A Naked Singularity: A Novel

by Sergio De La Pava

  “A man’s life.”

  “That but also the paucity of actions taken on the kid’s behalf to this point.”

  “It would seem that quite a few mistakes, of both commission and omission, were made before we became involved.”

  “The trial was a joke.”

  “Yes.”

  “Look at this transcript. I’ve done fucking hearings on sales that were longer than this!”

  “I know but—”

  “Not to mention the excruciatingly long list of things I would not have thought could possibly happen here, at this time, but that nonetheless somehow all manage to exist in this case, which was assigned to us allegedly at random.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m talking, in order, about the fact that Alabama does not have a fucking public defender’s office. So that Kingg’s lawyer at trial, this prick Bennigan, was assigned at random by the judge on the case, a judge whose concern with the efficacy of defense counsel we can surmise from his later actions.”

  “Good point.”

  “How this worthless shithead Bennigan was a solo practitioner whose practice consisted almost entirely of exchanging bank checks for deeds with the occasional petit larceny thrown in. How he was paid roughly the amount that a well-situated soda machine takes in in a week. How this grossly unqualified individual proceeded to put on the single most somnambulant, almost apologetic, performance I have ever had the misfortune of being exposed to. How even the slightest contact between Bennigan and his client should’ve sufficed to convince him he was representing a near-vegetable cloaked in a human epidermis costume yet he failed miserably to adequately convey this to the jury. How despite all this, God amazingly took time off from his busy schedule, as if to say that here finally was something that offended even his sensibilities, reached into that jury room and, like a master of puppets saddled with a group of particularly inexpressive marionettes, returned a verdict of life in prison rather than death. How at that point that empty, hollowed-out, prick of a trial judge Pearson overruled the jury and sentenced Kingg to death without so much as suggesting a reason. How this is perfectly permissible under Alabama’s death penalty statute but is impermissible in all but one other state and has never been done there.”

  “All true.”

  “How, and this is a great one, how this same Bennigan, who I wouldn’t trust to properly water my lawn, is then incredibly assigned to perfect Kingg’s appeal where the most meritorious issue, thanks in no small part to Bennigan’s own failure to preserve a single legal issue for appeal, was the ineffective performance of Bennigan himself. And in such a way is the guard entrusted to keep himself prisoner so that predictably Bennigan files this aptly named brief, a more turgid and unpersuasive collection of prose being difficult to envision. And since then what? Since this awe-inspiring series of events what action has been taken on Kingg’s behalf? Nothing.”

  “Us.”

  “Nothing! Because of course Alabama would have to be one of only two states where once the direct appeal is complete, a death row inmate like Kingg is no longer entitled to an attorney despite the fact that there are about a zillion further legal actions that can be taken to try to prevent him from being zapped. But Mrs. Kingg is in her fancy subterrestrial box and with her so interred there’s no one left who can picture Jalen’s face except those who wouldn’t want to. So without a lawyer the deadline to petition for state remedies passes.”

  “Yes.”

  “The two year deadline to petition for federal habeas relief passes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Enter us to mop up.”

  “Well I like to think we can do more than that.”

  “Really? That’s nice, and I like to think there’s a brotherhood of man except every time I let my hands down I get belted in the face. Has anything that’s been attempted on Kingg’s behalf so far worked? The Governor, who has one eye on November and has sole authority to commute Kingg’s sentence, has proven to be an obvious dead end.”

  “True.”

  “The State Supremes said there was nothing interesting here.”

  “True.”

  “Leaving us, you and I, alone and abandoned by our sponsor organization, to do what exactly?”

  “District court.”

  “Right. To file a three point brief with a judge from the appropriate district court urging sweet relief. Three points, one for each of us. Only that fuck Ledo did less than zero on his Yellow Mama electric chair point before heading out to the dopey place where they plant giant letters on hillsides and the sea swallows the sun each nightfall.”

  “True but we knew what Ledo was when we gave him the least meritorious point, a point that has already been decided by the Supreme Court. And besides I like what we have on that issue now anyway.”

  “Fine but the worst thing about Ledo is I’m filled with this overwhelming desire to take the next flight headed left, find him at whatever Melrose Place sidewalk joint he’s sitting in discussing the use of light in Rohmer’s films, snatch the tofu burger out of his mouth, and rap him in the face with a fork. Only that desire is tempered by my realization that, if not for the last week or so, I wouldn’t have done any more work than he did. Everywhere I look I see Ledos and I fear I may be no better than them. Isn’t that frightening? Shouldn’t somebody as good as me be appreciably better than a Joe Ledo?”

  “Is this the point?”

  “At the moment.”

  “Can I read it?”

  “Sure, it’s no secret.”

  “So what’s it going to be then, eh?”

  “Heard you the first time.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m thinking.”

  “Well don’t think too long. Remember the balancing act I spoke of. The balancing act Casi.”

  “Okay Dane.”

  “Well?”

  “Well I think we need to get by the roof guys undetected.”

  “Twice?”

  “Yes, I mean, at least the first time for sure.”

  “Because?”

  “I know that incapacitating them, and by that I assume you mean tying them up or something, has the advantage of facilitating our exit as well.”

  “Exactly.”

  “However, the downside of that method is the difficulty it would present for our stated goal of keeping Escalera in the dark as long as possible.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “Say these guys are tied up at 3:00, what happens at 3:05 when Escalera radios up to them to make sure everything looks good? When he gets no response he’s going to panic and investigate and he’s going to do that at a time when we’re still dancing with the The Whale on the second floor.”

  “Good point.”

  “On the other hand, if we sneak by them at 3:00 and again at say 3:10, then the first time Escalera will sense that something is wrong is when he asks Ballena to bring down the money at about 3:15 or 3:20, and incidentally we should look into possible methods for further delaying that time of discovery. Anyway, by then we should be back in the car.”

  “Seemingly the problem then becomes The Whale. Him we have to incapacitate because he’s specifically guarding the bag we want. What happens when Escalera radios Whale while we’re two feet away and gets no answer?”

  “First, Escalera’s far less likely to radio Ballena, other than to call for the money, because he’s not a lookout. Second, I think you’re right when you say we’ll have to physically confront The Whale because it’s highly unlikely that said creature will peel its eyes off that bag for even a second. So unlike with Heckle and Jeckle on the roof, with The Whale we seemingly have no viable choice.”

  “So sneak past the roof guys, harpoon The Whale with our swords, and sneak back out, all in ten minutes or so?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Less than ten minutes is going to be tough.”

  “No harpooning.”

  “What’s this now?”

  “No harpooning.”
>
  “Did you not read the profile? The Whale is an inveterate savage.”

  “I’m serious Dane, no.”

  “Amazing. Fine, sneak in, incapacitate The Whale, and sneak back out with the bag.”

  “Right.”

  “So really all that’s left to decide is how exactly we sneak in then out and the precise way we deal with Ballena.”

  “If you want to oversimplify, yes.”

  “I want to, tomorrow?”

  “See you then.”

  “I read your draft last night Casi.”

  “Ditto.”

  “I don’t know how you did that in less than a week.”

  “Paid good money for that point.”

  “Do you agree with me that the electric chair point is as good as it’s going to get?”

  “Yes, as good as, given the directly contrary and controlling legal authority from the highest court in the land.”

  “Well put, and my draft?”

  “Haven’t read it yet.”

  “You just said you had.”

  “Never.”

  “You said ditto.”

  “Right, ditto. You said you read my draft last night and I indicated that I also read my draft last night. Had I wanted to quickly yet artfully convey to you that I had in turn read your draft I might have said vice versa or something similarly pithy.”

  “How precise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t you think you should have read it by now.”

  “I will do so imminently don’t worry Toom. Meanwhile I encourage you to view my inaction as a token of my immense trust in your abilities.”

  “I’ll do that then. My only question about your draft is right here where you wrote this.”

  “You mean, I bet, where I wrote in gargantuan font GAPING HOLE.”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I think we have two big problems and not a lot of time to remedy them. The one Gaping Hole refers to is the one whereby probably our best argument is that Jalen’s trial counsel was remiss, and consequently that his performance was ineffective to a degree that is constitutionally impermissible, primarily because he did not during the penalty phase present sufficient evidence to the jury, and by extension to the court, of Kingg’s mental impairment; the theory being that an adjudicator well-informed in that area would not have chosen to fry a dim Kingg.”

  “Right.”

  “Well is it just me or is it not true that in making that argument it would be the very definition of advisable to present the court with unimpeachable and specific proof of exactly what Kingg’s condition is, i.e. a psych exam of some sort? I mean, yes, it’s obvious to us from his letters and these meager school records that there’s some serious synaptic interference here but that does nothing for us, we need the court to understand that. Where are the experts lining up to say this kid is more like a human clam with the idea being that, although Alabama of course permits the frying of the mentally infirm, and putting aside for the moment the pending Supreme Court action on the issue, the more mentally messed up Kingg is the graver his attorney’s omission in failing to adequately establish that mitigating fact and therefore the more likely that Kingg was denied his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel?”

  “I agree but we don’t have any of that.”

  “Hence the fucking gaping fucking hole in our case right?”

  “Perhaps but seemingly not one we can remedy.”

  “Why not? I know these people, they’re all idiots. It’s just a question of getting the right idiots to wax idiotic on our behalf.”

  “Any potential evaluator will want money to make an evaluation and write a report. We don’t have any money to give said evaluator thus we don’t have any resulting evaluation.”

  “How do we not have money? This is a country of organizations. Everywhere you look people are organizing themselves into groups, one joining many and many morphing into one. They have money, let’s have at some of it. What’s up with our little parent organization there in Alabama?”

  “I tried but they’re over-budget for the year.”

  “Over what? The year just fucking started.”

  “He also said they have to allocate resources where they feel they will do the most good. I believe the terms lost and cause were used in conjunction.”

  “They’re lost all right. That’s okay, there’s more where that came from. I’m sure there’s a Humans for the Ethical Treatment of Retards somewhere or something isn’t there?”

  “Sorry, I looked.”

  “I bet if we were raising money to prevent an endangered condor from flying over a municipally-funded, baseball-only stadium dressed in a banner advertising Joe Camel to impressionable twerps we’d have considerably better luck.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Wait a minute Toom how stupid are we? We work for one of these very organizations. Let them pony up the dough. After all, they got us into this mess.”

  “I tried but they say they can’t for this kind of thing.”

  “Christ. Well let’s get one of these chumps anyway, I’ll pay for it.”

  “You’re going to do what?”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You have that kind of money lying around? Those experts charge considerable fees.”

  “No, but I’ll get it. I’ll have it by the time they bill us anyway.”

  “Remarkable.”

  “I know but what am I supposed to do? I’m aware that it’s probably not going to make a difference but what about the small but discernible chance that it will, or already has.”

  “Already has?”

  “I’m not prepared to live with that unexplored chance, not here with this.”

  “Already has?”

  “Yeah, never mind.”

  “No, what did you mean because I get the feeling you meant something.”

  “Look I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this but that’s the thing about chance.”

  “Chance?”

  “Correct, chance. I have something like a chance theory if you’ll just give me a chance to give it to you.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Here goes: I say there’s a chance that retaining a psych expert will prevent Kingg from being executed right? What I seem to be saying is that if I take a certain action, create a certain event, then a later desirable event may occur as a result. We say these kinds of things all the time and the statements are primarily a function of how we experience Time, that is, in a linear fashion. But of course as many have shown we have no legitimate basis for believing that how we experience the world, including things like Time, corresponds perfectly to ultimate reality, that is, the things causing, in a manner of speaking, the experiences. In fact we can provide many examples of verifiable phenomena, such as the particle/wave duality of certain entities, that seem to contradict the manner in which experience tells us the world works. Similarly, with Time the fact that we experience it as a linear procession of events does not mean that’s what Time truly is; or that it even exists for that matter. So let’s posit a possible description of true Time. Basically, imagine a vantage point with respect to Time whereby you can see all events at once. When you observe it from this vantage point, Time is not linear. Instead, from this view, you see that events that exist in spacetime do not really precede or follow each other and therefore probably cannot be said to cause each other either. They exist all at once so to speak. Now what if within that matrix of spacetime events you’re observing there exists both the acquisition of a psychiatric expert and consequent psych report on Kingg as well as the court granting a stay and Kingg surviving? Now what if more than one of these matrices exist on some level, with one representing me spending money and Kingg living and another the converse?”

  “This is basically possible worlds as a way of explaining possibilia right?”

  “Kind of but slig
htly different. We don’t have the time to delve thoroughly but I’m not really talking about possibility so much as I’m talking about this weird view of Time. Bottom line is I’m intrigued by what goes on when I come to recognize that there is a chance an action by me might result in something I want. If Time is actually configured the way I set forth but our limited minds are unable to grasp this true nature of it, then my palpable experience of this chance may be more than just a purely mental exercise and may actually be my admittedly limited experience—since I don’t have the omniscienty vantage point I spoke of earlier—of the actual existence of these two events; the retaining of the expert and the subsequent, so to speak, saving by the bell. In that sense, the reason I perceive, on a weak level, that the chance exists that retaining an expert will be relevant is that it really is relevant and actual as I will later discover. Of course it only seems later to me, someone who is trapped into a myopic view of the whole of Time. The point being that this feeling I now have, the feeling that there’s a chance that might be actualized but only if I pay that expert, may actually be a glimpse into, and evidence of, this matrix where the two events exist. Who am I to fuck with the order of the universe? You get it? It’s like a workable chance theory. There’s a chance here that I can’t now ignore. Chance.”

  “Fat chance maybe.”

  “Exactly, it might, unbeknownst to us, be a fat chance, so we have to give it a try.”

  “No, fat chance as in fat chance, as in little or no chance. Understand?”

  “No, a fat chance is good. The fatter the chance the more of it there is and obviously the more chance of something good, in this case a legal victory, the better. You want your chance to be fat, a slim chance would be bad.”