“Come in if you like,” he said. “Take a look around.”
He wasn’t exactly sure why he said that. She certainly didn’t look like a potential customer, a fact that was confirmed when she took half a step toward the front door, hesitated, peered into the interior of the store, then gave a mild but distinct shudder.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “The place kind of gives me the creeps.”
As he watched her get on her bike and pedal away, he couldn’t understand quite why he found her remark so hurtful.
* * *
At last Zak closed up the store and went for a walk around the neighborhood. He did a lot of that. The city was a big mess these days: in the process of being simultaneously built and unbuilt, reshaped and made formless. Well, perhaps all cities are like that, but here special conditions applied: big changes were being made in the name of regeneration and renewal, a civic master plan, public and private initiatives, a cultural and commercial renaissance. Yeah right. At the same time, nothing ever quite got finished. Projects were constantly stalling, running out of money or coming up against planning “snags.” Buildings sat half-built, while others sat half-demolished; the whole city seemed to be suffering from completion anxiety.
And so wherever Zak walked he encountered detours, blocked sidewalks, metal plates covering the street, giant trucks making impossible turns. Roads were closed or made one-way. The fabric of the city was being torn wide open, both above- and belowground. One of the more glittering prestige projects involved extending the subway system, creating the new Platinum Line to connect downtown with the slums on the northern edge of the city, a connection that not everybody thought was such a great idea. Work on the subway created occasional deep, subterranean rumblings as new tunnels were blasted through some particularly unyielding section of the earth below — a trembling, an unsettling that Zak sometimes chose to see as symbolic.
As he drifted, he kept trying to make sense of what he’d just seen, unsure whether there was any “sense” to be made. It was puzzling, but hardly one of the world’s great mysteries. Strange women got into strange cars with strange men at any time of the day or night, every day, every night. People had all kinds of weird stuff tattooed on their backs. People lived incomprehensible and desperate lives. It probably meant nothing: things only meant what you decided they meant. He would probably forget all about it in a day or two. But he kept thinking about the woman in the tortoiseshell glasses; he knew he wouldn’t forget about her quite that soon.
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.