FIVE
THE RECYCLING STATION WAS a large brown building that thrust out of the water like the fist of a bully. It was one of the most eastern buildings in the city, located in a relatively empty area of midtown, about a mile from City Hall. No one had moored boats nearby. It had one bridge leading to the entrance, and no other bridges wrapped around it. Instead, bobbing in the water, anchored all around the perimeter, were the bright red recycling boats, their long nets hanging off them like veils.
Before going in, Simone tried calling Linnea again. Still nothing. She didn’t leave a message. She’d stopped after the sixteenth call. She’d begun to consider the possibility that Linnea had decided to conclude the investigation on her own terms and had fled the city. In which case, Simone wouldn’t get paid. In which case, she had no reason to be here.
She pushed open the doors to the recycling station. Simone had been there enough times before to know the layout. There was a front desk and to its right a big bulletin board with photos of the found bodies. Under each photo was a room number. You went to the room, and if you recognized the body, you reported it at the desk, made arrangements, whatever. There were usually some peepers hanging around in the lobby—people who just went from room to room, looking at the dead bodies. Most dressed in black, trying to be respectful. Many were old women. Today, only a few of them stood in the corner, murmuring to one another. They looked up at her with interest and voyeuristic sympathy. She went right to the board and checked for Henry’s photo. Then she headed to the marked room. The hallways were narrow and tiled, the walls painted with that plastic-y antimold stuff that always smelled like new shoes.
She opened the door to Henry’s room quickly and walked straight up to the body to confirm it was him. The room was small, just a white cube with a slab in the middle. She pulled the sheet down off his face. The eyelids were gone, eaten away by sea creatures, and part of the lips, too, but it was definitely Henry. She recognized a birthmark on his neck.
“Please tell me you’re here by mistake,” came a voice from behind. Simone turned. Standing in the corner, where the door had hidden him when she came in, was Peter, in full uniform.
“Officer,” she said with a nod. “Why should this be a mistake?”
“Because he bobbed up with a hole in him that didn’t come from the fish, and Kluren wants me to bring in whoever stops by to check him out.”
“She thinks they’d come to admire their handiwork?”
“Something like that.”
“So pretend you didn’t see me.”
“Sorry, soldier, you know I can’t do that. Especially now that it’s pretty clear you’re not in here by mistake. Who was he to you?”
“Wife thought he was seeking outside company, paid me to tail him.”
“She pay you to rough him up a little?”
“You know I don’t do that.”
“Where is she now?” Peter took a step towards her.
“Can’t get her on the phone.”
“Think she decided he’d be a better sieve than husband?”
“Not sure. There are a few players.”
“What is your gun shooting these days?”
“40 S&Ws, same as yours.”
“Same as the holes in the guy.”
“Same as a lot of people.” What caliber was The Blonde’s gun? It wasn’t big, but it had been hard to see exactly, with her backlit.
“Still.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to head over to Teddy with me?”
“Thanks for making it sound like a question.” She smiled slightly and followed him out the door.
The NYPD was located in a decommissioned navy cruiser called the Theodore Roosevelt. Everyone called it Teddy. The whole force was stationed there and on the smaller police boats tied up around it. It was a large ship, moored on the Upper East Side, and it had been cleared out of anything deemed unnecessary when the NYPD had taken it over. On deck were some guards and a parked helicopter, but inside were all metal walls and desks. Each of the bureau chiefs had his or her own office, and the commissioner held what was once the captain’s room towards the top. But the current commissioner, John Boady, was seldom seen doing actual police work. Usually he operated as more of an advisor to the mayor. Simone knew that the police force itself paid him little heed. Kluren, chief of homicide and chief of departments, was the one in charge.
On deck were a bunch of uniformed officers, taking smoke or coffee breaks, chatting and laughing, but the moment they caught sight of Simone, they went quiet. They knew her, of course. She’d been dragged there enough with her dad, first when he was a cop, and then when he was in trouble with the cops. Simone could feel the heat of their silence. Kluren was a popular chief among her men and had made her dislike of the Pierce family very public. Simone was in enemy territory and they wanted her to know it.
The day Peter had applied to the Police Academy, he’d come over and told Simone. Simone hugged him and, when he left, went to the application server and started filling it out. Her dad came home when she was up to the psychological profile section. He leaned over her shoulder, smelling of cigarettes and gin, and looked at what she was doing. Then he slammed the touchdesk off so forcefully the screen cracked.
“You don’t need to do that crap,” he said. “Police are all about rules. That’s where corruption comes from. If you have an officer so tied up with regulations he can’t move, he’s going to ease free of them. You work for me. You’re a private eye. We don’t worry about rules, we worry about finding the truth. That’s what police work should be. Trust me, you’ll be better off this way.” He laid his hand on her head and looked down into her eyes and smiled. “You’ll be better than me,” he said. She smiled back. She hadn’t really wanted to be a police officer anyway.
Peter opened the door on deck and took her into Teddy. More cops were there working, but they all paused to stare at Simone, like a wall of razor blades and ice. Simone wondered how it was Peter hadn’t become like these men, or turned bad like her dad said they all did eventually.
“C’mon,” Peter said, resting his hand on her shoulder. She pulled back slightly, like she was sighing, removing herself from his touch. Peter led her down two flights and across the length of the ship into Tara Kluren’s office. Kluren wore her hair like a helmet, her pantsuits too loose and her face in a perpetual scowl, at least whenever Simone was around. Her dad and Kluren had come up through the force together, were even partners briefly, and she’d hated him, too. Maybe it was a bad joke gone wrong, or competition between them. Simone’s dad had never told her, and he’d died before she could ask.
Kluren had offered Simone a job on the force once, right after her dad died. Simone was never sure why. Kluren had never seemed to even notice her before then. Simone had said no, or not said anything, and then a few months later, working one of her first solo cases, she crossed paths with the force, and Kluren threw her in the brig for a night. She never offered Simone a job again. Or even a friendly nod. Her hatred of Simone’s father had been passed down to Simone like a delicate heirloom.
When Peter led her into the office, Kluren was smiling like a water snake. Her suit that day was pale—maybe gray, maybe tan, maybe just dirty white, like the color of her hair. The irises of her eyes were gold, the telltale sign of augmented-reality contact lenses. Those weren’t usually seen in the city. On the mainland, and in other civilized nations, they were popular; people could use them for networking, to avoid getting lost, for gaming, for restaurant reviews, whatever. But in New York, the maps changed faster than satellites could keep up, and restaurants were boats that, even moored, could drift in the night. Nothing really stayed put, so overlays were usually confusingly off by a few feet, or completely wrong, unless people wanted to put up small signaling devices on their buildings and boats letting everyone know exactly what sort of place it was. Not surprisingly, no one did.