Lev Rosen - Depth

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.

Simone had gotten the call from Caroline minutes after Meers had left the mayor’s office the first time. She didn’t trust him, she told Simone, and since she knew Simone and trusted her, hiring her to find out if Meers was on the level seemed like a good investment. It wasn’t that Caroline doubted he was official; she’d seen the paperwork and gotten messages and calls confirming he was there for what he said he was there for. But Caroline had good instincts, and she didn’t like him.

It had been a fairly long case. Simone had gotten herself hired as part of Meers’ small staff, working as a secretary to one of his “scouts”—the three people he’d hired to find art and confirm it was pre-flood. It wasn’t as close as she would have liked, but it gave her access to the small office he’d set up. Once everyone had gone home, she’d call Caroline over, and together they’d dig through files. Caroline had insisted on being part of the investigation, which Simone hadn’t minded. She understood the bureaucracy in the papers better than Simone did. But for the first month, they found nothing incriminating. True, Meers hadn’t bought any art to send back to the mainland yet, but he hadn’t been stealing art, or embezzling, either. He just didn’t seem to be very good at his job.

“Okay,” Simone said. “So a month and a half in, he bought his first painting, something the Guggenheim had but wasn’t displaying. And he sent out a press release showing how the mainland was taking back lost treasures and what a boon it was for Boro-Baptism and everything.”

“I remember. He used the phrase ‘momentous undertaking’ six times on one page.”

“But the shipping crate that he sent back to the mainland was ten times larger than the piece itself. I filled out the manifest.”

“Well, sure, it needed to be packed.”

“Not that much. Even with all the packaging and foam and whatever, it was too big and too heavy.”

“That’s how you knew he was smuggling. I get that.”

“That and the amount of porn on his touchdesk.”

Caroline barked a laugh. “What did that have to do with anything? I mean, it was funny. What was that one site he loved… GMILFs and their Doggy Boys?”

“GrandmasNaughtyDogTraining.com,” Simone said, laughing with Caroline and remembering their mutual horror and amusement at finding the site on Meers’ touchdesk.