Depth

by Rosen, Lev AC

  “You have a gun,” Caroline said. “Why don’t you just display that?”

  “I will.”

  CAROLINE PAID FOR A CAB, and Simone had it drop them a few bridges away, where it wasn’t too seedy. It was midafternoon, and the sun pressed down, simmering the garbage that floated between the buildings and sending up a dirt and shit smell. Flies buzzed just over the waves, their paranoid hum rising up whenever the sound of the waves faded. Simone shaded her eyes with her hands and looked for the building Danny had directed her to. It was a short walk, over bridges littered with sleeping bodies and people in salt-stained clothes, their mouths white, their eyes glazed. Behind the buildings, off on the horizon, there was a massive storm cloud heading their way. They’d have to be fast.

  She led the way, flashing her gun when any of the MouthFoamers glanced up at them. Caroline walked just behind her, eyes straight ahead, fearless. They wove around poorly finished bridges and, at one point, climbed up to the top of a building to get to a bridge that was higher up. The building they finally came to was gray stone, one of the Glassteel test cases. It was covered with the stuff so thickly it actually looked laminated, cheap and tacky, like a building made of wax paper. The door was open, so they walked in and up a few flights. Danny had homed in on this location from server and cloud usage, but he couldn’t find an apartment number; the closest he could get was that she was probably in the top northwest corner of the building.

  The stairwells were metal things, crusted with salt and smelling of plastic and decay. Simone knocked on a few doors as she approached the northwest part of the top floor. No one answered any of them until they reached apartment G. There, the door flew open as though someone was expecting them.

  The woman who opened the door was young and wore only a blue dressing gown tied loosely around her. She didn’t even look at Simone and Caroline but walked away from the door as soon as she’d opened it. The apartment was a large flat, empty of all furniture save an unmade bed, a dresser, an old leather sofa that was also being used as a bed, and a wooden chair in front of a small table. An easel stood by one of the large frosted windows that let in a cold, gray light. A few other windows were open, and wind blew around the room, wet with the ocean. The woman sat down on the wooden chair and crossed her legs, apparently waiting for Simone and Caroline. Simone saw nowhere else to sit, so she stood across from the small table, eyeing the woman. The woman stared directly ahead of her, not looking up. She was pale, and her skin seemed loose on her pointed features. Her hair was ash blonde and fell in long, frizzy waves in all directions. Her lips were dry, and the cracks in them were white—she was clearly a longtime MouthFoamer. She reached forward, took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter off the table, and lit one. The smoke from the cigarette floated around her, blending with her hair, fanning out around her like a nebula. Her eyes were the palest blue and didn’t seem to see anything.

  “You’re Misty?” Simone asked. Caroline hung back as Simone walked forward. The woman looked up at Simone’s face as though she were trying to remember it. Suddenly, her eyes focused for a moment, and she saw Simone. Finding nothing familiar there, she just sighed and let her head drop back down, her eyes unfocused.

  “Yeah,” she said after a moment. “Do you know where Mom is?”

  “Mom?” Caroline asked in a whisper, the question directed at Simone, not Misty. Simone frowned. The hair and eyes were different, but she could see it now, around the jaw and cheekbones. She looked around the room again, not wanting to look at Misty. She could guess what had happened.

  “Your mom brings you the Foam?” Simone asked. Misty didn’t move for a moment, then nodded. “Since you were little?” Again, a long pause, then a nod. Caroline stepped closer to Simone.

  “Sometimes,” Misty said suddenly, as though she were in the middle of a conversation already, “I wanted to do other things. But Mom always said I was too good at painting. I had to paint.” She gestured sleepily with the hand that held the cigarette, then dropped it.

  “So she brought you the Foam,” Simone said sadly, “and you got more when you painted.” Misty didn’t say anything but looked up again and, for a moment, seemed to see Simone and Caroline.

  “So where’s my Foam? I finished the paintings.” Her eyes unfocused again, and her vision dropped back to the nothingness in front of her. Simone stepped around her and headed towards the table. Caroline followed her.

  “Whose daughter is she?” Caroline asked.

  “Linnea’s,” Simone said. She didn’t want to think about that now, though. She headed for the easel. It was covered. Behind it, in the shadows, leaning against the walls, was a stack of at least two dozen canvases, also covered. Simone heard a sudden scraping of a chair being pushed back and turned. Misty was looking around the room as though she’d just woken up there, taken from her bed. She was afraid.

  “Where’s my mommy?” she yelled. “Mommy?” Caroline looked at Simone, clearly unsure of what to do and uncomfortable with being unsure about anything. Simone walked back over to Misty and pinned her arms at her sides. She was frail and went limp quickly, but she kept staring at Simone, her eyes huge and terrified.

  “Your mom isn’t coming,” Simone said. “But that’s okay.” Better than okay, she thought, considering what Linnea had done. “This lady here is going to make a call, and some people are going to come and keep you safe and get you better.” She turned back around to Caroline, who was already dialing on her wristpiece. “Why don’t you sit back down?” She placed Misty back in the chair, where she shook like a sick dog. Simone hovered behind her, waiting for the shaking to subside, but it didn’t. She walked back over to Caroline, who was hanging up the phone.

  “I called in a favor. I got a friend at the hospital to put her in their rehab program. Ambulance-boat will be here in a few.” She paused and looked over Simone’s shoulder at Misty, then back at Simone. “Her mother was her dealer?”

  Simone nodded. “Used it to get her to focus on painting. A lot of artists use Foam for clarity. Linnea used it to make her daughter into a little forging machine. That’s probably how she made all her money back in Europe.”

  Caroline took a deep breath and shook her head. “Sometimes I feel like we never really survived the flood, y’know? Like we’re all underwater.”

  “Like we’re all drowning.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.” Simone put her hand on Caroline’s shoulder for a moment, then walked back to the covered easel. In the distance was the sound of the ambulance-boat’s sirens. Simone pulled the cloth off the easel and stared at the painting—the one people had killed and died for, the one that would “save” New York, if that was even possible. It wasn’t much, she thought. Just lines and colors. It didn’t resonate in her soul, give her an experience, bring a tear to her eye, the way Circe had. But it did tell her who had killed Henry.

  FIFTEEN

  * * *

  OUTSIDE, THE DARK CLOUDS had reached the city, and a light rain began to patter on the windows. Caroline walked around the room, shutting the open windows. Then she came back to Simone. Simone ignored her and the EMTs who were trying to give Misty a shot of tranquilizer before taking her back to the hospital.

  “You keep staring at that thing like you understand it. If you want to know where it marks, we have to find an old map and compare it to the new map to see where it is now.”

  “No we don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  It was a painting of a smiling young couple looking at each other lovingly. The woman proudly held out a key. Her hair spun out around her and turned into streets. His jacket did the same. Parts of their bodies were missing, replaced by map, but their expression was clear, as was the loading dock in the background with the shipping crate on it—the box clearly marked with the C-Rail logo. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but, with the water at their feet, Simone could see how people could think of this painti
ng as a treasure map. There was one other thing that was perfectly clear: his boots—old-fashioned rain boots, bright blue, with little ducks on them.

  Behind her, Simone could hear Misty murmuring, “Nononononono.”

  She called Danny. He didn’t pick up, but she left a message: “Can you find me the address for Louise Freth? ASAP. Thanks.” She hung up and turned around. Caroline was glaring. Behind her, Misty was backing away from an EMT with a jet injector. Simone knew she should help them—help Misty—but her body felt too heavy, almost soggy with sadness. She hadn’t expected much from Linnea, but it was a lot more than this. She had liked Lou, too. Maybe thought that when she was older, grayer—if she even lived that long—she’d be like her. Sad, maybe, but tough, and smoking real tobacco cigarettes.

  Simone explored the room further. The dresser had some clothes in it, and a drawer with two plane tickets to the EU for Misty and Linnea Frost. Matching fake IRIDs, too. Good quality. Simone put them back and took a deep breath.

  “You said you’d stop hiding things,” Caroline said. Simone turned around. The EMTs were closing in on Misty.

  “I know. I’m just sad is all.” The EMT lunged at Misty with the injector; Misty dodged, but the other EMT grabbed her. She struggled animally, her moans primal and terrifying as the wail of a storm. Simone turned away.

  “Who’s Louise Freth?”

  “Henry’s partner. Older woman. I liked her. That’s her in the painting. I think that tunnel, if it exists, is in her apartment building.”

  “So how does that tell you who killed Henry?” Simone made the mistake of looking back at Caroline. Behind her, the EMT with the injector pressed it to Misty’s throat, and she fell back limp in the other’s arms. Simone looked down to avoid watching them lift her body.

  “Wait,” Simone called to the EMTs after she’d heard the knock of them laying Misty’s body down on a gurney. She walked towards them as they glanced up, then looked over at Caroline. They knew where the power was. “Can you put a sheet over her? And under the gurney, can you hide these?” She gestured at the forged paintings. “We need to smuggle them out.”

  “Why?” Caroline asked. She was getting angry again.

  “Because if I were Dash, I’d be following me. And all he wants is the painting. We’re going to smuggle all these out. Dash’ll come in, assuming we found the paintings, and not find them—I’ll take the chance to lose him. I’ll call Peter and have him meet you and the EMTs at the hospital to recover the paintings. Then you can decide what to do with them. I’m going to go see Lou.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to know why she did this. I want to give her a chance to turn herself in.”

  “She did it because Henry stole the painting from her, if it’s hers,” Caroline said, putting her hands on her hips.

  “She’s not someone who would kill over a painting,” Simone said. Her earpiece buzzed, and she answered without checking the ID. Caroline crossed her arms.

  “Danny?”

  “Who is Danny?” came deCostas’ voice. “Should I be jealous?”

  Simone sighed. “I can’t talk right now.”

  “Okay, I just want to see if you got my last message with the buildings?”

  “I need to go.” Simone hung up with a tap of her earpiece.

  “So you’re going to confront a murderer because you like her?” Caroline asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “I guess so.” Simone shrugged.

  “Alone?”

  “She’s an old woman.”

  “She’s killed once already. I’m coming, too.”

  “Why?”

  Caroline paused, thinking of a reason, then smiled. “So that if there is an underwater tunnel, a city representative will be on hand to figure out how to deal with it.” She folded her arms over her chest, chin up, proud of her reasoning.

  “There’s not going to be a tunnel.”

  “Other people seem to think there might be.”

  “It’s dangerous.”

  “You said she’s an old woman. And the EMTs aren’t going to smuggle your paintings without my say-so.” The EMTs had their eyes on Caroline, waiting for her approval. “Besides, I want to know why, too. I want to see how it ends.”

  “Fine,” Simone said. “But we have to play this right. When we leave the building, look anxious, but don’t say anything. Just follow me.”

  “Sure.” Caroline nodded at the EMTs, and they loaded the paintings onto the gurney. They barely fit, and the EMTs had to drape a cloth over Misty like she was a corpse to obscure them, but they were hidden. They rolled the gurney out carefully, wanting to impress the deputy mayor.

  Simone called Peter.

  “Please tell me there isn’t another dead body,” he said.

  “No, just one that looks it. I need you to head to the rehab facility at Mercy Hospital. There’s an ambulance coming in; they have a whole lot of paintings you might be interested in.”

  “Damnit Simone, if you found the painting, you need to tell me where you are. This is for the police.”

  “I can’t, Peter. I’m giving you the paintings, and I’m hoping to get a confession by the end of the day.”

  “Kluren is going to lock you up for tampering, you know.”

  “She was going to do that anyway, sooner or later.”

  “Tell me where you are.”

  “I’ll see you later, Peter.” Simone hung up. The phone almost immediately rang; she waited for caller ID this time, and when it displayed Peter’s name, she ignored it. Then a message came in from Danny, with an address on the Lower East Side, a note that Lou owned the entire building, and a request to please stop bothering him while he was at work.

  “Okay,” she said to Caroline. “Let’s go.”

  When they left the building, Simone made a show of looking around to see if she’d been followed. If Dash was there, he was too good to be spotted, but she thought maybe she saw a pinstripe cuff on the pants of a silhouette draped in rags. She didn’t stare. She needed Dash to think she hadn’t seen him. Then she turned to Caroline and spoke, her voice soft, but carrying.

  “Okay, do you want to get the police or some hired muscle to get the painting out of there?”

  Caroline’s eyes widened for a moment, but she played along. “I have some family security. They’ll handle it.” She typed into her wristpiece for effect, to sell it. “I don’t want to stay here, though. Let’s go back to my place. I have some old maps there.” Simone nodded and led them to the nearest taxi-boat stand. She told the driver to go towards Caroline’s place but halfway there had him change direction, and head towards Lou’s place. Caroline was silent the whole ride, her hair whipping wildly around her in the wind and rain. It wasn’t a heavy rain yet, but the sky was dark, and it would be a real storm in a few hours. Simone hoped everything would be finished by then.

  Lou was not a suspect she could have seen. She had figured it was Marina or the forger. But she’d believed Marina when she said she didn’t do it, and Misty didn’t have the presence of mind to kill someone. Lou had said she knew every piece in their inventory, but Trixie had said Henry found the painting in storage. So someone had lied. The painting was of Lou and her husband, so it would have been Lou’s—Reinel gave his paintings to his subjects—and Henry had stumbled on it and figured out what it was and what it was worth. Then he tried to steal it out from under Lou, and she tried to take it back. He’d probably been going to pick up the original painting from Misty when Lou caught up to him in the abandoned building, thinking he had the painting on him. Shot him . . . but the case had been empty. That was the scenario that made the most sense to Simone. But why shoot him over a painting? It was personal, clearly, but it was just an object. Simone just couldn’t see Lou pulling the trigger. It takes hardness to do that. Lou was hard, but hard in a way that endured, not in a way that killed
. Killing was born out of desperation or madness. It was the act of a person worn down to a bloody shard. Lou was no shard. She was an old brick wall.

  “This is it?” Caroline asked. She paid the cabbie, and they hopped out onto the bridge surrounding the building Danny had directed them to. It was one of the newer ones, built with Glassteel in place but not very tall. The architects hadn’t thought the water was going to get this high. It looked like four floors of mirror, shaped like an oval from above, flat on top. But it was in disrepair. The windows were still mirrored but stained with salt, and moss and fungus were creeping down from the roof, making it look older than it should have. There was only one bridge leading up to it, thin and old. The building was alone, overlooked, forgotten.

  Simone and Caroline walked to the door. Inside was a glass-ceilinged stairwell, with dim light glancing through. A circular, transparent stairway rose out of the water. There was no lobby; just landings with doors, presumably to hallways with apartments.

  “Not airtight,” Simone said, pointing at the waves.

  “So which place is hers?” Caroline asked. Simone shrugged. They climbed up to the third floor, and Simone exited into a narrow hallway with tiled floors and a flickering overhead light. Simone knocked on the first door, which opened to her touch; inside was an abandoned apartment with a few pieces of broken furniture pushed into a corner, crept over with fungus like small, dying landscapes. The next few apartments were the same.

  “No one else lives here,” Caroline said. Simone shrugged. They went back to the stairway and climbed to the top, their footsteps echoing on the glass. Above them, the sky became even darker, and rain began to pound heavily on the roof. Silence faded into the deep white noise of a storm.

  The top floor had no hallway, only a small foyer with a door and the letters PH next to it. Simone tried the door. It was locked.

  “This is it,” she said, kneeling down and taking lock picks from her pocket.