They turned a corner and came to an abrupt dead end, a stretch of ragged tunnel blocked solid by debris. The roof had caved in, recently it appeared, a distant fallout from the subway line excavations. Concrete, earth, sections of ancient pipe, miscellaneous chunks of rock and ore had sunk down from above and were now filling the whole tunnel, side to side, top to bottom. Only a monstrous piece of machinery would be able to dig a way through. They would have to go back, pick a different route, start again.
“This is okay,” Zak said, looking desperately, unconvincingly on the bright side. “At least we know they didn’t come this way. We’re narrowing the possibilities.”
“No, we’re not,” said Billy. “The possibilities are pretty much endless. This is fucking hopeless. We don’t know where we are, we don’t know where we’re going.”
“Well,” Zak hazarded, “getting lost is a form of mapping.”
“Form of mapping, my ass,” said Billy.
* * *
Carla Moore and Wrobleski sat together on a bench on the empty subway platform, backs resting against the curved tile wall behind them, commuters waiting for a ghost train that would never come. She was tired and scared, and she would have been tearful if she’d allowed herself to be, but she wasn’t going to show any of that. Wrobleski kept watch along the length of the platform so he could see the entrance arch through which any new arrival would have to come, if they ever did. He told himself he was ready for anything they could throw at him, regardless of who “they” were, but there was no denying (much as he’d have liked to deny it) that he was feeling very weary; he realized he was also feeling very old.
“How’s your hand?” Carla asked.
“It hurts,” said Wrobleski.
“And how’s that gouge in your face?”
“How do you think?”
“And the cactus spines?”
“Give it a rest, kid.”
Something slithered and twitched down in the gloom at the platform’s edge, something with too many legs, something the color of dust and shed skin. Wrobleski had to make quite an effort to stop himself from shooting into the darkness.
“Don’t you have a first-aid kit down here?” asked Carla.
“Never needed one.”
“Anything to eat or drink?”
“I didn’t come down here for a picnic.”
Carla turned and looked at him with what he couldn’t quite believe was sympathy, but she didn’t sound as though she was altogether mocking him when she said, “I’m sorry I broke your map. The one of Iwo Jima or whatever.”
“Are you really? Well, that makes everything all right then, doesn’t it?” he sneered.
“I wasn’t the only one doing the breaking, was I? Why were those women so angry? Why did they want to smash everything?”
“I guess they just hate maps.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” said Carla. “Nobody hates maps. I can see a lot of people don’t care one way or another, but nobody really hates them.”
Was she fucking with him? Or was she just being a kid? He held his silence.
“Why?” she insisted. “Tell me. Don’t treat me like a child.”
“Okay,” said Wrobleski: he could see she had a point. “Those women hate maps because they have maps tattooed all across their backs.”
“Why did they have them done if they hate them?”
“They didn’t choose to have them done. Somebody did it to them.”
“That’s creepy. Did you do it?”
“No, I did not.”
“Then who?”
“I don’t know, but I have one or two ideas.”
“Want to share?”
Wrobleski didn’t answer. Carla had noticed that adults often behaved like this. They thought that if they didn’t answer, then you’d forget you’d asked the question. Carla never forgot.
“So what kind of maps?” she persisted.
“You don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do.”
What did it matter? Maybe he could freak her out a little, scare her into silence, if not submission.
“Murder maps,” he said. “Maps that show where certain murders took place, and where the bodies were stashed. Are stashed.”
“But who did the murders?”
“That’s something else you don’t want to know.”
“It was you, wasn’t it, Mr. Wrobleski?” His silence told her what she needed to know. “Boy, you really are a bad guy.”
He couldn’t understand why he needed to defend himself, but he said, “There are worse than me. Far, far worse.”
* * *
“That’s it,” said Zak. “That’s it. You finally got it, Billy. You finally became a cartographer.”
“You’re out of your mind. I’m trying to save my daughter and you’re fucking around talking about maps.”
“No. The thing you just said about mapping and asses. That’s what it’s all about. Wrobleski only uses one route down here.”
“How can you possibly say that?” said Billy.
“Because I’ve already seen the route he takes. And so have you.”
“That explosion fried your brains,” said Billy.
“And we have a version of the map with us. It’s on you, Marilyn. It’s in the tattoo. It’s in all the tattoos. That’s how the maps work. Above the waist they’re all different. They show different parts of the city, and more than that, each one shows where Wrobleski committed a murder, then the route he followed through the city, and where he brought the bodies, which in every case was to his compound. Then he brought them down here. The parts of the maps below the waist show what he did with the bodies, which is why the tattoos all look kind of the same in that area. He was always taking the bodies to the same single location, belowground, somewhere down here. We were half right about the compass rose marking the spot, but it’s not marking buried treasure, it’s where the bodies are buried. And that’s where he’s going now.”
Billy Moore said, mostly to himself, “And he’s taken my daughter to the place where he dumps the bodies.”
“Does this help us any?” Marilyn asked.
“Oh no,” said Zak. “It doesn’t help us in the least. I’d love to be able to look at your ass and work out the route … but you know, it’s a lousy map by a lousy mapmaker.”
“So you’re saying Wrobleski did the map?”
“I don’t know,” said Zak. “I don’t know if I’m saying that or not.”
* * *
“I think you’re kind of screwed, aren’t you, Mr. Wrobleski?” said Carla. “You’re sweating. I can’t tell if it’s a hot or a cold sweat, but you’re soaked, Mr. Wrobleski.”
“Shut up.”
“You’re just a big cowardly lion.”
“Shut up.”
She didn’t shut up. She said, “Your collection’s ruined. Your home’s on fire. The cops are all over the place. And meanwhile you’re hiding in a hole in the ground with a really annoying kid. And you can’t kill me because I’m your little human shield.”
“Don’t be so sure. Get up. Turn your back to me.”
“You’re going to shoot me in the back?”
“If I feel like it. Loosen your shirt.”
“Why?”
“You heard me.”
“You want me to take it off?”
“Fuck no,” he said. “What do you think I am, some kind of pervert? Just loosen your shirt and lift it up.”
“All right,” Carla said, frightened into compliance, and she gingerly turned her back to him, raised her shoulders a little, slowly untucked the rear of her shirt, hoisted it up as best she could. Goose bumps bubbled on her skin. A smell of rotting vegetables drifted along the platform. Wrobleski got to work. She could feel something pressing into her back, though she didn’t know what.