Depth (3 page)

“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.

Trying not to linger on deCostas’ curves, Simone decided on the rest of her day. She needed a way of hearing what Mr. St. Michel was talking about with The Blonde, which meant a bug, which meant meeting him, which meant a cover, which meant Danny. That was fine. She hadn’t seen Danny in a while. She brought up the photo of The Blonde again and printed it out. She could send it to Danny, but if she was going to him anyway, a hard copy seemed safer. She had another cup of coffee, locked the office up, and headed out.

Danny’s office, if it could be called that, was only a few bridges from the
Rialto
, the old freighter moored where Union Square used to be, filled with shops and street performers who docked motorboats around the bridges and played guitar in neon-piped scuba suits or juggled. It was a good location for his business—the top floor of a twenty-two-story building, just barely above the water, accessible by the old fire escape that led up to the window he used as a door. He had painted over the sliding glass door with images of crystal balls and pentagrams and had hung velvet curtains behind it. A neon sign proclaiming “Psychic” flickered in the window, and above that another sign: “The Great Yanai, Seer of the Future, Teller of Fortunes.” It looked like crap, but Danny did a decent business. Simone climbed the steps and walked into the shop. The waiting room up front smelled of sandalwood and had old gray carpeting and glass cases displaying various occult accouterments. The curtain leading to Danny’s “reading chamber” was closed, so Simone sat down in one of the old chairs and picked up a digital magazine called
Horoscope Weekly
.

Simone was an Aries, born March 29. “Now is a great time for love,” her horoscope read. “You’re letting out a seductive energy no one can resist. Use it wisely, but beware of fair-haired women.” Simone raised an eyebrow. Those were words to live by. She put down the magazine, a thin sheet of white polymer that scrolled through pages as you brushed a finger on the bottom. Originally, people had had entire libraries on small screens like that, subscriptions to magazines downloaded every day or week, but then advertisers and publishers had realized they could make more money by selling each magazine and book individually. Simone’s bookshelves were lined with the thin, folded white sheets, their titles and authors stamped across the front in black.

The curtains to the back parted and a well-dressed, wealthy-looking woman stepped out. She was pale, and her eyes were red. Behind her, Danny stepped out, wearing a ridiculous feathered turban and cape over what were probably black pajamas. His eyes met with Simone’s for a moment, and Simone winked. Danny raised his eyebrows, then turned back to the woman, clasped his hands together, and bowed slightly. The feather on his turban bobbed.

“Thank you again, Mrs. Seward,” he said. “The spirits appreciate your business.”

“Thank you, Yanai,” Mrs. Seward said, tapping something out on her wristpiece—her payment, Simone assumed. “I’ll be back again next week.”

“Of course,” he said, flourishing his cape to disguise his surreptitiously checking his own wristpiece to confirm payment. Mrs. Seward sniffed and walked out the door, her heels making metallic clicks on the fire escape outside. Danny looked at Simone and wiggled his eyebrows.

“The mayor’s wife,” Simone said, impressed.

“Shall we consult the spirits in my private chambers?” Danny asked in an overwrought imitation of a vampire from an old movie. Simone rolled her eyes, stood, and followed him into the back room.

The back room was much like the front, but smaller, and even more ridiculous. A circular table had a heavy black cloth over it with a crystal ball in the center, and various crystals hung from the low ceiling. In the back were a few steps leading up to an old-looking wooden door. Simone walked through the room and opened the door. Beyond that was Danny’s real office. Metal walls and an old sofa and coffee table. A desk covered in gadgets. Printers, screens, and other large electronics Simone couldn’t place lined the walls. Danny took off his turban, set it on the desk, and flung his cape over the sofa arm before sitting down.

“So what are you in the market for today?” he asked.

“I need a fake IRID. Canadian importer. Net-backing to go with it. And . . .” Sitting next to him on the sofa, Simone took the photo of The Blonde out of her jacket and asked, “Know her?” Danny stared at it, his eyes narrowing.

“No. . . . Do you think they found me?” He looked up at her, worried. Simone smiled.

“Nothing to do with you; just a case.”

Danny took a deep breath and nodded. “Want me to keep my eyes open, or a full-on search?”

“Just keep your eyes open.”

“No problem.” Danny grinned, pushing his shaggy brown hair back, revealing a metal plate just over the ear. Danny was somewhere in his early twenties, and had come to New York five years ago, running from the mainland. The US was no longer the world’s superpower. China had taken on that role ages ago, and with the various laws in the US forbidding most scientific research, all the experiments the US military did had to be kept secret. Danny was one of those.

Raised with nineteen others, he was genetically created in an underground lab near Chicago. As a child, he’d had various electronics implanted in his head. He was supposed to be the perfect spy—a hacker who didn’t even need access to a computer, because he
was
a computer. Danny was trained from birth to use the computer in his mind, as well as the wireless signals that were constantly swimming around him. At thirteen, he and the others could all sit quietly in a corner and surf the net to their hearts’ content, bashing down encryptions and security systems as fast as they could blink. They were always kept in small white rooms and never interacted with anyone besides each other and a woman they called “Mother,” who gave them their assignments and took their reports. At fourteen, they could hack into most classified government sites—any government. At fifteen, they were taken on field trips to the South China Sea, where they logged onto local signals and hacked into Chinese military clouds and databases.

Also at fifteen, during a routine check of what Danny (then called Odin 17) had been looking at online, his supervisors found that Danny was gay, or at least looking at gay pornography. In the US, under normal circumstances, they would have sent him to a re-education camp, but with Danny that would be a problem. The camps were outside, in the real world, where they wouldn’t be able to control his movements as easily, and where the metal plate on his head would get some attention. If the Odin Program, with its genetic modification and hacking, were to go public, it would be a disaster, both internationally and at home. And besides, they had nineteen others. They decided killing him would be easiest. But Danny beat them to the punch, hacking onto the facility servers and finding the orders for his termination.