Gold Wristbands

A guard's hand touched my elbow before Dorian had finished his sentence.

"This way, ma'am," said the guard. His badge read Ellis Boone. He said it kindly and he didn't grip. Someone had raised him right. He walked me across the lounge floor, and I used the walk.

I counted wristbands. Gold ones, the kind that meant Admiral Suite. There were nine. A couple by the window, a man in a golf visor, a family of four eating pastries with the ease of people who had paid for the pastries. Not one of them carried a cream folder with a green ribbon. Every real Admiral guest carries one. The Wrenfield Dawn has forty-one suites, and I could have named who booked most of them.

Nine strangers with no folders. One woman with a folder in the ice.

That was the first honest number of the morning.

Fourteen letters had come to me in five months. Different handwriting, different crew, the same complaint: the priority desk at Pier Fourteen had a price, and the price was not on any menu. Nobody signed a full name. I had read each letter at my kitchen table and decided that a man like the one I'd just met would never confess to paper. He would have to be seen.

Well. I had been seen instead.

Ellis left me at the rope line of the general queue hall, where the light was harsh and the suitcases outnumbered the people. "For what it's worth," he said, "I'm sorry." Then he went back to the lounge.

I stood in line for three minutes. A young deckhand in a navy crew polo pushed a luggage cart past me and the cart bumped my hip. "Sorry, ma'am," he said, loud enough that two people turned. Then, under his voice: "Left drawer. Under the desk."

Something folded landed in my jacket pocket. His badge said Tomasz. He didn't look back.

I waited until the line moved, then opened the slip. Block capitals, blue pen.

NOT THE FIRST TIME. ASK WHAT'S IN THE DRAWER.

Under it, smaller: HE LOCKS NOTHING.