Sensation Machines

by Adam Wilson

  “I keep a low profile,” says Stuart. “I’m not out on the message boards bragging it up, or at the San Jose nightclubs flashing my bling. It’s all relative anyway. I’ve done well, but there are guys who’ve made boatloads. No one knows who they are of course, but you can guess when you see one cruise the valley in his Porsche draping his braceleted wrist around a supermodel’s arm.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Michael. “How are people buying Porsches with Sykodollars? And, for that matter, how are you buying living-room sets?”

  “You haven’t been following what’s happened since the crash? It’s like ’49 all over again, Mike, only this time Woody Guthrie’s not here to sing his dustbowl blues, and there’s plenty of gold to go around. At least there was a few weeks ago. But people are pulling money from banks left and right, and they’re investing in SD, which are getting scarce. I can’t see how you’ve missed it. What do you do in that office all day, jerk off and play Snood?”

  “I haven’t played Snood in years,” lies Michael. “But these bracelets, how much might one be worth? In American dollars, I mean. A bracelet owned by one of these big shot Shamerican moguls.”

  “Could be millions,” says Stuart.

  “Huh,” says Michael.

  24.

  The room is windowless but bright, lit by fluorescent overheads that reflect off the steel table and the suspect’s watch. Ryan had always pictured these rooms differently, filled with cigar smoke and lit by bare bulbs that dangled from long, swaying wires between cop and perp. He’d formed this image watching cop shows and cop movies from the age of eight until twenty-two when he joined the force and suddenly found his formerly beloved programs insufferably plotted, as if all cases were open and shut, and the lines between bad guys and good ones, and crooked cops and the kind that help old ladies cross the street, were clear as Crystal Pepsi; a world where the coffee machine is never broken, and everyone’s uniform is always neatly pressed, and CSI can break a case by looking at a bloodstain through a piece of futuristic technology, and even the street beat unis are constantly coming up with clever quips and having affairs with femmes fatales played by such otherworldly beauties as Katharine Hepburn and Mary-Kate Olsen.

  He’d been particularly disappointed on this last point, joining up after 9/11 under the assumption that cops would be granted the same hyper-sexualized status as firemen, only to find that despite the uniform’s stately navy and the protective presence of the hip piece, and despite the newfound reverence for even the most previously debased authority figures like Mayor Giuliani, there was still such a deep, historically justified distrust of the badge that no amount of media-celebrated heroism could create the goodwill that would fill Ryan’s bed with the women he wants.

  There are police groupies, sure, but they’re never the chic and affluent business types who tantalize Ryan walking the streets of SoHo, or eating salad in Bryant Park, staring into their phones as if each contains a universe far more interesting than the one at hand. Ryan is paralyzed in front of these women, who look at him with something even worse than disdain: utter disinterest.

  He also thought the people he interrogated would be guilty. The guy across from him, for example, Donnell Sanders, a Verizon Wireless sales rep with a degree from CUNY, a daughter he raises alone, and no priors, who maintains a blog that covers the intersection between pop culture and sports. They’ve picked up Sanders as a suspect in the Ricky Cortes case—Sanders works a second job as a doorman in Cortes’s building—but because they don’t have evidence to hold him, he’s being indicted on the dubious charge of obstructing pedestrian traffic, and is being interrogated with the hope of wringing a confession from the poor guy who doesn’t realize he’s here on a murder rap.

  But while it’s obvious to Ryan that they’ve got the wrong man, Quinn seems bent on doing the bad cop thing, caving under pressure from the DA’s office to make an arrest. Despite suspicion and public speculation, the only evidence they have against Devor is circumstantial, and within the department, many have begun to express doubt that the Nøøse founder was involved in the riot, let alone the murder. They were surprised to learn that Sanders, Cortes’s doorman, had attended the Funeral for Capitalism.

  None of which makes him a criminal, though Quinn might disagree. It’s amazing to Ryan that even during this moment of pervasive unemployment, people like Quinn remain fixed in their fears of a welfare state. On multiple occasions, Quinn has expressed his opinion that even laid-off beat cops should have worked harder, as he did, to make detective. And while Ryan’s tried to explain the arithmetical problems with this line of thinking, Quinn isn’t interested in any point of view but his own.

  But while Ryan has no interest in trying to bully a false confession from Sanders, his own motives aren’t pure either. This morning at dawn, after the rumbling G train woke him from sleep and he lay freezing in bed, desperate to pee, but too cold to leave the comfort of his blanket, Ryan wondered if his premature verdict on Jay Devor is, in fact, a product of unconscious self-interest. Because, while nailing Donnell the doorman might lead to a small raise and nominal promotion, to take down a figure of Devor’s stature would make Ryan, himself, a celebrity by proximity, his picture plastered next to the headline hero cop for every salad-eating minx in Bryant Park to see.

  “We have you on video leaving the rally,” says Quinn, who’s pacing the room, tapping the cement walls with his knuckles as if testing their solidity.

  “I told you,” says Donnell, “I took the subway home, ate leftover Thai food, watched the second half of Knicks-Pacers in bed, and drafted a blog post.”

  They’ve been over this ten times.

  “And there’s no one who can corroborate this story?” asks Quinn. “No one you talked to on your walk to the subway, or on the subway, or on your walk from the subway, or at home, who can validate your story? I find that hard to believe.”

  “How many people do you talk to while you’re walking down the street or riding the subway? Not all black people know each other. Just because I live in Harlem doesn’t mean I walk by the barbershop every day on my way home and stop in for a lineup and neighborhood gossip. My life is not a Tyler Perry production. I was tired and I went straight home. Jackie was at her aunt’s in the Bronx. If you had drones watching me at the rally, then how come you don’t have me on camera walking to the subway?”

  But though Donnell asks, he’s not actually naïve enough to believe that innocence and justice are linked. He’s seen friends put away on trumped-up charges, and if they’re not put away then they’re bogged down in legal bullshit, held in lockup for weeks, or forced to plead out and pay fines. No, he’s not naïve, but he does believe that this particular charge and the detectives’ response to it are so out of proportion that at some point someone’s got to realize that a mistake is being made.

  “That’s what we’re asking,” says Quinn. “How come the camera loses you when you leave the rally? Where were you sneaking off to?”

  “Where do you think I was sneaking off to? I was going home, I told you. I was tired so I went home.”

  “So you admit that you were sneaking off?” says Quinn.

  Donnell looks to Ryan for backup, but the snub-nosed detective’s eyes appear to be shut, lashes trellised together like the strands of a withered toothbrush. And the truth is that though Germanic Quinn is doing the gestapo-style questioning, it’s red-faced Ryan who scares Donnell. At least with Quinn you know what you’re getting. There’s precedent there. Donnell knows from a lifetime of fitting descriptions that all he has to do is stay calm and answer Quinn’s questions clearly and concisely in some approximation of white American English, not using big words or saying anything too obviously intelligent, but not dropping double negatives either, inspiring the idea that a jury could be convinced of his criminality based on syntax and vocab. Detective Ryan, on the other hand, is unreadable, and in Donnell’s experience, th
is means a larger capacity for random acts of violence. He can picture the sleeping man snapping awake and beating Donnell with his nightstick. He can picture the building’s manager telling him he’ll have to wait until his black eye fades before returning to work, that it’s a classy condo with an elite clientele and those just aren’t the kinds of optics that they want to put forth. He can picture Steve from Verizon staring, eyes alight with idiotic revolutionary vigor, raising a fist in the air, rapping “Fuck the Police.” He can picture his ex-wife on the far end of a phone, refusing to believe that this isn’t, in some way, Donnell’s fault. He can picture Jackie waiting up for him at home.

  “No, I wasn’t sneaking.”

  “We have evidence that suggests otherwise,” says Quinn.

  “Why do you care where I went?” says Donnell. “I thought I was being charged with obstructing pedestrian traffic. A ridiculous charge, you must admit, because the whole point of a protest is to obstruct pedestrian traffic. If you’re arresting me, then you should be arresting everyone who was out there. I don’t know why you even care about this when whoever murdered Ricky is still running around. Have you ever heard of a white guy getting arrested for obstructing pedestrian traffic? I haven’t. But I’ve known a lot of black guys who’ve been arrested for it. Like, every fucking black guy I know.”

  25.

  Since his arrival, Lucas has all but commandeered Lillian’s office—the only secluded area within Communitiv.ly’s open-plan space—displacing Lillian to an annex desk by the bathrooms. By all appearances, Lillian has taken the move with team-player positivity, but Wendy’s sure it irks. She knocks on the door and Lucas tells her to come in.

  He sits on the floor in a yoga pose, legs bent half-swastika while his torso sticks straight up like the top half of a charmed cobra. His jacket and dress shirt are draped across Lillian’s desk, and he’s wearing only a shrunken white crewneck. Wendy can see both the firm curve of Lucas’s pecs, and the fact that his arms above the elbow are inked with the kind of fluorescent koi fish popular among California surf-bros and singers in late-nineties ska-punk bands. They don’t suit him at all.

  Wendy awaits instruction. Lucas remains still. She wonders if this is a power play learned from the autobiography of a celebrated American CEO, or if it’s a sex thing, Lucas showing off his tone and flexibility at the directive of a men’s mag listicle, or if she simply caught him in the midst of a midday exercise routine. He doesn’t seem embarrassed.

  “Sit,” he says, and Wendy looks for a chair. There aren’t any except the leather one behind Lillian’s desk that would have her facing his back. The excess folding chairs that usually cramp the office are nowhere to be seen.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place,” says Wendy. She seats herself on the floor, bunching her skirt around her knees.

  “You look tense,” Lucas says, though he’s the one holding the rigid position.

  “You’re not looking so relaxed yourself,” says Wendy.

  “Observant,” says Lucas, who now unlocks his muscles and stands. Wendy’s not sure if she should stand as well or stay seated. If she stands, it’ll look like she’s mimicking him, but if she stays seated, then he’ll be talking down from the mount of male authority. She stands. It must be all in her head. Lucas moves back behind Lillian’s desk and eases himself into her office chair. Wendy’s left standing.

  “You see the mockups?” she asks.

  “Fantastic,” says Lucas, batting his lashes. Wendy’s not sure if it’s a tic or an affectation. She guesses the latter. Everything he does feels deliberate. “You really managed to capture something there, the convergence of blue collar pride and sex appeal. The dignity and eros of someone who works with his hands. Like that old Mapplethorpe shot of Richard Gere, but much less gay-seeming. Babette in design is already in proofs. This will happen fast. We’re talking billboard tomorrow, prime time spots on the networks, a full page in Sunday’s Times. All hands on deck. The vote’s days away. The other agencies I met with said there was no way they could meet our timeline. That’s why I like an underdog. You strive for the impossible.”

  “You spoke to other agencies?”

  “How cute, you thought you were the only one. Seriously, you did an excellent job. I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to see it.”

  “I managed. So are you finally going to tell me about the product? I think I deserve that at this point.”

  “Tomorrow, I promise. You’ll get a private presentation. Everything will become clear. I would today, but it takes a minute and I don’t have time. As I said, things are moving fast, and there’s a new problem that we have to deal with. A big problem. The rest, unfortunately, can wait.”

  “What’s come up?”

  “The police have made an arrest in the Cortes case.”

  “And this is bad news?”

  “Well it’s not good,” says Lucas, “considering who they’ve arrested. It’s certainly not good news for our cause.”

  “Who have they arrested?”

  “They’ve arrested the wrong guy is who they’ve arrested.”

  “And you know better than the police?”

  “I don’t know whether he’s the guy who did or did not do the murder. What I do know is that he’s the wrong guy as far as we’re concerned. I do know that who gets arrested generally has little to do with who’s committed the crime. I know that the DA’s office is desperate for a quick conviction. I know a justice system with a history of finding the closest African American, filling the jury box with suspicious white folks, and letting the problem solve itself.”

  “You still haven’t told me who they’ve arrested.”

  “The doorman,” says Lucas. “The doorman from Cortes’s building.”

  Wendy feels nothing. No sense of further understanding or justice served. The revelation only gives rise to a new set of questions. She says, “Motive?”

  “They don’t need motive.”

  “And why is that?”

  “They have something better than motive.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “They have narrative.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “I’ll weave you a tale. Working black man with bills to pay. Say he’s bought an apartment in Harlem pre ’08. Took out a floating-rate mortgage because an asshole Realtor told him to. Some C&S trader bundles that mortgage into a CDO and sells the risk off to another bank, which in turn sells it off to someone else. The housing bubble bursts just as our guy’s interest has gone through the roof, so he’s in big, and the new bank that owns his mortgage refuses to give him a loan mod, even though he thought his tax dollars on the bailout were specifically designated to allow banks to give these kinds of breaks to homeowners. Meanwhile, he’s put 20K into the apartment which has depreciated by half, so either he can sell the place for nothing and make a small recoup or wait out the buffer years before white people get up the courage to buy on Malcolm X Boulevard, but either way he’s in a bad mood.”

  “Are these things true or are you making them up?”

  “True.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I used a thing called the Internet. You’d be amazed at how much information is available there.”

  “Okay,” Wendy says.

  “Can I continue, or do you have anything else you’d like to ask?”

  She says, “Continue.”

  “So our guy’s in a bad mood, and what does he do? Well, for one, he takes a second job. Verizon sales rep during the day, but at night he watches the door at a prewar Tribeca building where bankers like Ricardo Cortes live in palatial apartments. So now we’ve got this guy, Donnell Sanders is his name—a handsome, intelligent guy, no less, who everyone says is a lovely motherfucker—and every day Sanders sits there, trying to figure a way out of his debt, and meanwhile your friend Cortes passes by on his way upst
airs, reeking of privilege, flaunting his queer, druggie lifestyle. We’re talking dealers in and out, rent boys, fashionistas, coked-up businessmen. Money falling out of pockets. Empty plastic baggies scattered up and down the emergency stairs. Used condoms on the hallway floor. People buzzing in at 4 a.m., arriving in limos, departing in Porsches. See what I’m getting at?”

  “I do,” says Wendy. She imagines Michael as part of this scene, a wedding band being slipped into a pocket.

  “Resentment is starting to build. Meanwhile, Cortes, being the asshole that he is, keeps making drunken innuendo at Sanders, jokingly offering money for blow jobs, or what have you. Sanders does not find this funny. His debts are continuing to accumulate, while at the same time C&S isn’t prosecuted for the bevy of crimes that put Sanders in this very situation. Instead they’re forced to pay some bullshit ten-billion-dollar fine that might sound like a lot, but that Sanders knows is nothing to these guys, and will pay for itself and then some after the company’s shares go up in the wake of its non-prosecution. Skip to last month, and it turns out the market’s crashed again, meaning Sanders’s loan debt will somehow increase. So what does he do? What can he do? He goes to an #Occupy rally, exercising his right to, at the very least, bitch about all that’s happened, when he suddenly finds himself in a hotel room face-to-face with the very asshole he’s been hating all these years. So he drags the fucker into the empty room downstairs and unleashes his anger. Do you understand why this is problematic?”

  “He’s sympathetic.”

  “Exactly. And not only is he sympathetic, but he’s an angry black man, which means that white people will want to placate him out of fear that if they don’t, it could happen to them.”

  “What could happen to them?”

  “Murder.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

  “There are holes in this story. Where’d he get the gun?”