The City Under the Skin

18. SWING

“You’ve brought me to a high place,” said Wrobleski. “Again.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Ray McKinley asked.

They were on a rooftop, twenty-one stories high, on the edge of Chinatown, at an underpopulated nighttime golf range. On three sides the parapet of the roof supported green netting that towered and billowed like perforated sails. Spotlights trained down from a great height, turning the darkness hazy and bordering it with white velvet flare.

“I fucking hate golf,” said Wrobleski. “I hate the people who play it, people who watch it, everything about it.”

He glanced at the nearest pair of golfers, a young Asian couple, three tees over, driving balls haphazardly into the netting. They were too far away to hear what he said. He thought that was a shame.

“Maybe it’ll grow on you,” said McKinley.

“If it grows on me, I’ll hack it off.”

McKinley feigned amusement. Wrobleski did not.

“You hit. I’ll watch,” said Wrobleski.

The tees were automatic: balls popped up from the ground at the golfer’s feet, and one appeared now in front of McKinley. He concentrated, addressed the ball, did an exaggerated wiggle with his ass, drew back the club, swung, hit the ball effortlessly, straight, clean, if perhaps with more height than length. Even so, he looked quietly satisfied.

“I hear you’ve been buying real estate,” he said.

“It’s not a secret. Looks like easy money to me. I see you buying and selling property. I think, How hard can it be?”

McKinley didn’t take the bait. He said, “Maybe you should sell that compound of yours. Turn it into quirky luxury apartments.”

“No.”

“Too many memories, eh?” Ray said, smirking. “Look, are you all right? What is it? Money troubles? Women troubles? Whatever it is, you can talk to me about it.”

“No, I can’t. And I don’t want to.”

“Okay then, just enjoy the view,” Ray McKinley said. “I like it here. You can see half the city from here. Don’t you like it?”

“I’d like it better without the nets and the lights and the dicks playing golf.”

“You have to see past all that stuff,” said McKinley. “That’s what I do. I look beyond. I see possibilities.”

“Yeah, Ray, you’re king of all you survey.”

“No need to be a jerk about it.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said Wrobleski, continuing to be a jerk. “You can see the tower of the Telstar Hotel from here, can’t you? You still own a piece of that?”

“You know I do. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“I hear the mayor’s plans are going pretty well.”

“Plans are made to be changed.”

They looked out across the city, to the dimmed stillness of the empty Telstar. There were one or two lights dotted randomly amid the grid of its windows: squatters. Ray lofted another ball, harder, straighter, even higher.

“Don’t tell me,” said Wrobleski, “you just want to talk.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“It’s a conversation we’ve already had,” said Wrobleski. “You’re going to ask me to do a job I’ve already told you I’m not going to do.”

“I think you should be allowed to change your mind.”

“There are jobs and there are jobs. This one is just suicide.”

“What? You’re scared? The old Wrobleski wouldn’t have scared so easily.”

“What’s wrong with being scared?” said Wrobleski. “Only an idiot’s never scared. And you can’t just rub out the mayor because she’s in the way of one of your development deals.”

“Oh, I think you can,” said McKinley. “The mayor goes. Her little restoration plan collapses. The Telstar gets demolished. I make a killing.”

“And I’m the one who does the killing.”

“Sure. It’s what you do, isn’t it?”

Wrobleski didn’t respond, but he didn’t deny it.

“Look,” said McKinley, “I’m not asking you to enjoy it. But I can’t see any other way. I’ve tried reasoning with her. I’ve tried bribing her. You got rid of the other old dude for me. That ought to have got her attention, made her rethink her position. But it didn’t. So what am I supposed to do?”

A news helicopter, black and white, insectlike, hacked through the air not so far above their heads. There was a man in the passenger seat, leaning out, pointing a video camera down at them. McKinley raised thumb and index finger and mimed shooting down the chopper.

“The mayor has people,” said Wrobleski. “She’s never alone. She has armed security. She has cameras on her twenty-four hours a day.”

“What is it?” Ray asked. “Are you trying to go straight, Wrobleski?”

“No.”

“Or maybe you’re squeamish about women.”

Wrobleski didn’t answer.

“Really? Is that it? Well, aren’t you the gentleman assassin?”

At last Wrobleski picked up one of the golf clubs McKinley had rented for him. He held it like an ax. McKinley addressed the new ball that had appeared before him. He swung, the ball flew away, fast, straight, and low this time.

“Why don’t you pay one of your other goons to get rid of the mayor for you?”

“You’re the only goon I can trust,” said Ray. “I want to keep it neat. I want to keep it in-house.”

“You could always do it yourself.”

“What do you think I am?”

“I know what you are,” said Wrobleski.

“You sure?”

Wrobleski at last stepped up to a place at the tee. A ball was there waiting. He wound himself up, took an almighty swing, as though he was trying to burst the netting, send the ball far across the city, to the outskirts, to the empty brown land beyond. The ball sliced fiercely, viciously off to the right, smacked the young Asian man standing three tees away, hit him clean and hard in the right shin. He fell down as though he’d been shot. Wrobleski strolled across, stood over him, and offered a thoroughly insincere apology.

“You have to keep your head down and your elbows in,” said McKinley, unhelpfully.