The City Under the Skin

16. WHAT HAPPENED AT THE LOFT

Billy Moore was on the morning run, driving his daughter to school, when the second phone call came from Akim. “Call me back in fifteen minutes,” he said into the phone, and put it away.

“Who was that?” Carla asked.

“One of my parking associates,” said Billy. “I didn’t want you to have to listen to all that boring business stuff.”

“Are you keeping a secret?”

“Yeah right,” said Billy. “The parking business is full of classified information. Hey, when are we going to go buy me that suit?”

“You’re changing the subject.”

“You noticed. So when?”

“This weekend — if you don’t chicken out.”

“Are you calling me chicken?”

“Of course not — so long as you buy that suit.”

“You know, for a twelve-year-old, you’re pretty much manipulating at an adult level.”

“Oh, Dad, you say the sweetest things.”

He delivered her to school. He was pleased that he and his Cadillac looked so completely out of place amid the clean, safe, caring parents and their clean, safe, caring cars: not that Billy wasn’t caring. In fact, he reckoned he cared a hell of a lot more than most of these smug civilians. And as he drove away, with just the slightest hint of tire squeal, his phone rang again.

Akim said, “I don’t like being told to call back.”

“You know, I didn’t think you would,” said Billy.

“Your second job,” said Akim. “I’ve made you an appointment.”

“What kind of appointment?”

“To see a property. One o’clock. Banham Towers. There’ll be a realtor there to show you a waterfront loft. She’ll be expecting you. Her name’s Isabel Sibrian. She’s the one, even if she doesn’t look like it. She’s been told your name’s Smith.”

“Very inventive,” said Billy.

Akim ignored that. “She may be a more difficult customer than the last one. But you’ll deal with it. You’ll bring her here.”

“That’s what I’ll do, is it?”

“I believe so.”

“And what if I say, ‘I’m going to have to turn down Mr. Wrobleski’s kind offer’?”

“It’s already too late for that. Clear?”

Billy Moore knew better than to challenge Wrobleski, but he had no such inhibitions with Akim.

“Some of it’s clear, some of it isn’t clear at all.”

An impatient grunt indicated that Akim didn’t have much interest in clarifying things for Billy’s benefit, but Billy wasn’t deterred.

“You see,” Billy said, “I get it that Wrobleski is way too grand to run around picking up these tattooed women.”

“Very perceptive,” said Akim.

“But what I don’t get is why he needs me to do it. Why doesn’t he have you pick them up for him, since you seem to know where they are?”

An insulted silence rippled through the phone and Billy thought Akim might hang up on him, but he didn’t. Perhaps he was the one who needed to get things clear.

“Dragging women into cars,” said Akim, “isn’t really my style.”

It sounded like the only answer Billy was going to get.

“Let’s hope your style doesn’t go out of fashion, Akim,” he said.

Billy got the address of Banham Towers, one he vaguely recognized as part of an ongoing dockland development, a cluster of former bonded warehouses that were being converted into luxury apartments that people with real money and a taste for real luxury wouldn’t have used to kennel their dogs.

He drove out there a little before one. It was evidently some way from complete or habitable, yet there was no construction work going on, no activity whatsoever. There was just one car in the parking lot: the realtor’s, he assumed. He made his way inside the building and followed some freshly printed signs up to the show apartment on the second floor.

The woman waiting for him was tall, fleshy, with an artful tangle of dense, ink-black hair. She looked businesslike, though glamorous in a way, and overdressed for the occasion, as though she might be going to a gala afterward. There was a scent of lilacs about her, and her heels clacked on the loft’s hardwood floor. Hollow light flooded the room, picked out some long, low, cut-rate furniture, and the angular, anonymous art on the walls. Yes, there was a cheapness to it, and a brittle fakery, but there was certainly a lot more room to stretch yourself here than in a trailer.

“Miss Sibrian,” said Billy.

“Mr. Smith,” she said.

“I thought a loft would be on the top floor,” said Billy.

She smiled unconvincingly. Maybe she’d heard that one before. She was some way from being friendly, and Billy reckoned she must have made up her mind about him the moment she saw him, realized he wasn’t a serious buyer, which of course was perfectly accurate. Even so, she went through the motions, showed him a thick, intensely colored, embossed brochure demonstrating the virtues of the place, which she then spelled out, talking about the apartment’s many advantages, the “flow” from kitchen to living room to balcony, the quality of the soundproofing, the neighborhood, a little frayed at the edges right now but changing; a mall was planned, wine bars were opening, there was a fitness center, and, of course, the new Platinum Line subway would run close by. But her heart wasn’t in it.

“I can see you’re not impressed,” she said, without any particular disappointment. “That’s okay. If the place isn’t right, it isn’t right. We can work together. What are you really looking for?”

Billy could see it might help to play along.

“I guess I’m looking for something more … genuinely industrial.”

“Yes? There’s a new development in the old steel mill a couple of miles up the road. Can’t get much more industrial than that. I can take you there now if you like.”

“Okay, but we go in my car. I don’t like riding bitch.”

She laughed, not sure if he was joking.

“It’s a little phobia of mine,” he said. “Call me crazy. I don’t like being driven by other people. Indulge me. I’ll bring you right back.”

It seemed she was prepared to indulge him. Maybe it had something to do with his smile, and after all, a potential sale was a potential sale.

As she was locking up the show loft, Billy said, “Do you always work alone?”

“Pretty much,” she said. “Realtors don’t usually hunt in packs.”

“Don’t you ever worry about what might happen?”

She gave him a frank, questioning look.

“What do you think might happen?” she asked.

Billy gifted her his smile again.

“Anything might happen,” he said.

“Are you flirting with me, Mr. Smith?”

“Sure. It’s what I do.”

They took the elevator down to ground level, went out to the parking lot. Isabel Sibrian eyed the Cadillac and was not impressed. She hesitated, took half a step toward her own car.

“What?” said Billy. “My car’s not good enough for you?”

“It’s not that.”

“So, we’ll do it now, right?” he said. “You can trust me. I’m a good guy. I have my own business. I have a daughter.”

“Well, I…”

She didn’t get in with any enthusiasm, but she got in. Billy slid into the driver’s seat, locked the doors, but left the windows open: the smell of lilacs was getting to him. He lurched the car into life, and Isabel Sibrian gave him some overdetailed directions to get to the steel mill development. He tried to look as though he were listening.

“You were right,” Billy said as they drove away. “I do think that apartment’s a piece of expensive crap.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, and I think you know it too.”

“We all have to make a living.”

“That’s so true.”

They drove for a while in silence. She looked out of the side window. They were passing a cemetery, a fire-damaged mall, some freshly built big-box stores. He was no longer following her directions. She hadn’t a clue where they were. She suddenly got very nervous.

“Why don’t you stop,” she said, as calmly as she could. “Let me out here and now if you’re not interested.”

“I am interested. But I’m not here because of any apartment. I’m here because of the tattoos.”

The woman’s fear arrived like a rolling wave.

“What tattoos would those be?” she said with forced, exaggerated calm.

“The ones on your back.”

He wondered if she’d deny it. He even wondered if he, or Akim, might have got the wrong woman. But no.

“How do you know about them?” she said.

“Why? Is it a secret?”

“From most people, yes. What do you know?” she demanded. The fear hadn’t completely blotted out her essential curiosity.

“Less than you do, that’s for sure.”

“Do you know who did it to me?”

“No,” said Billy. “I kind of want to know. But then again, I kind of don’t. In any case, I’m here to take you to somebody who knows a lot more than I do.”

“You’re really freaking me out here, you know.”

“I’m not trying to, but it’s all the same whether you’re freaked out or not.”

“Stop the car. Stop the car. Please.”

“Please is nice, but it won’t do it.”

He saw her hand snake into her purse and she took hold of her cell phone.

“You know that’s not going to work either,” said Billy.

He stopped the car for a second, grabbed her hand, peeled her fingers from the phone, and tossed it out the side window before driving on.

“Why don’t we try again?” she said. “Why don’t you tell me what you want? Is it money? Is it sex? Everything’s negotiable.”

“Don’t insult me,” Billy said. “I’m not some fucking … opportunist. I don’t want money or sex from you, right? I just want you to come quietly. And look, if I were really a bad guy, I’d have walked in there, knocked you unconscious, and then carried you out to the car.”

She gave him a look of finely regulated distaste and condescension, and then her hand was in her purse again, grabbing something small, black, and cylindrical: a pepper spray.

“Now that’s just annoying,” Billy said, and he slammed on the brakes again.

She lurched forward, her black hair falling around her face like a hood. He hit her once, good and hard so she understood the situation, then took the pepper spray and blasted a jet of the stuff into her face. She fell back in the seat, coughing, retching, and he popped her again, just to be sure. He almost felt justified.

“There’s more where that came from if you don’t behave yourself,” he said, hating the sound of his own voice.

She whimpered indignantly and behaved herself. Billy delivered her to Wrobleski’s compound, received the envelope of money; this time he didn’t even bother to see how much was in it. It would again be too much, maybe even more than before. He knew he hadn’t earned it. He looked at his watch. He was in good time to pick up Carla from school. He hoped she wouldn’t notice the scent of artificial lilacs or the sting of pepper.

* * *

He thought he was doing well. Carla smelled nothing, but then she pulled something out from under the front passenger seat, an embossed real estate brochure. Billy hadn’t noticed it; Isabel Sibrian must have put it there, and he knew that was bad, he was supposed to be aware of these things. Carla turned the few heavy pages, looked at them in deep fascination.

“Wow, we really are moving up in the world,” she said.

“We’re not moving there, that’s for sure,” said Billy.

“No? Why not?”

Billy could think of a lot of reasons, all of them plausible, but he wasn’t sure which one would satisfy Carla.

“I didn’t like the realtor,” he said at last.

“Why not?”

“Just a feeling.”

“What? She didn’t treat you right? She didn’t show enough respect?”

Billy wished he’d never started this. “Sure, something like that.”

“You see, Dad,” Carla said triumphantly, “if only you’d been wearing a suit…”