The Skin Collector (22 page)

Provence
²
was crowded.

As soon as the
Times
had bestowed its stars, this hole-in-the-wall in Hell’s Kitchen had been inundated with folks desperate to cram into the loud, frantic rooms and to sample dishes that were a fusion of two southern cuisines, American and French.

Fried chicken with capers and ratatouille.

Les escargots
avec
grits.

Improbable. But the dish works …

Straddled
by a warehouse to the south and a chic steel-and-glass office building to the north, the restaurant was housed in a structure typical of those on the west side of Midtown: a century old, angled floors that snapped and creaked underfoot, and ceilings of hammered tin. Low archways led from one cramped dining room to the next and the walls were sandblasted brick, which did nothing to dim the din.

Lighting was low, courtesy of yellow bulbs in what seemed to be lamp fixtures as old as the structure itself (though they’d come not from a Victorian-era ironworks on the Hudson but a factory outside Seoul).

At one of the tables in the back, the conversation ricocheted like an air-hockey puck.

‘He doesn’t have a chance. It’s ridiculous.’

‘Did you hear about his girlfriend?’

‘She’s not his girlfriend.’

‘She
is
his girlfriend, it was on Facebook.’

‘Anyway I don’t even think she’s a girl.’

‘Ooo. That’s sweet.’

‘When the press finds out, he’s toast. Let’s get another bottle. The Chablis.’

Samantha Levine listened to her companions’ banter but not with her full attention. For one thing, she wasn’t much concerned about local politics. The candidate they were speaking of probably wouldn’t win
the next election but not because of girlfriends who might or might not pass the physical but because he was bland and petty. You needed the quality of
more
to be mayor of the city of New York.

You needed that
je ne sais quoi
, y’all.

Apart from that, though, Samantha’s thoughts kept returning to her job. Major trouble lately. She’d worked late – close to eight p.m., a half hour ago – then hurried
here from her office in the glitzy building next door to join her friends. She tried a memory dump of the concerns she’d lugged with her but in the high-tech world you couldn’t really escape from the puzzle and problems you faced every day. Sure, there were advantages: You could wear – as she did now – jeans and sweaters (tank tops in the summer), you made six figures, you could be inked or
studded, you could work flex hours, you could bring a pillow couch to your office and use that for your desk.

Only you had to produce.

And be one step ahead of the competition.

And, fuck, there was a lot of competition out there.

The capital-I Internet. What a place. So much money, so many chances for breathtaking success. And for bottomless fuck-ups.

The thirty-two-year-old, with a voluptuous
figure, ornery brown and purple hair and big doey Japanese anime dark eyes, sipped more white wine and tried to focus past a particularly difficult meeting with her boss not long ago, a meeting that had floated in her thoughts ever since.

Put. It. Away.

Finally, she managed to. Spearing and eating a wedge of fried green tomato topped with ground anchovies, she turned her attention back to her
friends. Smiling, all of them (except Text Girl), as Raoul – her roommate, yes, just a roommate – was telling a story about her. He was an assistant to a fashion photog who shot for
Vogue
-wannabe mags, all online. The slim, bearded boss had come to pick up Raoul in the apartment they shared in Chelsea and he’d looked over Samantha’s T-shirt and PJ bottoms, sprouting hair tamed with mismatched
rubber bands and very, very serious glasses. ‘Hmmmm. Can I shoot you?’

‘Oh, you’re the one got the contract for the Geek Girl calendar?’ Samantha had offered. Raoul now gave his delivery a little extra oomph and the table roared.

This was a good group. Raoul and James – his best bud – and Louise from Samantha’s office and Some Other Woman, who’d arrived on James’s arm. Was her name Katrina or
Katharine or Karina? Jamie’s blonde of the week. Samantha had dubbed her Text Girl.

The men continued their discussion of politics, as if they had money on the outcome of the election, Louise was now trying to discuss something serious with Samantha and the K woman texted some more.

‘Be back,’ Samantha said.

She rose and started along the antique floor, which was – after the three glasses of
anti-stress wine – not as even as it had been when she’d arrived. Easy, girl. You can drink-fall in the Hamptons, you can drink-fall in Cape May. You don’t drink-fall in Manhattan.

Two flirts from the tiny bar. She ignored them, though she ignored one less stridently than the other. It was the fellow sitting by himself at the end. He was a slim guy, pale – only-goes-out-at-night kind of skin.
Painter or sculptor or some other artist, she guessed. Handsome, though there might be a weak-chin factor if he looked down. Piercing eyes. They offered one of
those
glances. Samantha called them ‘laps’, as in a dog lapping up food.

She got a chill. Because the look went on a little too long and then got scary.

He was undressing her, looking over her body.

She regretted tapping his eyes with
hers. And continued quickly to the most challenging route the restaurant offered: the narrow stairway down to the restrooms in the basement.

Clunk, clunk …

She made it.

Dark and quiet down here, clean, which had surprised her the first time she’d come to the place. The people who’d renovated had spent plenty of time making the dining rooms rough-edged rustic (yeah, we get it: French and American
countryside
), but the bathrooms were pure SoHo. Slate, recessed lighting, ornamental grasses for decoration. Mapplethorpe on the walls but nothing too weird. No whips, no butts.

Samantha walked to the
W
, tried the door.

Locked. She grimaced. Provence
²
wasn’t big but no fucking restaurant in the world should have a single-occupancy women’s room. Were the owners crazy?

Creaks overhead, from footsteps
on the sprung wood flooring. Muted voices.

Thinking of the man at the bar.

What
was
I doing, looking back at him like that? Jesus. Be a little smarter. Okay? Why flirt? You’ve got Elliott from work. He isn’t a dream boy but he’s decent and dependable and watches PBS. Next time he asks, say yes. He has those sweet eyes and he’s probably even pretty decent in bed.

Come on, I’ve gotta pee. One
damn restroom?

Then, with a different pitch of creak, footsteps were coming down the stairs.

Clunk, clunk …

Samantha’s heart thudded. She knew it was the flirter, the dangerous one.

She saw boots appearing on the steps. Men’s ankle boots. Out of the ’70s. Weird.

Her head swiveled. She was at the far end of the corridor. Nowhere to go from here. No exits. What do I do if he rushes me? The
decibel level in the restaurant itself was piercing; nobody would hear. I left my cell phone upstairs, I –

Then: Relax. You’re not alone. There was the bimb in the restroom. She’d hear a scream.

Besides, nobody, however horny, would risk a rape in a restaurant corridor.

More likely it would be just an Awkward Incident. The slim guy coming on too strong, pushing the flirt, growing angry, but
ultimately backing off. How many dozens of times had that happened? The worst injury would be branding her a cocktease.

Which was what happened when women glanced at a guy. Different rules. When men did the glancing, oh, it was all right. With men, oh, that’s what they do.

Would things ever change?

But then: What if he was a real psycho? With a knife? A slasher. The man’s piercing eyes had
suggested maybe he was. And there was that murder just the other day – some girl in SoHo killed in the basement.

Just like here. Hell, I’ll hold it—

Then Samantha barked a laugh.

The boot-wearer appeared. A fat old guy in a suit and string tie. A tourist from Dallas or Houston. He glanced at her once, nodded a vague greeting and walked into the men’s room.

Then she was turning back to the
door of the
W
.

Come on, honey. Jesus. You got your slutty makeup on just right? Or are you puking up your fourth Cosmo? Samantha gripped the knob again to remind the inconsiderate occupant that there was a queue.

The handle turned.

Hell, she thought. It’d been unlocked all along. She’d probably turned it the wrong way a moment ago.

How stupid can you be? She pushed inside and swept the light
on, letting the door swing shut.

And saw the man standing behind it. He wore coveralls and a stocking cap. In a flash he locked the door.

Oh, Jesusjesusjesus …

His face was burned! No, distorted, mushed under a latex hood, transparent but yellow. And rubber gloves, the same color, on his hands. On his left arm, a sliver of a red tattoo was visible between the end of the glove and the start
of the sleeve. An insect, with pincers, spiny legs, but human eyes.

‘Ahhhh, no, no, no …’

She spun about fast, grabbing at the door, but he got to her first, arm around her chest. And she felt a sharp pain as he punched her neck.

Kicking, starting to scream, but he clapped a thick cloth over her mouth. The sounds were absorbed.

And then she noticed a small door across from the toilet, two
by three feet or so, open onto a blackness – a tunnel or passage to an even deeper basement, below the restaurant.

‘Please!’ she muttered but the word was swallowed by the gag.

Growing limp, growing tired. Hardly afraid anymore. And she realized: the neck punch. He’d injected her with something. Before sleep took her completely Samantha felt herself being eased to the floor then dragged across
it, closer and closer to the black doorway.

She sensed warmth, felt the trickle down her leg – fear and the lack of control as whatever drug he’d stuck her with took effect.

‘No,’ she whispered.

And heard a voice in her ear. ‘Yes.’ The word was drawn out for a very long time, as if it weren’t the assailant who was speaking but the insect on his arm, hissing, hissing, hissing.

The Rule of Skin …

As he labored away on his new victim’s very nice belly with the American Eagle, Billy reflected on his fascination with the substance, God’s own canvas.

Skin.

It was Billy’s canvas too and he’d become as fixated on it as the Bone Collector had been on the skeletal system of the body – which Billy had found interesting reading in
Serial Cities
. He appreciated the
Bone Collector’s obsession but frankly he couldn’t understand his fascination with bones. Skin was far and away the more revealing aspect of the human body. Far more central. More important.

What insights did bones give? Nothing. Not like skin.

Of the integumentary organs, which protect the body, skin is the most evolved, far more than hooves, nails, scales, feathers, and the clever, creepy
arthropod exoskeletons. In mammals, skin is the largest organ. Even if organs and vessels might be maintained by some alternative Dr Seuss contraption, skin does so much more. It prevents infection and is an early warning system against and protection from excessive cold and heat, from disease or invasion, from ticks to teeth to clubs and, under certain circumstances, even spears and bullets. Skin
retains that vitally precious substance, water. It absorbs the light we need and even manufactures vitamin D. How about that?

Skin.

Delicate or tough as, yes, leather. (Around the eyes it’s only a half millimeter thick; on the soles of the feet, five millimeters.)

The epidermis is the top layer, the beige or black or brown sheath we can see, and the dermis, into which a tattoo machine’s needles
must penetrate, is below. Skin is a master at regeneration, which means that the most beautiful tattoo in the world will vanish if the needles don’t go deep enough, which would be like painting the Mona Lisa on sand.

But these basic facts about skin, as interesting as they were to Billy Haven, didn’t touch on its true value. Skin reveals, skin explains. Wrinkles report age and childbearing, calluses
hint at vocation and hobby, color suggests health. And then there’s pigmentation. A whole other story.

Now Billy Haven sat back and surveyed his work on the parchment of his victim’s skin. Yes, good.

A Billy Mod …

The watch on his right wrist hummed. Five seconds later the second watch, in his pocket, did so too. Sort of a snooze alarm, prescribed by the Modification Commandments.

And not
a bad idea. Like most artists, Billy tended to get caught up in his work.

He rose and, with illumination provided by the halogen headlamp strapped to his forehead, walked around the dim space underneath Provence
²
.

This area was an octagonal chamber, about thirty feet across. Three arches led to three darkened tunnels. In a different century, Billy had learned in research, these corridors had
been used to direct cattle to two different underground abattoirs here on the West Side of Manhattan.

Healthy cows were directed to one doorway, sickly to another. Both were slaughtered for meat but the tainted ones were sold locally to the poor in Hell’s Kitchen or shipped down to Five Points or the city of Brooklyn, for the filthy markets there. The more robust cattle ended up in the kitchens
of the Upper East- and Westsiders and the better restaurants in town.

Billy didn’t know which of the exits was for the healthy beef, which for the sickly. He’d been down both until they ended, one in brick, one in rubble, but he couldn’t deduce which was which. He wished he knew because he wanted to tattoo the young lady in the tainted beef corridor – it just seemed appropriate. But he’d decided
to do his mod in the place where the livestock cull had been made: the octagon itself.