Free The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson

Register of Historic Architecture. Gunderson had worked hard for this, become personally identified with the campaign that put the Telstar at the heart of the next phase of renewal. She said she cared deeply, was passionate about the plans. She said she was prepared to put her reputation on the line here. For all that Wrobleski despised and distrusted politicians, he was almost inclined to believe her.
    He looked over to the other side of the room, where Akim was meticulously, if unenthusiastically, polishing the glass on a wall full of framed maps. Wrobleski couldn’t trust just anyone with a job like that.
    On the TV screen, Brandt was now unleashed. Before long Wrobleski was not so much listening as fighting to stop himself from riddling the screen with bullet holes. He heard Brandt utter formulations about shifting paradigms of urban policy, sustainability, streetscapes, environmental enhancements, social inclusiveness, synergy, metropolitan hegemony.
    It was only after this had gone on longer than any sane human being could possibly tolerate that the interviewer decided it was time to bring things to a close. She talked directly, and a little too brightly, to the camera for a few moments, and as she spoke, Meg Gunderson (off microphone, but by no means off camera) looked across at Brandt and mouthed the words “You twat.”
    â€œYou know,” said Wrobleski to Akim, “the more I see of this woman Gunderson, the less and less I feel like killing her.”

 
    12. IN AND ON THE GRID
    The “sleazy watering hole” was named the Grid. Originally it had been a minor outpost of the telecommunications industry, a squat bunker of a building that housed an arcane and obsolete form of telephone exchange. Now it had been “repurposed” into an inky, angular, high-ceilinged bar, with tight pools of blue and purple light, and miscellaneous chunks of antique electronic equipment half-visible in dark recesses. It was the kind of place that casual, uncommitted drinkers would peer into and immediately realize, rightly, wasn’t for them. There were TV screens above the bar, but no sports had ever been shown on them. The management preferred to screen classic noir and European avant-garde masterpieces, played in slow motion with the sound off.
    In the corner, on a tiny raised stage, an extravagantly muscled, hairless man was playing an electronic keyboard. He looked as if he might have been a biker, maybe a laid-off steelworker, maybe a gay bodybuilder. His repertoire heavily favored Satie, Philip Glass, and Stockhausen. He called himself Sam, though nobody thought that was his real name, and in any case, few people had ever said to him, “Play it again.” He nodded to Zak and to Marilyn, though it was a general rather than a specific greeting.
    â€œThat’s Sam,” said Zak. “They say he used to be a cop. Whether a good cop or a bad cop, I’m not sure. One of those ‘profiler’ guys, I think.”
    Otherwise the crowd was a mix of hipster, nerd, and borderline-criminal element. The woman behind the zinc-topped bar looked like a ruined Bettie Page, something both reinforced and contradicted by a tattoo of Bettie Page on her forearm. Zak and Marilyn took up places at the bar and ordered drinks from the “special” cocktail menu. Something celebratory seemed in order. Nothing quite brings people together like being beaten up at the same time, in the same place, by the same guy. The drinks came, in elegant, conical cobalt-blue glasses, though the bases were severely chipped.
    â€œThis is where you come for kicks?” Marilyn said.
    â€œOne of the places.”
    â€œAnd what else do you do for kicks, Zak?”
    â€œOh, you know … I read, I watch movies, I walk. Actually what I like best is urban exploration.”
    â€œYes?”
    She didn’t seem as impressed by that as she had been by his knowledge of maps. He tried to