Free Depth by Lev AC Rosen

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