The City Under the Skin Read Online Free PDF Page A

mess, done hastily and ham-fistedly.
    â€œWhat do you make of that?” Wrobleski asked.
    â€œWhat am I supposed to make of it?” said Billy.
    â€œWhat if I told you it was a map?”
    â€œThen I guess I’d have to believe you.”
    Billy looked again. If these markings really constituted a map, it was more inscrutable than any of the others he’d seen elsewhere in the building.
    â€œConfusing, yeah?” said Wrobleski.
    Billy nodded in agreement.
    â€œIt confuses me too,” said Wrobleski. “And I don’t like to be confused.”
    There was a fat golden barrel cactus, the size of a basketball, in a black enameled planter positioned next to the sofa. Wrobleski absentmindedly pressed his index finger against one of the hooked spikes, as if he were trying to draw his own blood.
    â€œKnowledge is power, right?” Wrobleski said. “But there are two kinds of power, as I see it. There’s one kind where you can make other people do what you want. That’s what most civilians think of as power. But there’s another kind, where nobody can make you do anything you don’t want to do. That’s better, if you ask me. But right now I haven’t got either.”
    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.
    â€œI’ve got a job for you, Billy,” Wrobleski said. “Or for someone like you.”
    â€œWhat’s the job?” Billy asked.
    Wrobleski offered a deep sigh as his first attempt at a job description.
    â€œIt 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?”
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œIt sounds too easy.”
    â€œYeah, doesn’t it?”
    â€œWill these women want to come?”
    â€œNot 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.
    â€œIs something bad going to happen to these women?” Billy asked.
    â€œSomething bad has already happened to these women.”
    Billy was mystified. He knew he was supposed to be mystified.
    â€œLook,” 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.
    â€œI hear you’re not a complete maniac, Billy, and neither am I, despite what you might have heard. Trust me. Or don’t.