William Vollmann - The Royal Family

NURSE’S NOTES: Patient is not reliable enough to send home. Lungs diffuse. Wheezes throughout. Refuses adamantly to agree to induction of labor. Severe pneumonia

COMPLICATIONS: Diabetes

SOCIAL SERVICE CONSULT: Patient reports that she does not smoke cocaine now. Stopped 2 days ago. Incarcerated x 5 months.

IMMUNOASSAYS FOR DRUGS OF ABUSE: Positive for cocaine.

NURSE’S NOTES: Patient tends to be only marginally cooperative. Easily distracted and involved with physical occurrences.

DISCHARGE INSTRUCTIONS: Return to emergency room for observation of breathing difficulties.

NURSE’S NOTES: Stabbed in L abdomen by 6” knife this evening by room mate. Denies head trauma. Rapid speech. Hyperactive. Restless. Stab wound 7 cm deep. Eczema, hives. Breath smells of vodka.

CONSULTATION: Recommend leaving wound open. TRAUMA.

NURSE’S NOTES: Difficult to arouse. Agitated on arousal. Patient dirty. Incoherent speech. Home phone number supplied by patient is a pay phone. Speech slurred. Patient appears to be high on something. Denies drug use.

NURSE’S NOTES: Patient hypersexual. Continually exposes and manipulates her genitals, embarassing the other patients. Propositions doctors, interns, male patients, male relatives of patients, etc.

NURSE’S NOTES: 37 year old black female was going shopping earlier today when a man grabbed her purse, then dragged her along asphalt. She got away, then he chased her again, pulling her to the ground and kicking her. Some superficial abrasions, facial pain, swelling.

DIAGNOSIS: Closed head trauma, orbital contusion, knee and foot contusion.

NURSE’S NOTES: Coughing up blood. Right eye swelling and knee swelling.

And then in the back of her chart lay the envelope which contained a slip reading:

BRENDA WILEY AIDS INFO: Postive antibody.

He turned to the front of the chart and found:

NEXT OF KIN: AFRICA JOHNSTON

He instructed his computer to search for American women named Africa Johnston. None of them lived in California. But then how many Chocolates were there?

In his microfiche of the Los Angeles Superior Court index, which an old private eye had sold him for almost nothing, there were all the aliases one could want. No Africa Johnston, however.

Meanwhile Chocolate trotted around the corner to her homegirl, fat Mexican Beatrice, who, sunny believer, could often be made to do as she was told; and after Chocolate had described to her the grizzled white man who was searching for the Queen, Beatrice promised to relay this warning, crying: I come running, running!

Switching on his computer, Tyler searched two legal and two illegal databases for the alias “Domino” and found nothing. The fifth database, which limited itself to California and which invited him to access it for each of the state’s fifty-eight counties at eleven dollars each, gave him a match with the name Sylvia Fine in San Francisco County. Datatronic Solutions would have been better, but he owed them too much money. He entered the name in a sixth database and got her social security number. Running her name and social in a seventh, he obtained and printed out a lengthy file beginning

MUNICIPAL CRIMINAL

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY

Main Court: 1987—06/29/96

Data Submitted:

Last Name

: FINE

First Name

: SYLVIA

Middle Init

: S

County

: San Francisco

76 of 14)

Case

: 88F08265

Date: 04/01/88

Case Type

: FELONY

Location

: SAN FRANCISCO

Subject(s)

FINE SYLVIA R

aka

FINE SYLVIA T

aka

FEINGOLD SANDY

aka

DOMINO

77 of 14)

Case

: 89M11352

Date: 01/02/89

Case Type

: MISDEMEANOR

Location

: SAN FRANCISCO

Subject(s)

FINE SYLVIA R

aka

FINE SYLVIA T

aka

FEINGOLD SANDY

aka

DOMINO

aka

BLONDE MARY

And so it went, on and on, for a dozen other crimes, all the way up to the present, which the file proclaimed as follows:

Court Runner (tm): Additional record(s) found in Municipal Criminal Courts:

CA-SACRAMENTO

CA-SAN DIEGO

CA-SAN JOAQUIN

Other crimes in other counties. Domino had been a very busy girl. He sighed. The file said:

*** End of Search ***

Tyler drove down to San Francisco’s municipal court, found a parking space five blocks away after considerable difficulty, and went inside whistling gloomily, the printout in his fist. He requested all case reports within the county’s jurisdiction, copying out the case numbers from the printout. — Oh, jeez, he said, cross because the courthouse clerk spotted Domino’s rap sheet and tore it off the file. — The next clerk greeted him by name. Tyler smiled, waved, asked about her family. When the documents came, he sat and leafed through their unhappy pages, learning that Domino had been arrested and convicted for prostitution eight times, which hardly surprised him, and that she had also served time for two counts of cocaine possession, one count of heroin possession, and three counts of felony assault. The clerk, liking Tyler and wanting to help him, had “forgotten” to remove Domino’s rap sheet, private possession of which was a crime, but since the rap sheet had fallen into Tyler’s possession inadvertently, so as to speak, possession was no skin off his nose. In Sacramento, San Diego, and San Joaquin, it said, the blonde had been convicted of many other sad and ugly acts, including one attempted homicide which she’d plea-bargained down, and she’d been charged with infanticide but acquitted on a technicality. — Poor Domino, he muttered to himself.

Yawning, he browsed through the trial transcripts:

Ms. Fine, how do you plead? ¶ No contest, Your Honor.

Ms. Fine, how do you plead? ¶ Guilty, Your Honor.

Really what he wanted were the names of co-defendants, co-conspirators. Although he wrote them all dutifully down and later ran them through his databases, he already knew that none would check out. Not one name was linked to the aliases “Queen” or “Maj” or “Africa.”

Every summer the great maple tree on his mother’s front lawn seemed to grow larger, wider, and greener (and of course it actually did), so that at sunset when he sat out on the porch drinking lemonade with his mother, that tree was as an immense crystal both gold and green which subsumed the entire sky, and his mother asked him if he would like another glass of lemonade, and he said: I’ll get it, Mom. — The pitcher was almost empty, so he mixed up more, employing fresh lemons and strawberry slices; she always made it too sweet, so he made it the way he liked it and brought out the sugar jar for her. This jar resembled in miniature the prism of one of those lighthouses along the Oregon coast. A metal lip on the top could be finger-hooked into a beak from which the sugar came vomiting out whenever the humidity was not overly high; he saw that his mother had scattered a few grains of rice inside, but these hadn’t prevented the sugar from hardening into a cylindrical brick, chipped into white rubble at the top only, thanks to his mother’s spoon-probings.

So you won’t be in this weekend? his mother repeated.

That’s right, said Tyler, gently swishing the ice cubes in his glass.

Where did you say you’re going?

I didn’t, but I’m going to L.A.

Business? pursued his mother.

Something like that.

You know, his mother said with gentle determination, John tells me that you very often make the drive all the way down to Los Angeles to lay flowers on Irene’s grave.