The Stochastic Man

11

There was one frosty day late in March ‘99 that started like most of the other days since I had gone to work for Paul Quinn, but went off on an unexpected track before afternoon arrived. I was up at quarter past seven, as usual. Sundara and I showered together, the pretext being conservation of water and energy, but actually we both had this little soap fetish and loved lathering each other until we were slippery as seals. Quick breakfast, out of the house by eight, commuter pod to Manhattan. My first stop was my uptown office, my old Lew Nichols Associates office, which I was maintaining with a skeleton staff during my time on the city payroll. There I handled routine projective analysis of minor administrative hassles — the siting of a new school, the closing of an old hospital, zoning changes to allow a new wipe-out center for brain-injured sniffers in a residential district, all trivia but potentially explosive trivia in a city where every citizen’s nerves are taut beyond hope of slackening and small disappointments quickly start looking like insupportable rebuffs. Then, about noon, I headed downtown to the Municipal Building for conference and lunch with Bob Lombroso.

“Mr. Lombroso has a visitor in his office,” the receptionist told me, “but he’d like you to go on inside anyway.”

Lombroso’s office was a fitting stage for him. He is a tall well-set-up man in his late thirties, somewhat theatrical in appearance, a commanding figure with dark curling hair silvering at the temples, a coarse black close-cropped beard, a flashing smile, and the energetic, intense manner of a successful rug merchant. His office, redecorated from standard Early Bureaucrat at his own expense, was an ornate Levantine den, fragrant and warm, with dark shining leather-paneled walls, dense carpets, heavy brown velvet draperies, dim bronze Spanish lamps perforated in a thousand places, a gleaming desk made of several somber woods inlaid with plaques of tooled morocco, great white urnlike Chinese floor vases, and, in a baroque glass-fronted credenza, his cherished collection of medieval Judaica — silver headpieces, breastplates, and pointers for the scrolls of the Law, embroidered Torah curtains out of the synagogues of Tunisia or Iran, filigreed Sabbath lamps, candlesticks, spice boxes, candelabra. In this musky cloistered sanctuary Lombroso reigned over the municipal revenues like a prince of Zion: woe betide the foolish Gentile who disdained his counsel.

His visitor was a faded-looking little man, fifty-five or sixty years old, a slight, insignificant person with a narrow oval head sparsely thatched with short gray hair. He was dressed so plainly, in a shabby old brown suit out of the Eisenhower era, that he made Lombroso’s nippy-dip sartorialism seem like the most extreme peacock extravagance and even made me feel like a dandy in my five-year-old copper-threaded maroon cape. He sat quietly, slouched, hands interlocked. He looked anonymous and close to invisible, one of nature’s natural-born Smiths, and there was a leaden undertone to his skin, a wintry slackness to the flesh of his cheeks, that spoke of an exhaustion that was as much spiritual as physical. Time had emptied this man of any strength he might once have had.

“I want you to meet Martin Carvajal, Lew,” Lombroso said.

Carvajal rose and clasped my hand. His was cold. “A pleasure at last to encounter you, Mr. Nichols,” he said in a mild, numb voice that came to me from the far side of the universe.

The odd courtly phrasing of his greeting was strange. I wondered what he was doing here. He looked so juiceless, so much like an applicant for some very minor bureaucratic job, or, more plausibly, like some down-at-the-heel uncle of Lombroso’s here to pick up his monthly stipend: but only the powerful were admitted to Finance Administrator Lombroso’s lair.

But Carvajal was not the relict I took him to be. Already, in the moment of our handshake, he appeared to have an improbable access of strength; he stood taller, the lines of his face grew taut, a certain Mediterranean flush brightened his complexion. Only his eyes, bleak and lifeless, still betrayed some vital absence within.

Sententiously Lombroso said, “Mr. Carvajal was one of our most generous contributors to the mayor’s campaign,” giving me a suave Phoenician glance that told me, Treat him kindly, Lew, we want more of his gold.

That this drab, seedy stranger should be a wealthy campaign benefactor, a person to be flattered and curried and admitted to the sanctum of a busy official, shook me profoundly, for rarely had I misread someone so thoroughly. But I managed a bland grin and said, “What business are you in, Mr. Carvajal?”

“Investments.”

“One of the shrewdest and most successful private speculators I’ve ever known,” Lombroso offered.

Carvajal nodded complacently.

“You earn your living entirely from the stock market?” I asked.

“Entirely.”

“I didn’t think anyone actually was able to do that.”

“Oh, yes, yes, it can be done,” Carvajal said. His tone was thin and husky, a murmur out of the tomb. “All it takes is a decent understanding of trends and a little courage. Haven’t you ever been in the market, Mr. Nichols?”

“A little. Just dabbling.”

“Did you do well?”

“Well enough. I have a decent understanding of trends myself. But I don’t feel comfortable when the really wild fluctuations start. Up twenty, down thirty — no, thanks. I like sure things, I suppose.”

“So do I,” Carvajal replied, giving his statement a little propulsive twist, a hint of meaning beyond meaning, that left me baffled and uncomfortable.

Just then a sweet bell tinkled in Lombroso’s inner office, which opened out of a short corridor to the left of his desk. I knew it meant the mayor was calling; the receptionist invariably relayed Quinn’s calls to the back room when Lombroso had strangers out front. Lombroso excused himself and, with quick heavy strides that shook the carpeted floor, went to take the call. Finding myself alone with Carvajal was suddenly overwhelmingly disturbing; my skin tingled and there was pressure at my throat, as though some potent psychic emanation swept irresistibly from him to me the moment the neutral damping presence of Lombroso was removed. I was unable to stay. Excusing myself also, I hastily followed Lombroso to the other room, a narrow elbow-jointed cavern full of books from floor to ceiling, heavy ornate tomes that might have been Talmuds and might have been bound volumes of Moody’s stock and bond manuals, and probably were a mixture of both. Lombroso, surprised and annoyed at my intrusion, angrily jabbed a finger toward his telephone screen, on which I could see the image of Mayor Quinn’s head and shoulders. But instead of leaving I offered a pantomime of apology, a wild barrage of bobs and waves and shrugs and idiotic grimaces, that led Lombroso to ask the mayor to hold the line a moment. The screen went blank.

Lombroso glowered at me. “Well?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I don’t know. I’m sorry. I couldn’t stay in there. Who is he, Bob?”

“Just as I told you. Big money. Strong Quinn backer. We have to make nice for him. Look, I’m on the phone. The mayor has to know—”

“I don’t want to be alone in there with him. He’s like one of the walking dead. He gives me the creepies.”

“What?”

“I’m serious. It’s like some kind of cold deathly force coming from him, Bob. He makes me itch. He gives off scary vibes.”

“Oh, Jesus, Lew.”

“I can’t help it. You know how I pick up things.”

“He’s a harmless little geezer who made a lot of money in the market and likes our man. That’s all. ”

“Why is he here?”

“To meet you,” Lombroso said.

“Just that? Just to meet me?”

“He wanted very much to talk to you. Said it was important for him to get together with you.”

“What does he want with me?”

“I said that’s all I know, Lew.”

“Is my time for sale to anybody who’s ever given five bucks to Quinn’s campaign fund?”

Lombroso sighed. “If I told you how much Carvajal gave, you wouldn’t believe it, and in any case, yes, I think you might be able to spare some time for him.”

“But—”

“Look, Lew, if you want more answers you’ll have to get them from Carvajal. Go on back to him now. Be a sweetheart and let me talk to the mayor. Go on. Carvajal won’t hurt you. He’s just a little puny thing.” Lombroso swung away from me and reactivated the phone. The mayor reappeared on the telephone screen. Lombroso said, “I’m sorry, Paul. Lew had a bit of a nervous breakdown, but I think he’s going to pull through. Now—”

I returned to Carvajal. He was sitting motionless, head bowed, arms limp, as if an icy blast had passed through the room while I was gone, leaving him parched and withered. Slowly, with obvious effort, he reconstituted himself, sitting up, filling his lungs, pretending to an animation that his eyes, his empty and frightening eyes, wholly betrayed. One of the walking dead, yes.

“Will you be joining us for lunch?” I asked him.

“No. No, I wouldn’t impose. I wanted only a few words with you, Mr. Nichols.”

“I’m at your service.”

“Are you? How splendid.” He smiled an ashen smile. “I’ve heard a good deal about you, you know. Even before you went into politics. In a way, we’ve both been in the same line of work.”

“You mean the market?” I said, puzzled.

His smile grew brighter and more troubling. “Predictions,” he said. “For me, the stock market. For you, consultant to business and politics. We’ve both lived by our wits and by our, ah, decent understanding of trends.”

I was altogether unable to read him. He was opaque, a mystery, an enigma.

He said, “So now you stand at the mayor’s elbow, telling him the shape of the road ahead. I admire people who have such clear vision. Tell me, what sort of career do you project for Mayor Quinn?”

“A splendid one,” I said.

“A successful mayor, then.”

“He’ll be one of the finest this city’s ever had.”

Lombroso came back into the room. Carvajal said, “And afterward?”

I looked uncertainly at Lombroso, but his eyes were hooded. I was on my own.

“After his term as mayor?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“He’s still a young man, Mr. Carvajal. He might win three or four terms as mayor. I can’t give you any sort of meaningful projection about events a dozen years from now.”

“Twelve years in City Hall? Do you think he’ll be content to stay there as long as that?”

Carvajal was playing with me. I felt I had been drawn unawares into some sort of duel. I gave him a long look and perceived something terrifying and indeterminable, something powerful and incomprehensible, that made me grasp the first available defensive move, I said, “What do you think, Mr. Carvajal?”

For the first time a flicker of life showed in his eyes. He was enjoying the game.

“That Mayor Quinn is headed for higher office,” he said softly.

“Governor?”

“Higher.”

I made no immediate answer, and then I was unable to answer, for an immense silence had seeped out of the leather-paneled walls to engulf us, and I feared being the one to puncture it. If only the phone would ring again, I thought, but all was still, as becalmed as the air on a freezing night, until Lombroso rescued us by saying, “We think he has a lot of potential, too.”

“We have big plans for him,” I blurted.

“I know,” said Carvajal. “That’s why I’m here. I want to offer my support.”

Lombroso said, “Your financial aid has been tremendously helpful to us all along, and—”

“What I have in mind isn’t only financial.”

Now Lombroso looked to me for help. But I was lost. I said, “I don’t think we’re following you, Mr. Carvajal.”

“If I could have a moment alone with you, then.”

I glanced at Lombroso. If he was annoyed at being tossed out of his own office, he didn’t show it. With characteristic grace he bowed and stepped into the back room. Once more I was alone with Carvajal, and once more I felt ill at ease, thrown awry by the peculiar threads of invulnerable steel that seemed to lace his shriveled and enfeebled soul. In a new tone, insinuating, confidential, Carvajal said, “As I remarked, you and I are in the same line of work. But I think our methods are rather different, Mr. Nichols. Your technique is intuitive and probabilistic, and mine — Well, mine is different. I believe perhaps some of my insights might supplement yours, is what I’m trying to say.”

“Predictive insights?”

“Exactly. I don’t wish to intrude on your area of responsibility. But I might be able to make a suggestion or two that I think would be of value.”

I winced. Suddenly the enigma lay unraveled and what was revealed within was anticlimactically commonplace. Carvajal was nothing but a rich political amateur who, figuring that his money qualified him as a universal expert, hungered to meddle in the doings of the pros. A hobbyist. An armchair politico. Jesus! Well, make nice for him, Lombroso had said. I would make nice. Groping for tact, I told him stiffly, “Of course. Mr. Quinn and his staff are always glad to hear helpful suggestions.”

Carvajal’s eyes searched for mine, but I avoided them. “Thank you,” he whispered. “I’ve put down a few things to begin with.” He offered me a folded slip of white paper. His hand trembled a little. I took the slip without looking at it. Suddenly all strength seemed to go from him, as if he had come to the last of his resources. His face turned gray, his joints visibly loosened. “Thank you,” he murmured again. “Thank you very much. I think we’ll be seeing each other soon.” And he was gone. Bowing himself out the door like a Japanese ambassador.

You meet all kinds in this business. Shaking my head, I opened his slip of paper. Three things were written on it in a spidery handwriting:

1. Keep an eye on Gilmartin.

2. Mandatory national oil gellation — come out for it soon.

3. Socorro for Leydecker before summer. Get to him early.

I read them twice, got nothing from them, waited for the familiar clarifying leap of intuition, didn’t get that either. Something about this Carvajal seemed to short my faculties completely. That ghostly smile, those burned-out eyes, these cryptic notations — every aspect of him left me baffled and disturbed. “He’s gone,” I called to Lombroso, who emerged at once from his inner room.

“Well?”

“I don’t know. I absolutely don’t know. He gave me this,” I said, and passed the slip to him.

“Gilmartin. Gellation. Leydecker.” Lombroso frowned. “All right, wizard. What does it mean?”

Gilmartin had to be State Controller Anthony Gilmartin, who had clashed with Quinn a couple of times already over city fiscal policy but who hadn’t been in the news in months. “Carvajal thinks there’ll be more trouble with Albany about money,” I hazarded. “You’d know more about that than I do, though. Is Gilmartin grumbling about city spending again?”

“Not a word.”

“Are we preparing a batch of new taxes he won’t like?”

“We would have told you by now if we were, Lew.”

“So there are no potential conflicts shaping up between Quinn and the controller’s office?”

“I don’t see any in the visible future,” Lombroso said. “Do you?”

“Nothing. As for mandatory oil gellation—”

“We are talking about pushing through a tough local law,” he said. “No tankers entering New York Harbor carrying ungelled oil. Quinn isn’t sure it’s as good an idea as it sounds, and we were getting around to asking you for a projection. But national oil gellation? Quinn hasn’t been speaking out much on matters of national policy.”

“Not yet.”

“Not yet, no. Maybe it’s time. Maybe Carvajal is on to something there. And the third one—”

“Leydecker,” I said. Leydecker, surely, was Governor Richard Leydecker of California, one of the most powerful men in the New Democratic Party and the early front runner for the presidential nomination in 2000. “ Socorrois Spanish for ‘help,’ isn’t it, Bob? Help Leydecker, who doesn’t need any help? Why? How can Paul Quinn help Leydecker, anyway? By endorsing him for President? Aside from winning Leydecker’s good will, I don’t see how that’s going to do Quinn any good, and it isn’t likely to give Leydecker anything he doesn’t already have in his pocket, so—”

“Socorro is lieutenant-governor of California,” Lombroso said gently. “Carlos Socorro. It’s a man’s name, Lew.”

“Carlos. Socorro.” I closed my eyes. “Of course.” My cheeks blazed. All my list-making, all my frantic compiling of power centers in the New Democratic Party, all my sweaty doodling of the past year and a half, and yet I had still managed to forget Leydecker’s heir apparent. Not socorro but Socorro, idiot! I said, “What” he hinting at, then? That Leydecker will resign to seek the nomination, making Socorro governor? Okay, that computes. But get to him early? Get to whom?” I faltered. “Socorro? Leydecker? It comes out all muddy Bob. I’m not getting a reading that makes any sense.”

“What’s your reading of Carvajal?”

“A crank,” I said. “A rich crank. A weird little mar with a bad case of politics on the brain.” I put the note in my wallet. My head was throbbing. “Forget it. I humored him because you said I should humor him. I was a very good boy today, wasn’t I, Bob? But I’m not required to take any of this stuff seriously, and I refuse to try. Now let’s go to lunch and smoke some good bone and have some very shiny martinis and talk shop.” Lombroso smiled his most radiant smile and patted my back consolingly and led me out of the office. I banished Carvajal from my mind. But I felt a chill, as though I had entered a new season and the season wasn’t spring, and the chill lingered long after lunch was over.