A Naked Singularity: A Novel (12 page)

“Oh no, have to love my bike until it can’t reciprocate.”

I said I had court but was glad I could help, that his concern was appreciated and his advice would be heeded although we knew it wouldn’t be because as long as they kept track of things like caseloads mine would always be the highest. Tom nodded and reiterated some things while I picked at the bike’s rear tire. Then I walked out and down the hall shaping the petition into a ball and calmly sinking an uncontested eight footer into the trash can just outside the video room.

NOW SHOWING:

On the screen is surprising quality—like decent public access; the angle is upper right-hand corner looking down. Looking down on the innards of a tiny bodega with two consumer aisles and one of those fridge/counters in front of the cash register located on the bottom right of the screen. There’s no life in there. Behind the counter sits, according to his tee shirt, Superdad, or a fiftyish Hispanic man with a close-cropped gray afro. The once-black shirt has faded to a dark grey that emerges intermittently from behind the yellow and red pentagon logo. The short sleeves barely contain the wearer’s carved arms and shoulders as he rocks back and forth on his wooden stool. He is alone and staring emptily.

Now the chimed door announces work and he slowly uncoils to attention, leaning forward against the counter. To the back they go, one in each aisle followed by purposeful loitering and Superdad’s eyes on them all the while. More loitering. Marvyn Rane and Disangel Cruz are the two and they can’t decide and Superdad is losing patience maybe starting to worry. Now Rane signals to Cruz with his chin and they rhyme towards the counter, the cash register, and the near-future decedent. Cruz has a bag of chips that he drops on the counter. Rane looks out the door then points to the cash register. Repeatedly. Point. Point. From behind the counter, a dismissal in response, signaling to the door with annoyed lips. Except Rane has a gun.

The gun does not come out and jut forward. The gun comes out and drives Rane backward, straightening his bony right arm with its electric current. It points at a stone face and Rane seems bigger now as Superdad shrinks. Cruz hops up and down like a fighter between rounds and Superdad moves to the cash register without looking away from Rane. It doesn’t open. Rane is a statue—hardening and unforgiving. More hopping. Won’t open. Gun moves closer to the counter with Rane following. Cruz wants out. He pulls at Rane’s left shoulder but the right one stays frozen. Still tapping, now pounding, the register. Refuses to open. Rane waves Cruz off. Open. (The tape should end here or shortly thereafter when the money enters Rane’s hand right?) Now Superdad has the bills so he’s armed too and he extends them to Rane, his mouth silently moving. But the money no longer exists to Rane. Cruz’s mouth moves. Rane’s doesn’t. His fist is full of the trite ending. He squeezes it. A white flash as if from a camera then the beginnings of a flame that’s quickly snuffed.

Superdad’s neck is black from all the red.

Hands wrapped tight around his neck to keep the red in. The universal sign for choking. Gargling and Thrashing. On the floor behind the counter, chin down and soaked shirt. Rane looking down, leaning over the counter and pointing again. Cruz part of the audience. Another squeeze and flash. Superdad’s middle looks like his neck. Now he’s on his side and crawling with Rane pointing again. But suddenly out the door they go—Cruz first.

On the ground Supe crawls to the white then red cordless phone. His wet hand can’t properly grasp it. It falls and he looks at it. The mouth moves but slower. Hands on and chin down but it can’t work. Can’t keep liquid life in when it wants out and the thrashing is a dull imitation of earlier vigor. The rejected money has scattered around him. His breathing is insanely heavy now. A paroxysm of desire. Then less and less. Pianissimo. Wrists down . . . palms up . . . eyes open. No more forevermore. Inexpensive Surreality Television. THE END.

Dane stared at me as if colorful chips were between us. “Something huh?” he said.

“Everything’s some thing.”

“Meaning it’s not often you’re confronted with your client’s irredeemable actions in such unassailable detail is it?” He looked back at the barren screen. “You’re an eyewitnesses in effect. It’s not just represent a guy who did this, which you’d probably say is never a problem, it’s squint your eyes and witness his interior darkness in all its glory. What are your options then? Do you embrace it, reject it, grudgingly accept it, and does it ultimately matter? Regardless, you’re in right?”

“I’m pretty busy right now like I said last night.”

“Perhaps there’s a slight failure of comprehension here,” he said. “You saw, did you not, the cash register finally open?”

“I did.”

“Saw the money offered to Rane?”

“Yes.”

“What you didn’t see, of course, was either genius take that money and leave.”

“No.”

“So naturally when I get a case like this what I want, and what I have thus far been denied by those annoying pro forma protestations of innocence, is a look inside the shell of this person. Understand? Unlike most, I don’t deny the attraction. What do you want?”

“In general?”

“From Rane.”

“Nothing from Rane. Besides, he says it’s not him and that could be true. I mean it
could
be,” almost laughing.

“This is his mug shot.”

“Okay, so much for that. So he’ll take a plea.”

“I suppose, but as I say that’s hardly the most relevant consideration here. Think of what I’m offering you.”

“Whatever, I guess.”

“Good, very good. Lunch later?”

“Why not? If I’m not back by one meet me in front of one-eleven.”

“Oh yeah, in the interest of full disclosure, Edwin Vega was the name of the bodega guy. I talked to the neighborhood. He was loved. He would give neighborhood kids jobs and he would coach in the peewee basketball league or whatever. He had kids too, ten-year-old girl and eight-year-old boy.”

“Yeah the shirt.”

“So you understand?”

“That he had kids? Yeah I understand. That makes him a father, I’m familiar with the concept.”

“Then you can come with me when I return to the neighborhood,” he chuckled. “What killed me last time was when this lady says to me
I can’t believe this happened to him, he went to church every Sunday
. Believe that? In this day and age? Lot of good it did him huh? I mean can’t you just picture it? Every Sunday this poor schlub packs his plump wife and two kids into their early-eighties Buick and off they go to the building with the pretty windows and the empty promises. Inside a guy in a colorful robe tells them everything is going to be all right because what happens here is essentially meaningless. Just bide your time you know? Then in walks this twerp who doesn’t shave yet and what good is all that shit? A little bullet to the neck and what good is it all? These funny distractions you people create for yourselves are powerless in the face of clinical truth. The Ranes of this world are that truth. There will always be Rane Casi.”

“Okay.”

“I mean have you thought about this guy, every day in his little bodega just trying—”

“Really don’t want to think about him.”

“So what do you say to what I’m saying?”

“I say I have to go to court.”

“And?”

“And I don’t care about Vega right now.”

“Have it your way then.”

“I will. Later.”

“One o’clock at one-eleven.”

And just like that, poof, he was gone.

In the elevator were two attorneys. I recognized one of them from the night before as one of the attorneys who’d come in for the lobster shift. He was a tall, square-jawed, game-show-host-looking guy. There was a Clarke and a Karl; he was one of them but I didn’t know which and he was talking to another attorney, Lee Graham, whose name I knew only because he had recently achieved mild notoriety by fainting in front of a judge.

“How was the lobster yesterday?” asked Graham.

“Not bad, we didn’t do many cases at all.”

“It was slow?”

“Well it was actually funny. They beat the shit out of some guy in the back real bad so we just sat around while they had all these EMS guys come in and take this poor sap away. Supposedly they shattered this guy’s jaw and everything.”

“The cops?!”

“No the other prisoners.”

“Really?”

“Yeah don’t faint on me now. It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“They charge anyone?”

“Nah, no one would spill who done it.”

“When did this happen?”

“Round three.”

“Did you see the guy when they took him out?”

“Oh yeah. A real mess, both eyes closed, broken teeth, dried blood, the whole deal. Somebody wasn’t happy with this dude.”

“Wow. Who was it?”

“Some Oriental.”

“What?!” I said.

“What what?” he said.

“What did you say about Oriental?” I said.

“Oh I’m sorry
Asian
. Fucking political correctne—”

“No, who was Asian?”

“The guy who got fucked up haven’t you been listening?”

“Well what the hell was his name?”

“How do I know? He didn’t show me any I.D. man. Who is this guy?” to Graham.

“Nobody said his name?”

“Choo choo or something. What the hell do I know?” he was full of laughter too.

“Chut? Ah Chut was that his fucking name?”

“Sounds right. Why does he owe you money or something?”

“Listen you worthless piece of shit, was his name Ah Chut or not?”

“Hey screw you man. No reason to get insulting here.”

“Fuck” I said under my breath as I walked through the lobby towards the door.

“Who is that guy anyway Grammy?”

Worst part was I couldn’t even remember what Chut looked like. Those arraignment faces always bled together like in an amateurish, speedy camera pan.
You go home
I remembered assuring him in that retarded way people talk to those who fall short of full comprehension of the language being used. I thought about it some and concluded I had messed up. I was supposed to get him home. No one else cared or was supposed to. I was responsible for getting him home without excuses but didn’t so now he was a mess to look at.

Just then, at that very moment, I became sick of my job and wanted a different one. More specifically I was sick of that kind of shit always happening. Until I quit, I thought, I could make a pledge like the kind comic book superheroes are always making, you know where they like pledge that
never again
will injustice flourish in their presence and then this pledge brings a clarity and meaning to the superhero’s life that he or she could not have envisioned prior to the pledge. A Pledge. I decided to make one, a pledge, to myself really. And not an insignificant factor in this decision was the fact that the word
pledge
was really rather funny if you kept saying it repeatedly or in my case thinking it, so I felt a responsibility to somehow animate this word that had given me pleasure at a down time by actually making one. So anyway the pledge was that, in the mystical future, but the one that began like that instant, nothing detrimental or untoward would ever happen to a client of mine. I could make this pledge, I thought, because I would be physically present whenever such a deleterious event would threaten to occur. I would be there when somebody—judge, prosecutor, court officer, janitor—tried to make something bad happen and I would be there to stop it. I would simply stop it is what I would do. How I would do that would obviously depend on the situation. So no more errata I thought. No almosts or maybes. In the future I would always succeed; all regret and guilt would wither and die in the face of a crushing, compulsive efficiency.

I thought about how, when I was a squirt, minor bad things like misplacing a pair of gloves that still spanked, the price of which I’d been explicitly and repeatedly informed, would happen with alarming frequency and how I was often, as a result, placed on the defensive.
For the defense: they lost themselves, you still love me? ¡Of course papi! how much? This much. but there are mommies who are bigger than you and can stretch their arms wider, do they love their kids more than you?

First up following The Pledge was Malkum Jenkins and 111 Centre Street, one of two buildings in New York County where state criminal cases were heard and home of Part 28 where Jenkins was presumably waiting. Part 28 belonged to Judge Sizygy and Friday meant it was his calendar day which in turn meant there would be a slew of teens and their families behaving like heated molecules inside his ridiculously tiny courtroom. (The thinking went something like this: let’s take the JO [juvenile offender] part, the part that figures to attract the highest number of interested observers—familial and otherwise—due to the age of the defendants, and stick it in a courtroom appreciably smaller than any other so that inevitably the audience on calendar days [remember,
Friday
] will spill out into the halls creating barely-restrained chaos, won’t that be fun?) And Sizygy was probably the best judge around. He took an interest in the defendants and tried to help. He kept their families informed and even fielded questions from them. He took his time on every case, careful to do the right thing. He was, in short, a good man whose basic decency made contact with him a desirable pleasure. Everyone hated going there.

Malkum had to go because four months earlier he’d sold to an undercover during a buy and bust. He was arrested and charged with Sale 3° and some 18B got the case but no matter since Jenkins was nothing if not routine and thus entitled to the standard outcome for sixteen-year-olds who look disproportionately at the floor and sell the product that sells itself. Standard outcome was adjudication as a youthful offender, meaning no criminal record, and five years probation. YO and probation meant Malkum stayed pure and out of jail but with someone to watch over him: a probation officer or PO, where we were all the kids had them. Twenty-one days, that’s how long Malkum reformed before we met. Once again he’d sold to the only customers who complain and his sweet deal had turned acrid. This time there was no ROR at arraignments. Instead he received $5,000 bail and a head start on his expected jail sentence. YO eligibility had been exhausted too, meaning the minimum was one to three years in state prison plus whatever he got on the forthcoming VOP or violation of probation.