Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

The Hudson River and the East River transformed overnight. No longer beautiful backdrops skirting the city, they became a coiled threat. A lingering drunk. Something to be wary of at all times. I can feel them right now, running down either side of Manhattan, their waters higher than these streets, held back only by great walls and elevated parks. Here I am trapped in the middle, creeping along in a trickle of traffic that flows slower than the tides. Those bodies of water could come together at any moment and drown us all. That’s what they’ve become. And we let them.

Like a lot of people, I sold my car soon after the big levee breach and bought an old electric. Didn’t care about the cost. I changed a lot of habits. And like a lot of people, I made excuses for the rising sea levels. I blamed the companies pumping oil and gas from the ground. I blamed the smiling CEOs at the helm, like Ness Wilde. I blamed the politicians who refused to do anything as they kept getting reelected. I blamed anyone other than the glorious sea of my remembered youth.

I blamed anyone other than myself.

The taxi lets me out on Worth Street, which is high and dry. Inside the Federal Plaza, I go through a security routine that has me patting my pockets for my boarding pass. I have to practically disrobe and send my bag, shoes, and coat through one machine while the rest of me stands inside another to get a thorough scanning. On the other side of the security station, I present Agent Cooper’s card to a man behind an information desk. He picks up his phone and speaks to someone while I thread my belt back through my slacks.

“Fourth floor,” he tells me, hanging up the phone. “Elevators are to the left. Someone will meet you up there.”

I make my way toward the elevators, and now that I’m in this building, I wrack my brain for what Ness Wilde might have done to have gotten the FBI’s attention. Tax evasion is the most obvious. Ocean Oil gets press every year for how little they pay in taxes compared to regular folk like me. Then again, people like me don’t have entire divisions of tax experts on the payroll. And would that be the FBI’s jurisdiction? I get all the three-letter agencies confused.

Whatever it is, I imagine I’ve got some rewrites ahead of me. Yesterday’s piece was about Ness’s great-grandfather. I broke the story up to cover each of the four generations of Wildes individually. If Henry plans to run them weekly, that gives me a few weeks before I have to turn in any revisions on Ness. Plenty of time to tack on whatever’s happening here. A picture of Ness Wilde in handcuffs above the center fold flashes before me. I’m smiling as I step off the elevator.

“Maya Walsh?” a young man asks. He’s dressed like a TV version of what an FBI agent looks like: black suit, scuffed black shoes, thin black tie.

“Agent Cooper?” I ask.

“I’ll take you to him. This way.”

I follow the young man through a maze of cubicles toward the far side of the building. We stop outside an office with Cooper’s name on a brass plate. The young man knocks twice, then lets me inside. The office is dimly lit, the blinds drawn down over the windows. Cooper sits behind his desk, looking at an open folder. A single lamp illuminates the space. There’s a scattering of seashells across the desk, lining the windowsill, and more on top of the filing cabinets. Cooper is obviously a serious collector, and I feel immediately more at ease.

“Ms. Walsh,” he says. He closes the folder, stands up, extends his hand.

“Just Maya,” I say. The young deputy backs out and closes the door, leaving us alone.

“Call me Stan.” He smiles and holds my hand a little longer than necessary. Is he hitting on me? I can never tell. Either way, my mind does this weird New York thing where it imagines me dating every single person I meet, regardless of age, gender, or what part of town they live in. I understand that this is a municipal disorder and that I’m not the only sufferer. And while Agent Cooper is handsome and a collector, I don’t see myself dating an FBI agent. I’m good at this: ruling people out with excuses as flimsy as they are fast.

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” He waves at a chair, and I sit.

“So you’re the reason my story didn’t run in this morning’s edition,” I say.

“That’s right. Your government needs you, Ms. Walsh.”

He smiles to let me know he’s being cheesy on purpose. And yeah, I am not dating a cop. I’m pretty sure the FBI are the cops. The CIA are the spooks, and the NSA monitors my online shopping habits. I feel like this is right. What I don’t understand is the ATF.

“As you may know, Ness Wilde—”

“I have a quick question,” I say.

“Shoot.”

I lean forward. “What exactly do tobacco and firearms have to do with one another?”

Agent Cooper blinks. Twice. “I’m sorry, what?”

“The ATF. Why put those things together?”

“It’s… uh… has to do with federal oversight of… state-level regulat—”

“Okay, so you don’t know either.” I settle back in my seat, reminding myself to Google this later.

Agent Cooper studies me for a prolonged moment, clears his throat, then seems to gather his wits. “Ms. Walsh—”

“Maya.”

“Of course. Maya. Your editor informs us that you’ve been digging into Ness Wilde’s past. You’ve got a series of pieces planned on him and his father, grandfather, et cetera.”

“That’s right. And I suppose I’m here because you’ve been doing some digging as well. Is this where we exchange notes?” I nod to the thick sheaf of papers Cooper was looking through when I entered. “Is that his folder?”

Agent Cooper laughs. He nods toward the row of filing cabinets that covers one wall of his office. “No. His folder is right there. This one is yours.”

I lean forward and grab it, and Cooper flinches, but doesn’t try to stop me. Inside I find a copy of an old résumé from a decade ago, one I think I uploaded to a public headhunting site. It’s woefully out of date except for my degrees and a few internships. Behind this are printouts of various columns I wrote for the Times. They go back quite a ways, and I have a feeling all of this was printed out recently, like Cooper has been cramming rather than studying.

“If this is all you’ve got on me, I need to live it up a bit more.”

Agent Cooper laughs. He opens a drawer in his desk and reaches inside. I half expect a different folder with some of my college exploits. Instead, he brings out a small plastic case, bright orange, about the size of a closed fist. “Three months ago, a man was found dead in his apartment in Portland, Maine—”

Cooper pauses as I gasp out loud and lean forward, eager to hear more. Worse, I think he can see my genuine excitement at the idea that Ness Wilde is guilty of actual direct murder rather than the indirect kind.

“The gentleman died of a heart attack,” Cooper says. “He was seventy-two years old. No foul play suspected.”

The reporter in me sags in her seat. The rest of me is happy for the deceased. I guess.

“Two weeks later, this goes up for auction alongside other items from the gentleman’s estate.”

Cooper slides the plastic case across the desk. It looks like one of those waterproof boxes snorkelers use to keep things dry while they’re out in the surf. There’s a complex latch with a slot for a key. It’s unlocked, but the latch is stiff. A tight seal. When I lift the lid and see what’s inside, the air seems to evacuate the room.

A lace murex, one of my favorite shells, is nestled inside. Medium-sized, just over an inch long. I move the box into the cone of light from the lamp and note the bright pink aperture and tight apex. The inner lip is so shiny, the shell must be wet. But touching it, I find it to be dry. It just hasn’t lost its luster.