Then comes September and the sun tilts to the south. Yes, autumn in New York: the great song of the city and the great season. Not just for the relief from the brutal extremes of winter or summer, but for that glorious slant of the light, that feeling that in certain moments lances in on that tilt—that you had been thinking you were living in a room and suddenly with a view between buildings out to the rivers, a dappled sky overhead, you are struck by the fact that you live on the side of a planet—that the great city is also a great bay on a great world. In those golden moments even the most hard-bitten citizen, the most oblivious urban creature, perhaps only pausing for a WALK sign to turn green, will be pierced by that light and take a deep breath and see the place as if for the first time, and feel, briefly but deeply, what it means to live in a place so strange and gorgeous.
I had to get used to it, but now that I have, nowhere do I feel freer than amid the crowds of New York. You can feel the anguish of solitude here, but not of being crushed.
—Jean-Paul Sartre
f) Inspector Gen
Gen sometimes wondered if the patterns she thought she saw caused her to send her people out and make the patterns come into existence. Maybe this was deduction versus induction again. It was so hard to tell which she was doing that she often got the definitions of the two words confused. Idea to evidence, evidence to idea—whatever. Sometimes Claire would come back from her night classes talking about the dialectic, and what she said sounded a bit like Gen’s thinking. But Claire also complained that one of the dialectical features of the dialectic was that it could never be pinned down by a definition but kept shifting from one to another. It was like a traffic light: when you were stopped it told you to go; when you were going it told you to slow down and stop, but only for a time, after which it told you to go again. And yet you were not supposed to have your destination guided by traffic lights at all, but range widely and try to catch things from the side. While also trying to get where you were going.
So Gen was baffled as she reflected on these matters while walking the skybridges of the drowned city from station to station, from problem to problem. Today she was trying a new way to solve the shortcutter’s problem from her office to the mayor’s residence and reception skyscraper at Columbus Circle. She ambled along in the clear tubes of the graphene spans, switching from knight’s moves to bishop’s moves as the 3-D grid allowed. A dialectical progress high over the canals of lower Manhattan, which on this morning looked gray and congealed under a low cloud ceiling. Early December, finally getting cold. At Eighth she dropped to the ground and continued up the crowded sidewalks of the avenue just north of the intertidal. Mayor Estaban was hosting some kind of ceremony for visiting mayors from inland cities, apparently, and Inspector Gen had decided to attend and wave the NYPD flag.
This crowd was not Gen’s crowd. She would much rather have been submarining with Ellie and her people, having a frank and open exchange of views with the usual gang of water rats and ignoring the various indiscretions in the corners. The politicians and bureaucrats inhabiting the top of the uptown hierarchy, on the other hand, made her feel defensive. They wearied her. And she knew also that many of them were much bigger criminals than her submarine acquaintances; in some cases she had the evidence of their corruption cached for use at an opportune moment. This was a version of the same judgment she made underwater, that the people in place were better than whoever might replace them. Or she was just waiting for a moment of maximum leverage. Always that waiting made her anxious, as she realized she was making judgment calls that weren’t hers to make. In effect she was herself becoming part of the bad system, the nepotism and corruption, by holding things off the record. But she did it all the time. If she felt that the person in question was doing little harm by being there, such that nailing them might degrade the situation in lower Manhattan, then she put it in her pocket and waited for a better time. It seemed the best way. And sometimes she caught signs in the files that it had been the NYPD way for a lot longer than she had been alive. NYPD, the great mediator. Because the law was a very human business, any way you looked at it.
So here she was, one of the city’s most distinguished inspectors, famous downtown and in those parts of the cloud interested in police work. Pressing the flesh and being shown off by the mayor. She had never quite come to terms with this aspect of her job. Her coping method was basically to do film noir. Regard people tightly, keep a stone face. That manner, plus her height, six two in her thickest shoes, gave her what she needed to be able to hold her own. And sometimes, she was pleased to note, do even more than hold her own: she could intimidate. On occasion she could play that role pretty hard. Tall bulky severe black policewoman, Octaviasdottir indeed. On the other hand this was New York, where everyone played their part pretty hard, and many of them thought they too were in a noir movie, or so it seemed. New York noir, a classic style. Watch out babe.
The mayor had occupied almost all of a new tower at the north end of Columbus Circle, using her own money but making it the official mayor’s reception palace as well as her private residence. So now Gen clomped up the broad staircase to the mezzanine, moving slowly, like a beat cop with sore dogs. She lifted her chin at acquaintances, said “Hey” to the functionaries manning the entry and the refreshments table. Then she stood against the wall by the door, sipping bad coffee and staring into the middle distance as if about to fall asleep on her feet. She took this pose so far that she almost did fall asleep. When the mayor and her retinue swept in, Gen stayed put and watched the throng gather around them and then dissipate, allowing the mayor to make her rounds. Looked like Arne over there, head of Morningside Realty, a power in the party. Chatting with a group from the Cloister cluster. The people from Denver looked out of place.
Galina Estaban was as charismatic as ever. Already, at age forty-five, a retired cloud star and ex-governor of the state of New York. She reminded Gen of Amelia Black in some ways—in that easy assumption of fame. She was like Amelia’s Latina older sister, the one who had gotten good grades and even enjoyed studying. Five foot five, but heeled to get there; sweep of brown hair over radiant good looks, her beauty in a broad-faced Native American or mestizo mode. Eyes like lamps. A little smile you couldn’t quite believe was about you.
When she saw Gen she came immediately to her, as if on a tractor beam to her favorite person in the room, or even the most important person in the room. Gen almost smiled as she acknowledged that yes, Galina Estaban was the best ever at making people feel good. If you didn’t walk away, if you smiled and nodded in response to her operatic overture, you became complicit in her popularity. But in this case Gen knew it was all an act. Gen had nailed one of Estaban’s favorite aides taking kickbacks from an uptown developer, and really it was obvious from the proximities involved that Estaban had to have known about it. Galina hadn’t liked having to accept her aide’s hasty resignation and had retaliated with some hammering of Gen’s support at police headquarters, then some disabling blows at their cloud infrastructure, which was ugly revenge indeed; NYPD had been materially harmed. So now the two hated each other. But New York had to be an impressive place for Denver execs to visit, and appearances therefore had to be upheld, or else the cloud would fill with a fog of salacious speculation so thick that they wouldn’t be able to see to do their respective jobs. So they made nice.
“I didn’t know you would be here,” Estaban said.
“Your people told me to come.”
“Since when has that made a difference?”
“What do you mean? I always come when I’m called.”
Estaban laughed cheerfully at this. People would think they were amusing each other.
“I don’t think any of my people asked you to be here. Come on, why really?”
“Well, now that you mention it, I’m hearing about stuff happening in the intertidal. Unsolicited offers on buildings down there, combined with threats and some sabotage. And some messing with the local scene down there. So I
thought I’d check to see if you or your people have heard anything about this. You usually have your finger on the pulse of the city, and people are getting anxious.”
The mayor turned to Tanganyika John, one of her minions, who had just hurried up to join them and run interference. “Any news about that, that you know of?”
John shrugged. “No.”
If they knew anything they wouldn’t say. Gen was used to stonewalling, from them and from everyone, and in other situations she might have undermined their stone wall a little, but this was not a time for that. Estaban extended a bubble of good cheer around her that it would be impolitic to pop, especially with all the people from Denver there in the room. Gen shrugged back at John, trying to indicate with her stare that she didn’t expect any minion help at any time.
“It may be only visible underwater,” she said. “Or in city stats. I’ll check with my people in real estate transfers and see if they’ve seen anything.”
“Good idea. Everything okay otherwise?”
“Not really. You know how it is. When real estate worries go up, people get stressed.”
“Meaning we’re all stressed all the time, right?”
“I guess.”
“This time is different, you’re saying.”
“It seems like something new is happening.”
Gen stared at the mayor. It was part of their conflict, each claiming to be closer to the real heartbeat of the city. Fighting over which of their angles of vision showed more. There was no way to win this, even if they had sat down and compared notes on it, which they would never do. A formal debate, with God impartially judging: not going to happen. So it was an attitude thing, not at all uncommon among New Yorkers: I know more than you do, I know the level below yours and above yours, I have the secret knowledge, the key to the city’s life. No one could ever really win at that, but no one could lose either, not if they hung tough.
Gen did that now, while hoping that Claire had some of her implants in the mayor’s office here watching the minions on hand. Some of these people she would like to have tracked after this reception, to see if her appearance might tip someone into making a move. Someone might feel impelled to go out and make a call, tip a contact, warn someone somewhere … She had to hope for such a move, or else it would just be a case of giving away her interest without any more result than causing involved parties to get more cautious. Well, that too might be trackable, one never knew. She had to put in a bid to start the game.
But there was one more thing to try. Olmstead had recently discovered a link between the mayor and Arne Bleich, the owner of Morningside Realty, who was right there across the room. “So you’re working with Arne Bleich on projects downtown?”
Estaban blinked, processing both the question and the fact that Gen had asked it at a reception like this one. She definitely didn’t like it. “You mean me personally?”
“Obviously.”
“No.” And now her smile was very definitely a fuck you. “Excuse me, I’ve got to say hi to all our visitors here, I have to mingle.”
“Of course. I’ll do the same.”
After that it was just a matter of staying visible for a while, looking politely ominous, then getting away unobtrusively. Claire’s team would be taking it from there. It wasn’t much different from visiting Ellie’s. Show up and give them a shock, see if any guilty fled where woman pursueth. She surveyed the minions herself, trying to gauge the room; they were very attuned to the mayor’s mood, and now they were a little freaked, and not looking Gen’s way. With a sudden onset of lethemlucidity Gen saw the power structure of the city with x-ray vision, all atremble with force fields like magnetic lines emanating from the gorgeous mayor. Gen had broken the glass over some kind of psychic alarm bell, and now it was ringing.
Eventually she left, and as it was late, she called a police cruiser to the floating tide dock at Eighth between Thirty-fifth and Thirty-seventh. When she got back to her apartment in the Met she changed clothes, went down to Vlade’s basement room, buzzed the door. No answer, so she walked up one flight of stairs to the boathouse office, and there he was. Gen had the impression he spent far more time here than in his room, which was basically just a place to sleep. Like her in that regard. This office was his living room.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Pretty well. I’m still nosing around the stuff that happened here. Anything new there?”
“I’m not sure. The generator wouldn’t start, and there was a clog in the sewage line. If there weren’t other things going on I wouldn’t think twice about it, but as it is, I don’t know.”
He looked up into the hung boats high in the boathouse, frowning somberly. Slab shoulders slumped, slab cheeks too. Apprehensive. Which made sense. Even if he had been somehow bought or otherwise won over by the people offering on the building, or the people messing with the building, if they weren’t the same, he could never count on them keeping their word to him when they took over. More typically new ownership would hire new management, in which case Vlade would be out of a job. That would represent disaster for him, it seemed to Gen. The building was his clothing and home, it was his skill, his skull. It would make better sense if he were perhaps doing things to make the building look worse to the people interested in buying it. But these little problems were not going to do that.
“So, most of these problems, you’ve seen them before?”
“Yeah, sure. All but those guys disappearing and the cameras not working when it happened. That is truly an odd one. And”—he frowned—“I haven’t seen a leak like the one I found either. That wasn’t an accident. So, you know. Seems like it might be a pattern.”
“Happens to me all the time. Listen, will you show me the records for all your employees, including their references when you hired them?”
“Yes. I’m curious myself.”
Gen put her pad on his desk and he transferred some files into it.
As he was finishing a young man looked in his doorway. Franklin Garr, a resident. “Hey can you get my zoomer down pronto please?”
Six foot one, dishwater blond, good-looking in a bland way, like a model in a cheap men’s clothing catalog. Eyebrows bunched as he drove home his request to Vlade. Smart, quick, nervy. Cocksure, but maybe a little rattled too.
“On its way,” Vlade said heavily, toggling his boathouse dashboard.
A little motorboat with hydrofoils descended out of the murk of the boathouse rafters, and the young man threw a “Thanks” over his shoulder as he rushed out to it.
“One of your favorite residents,” Gen guessed.
Vlade smiled. “He can be a jerk. Impatient youth, that’s for sure.”
After that, she could either go to the dining and commons, or to her apartment, or keep working. So she kept working. She hoofed over to the vapo dock next to the Flatiron and took the Fifth south down to the Washington Square bacino, where she knew that the Lower Manhattan Mutual Aid Society was having its monthly. Lots of building supers would be there, and various obliged and interested parties from the buildings and organizations that altogether made Lame Ass a lively place.
They met on a big roof terrace that NYU provided for the meetings, a kind of cocktail hour before the evening meetings. Gen was a well-known figure and lots of friends and acquaintances came up to greet her; it had been a while since she had made one of the monthlies. She was friendly to all but kept an eye out for her particular friends, the supers and security experts she called her Bacino Irregulars. Clifford Sampson, an old friend of her father’s from the Woolworth building, Bao Li from the Chinatown security detail, Alejandra from the James Walker Bacino association: all these people were well-known to her, and with each of them she could give them a certain look and they would follow her aside ready to answer questions. She quickly ran through them: Any buildings getting sabotaged? Any unsolicited offers to buy communal buildings? Anything unusual or untoward in their employees, disappearing without quitting, messing around
with security systems?
Yes, they all said. Yes, yes, yes. Right in my own basement. Fucking with my structural integrity. Cameras not seeing things. You should talk to Johann, you should talk to Luisa. In all of them a tight russrage at the ugly cynicism of whoever or whatever it was doing these things. Gentrification my ass. Fucking slimeballs just want what we got. We got the SuperVenice humming and they want to horn in. We’re going to have to hang together to keep what we’ve got. Time for your goddamn NYPD to show us which side they’re on.
I know, Gen kept saying. I know. NYPD is on New York’s side, you know that. Nobody on the force likes those uptown creeps. Uptown is uptown, downtown is downtown. Got to make sure there’s a balance kept. Rule of law. I need the Bacino Irregulars to jump into action, people.
This she said to a group of old friends, people who knew her from Mezzrow’s and Hoboken, the old guard, children of the hard years, after the Second Pulse had wrecked everything. People who were paid in food and blocknecklaces, people indentured to their buildings by money and love. They were gathered in a corner and happy at the little reunion she had convened. Drinking beer and swapping stories. The meetings later would be contentious as always. People complaining, arguing, shouting, calling for votes on this and that. The crazy messiness of intertidal life. For now they were a functioning in-group in that madness. There were probably twenty such meetings going on now all around Washington Square bacino, prepping for the more public meetings or just letting off steam among people they trusted.
“We’re all going to need the Bacino Irregulars,” she said to them. “I have a task force working on this now, and my own building, my folks’ building, is in the crosshairs with you. So start trolling and let me know what you find out.”