The Juror Read online

  Copyright

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to quote from “The Gulf” from The Gulf by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1970 by Derek Walcott.

  Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is also made to Faber and Faber Ltd. for permission to quote from “The Gulf” from Collected Poems 1948–1984 by Derek Walcott.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1995 by Moth to a Flame, Inc.

  Reading Group Guide Copyright © 2009 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Excerpt from Ravens Copyright © 2009 by George Dawes Green

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  www.twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First eBook Edition: June 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56201-0

  Contents

  Copyright

  Raves for George Dawes Green and the Juror

  Acknowledgments

  1: Varnish, putty, char, clay, moss Fur, wax, turpentine, ink, cedar

  2: You must keep showing her you love her.

  3: You’re not afraid of anything when you’re around this man.

  4: bounced around like a dunce with my jaw hanging open….

  5: O you sick Brain of Mine, O you desperate Glutton for Misery…

  6: Whoever can see through his own fear will be delivered from fear

  7: the cold discipline of Orion, the sweet wild confusion of the Pleiades

  8: Who will protect you?

  9: the least spit of sound

  10: Conquistador, rather

  11: You can start scrubbing us out of your head now?

  12: a child at play, a sentimental fool…

  13: Does it seem depraved—my fascination for that man?

  14: Struggle as hard as you like and I won’t love you any less for it….

  15: The Path of Scorched and Scoured Love

  16: a wild honky-tonk Chopsticks

  Reading Group Guide

  A Q & A with George Dawes Green

  A Preview of "Ravens"

  RAVES FOR GEORGE DAWES GREEN AND THE JUROR

  “A heart-pounding, blood-chilling, page-turning tour de force… with a villain so perfectly evil, he makes Hannibal the Cannibal look like a vegetarian.”

  —Scott Turow, author of Presumed Innocent and Pleading Guilty

  “Swift… entertaining… will leave you feeling jangly and vindicated.”

  —Boston Herald

  “A classy, romantic horror tale… The author knows how to simultaneously seduce and petrify an adult reader.”

  —Glamour

  “Marvelous… stylish and literate. It is set apart from a very crowded field of thrillers by the high quality of Green’s descriptive prose, his dead-on dialogue, and his character development… Well-drawn characters will remain in your mind long after the book is finished… Green has proven himself a master storyteller with an enormous talent for inventing compelling plots filled with interesting and unusual characters.”

  —Seattle Times

  “Timely and fun.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “A remarkable stylist.”

  —New York Times

  “A powerful writer.”

  —Katherine Dunn

  “The tension is nearly unbearable… a gem of deft plotting, given added luster through its rich characterizations. Annie is an especially fine creation… The plot, jittering from one brutal, clever twist to the next, will keep readers in a cold sweat. Green pushes buttons without remorse.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “If you’re looking for a taut, well-crafted thriller, deliberate no further: pick up a copy of THE JUROR.”

  —West Coast Review of Books

  “I’m impressed… Green takes what is essentially a familiar theme and, with a few distinctive touches, turns it into something more.”

  —San Jose Mercury News

  “An ingenious, scary, and captivating novel brimming with psychological terror that captivates from start to finish… Green keeps the suspense burner turned on high right to the novel’s denouement.”

  —Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “A smashing read that grips the reader like an ever-tightening vise. With a flair for provocative plotting and stylish prose, Green shows himself to be a hot young writer to watch.”

  —Flint Journal

  “A titanium version of the thriller, highly polished, hard-edged, coolly efficient, designed for speed… Stylistic brevity serves to intensify the story’s tense, staccato pace.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “Ruthless to the core, plausible to the last gunshot—and a whole lot of fun… The beauty of the story is that everyone has brains. Everyone’s one step ahead of everyone else. The reader just has to sit back and let it unfold. None of the usual second-guessing applies.”

  —Dayton Daily News

  “Sparkling… deliciously original… The story rushes to its inevitable and thrilling conclusion, conveyed through a host of brilliantly sketched characters. Dawes brings his poet’s ear for dead-on dialogue and an artist’s eye for deftly drawn scenes… A compelling view of the passions and compulsions that rule us, wrapped in a page-flipping story.”

  —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “Fast-moving, violent, and totally unpredictable… shows readers there’s more to scrutinize in a courtroom than the theatrics of dapper attorneys in their expensive threads.”

  —Greensboro News & Record

  “George Dawes Green is as good as they come.”

  —Andrew Klavan, author of True Crime

  “Gripping… Take a deep breath, find a nice reading spot, and go for it.”

  —San Mateo Times

  “An excellent novel of suspense.”

  —Daily Telegraph

  “An exceptionally talented new writer.”

  —Marcia Muller, author of Burn Out

  “Rush out and buy it…a gripping courtroom drama…Green’s Teacher is easily the most chilling psychotic since Hannibal Lecter.”

  —Times (London)

  “Emotionally sophisticated, powerful, angry, sarcastic, written with great verve.”

  —Guardian

  “Green does a fine job… His juggling act is expert enough to make you laugh out loud… You won’t be disappointed.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Terrifying… If you buy THE JUROR for a weekend’s read, don’t make any other plans.”

  —High Point Enterprise (NC)

  “An edge-of-the-seat second novel.”

  —Winston-Salem Journal

  ALSO BY GEORGE DAWES GREEN

  The Caveman’s Valentine

  Ravens

  For my father,

  always wandering the oak grove,

  playing pibrochs on his bagpipes

  For my mother,

  always radiating love

  And for my beloved brother
and sisters—

  Rob, Om, Burch, and Alyce,

  always pickin on me

  Acknowledgments

  A legion of kindly guides…

  Glenn Brazil, at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Brunswick, Georgia, counseled me in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques. Jim Koster reviewed the arsenal. Bob Stapleton, retired Senior Investigator for the New York State Troopers, helped me to stalk the Teacher.

  Among those who advised me in aspects of criminal court procedure were my old friend Tony Maccarini; Jim Rooney, Chief Assistant District Attorney for Putnam County, New York; Judge John Sweeney, Jr., Putnam County Court Judge; Stephen Saracco, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney; George Buchhert of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and Judge Ronald Adams of Glynn County, Georgia.

  Medical advice came from Dr. Amy Gelfand, Dr. Kirk Hochstetler, and Marland Dulaney, the Sage of Pharmacology.

  My choice of birds and moths and operas was influenced by the uncanny erudition of Julio de la Torre. Tim Groover and Rick Hood tended the orchids, Susann Craig the costumes. Angela Tribelli helped me with the Italian, Leo Iterregui the Spanish, and Margo Dannemiller the Mam. Alex Mason provided the dragons. Other abettors include Timothy Horan, Ann Clark, Joel Ettinger, Thalia Broudy, Julia Carson, and Crystal Chamberlain.

  Finally, a few of the Most Exalted Seraphs of Divinity in this writer’s addled brain. My agent Molly Friedrich and her colleague Sheri Holman, who were not afraid of the Caveman. My editor Jamie Raab, who brought us in from the Y-ray wilderness. And all those who provided sustaining love: Drew and Ellen and Paula and Daniel and Larry and Nancy and Keith, and the crew at Wanda’s, and the hard-rockin, breathtaking Kellie Parr.

  Words don’t work here.

  1

  Varnish, putty, char, clay, moss Fur, wax, turpentine, ink, cedar

  EDDIE, in the spectators’ gallery, leans forward. Prospective Juror 224 has just said something that he couldn’t hear. That in fact nobody in this courtroom could hear. Judge Wietzel asks her to move the mike closer.

  Juror 224 takes the neck of the mike and pulls it up to her. Then gives it a quick choke. Strong rough scratched-up farmwife hands she’s got—they don’t match the rest of her. They don’t match her gentle gray eyes, which now sweep softly across the courtroom, and light upon the defendant, Louie Boffano.

  She says, “I don’t think so. No:”

  “Are you sure?” says Judge Wietzel. “You’ve never seen Mr. Boffano? In the newspapers? On TV?”

  “No sir.”

  Wietzel casts her a withering look. “Do you read newspapers, ma’am?”

  This gets him a chuckle from his toadies up front. Fuckin Wietzel, thinks Eddie. Shit on toast he thinks he is. That look he’s giving the juror. The arrogant way he flicks his gavel to quiet the laughter.

  But Juror 224 doesn’t rattle. She says softly, “I read the paper when I have the time.”

  “How often is that?”

  “Never.”

  Eddie likes this woman. Kind of weary-looking, but she takes no crap from Wietzel, and Eddie likes the way those big gray eyes slide along sort of slow and then suddenly pounce on something—as though there were lots of wonderful things to catch sight of in this courtroom. Though as far as Eddie can see it’s just the usual floating courtroom sewage.

  She tells the court, “I’m a single mother, Your Honor. And I’m trying to be a sculptor? I have, well, just a job in the day, and when I get home I take care of my son. Then at night, at night with whatever time I’ve got left I work on my pieces. I mean it’s tough to find any free time. I feel ignorant saying I don’t keep up with the news, but that’s how it is, I don’t. I don’t have time.”

  She must come from some other planet, thinks Eddie. From some place where they’ve all got eyes like that, and they all work hard and take care of their little boys and make art at night, take out their chisels and make sculptures for Christ sake—until one day one of them gets in her rocketship and comes halfway across the universe and lands here in this pit of shit and doesn’t even know enough to be scared.

  I mean here she is, Eddie thinks, surrounded by all these vipers in three-piece silk suits, by barracuda whose hearts run on grease, who would tear her apart with their teeth if someone gave them the word—and she just blinks those big gray eyes at them and that’s it—that’s her whole defense, take it or leave it.

  But Wietzel frowns at her. “Ma’am, you’re saying you’ve heard nothing about this case?”

  224 turns and lifts her eyes to him.

  “Well, no. I have heard… something.”

  “And would you share that with us?”

  “Yesterday I told my son I was going to be on jury duty today. So I might not be able to pick him up. I mean when I usually do. And he said, ‘Hey, Mom, maybe you’ll get on that big Mafia case.’ And I said, ‘What big Mafia case?’ And he said, ‘You know, Louie Boffano—they’re gonna try him for popping these guys.’”

  Rising swell of greasy laughter from the gallery.

  Eddie checks on his boss. Louie Boffano’s back is to the gallery. All Eddie can see of him is a sliver of cheek. But that sliver fattens out some, and Eddie figures that Louie’s flashing one of his famous devil-damn-me grins at the prospective juror.

  But she doesn’t seem to notice. She plows right on. She says:

  “My son told me that popping was, when you pop somebody, that’s the same as killing them. And I said, ‘OK, I got that, but who’s Louie Boffano?’ And he said I was really dumb not to know. I said, ‘OK, I’m really dumb. Who is he?’ He said, ‘Mom, come on—he’s the big Spaghetti-O.’”

  Wietzel gets his gavel going pretty quick, but it sounds like a drummer’s rimshots after a comic has landed a stinger. The laughter resounds. The lawyers, the media assholes, the gawkers—all that scum is in bliss. Wietzel himself is having a wrestling match with his lips, trying to pin them down. And at the defendant’s table, Eddie’s boss is roaring. He’s got his head thrown back so far you can see his face upside down. He wants us all to see what a good time he’s having. To see the sumptuous pleasure Louie Boffano draws from being called the Big Spaghetti-O.

  The only one not laughing is Juror 224 herself. Her gray gaze is still drifting around the room, and drinking up the scene, and what plays on her face now, Eddie thinks, is not amusement, it’s pride. She’s simply proud of her kid’s cleverness. Sort of the way Eddie himself felt that time last year when his daughter won Honorable Mention in Domestic Science at Mamaroneck High.

  Wietzel pounds down the uproar. “If we have any more of these outbursts,” he says, “I’m giving you all fair warning, I will not hesitate to clear this court.”

  Oh Wietzel, thinks Eddie. You’ll never clear this court. You crave an audience every bit as much as Louie Boffano does. I mean if we were having a food fight in here, if we were all mooning each other, still it would break your heart to clear the court. So stick your bullshit back up your ass where it belongs.

  When at last the judge gets the gloomy pindrop silence he’s waiting for, he asks, “Do you think that what your son told you will influence your verdict in this case?”

  “No.”

  “No prejudice for or against the defendant?”

  “My son is twelve years old, Your Honor.”

  Eddie glances at the prosecutor’s table. Michael Tallow, the DA for Westchester County, is whispering to one of his pawns.

  Eddie sees him lift one shoulder just a notch.

  Sort of a shrug.

  It means he’ll take her. Christ.

  Nine murder trials out of ten, a white single mother from Westchester, that’d spell acquittal. And an artist? That’d put it in caps. And that goofy South American handbag she’s carrying? Ah, Jesus, that’d put it in whimpering yellow on a big white flag of surrender: PLEASE, YOUR HONOR, OH PLEASE LET THE POOR OPPRESSED MR. SPAGHETTI-O GO FREE.

  Nine cases out of ten, the DA wouldn’t go anywhere near the bleeding hea
rt of a babe like this.

  But this is a mob trial.

  This is one time Tallow will be looking for weepers. For anybody old-fashioned enough to think a syndicate hit is still murder, and not just an unpleasantness among hoodlums. For anybody who might actually bemoan the passing of that gutter-rat Salvadore Riggio and his spoiled grandson, anyone sucker enough to shed a tear when the guy’s widow takes the stand and the gnashing of teeth begins.

  Tallow’s assistant nods back at him—the slightest nod.

  It’s done then: they’ll take 224.

  Which pisses Eddie off. He likes this alien. Stupid, but there it is. He doesn’t see why she should have to swim in this slime. So what if there was once a little bad blood between Louie Boffano and Salvadore Riggio, what the hell does that have to do with her? Why not let her go home to her kid and her art and her own little workaday worries?

  Why should those great gray eyes be obliged to absorb this pollution?

  Let her go.

  And by God Wietzel seems to hear Eddie’s silent plea. For once in his life Wietzel does something fair and just and good. He looks down upon 224 from his high altar and he says, “You may be excused, ma’am. If you like.”

  A silly grin starts to go up on Eddie’s face.

  The judge goes on, “I’ll try to keep this trial short, but I’m sure it will last several weeks at the least. And during deliberations, you will be sequestered. This court is well aware that a trial of this nature can present unreasonable hardships for some jurors. You’ve told us that you’re a single mother, that your economic situation is somewhat strained. That’s enough for me. If you say it would present a grave hardship for you to serve on this jury—I’ll excuse you.”

  Why, Wietzel! You know, Wietzel, I was looking forward to erasing your ugly bucket face someday—but now maybe I won’t. On account of this little rag of mercy you’ve extended to my sweet 224.