The City Under the Skin

6. BILLY MOORE’S FIRST JOB

The first one was easy, so easy that Billy Moore couldn’t understand why Wrobleski even needed him. Any idiot could have done it. But maybe that was to be expected. It was a chance for him to prove he was not less than an idiot. He knew that the real tests, the real complications, would come later.

There had been a phone call, and a thick, deep, somehow affected voice that he didn’t recognize said, “I’m calling on behalf of Mr. Wrobleski. He’d like to offer you that job.”

And as predicted Billy Moore didn’t say, “Tell Mr. Wrobleski I’ve found alternative employment.” Instead, he said, “Can’t Wrobleski make his own phone calls?”

And the voice said, “He can, but he doesn’t need to.”

“So who am I talking to now?” said Billy.

“The name’s Akim.”

“Right. Are you the one who washes cars?”

“That’s one of my more minor responsibilities.”

Billy Moore reckoned there was no point telling him he’d done a lousy job on the Cadillac: he must know that already.

“And you have others?”

“Clearly. Which is why I’m calling you. This is to tell you the time and the place where you will locate a certain woman and bring her to Mr. Wrobleski.”

“Okay,” said Billy. “Then I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

Beforehand he wondered if he’d have any trouble recognizing the woman, but that proved to be the least of his concerns. He’d been told she was living rough, and that she had a tattoo similar to the one he’d seen on Laurel, but he never thought that finding her would be so simple. He certainly didn’t imagine she’d be naked in the street. And once he saw the state of her, he wasn’t so happy about having her in his car. The Cadillac may have been beat up on the outside, but the interior was his territory. Those rags of hers were filthy and they’d surely stink. She looked as though she might throw up or bleed or piss on his leather upholstery. He also wondered how eager she’d be to get in the car, whether he’d have to drag her in kicking and screaming, whether he’d have to slap her. But again, it wasn’t a problem. He just maneuvered her toward the car and in she got. Yeah, it was all far too easy.

Once inside, she slumped in the passenger seat, maybe exhausted, maybe a bit mad, and she closed her eyes and seemed quite content, maybe relieved to be anywhere other than the street. She looked as if she was falling asleep, which was fine by Billy. They drove in silence, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Before long the woman opened her eyes, stirred herself, and if she didn’t exactly seem alert, at least she took an interest in her surroundings. She looked around the inside of the car and approved of what she saw.

“Elegant,” she said; then, “Where are we going?”

Nobody had told Billy what he was and wasn’t allowed to say, but his inclination was to be cryptic. “A friend’s place,” he said.

“A friend of yours or a friend of mine?” the woman asked.

“Both, I expect.”

That satisfied her for the moment. She peered out through the side window of the car, her eyes drooping, sliding in and out of focus. Then a new thought occurred to her.

“How am I going to get back?”

Billy didn’t know the answer to that, so he said, “On the bus.”

“I go out in a Cadillac; I come back on the bus.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

“Okay.”

She seemed to find that a perfectly reasonable state of affairs, and then another thought arrived.

“And what’s going to happen to me when I get to your friend’s place?”

Billy had even less idea of the answer to that.

“That’ll be a surprise,” he said.

She let that one float away.

“My name’s Genevieve,” the woman said.

“You don’t look like a Genevieve,” said Billy.

“I used to.”

“Maybe you will again.”

“You think?”

They approached Wrobleski’s compound, and Charlie, the efficient old gatekeeper, opened up the gate as the Cadillac arrived. Wrobleski and Akim were waiting in the courtyard, standing by the SUV, which seemed not to have moved since Billy’s last visit. He stopped his car, left the engine running, then got out and went around to the passenger side to let the woman out. He knew he was behaving like a chauffeur, yet it seemed the decent thing to do, to show the woman some respect. Genevieve got out, hugged the velvet rags to her, and stood swaying gently, moving to some distant music only she could hear.

“Nobody saw you, right?” Wrobleski said to Billy.

It was the kind of question that allowed only one answer.

“Nobody saw me,” Billy lied.

“If somebody sees you, then you’ll have to do something about that.”

“Understood,” said Billy.

Akim took charge of the woman. He put an arm around her shoulders, seeming rather happier doing that than washing cars. He gave her something to drink, and he had something in his hand that looked like a syringe. Billy didn’t ask what was going to happen to her. It wasn’t his business, and he already knew you didn’t ask Wrobleski questions like that.

* * *

As Billy Moore drove away from Wrobleski’s compound, it started to rain: big thick globs of water stippling the Cadillac’s windshield. He waited as long as he could before turning on the wipers and watched the world become marbled. He drove with the window half-open so he could feel the spray on the side of his face, and at last he snapped the wipers into life, blurring, smoothing, eventually clearing his field of vision.

Beside him on the passenger seat was an envelope of money Wrobleski had given him for his work. He decided it was time to open it. He pulled over, stopped the car in front of a shuttered halal supermarket, and unsealed the envelope. There was too much money inside. Billy could find a good use for all the cash that came his way — there was some upgrading to be done on the parking lot, and Carla was always begging for a new cell phone — but this was far more than you’d expect to be paid just for acting as driver to some homeless woman. Wrobleski was being generous, and that was flattering and worrying in equal proportions. Billy tried not to think about what was happening to Genevieve inside Wrobleski’s compound, but he couldn’t quite manage that.

* * *

Carla was awake and waiting for him when he got back. She was in her trailer, at her desk, an image of a lion on the screen of her laptop.

“Have a good night out?” she asked.

“I was working,” said Billy.

“This parking business takes up a lot of time, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does. What have you been doing?”

Carla said, “I’ve been thinking about lions.”

Billy looked at the screen and said, “So I see.”

“Yeah,” said Carla. “And about The Wizard of Oz. They talk about the Cowardly Lion like that’s something out of the ordinary, but it’s not, is it? All lions are cowardly. I mean, when they attack a herd of antelope, they always pick off the stragglers, the weak ones at the back, don’t they? It’s not like they go and fight the biggest, toughest antelope they can find, just to show how brave they are.”

“Are there any big, tough antelopes?” said Billy.

“Some of them have got to be bigger and tougher than others.”

“I suppose so. Is that all you’ve been doing? Thinking about lions?”

“Sure.”

“How’s your skin?”

“The same.”

“Let’s have a look.”

“No.”

“Come on, roll your sleeve up.”

“I don’t want to.”

“What are you trying to hide?”

She wouldn’t admit that she was trying to hide anything, so she pushed up her sleeve to reveal her right arm. At first all Billy could see was a red, inflamed rash.

“You’ve been playing with it.”

“It helps pass the time.”

“You weren’t happy with the skull and crossbones?”

She shrugged. “Change is good,” she said.

When Billy looked more closely, he saw there was a pattern in among the disorder. By constantly pressing and drawing on her skin she’d made a word appear, a livid, blotched, temporary tattoo that read DAD.

“That’s a very weird thing to do,” Billy Moore said. “Kind of sweet and touching, but also very weird.”

Without being asked, Carla pushed up the other sleeve and revealed on her left arm the word MOM.

“Even more touching,” he said, though he was touched in a very different way by this.

“Don’t worry,” Carla said. “They’ll fade eventually.”