“And Tharp didn’t bond with him as one of his own?” The head archivist, Martin Tharp, was a knot of conspiracy theories, hometown pride, and xenophobia, all in a shape and demeanor most closely resembling a deflated balloon. He was the president of several organizations, including the New York Society of Underwater Cartographers—essentially a club of pearl divers like deCostas. He’d written papers on the plausibility of the pipeline in the society newsletter. He was, in Simone’s opinion, King of the Pearl Divers—a title only earned by a steadfast ability to speak so loudly that he could hear no one else. Which is probably why Caroline liked to keep him in the archives, where his combination of inflated ego and paranoia were kept at bay by the rows and rows of old papers and lack of people.
“No, the hatred of outsiders won. I’d sent him a message saying deCostas was legit, but good ol’ Tharp has decided that deCostas, being a foreigner and with backing from a foreign government, is probably doing research to sell information to evangelical terrorists back on the mainland who want to sink the city for good.” Caroline rolled her eyes and shook her head. Simone tried to hold it back but couldn’t help firing off a gunshot of laughter. That sounded about right for Tharp. Caroline sighed. “And I have some crap family stuff to take care of while my folks are out of town, as my father keeps reminding me.” Caroline put her forehead on the table and sighed again. Simone took the opportunity to read the menu and think about what she wanted to eat. “I know you’re reading the menu,” Caroline said into the table. “You should be empathizing with my pain.”
“I am,” Simone said. “But I’m also looking at the menu. I’m a multitasker.”
“If you were a real friend, you’d stroke my hair and tell me that my hard work will not go unappreciated.”
“Your hard work will not go unappreciated, and if I tried to touch your hair, you’d snap my fingers off. How about we order and then you can tell me more about your horrible day?”
Caroline lifted her head and gave a slight nod, and they spent a few minutes in silence considering their menus. They had beef here, but it was cheap, from the farm ships far uptown: big decommissioned ships where the cows would sleep below deck at night and then come up during the day, lowing at each other across the deck. Sometimes Simone liked to go watch the cows, who stared back at her and the city off the side of their boats, chewing their kelp, its long strands falling from their mouths like a MouthFoamer’s saliva. There was something calming about them and their vacant gaze at the city, as if they had accepted their lot, and could accept yours, too. Simone thought they tasted okay but weren’t nearly as good as the imported mainland stuff.
After they’d ordered and Caroline was onto her third beer, she continued with her woes: the water-taxi drivers were threatening a strike, plans for the main bridge over the Upper East Side were not coming together, and a reporter had called asking if it was true that the mayor’s wife regularly consulted a psychic to check on her husband’s extramarital affairs. By the time she finished, the food arrived, and Simone was picking at her fries.
“How about your day?” Caroline asked. Simone held her face carefully blank. She liked Caroline, considered her her best friend, if such a thing existed after age eleven, but Simone dealt in secrets, and Caroline was still deputy mayor, and she’d have to report something if Simone mentioned gunshots and blood. That might mean Linnea would hear from the police, instead of Simone, and that might mean Simone wouldn’t get paid. She repressed the urge to tap her earpiece to see if she had any messages, but Caroline would see, and her phone had been with her since she called Linnea. She just needed Linnea to call her back. So in answer to Caroline she just shrugged and let out a long sigh.
“The usual,” she said.
“Well, thanks for letting me rant, anyway. And of course, tell anyone any of this and no one will find you till you bob to the surface.”
“Of course,” Simone said. “I did bump into Peter today. But it was for five minutes.”
“Fun,” Caroline said dryly. “He get that puppy dog look?”
“Little bit. Had to brush him off to tail a guy, though.”
“Feel bad about it?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, don’t bother. You ended it for a good reason, and you’ve finally stopped having those nights where you forgot that. Besides, now you’re escorting deCostas around. That seems like more fun.”
“Could be,” Simone said, eating another fry and thinking of deCostas’ ass.
“Should be,” Caroline said. She bit into her burger. “So what is the usual with you these days, anyway? Are you still working cases like the ones I used to hire you for?”
“Like the Meers case?” Simone asked. “Yeah, this could be like the Meers case, I guess—though I doubt I can get a confession right now.”
Caroline sighed and took a long drink through her straw. Then she looked up and frowned. “Now, before I say this,” she said, “you need to understand something.”
“Mm?” Simone raised her eyebrows.
“I’m not just a pretty face,” Caroline said in a low monotone.
“No?” Simone bit into another fry.
“No. I speak Korean, Mandarin, and every language used in the EU. I have a PhD in political science. From Oxford.”
“I’ve seen the diploma,” Simone nodded.
“So you understand, I’m very smart.”
“OK,” Simone said, smirking.
“Brilliant, some would say.”
“I believe you.”
“You’ve seen the evidence. So I need you to remember that when I tell you this…”
Simone nodded, but Caroline stopped speaking and took another strawful of beer. Then she looked back up at Simone, the closest thing to ashamed Simone had ever seen her. “I still don’t understand the Meers case.”
Simone stared at Caroline for a long while, then took a long drink and stared again.
“It was the first case you hired me on,” she said, finally.
“Yeah.”
“You were there when I got Meers to confess.”
“Oh yeah, I understand he did it. I just don’t know how you knew he would confess so quickly. I’d expected us to need mountains of evidence and copies of documents and all that. You just accused him, and he caved. How did you do that? Was there a trick I didn’t understand? And more importantly, can you teach it to me so I can use it on the various people I have to deal with all day? I’d have so much more free time if people would just admit they’re idiots.”
Simone smiled. The Meers case had been a few years back, right after she and Caroline had settled into a friendship. Dustin Meers had been sent by the mainland government to retrieve “lost American treasures” for the mainland museums. “American treasures” meant art and artifacts that had been saved or taken during the looting. The problem was, most of this art was already in the city’s remaining museums—and there were a few: The American Museum of Natural History was a huge freighter, the giant Apatosaurus skeleton crowning the bow; the Met operated out of four stories of an old, seashell-colored building; and the Guggenheim was on a decommissioned oil tanker, completely altered with strips of metal curved around in an attempt to recreate the original building’s shape, but which had ended up becoming a rusted shadow of its former glory, forever crusting over with moss and barnacles no matter how often it was cleaned.
But the mainland hadn’t shown much interest in the museums before Dustin Meers. Caroline theorized at the time that their interest developed because the world had stabilized and people had become used to living on the water. The decades since the flood had been all about learning to live again, about making technology that worked in the wet and salt, and the world had done that. Now, the mainland wanted to get back to restoring America’s glory, and that apparently meant art. And New York was where they’d kept the good stuff. So they dispatched Meers to find some of that good stuff from the flooded city, buy it, and send it home where it would be appreciated by “true” American citizens.