“True.” As in, end of world, but I didn’t point that out, not wanting to make fun of her too soon. “But maybe it was just another flash bite.”
“Well, it did come and go. Maybe it was somebody testing something.”
“Maybe,” I said, and thought that over.
After a moment of silent contemplation we had to talk about other things. It was too loud to think, and talking shop was only fun when you could hear the other person without shouting. Time to get back to basics, but also she was finishing her drink and going into leave-taking mode, or so it appeared from her aura. I didn’t want to blow it; this was not going to be quick and I didn’t want it to be, so it required some tact, but I can be very tactful, or at least try.
“Hey, listen, would you like to go out to dinner some Friday to celebrate the week?”
“Sure, where?”
“Somewhere on the water.”
That made her smile. “Good idea.”
“This Friday?”
“Sure.”
Windows split the city’s great hell
Into tiny hellets —Vladimir Mayakovsky
From now on each new building strives to be “a City within a City.”
—Rem Koolhaus
In King’s “Dream of New York” illustration from 1908, the future city is imagined as clusters of tall buildings, linked here and there by aerial walkways, with dirigibles casting off from mooring masts, and planes and balloons floating low overhead. The point of view is from above and to the south of the city.
While working as a detective in New York, Dashiell Hammett was once assigned to find a Ferris wheel that had been stolen the year before in Sacramento.
d) Vlade
Vlade’s little apartment was located at the back of the boathouse office, down a set of broad stairs. The rooms had been part of the kitchen pantry when the building had been a hotel, and were below the waterline even at low tide. Vlade didn’t mind this. Protection of the submerged floors was one of his main jobs in the building, interesting to manage and valued by the building’s occupants, although they took it for granted when there were no problems. But the water work was never done, and never less than crucial. So it had become a little point of pride for him to sleep below, as if deep in the hull of a great liner for which he was ship’s carpenter.
Methods to keep water out kept improving. Vlade was currently working with the team from the local waterproofing association that had caissoned the Madison Square side of the building to reseal the building’s wall and the old sidewalk. The aquaculture cages covering the floor of the bacino had to be avoided, making for a tight squeeze, but the latest Dutch equipment could be angled and accordioned in a way that gave them room to work. Then new pumps, dryers, sterilizers, sealants—all better than ever, even though this same work gang had passed through only four years before. It made sense, as Ettore, the super for the Flatiron, pointed out; this work was the crux for every building in the drink. But Vlade kept thinking things were as good as they could get. Ettore and the others laughed at him when he said this. That’s you, Vlade. They were a good group. Supers for the buildings of lower Manhattan formed a kind of club, all enmeshed with the mutual aid associations and cooperative groups that knitted together to make intertidal life its own society. Lots of complaints to share about all kinds of things, such as being paid in wetbits and blocknecklaces, which some called torcs, as they were basically forms of indenture to the building, a fancy version of room and board—people went on and on, but despite all the moaning they were lively and helped keep Vlade out of the depths.
On this day he woke in almost pitch-darkness. Green light from the clock cast hardly any illumination. He listened for a while. No rushing liquid except for his blood, moving sluggishly around in him. Internal tides, yes. Low tide in there, as on most mornings.
He pulled himself up and turned on the room light. The building screen reported all was well. Dry to bedrock: very satisfying. North building the same, or almost—some as-yet-unidentified crack was leaking into the foundation over there, very vexing. But he would find it.
He had slept four hours, as usual. That was all the time the building and his bad dreams gave him. Part of his low tide. Nothing to do but get up and go for it again. Up to the boathouse, to help Su get the dawn patrollers out the door and onto the canals. There were six lifts in the boathouse, and the boathouse computer provided them with a good sequencing algorithm. Where the human touch was still needed was in mollifying boat owners if their departure was delayed. Even a minute could get a bad response. Ah yes, very sorry, Doctor, I know, important meeting, but there’s been a slipped sling at the bow of the James Caird, it’s a bit of a tub. Not that the doctor’s boat wasn’t a barge itself, but no matter, the balm of chatter, all would be well. Everyone who wanted to be out the door without stress could do it. It was true there were people who needed a fight a day to satisfy some awful itch, but Vlade made them find it elsewhere.
Su was happy to see him, as Mac had gotten a call for her water taxi and wanted to take the job. This altered the drop sequence, and it took some hunting to find an alternative that balanced Mac’s need with Antonio’s standing request to be out at 5:15 a.m. Small things made Su nervous; he was a careful guy.
Then Inspector Gen showed up. Very senior NYPD, and a famous defender of downtown when uptown. She usually walked the skybridges to the police station on Twentieth, and the day before she hadn’t seemed to know who he was. They had never talked, but over dinner she had grilled him about the building’s security systems. She had known the local co-op he had hired to install the system and in general seemed quick to understand the issues in surveilling a building. No surprise there.
Now they greeted each other and she said, “I wanted to ask you more questions about the two missing men.”
Vlade nodded unhappily. “Ralph Muttchopf and Jeff Rosen.”
“Right. Did you talk to them much?”
“A little. They sounded like New Yorkers. Always pounding their pads when I was up there. Hardworking.”
“Hardworking but living in a hotello?”
“I never heard what that was about.”
“So you were never told anything about them by anyone on the board?”
Vlade shrugged. “My job is to keep the building running. The people aren’t my worry. Or so I am led to understand by Charlotte.”
“Okay. But let me know if you hear anything about these guys.”
“I will.”