The City Under the Skin Read Online Free PDF

It’s all the same, really.”
    Wrobleski fell into silence.
    â€œSo what happens next?”
    â€œYou 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?”
    â€œMoney?” said Billy.
    â€œMoney won’t be a problem,” said Wrobleski.
    â€œAnd why me?” Billy said.
    Wrobleski didn’t quite have an answer to that.
    â€œMaybe 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?”
    â€œSure,” 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.
    â€œNice ride, I know,” said Wrobleski. “I’ve got a lot of nice things. I was serious about showing you my map collection sometime.”
    â€œGreat,” 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.

 
    5. ZAK WEBSTER PUTS HIMSELF ON THE MAP
    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