A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  The clamor was due to Debi and Conley being mid-debate. Should the odds change continually to reflect incoming Tula news, with people allowed to wager at any point up and until a definitive settlement of the issue? Or should a deadline be set at which point no further action would be accepted and the odds frozen?

  On one of the rose-colored walls, an oaktag chart had been hung with evident care. From this chart a prospective wagerer could see the various odds and their respective predictions as well as who was aligned with what outcome and at what price. Television had been wheeled into the room and was awake in hope it would soon feed the room much-sought-after information. The debate was quickly settled and it was decided that all bets would be on with no cutoff other than the natural one mandated by the situation.

  Soon thereafter a quiet broke into the room. Then all eyes, guided by invisible but persistent gravitons, locked on to Television and the subdued press conference being held within. Now they, i.e. the news, cut back to the studio with the faux NYC skyline background. There the immaculately sculpted head shook no and said, “Again, police are asking for your help. If you know anything at all concerning the whereabouts of baby—”

  “I hate that,” interrupted Conley. “Police are asking for my help? When did that become legitimate? Do your own job. What would be the reaction if the newscaster said public defender Garo Conley is asking for your help. He has a really busy day in court tomorrow and he needs somebody to cover a couple of cases in Part 43? I would be laughed out of the box. Cops do it and people rush to the phone.”

  “We all have an interest in the successful prosecution of malfeasance,” said Cleary. “The hotline number allows the community to vent and feel productive.”

  “Community? This is New York padre!” a chorus laughed.

  “Unfortunately, the hotline also gives some sick people a forum,” said Julia. “I heard on the radio this morning that somebody called BAD—BABY with an anonymous tip regarding Tula. Apparently he had everyone’s hopes up at first because he seemed to know things that weren’t in the papers. He said he had it on good word that baby Tula was fine and unharmed and he was very convincing. Unfortunately, when they pressed him on his source it appears he cited Ralph Kramden as the bearer of the good news.”

  “Not.”

  “Yes the fat bus driver with the best friend who works in the sewer!”

  “Crazy people,” muttered Debi without smiling.

  Debi did everything without smiling and there was more than a little speculation as to why that was, speculation I could have ended at any moment but didn’t. After hearing several people commenting on the fact that Debi never smiled I had grown curious myself and asked her about it in a roundabout joking way that I hoped would insulate me from charges of rudeness. She mumbled something while motioning to a magazine on her table, her voice trailing off as she left the office. When I went over to the magazine I saw the problem. Under the Basic Beauty section there was an article on smiles. The writer couldn’t have been clearer. Smiles were a D.E.E. that should be avoided at all costs. D.E.E. stood for Devastating Epidermal Event because it seemed a smile implicated more facial muscles on the average than any other common facial expression. As a result, researchers at Whattsamatta U. or something were prepared to state that excessive smiling could lead to premature wrinkles particularly around the all-important windows to the soul. News taken to heart apparently.

  “He was claiming to have spoken to Kramden himself?” asked Liszt. I accidentally looked right at Toomberg. “Got to go,” I whispered and split.

  “Can I change my pick to the mother killed the baby herself and concocted the entire scenario as a smoke screen?” I heard Liszt ask from the hallway.

  “Wait up!” said Toomberg running out of the office after me and foiling my plan to avoid him. Drats! is what I thought.

  “Did you get an opportunity to review the death penalty material over the weekend?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “We really have to progress on that.”

  “Don’t worry Toomie, I’m with you. It’s just that I was swamped.”

  “How?”

  “Christ Toom. I pulled some kids out of a burning building! Don’t you feel guilty for asking now? Obviously that was followed by all sorts of commendations and meetings with the mayor and the like. It’s been a real whirlwind.”

  “Seriously, is it true you’re working on Tom’s case?”

  “Yeah why?”

  “It’s just that, well, you do have a great deal of cases. Are you going to have the time to devote to this case? I mean there’s a brief to write. One of us has to go down to Alabama to meet with both the client and the director of the project. Then we have to prepare for the argument and—”

  “Easy Toomie please. Don’t get all worked up. I’ve been doing this for the better part of four decades. When I started in this racket you weren’t even a prediction. And we didn’t have these fancy computers either. Or books. We had to memorize the laws back then.”

  “Be serious.”

  “Don’t worry man, shit is that Tom?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Did he see me?” I was trying, turtle-like, to retract my head into my body.

  “I think so, he’s coming this way.”

  “Fucking fate, quick tell me everything you know about Tom’s case.”

  “Why?”

  “I was supposed to look at that file this weekend and I know he’s going to ask me questions.”

  “The burning child correct?”

  “C’mon!”

  “Well all I know is what I’ve read in the papers and of course these daily periodicals are famous, or rather infamous, for their superficial coverage of—”

  “The short version Toom! Never mind, just give us a couple seconds then come up with some reason why I have to go with you.”

  “No I’m terrible at that sort of thing.”

  “Just . . . hey Tom.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “What a mess.”

  “Do you think—”

  “Hey Casi, we have to get going.”

  “Where?” demanded Tom.

  “Yeah where?” I added along with a silent prayer.

  “We have to see about those . . . jelly . . . um . . . beans . . . and stuff.”

  “Jelly beans? What the hell are you talking about Toomberg? What the hell’s he talking about Casi?”

  “I have no, the hell you talking about Toom?”

  “You know. The appeal and . . . the thing . . . and.”

  “Oh yeah. I better go Tom. What’s your day like tomorrow? Actually I have 180.80s. Can we talk the day after?”

  “What’s happening with that mandatory tomorrow?”

  “I don’t know. I called the DA (lie) but she hasn’t called me back. I’m going to the scene right now actually. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Let me go.”

  . . .

  “Jelly beans Toom? What the fuck?”

  “I told you I’m terrible when it comes to subterfuge.”

  “Terrible is one thing but jelly beans?”

  “Once I committed to the word jelly it was almost as if beans had to follow.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Besides, the whole thing is your doing. If you had just—”

  “Very true. Thanks Toom. Don’t worry you’re still my favorite teammate. See you tomorrow, I have to go on an investigation.”

  I walked out with Debi who was going home early. She had a sharp gait that made mine feel rounded.

  “Where you off to?” she said.

  “To a scene to try and interview a complainant.”

  “You know, you should always bring an investigator or another attorney along. You don’t want to become a witness.”

  “No one was available but I agree.”

  “I’d go with you but I have this thing.”

  “That’s okay. Here’s one Deb. A Mexican duck walks into a bar and says bartender a d
ouble of Cuervo and put it on my bill.”

  “That’s good,” she said stone-faced.

  What I was doing wasn’t very complicated. I had to find Valerie Grissom and get her to talk to me. She was claiming that Darril Thorton had sexually attacked her. My client’s response was that this was a total fabrication an otherworldly force intent on propagating evil had put her up to. I had an address, which was more than we usually have, and therefore optimism. If she’d talk to me it would be a no-lose. I would get some idea as to her potential strength as a witness, possibly even get some impeachment material for a later trial, and most importantly get an early quasi-definitive answer regarding the state of the People’s case, particularly whether or not Ms. Grissom would be appearing in the grand jury the next day the picture of testimonial eagerness.

  But none of that was accomplished because I never found her. 322 West 119th Street barely qualified as a building. It turns out that when you read you don’t really take note of each individual letter. Instaed it seems your mind fills in details in service of a greater schematic, namely the words you’ve read millions of times before. Your mind jumps to conclusions in effect. In only such a way could you see a building when you looked at 322. The windows were made of plywood, the apartment doors secured by rusty combination locks. The concrete steps up to the main door gradually self-destructed outward, culminating in jagged ends without handrails where I sat under the assumption that Valerie Grissom had to appear at some point but she didn’t have to and in fact didn’t before I decided to leave.

  I jumped in a cab I hoped would fly home. The cab driver was a lovely guy who betrayed no evidence of owning a tongue. He decided to take the Manhattan Bridge. Just short of Canal St. the cab stopped and I saw the billboard peephole that had been set up as visual portal to Man’s Greatest Invention. Currently peering in was a tiny guy with a humongous ass, the black velvet curtain splayed on either side of his neck. The immediate visual impression was of a half-man cut off at the waist, reduced to his lower geography and frozen in front of the sign. Like molecularly bombarded particles engaged in Brownian motion, others in the area loitered in skittish disarray. But as we pulled away they congealed into a rational rhyme. With balletic grace they formed a single file. All together now, lining up behind the ass to look in the hole.

  chapter 8

  Mirror, mirror on the wall

  Who’s the fairest of us all?

  —Ms. White’s stepmom

  There I was the following morning sitting at a depressing table in a like room with one of those retro billowy soda machines glowing like a plastic rainbow next to its pal with the rotating steel compartments that separated uniformly rejected white-bread sandwiches from their colleagues; and in my hand, between fingers fore and middle with thumb cradling underneath, in a room where precisely this conduct was explicitly not permitted, a profusely smoking cigarette, the kind where the end responsible for filtering had a joyous cavity, the constant flicking of which produced great pleasure in me, and which had inspired me to determine exactly how long I could abstain from that fucking great activity with the not unexpected result that the burning end with its hollow parasitic ash was now considerably longer than the unburnt rest and was obstinately marching towards absurd Pink-Floyd’s-The-Wall length as the painful orange paper embers neared my fingers, C fibers firing like mad, leaving ashen skeletal remains that seemed to defy gravity while desperately clinging to their ancestral filter, when in walked Liszt.

  He had previously sworn me to uphold what he termed a sacred obligation, namely an obligation to be of great assistance to him in his quest to quit smoking. I would achieve this by, at the very least, never—even under the direst of circumstances and regardless of how much he should solicit, beg, plead, or importune—giving him a cigarette. He looked at me, the bizarre stick giving him pause, and said, “Ooh, can I have one?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Take the rest, I quit.”

  “Damn,” he said as I walked out.

  “Casi, it’s me.”

  “I see that.”

  “You know me right?”

  “Uh, no. Sorry I uh—”

  “I’m the new attorney on the sixth floor, Darren Leaves?”

  “Oh nice to—”

  “You’re like famous. I’ve heard really great things about you.”

  “Oh.”

  “The other day in arraignments I picked up one of your old clients.”

  “Really, who?”

  “Well normally I wouldn’t expect you to remember but he says you went to trial and won. Ramon DeLeon?”

  “Sure, Ramon. Back to his old?”

  “Yeah, another drug case.”

  “He’s probably all emboldened and wants to go to trial again huh? Sorry.”

  “What he really wants is you. He sure remembers you.”

  “The acquittal he remembers.”

  “He still has your card and he’s certain you’ll want to take his case over.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “So?”

  “So?”

  “So do you want to take his case?”

  “Are you clinically insane? I’m serious, are you part of some sort of pilot program whereby the mentally ill are placed in public defender offices in major cities across this great nation and thereby made to feel useful?”

  “I know but really the guy has no use for me and like worships you.”

  “Look Darren.”

  “Darryl.”

  “One trial per customer is I think a good policy, so no.”

  “Really? Because I would take one of your cases in return. Anything to avoid having to see this guy again. He’s so mean to me.”

  “Mean? Listen Darryl.”

  “Darren.”

  “They’re all mean, haven’t you heard?”

  “But this is like a no-win situation.”

  “So lose.”

  “Please Casi, I’m prepared to go beyond the lengths of appropriate behavior.”

  “Jesus, believe this?” I said to no one. “Fine, leave it on my desk.”

  “Well, it’s on today actually.”

  “For what?”

  “180.80 in F.”

  “Great, I have a ton already. At least you didn’t wait until the last minute. You’re going to fit in beautifully here, give.”

  “Really? Thanks so much! I mean it, give me any case you have. Pick the one you’ve been dying to get rid of.”

  “Good, I have a guy who rhymes all the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind, you owe me. And I know where you work.”

  Persistent fuck. I hated getting cajoled into doing something I’d resisted, an all-too-frequent occurrence for me, and making all worse was the file this unknown chump handed me: an indecipherable abstraction that hemorrhaged red ink all over my innocent hands.

  I was walking to court surprised at the ease with which I recalled DeLeon’s face, not normally a strength of mine. What I remembered was a round serious face that had trouble breathing as the jury entered to read their verdict. And as close to universal legal truth as you get is this: putting aside potential calamities that threaten to personally and intimately befall you, there is no greater anxiety than the quiet charged moments before the reading of the verdict in a case you’ve parented. And I want you to know this feeling and want, moreover, to be the reason you know it, hence the following:

  First, a case that goes to trial is a hideously deformed corporal appendage that forces you to hunch down in deference to its weight. Always on your mind despite your best efforts but you don’t dare kill it for fear that you, the host, will join in its demise. Self-inflicted as well. The realization that this deformity is something you freely chose, something you once strove for and something the overwhelming majority of the population has no relationship with or any true conception of. A deformity you adopt every couple of months then cradle in your arms and measure your breath hoping to be an adequate parent. And ever
yone in the room hates it, wants to see it lopped off and discarded. But you have to put your arm around it, snuggle up to it and protect it from those that would do it harm. Or you can inhale some of the surrounding air that whispers we understand if you find it hard to kiss this oozing creature on the lips so instead just blow it a kiss from afar and when, in the end, it lays there gasping for life you can turn to us and say you did your best and the creature bought it upon itself at any rate. You can do that and be like everyone else because no one says you have to love deformities. Unless you need to.

  But that’s the trial, which feels positively splendid compared to the verdict. Because there’s an undeniably legitimate response to observers who question a trial attorney’s particular decision or action during a trial. The response in distilled form is that things happen a lot faster in the well than they do for someone sitting on their fat ass in the audience. In those charged pre-verdict moments, however, the opposite is true. The note from the jury announcing it has reached a verdict instantly accelerates the well toward the speed of light with a resultant slowing of time for those within. In this slowed universe everyone not you seems to exist solely for your benefit or detriment, their realities not rising to the level of yours so that when, after much anticipatory ritual speech by the clerk, the foreperson of the jury plays with his piece of paper and announces his group’s creation you feel a strange dissociation. But even so you stand there and your organs seem to tighten from within and there’s an empathy so great you start to sense not much difference than if the case were named after you, the People of your State opposing You, and this ragtag body politic entering to announce their recent past and your lasting future. And now it feels less like a decision on a particular incident and more like a final judgment on your life, that collection of tenuously-related decisions made and deferred, yet what truly empowers these people, with their own tainted slates, to so decide?

  With DeLeon I rose and lowered my head, tensing every muscle in my body, the pulsing transmissions ending in blood-deprived hands that gripped the table while their owner tried to convey nonchalance. What I was listening for was not really a declaration or even a word. It was a syllable. The coveted nuh or the devastating gih. I would hear one or the other and it would be over. Now I hadn’t slept or eaten in days, not the real kind of sleep with minimal synaptic firing and the sensation of actual temporal passage and not the real kind of eating where the victim doesn’t swell to twice its normal size as it approaches your esophagus, so when I heard the nuh it was unjustifiably a great surprise and felt like a bullet evaded. What I did then was what I always did when I heard those words. I got the hell out of there before they realized there was some sort of error, or the jury changed its mind, or some new evidence surfaced or you get the picture. I didn’t need to talk to the jury either. Once a trial was over I never wanted to see them again and I certainly didn’t care what they thought about the case. I didn’t care if they thought I was the best lawyer they’d ever seen or more likely the worst. I wasn’t interested in the often ridiculous leaps of logic that produced their verdict and conclusively displayed once and for all, to themselves, how intelligent they were in that they were able to go beyond the parameters of the courtroom’s four walls, if need be, to decide my client’s fate. Thankfully not guilty spoke for itself and allowed me to avoid all that maddening bullshit. Not Guilty also let me avoid ghosts. I remembered very little of the actual litigation of DeLeon’s trial. But had the verdict been different it would, like all traumatic events, have been permanently seared into the canvas of my brain, ready to be recalled and agonized over at the slightest provocation. Once recalled I would have mentally run over the strategic roads not taken and how they might have changed the result. This I would have done over and over, in every conceivable combination, with increasingly pained frustration but always with the same conclusion: I was faulty. The kind of unremitting chorus that can impel the wrong kind of person to the wrong kind of conduct.