The kid had a big gap-toothed grin while her mom looked more serious. Casey’s hair was cut in a severe pattern, bangs way too short, with the sides shaved and the back in a weird rectangle hanging straight down to the small of her back.

“I bet she walked all over poor little Brixton.” Heinrich murmured. “That beta male probably loved it, too. What a chump.”

He forwarded the information to Biniam, a computer hacker who specialized in hunting down secrets online. Later that day, Biniam invited him over. Heinrich was surprised. The refugee valued his privacy and generally kept to himself.

Biniam lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Alphabet City, one of the last bastions of true New York. When Heinrich had been growing up in the Eighties, it had been a no-go area even for a juvenile delinquent like him. It had cleaned itself up a lot since then, although it had managed to resist gentrification to a large degree. Walking the streets, Heinrich heard a dozen languages and saw people from every continent. This was how all of New York had been before it was whitewashed into generic sameness.

Biniam, for example, was from Eritrea, the region that had first discovered coffee, but he’d have looked out of place among all the hipsters in Starbucks.

“Selam, Biniam,” Heinrich said as he entered through the door. “Kemey ‘aleka?”

“Kemey Wu’elka, Heinrich,” Biniam replied. He was a slight man in his late twenties, with Semitic features and coffee-colored skin.

The friendly hello took Heinrich to the end of his Tigrinya. He’d never had a reason to learn more of it. He did, however, speak those words perfectly.

Biniam gave him the traditional handshake of the Horn of Africa, clasping Heinrich’s hand down low and then bumping his shoulder against his. The shoulder bump was a habit from the old country that Biniam had kept, much to the amusement of his small circle of friends. Clapping to get a waiter’s attention was something they’d had to make him stop.

Biniam’s apartment looked like the complete opposite of what Heinrich imagined a typical computer hacker’s place would be. It was scrupulously clean, with no pizza boxes or Chinese takeaway on the table. Biniam preferred to make his national cuisine, something he got to eat damn too little of back in Eritrea. Half that country was starving. On the walls hung photos of Eritrea—blue waters, rugged mountains, and the Italian retro cafés of the capital, Asmara. There were no posters of science fiction movies and no comic books anywhere. Only the high-powered Mac with two large screens hinted at Biniam’s occupation.

“I’ll put on some coffee,” Biniam said.

“Music to my ears.” Biniam’s coffee was the best Heinrich had ever tasted.

He followed the hacker into the kitchen, where Biniam began grinding the coffee beans.

“I found some wonderful details about your dominatrix,” Biniam said with a giggle. “You’re going to have fun on this case.”

“What did you find?”

“Just like her husband suspected, she has moved to Amsterdam and rented a room in the Red Light District. I don’t have her home address yet, just her workspace. Basically, it’s a little closet where the woman stands by a glass door so she can be seen from the street. When a man is interested, they go in back, where there is a bedroom.”

Biniam put the grounds into a small brass pot and set it on the open gas range. He chuckled.

“I must say, in the West you really make things efficient. Back home, the girls just lounge around the bars. In Amsterdam, you don’t even have to buy a beer.”

“But in Eritrea, how do you tell the difference between the working girls and the girls who are just at the bar for a drink?” Heinrich asked.

Biniam laughed.