Sergio De La Pava - A Naked Singularity

“Right.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard about the pool, you do work here right?”

“What pool?”

“The macabre office pool your colleagues are running on Baby Tula’s fate? Dead or alive being the major demarcation with all sorts of ensuing possibilities. Five bucks a square.”

“That’s what you came in here for? To see if I would attempt to exploit the disappearance of an infant for monetary gain?”

“Not in the slightest. I’m here because you remember the case I told you about last night, the one you should work with me on? Well I just got the video, let’s eyeball it.”

“Video?”

“Whole thing’s on video, I told you.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, to the video room Robin.”

“Have to see Tom first, I’ll meet you in there.”

I took a deep preparatory breath outside Tom’s then a woman who seemed to recognize me but for whom I could not reciprocate handed me some papers and said sign this before spotting someone else and rushing off in that direction.

I walked through the door and immediately into a knee-high cardboard box. Now I was face-first in more boxes and crawling on them to the chair in the corner from where I looked at their owner and said:

“What the?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I meant to do that. What is all this?”

“Moving offices man, eighteen years in those boxes.”

His walls were bare with light rectangles and squares where frames had hung

“You been in here that whole time?”

“Been in here since I was you. Funny, people think it was some kind of symbolic gesture not moving to a better office when I kept getting bounced up but look at this shit, would you want to move it? Not that neatness—”

No. Tom’s hair, it was as if he had managed to sleep on all sides of his head simultaneously. And the loop of his tie was always partially visible under his unbuttoned collar.

“Guess it could be worse,” he said. “I could be packing involuntarily to leave for good, you know?” He grinned and put his feet on his desk.

I looked at the papers in my hand. Their title was PETITION TO DEPOSE T. SWATHMORE and below a little statement of facts was a lot of signatures.

“What do you got there?” he said.

“You looking for me?”

“Yeah, you know, if I ever come in here again, check the computer and see that you arraigned seventeen felonies in an arraignment shift—”

“Oh c’mon.”

“You already have the highest caseload in the office.”

“The cases kept coming in, what am I supposed to do? Brilliant Debi puts Linda in arraignments on her penultimate day.”

Tom was talking and gesticulating and the rectangle at my feet with the center star of broken glass wanted it known that the trustees of Harvard College on recommendation of the faculty had conferred upon Thomas Swathmore the degree of Bachelor of Arts along with all the rights and privileges that thereunto appertained and I knew the law school felt similarly whereas the petition in my lap weighed down by signatures alleged a pattern of abuse and intimidation except with respect to favorites . I sensed silence and Tom looking at me.

“Right,” I said.

“What do you mean right? Right is not responsive.”

“No I mean, what are you talking about?”

“This mandatory you picked up.”

“Right, what about him?”

“I have to take it from you.”

“What are you talking about? I’m all over it.”

“It’s too much too soon.”

“That’s crazy. I’m going out to the scene today it’s probably not even going to be indicted.”

“What is it?”

“Sex assault, they’re known to each other and there’s a delay in reporting. No medical attention either. Like I said, I’m all over it. Don’t worry so much.”

“Okay but keep Debi and Conley posted on what’s happening. All right?”

I turned the petition over, face down onto my lap.

“If you were packing involuntarily, big deal, you know Kevin Miller?”

“Sure.”

“He says you’re the best trial attorney in the city. For now anyway.”

“Oh for now huh? Who the fuck talks to me like this kid?” He was laughing and looking around for invisible support.

“So it’s true?”

“No, I doubt it’s true.”

“Let me quote, something like the closest you can get to perfection in a complicated endeavor , about Rollins I think.”

“Probably, but I don’t think so.”

“Why not? You see Fallon on the news last night, all fake-outraged about his client’s innocence, what a clown.”

“Clown? No he’s damn good, we came in here together.”

“Get out, I didn’t know that.”

“Sure, in this very office.”

“You were tight?”

“Still are, I’ll tell him your feelings. No, we used to go on each other’s investigations. Ten, eleven at night we’re in neighborhoods you wouldn’t believe. Now this Alabama death penalty project, did I hear you were involved in that too?”

“This picture, it looks like you’re throwing something, what is this, who’s this?”

I showed him the picture of the smiling girl whom he identified as his daughter.

“You yell at her?” I said.

“Ah, that was dumb, but I told myself when I became head that I would not run an untrained office you know? People here six, nine months already looking at their watches, I don’t know what it is. So I lost it a bit there I guess. Speaking of, how exactly do you have time for a death penalty case?”

“Please, that’s a group situation, three attorneys. We have a meeting this afternoon where we get the transcripts and all the discovery then each group does an appeal-type deal.”

“That it?”

“Pretty much, there’s this Murder Two.”

“What?”

“Not mine, just considering working on it with another attorney.”

“Who?”

“He’s not on our floor, new guy, lateral from Florida.”

“Florida? Don’t know him, we get five new guys a day though.”

“He’s good.”

“What’s so good about him?”

“He’s fearless, I hear, I think, what do I know?”

“Or reckless.”

“Well I don’t know,” I started to walk out. “If I’m in it I’ll make sure everything gets done and my guess is he can try a case.”

“Look don’t get the impression that I don’t appreciate it because I do. I got about twenty attorneys going to their union reps and looking to file a grievance because their caseloads are too high. Then I got a handful like you who want to take on anything they can get their hands on and who are doing some truly great work. What I’m saying is you’ve been doing this two years not twenty and I know this will surprise you but you don’t know it all, acquittals notwithstanding. So slow down and be very thorough. That’s more important than being good in the way that you’re good. And who you align yourself with is important too. My feeling on some attorneys is that they can be naturals and great fun in a courtroom but that kind of thing is overrated. How many cases go to trial? Two, three percent at most? What kind of work do you do on those hundreds of cases that don’t go to trial? Isn’t that a better indication of the kind of attorney you are?”

“What’s with the bike still?” I engaged and disengaged the brake. “It’s like two degrees out there.”

“I love it. The air wakes you up and gets you going, ready to come in here and fight some more.”

“All the way from the upper west?”

“Every morning.”

“It’s pretty beat up too, maybe a new one.”

“Oh no, have to love my bike until it can’t reciprocate.”