The City Under the Skin

9. SCARE

Zak Webster got on with his life. What else was there to do? The events of the other night had been pretty strange, but he found it impossible to calibrate the degree of strangeness. Looked at from one perspective, it all seemed random enough, just big-city weirdness, but from another, there was something less than random about it, something ominously specific that seemed to involve him and Utopiates.

A couple of days passed. Zak did his job, sold a set of mid-priced eighteenth-century maps of Peru, talked to Ray McKinley on the phone, said nothing about the tattooed woman. He wouldn’t have known what to say, and why would Ray even have been interested? He got through the working hours, and the genuinely random universe seemed to be asserting itself. That was a good thing, right? And then there was a counter assertion.

It was another long, restless evening, and again it was nearly time to close the store, but then Zak glanced out the window and saw the battered metallic-blue Cadillac parked a short distance away. His heart sank. He felt disappointed, anxious, and somehow inexplicably angry. He looked up and down the street, thinking perhaps history was about to repeat itself, that perhaps some other tattooed woman was out there, just waiting to strip naked and show herself, but no, this time the street was thoroughly empty.

Zak watched as the driver got out of the Cadillac, strutted along the sidewalk, looked very briefly in the window of Utopiates, then ambled inside. Zak gave him a nod of tentative welcome, but initially the guy ignored both Zak and the contents of the store. He moved slowly and purposefully around the space, briefly entering the back room, as though staking it out, looking for exits or trapdoors or hidden gunmen. Zak suspected he might be in some trouble. Absurdly, he found himself saying, “Can I help you?”

The visitor didn’t reply at first, then asked, “How’s business?”

Billy Moore sounded genuinely interested, which only alarmed Zak even more.

“It could be better,” Zak said truthfully.

“Always,” Billy said. “Business could always be better.”

He looked at Zak with what might possibly have been sympathy, though Zak suspected it might equally well be contempt. This didn’t look like a man who’d have much respect for someone who worked in retail.

“Who buys this kind of shit?” Billy asked.

“People who like this kind of shit,” said Zak, with just a hint of defiance in his voice.

Billy Moore nodded slowly, considering the answer, and when it had sunk in, he said, “You on your own here?”

Zak wanted to say no, no, there were a couple of samurai lurking in the basement, just dying to come up and start trouble, or finish it, but he said, “For now I am, yes.”

“Good,” said Billy Moore. “I’ve got a message for you.”

“Who are you?” Zak asked.

“It doesn’t matter. And why would I tell you anyway? The message is just this: the things you saw the other night, the woman, the tattoos, the Caddy, me…”

“Yes?”

“You didn’t see them.”

“Oh, okay,” said Zak. “I think I get the message.”

“Well, there’s the problem. It’s not just a verbal message. I’m here to scare you. Are you scared yet?”

“I’m anxious,” Zak said.

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Okay, then, let’s say that I’m scared,” said Zak, but there was a certain insolence in the way he said it, suggesting that he might not scare so easily after all.

“That’s not enough. I have to make sure.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“I’m going to hurt you. It’s nothing personal.”

“Couldn’t you just hurt my feelings?”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“A little,” Zak said. “Trying to, you know, break the tension.”

“If you’re trying to be funny, then you’re not nearly scared enough, are you?”

Zak could see he had a point. “What does ‘hurting’ mean exactly?” he said.

“Maybe break something.”

“That would definitely hurt,” Zak said.

“Something in the face maybe,” Billy suggested. “Nose, teeth, jaw, whatever…”

Zak conducted a brief mental inventory of his face. Every part of it seemed infinitely breakable, as fragile and brittle as any of the antique maps and globes that were on sale in the store.

He said, “I really didn’t see anything. And even if I did, I didn’t know what I was seeing. And I definitely wouldn’t tell anybody. I’ve nothing to tell. I really am quite scared.”

“You’re getting there.”

“No, I’m right there. You can leave it at that.” Zak was trying to sound resolute, reasonable, and robust, but he wondered if he might have done better to sound pathetic. He added, “You don’t have to hurt me. You’ve delivered your message. I’ll do what you say. Now you can just fuck off.”

Zak was a little surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth, though not nearly as surprised as Billy Moore. They both knew it was absolutely the wrong thing to say.

“Are you telling me to fuck off?” Billy said.

“Only metaphorically,” Zak replied, and then he wished he hadn’t said that either.

Billy Moore positioned himself between Zak and the front door of Utopiates. There’d be no chance for Zak to escape in that direction, and there was nothing to be gained by running into the back room: Billy had already established that was a dead end. Lacking other options, Zak squared himself up. He’d been in very few fights in his life and, given the choice, would never have been in any whatsoever. Still, he wasn’t going to beg or plead; and he was certainly going to do his best to fight back.

He didn’t get the chance. Billy Moore zipped up his leather jacket, a sign that he meant business. He took half a step forward and landed a precise, effortless punch in the core of Zak’s body, as though his navel were a bull’s eye. So, not the face after all, Zak thought, but that was no consolation. He was amazed by the pain, as though a battering ram had penetrated his body. Fighting back suddenly didn’t seem to be a possibility. His legs lost their stability. The air was too thin, his lungs too feeble. He started to fall and another blow hammered him in the eye before he’d hit the floor.

Once there, Zak clutched himself and again tried to breathe, but he seemed to have lost the knack. Billy Moore stood over him, nicely positioned to give him a good kicking, a process he began by slamming his foot into Zak’s left kidney. Zak squirmed, his arms and legs twitched, motor coordination was a thing of the past.

Another kick landed. From what had been said, Zak didn’t believe this man had actually come to kill him, but he suspected that guys like this often made mistakes; they got carried away, enjoyed their work a little too much. Then, dimly, from very far away, Zak heard the front door open and close. Somebody had come into the store, and then a woman’s voice that sounded only vaguely familiar was issuing commands—“Stop that. Stop that right now. Leave him alone. Stop kicking him”—and to Zak’s great surprise he was no longer being kicked.

The female voice persisted. Zak recognized it now as belonging to the woman with the tortoiseshell glasses. She was angry and outraged, or was at least pretending to be. Either way it was impressive. From his quasi-fetal position, Zak couldn’t tell exactly what was going on above him, but he sensed that his assailant was moving away.

“Get out of here. Go on,” the woman shouted. “And shame on you.”

Billy Moore was calm, and he didn’t seem remotely ashamed. He straightened himself, ran a hand through his hair, though, in fact, his assault on Zak had left him entirely unruffled. It seemed he was about to leave the store, just as he had been told to do, but the woman wasn’t finished with him yet.

“And that poor creature from the other night,” she demanded, “the one you put in your car, where is she now? What have you done with her?”

Zak was certain these questions would not be answered, and that even asking them was a very high-risk activity.

“It’s none of your business, is it,” said Billy Moore, flatly.

She marched up to him. She was carrying a backpack and she swung it in a wide, shallow, urgent arc, slamming it into the side of Billy Moore’s head. He flinched, surprised but certainly not hurt: not even conspicuously angry. He looked at her sadly.

“You know,” he said, “there are some guys who pride themselves on never hitting a woman. I’m not one of them.”

He delivered a single punch, not nearly as hard as either of the ones he’d landed on Zak — something more delicate, something for the ladies, but not a bitch slap either, more of a jab, a straight shot with a closed fist that landed neatly on the woman’s left eye. Her head snapped back, her spectacles went flying, and she went down too, ending up on the floor, not far away from Zak. Billy Moore showed just a modicum of concern as he watched her fall, but once he was satisfied that she hadn’t cracked her skull open, that she was down but not completely out, he was content to unzip his jacket and leave. He’d driven away before either of his victims was able even to contemplate getting up from the floor.