“I’m not sure yet,” says Alvaro, but then Burlington is up, arms raised, face incredulous.
“You? What happens to you?” Burlington with his bristle mustache and bald head, his scalp red with fury. “What happens to you, Laszlo? Fuck you.”
“I mean, Laz. Laz. What happened?” Ms. Carson stands behind Cullers, her arms crossed. They’re not all as worked up as Burlington, but no one is defending me either. Nobody understands. I don’t understand.
“I had—proof…” I say, start to say, but the word crumbles on the edges of my lips. Proof? What proof did I have? What was I doing? Cullers is right: How could I do this? I’m the only person who can answer. I’m supposed to be able to tell truth from lies; I’m supposed to be able to stare at the air and see where it’s been bent by falsehood. We all are. So what was I seeing? The mistake I made should have been impossible.
“Do you have any idea what’s happening out there?” Burlington continues, and points to the glass windows, waving his hand, taking in the whole of the State. “This could be years of damage you’ve done. A decade at least. Public faith in our work is a bulwark. You ever heard that? Public trust is a fucking bulwark, you fucking idiot.”
“All right, people,” says Alvaro. “Let’s get to work.”
“We can’t,” says Burlington, turning and grabbing his coat, storming toward the elevator. “That’s the fucking point. We can’t.”
Alvaro shakes his head, sighing, as Burlington disappears behind the elevator door. “He’s not wrong, you know. If people don’t trust us, we can’t do the job. They rely on our abilities. This…” He points at the screen. “This is bad. This is… it’s very bad, Laszlo.”
“I know,” I say.
“Very bad.”
And then he goes, too. They all go. Out to do the work of the people. If they can.
I sit. I watch the stretch again. Ms. Aysa Paige and Mr. Laszlo Ratesic, creeping across the lawn. Waving their hands in front of the dead captures.
I stood in that house and I felt it, and Aysa felt it too, we stood there together, firm in our understanding of what we discovered. Petras was lying, and the more we pressed her the more fervently she lied, the more vividly we were aware of her lying. Those captures were fakes. The house was a new version of the old conspiracy, this was the final chapter of the case that my brother started—
Except it wasn’t. I was wrong, and now it’s exactly as Burlington said. Public trust is a bulwark, and I somehow have dealt that trust a catastrophic blow. So what happens now?
I am alone in the office. The sun is getting ready to set, and long shadows are painted on the sides of the Hills, dousing the gold glint of the skyscrapers one by one, like candles being blown out in turn.
I stare out the windows as I have done a thousand times, and I see that there is something new in the air, gently settling on the rooftops and on the streets. It may be my imagination—I don’t know; it may not be. It’s like dust, like grit, a particulate matter coming down slowly from the sky, like it’s being sifted onto downtown in great slow drifts. And I did this. It was me.
The phone rings on my desk and I leap for it. I have been waiting for Arlo to call. To tell me that this is going to be okay, and how.
“Hey, Mr. Speculator. You want to take a walk?”
I blink. The world spins and rights again. It’s not Arlo.
“Silvie?”
“I’m in the lobby. Will you come down?”
“You didn’t—have you not heard?”
“That you fucked up big-time? Oh, I heard. Come down to the lobby. Take me for a walk.”
Silvie’s tone is crisp, deadpan. I am staring out the window. The city is hazy, shrouded. The skyline, the mountains, the strip of gray sky. Everything in a new and watery light. The air in the city has changed.
“I’m supposed to stay here,” I tell Silvie. “I’m supposed to stay in my office.”
“Did someone tell you that you can’t leave the office?”
“No.”
“Alvaro? Is that his name?”
“Yeah, Alvaro. But—yeah, no.”
“So come get some air with me.”
“Why, Silvie?”
“Come down,” she says again. “I’m in the lobby.”
21.
There are dozens of Silvies waiting for me in the lobby. A hundred Silvies. A thousand of them. She waits in the long mirror-lined lobby of the Service, her reflections reflecting on each other, multiplying her and multiplying her again. Rows of Silvies smiling, waiting, each of them raising one hand in greeting.
I step off the elevator and lope toward the army of Silvies. One of them steps from the crowd and takes my hands.
“You look like shit, Laszlo.”
“That’s subjective.”
“Not today it’s not.”
I manage a laugh.
“How’s that shoulder?”
“It hurts.”
“Should have thought of that before you got shot.”
The Silvies turn and collapse back into one as she strides briskly from the lobby. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I might have thought the day couldn’t tilt further from its axis. My ex-wife calling out of nowhere and inviting me for a stroll. There is still funeral dirt clinging to the insides of my shoes. There is still Burlington’s red face, stern and huffing, vivid in my mind: “You, Laszlo? Fuck you.”
The world is looking at me as we step out of the building, as Silvie takes my arm. The bustling crowd on the Plaza, the zealots on the steps of the Record, the businesspeople with their briefcases, the Authority hawker in his kiosk. Everybody staring, and I can read their minds.
“I should go back upstairs,” I tell Silvie, my gut turning over. “I want to go back upstairs.”
“Five minutes, Laz.”
“I should wait for Arlo.”
“Hey. Laszlo. You need a friend right now. Let me be your friend.”
She keeps her hand on the crook of my elbow, and we walk together, along the lip of the fountain, where the ducks regard us impassively.
