“I heard there’s bad stuff getting sold in Kips Bay,” Gen said, “and I came over to check it out. It didn’t seem like you. I didn’t believe it.”
Ellie frowned. This was too direct, as Gen well knew. But it was time to forgo gossip about new submarine fashions and such.
Ellie finished pouting at this brushback fastball, then said, “I know what you mean, Gen, but it isn’t any of us. You know I wouldn’t allow that.”
“So who is it?”
Ellie shrugged, looked around the room. The room was in a Faraday box with a magnetic charge that would scramble any recorders, and Gen didn’t have one anyway. No recorder, no body cam, it was all part of the protocol between them. Talk here rather than down at the station, et cetera. Gen nodded to confirm this, and Ellie leaned forward and said, “There’s a group from uptown putting this shit out, I think to try to wreck the feel down here. It’s so stupid I think it must be on purpose. We lost someone last week, so now I’ve pulled everyone in and put them on alert, keep an eye out for strangers and the like.”
“Who is it?”
“I still don’t know, and it’s interesting how hard it is to find out. No one underwater will say anything about it. I think they’re feeling pressure, and they don’t want to be unfriendly, but they don’t want to help either. So I’ll have to deal with that later, but meanwhile I’ve got a friend up in the Cloisters who says she heard someone up there mention that we’re ripe.”
“Ripe?”
“Ripe for development.”
“Real estate?” Gen said.
“As always, right? I mean, when is it not real estate?”
“But in the intertidal?”
“The intertidal is ripe. That’s what they’re saying. It’s got problems, it’s been a mess, but people have dealt with it, and now we’ve got it going. So now uptown wants to take it over again. It’s like, renovation’s over, time to flip.”
“But you’ve got to own before you can sell.”
“Right.”
“But what about the legal questions? No one is supposed to be able to own the intertidal.”
“Possession is nine tenths of the law, right? Then again the buying hasn’t been going that well, and maybe that’s part of it. There’s been a lot of resistance. Hardly anyone wants to sell to these assholes, even at prices you’d think would work. A lot of money is being offered. I heard ten thousand a square foot, for some buildings. But, you know. If you like the water, you can only get that in the water. It doesn’t matter how much money is offered to limpets like that. So the assholes offer more, until it’s crazy time, and then you can see that the offers are a threat, right? Like, take our mad money and make a bundle, or else. If you don’t, then it’s your fault. You’re not playing the game. Bad things can happen to you if you don’t play the game, and it’s your fault for not playing.”
“This is happening to you,” Gen said.
“Sure it is. It’s happening to everyone in the drink. New York is New York, Gen. People want this place, drowned or not.”
“Mildew,” Gen suggested.
“Venice has mildew, and people still want Venice. And this is the SuperVenice.”
“So they’re selling defective goods to make you look bad?”
“That’s what it looks like to me. It’s not my friends doing it, that’s for sure. We take good care of our own. Everything people need has been tested, and most of it is made or grown underwater. I know I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know, right?”
Gen nodded. “That’s why I came by to ask you what was up. It was weird.”
“It is weird.”
They sat there looking at each other. Two powerful figures in lower Manhattan. But no one was capable of withstanding pressure from uptown on their own. It took a team effort. This was the look on Ellie’s fashionable face, now looking kind of drawn and strung out. Gen could only nod.
Ellie smiled a tight smile. “When we heard you were coming by, there were those who wanted me to ask you if you’d go in the ring again. Bets are being laid already.”
Gen shook her head. “I’ve retired, you know that. I’m too old.”
Ellie’s smile got a little friendlier. “So some bets have already lost.”
“And some have won. I’ll come watch with you. Always enjoy seeing a match or two.”
“Okay, better than nothing. They’ll enjoy having the champ on hand.”
“The old champ.”
“Please quit reminding me. I’m older than you.”
“By a month, right?”
“That’s right.” Ellie got up and went to the door, spoke to someone.
Gen gestured at Ezra and Claire, still knocking around the same number of balls on the table. They had not misspent their youths, that was clear. Screen kids for sure. Could not handle the third dimension. Shit at Ping-Pong too, Gen presumed. “You’ve got to attend to the sixth dimension,” she told them, but that was Sean’s thing, and they didn’t get it.
“I’m going to watch some water sumo,” Gen told them. “Come along and keep an eye on the audience in there. Don’t get distracted. See if you see anyone watching Ellie during the match, watching her rather than the action in the pool.”
They nodded.
Ellie returned and led them along a long hallway, to a stairwell leading down. They took flights of these stairs down until they were far under the city streets, maybe seventy feet below low tide, in an aerated portion of old subway tunnel. Old tunnel walls and bulkheads, heavily coated with diamond spray, held out the subterranean waters. These chambers were called diamond balloons or diamond caves and could be quite extensive. The diamond sheeting was all that was keeping them dry, that and the hard old bedrock of the island itself.
They came into a big bright chamber that had a gleaming round turquoise pool cut down into its center, lighting the room like a blue lava lamp. A New York bathhouse, sure; another nostalgia trip, like the speakeasy. Same idea. The main pool was a hot tub in Icelandic blue lagoon style, with different parts of it bubbling at different temperatures. A place for people to hang out in hot water and drink and talk. All very familiar to Gen. She had spent a lot of hours in rings like this one, but it had been so long ago that she had outlived nostalgia itself, it seemed, and felt no desire to get back in the ring. Her knees ached at the thought, and sometimes she had trouble catching her breath even in the open air. No, it was a kids’ game, as so many of them were.
A crowd was arriving from other rooms and other pools, many of them in bathing attire or nonattire, and wet already. Gen sat by Ellie and enjoyed the vibe, the friendly hellos, “Oh she’s back,” “Coming back to Mama,” that kind of thing.
“Please, Gen-gen, get back in!”
“No way,” she said. “Show me what you got.”
“I’m taking even money! Even money here!”
“They’ll be here in a second,” Ellie said to Gen.
Gen nodded. “Anyone I know?”
“I doubt it. Youngsters. Ginger and Diane.”
“Okay fine. But look, afterward it’ll get all social, and we won’t want to go back to business. But I want you to find out who’s horning in on you, okay?”
“I’m trying,” Ellie complained. “I’d like to know myself.”
“So, maybe keep an eye out for a security company called Pinscher Pinkerton.”
Ellie’s eyebrows rose. “You think?”
“I wonder.”