Depth E-Book

Lev AC Rosen

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 408

Beschreibung

in a near-future world where most of New York is under water and the mainland US is a bastion of censorship and religious extremism, PI Simone Pierce plies her trade between the tops of skyscrapers and over the networks of bridges. A routine case helping an archaeologist search for artworks lost when the seas rose turns deadly as bodies start floating to the surface of the Manhattan waters.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

DepthPrint edition ISBN: 9781783298631E-book edition ISBN: 9781783298648

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: June 201510 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Lev AC Rosen asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 2015 Lev AC Rosen.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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FOR JOY

ONE

SHE HAD THE SHOT. It was lined up. She just needed to wait for the fog to clear. And it was going to clear in a moment. She could read the swirls of it, how it breathed and parted. New York City fog was lazy, like cigarette smoke.

A small vibration in her right ear. She clenched her jaw and waited. The fog didn’t clear. Her ear vibrated again. She sighed and whispered, “Phone ID.” A holo-projection beamed out from her earpiece, displaying a small screen in the corner of her vision. She glanced at it, and as she did the fog swirled open for less than a heartbeat, then closed like a lover’s kiss. She ground her teeth. Caroline Khan, read the display. “Answer,” she told the phone.

“I’m working,” Simone said softly. She was on a rooftop, four stories above her targets, and they were in a boat below her, but she was careful—voices could carry out here.

“I sent you a present,” Caroline said, her low voice smug. “You’re going to want to thank me.”

“You just made me miss my shot,” Simone said, “so let’s call it even.”

“No,” Caroline responded without a hint of guilt, “it’s not my fault you don’t turn your phone off while stalking.”

“Stalking is what people do for fun,” Simone said. “Following a cheating husband to get photos of him with his special friend is business.”

“Don’t try to convince me it isn’t fun for you, too.”

Simone rolled her eyes and squatted down, letting the camera hang low in her arm. She leaned against the railing enclosing the roof.

“Why am I going to owe you?” Simone asked.

“I sent some business your way. Attractive business.”

“The business, or the client?”

“The client is attractive, the business is lucrative and easy.”

“Is this going to be a long conversation?”

“Maybe,” Caroline said after a moment. “But only because I’ll be laughing a lot.”

“Can I call you later, then?”

“Just meet me at Undertow when you’ve got the money shot. Call if you still don’t have it by eleven.”

“Will do,” Simone said, rising back up and trying to point her camera in what she thought was the right direction. “Later.”

Simone touched the earpiece to turn it off. The fog rolled out for a moment, and the boat below her became perfectly clear. It was a floating restaurant, permanently moored, with a large, open deck made of wood, covered with tables and chairs. Fancy, too: white linens, low lighting, and waiters in tuxes. The couple she was looking for was sitting in a corner, far from the entry bridge. He, Simone knew, was Henry St. Michel, whose wife had hired Simone to tail him. She was a blonde and definitely not Henry’s wife. Most cheating spouses cheated with blondes.

She snapped a photo, her camera silently capturing Henry and The Blonde. The fog rolled back in, blocking her view. Simone looked at the photo she had just taken. They were sitting across a round table from each other. The Blonde’s back was to Simone, but Henry was fairly clear in the shot. He didn’t have a romantic expression; he had a nervous one. Simone zoomed on the camera’s display, taking a closer look at Henry. He was in his fifties, pudgy, balding, goatee, glasses. In the photo, his brow was furrowed into a stack of skittish creases. Simone aimed her camera again and waited for the fog to clear. When it did, she held down the release, taking about a dozen more shots before the fog closed around her. The images in her camera did not become any more romantic. They showed Henry taking an envelope out of his jacket and passing it across the table to The Blonde. She slipped it into her purse without looking inside. Then the waiter came over and took their order.

Simone rubbed at the back of her neck. Ms. St. Michel had only suspected an affair when she hired Simone. Her exact request was to find out what her husband was up to. From the look of it, it wasn’t an affair, but it was still suspicious. Even if the envelope was just cash, no one used cash anymore unless they had to, and passing it across the table in an unmarked envelope didn’t exactly make it seem aboveboard.

Simone squatted down and leaned on the rail again. She needed a shot of The Blonde’s face, but she couldn’t get it from this angle. She pressed a button, and the camera shrank down to the size of a business card, which she slipped into her trenchcoat sleeve. Then she stood and walked to the stairs at the other end of the roof, glancing out briefly before heading down.

She was on the roof of a twenty-four-story building, so the ocean lay four stories down, churning just below the twenty-first floor. The fog was thick, but she could hear the waves lapping at the other buildings around her, and the worn wooden bridges that connected them to one another and to the permanently moored boats that made up New York City. New York, city of bridges and boats. The green light of algae generators pulsed through the fog here and there, giving the view an eerie glow and, through it, the silhouette of the skyline bursting from the sea. It wasn’t the iconic skyline of the past—just the top, with wide plains of ocean between crumbling towers, and large boats floating low on the horizon, like a steel archipelago. Waves left streaks of yellowed foam like a sea chart against the buildings and boats. Everything smelled and tasted of salt.

Simone walked down to the twenty-first floor and stepped onto a bridge via a large window that had been converted into a door. Most of the city’s bridges clung to the buildings, wrapped around their exterior walls and branching off into “streets” that connected nearby buildings or boats. Sometimes the bridges were nice, well kept, wide enough for many people. Sometimes, they were like the bridge Simone was walking on now—creaking wood planks hovering over a hungrily lapping ocean. The banisters were splintery, so Simone didn’t touch them. Waves splashed at her ankles, but she had grown up here. She was used to it.

New York, though technically still part of the United States, had long begun to consider itself its own country, hundreds of miles from the Chicago coastline and the conservative, religious mainland. The Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial had been airlifted to Salt Lake City, but no one tried moving New York. All the other drowned cities, like DC and Boston, were graveyards now—spires and flat tops of buildings tilting out unevenly from under the water like old headstones. Not New York. Though some older buildings had been worn away by the waves, others, retrofitted and laminated in that technological wonder Glassteel, stayed where they were as the ocean rose, closing off the bottom floors as they filled with water. There were newer buildings, too, designed to withstand the water, and decommissioned boats clever entrepreneurs had bought and moored around the city. There were a million New Yorkers left, and they were stubborn. They built the bridges themselves, and everyone bought personal algae generators and desalination filters for their apartments, stringing them out the windows into the sea. They reassembled their city. They stayed.

Simone walked the bridges that took her to the boat-restaurant’s entrance, a well-preserved metal ramp that connected the bridge to the deck of the ship. The bridge here was wider and had a few lamps rising up and over it, like old street lamps, but with tubes that went down into the ocean to small algae generators that pulled the bright green stuff up and converted it to electricity. The railings were high enough, and solid metal, so the waves seldom splashed on the bridge in calm weather. A taxi-boat stand bobbed just down the bridge. This was a nice area. Well kept.

Strands of violin music came from the boat. Simone stood on the bridge, lit a cigarette, and waited. It was an early dinner, only six thirty, but the sky was darkening, and the fog was at its thickest. Maybe they chose the time because of the fog, Simone thought. The cigarette tasted dry and acidic in her mouth. It wasn’t her preferred brand. If she had them, she smoked the old-fashioned ones that killed slowly, but those were hard to find, so she had settled for the noncancerous ones that cleared out your sinuses, left your teeth whiter, and were just as addictive as real nicotine.

Simone settled in to wait. Waiting was a large part of being a private detective. She smoked two cigarettes and wondered what the envelope Henry had handed The Blonde contained. He wasn’t a big deal, as far as she knew. Not in politics. Just an export-import guy. His wife had the money. She was from the European Union, the part that was still dry thanks to the dikes, not the part that was all gondolas and canals. They had met when he was traveling, and decided to settle in New York because she loved the ocean. Not that there wasn’t a lot of ocean everywhere else. He ran the business with a partner, mostly bringing stuff out of mainland America as it became illegal (banned books, birth control, “scandalous” art) and sold it in Canada or the EU. Simone couldn’t think of anything he could have come across that would require shady dealings outside the office—maybe looted art from before the flood, but that stuff was sold pretty openly in the city. It could be smuggling, but with the amount of money his wife seemed to have, he didn’t need to.

They came down the ramp a little after seven. Not a long dinner. Not the sort of dinner where a couple gazed into one another’s eyes over crème brulée and sighed. They weren’t holding hands as they came down the ramp, either. Simone flicked her cigarette into the ocean and pretended to study the menu posted next to the restaurant’s ramp. Henry and The Blonde walked down the bridge and stopped at the taxi-boat stand. Henry nodded an awkward-looking goodbye and got into a waiting yellow boat. The Blonde waved goodbye after him. Simone watched The Blonde walk farther down the bridge and wondered whom to follow. She still hadn’t gotten a good shot of The Blonde, and her instincts told her Henry was on his way home, so she walked down the bridge, trailing The Blonde, her shoulders hunched, head down slightly. The Blonde turned onto one of the main bridges—huge things, reinforced, with suspension lines holding them up. Always crowded. Sometimes you might even see an old gas-powered car on one of them.

Simone followed The Blonde, picking out details of her through the fog. She was petite, wearing a blue jacket and knee-length skirt. Her hair hung pin-straight to just above her shoulders, as if afraid to make contact, and it swayed when she walked. When she turned, it covered her profile. Simone couldn’t get a good look at her face.

The Blonde didn’t look like a New Yorker. Her boots were tall, and waterproof, but they had heels. Her dress was short enough to move in, but tight. And if she were a major player in the city, Simone would have known her face already. Simone guessed they were headed for a hotel, probably the Four Seasons. It was down this street and off another—and The Blonde looked like she could afford it. She pulled her camera out of her sleeve, turning it on without the zoom, so it stayed small. The Four Seasons was in front of them, the white-painted steps up to its marble terrace built right onto the bridge. The doors had originally been the wide glass doors from a suite to a balcony, and they hadn’t been changed much—except now the glass was tinted for privacy. They shone black in the fog, a doorman standing in front of them like a dark mast. He nodded at The Blonde, who nodded back and then turned as if aware of someone following her. Simone tilted her head down to hide her face but raised the camera and took as many photos as she could. The Blonde’s eyes scanned the horizon but didn’t seem to find Simone. She turned back around and went inside. Simone eyed the doorman, wondering if he would tell her who The Blonde was, but he had the look of an old dog about him, the kind who would stay loyal even if bribed, if only out of sheer laziness. Simone turned away. It was enough for one night. She’d call Ms. St. Michel and find out if she knew The Blonde.

Simone looked at the photos she had just taken. She was a blonde who could refreeze the ice caps—one of those pretty but cold, ageless faces that could be twenty-one or forty. Long bangs, a stylish haircut if Simone could judge by advertisements. She rubbed the back of her neck where it had started to ache and put the camera back in her sleeve. Then she took off down the street, walking to the bar to find out what sort of attractive client or job Caroline had found for her.

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.

THREE

THE MORNINGS AFTER STORMS were often bright and clear, the storm having somehow cancelled out the usual morning fog. The light, only slightly dampened by the closed shades, fell hard on Simone, waking her earlier than usual. She took a deep breath, pushing away the usual flickering remnants of her dreams—the red hole of an exit wound, ashes pouring into the sea. They faded away until she’d forgotten them, the edge between dream and reality becoming sharp again. She hit the button on her nightstand to lift the shades. Gulls soared above the city, cutting the air and looking for scraps that had churned to the water’s surface. She got out of bed and showered, then dressed in a gray collared shirt and black pants, with her knee-high boots pulled over them. In her office, she turned on the touchdesk, checked her messages, and scanned the headlines: the European Union was condemning the US’s “homosexual re-education” camps, lawsuits over the failed Mercury Imported Polar Ice Project were stalled again, Canada’s virtual reality city had repaired the damage done by a hacker last month, and the United Nations Space Station seemed to be having a record number of health issues and was trying to hire top doctors from Earth. Nothing that concerned Simone. She went to the kitchen, turned her coffee maker on, and lit a cigarette, then went out into the waiting room and unlocked the door. She hadn’t even crossed back to the hall when it opened behind her.

“Ah, hello?” came a voice behind her. She turned. Apparently, he had been waiting. Caroline had been right about the handsome. He had warm tan skin, roguish black hair, and full lips, and his clothes clung to him well enough to show that he had the sort of body that could inspire spontaneous sculpting in marble. He didn’t look older than thirty. “I’m supposed to meet a Ms. Pierce,” he said with a very faint accent.

“You’ve met her, then,” Simone said. “You’re Mr. deCostas?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “Ms. Khan told me you were the best.”

“It depends on what she meant I was the best at,” Simone said. She turned back to the hall. “Come into my office. Would you like some coffee? It’s not the fancy, genetically perfected stuff, but it’s coffee.”

“Thank you,” he said, following her. She pointed him into the office, then went back to the kitchen to get the coffee. When she got back to her office, holding two mugs, he was sitting, staring at her desk. The Blonde’s oversized face still stared back out of it. Simone walked back to her chair and tapped The Blonde’s face so it shrank down again, then slid all the photos to one side and spun her finger around to gray them out. She handed deCostas his coffee and swung her legs up onto her desk.

“So you want a tour guide,” she said, appraising him.

“No.” He tilted his head slightly, as if considering, and blew on his coffee. His lips were damp and shone pale pink like the inside of a strawberry. “Tour guide makes it sound, ah, pedestrian. I am not touring. I am researching. I need an escort. Someone who knows the city and also can deal with any … trouble that may arise during my research.”

“Do you anticipate a lot of trouble?”

“I try to be prepared for anything.” He pushed his shoulders back, possibly in an attempt to look prepared, but the effect was of a teenager trying to look older.

“Then you’d be able to handle the trouble yourself,” Simone said.

“A fair point,” deCostas said with a curved smile. “Let’s say then that hiring you would be part of my preparations. You look like you’re capable of handling trouble.” He let his eyes look her over slowly. She met his gaze and locked it.

“I suppose I’m used to it. I don’t know if that makes me capable.”

“Asumiria.”

“Pardon?”

“I mean that’s ideal.”

“So if I feel a drop, I get us out of wherever we are—that’s what you’re looking for?”

“If a drop means trouble, yes.”

Simone nodded. “That I can do. Now, explain to me exactly what you’re looking to find,” Simone said, sipping her coffee. He had black eyes, mirrorlike. Seeing her drink apparently reminded deCostas that he also had coffee. He took a sip of his, then frowned.

“Used to the good stuff?”

“Used to the weak stuff.” Simone raised an eyebrow. “I’m a student, Ms. Pierce, I can only afford weak coffee.” He pursed his lips in a way that was probably supposed to suggest this was his lot, and he was used to it, but which Simone found incredibly sexual. “I am looking to find areas where the architectural strength of the buildings kept them watertight, so the buildings themselves are still inhabitable to street level. No water.”

“I know New York, Mr. deCostas. That’s all driftwood.” He looked confused, so she explained: “Nonsense.”

“I’ve done extensive research on architectural techniques used in New York over the past hundred years. Some buildings—and I have a list where we can begin—some buildings should have been strong enough, and used technology advanced enough, to keep out the floods.”

“Even all these years later?”

“Yes.” deCostas frowned. “Maybe. I think so. And it does not really matter if you don’t think so. I just need you to help me locate these buildings and take me there. If I am wrong, you’ve been paid for what will most likely be an easy job. If I am right, you get to see a secret side of the city you claim to know so well. You get to be part of a great discovery.” He raised his eyebrows slightly.

“If these buildings did exist, don’t you think someone would know?”

“Maybe. But they might want to keep it a secret.”

“Ah, and now we come to the trouble you predicted.”

“Yes. Some inhabitants of these possibly watertight buildings might not take well to having what they consider their private spaces invaded.”

Simone swung her legs off the desk and opened the drawer in a cabinet to her left.

“I’m not some exterminator, Mr. deCostas. If you find some place you want to move in, you need to take care of current occupants some other way.” She took out a business card for Dash Ormond, another private detective in the city whom Simone sometimes sent business to. He had what Simone would call a different set of ethics, but he’d been around as long as she had, and he sometimes sent her stuff that he didn’t want. “This guy can probably do the job better.” She handed him the card. He stared at it but didn’t take it.

“No, I think you misunderstand,” he said. “I don’t mean for you to harm anyone who does not pose a threat.” Simone stared at him. She was fairly certain that that was exactly what he had meant. He stared back, a small smile forming. “Please, Ms. Pierce. The mayor’s office said you were the best in the city. Said you knew every inch of it, because you’d grown up here.”

“Okay,” she said, “I’m a thousand a day, in advance, on my schedule, and I’m no tour guide; you find out which buildings fit your structural integrity criteria, tell me what they are, and I’ll take you there, and get you in, if getting in isn’t as easy as walking in the front door. I still think you’re not going to find anything, but I’ll take your money just the same.”

deCostas stood and nodded, then drank the last of his coffee.

“When do we begin?”

“Tomorrow,” Simone said, “if you can get me your credit information and the names of some buildings today. At least two buildings ASAP. I’ll handle the rest.”

“You won’t just take me to the nearby buildings and say they’re the ones I asked for?” he asked, smiling.

“You’ll have to trust me, angel,” she said, smiling coyly.

“Then I will do so. Until tomorrow, then. Thank you for the coffee.”

They shook hands and he turned and walked out. Simone caught herself staring at his ass. She would have to think of reasons to walk behind him. Easy money and eye candy. She did owe Caroline.