“Well, what do you know?” he says, still straddling the dude, winking at me. Charlie in his black leather jacket and high black boots.
It was a counterfeit bill. One fake, in a wallet in a man’s back pocket, us driving past on Westwood Boulevard.
That was Charlie, floating above us mere mortals, the jacket and the boots and the big stand-back grin, throwing out his hands wide so the world could witness his miracles. He offered to pay for the chips but the shopkeeper wouldn’t hear of it.
We park on the Plaza and walk together through the glass lobby of the Service, and I’m just getting used to how it feels, to not be walking alone.
But then Paige presses nine in the elevator, and I say, “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean, what am I doing?”
“Why are you pressing the button for the ninth floor?”
“Isn’t that where the Liaison is?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So don’t we need to talk to him?”
“Nope.”
I cross my arms and she crosses hers too. I stare at her and she stares back at me. The elevator door opens on nine and I wait like that, daring her to get off. It slides back closed and we resume our ascent.
“Mr. Ratesic.”
“What?”
“What ‘What?’? Look. We’ve obviously got something going on here, right?”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say ‘obviously.’ I’m not a fan of the word ‘obviously,’ just in general.”
“But you don’t think it’s time to at least requisition the stretch?”
“No. I don’t think.”
“Okay, okay.”
I’m guessing the soft edge has come out of my voice again. I’m trying to be neutral, just a nice, calm, skeptical expression, but Paige is looking at me like I’m about to take a bite out of her neck.
“And what stretch of reality is it you think we need to see?”
“Just—the roof.”
“What roof?”
I’m playing devil’s advocate. I’m being an asshole. I’m somewhere in the charming middle ground between those two. This kid, she wants to jump in, both feet, jump in and grab on to something. But if she can’t make a case, build an argument, I don’t care how sensitive she is. I don’t care if she’s a thousand Charlies.
“On Vermont Avenue. The roof at the moment Crane falls. I think we can both agree, at this point, that there is something anomalous about it.”
“Oh? I recall you agreeing with me that there was nothing anomalous about the death. Should we requisition that stretch? Of us having that conversation?”
“No.” She flushes. “I just mean—the whole incident.”
“There’s no incident.”
“Well, there’s something.”
“Yeah, but is there?”
The elevator stops and settles and the door sweeps open.
“Holy cow,” says Paige, in a different voice, and I sigh, smile very slightly.
“I know.”
It’s the view. She must not have noticed it when Arlo brought her in this morning, or maybe she’s just seeing it again as if for the first time, just like I do every time, even though I’ve been coming off that elevator into this room—just one big room, totally wrapped in glass—for much of my life. We linger at the glass, held by the majesty of the sprawling city: the bright glass towers of downtown, the upright cones and rectangles, the low gray hulks of the garment district. It goes on for miles from here: north to the fields, west to the water. The desalination plants that line the water’s edge north of the pier. The acres of avocados, of wheat and corn, the rice and lettuce, the marijuana plants and the grapes for wine. The electric automobile plants that make the trucks that bring the wheat from the fields and the fish from the harbors to all corners of the State.
Way out to the west is the water; to the east and to the north are the rolling tops of the distant hills, with pockets of clouds clustered across their peaks, their contours crisply outlined by the backlight of the sun.
Aysa says “Sir,” and I give her a warning look, but the edge has come off my sternness now. That view gets me—it gets me every time.
“Laszlo.”
“Yup.”
“You’ve been doing this longer than me.”
“Well noted, Ms. Paige. You’ve been doing it for, what, three hours?”
I am walking to my desk, raising a hand to Cullers, who barely moves, and Paige tails me all the way, talking nonstop, piling point upon point. Burlington is here, at his desk, grunting, typing out what looks like a long crime scene report, but other than that it’s pretty quiet.
“There are anomalies in Renner’s statement.”
“Renner?”
“The boss. Manager. And there are anomalies in the dead man’s home. In his Provisional. Two weeks of missing days.”
“Which so far as we know have zero connection to his death.”
“Well, sure, but how can we know what we don’t know?”
I sigh. It’s a fair point. I’m just hesitant, that’s all, about going down to nine, engaging with the Liaison Office, jumping through the thousand hoops required to review stretches of reality.
For what? A man is dead but men die all the time. Here’s one thing that’s true as it gets: people are dying all day long.I look over at Arlo’s desk, in search of wise counsel, but Arlo’s desk is empty.
“I don’t mean to be contumacious. But—”
“You don’t mean to be what?”
“Contumacious. It means stubborn.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Respectfully, Laz, it does.”
“I think I know what words mean.”
Cullers, from his desk, from under the hand towel draped over the top half of his face, makes a snort of amusement. The whole thing is ridiculous two stubborn people arguing over whether a word means stubborn or not, two dogs tearing at a bone of truth. This kid, buttons polished, eyes shining, barely out of police academy diapers, pushing back on her immediate supervisor over a minor and irrelevant fact. She is all readiness and upright zeal; she is dying to show me what she’s made of.
“Okay, you know what? Be my guest.”
Aysa’s eyes widen. Her spine straightens perceptibly. “Really?”
I shrug. “Sure. Go down to nine, tell Woody you want to pull a stretch from the Record. You would like to fill out all of the ten thousand forms necessary, for the pleasure of watching a roofer fall off a roof. You know what, kid? Knock yourself out.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Great.”
I’m being hyperbolic about the forms, but just barely. Reviewing material from the Record is a massive pain, even for us, one of the few institutional bodies with license to do so in any circumstance. If reviewing stretches of reality were easy, everybody would be doing it all day long: to settle petty arguments, satisfy prurient curiosity, win bets. Forget all that. Access even to fleeting instants of reality requires multiple levels of bureaucratic review and regulatory rigmarole, and that’s not even counting having to reckon with the miserable personality of Woodrow Stone, the Speculative Service’s Chief Liaison Officer to the Permanent Record.
Aysa Paige, undaunted, is heading back to the elevator. I watch her walk, the sun-sparkled heights of downtown like a dream vision behind her, through the windows.
“Hey, actually—Paige.”
“Yeah?”
I tug at my beard a second, think it over. Can’t hurt, right?
“As long as you’re going. One more thing I want you to put in for.”
“Oh?” She takes out her Day Book, clicks her pen open, eager pupil.
“Tell Woody I want stakeout stretches on Mose Crane’s front door.”