Stochastic Man (18 page)

23

Sundara vanished at the end of June, leaving no message, and was gone for five days. I didn’t notify the police. When she returned, saying nothing by way of explanation, I didn’t ask where she had been. Bombay again, Tierra del Fuego, Capetown, Bangkok, they were all the same to me. I was becoming a good Transit husband. Perhaps she had spent all five days spread-eagled on the altar at some local Transit house, if they have altars, or perhaps she’d been putting in time at a Bronx bordello. Didn’t know, didn’t want to care. We were badly out of touch with each other now, skating side by side over thin ice and never once glancing toward each other, never once exchanging a word, just gliding on silently toward an unknown and perilous destination. Transit processes occupied her energies night and day, day and night. What do you get out of it? I wanted to ask her. What does it
mean
to you? But I didn’t. One sticky July evening she came home late from doing God knows what in the city, wearing a sheer turquoise sari that clung to her moist skin with a lasciviousness that would get her a ten-year sentence for public lewdity in puritan New Delhi, and came up to me and rested her arms on my shoulders and sighed and leaned close to me, so that I felt the warmth of her body and it made me tremble, and her eyes met mine, and there was in her dark shining eyes a look of pain and loss and regret, a terrible look of aching grief. And as though I were able to read her thoughts, I could clearly hear her telling me, “Say the word. Lew, only say the word, and I’ll quit them, and everything will be as it used to be for us.” I know that was what her eyes were telling me. But I didn’t say the word. Why did I remain silent? Because I suspected Sundara was merely playing out another meaningless Transit exercise on me, playing a game of Did-you-think-I-meant-it? Or because somewhere within me I really didn’t want her to swerve from the course she had chosen?

24

Quinn sent for me. It was the day before the ceremony at the Bank of Kuwait Building.

He was standing in the middle of his office when I entered. The room was drab, drearily functional, nothing at all like Lombroso’s awesome sanctum—dark awkward municipal furniture, portraits of former mayors—but today it had an eerie shimmer of brightness. Sunlight streaming through the window behind Quinn cloaked him in a dazzling golden nimbus, and he seemed to radiate strength and authority and purpose, emitting a flood of light more intense than that he was receiving. A year and a half as New York’s mayor had left an imprint on him: the network of fine lines around his eyes was deeper than it had been on inaugural day, the blond hair had lost some of its sheen, his massive shoulders seemed to hunch a little, as if he were sagging under an impossible weight. During much of this edgy, humid summer he had appeared weary and irritable and there had been times when he seemed much older than his thirty-nine years. But all that was gone from him now. The old Quinn vigor had returned. His presence filled the room.

He said, “Remember about a month ago you told me new patterns were shaping up and you’d be able to give me a forecast soon for the year ahead?”

“Sure. But I—”

“Wait. New factors have been shaping up, but you don’t have access to all of them yet. I want to give them to you so you can work them into your synthesis, Lew.”

“What sort of factors?”

“My plans for running for President.”

After a long gawky pause I managed to say, “You mean running next year?”

“I don’t stand a snowball’s chance for next year,” Quinn replied evenly. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. The ticket for 2000 is Kane and Socorro. I don’t need your skill at projection to realize that. They have enough delegates in their pockets now for a first-ballot nomination. Then they’ll go up against Mortonson a year from November and get clobbered. I figure Mortonson’s going to rack up the biggest landslide since Nixon in ‘72, no matter who runs against him.”

“I think so, too.”

Quinn said, “Therefore I’m talking about ‘04. Mortonson won’t be able to run for another term and the Republicans have nobody else of his stature. Whoever grabs the New Democratic nomination that year is going to be President, right?”

“Right, Paul.”

“Kane won’t get a second chance. Landslide losers never do. Who else is there? Keats? He’ll be past sixty. Pownell? No staying power. He’ll be forgotten. Randolph? I can’t see him as anything better than somebody’s vice-presidential pick.”

“Socorro will still be around,” I pointed out.

“Socorro, yes. If he plays his cards right during next year’s campaign, he’ll come out looking good no matter how badly the ticket is beaten. The way Muskie did losing in ‘68, and Shriver losing in ‘72. Socorro’s been very much on my mind all this summer, Lew. I’ve been watching him move up like a rocket ever since Leydecker died. That’s why I’ve decided to stop being coy and start my push for the nomination: this early. I’ve got to head off Socorro. Because if he gets the nomination in ‘04, he’s going to win, and if he wins he’ll be a two-term President, and that puts me on the sidelines until the year 2012.” He gave me a dose of the classic Quinn eye contact, transfixing me until I wanted to squirm. “I’ll be fifty-one years old in 2012, Lew. I don’t want to have to wait that long. A potential candidate can get awfully withered if he dangles on the vine a dozen years waiting his turn. What do you think?”

“I think your projection checks out all the way,” I said.

Quinn nodded. “Okay. This is the timetable that Haig and I have been working out the past couple of days. We spend the rest of ‘99 and the first half of next year simply laying the substructure. I make some speeches around the country, I get to know the big party leaders better, I become friendly with a lot of precinct-house small fry who are
going
to be big party leaders by the time 2004 comes around. Next year, after Kane and Socorro are nominated, I campaign nationwide for them, with special emphasis on the Northeast. I do my damnedest to deliver New York State for them. What the hell, I figure they’ll take six or seven of the big industrial states anyway, and they might as well have mine, if I’m going to come on like a dynamic party leader; Mortonson will still wipe them out in the South and the farm belt. In 2001 I lay low and concentrate on getting re-elected mayor, but once that’s behind me I resume national speechmaking and after the 2002 Congressional elections I announce my candidacy. That gives me all of ‘03 and half of ‘04 to sew up the delegates, and by the time the primaries come around I’ll be sure of the nomination. Well?”

“I like it, Paul. I like it a lot.”

“Good. You’re going to be my key man. I want you to concentrate full time on isolating and projecting national political patterns, so you can draw up game plans within the larger structure I’ve just outlined. Leave the little local stuff alone, the New York City crap. Mardikian can handle my re-election campaign without much help. You look for the big picture, you tell me what the people out in Ohio and Hawaii and Nebraska think they want, you tell me what they’re likely to want four years from now. You’re going to be the man who’ll make me President, Lew.”

“Damned right I will,” I said.

“You’re going to be the eyes that see into the future for me.”

“You know it, man.”

We slapped palms. “Onward to 2004!” he yelled.

“Washington, here we come!” I bellowed.

It was a silly moment, but it was touching, too. History on the hoof, marching toward the White House, me in the vanguard carrying the flag and playing the drums. I was so swept by emotion that I almost started to tell Quinn to pass up die Bank of Kuwait ceremony. But then I thought I saw Carvajal’s sad-eyed face hovering in the dust motes of that beam of light pouring through the mayor’s Window, and I caught myself. So I said nothing, and Quinn went and made his speech, and of course he jammed his foot deep into his epiglottis with a couple of elephantine quips about the Near Eastern political situation. (“I hear that last week King Abdullah and Premier Eleazar were playing poker down at the casino in Eilat, and the king bet three camels and an oil well and the premier raised him five hogs and a submarine, so the king...” Oh, no, it’s too dumb to repeat.) Naturally Quinn’s performance made every network that night, and the next day City Hall was inundated by angry telegrams. Mardikian phoned me to say the place was being picketed by B’nai B’rith, the United Jewish Appeal, the Jewish Defense League, and the whole House of David starting team. I went over there, slinking goyishly through the mob of outraged Hebrews and wanting to apologize to the entire cosmos for having by my silence permitted all this to happen. Lombroso was there with the mayor. We exchanged glances. I felt triumphant—had Carvajal not predicted the incident perfectly?—and sheepish, and frightened, too. Lombroso gave me a quick wink, which could have meant any one of a dozen things, but which I took to be a token of reassurance and forgiveness.

Quinn didn’t look perturbed. He tapped the huge box of telegrams smartly with his toe and said in a wry voice, “And thus we commence our pursuit of the American voter. We aren’t off to much of a start, are we, lad?”

“Don’t worry,” I told him, Boy Scout fervor creeping into my voice. “This is the last time anything of this sort is going to happen.”

25

I phoned Carvajal. “I have to talk to you,” I said.

We met along the Hudson Promenade near Tenth Street. The weather was ominous, dark and moist and warm, the sky a threatening greenish yellow, with black-edged thunderheads piled high over New Jersey and a sense of impending apocalypse pervading everything. Shafts of fierce off-color sunlight, more gray-blue than gold, burned through a filtering layer of murky clouds clustered like a crumpled blanket in mid-sky. Preposterous weather, operatic weather, a noisy overstated backdrop for our conversation.

Carvajal’s eyes had an unnatural gleam. He looked taller, younger, jazzing along the promenade on the balls of his feet. Why did he seem to gain strength between each of our meetings?

“Well?” he demanded.

“I want to be able to
see.”

“See,
then. I’m not stopping you, am I?”

“Be serious,” I begged.

“I always am. How can I help you?”

“Teach me to do it.”

“Did I ever tell you it could be taught?”

“You said everyone has the gift but very few know how to use it. All right. Show me how to use it.”

“Using it can perhaps be learned,” Carvajal said, “but it can’t be taught.”

“Please.”

“Why so eager?”

“Quinn needs me,” I told him abjectly. “I want to help him. To become President.”

“So?”

“I want to help him. I need to
see.”

“But you can project trends so well, Lew!”

“Not enough. Not enough.”

Thunder boomed over Hoboken. A cold damp wind out of the west stirred the clotted clouds. Nature’s scene-setting was becoming grotesquely, comically excessive.

Carvajal said, “Suppose I told you to give me complete control over your life. Suppose I asked you to let me make every decision for you, to shape all your actions to my orders, to put your existence entirely into my hands, and I said that if you did that, there’d be a chance that you’d learn how to
see.
A chance. What would your reply be?”

“I’d say that it’s a deal.”

“Seeing
may not be as wonderful as you think it is, you know. Right now you look upon it as the magic key to everything. What if it turns out to be nothing but a burden and an obstacle? What if it’s a curse?”

“I don’t think it will be.”

“How can you know?”

“A power like that can be a tremendous positive force. I can’t see it as anything but beneficial for me. I can see its potential negative side, sure, but still—a curse? No.”

“What if it is?”

I shrugged. “I’ll take that risk. Has it been a curse for you?”

Carvajal paused and looked up at me, eyes searching mine. This was the appropriate moment for lightning to crackle across the heavens, for drum rolls of terrible thunder to sound up and down the Hudson, for tempestuous rain to slash across the promenade. None of that happened. Abruptly, the clouds directly overhead parted and sweet soft yellow sunlight enveloped the dark storm- frowns. So much for nature as a setter of scene.

“Yes,” Carvajal said quietly. “A curse. If anything, yes, a curse, a curse.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“What does that matter to me?”

“Even if it’s been a curse for you, I don’t think it would for me.”

“Very courageous, Lew. Or very foolish.”

“Both. Nevertheless, I want to be able to
see.”

“Are you willing to become my disciple?”

Strange, jarring word. “What would that involve?”

“I’ve already told you. You give yourself to me on a no-questions-asked, no-results-guaranteed basis.”