maps: who cared? He got in his car, ready to drive back to where he belonged. He knew Wrobleski would offer him the job, and he knew he’d accept it, because he needed the money, and he already recognized that this might force him to accept much more as well. He also realized this might not be everybody’s idea of staying out of trouble.

It was 6:30 on one of those long, restless city summer evenings, a time when Zak Webster could justifiably have closed up the store. Chances were there’d be no more customers today; there were few enough at the best of times. In fact, he could have opened and closed pretty much whenever he liked. Nobody was breathing down his neck. Ray McKinley, his boss, the owner of the business, and of much else besides, prided himself on a hands-off management style. He trusted Zak, which was perhaps only to say that he was well aware of Zak’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility; and since the sign on the door said the opening hours were 10:00 till 7:00, those were the hours Zak kept.

The store was named Utopiates, a name that by no means said it all. It was an oblique reference to an Oscar Wilde quotation: “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” But as Zak would tell anybody who’d listen, there were in fact a great many maps of Utopia, starting with the version in the 1516 edition of Thomas More’s book, as well as any number of later engravings, woodcuts, prints, and so on.

That was the business Utopiates was in: selling cartographic antiques — maps, atlases, globes, navigation charts, the occasional mapmaking instrument, folding pillar compasses, snake-eye dividers. Some were no more than decorative curiosities, but the best of them were rare, exquisite, expensive, perhaps “important,” maybe even “museum quality.” It was a specialist market, perhaps too special by half, it sometimes seemed to Zak.

The store was a small, brown, oaky, two-roomed space with a basement for storage, in a quiet backwater of what was now known as the Arts and Crafts Zone, previously the red-light district, but transformed by population shifts, property development, and marginal gentrification. Neighboring businesses included an outsider-art gallery, a seller of French horns, a designer of one-off wedding dresses. None of these enterprises were conspicuously thriving, and neither was Utopiates.

For the time being, that was okay with Ray McKinley, who regularly made it clear to Zak that the store was the most minor and most trivial of his many, many business ventures. He had a mild enthusiasm for maps and antiques, so he’d bought the store on a whim, when he’d seen how desperate the previous owner was and how much he’d lowered the asking price. The deal included the premises, the stock, and Zak, the store’s single, poorly paid employee; though Zak had no idea how long the current arrangement would last. For now the store remained open, but Ray McKinley insisted the value was in the site not the business. Before long the area’s gentrification would peak, then he’d sell up and make a killing. Exactly where this would leave Zak had never been discussed, but the chances were that he’d be left jobless, and homeless too.

Zak lived above the store, in a small apartment made smaller by the excess stock kept there. This was the stuff that wasn’t remotely collectible or important — mostly things they’d got stuck with while acquiring genuinely desirable items. There were boxes of out-of-date road maps, a job lot of school atlases, a few dozen cheap and cheerful illuminated globes. Zak made the best of living with the store’s leftovers.