The Stochastic Man

Eventually, deciding that I had sequestered myself in the woods long enough to re-establish my standing at City Hall as a stable and trustworthy adviser, I drove up to Monterey, hopped the coastal pod to San Francisco, and flew home to New York, to my dusty, untended flat on Sixty-third Street. Not much had changed. The days were shorter, now that November had come, and autumn’s haze had yielded to the first sharp blasts of the onrushing winter, slicing crosswise through the city from river to river. The mayor, mirabile dictu, had been to Louisiana and, to the displeasure of the New York Times ’ editorial writers, had advocated construction of the dubious Plaquemines Dam, had been photographed embracing Governor Thibodaux: Qui

Next I went out to Brooklyn to visit Carvajal.

It was a month since I had seen Carvajal, but he looked very much more than a month older — sallow, shrunken, eyes dim and watery, a tremor in his hands. He hadn’t seemed so wasted and worn since our first meeting, in Bob Lombroso’s office, back in March; all the strength he had gained in the spring and summer now was gone from him, all the sudden vitality which perhaps he had drawn from his relationship with me. Not perhaps: surely. For, minute by minute, as we sat and talked, color returned to him, the gleam of energy reappeared in his features.

I told him what had happened on the hillside in Big Sur. He may have smiled. “Possibly a begi

“If I did see, though, what did the vision mean? Qui

“How would I know?” Carvajal asked.

“You haven’t ever seen anything like that?”

“Qui

I tried to remember. Qui

He said, “Time for business. New instructions for Qui

There was only one thing to convey this time: the mayor was supposed to start shopping around for a new police commissioner, because Commissioner Sudakis was shortly going to resign. That startled me. Sudakis had been one of Qui

“Qui

Carvajal shrugged. “Sudakis will no longer be police commissioner after the first of the year. The mayor ought to have a capable replacement ready.”

“Maybe so. But it’s all so damned implausible. Sudakis sits there like the Rock of Gibraltar. I can’t go in and tell the mayor he’s about to quit, even if he is. There was so much static over the Thibodaux and Ricciardi businesses that Mardikian insisted I take a rest cure. If I go in there with something as wild as this, they might have me put away.”

Carvajal stared at me imperturbably, implacably.

I said, “At least give me some supporting data. Why does Sudakis plan to quit?”

“I don’t know.”

“Would I get any clues if I approached Sudakis myself?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. You don’t know. And you don’t care, do you? All you know is that he’s pla

“I don’t even know that, Lew. Only that he will leave. Sudakis may not know it himself yet.”

“Oh, fine. Fine! I tell the mayor, the mayor sends for Sudakis, Sudakis denies everything, because as of now it isn’t so.”

“Reality is always conserved,” said Carvajal. “Sudakis will resign. It will happen very suddenly.”

“Must I be the one to tell Qui

“Do you want the mayor to be caught unprepared when it happens?”

“Better that than to have the mayor think I’m crazy.”

“Are you afraid to warn Qui

“Yes.”

“What do you think would happen to you?”

“I’ll be put in an embarrassing position,” I said. “I’ll be asked to justify something that makes no sense to me. I’ll have to fall back on saying it’s a hunch, only a hunch, and if Sudakis denies he’s going to quit I’ll lose influence with Qui

“I have no desires whatever,” said Carvajal distantly.

“Besides, which, Qui

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. He needs him too much. He won’t accept his resignation. No matter what Sudakis says, he’ll stay on the job, and what does that do to the conservation of reality?”

“Sudakis won’t stay,” Carvajal said indifferently.

I went away and thought about it.

My objections to recommending that Qui

But I let a week slide by, hoping the situation would somehow resolve itself without my interference, and then I let most of another week go past; and so I might have allowed the rest of the year to slip away, but I knew I was deluding myself. So I drew up a memo and sent it in to Mardikian.