The Stochastic Man Read online

  Our whole campaign team went right into the new city administration. Quinn named Haig Mardikian his deputy mayor and Bob Lombroso his finance administrator. George Missakian became media coordinator and Ara Ephrikian was named head of the City Planning Commission. Then the five of us sat down with Quinn and handed out the rest of the jobs. Ephrikian proposed most of the names, Missakian and Lombroso and Mardikian evaluated qualifications, I made intuitive assessments, and Quinn passed final judgment. In this way we found the usual assortment of blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Jews, etc., to run the Human Resources Agency, the Housing and Redevelopment Board, the Environmental Protection Administration, the Cultural Resources Administration, and the other big numbers. Then we discreetly planted many of our friends, including an inordinate number of Armenians and Sephardic Jews and other exotics, high in the lower echelons. We kept the best people from the DiLaurenzio administration—there weren’t very many—and resuscitated a few of Gottfried’s hard-nosed but enlightened commissioners. It was a heady feeling to be picking a government for New York City, to drive out the hacks and timeservers and replace them with creative, adventurous men and women who happened, only happened, also to provide the ethnic and geographic mix that the cabinet of the mayor of New York must have.

  My own job was amorphous, evanescent: I was private adviser, hunch maker, troubleshooter, the misty presence behind the throne. I was supposed to use my intuitive faculties to keep Quinn a couple of steps ahead of cataclysm, this in a city where the wolves descend on the mayor if the weather bureau lets an unexpected snowstorm slip into town. I took a pay cut amounting to about half the money I would have made as a private consultant. But my municipal salary was still more than I really needed. And there was another reward: the knowledge that as Paul Quinn climbed I would climb with him.

  Right into the White House.

  I had felt the imminence of Quinn’s presidency that first night in ‘95, Sarkisian’s party, and Haig Mardikian felt it long before that. The Italians have a word, papabile, to describe a cardinal who might plausibly become Pope. Quinn was presidentially papabile. He was young, personable, energetic, independent, a classic Kennedy figure, and for forty years Kennedy types had had a mystic hold on the electorate. He was unknown outside of New York, sure, but that scarcely mattered: with all urban crises running at an intensity 250 percent above the levels of a generation ago, anybody who shows he’s capable of governing a major city automatically becomes a potential President, and if New York did not break Quinn the way it broke Lindsay in the1960s he would have a national reputation in a year or two. And then—

  And then—

  By early autumn of ‘97, with the mayoralty already as good as won, I found myself becoming concerned, in what I soon recognized to be an obsessive way, with Quinn’s chances for a presidential nomination. I felt him as President, if not in 2000 then four years later. But merely making the prediction wasn’t enough. I played with Quinn’s presidency the way a little boy plays with himself, exciting myself with the idea, manipulating pleasure for myself out of it, getting off on it.

  Privately, secretly—for I felt abashed at such premature scheming; I didn’t want cold-eyed pros like Mardikian and Lombroso to know I was already enmeshed in misty masturbatory fantasies of our hero’s distant glowing future, though I suppose they must have been thinking similar thoughts themselves by then—I drew up endless lists of politicians worth cultivating in places like California and Florida and Texas, charted the dynamics of the national electoral blocs, concocted intricate schemas representing the power vortices of a national nominating convention, set up an infinity of simulated scenarios for the election itself. All this was, as I say, obsessive in nature, meaning that I returned again and again, eagerly, impatiently, unavoidably, in any free moment, to my projections and analyses.

  Everyone has some controlling obsession, some fixation that becomes an armature for the construct that is his life: thus we make ourselves into stamp collectors, gardeners, skycyclists, marathon hikers, sniffers, fornicators. We all have the same kind of void within, and each of us fills that void in essentially the same way, no matter what kind of stuffing for the emptiness we choose. I mean we pick the cure we like best but we all have the same disease.

  So I dreamed dreams of President Quinn. I thought he deserved the job, for one thing. Not only was he a compelling leader but he was humane, sincere, and responsive to the heeds of the people. (That is, his political philosophy sounded much like mine.) But also I was finding in myself a need to involve myself in the advancement of other people’s careers—to ascend vicariously, quietly placing my stochastic skills at the service of others. There was some subterranean kick in it for me, growing out of a complex hunger for power coupled with a wish for self-effacement, a feeling that I was most invulnerable when least visible. I couldn’t become President myself; I wasn’t willing to put myself through the turbulence, the exertion, the exposure, and that fierce gratuitous loathing that the public so readily bestows on those who seek its love. But by toiling to make Paid Quinn President I could slip into the White House anyway, by the back door, without laying myself bare, without taking the real risks. There’s the root of the obsession most nakedly revealed. I meant to use Paul Quinn and let him think he was using me. I had identified myself, au fond, with him: he was, for me, my alter ego, my walking mask, my catspaw, my puppet, my front man. I wanted to rule. I wanted power. I wanted to be President, King, Emperor, Pope, Dalai Lama. Through Quinn I would get there in the only way I could. I would hold the reins of the man who held the reins. And thus I would be my own father and everybody else’s big daddy too.

  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, fift
y-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 trade 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.”