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.