The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson

Author:Geoff Nicholson [Nicholson, Geoff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Crime, Mystery & Detective, Hard-Boiled, General
ISBN: 9781429954853
Google: DAPHAgAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00GVQXXIS
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2014-06-02T12:00:00+00:00

24. TREASURE

Marilyn had moved into the driver’s seat in case a quick getaway was needed, but as Zak staggered back to the car, he looked damaged rather than hurried, and he opened the door and got in beside her with surprising delicacy, as if he were a package of fragile goods, already broken but perhaps still partly salvageable. Marilyn looked at his face with fresh, pained alarm.

“What happened?”

“Cactus,” Zak said, through thick, barely mobile lips, though he knew that explained nothing.

“We need to do something about that,” said Marilyn.

“I was thinking … same thing,” he said. It hurt.

Marilyn began to drive, with purpose, though not fast. Zak slumped beside her, the skin of his face zinging under a web of small, sharp, stabbing pains. Below that was a deeper, spreading ache, and deeper still a more general feeling of nausea now that the adrenaline was curdling inside him. As they drove, he explained as best he could, as economically as possible, what he’d seen and done, and what had then been done to him. The only thing he couldn’t tell her was what any of it meant. Marilyn was a good deal less sympathetic than he’d hoped for. He wanted her to be caring, compassionate, concerned for his welfare; instead, she was all business.

“So we now know the guy’s name: Wrobleski,” she said. “And you say he’s a customer of Utopiates.”

“Yes, a collector.”

“Is that why he wants these women? Could it be that simple?”

Zak grunted.

“Okay, maybe that’s not simple at all,” said Marilyn. “And he didn’t recognize you, why? Because you’re a nobody as far as he’s concerned?”

“Right,” said Zak.

“But if he ever comes in the store again, he’ll definitely recognize you. God knows what happens then. And Billy Moore did recognize you, he must have, but for some reason he pretended not to. But it seems he’s just a nobody too, just a guy whose job it is to bring these women to Wrobleski.”

“Sometimes being a nobody has … advantages,” said Zak.

“At least the women seemed to be okay,” said Marilyn. “Well, as okay as you can be when you’ve got tattoos across your back, when you’re being kept in a compound by some blubbering weirdo, and you’re being paraded naked in a conservatory.”

“Yep, these things … comparative,” said Zak.

He looked out of the windshield through one half-closed eye, couldn’t make out where they were.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to my place,” said Marilyn.

“In other circumstances that would make me so happy,” said Zak.

“I think I might still be able to make you happy, Zak. Once I’ve done my stuff with tweezers and rubbing alcohol.”

“Where … you live?”

“I live in a squat,” said Marilyn.

“Yeah?”

“In a hotel. The Telstar. You know it?”

“Everybody knows the Telstar.”

* * *

Like Wrobleski, like many others, Zak was inclined to think of the Telstar as “that place that used to have the revolving restaurant.” More correctly it had had the Canaveral Lounge, a space-themed bar up on the twenty-third floor that had delivered a complete panorama of the city, 360 degrees, every sixty minutes.

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