A Naked Singularity: A Novel (16 page)

“Interesting, constituting a triumph of what?” asked Dane.

“Intelligence, what else?”

“No, of will. Intelligence how?”

“If the right person plans it properly it will work, you can plan it into success.”

“But then you need the will Casi. The will to execute it the one chance you get. This is where the adrenaline comes from and this is the universal attraction. This is why people love crime, the singularity of will involved. And don’t tell me people don’t love crime to the point of near obsession. Just look at the newspapers, the visual news, and all other forms of popular entertainment, crime is their favorite process. The only question left is whether crime is inherently a perversion, meaning error is necessarily built into it, or whether some degree of perfection can be achieved in that area.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning the commission of a truly perfect crime.”

“Oh.”

“Possible?”

“Guess anything’s possible Dane.”

“And everything.”

“So get cracking on it, could be your legacy.”

My, people come and go so quickly here!

—Dorothy in Oz

So now imagine you are Raul Soldera meaning that although you are dying, as promised, you are not doing it fast enough so that wherever you turn people are upset by this and even you yourself end up not really knowing what to root for since every upturn in physical health leads to greater legal peril and so you spend time internally debating things like whether ’tis better to be strong and caged or infirm but free.

And one of the literally handful of things you own is a weathered trumpet you use to play Salsa, your native Puerto Rico’s creation, at various nightclubs with various others but never without the assistance of one or more attractively controlled substances. And though you are a legitimate musician you are not an immensely talented one meaning your constant use of these substances achieves neither mystique nor cliché but rather is a lot like that proverby thing whereby
first you take drugs then the drugs take drugs then the drugs take you
but all this happening in like three days really not the years probably envisioned. So now stare at your owner, a seemingly innocuous amount of white powder that you convert to injectable fluid. A demanding owner that wants inside you at all times, that you serve meekly in everything you do whether it’s blowing into that trumpet or selling Him to other chattel just so you can be near Him. Until you sell to the wrong kind and one of the things the judge says when you take the inevitable plea is that if you commit another felony within the next ten years then you
must
be sentenced to State Prison and you say you understand and there will not be a next time. Which semi-vow you mean because you genuinely fear State Prison so imagine further that you in fact draw this demarcation into your life whereby in the ensuing eight years you continue to run afoul, as they say, of the law but only of misdemeanor incarnations of such. Meaning you will still sit behind a restaurant’s dumpster near used condoms and inject your foot with your owner then shake your companion’s chin to determine whether he continues among the living and in the absence of a final determination slowly peel his fingers from his needle to see if you might not be able to squeeze a few more drops for yourself but you will never again give to strangers for money, it being famously better to receive than to give in this context.

Now you are forty and essentially homeless and one night you spot a forgotten purse outside the nightclub you just played. Only the thing about the purse is not much in it save for the credit card with the woman’s name in raised letters that you stick in your wallet to maybe feel a little important then forget about until its discovery months later by the latest A/O on your latest failed buy who raises it to your face and makes a what-have-we-here type declaration while smiling, the fuck. The next day your improbably smooth-faced lawyer tells you you’re charged with Criminal Possession of Stolen Property in the Fourth Degree and that this is an E felony with a minimum sentence of one and a half to three years in state prison but that he will likely get you out in five days, which he does. Then later he tells you the DA must be an idiot because you’re indicted but he will delay things as much as possible, which he also does. Until the day when further delay becomes impossible as the case is scheduled for trial and they want to start it like that instant. And you don’t want to take 1½ to 3 but you also don’t want to go to trial and get more.

And you’re sick. You’re sick and your T-cell count is in like the teens and your mouth bleeds at inappropriate times and you didn’t know you were positive, although it wasn’t exactly a shock either, until those six days when your lawyer said something about medical attention then a doctor saw you and took blood and checked a lot of boxes for high-risk behavior then later told you it was bad, the blood. Now you are perceptibly wasting away with what look like white Rorschach inkblots on your face and have no stomach for a risky trial or prison sentence and instead just want the case to somehow disappear. Which it sort of does because after talking to the judge your lawyer tells you that because you are so sick you are being offered a special deal by the judge whereby you plead guilty and are promised the minimum sentence but your sentencing is deferred indefinitely while you provide intermittent updates on your medical condition until such time as . . . and then his voice kind of trails off as the two of you silently contemplate the obvious eventual ending of the litigation.

But these still become something like good times. For one, without the Damoclean sword of a potential trial and consequent state bid hanging over your head you actually start to feel better. You feel better and you play better and you stop with the junk and your sister lets you live with her as long as you continue to stop with the junk. You even start to semi consistently play Jimmy’s of all places and even though drinks are free for the band you drink club sodas with lime all night. You tell your lawyer he should come and watch one night. Then things really get better when you get switched doctors and you get Dr. Weintraub who puts you on a cocktail, which you think is a funny name considering everything, and your T-cells go up like a lot and his letters to the court don’t seem so dire and Judge Hilton, like the hotel, still smiles when she sees you every couple months and everything just seems so much quieter now.

But imagine that one day Judge Hilton is not there and she won’t be back and instead it is Judge Cymbeline who will now
preside
as they say. The medical reports don’t look so dire she says with slit-wrist serenity and adds that she disagrees with Judge Hilton. That she wouldn’t have given you such a big break. This Dr. Weintraub sounds almost optimistic she says. Why can’t you go to prison now that you’re feeling better? After all hasn’t it been eight months since you took the plea and yet there’s your heart still pumping, your compromised blood still flowing. That was not the deal. Your improving health requires that you be incarcerated and she’s ready to do so. Imagine all that.

I did and remembered that after we dodged that bullet on the previous court date I had informed Soldera and his counselor, with uncertain terms decidedly not present, that he should get sicker if he wished to avoid going to prison. Preferably, I strongly suggested, he would be in the hospital, his home away from home and the only place that offered true amnesty, the next time he was supposed to be in court. So I fully expected to be greeted by a duly-appointed representative who would give me the good news of Raul’s hospitalization along with a little supporting documentation. But instead there was Raul himself, in the audience and smiling.

He stood and came to me. Raul was all eyes; they dominated his face as if his body had been reduced to its barest essential, seeing obstacles and getting out of their way.

“Good to see you but I was hoping you’d be in the—”

“I’m doing good. The new doctor is more better. He’s got me on the cocktail and—”

“That’s great but I’m worried that—”

“He give me this letter to give to the judge.”

I looked at the numbers quickly. “The problem is this judge,” I said. “When your condition improves she gets impatient and—”

“What’s she going to do? Is she?”

“I don’t know. Remember I told you last time that she can put you in jail to serve the 1½ to 3 if she—”

“But the other judge said—”

“That judge is gone Raul. Cymbeline’s in charge of the case now and she can decide—”

“But you said—”

“I said that precisely this could happen. Damn it Raul, why didn’t you do what I said? I was very—”

“Am I going to jail today?”

I thought of Ah Chut and The Pledge. “No I’ll keep you out of jail. But next time either do what I say or tell your doctor to write more pessimistic letters!”

“Okay.”

“I’m glad you’re doing well and I’m sorry about this but—”

“Can I make a call while we’re waiting to go in front of the judge?”

“Yeah but don’t take too long. It doesn’t look very busy in there.”

I went inside the courtroom and signed in Soldera’s case. I sat and watched Cymbeline and her Cheshire-grinned marionettes torture the lost like powerful boxers toying with overmatched opponents. After some time I realized Soldera hadn’t come back so I went out to the hall to look for him.

I didn’t see him.

I went back in and crossed his name off the list.

Then I went back out and looked for him some more. Nothing.

He had disappeared.

The golden favor was a big one,
catching
a misdemeanor all-purpose part for an alleged afternoon hour prior to my death penalty meeting. In Manhattan there were five such parts with
all-purpose
code for nothing meaningful gets done but the nothing takes all day. Misdemeanors that had been arraigned but not disposed of were sent to these parts to take care of all pretrial matters. The parts typically handled about a hundred and twenty cases a day and did so with maximum confusion and disarray. In theory, the attorney on each of those cases would appear in the part to handle the case. Like most such theories, this one had little to do with reality. Reality was
catch, the catcher,
and
catch notes
. Each day an attorney was assigned to catch one of the parts, that person being the catcher. If the assigned attorney was unable to cover his case in one of these parts he would write a catch note that would tell the catcher what needed to be done on the case. The catcher would then cover the case to the satisfaction of no one. The client was usually unhappy because where the hell was his attorney and when was client’s case going to be called? The judge wasn’t thrilled because the catcher knew nothing about the case aside from vague jottings on a piece of paper. The catcher was least happy because he was fucking catching and more demeaning and horrifying task had yet to be invented.

So there I was sifting through a pile of hieroglyphic notes and doing my best to ignore an increasingly-agitated audience. Linda was there too.

“You know why you’re catching?”

“Gold asked me.”

“Know why?”

“No.”

“Diane Zale refused to catch.”

“Doesn’t the schedule say Larry Halloran is supposed to be here.”

“Where’ve you been? He quit weeks ago. Diane was the reserve but she refused to come in and catch.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well Conley informed her that she was the reserve and she informed him that she refused to catch. Then Swathmore went and talked to her and she said the same thing.”

“To Tom?”

“Yup.”

“And he said what?”

“You’re fired.”

“Is that even allowed in this place?”

“No there’s already talk of a rescission,” she laughed. “The union’s negotiating and they’re hinting about a sick-out on Tuesday.”

“Aren’t you broken up you’re leaving? You’ll miss all the fun.”

“No I think I’m leaving just in time.”

“Soon you’ll be pressuring earnest bright-eyed couples to buy homes they can’t afford. You know the ones near railroad tracks that you couldn’t resell with a gun.”

“No,” she laughed. “You’re bad.”

I would’ve thought we were done then but she just kind of hung around the table there until I felt compelled to create more noise.

“So why are you splitting?”

“I’ve been here a decade and that seems like enough. It’s draining to me. Every day dealing with people who are in so much trouble,” she gestured to the audience for empirical support. “I know that sounds silly but it’s true. I think it does something to a person to constantly deal with people who have made a mess out of their lives don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“See, you
guess
, but I
know
. That’s the difference. I’m not like you, I don’t have the stomach for this job. No I’m serious, I’ve seen you. You get sent out to trial you get excited, you like it. When I get sent out I get sick, literally. I just don’t want this to be a part of my life anymore, I want to go back to the real world.”

“Everyone gets nervous when they get sent out, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m not talking about normal nerves here, I’m talking about terror. The first time I did a trial I’m about four months out of law school, twenty-six years old. I remember looking at my client and thinking am I really the attorney for this guy? It was petrifying to me to realize that it was really
me
who was in charge of this guy’s defense. The first time I spoke during that trial I heard the words as if they came from another person, a very nervous person. After the trial I told my supervisor about this feeling I’d had and how it lasted throughout the entire trial. She said it was normal and would go away through experience. Well it’s all these years later and I still get that feeling every time I pick up a serious case that doesn’t look like it’s going to plead out.”

“Wow, that’s not good.”

“Uh, no. That’s why I’m going to be worrying about mortgages and annual percentage rates from now on. I’m telling you this job’s not healthy. You know I watched Lee Graham faint in court from the pressure. He’s like me he’s—”