Golden State

by Ben H. Winters

“Mr. Alvaro,” I say.

  “Yes, at which point Mr. Alvaro would file a formal request for discussion, which would then be reviewed by myself or by my staff.” Ms. Petras angles her chin to the corner, where the man in his gray suit sits at his desk. Presumably there are more staff behind the inner-office door to his right. “They will then coordinate with…I do apologize.”

  “Mr. Alvaro.”

  “Right, to find the appropriate venue and time for us to provide our Expertise.”

  “Right. That’s not going to work.”

  She blinks. “And why is that?”

  “We’re not here to take advantage of your Expertise.”

  Petras’s brow furrows. She steeples her manicured fingers on the desk in front of her. I’m standing with my hands behind my back, with Aysa at my side in the same posture. I think I’ve cleaned all the blood off my face. I swapped my jacket for the backup I keep in the trunk of the car, but there wasn’t much I could do about my shirt.

  “Oh no?” says Petras finally, tilting her head.

  “No. The anomaly we are investigating—anomalies at this point, actually—intersects with this office.” She waits, her expression placid and indecipherable. “You might have relevant information, is what I mean.”

  “Me, personally?”

  “Yes. You or your office.”

  The staffer, in his corner, continues writing. His desk is a slightly smaller version of his boss’s, angled upward like a drafting table. There are four notebooks open on the desk, one at each corner, and he writes constantly, shifting from book to book according to some system known only to him.

  “You are here for a point of information,” says Petras.

  “Possibly several,” I say.

  She looks again to her staffer in his suit and he writes something in one of his notebooks and tears it free and walks it swiftly over to her. The wall behind them is lined with metal cabinets, arranged in stacks from floor to ceiling, an archive of documents and filings and transcripts. The Provisional Record of her department’s work. Directly behind Petras is a tall shelf weighted with volumes of procedure: the protocols of the court systems, the rules regulating the regular police and the Speculative Service. Statistical manuals, sentencing guidelines, treatises on ballistics and recidivism and forensics. All the areas of her Expertise.

  Petras unfolds the slip of paper that her assistant has handed her. “Very good,” she says to him, and turns to us. “We are able to grant you three and a half minutes.” There is a clock behind her on the wall, above the filing cabinets, and another clock behind us, on the facing wall. “That time begins right now.”

  I nod. “Thank you, ma’am. We’re here to ask about a judge.”

  She frowns. “Mr. Speculator, this office is responsible for the conduct and caseloads of just over three hundred and fifty sitting judges, on a wide variety of courts, from the Court of Small Infelicities to Grave Assaults on the Objectively So. That is in addition to our oversight of the regular courts, meaning everything from traffic infractions—”

  “Sampson,” says Ms. Paige. I give her a look, which she ignores. “Judge Barney Sampson. Does that sound familiar?”

  “It—yes,” says Petras, and a swift-moving cloud of anxiety passes across her brow. I think it does. I watch it come and go, I see it, but as soon as it is gone I cannot be sure I saw it at all. Something has opened up in me that will not close. I shake my head to clear it, clench my teeth, and focus. The staffer in the corner, meanwhile, rises silently and brings the Expert a new scrap of paper, which she unfolds and reads.

  “His court is in Aberrant Neural Phenomena, on Grand Avenue? Is that correct?”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Earlier today—” says Ms. Paige, but I hold up my hand and she stops. If Petras has not yet heard about Sampson’s death, we don’t need to be the ones to fill her in. Not yet, anyway.

  “Mr. Doonan?” Petras turns her head slightly toward the man in the corner. “Would you draw the judge’s file, please?”

  “Of course.” Mr. Doonan rises and moves along the back wall of the office, brisk and efficient.

  “Our line of inquiry,” I add warningly, “may touch on very sensitive matters. You may feel most comfortable speaking alone.”

  Petras shakes her head tightly. “Mr. Doonan is my executive assistant.” He has found the file, and he hands it to her without looking at us or otherwise acknowledging that he is being discussed. “I cannot imagine there is anything you need to ask me to which he could not or should not be privy. Do you know the idiom ‘He is my right hand’?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “He is my right hand.”

  Mr. Doonan sits again, his expression unchanged. His eyes are gray like his suit, giving him a kind of hazy, indistinctly distinguished look. He resumes writing in his notebooks.

  I watch the clock over Petras’s head. I talk as quickly as I can. “In the course of pursuing a seemingly unrelated anomaly, we discovered that Judge Sampson was involved in an extramarital affair. Our speculation led us to believe that an individual had gained knowledge of this affair and was interested in blackmailing the judge regarding this affair. Or—” I stumble, not certain how to frame it. Not certain even of what I know. As Petras’s eyes remain on me, cool and evaluating, I am treading out onto thinner and thinner ice. “Or potentially over other improprieties.”

  “You need to know if we know anything.”

  “Yes.”

  “About any improprieties.”

  “That’s right.”

  She regards me quietly, weighing my heft with her Expert’s eyes. Doonan, in his corner, stays busy with his papers, clipping and unclipping his binders. Making a performance of not paying attention, making of himself a capture, inconspicuous but active, noiseless in his gray suit, gathering every word.

  “Mr. Doonan?” Petras says. “Would you come here for just a moment?” He walks quickly over, waits for the half instant it takes Petras to write something on a piece of paper, reads it and tucks it away in a pocket while he returns to his corner.

  Petras looks at me. The clock behind her has swallowed up half our time.

  “It strikes me that you’ve done an awful lot of speculation, based on an awfully small number of facts.”

  “I’m—excuse me, ma’am?”

  Doonan at his desk switches from one notebook to another. I fold my arms.

  “I am not here to have my work evaluated, ma’am.”

  “And neither will I be instructed in how to entertain your presence. You are here. Here you are.” Her tone is elevated now; she has brought her authority into her voice. “And my position requires me to observe that I am not convinced this investigation is carefully built on the facts as they exist.”

  “Listen. Look.” I take a step toward her, feeling a new sheen of sweat at my hairline, a new consciousness of my great bulk in the polished interior of this office. “All I need to know is what that judge was up to.”

  “Then you would have to ask him.”

  “Well, see, I can’t do that. He’s dead.”

  There it is again: a flutter of emotion at her brow, a fleeting grief of awareness. This time I am sure I see it, long enough to know it for what it is, and to wonder what it means. Ms. Petras looks at me accusingly across the desk. “You might have begun with that information.”

  I shrug, conceding the point. I’m waiting for the obvious next question, and when she doesn’t ask I tell her anyway.

  “He did it himself. Drank poison.”

  “When?”

  “Today. Earlier today.”

  I see it again, like it’s happening now, in front of me. Blood leaping from his throat like a living thing, his arms flailing forward, body spinning. Doonan closes one of his notebooks and slides it off his desk. For an instant I see a red cover on the notebook, an unfamiliar gold logo. He has the book under his arm as he rises.

  “Remind me, Mr. Speculator,” says Petras. “What is the inciting anom
aly at issue?”

  “Pardon me, ma’am?”

  “You have come here regarding Judge Sampson. But the original investigation began elsewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was that matter?”

  Maybe if the day had begun differently. Maybe if I wasn’t standing here with the judge’s blood on my shirtfront, with his memory of Silvie blazoned on my mind.

  “I understand your authority, ma’am, but I am here to ask you questions and not the other way around.”

  She holds my gaze for a moment, another one, and then directs herself to my partner.

  “What is your name, young lady?”

  “Ms. Aysa Paige, ma’am.”

  “Ms. Paige, two and four are even numbers.”

  “One and three are not.”

  “What is the original anomaly you and your partner are after?”

  “Ma’am? I—I would have to—to respect Mr. Ratesic’s authority, as far as discussing our investigation.”

  Our Acknowledged Expert does not rise from her desk. She barely moves, in fact. her head. She speaks very carefully, putting each new word precisely in its place.

  “Ms. Paige, my office would be happy to make available to you a laminated copy of the chain of command of the law enforcement divisions of the Golden State, including the position of the Speculative Service, in which you serve, relative to this office, and at the head of which I sit. I am asking you a direct question with a simple answer.”

  Paige looks at me. I look at the ground.

  “We are investigating anomalous circumstances relating to a death,” she says.

  “Death of whom?"

  “Crane, ma’am. A man named Mose Crane.”

  “Foul play?”

  “No.”

  “Merely anomalous? Potentially?”

  “That is—right. Correct.”

  “Where?”

  Aysa’s answers are coming quickly now, either out of deference or fear or some combination of the two.

  “On Vermont Avenue. At Judge Sampson’s home, ma’am.”

  “Ah,” says Petras, and she tilts her head up and thinks. “Ah.”

  Mr. Doonan softly shuts the door, returning from the inner office. I don’t recall seeing him leave. He passes a note to Petras, who writes on it and passes it back.

  “Madam Expert,” I begin, and Doonan stops me, pointing at the clock.

  “Mr. and Ms. Speculator,” he says blandly, “your time has elapsed.” I don’t move. Aysa doesn’t move. Doonan steps between us and Ms. Petras, drawing his suit coat together and buttoning it like he's closing a door. “The Expert is a busy woman, as you know, and your allotted time has long since elapsed.”

  “Sit down,” Ms. Paige tells him.

  “Respectfully, miss,” Doonan begins, and Paige says, “I said sit the fuck down,” and I hope she knows I love her—not with some goony-eyed romantic love but with the fierce, true love of respect. One Speculator to another. I love Ms. Paige fierce and true and I will love her forever.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Doonan,” says Petras, and he does. She places her hands over her eyes, and when she removes them all of the tension is gone from her face. She smiles pleasantly, robotically, as if we are here after all to seek her wise counsel, to ask about appropriate strategies for sentencing or community policing.

  “As you may be aware, Mr. Speculator,” Petras begins, “we on the committee have certain prerogatives regarding matters of epistemological certainty.”

  “What?”

  This is off topic. I don’t know what this is, but I don’t like it.

  “That is, the State has vested in me the power to determine, under certain circumstances, when matters can be deemed inscrutable. Impossible to be weighed as true or not true, and therefore dangerous.”

  She gives me her bland smile. I know what she means, the ultimate power of the State, the authority to designate things as unknown and unknowable, beyond the reach of speculation. But I don’t see what that has to do with this—until I do.

  “Wait.”

  “Mr. Doonan would be happy to provide you with documentation of the statutory authority to which I refer.”

  I see it now—the danger that has entered the room in the slipstream of her murmuring tone.

  “Ms. Petras, hold on.”

  “Upon review of the case currently under discussion—”

  “You haven’t reviewed it. You—”

  “—my office is taking the official step of declaring the matter of the death of Mose Crane—”

  She is just reeling it off, chapter and verse, reciting it like Arlo would, except not to flaunt her knowledge of the Basic Law but to build it as a wall.

  “Hold on.”

  The trap was not clear until it was too late—the ground did not shift until I stepped onto it. Oh. Oh shit.

  “—as unknown and unknowable.”

  “Laszlo?” says Aysa, confused, uncertain. Mr. Doonan is still writing. There are three notebooks on his desk now, just the three. Outside the window of the bungalow, carts putter past, important people going from one important place to another, clutching folders bulging with important papers.

  I have been carrying around the small light of my investigation, like a man cupping a candle under his palms, hoping for it to stay lit, and instead I’ve brought it to the one person with the power to snuff it out between two fingers. I don’t even look at Ms. Paige right now. I can’t. I can’t bear to watch her realize what I’ve done. What an idiot I am.

  “I declare the truth of the death of Mose Crane, and all matters flowing therefrom, to be unknowable.” She nods at Doonan, who nods back at her. He is writing in his Day Book, a big silver number with silver-edged pages. The captures are rolling. It’s all being lost, before my eyes. “All relevant truth that can be collected has been collected,” she says.

  “No,” I say. “It hasn’t.”

  “Well.” She stands, and holds out her hand. “It has been, though. And let me add, finally, also, on behalf of the Golden State: thank you for your efforts in this matter.”

  It is the end of the conversation. She holds out her pad for me to stamp, and I stamp it, and Paige stamps it too. Too late I have figured it out, too late to draw the line that I should have drawn already.

  E is not for Elena at all. E is for Expert.

  “Okay,” says Petras brightly, as if we’ve just come in. “Was there anything else I can help you folks with today?”

  17.

  Everybody keeps everything. Archiving is a bulwark. You do it. I do it. We have to do it.

  I do it now, down in the crawl space beneath my small house, I unpack all of the flat facts I’ve collected, my whole paper trail of the day that was, a day’s worth of living. Conversation stamps and stamps of presence, the receipt from passing through the gate arm at the administrative campus, the receipt for every cup of coffee and donut consumed, the record of my interrogation by the regular police in the hallway outside Judge Sampson’s chambers. The slip of stamped paper I was handed on the seventh floor of the Service building, when we turned over Sampson’s Night Book to evidence processing.

  I tear today’s pages of notes clean from my Day Book, one at a time, careful to leave the carbons in place.

  My motions are deliberate, slow, careful. I have performed this ritual many times. Once for every day of my adulthood. Those notes relating to the death I was investigating and am not investigating any longer I fold in half, and then fold in half again, make of them a small hard square, a stiff packet with four sharp corners, and this I slide last into the bag and seal it. Mose Crane is dead, but his death is not an event for me. It is gone from my mind.

  When I’m done, I don’t get up. I stare at my boxes, tempted to start opening things up. I could just sit here for a while, rummaging through years gone by, digging up scraps of the past for consideration. People do it. I have done it. Sort through the past, seek out certain incidents, key days, fragments of memory, spread
them out on the ground and then sweep them all together and put them all back, stamp the bags “Unsealed and resealed,” waste hours in reflection, self-abasement, and recrimination. There are people who fall down that rabbit hole and never come up.

  Not me. Not tonight.

  I rise stiffly, keeping my body very still, wriggle back out of the crawl space, and walk slowly back up the stairs.

  “Fuck.”

  I find my face in the mirror, in the darkness of my empty house. Silvie took a lot of the furniture when she left, but this standing mirror is still here, by the front door, leaning against the wall. “It might be fun to look at yourself in the morning sometimes,” she used to say. “Before you leave the house.”

  There is blood still on my forehead, up by my hairline, at the level of the roots. Blood still in my eyebrows, small flecks like red dust.

  I pass through the kitchen into the bedroom, peeling off the rest of my clothes as I go. Coat and pants, shirt and tie.

  I knew a one-legged policeman once. When I was still on the regular force, before I followed my brother’s lead and drifted into Service. His name was Rafael, and we used to drink together, after shift, at a bar on Grand Avenue north of downtown. He lost the leg, he told me, when he was a teenager, but he could still feel it. “Sometimes I swear I could touch it. Sometimes I swear if I look away, and look back—” He was pretty drunk. I was drunk too. He never told anyone, he said, about how he still felt like the leg was there. “Please, Laz, please don’t tell anyone. They’ll jack me up on that shit,” he whispered, beery breath in my ear. It was late at night, just taxis on the street outside. “On that Clarify. They’ll kick me the fuck over the wall.”

  He still felt the leg and he liked to feel it. He liked to believe that it was real.

  I will miss my case but my case is gone.

  I stumble into the bathroom and piss and splash water on my face.

  I come out into the bedroom and see a dark shape in the greater darkness of my unmade bed. Nested like a dead animal in the mass of rumpled sheets.

  A book. The book. Still in the cover that calls it The Everyday Citizens Dictionary, but I know what it is, I can see its true face through the mask. The Prisoner: A Novel. By Benjamin Wish. It’s on my bed.