Depth

TWO

SIMONE WALKED INTO UNDERTOW, a seedy little bar right over the water with brick walls that were constantly being worn away by the waves. The ocean lapped at the windows with the regularity of a ticking clock, and the narrow bridge leading to the door was always slippery. The bartender was a guy named Perske. He knew Simone and Caroline well enough that he didn’t water down their drinks.

Caroline was curved over at the bar, drinking a G&T through a straw. Her hair was a mass of black waves, like a storm rolling off her forehead, forever frizz-less from the FluoriSeal products she used. She was still dressed for work, in an expensive white DrySkin suit, and seemed to still be at work, staring into the screen on her wristpiece, her right hand tapping at the keyboard projected onto her left forearm like a very methodical gull pecking at scraps. To anyone who didn’t know her, she might have seemed a woman letting her hair down after a long day of work—sending personal messages, checking her feeds—but Simone knew better. The curls were carefully sculpted to look effortless and make her seem more easygoing than she was. And that was work she was doing on her wristpiece. It was why she didn’t use any dicta-stuff, like the glasses, or the type of earpiece Simone used. She couldn’t say anything aloud—people might hear, and then there’d be trouble.

Deputy Mayor Caroline Khan came from one of the most powerful families in New York. The Khans were a Korean American family that had lived in New York since before the water started rising and now owned several decommissioned luxury ships around the city, renting them out as apartments, offices, stores, hotels, and factories. They had ties to the EU, Korea, Japan, Canada, and the mainland, were involved in local politics, and were known as avid art collectors. They were on the Board of Trustees for the American Museum of Natural History and the city’s Art Reclamation Fund. They personally had found over eighty paintings thought to be lost to looting or left underwater during the flood, and had donated them to museums. They employed a vast number of New Yorkers, were well respected, and those who crossed them always lost. They existed to be wealthy, powerful, and perfect. Caroline hated that about them.

“What’ll ya have, Red?” Perske asked Simone as she sat down next to Caroline.

“Don’t call her that,” Caroline said in an irritated tone without looking up or removing her mouth from the straw. Simone grinned, took her coat and hat off, and unpinned her hair so it fell in a dark-red wave over one eye—Caroline also kept Simone well stocked in FluoriSeal.

“Something strong and sour,” Simone said. Perske nodded and turned to the row of bottles behind the bar. “So what do you have for me?” she asked Caroline. Caroline turned for the first time, her mouth still biting down on the straw. She smiled and looked back at her wristpiece, then gave it a tap. The keyboard projected onto her forearm vanished, and the screen went dark.

“I don’t know if you deserve it anymore,” she said flatly. Caroline always sounded unimpressed. Her humor was the driest thing in New York. Anyone listening might have thought that Caroline didn’t like whomever she was talking to. But Simone knew better: if Caroline didn’t like someone, she didn’t talk to them at all.

At thirty-seven, Caroline had been New York’s deputy mayor for several years. She was Mayor Seward’s mouthpiece and gatekeeper, and a shoo-in to replace him when he retired. She was also, to Simone’s constant surprise, a very good friend—intervening on her behalf when the police rattled her, sending business her way. Simone liked Caroline, even trusted her, which was an unusual feeling for her—one that actually made her feel queasy every time she saw Caroline, as though she were looking down from very high up, waiting for someone to push her. But she’d grown used to liking Caroline. Enjoyed it. She was her only friend. And having a deputy mayor as a friend was always a nice advantage for a PI.

“Why don’t I deserve it? Because I said I was on a stakeout?”

“Because you didn’t seem very grateful.”

“I don’t know what it is yet.”

Caroline pursed her lips and looked forward again, nodding. She leaned back and stretched, her hands clasped above her head, her back arched. In the white suit, she looked like a cold crescent moon.

“Fair enough. It’s an anthropologist. Or archeologist. I don’t remember. I met him at some party my parents threw two weeks ago, just for five minutes, but then he came into the office this morning, saying he needed a tour guide.”

“I’m not a tour guide,” Simone said.

“Slash bodyguard,” Caroline continued, ignoring her. “He’s good looking. Extremely good looking. From the EU, Spain I’d imagine, beautiful body, slight accent. Tell me you don’t owe me one.” Caroline smiled for the first time since Simone had sat down, a small upward curve so subtle that it almost didn’t exist.

“What does he want me to do?”

“He’s looking for places where the buildings are dry down past the twenty-first floor.” Caroline’s laugh came in a short, sudden burst, like the single rotation of a siren. It harmonized well with Simone’s own low chuckle, like the rumbling of a building about to collapse into the sea.

“Is this a joke?” Simone asked. She’d heard rumors, of course—everyone had—about buildings that were so airtight and advanced that you could walk down to the bottom of the ocean. When the water was first rising, scuba companies had done good business offering to rappel down the sides of buildings with airtanks, going into submerged apartments to bring back old heirlooms. As the water got higher, though, buildings began to crumble, and algae bloomed everywhere, making it impossible to see below the surface. Crumbling cement could land on your head without your ever seeing it falling towards you, or an adventurous shark could take you from an alley. These days, if you were foolish enough to go into the water, you didn’t come back out. People still went in, now and then, not searching for waterlogged heirlooms but for the mythical airtight buildings—the Atlantis under New York. No one ever found anything because it was all nonsense. Simone had lived there thirty-six years and knew the city as well as anyone, and she didn’t know of anywhere where the water stopped below the twenty-first floor.

“No joke,” Caroline said, though she let out another laugh.

“And he’s a real anthro-archo-whatever?”

“His papers were legit. But that’s the best part. You basically get to spend time with a good-looking guy and get paid for it, and, since what he’s looking for doesn’t exist, he’ll be with you a while.”

“I have other cases, Caroline. I don’t have time to babysit some pearl diver.”

“I know you find the idea of work that doesn’t involve you skulking alone in the shadows to be a personal insult, but you need the money, and you could stand to get laid, judging by the fact that you’ve cracked your neck twice since coming in. Haven’t called up Peter for a quick-and-dirty evening of heartbreak lately?”

“We broke up years ago,” Simone said, trying not to sound too bothered and failing. “And I haven’t seen him in almost a month.” She looked over at Perske, willing him to mix the drink faster. “And even then, we didn’t fuck.”

“Exactly. Take the job, take the money, and take any bonuses that come with it. If only so I don’t have to watch you roll your head around like some MouthFoamer who just found a stash the size of the ocean. You’re doing it again.”

Simone stopped rolling her head and glared. Perske put a yellow drink down in front of her and walked off to another customer. She drank deeply.

“Okay,” Simone said, “but I’m not agreeing that I owe you one till I see him.”

“Fair enough. I gave him your info; he’ll probably stop by tomorrow.”

“But he’d better not be full-time. I have to at least finish up this case I’m on.”

“What is it?”

“Wife thought it was a cheating spouse, now it looks like more.”

“More?” Caroline cocked her body on the stool, turning slightly closer to Simone.

“I can’t tell you,” Simone said, smiling. “You know that.”

“Hmmm,” Caroline said, and locked her mouth onto her straw again. “You’re no fun,” she said.

“I’m lots of fun,” Simone said, “but only when water pistols are involved.”

Caroline snorted into her straw. What was left of her drink bubbled in the glass.

“I’ll be sure to tell Alejandro that.”

“That the hot client?”

“Yep. Alejandro deCostas.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to tour him yourself?”

“Nah,” Caroline said. “I don’t like them stupid.”

“Ah, but you have no problem with the stupid ones for me?”

“If you don’t, I don’t… and judging from your dating history, you really, really don’t.”

Simone finished her drink and raised an eyebrow at Caroline. Caroline stared back, eyes wide with a false innocence.

“Okay, gotta drift. Have to call a woman and tell her about a blonde.”

“Why is it always a blonde?” Caroline asked.

“I’ve been asking myself that for years,” Simone said, getting up and putting her coat on.

“Let me walk out with you,” Caroline said, standing. “I have way too much work to do tonight.”

“Something interesting happening at City Hall?” Simone put on her hat. Caroline put on her long overcoat, then pulled her hair out from under the collar in one quick motion. For a moment, it haloed out around her, like dark, churning water.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Caroline said, her voice rising slightly with amusement.

“We still on for the weekend? Going to finally try that VR bowling place?”

“Yeah,” Caroline said. They walked out the door. Sea froth whipped up over their ankles, occasionally up to their knees, as they walked the rickety walkway from Undertow back to a more solid bridge.

“You’ll have to have a real conversation while bowling, you know, so you better come up with something interesting to talk about,” Caroline said.

“Yeah,” Simone said, nodding. They parted ways at the next bridge, a steady one with rusted metal railings, and Simone headed home.

She lived on the sixth floor above sea level of an old thirty-story building, its brick walls mirror-smooth from the waves. The rent was cheap because there was a chance it could fall into the sea at any moment. But Simone liked that.

It was in an area of town her dad used to call Alphabet City, but which most people now called Cartarojo for the large tanker in the center of the neighborhood. It was a relatively peaceful neighborhood, with plenty of bars below the various decks. People were quiet, or at least not too loud. It wasn’t like the touristy area to the west, or the expensive places uptown. It was just the city: cool, wet, uncaring. She had large picture windows that she’d had to reinforce against the ocean storms but which gave her a nice view of a flat expanse of water and the buildings just beyond it. On bright days, when the sun was at the right angle, she could see a building maybe ten or so feet below the water, like a reflection of what the city once was. The water was too shallow to dock a large boat over the building but too deep to build anything on top. Small taxi boats and private yachts sailed over the empty water at all hours. Sometimes it was a lake. Sometimes it was an intersection.

Simone’s apartment had been huge once, with high ceilings and decorative wooden beams that gave it a slightly rustic feel. She had turned the front part into her offices—an old-fashioned front door with Simone Pierce Investigations carefully lettered across the frosted-glass window. Inside was a waiting room, with chairs and a desk for a receptionist (if she could ever afford one) and behind that a table and sofa. From there, through another, more tightly locked, door was a hallway leading to her office, the kitchen, and a bathroom. Her bedroom was past her office and had its own bathroom. No one was waiting for her, so she locked the front door for the night, shut the light, and went into her office.

Simone lived in the office, and it showed. What money she made was spent here. She had a relatively up-to-date touchdesk, the kind that looked like a long curve of black glass that curled up into a wave on one side, ending in a flat screen. She placed her palm on the desk to turn it on, the black glass becoming a series of images. She shrugged off her coat and hat, put them on the coatrack by the door, and sat down at the desk. She slid the small inbox symbol up to the flat screen and tapped it once so it expanded. She had six new messages, but nothing pressing. If she were like Caroline, she’d have an expensive wristpiece connected to her phone and her home office through a high-security cloud, and she could check all her messages from one place, but when she was out, she was usually working, and preferred as few distractions as possible. Her phone and office were cloud-connected, so she could always have messages that came through her touchdesk dictated to her by her phone. She just didn’t want a screen on her wrist. It affected her aim.

She lifted her left leg to take her gun out of its ankle holster and put it on the desk. The images under the gun twitched, realizing something was covering them, and reorganized themselves to another part of the desktop where they could be seen clearly.

Simone turned her earpiece back on while walking to the kitchen. It was only nine thirty. She called Ms. St. Michel’s personal line.

“Hello?” Ms. St. Michel answered. She had an accent Simone couldn’t place—some sort of European, maybe Scandinavian.

“Ms. St. Michel? It’s Simone Pierce.”

“Ah, yes, Ms. Pierce.” She hesitated on the other end of the line. Simone switched on the light in the kitchen and turned on the coffeepot. “Do you have something to tell me?” Ms. St. Michel’s voice wavered ever so slightly. If Simone hadn’t known better, she might have thought it was part of her accent.

“Can I ask you first when your husband came home tonight?”

“Perhaps seven thirty, maybe a little later. Why do you ask?”

“Just checking a hunch. Ms. St. Michel—”

“If you are going to be the one to tell me my husband is cheating on me, you may as well call me Linnea. Being called Ms. St. Michel and then being told Mr. St. Michel is unfaithful makes it all seem like we’re just actors in a play. This is my life.”

“Linnea, then,” Simone said, licking the bitterness off her lips. She hated it when clients got personal. “I took some photos tonight of your husband with another woman, but I don’t think it’s an affair. I would appreciate it if you would look at some photos of the woman in question and tell me if you recognize her. May I send them to you?”

“No. Henry is home, and I don’t want him to walk in on me and find me staring at photos of him that should not exist. I will come to you. Tell him I need some air.”

Simone looked out the window. The only light now was coming from the city’s buildings and algae generators, but she could make out some heavy clouds on the horizon.

“Linnea, it’s going to storm soon. Maybe we should wait until tomorrow?”

“I could never sleep. I will come over now. That is okay, yes?”

“Yes… I just don’t want you to drown on your way.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Linnea said, her voice a sigh. “I will be there soon.”

“Sure thing.”

Linnea hung up, and Simone shook her head as she poured herself a cup of coffee, took it with her to the waiting room. She unlocked the door again, and turned the light back on.

Simone went back to her desk to read her messages, sometimes glancing out the window at the approaching storm. Lightning flashed in the distance, and she could hear the wind on the windows. Walking around New York, even without the high waves and strong winds of a storm, was dangerous enough. The city was permanently slippery and poorly maintained, and try as they might, shoe companies couldn’t make your soles completely slip-proof. Rip currents had taken up residence around all the buildings, a complex map of tides and undertow; struggling against them would drown you, but relaxing and letting them carry you would end with you miles out to sea, far from the city, if your head wasn’t bashed into some debris on the way.

But during a storm, being outside went from merely deadly to suicidal. One wave could throw you against the side of a building and you’d fall off whatever narrow bridge you were on and into the water, unconscious. The next day, the recycling boats would find your body while dragging the water, and deliver it to the recycling center, where they’d look for your IRID or some other identification. If you were lucky, and your IRID hadn’t floated off your body (or been taken along with your wallet by a particularly ambitious recycling boat worker), then notifications to your family would be made. But if you had no identification like most drowned people, and your fingertips, lips, and eyelids were too damaged from water and hungry fish to get a fingerprint or a facial scan, they took your photo, pinned it on their bulletin board, and posted it online. Your body would be kept at the recycling center, and if no one claimed you in two weeks, whatever nutrients could be harvested from your corpse were sucked out and the rest of you burned, the ashes poured back into the ocean. Simone tried to check the website regularly, just to make sure no one she knew was on it. On average, there were between a dozen and twenty new faces every week.

Simone’s messages weren’t anything interesting aside from an amusing bit of gossip from Danny about one of New York’s elite coming in for a psychic reading to ask if his mistress was cheating on him. About half an hour and two cups of coffee later, there was a gentle rap at the door, and Simone walked out to the waiting room to open it. Linnea stood in the hall.

She was an attractive woman, somewhere in her fifties, the kind who aged gracefully, though whether that was natural or not, Simone couldn’t tell. Her being well dressed wasn’t a surprise, but still the richness of her clothes took Simone aback. She wore a fur-collared, brown-bronze trench coat that went down to her ankles, and under that a perfectly tailored golden sheath of a dress that ended just below her knees. That meant she’d had a ride over; dresses—anything that tangled your legs if you slipped—were idiotic in the city. That’s why women were never fined for wearing pants, even though it was technically a federal offense.

Linnea took off her coat and handed it to Simone but left on her hat, a small bronze oval perched on her chocolate hair, from which hung a long veil, down to her shoulders. And it was all made of DrySkin. Even the veil, Simone was willing to bet, had thin layers of the stuff over the holes in the netting. It felt like nothing, stretched like spiderwebs, and breathed like air, but when water hit the fabric, it broke into a thousand droplets, never penetrating—just hanging there like diamonds until they dripped off or evaporated. It was the same stuff they used to waterproof electronics these days. Expensive. Even Caroline didn’t have a complete wardrobe of it. Simone only had one coat made with the stuff. She went back to her office and carefully hung Linnea’s coat.

“Linnea,” Simone said, motioning for her to take a seat on the other side of the desk. Linnea did so and crossed her legs. She was wearing high heels—ridiculous to even own in the city, unless you never had to walk anywhere.

“I’m a bit nervous, Ms. Pierce,” Linnea said, clasping her hands in her lap. “I have been wondering what you meant when you said you did not think it was an affair.”

Simone nodded. She got up again and went to the coatrack to take her camera out of her coat sleeve, then turned it on and put it on her desk. The desk automatically started downloading the photos she had taken, displaying them as small images on the desk. Simone tapped them once so they grew, then slid them around so they were facing Linnea.

“You see, I’ve done plenty of cheating spouse cases. There’s nothing romantic here. It looks more like a business deal. That’s why I wanted to ask you if you knew the woman.” Simone tapped a shot of The Blonde’s face, enlarging the photo even more. “Have you ever seen her before?”

Linnea shook her head. “No… but they are at a restaurant together. Isn’t that like a date?”

“I don’t think so,” Simone said. “They didn’t touch, and they didn’t go back to a hotel together or anything like that. Henry went right home to you after dinner.”

“Did you hear their conversation?”

“No—but I can plant a bug next time, if you’d like.” Simone scratched her chin.

Linnea nodded slowly. “So what does this mean?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping she was just a business associate, and then I would tail him again tomorrow, but if you don’t know her…”

“I want you to follow him again anyway,” Linnea said resolutely. “He is not himself lately. A wife knows. Something is amiss. Even if it doesn’t seem like an affair… perhaps it is something else. Perhaps the envelope had a payment for a girl for another time. The girl could be a, what do you call them, a dock mistress, who keeps a boat of sirens.”

Simone shrugged.

“If you want me to, I’ll keep tailing him.”

“Please. I want to know what he’s doing with… her,” Linnea said with some distaste, tapping at The Blonde’s photo, accidentally causing it to enlarge so that it took up almost the entire desk, her forehead and chin cut off by the edges.

“I can do that,” Simone said.

“Thank you,” Linnea said, standing up. “That is all, I assume?”

“Yes,” Simone said. “I should mention, Linnea, that the longer I follow your husband the more expensive—”

“Money is of no concern,” Linnea said with a wave, as she took her coat off the rack and slipped it on. She turned to look at Simone. “As I said, a wife knows when something is amiss,” she said, her voice low, the dim lights of a boat outside the window running over her face. Raindrops began to hit the window with light thudding noises.

“Will you be all right to get home?” Simone asked.

“Yes. I have a yacht and a driver,” she said. Simone nodded. Safest way to travel.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I find out anything else,” Simone said.

“And I will call you if I discover anything on my own,” Linnea said. She looked Simone square in the eyes for a moment. The rain became heavier all at once, moving from light drops to a heavy drumming, thick rivers of water streaming down the windows. Thunder clapped. Linnea adjusted her veil and smiled at Simone, then nodded. “Good night,” she said. She left the office and the waiting room, the clicking of her heels blending into the sound of the rain. Simone looked at her desk again. The giant face of The Blonde stared back at her. Simone lay her palm flat on the desk to turn it off. Then she turned off all the lights and went to her bedroom.

Her bedroom was in the corner of the building, with windows on two sides, looking out on New York and the heavy storm that had descended on it. It was almost completely black outside, except when lightning struck—for brief moments illuminating the city skyline and the surging waves devouring it. In one flash, Simone saw a yacht motoring swiftly away, like a white arrow in the darkness, pointing at the horizon. When the waves surged so high that the wind could carry the spray up to her window, blurring it with flecks of salt and algae, Simone closed the drapes, stripped, and got into bed. A large mirror hung opposite her bed, but when Simone tapped a screen on her nightstand, it turned into a video feed. Simone absent-mindedly flipped through the shows, news programs, and old movies they sometimes ran. She sighed. Nothing interested her. She turned the video feed off and the screen turned back into a mirror. She shut off the light and rolled over on her pillow, falling asleep to the sound of waves, and rain, and the occasional shudder of thunder through her drapes.