And then, knowing the precipice upon which I am trembling, knowing that I brought her into it, thinking, therefore, somehow, that I owe her something now, I speak to her a piece of myself.
“I miss you.”
“I miss you too.” She reaches out and brushes my cheek. “A very little bit. Take care of yourself, Laszlo.”
It is not until I am back in my car that I understand what she meant by “Take care of yourself.” It is a phase with multiple potential meanings faceted into it, and in this instance the meaning is clear: by “Take care of yourself” she is not saying goodbye; she is saying “Be careful.”
She is saying “Watch out.”
On the paper, in her neat careful hand, in all capital letters, are the three words she conspired to keep from the eyes of the State.
“NO SUCH SOUL.”
22.
While I drive I think about what it means, but I already know what it means. I understand the tiny slip of paper as soon as I read it, I understand “NO SUCH SOUL” immediately and completely. Mose Crane was not the victim of a robbery. Nobody snuck into his basement to spirit off two weeks of his days. Mose Crane never existed in the first place. It’s not about the days that were stolen, it’s about all the rest of them—all the days of a life that never existed at all.
Crane isn’t real, and if there is no Crane, then the whole thing was a setup from the beginning. I was supposed to puzzle over those missing days. I was supposed to wonder about Mose Crane. I was supposed to speculate, and to follow the trail of my speculation from Aster’s basement to the judge’s chambers, and from the judge to Laura Petras, and from Petras to my terrible mistake, when with blundering force I smashed into the public trust in my Service, and dealt a blow to the foundation of the State.
But why would that happen?
No, not why, but who? Who set me on the trail? Who laid out the puzzle for me to solve?
And the truth is, the blood truth, bone truth, is that I know, I think I know, I don’t want to know but I do, and I just drive. I just focus on the road, on the 10 west, and I drive.
There is this remarkable ability your mind has, sometimes, this trick it is able to play, where you have something figured out all the way, but you refuse to allow yourself to know it. When the flat fact is there in you but it remains below the clouded surface of the water, half drowned, waiting for you to dredge it up.
“NO SUCH SOUL” is a grand anomaly, radiant at the center of a circle of related anomalies, but I can’t see it yet. I’m not ready yet to know. All I am ready now to know is that I am standing at a green door, heavy wood, hung in a red doorframe. A small house in Faircrest Heights, between a coffee shop and a drug store, one of a handful of pretty houses on what is otherwise a commercial street a half dozen modest one-family homes with fruit trees in the yard, each home painted its own pleasing color. I find the right house, an address I memorized without setting out to do so. I am knocking and my whole body is trembling very slightly, recalling in me the barely discernible tremor of the small earthquake at Petras’s house.
All I am capable of knowing right now is what is right in front of me, what I can feel with my hands, my calloused knuckles banging on a green door in a red doorframe, in a small house in Faircrest Heights. There is a little octagonal window set in the center of the door, and I shade my forehead and try to see in through the frosted glass, see if anybody is home. That’s what I’m doing when the door flies open.
“Oh no.” Ms. Tarjin is terrified to see me. She takes a stumbling half step backward, and a hand flies up to her mouth and she speaks through it. “It didn’t work.”
“What?”
“You were going to forgive him. You said the, the prosecuting attorney would drop it, if you forgave him.”
“Oh. Right. No. Not forgive. Absolve.” I’m such an idiot. “Ms. Tarjin. It’s okay.”
“It is?”
“It is.” My fears drove me here. I didn’t stop to think of how it would make her feel, this poor lady, to find me washed up on her shore. “I contacted the PA’s office, and formally absolved Todd of the false representation he made to me. Just like I said I would. Okay? Like I said.”
She exhales, her hand trembling. “Oh—Okay. Okay.” Then she steps back and tilts her head. “Then what… what are you doing here?”
“Well.” I take off my pinhole, push a hand through my hair. “I need to ask you a question.”
A few moments later, and we are arranged in her small dining area.
I ground myself in the reality of the small house. A handsome wood dining table ringed by mismatched chairs, a low-hanging light fixture with six bulbs. Steam rising from teacups, the smell of baking bread. The wall-mounted plays on in the kitchen behind us, turned to a stream called “Eating Lunch Outside.” I’m across from Ms. Tarjin, who leans forward on her elbows, looks at me carefully. There are freckles across the bridge of her nose.
Eddie, the other son, is home. He emerged from the back of the house while Ms. Tarjin fixed tea, and now he’s looking at me with plain distaste, arms crossed. He watches us sit, half hidden behind a room divider, anxiety and dislike plain in his eyes.
“What does he want?” he asks, and then, to me directly: “What do you want?”
“Help,” I say. Call out over his mother’s shoulders. I need your help.” And turn to Ms. Tarjin, who is trying to puzzle me out from across her table. “You and your mom.”
Eddie doesn’t come over. He stays where he is. “What kind of help?”
“Okay, so, the other morning,” I say. “The other morning at the diner. At Terry’s diner. I heard you. I heard you talking, and I—I stood up and I came over. And we talked for… for three minutes? Four minutes?”
“Yeah,” says Eddie warily. Trying to figure this out. While we’re talking the wall-mounted is cycling through short stretches: a picnic in Griffith Park, a barbeque at one of the crowded State beaches.
“Yeah. And—look, there is a radio on my belt. A radio.” I am talking too fast. Tripping over myself, talking sideways. “Do you remember?”
“Yes,” says Ms. Tarjin.
The first anomaly—what was the first of the anomalies?
“When I approached you, in the restaurant—”
The first of the anomalies. Not on the lawn—
Tarjins, mother and son, exchange glances, trying to figure out what’s going on here. Ms. Tarjin leans forward, reaches past the cup of tea she has poured for me, and places a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Breathe. Hey. Mr. Speculator? You gotta breathe, okay?”
She is empathetic. Kind. I follow her instructions. I breathe; take a sip of the tea.
“What do you need to ask us?”
“When I was in the act of arresting your family, did my radio go off? The radio I wear on my hip—this.” I point to it, the black box, black dials, red lights, shift my body weight awkwardly forward to angle my hip toward them. “Did it make any noise? Was there a call that I ignored?” They look at each other again. “Please try to remember.”
Ms. Tarjin puckers her lips. Unsure, unwilling to lie.
But Eddie is shaking his head. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You were—you didn’t move. There was no radio call. I’d remember it. I remember thinking, Well, that thing is cool.”