"I think this is yours," said Lucia Mercado. "Your name's on it."
He took it from her because she was holding it out and because twenty-four years of habit had taught his hand to take whatever paper was offered to it — licenses, registrations, insurance cards, court orders, crumpled prescriptions, a letter from somebody's pastor. He took it the way he would have taken any of those, between two fingers, and he looked at it the way he would have looked at any of those, top to bottom, fast.
CRIMINAL TRESPASS WARNING — CITY OF FALLON.
Subject copy. Carbonless goldenrod, the ink of the original pressed through in faint blue, the way it always was, so that the handwriting looked like it had been written underwater. Subject name: MERCADO, ARTURO J. Date of birth: 03/22/1979. Address: NONE — ST. VINCENT MISSION (INTERMITTENT). Height 5'10". Weight 160. Hair black/gray. Eyes brown. Location of incident: TOLLIS SQ — W PATH BENCH 2ND FROM HOLLOWAY. Date: 10/14. The year was last year. Time: 0612. Narrative, in the cramped box: Subj located lying on bench during posted closure hrs (2300–0600) w/ blanket & personal property. Subj advised of ordinance 14-207. Subj cooperative. Excluded from all DID-district parks for period checked below. The box beside ONE YEAR was checked with a firm X. And at the bottom, on the line for issuing officer, a signature he would have known anywhere because he had been making it since he was nineteen years old, the L like a hook and the rest of it trailing off into a flat scribble, and beside it, in block numerals, 4471.
He looked at the date again. Then he looked at his watch, though he did not need his watch to tell him what day it was. He had written it himself that morning on the top of a fresh page in his notebook. 10/14.
"I don't—" he said, and stopped, because he did not know what came after it.
"Turn it over," Lucia said.
He turned it over.
The back of the goldenrod copy was where the appeal procedure lived, eight paragraphs of gray print so small you needed good eyes or reading glasses, and Lloyd, these days, needed reading glasses, which he kept in his shirt pocket and never wore on duty because of the way they made him feel. He did not need them now. Someone had written over the appeal procedure in blue ballpoint, in large careful printing, all capitals, the letters perfectly upright and evenly spaced, the handwriting of a person who had spent years making labels other people had to read from across a room. The pen had pressed so hard that he could feel the letters with his thumb, like Braille, through the paper.
FOR MY LITTLE SCHOLAR —
THE YEAR LIST.
ONE A MONTH. THEN YOU TELL ME EVERYTHING.