Depth (6 page)

“No, the hatred of outsiders won. I’d sent him a message saying deCostas was legit, but good ol’ Tharp has decided that deCostas, being a foreigner and with backing from a foreign government, is probably doing research to sell information to evangelical terrorists back on the mainland who want to sink the city for good.” Caroline rolled her eyes and shook her head. Simone tried to hold it back but couldn’t help firing off a gunshot of laughter. That sounded about right for Tharp. Caroline sighed. “And I have some crap family stuff to take care of while my folks are out of town, as my father keeps reminding me.” Caroline put her forehead on the table and sighed again. Simone took the opportunity to read the menu and think about what she wanted to eat. “I know you’re reading the menu,” Caroline said into the table. “You should be empathizing with my pain.”

“I am,” Simone said. “But I’m also looking at the menu. I’m a multitasker.”

“If you were a real friend, you’d stroke my hair and tell me that my hard work will not go unappreciated.”

“Your hard work will not go unappreciated, and if I tried to touch your hair, you’d snap my fingers off. How about we order and then you can tell me more about your horrible day?”

Caroline lifted her head and gave a slight nod, and they spent a few minutes in silence considering their menus. They had beef here, but it was cheap, from the farm ships far uptown: big decommissioned ships where the cows would sleep below deck at night and then come up during the day, lowing at each other across the deck. Sometimes Simone liked to go watch the cows, who stared back at her and the city off the side of their boats, chewing their kelp, its long strands falling from their mouths like a MouthFoamer’s saliva. There was something calming about them and their vacant gaze at the city, as if they had accepted their lot, and could accept yours, too. Simone thought they tasted okay but weren’t nearly as good as the imported mainland stuff.

After they’d ordered and Caroline was onto her third beer, she continued with her woes: the water-taxi drivers were threatening a strike, plans for the main bridge over the Upper East Side were not coming together, and a reporter had called asking if it was true that the mayor’s wife regularly consulted a psychic to check on her husband’s extramarital affairs. By the time she finished, the food arrived, and Simone was picking at her fries.

“How about
your
day?” Caroline asked. Simone held her face carefully blank. She liked Caroline, considered her her best friend, if such a thing existed after age eleven, but Simone dealt in secrets, and Caroline was still deputy mayor, and she’d have to report something if Simone mentioned gunshots and blood. That might mean Linnea would hear from the police, instead of Simone, and that might mean Simone wouldn’t get paid. She repressed the urge to tap her earpiece to see if she had any messages, but Caroline would see, and her phone had been with her since she called Linnea. She just needed Linnea to call her back. So in answer to Caroline she just shrugged and let out a long sigh.

“The usual,” she said.

“Well, thanks for letting me rant, anyway. And of course, tell anyone any of this and no one will find you till you bob to the surface.”

“Of course,” Simone said. “I did bump into Peter today. But it was for five minutes.”

“Fun,” Caroline said dryly. “He get that puppy dog look?”

“Little bit. Had to brush him off to tail a guy, though.”

“Feel bad about it?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, don’t bother. You ended it for a good reason, and you’ve finally stopped having those nights where you forgot that. Besides, now you’re escorting deCostas around. That seems like more fun.”

“Could be,” Simone said, eating another fry and thinking of deCostas’ ass.

“Should be,” Caroline said. She bit into her burger. “So what is the usual with you these days, anyway? Are you still working cases like the ones I used to hire you for?”

“Like the Meers case?” Simone asked. “Yeah, this could be like the Meers case, I guess—though I doubt I can get a confession right now.”

Caroline sighed and took a long drink through her straw. Then she looked up and frowned. “Now, before I say this,” she said, “you need to understand something.”

“Mm?” Simone raised her eyebrows.

“I’m not just a pretty face,” Caroline said in a low monotone.

“No?” Simone bit into another fry.

“No. I speak Korean, Mandarin, and every language used in the EU. I have a PhD in political science. From Oxford.”

“I’ve seen the diploma,” Simone nodded.

“So you understand, I’m very smart.”

“OK,” Simone said, smirking.

“Brilliant, some would say.”

“I believe you.”

“You’ve seen the evidence. So I need you to remember that when I tell you this . . .”

Simone nodded, but Caroline stopped speaking and took another strawful of beer. Then she looked back up at Simone, the closest thing to ashamed Simone had ever seen her. “I still don’t understand the Meers case.”

Simone stared at Caroline for a long while, then took a long drink and stared again.

“It was the first case you hired me on,” she said, finally.

“Yeah.”

“You were there when I got Meers to confess.”

“Oh yeah, I understand he did it. I just don’t know how you knew he would confess so quickly. I’d expected us to need mountains of evidence and copies of documents and all that. You just accused him, and he caved. How did you do that? Was there a trick I didn’t understand? And more importantly, can you teach it to me so I can use it on the various people I have to deal with all day? I’d have so much more free time if people would just admit they’re idiots.”

Simone smiled. The Meers case had been a few years back, right after she and Caroline had settled into a friendship. Dustin Meers had been sent by the mainland government to retrieve “lost American treasures” for the mainland museums. “American treasures” meant art and artifacts that had been saved or taken during the looting. The problem was, most of this art was already in the city’s remaining museums—and there were a few: The American Museum of Natural History was a huge freighter, the giant Apatosaurus skeleton crowning the bow; the Met operated out of four stories of an old, seashell-colored building; and the Guggenheim was on a decommissioned oil tanker, completely altered with strips of metal curved around in an attempt to recreate the original building’s shape, but which had ended up becoming a rusted shadow of its former glory, forever crusting over with moss and barnacles no matter how often it was cleaned.

But the mainland hadn’t shown much interest in the museums before Dustin Meers. Caroline theorized at the time that their interest developed because the world had stabilized and people had become used to living on the water. The decades since the flood had been all about learning to live again, about making technology that worked in the wet and salt, and the world had done that. Now, the mainland wanted to get back to restoring America’s glory, and that apparently meant art. And New York was where they’d kept the good stuff. So they dispatched Meers to find some of that good stuff from the flooded city, buy it, and send it home where it would be appreciated by “true” American citizens.

Simone had gotten the call from Caroline minutes after Meers had left the mayor’s office the first time. She didn’t trust him, she told Simone, and since she knew Simone and trusted her, hiring her to find out if Meers was on the level seemed like a good investment. It wasn’t that Caroline doubted he was official; she’d seen the paperwork and gotten messages and calls confirming he was there for what he said he was there for. But Caroline had good instincts, and she didn’t like him.

It had been a fairly long case. Simone had gotten herself hired as part of Meers’ small staff, working as a secretary to one of his “scouts”—the three people he’d hired to find art and confirm it was pre-flood. It wasn’t as close as she would have liked, but it gave her access to the small office he’d set up. Once everyone had gone home, she’d call Caroline over, and together they’d dig through files. Caroline had insisted on being part of the investigation, which Simone hadn’t minded. She understood the bureaucracy in the papers better than Simone did. But for the first month, they found nothing incriminating. True, Meers hadn’t bought any art to send back to the mainland yet, but he hadn’t been stealing art, or embezzling, either. He just didn’t seem to be very good at his job.

“Okay,” Simone said. “So a month and a half in, he bought his first painting, something the Guggenheim had but wasn’t displaying. And he sent out a press release showing how the mainland was taking back lost treasures and what a boon it was for Boro-Baptism and everything.”

“I remember. He used the phrase ‘momentous undertaking’ six times on one page.”

“But the shipping crate that he sent back to the mainland was ten times larger than the piece itself. I filled out the manifest.”

“Well, sure, it needed to be packed.”

“Not
that
much. Even with all the packaging and foam and whatever, it was too big and too heavy.”

“That’s how you knew he was smuggling. I get that.”

“That and the amount of porn on his touchdesk.”

Caroline barked a laugh. “What did that have to do with anything? I mean, it was funny. What was that one site he loved . . . GMILFs and their Doggy Boys?”

“GrandmasNaughtyDogTraining.com,” Simone said, laughing with Caroline and remembering their mutual horror and amusement at finding the site on Meers’ touchdesk.

“It was disgusting,” Caroline said, the laughter dying down. “But what did that have to do with the smuggling?”

“It was a specific fetish. People with fetishes that specific often seek out others with similar fetishes—especially on the mainland, where all pornography is strictly illegal. If you want to find something, you have to find the person who has it. That, combined with the budget for ink that the foundation was running up . . .”

“He was printing out Internet porn and shipping it back home to friends on the mainland?” Caroline asked. “I thought he was smuggling other art, or maybe documents he’d compiled on the mayor.”

“No,” Simone said, “porn. Weird porn. That’s why he was so quick to confess. Remember how I phrased it when I asked him if he was smuggling?”

“You called the art ‘media,’ ” Caroline said, nodding.

“I said, ‘You’re using the art shipments to smuggle additional media to the mainland. What that media is, we won’t pry into if you confess now.’ ”

“He was embarrassed.”

“You’d be amazed how many criminals are. It’s the shameless ones you have to look out for.”

Caroline shook her head. “So, do you think he found himself a grandma to punish him?” she asked after a moment, and the two of them burst out laughing again. The laughter faded into more stories and talk until it was late. They paid the bill and left, Caroline catching a taxi and wishing Simone good luck with Sorenson the next day.

At home, Henry’s face still hadn’t shown up on the recycling web page. Simone tapped her fingers on her desk and pursed her lips. Maybe it wasn’t a murder. Maybe it wasn’t Henry’s blood. She stood, looking forward to sleep, but her earpiece buzzed. The ID said it was a call from Belleau Cosmetics. Probably Anika, though Simone couldn’t be sure. Could be her secretary. Anika probably made her secretary stay as late as she did.

“Hello,” Simone answered.

“Are you at home?” Anika asked. She had a deep voice that was smooth but unvaried. A concrete slab wrapped in velvet.

“Yeah,” Simone said.

“Put me on vid,” Anika said. Simone put her earpiece on the desk, and an image of Anika at her desk popped up. Anika always wanted to talk on vid, though Simone was never sure why. Her eyes always wandered from one document to another, and she was constantly rearranging things. She only sometimes looked up at the screen. Maybe she just wanted to advertise her company’s products, which, Simone granted, were beautifully displayed on Anika’s face.

“So,” Anika said, “I think I have something I could use you for. A few experimental samples went missing from one of the labs here in the city. I was going to just ask security to handle it, but then you called, and I think I can justify that expense.”

“What are you talking about?” Simone asked, leaning back in her chair. She put her feet up, away from the camera so it wouldn’t block Anika’s view.

Anika looked up from something she was reading off her desk and furrowed her brow at Simone.

“You called me,” she said. “For work, I assume.”

“Oh,” Simone said. “No. Thank you, but that’s not why I called.”

Anika raised an eyebrow and folded her arms over her desk. She was wearing a blouse buttoned to the top button. Her wardrobe always followed mainland decency laws, but somehow, it always looked illegal on her.

“So what did you call about?”

“You came up in the course of an investigation. I was hoping you could help me.”

Anika leaned back, studying Simone. “What do you need?”

“You met with a blonde woman at Delmonico’s recently. I was hoping you could tell me why.”

“That?” Anika shook her head. “That was total nonsense.” She unfolded her arms and started reading something off her desk again. “If your case has anything to do with that, it’s a dud.” The thing about Anika’s wandering eyes was that it made it hard for Simone to tell if she was lying.

“Humor me,” Simone said.

“I really can’t,” Anika said. She glanced up. “Have you tried our new fall line, by the way? We have this new lipstick that would look great on you.”

“The Blonde?” Simone asked, taking her feet down from the desk.

“I only took the meeting because Darren Keep asked me to,” Anika said. Darren Keep was the president of Belleau. “He wanted me to take the meeting, give him my thoughts. My thoughts were that that woman was peddling bullshit. I told him as much. That was it.”

“What exactly was she peddling?” Simone asked.

“I can’t tell you that,” Anika said, as though it were obvious.

“Why not?”

“It’s a company meeting—therefore, it’s a company secret.”