The Stochastic Man Read online

  Lombroso, looking perturbed and mournful, walked in slow circles around his office. “I don’t know which is crazier,” he said finally. “Believing that Carvajal can see the future, or fearing that he’ll get even with you if you transmit his hunch to Quinn.”

  “It’s not a hunch. It’s a true vision.”

  “So you say.”

  “Bob, more than anything else I want to see Paul Quinn go on to higher office in this country I’ve got no right to hold back data from him, especially when I’ve found a unique source like Carvajal.”

  “Carvajal may be just—”

  “I have complete faith in him!” I said, with a passion that surprised me, for until that moment I still had had lingering uncertainties about Carvajal’s power, and now I was fully committed to its validity. “That’s why I can’t risk a break with him.”

  “So tell Quinn about the Kuwait speech, then. If Quinn doesn’t deliver it, how will Carvajal know you’re responsible?”

  “He’ll know.”

  “We can announce that Quinn is ill. We can even check him into Bellevue for the day and give him a complete medical exam. We—”

  “He’ll know.”

  “We can hint to Quinn that he ought to go soft on any remarks that might be construed as anti-Israeli, then.”

  “Carvajal will know I did it,” I said.

  “He really has you by the throat, doesn’t he?”

  “What shall I do, Bob? Carvajal’s going to be fantastically useful to us, whatever you may think at the moment I don’t want to take the chance of spoiling things with him.”

  “Then don’t. Let the Kuwaiti speech happen as scheduled, if you’re so worried about offending Carvajal. A few wisecracks aren’t going to do permanent damage, are they?”

  “They won’t help any.”

  “They won’t hurt that much. We’ve got two years before Quinn has to go before the voters again. He can make five pilgrimages to Tel Aviv in that time, if he has to.” Lombroso came close and put his hand on my shoulder. This near, the force of his strong, vibrant personality was overwhelming. With great warmth and intensity he said, “Are you all right these days, Lew?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You worry me. All this lunacy about seeing the future. And so much dither over one lousy speech. Maybe you need some rest. I know you’ve been under a great strain lately, and—”

  “Strain?”

  “Sundara,” he said. “We don’t need to pretend I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “I’m not happy about Sundara, no. But if you think my wife’s, pseudo-religious activities have affected my judgment, my mental balance, my ability to function as a member of the mayor’s staff—”

  “I’m only suggesting that you’re very tired. Tired men find many things to worry about, not all of them real, and worrying makes them even more tired. Break the pattern, Lew. Skip off to Canada for a couple of weeks, say. A little hunting and fishing and you’ll be a new man. I have a friend who has an estate near Banff, a nice thousand-hectare spread up in the mountains, and—”

  “Thanks, but I’m in better shape than you seem to think,” I said. “I’m sorry I wasted your time this morning.”

  “Not at all a waste. It’s important for us to share our difficulties, Lew. For all I know, Carvajal does see the future. But it’s a hard notion for a rational man like me to swallow.”

  “Assume it’s true. What do you advise?”

  “Assuming it’s true, I think you’d be wise not to do anything that could turn Carvajal off. Assuming it’s true. Assuming it’s true, it’s in our best interests to milk him for further information, and therefore you ought not chance a break over something as minor as the consequences of this one speech.”

  I nodded. “I think so, too. You won’t drop any hints to Quinn, then, about what he ought to say or not to say at that bank dedication?”

  “Of course not.”

  He began to usher me toward the door. I was shaky and sweating and, I imagine, wild-eyed.

  I couldn’t shut up, either. “And you won’t tell people I’m cracking up, Bob? Because I’m not I may be on the verge of a tremendous breakthrough in consciousness, but I’m not going crazy. I really am not going crazy,” I said, so vehemently that it sounded unconvincing even to me.

  “I do think you could use a short vacation. But no, I won’t spread any rumors of your impending commitment to the funny farm.”

  “Thanks, Bob.”

  “Thank you for coming to me.”

  “There was no one else.”

  “It’ll work out,” he said soothingly. “Don’t worry about Quinn. I’ll start checking to see if he really is getting in trouble with Mrs. Goldstein and Mr. Rosenblum. You might try some polltaking through your own department.” He clasped my hand. “Get some rest, Lew. Get yourself some rest.”

  21

  And so I engineered the fulfilling of the prophecy, though it had been in my power to thwart it. Or had it been? I had declined to put Carvajal’s ice-etched unbending determinism to the test. I had accomplished what they used to call a cop-out when I was a boy. Quinn would speak at the dedication. Quinn would make his dumb jokes about Israel. Mrs. Goldstein would mutter; Mr. Rosenblum would curse. The mayor would acquire needless enemies; the Times would have a juicy story; we would set about the process of repairing the political damage; Carvajal would once more be vidicated. It would have been so easy to interfere, you say. Why not test the system? Call Carvajal’s bluff. Verify his assertion that the future, once glimpsed, is graven as if on tablets of stone. Well, I hadn’t done it. I had had my chance, and I had been afraid to take it, as though in some secret way I knew the stars in their courses would come crashing into confusion if I meddled with the course of events. So I had surrendered to the alleged inevitability of it all with hardly a struggle. But had I really given in so easily? Had I ever been truly free to act? Was my surrender not also, perhaps, part of the unchangeable eternal script?

  22

  Everyone has the gift, Carvajal said to me. Very few know how to use it. And he had talked of a time when I would be able to see things myself. Not if, but when.

  Was he planning to awaken the gift in me?

  The idea terrified and thrilled me. To look into the future, to be free of the buffeting of the random and the unexpected, to move beyond the vaporous imprecisions of the stochastic method into absolute certainty—oh, yes, yes, yes, how wonderous, but how frightening! To swing open that dark door, to peer down the track of time at the wonders and mysteries lying in wait—

  A miner was leaving his home for his work

  When he heard his little child scream.

  He went to the side of the little girl’s bed.

  She said. Daddy, I’ve had such a dream.

  Frightening because I knew I might see something I didn’t want to see, and it might drain and shatter me as Carvajal apparently had been drained and shattered by knowledge of his death. Wondrous because to see meant escape from the chaos of the unknown, it meant attainment at last of that fully structured, fully determined life toward which I had yearned since abandoning my adolescent nihilism for the philosophy of causality.

  Please, Daddy, don’t go to the mines today,

  For dreams have so often come true.

  My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away,

  For I never could live without you.

  But if Carvajal did indeed know some way of bringing the vision to life in me, I vowed I would handle it differently, not letting it make a shriveled recluse out of me, not bowing passively to the decrees of some invisible playwright, not accepting puppethood as Carvajal had done. No, I would use the gift in an active way, I would employ it to shape and direct the flow of history, I would take advantage of my special knowledge to guide and direct and alter, insofar as I was able, the pattern of human events.

  Oh, I dreamed that the Mines were all flaming with fire

  And the men all fought for their lives. />
  Just then the scene changed and the mouth of the mine

  Was covered with sweethearts and wives.

  According to Carvajal such shaping and directing was impossible. Impossible for him, perhaps; but would I be bound by his limitations? Even if the future is fixed and unchangeable, knowledge of it could still be put to use to cushion blows, to redirect energies, to create new patterns out of the wreckage of the old. I would try. Teach me to see, Carvajal, and let me try!

  Oh, Daddy, don’t work in the mines today,

  For dreams have so often come true.

  My daddy, my daddy, please don’t go away,

  For I never could live without you.

  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.

&
nbsp; “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.”