The Juror Read online

  But 224 isn’t getting up and going. She’s still sitting there. She has her eyes lowered, and clearly she’s thinking this over. Thinking hard.

  Oh Christ. Get out of here now.

  She looks up and asks the judge, “If I did serve, would I, um, would I be safe?”

  Wietzel frowns. Seems surprised himself that she isn’t scurrying on her way, but he collects himself and says, “Of course. You’ll be perfectly safe. In fact, let me say again that no juror has ever been harmed in a trial in Westchester County. That doesn’t mean that we won’t take precautions. For example, although I don’t think it’s necessary to sequester you throughout the trial, I have instructed that all the jurors are to be driven to and from this courthouse daily from some location known only to yourselves and your driver. Your anonymity will be treasured here. No one will know your name. I won’t even know your name. But I will always be available to you. And in the event that anyone does try to influence your verdict on this case, you have only to say a word to me, in private, in my chambers, and those persons will be dealt with to the fullest extent of the law. So in this regard you can feel perfectly secure.”

  Oh, bite me, Eddie thinks.

  Wietzel, you son of a stinking turd, bite me.

  Juror 224 is thoughtfully pursing her lips, and her alien gray eyes are glimmering and she says, “Well, then, then I think I could get someone to take care of my son. For when I’m sequestered.”

  “And you would like to serve?”

  “Um. Yes. I would. Yes.”

  It dawns on Eddie that here we’ve got the dumbest woman ever to walk the face of the earth.

  Says Wietzel, “I commend you for your good citizenship, and I ask that you return tomorrow for further examination by the prosecution and by counsel for the defense. Thank you, you’re excused for now.”

  Juror 224 rises. She seems exhausted. It hasn’t been easy for her, arriving at that noble bonehead resolution. She’s confused and doesn’t know which way to go. The bailiff beckons her, and she follows him. She’s a small woman. Her walk is plain but with a wisp of a wobble. A holdover maybe from when she was a kid trying to act like a starlet. Or maybe she’s just unsteady from sitting around all day waiting to be called.

  Whichever, that walk gets to Eddie.

  He watches her go, watches the nice flip side of that wobble.

  And then he sees Louie Boffano turn. Just for an instant, to glance at someone sitting way over on the other side of the spectators’ gallery.

  Louie Boffano has his lower lip tucked under his teeth. It’s as thoughtful a look as you’ll ever get out of the guy. He wants someone back there to see that look.

  Then he looks away again. And no one knows that Louie has flashed a sign with that glance.

  It’s OK by me if that’s the one you want. She’s yours.

  Eddie swivels his head.

  The man Louie was signaling to is all the way back near the corner of the gallery. Surrounded by trial freaks, a nobody. He wears a bland turtleneck and moony tinted glasses and a furry fake blond mustache. He has no presence at all. He’s gazing at nothing. At vapors. He looks to be lost in what you’d guess—if you didn’t know Vincent the way Eddie knows him—were the most trivial and commonplace of thoughts.

  Suddenly he gets up.

  Eddie glares at his own fist in his lap and he thinks, OK then you brain-dead bitch, this is what you wanted? OK you got it. Who’s going to help you now?

  When he looks back, the space where Vincent was sitting is now empty.

  Eddie silently counts to twenty. Then he rises and pushes his way down the row of spectators out to the aisle. He keeps his head low, and he nods to the guard and pushes open the huge door, and he leaves the courtroom. He passes quickly through the ugly jagged-edge Buck-Rogers lobby.

  He goes to do what he’s paid to do.

  ANNIE sits in the old Subaru and waits on her son Oliver, who’s studying the buckle of his seat belt. He’s always studying things. He stares too long at even the simplest tasks before he gets down to work. Sometimes he’ll stare so long he forgets what he’s supposed to be doing.

  Dreamland. He drives her crazy.

  “Oliver. Let’s go.”

  He gets the belt snapped in.

  She backs out of Mrs. Kolodny’s driveway and turns onto Ratner Avenue.

  “Hey guess what,” she says. “You were a star today.”

  “Bull. I was the zero kid today. You know where Jesse is on DragonRider? Fifth Dome—he did it last night. I can’t get into the Second Dome without some Troll-Slave clobbering my ass. Jesse and Larry say I’m a retard ’cause I can’t find the Invisible Potion.”

  “Maybe the Invisible Potion is in the Fallen Keep?”

  “Wrong again,” says Oliver. “Larry says it’s in the Western Shire. The freakin Western Shire.”

  “Maybe Nintendo’s not your forte and you should concentrate on something else.”

  “It’s not Nintendo, Mom. It’s Sega.”

  “Maybe you should take up some other specialty. Like school-work.”

  “Yeah, right,” he says. “No doubt.”

  “Or maybe Jesse’s trying to throw you off the track. Maybe there isn’t any Invisible Potion.”

  “The kid’s a lying weasel all right.”

  “You shouldn’t say that about your friends.”

  “No doubt.”

  They come to the lake and take a left on Old Willow Avenue. They pass the town library, which used to be a chapel. Autumn’s starting to take hold. Jolts of rust and ruby in the sycamores along the lake.

  Oliver pulls from his pocket a piece of Booger Bubblegum. He stares at the wrapper. Unwraps it. Studies the wad. Pops it in his mouth.

  “Anyway,” she tells him, “you were the star today. Star of the county court. They asked me if I’d ever heard of Louie Boffano and I told them my son had called him the big Spaghetti-O and that got a big laugh.”

  “Wow. You’re really on that case?”

  “If they take me.”

  They pass Cardi’s Funeral Home.

  “And you’re going to do it? You’re gonna be a juror on that case? Are you nuts, Mom?”

  Good question.

  There was that moment, on the stand, when she was on the verge of asking the judge if she might be excused, considering she’s got a son to raise and a boss who’s threatening to lynch her if she doesn’t get out of jury duty. Plus a show going on at Inez’s gallery for her sculpture.

  Then, when she said she’d do it, everyone must have figured her for a lunatic. That’s how she figures it herself. What other conclusion can she draw?

  “I don’t know,” she says. “Well, you know it wasn’t just the old godfather who got killed. They got his grandson too. Fourteen years old. I guess I was thinking about you. I guess I thought it was my duty. I’m always telling you about being responsible and all. Right?”

  “Sure.”

  “You see what I’m saying?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well OK, you want the truth? Maybe I thought it’d be exciting. I think I’m getting a little worn out with the grind. I mean… it really wasn’t such a bright idea, was it?”

  “Mom, is this for real? You’re on the Louie Boffano trial? Wait’ll Jesse hears this.”

  “No. Jesse’s not hearing nothing. Neither is anyone else. I mean I shouldn’t have told you. Listen, Oliver, it’s a secret that I’m a juror on this case. Nobody knows my name. Not even the judge. They call me by a number. I’m completely anonymous—you know what that means?”

  “Sure, it means they won’t put your picture in the Weekly World News. That won’t stop Louie Boffano. If he wants to find you—”

  “Oh quit it. He wouldn’t dare. They’ve got a word for that, you know, it’s called tampering. You know what would happen to him if he were caught tampering with a juror?”

  “What?”

  “He’d go to jail.”

  “But he’s already in jail. Probably for t
he rest of his life. So what’s he got to lose?”

  “Oliver. This is serious. This isn’t a game. The reason I’m a lunatic to do this isn’t because it’s dangerous—it’s not. It’s just that it’s such a nuisance. Mr. Slivey’s going to kill me for taking the time from work. And when the TV’s on I’ll have to be careful that I don’t see anything about the trial. And anything in the Reporter Dispatch? You’ll have to cut it out so I don’t see it.”

  “But you never read the paper anyway, Mom.”

  “I know, but still.”

  “You just wrap things in it.”

  “I just want to be sure. You know? And when the trial’s over and we start to deliberate, I’ll be sequestered. Means I’ll have to stay in a motel for a while. You’ll have to stay with Mrs. Kolodny.”

  Oliver nearly chokes on his gum. “Mrs. Kolodny? You mean overnight? Mom, tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I tell you I’m not kidding. Yes, overnight. More than one night.”

  “How long?”

  “Don’t know. However long it takes to reach a verdict. Maybe a week. Or, I don’t know.”

  “A week? Why? You go out, you come back in, you say ‘Guilty.’ You say, ‘Fry the sucker.’ How long can that take?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Six seconds?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe a week.”

  “A week with Mrs. Kolodny? Momba, why are you doing this to me?”

  Annie shrugs.

  The road forks and she takes Seminary Lane up the hill away from the lake. A pair of big three-story Queen Anne elephants to the right, with a view to the water. On the left are homelier cottages. She slows and turns at their own small bungalow. She tells Oliver, “OK, you got two minutes to change your clothes, then I’m taking you to work with me.”

  “Mom!” Panicky whine. “I’m supposed to meet Jesse at the churchyard—”

  “Can’t help you. I promised Mr. Slivey. Got to post some orders, that’s all. Only an hour or so—”

  “Mom, in an hour it’ll be dark. Jeez, I trashed the whole freakin afternoon at Mrs. Kolodny’s and now you tell me—”

  “Two minutes, you miserable little snot. Hustle.”

  THE TEACHER waits in the red Lotus S4. He’s got Vivaldi’s Concerto Grosso in A Minor coming over the Magnus. He’s parked on a side street, which runs into Seminary Lane two hundred yards ahead of him. His car sits under a linden tree, under a razor-blue sky. He has the speaker turned up on the cellular phone, and his friend at DMV is telling him:

  “License JXA-385 is registered to an Annie Laird. Address: 48 Seminary Lane, Pharaoh, New York. Anything else?”

  The Teacher speaks above the violins. “This woman has a son. He’s twelve years old, I presume he’s in elementary school or middle school somewhere around here. Could you find out something about him?”

  “I can try.”

  “Don’t push, don’t force it. Drop it if you can’t finesse it.”

  Skirl of wind. Leaf-shadow trembling on the red hood before him. A girl sails past on her bike. Liquid-limbed, maybe sixteen. Her near haunch is piston-straight as she coasts past. She seems to admire his red car. Am I too conspicuous, he wonders, in such a vivid red Lotus on such a plain street? Am I taking unnecessary risks?

  I am, yes.

  He whistles along with the flute.

  The cellular phone buzzes, and he touches the panel.

  “Yes.”

  Eddie’s voice: “Vincent. She’s coming out of her house now.”

  “With her child?”

  “Yeah. With.”

  “They don’t see you?”

  “No. I’m parked way down. OK, they’re getting in her car.”

  “Careful. I think she sounded somewhat frightened in court today. She might be looking for a tail. If she comes your way—”

  “She’s not gonna. She’s going up your way, Vincent—and she’s in a fuckin hurry.”

  “Up the hill?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Get on her, Eddie.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But give her plenty of room. If you lose her, that’s no tragedy, we’ll pick her up some other time—but don’t let her spot you.”

  Then the Teacher waits.

  A moment later, he sees Annie Laird’s car blur by, on Seminary Lane. Only one glimpse of her. Her worn-at-the-edges loveliness.

  Next, Eddie’s car passes by.

  The Teacher pulls out, but he doesn’t follow them. He drives the other way, back down the hill. To his right a few houses, then a long stand of woods, and then he comes to her rusted mailbox. He eases up, his eyes prowling.

  Across the road is another stand of trees, sloping down toward some big houses and the lake. Must be a stunning view in the pitch of winter, with the trees bare, but for now there’s still some feeling of seclusion. On Annie’s side of the street the next bungalow is a hundred yards down, and there’s a prim wood fence in between.

  He pulls into her drive. Takes his car all the way to the back, to the space between the bungalow and the old wood barn behind it.

  Quiet back here.

  He attaches the phone to his belt. Takes his Heckler & Koch P7 from the glove compartment and slips it into the shoulder holster under his jacket. He reaches under the seat and draws out his doctor’s bag.

  As he walks up to the bungalow a male mockingbird opens up in the big Indian bean tree above him. Mimus polyglottos, the Teacher’s favorite.

  Two cracked-concrete steps up to the back porch. The screen door whimpers as he opens it. Wasps’ nests over the lintel—that clay-pot smell of old wasps’ nests. Then the clutter of the porch. An old sofa, eruptions of stuffing. Carcass of a freezer, tires, lacrosse stick and lacrosse mask. Two bikes in fair condition. One with the masculine crossbar, the other without. Therefore they take bike rides together, mother and child. OK. Maybe we’ll ride with them someday.

  It takes him less than half a minute to pick the lock with his lock-gun.

  He steps into the big airy kitchen. Sets his bag on the enamel-top kitchen table and withdraws from it a Mustek page scanner and a Toshiba notebook computer.

  He scans into memory the list of numbers by the telephone. He rummages in the tall desk and finds some letters, some bills, invitations to gallery openings. These he also scans.

  But he simply purloins the loose, scattered pages of an old telephone bill. She’ll never miss them.

  He uses his Phillips to remove the cover on the wall phone. Behind the printed circuit board he sets a small black device with two pairs of wires coming out of it: an “infinity bug.” For monitoring both the phone and the kitchen. One pair of wires is already hooked to the supersensitive Lartel microphone. Using wire nuts, he parallel-connects the other pair to the telephone wires.

  While he’s working, Eddie calls him on the cellular.

  “She stopped up at the top of the hill, Vincent. Couple of miles from you. Big old building, got a sign out front says ‘Devotional Services, Inc.’ Parking lot’s empty. I guess everybody’s gone home by now. She went in with the kid. Used a key.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Up the road from her. Turned around. I’m ready.”

  “What do you suppose she’s doing?”

  Says Eddie, “I dunno. Must be some kind of church. Maybe she’s praying. Maybe she’s some kind a religious freak. You know?”

  The Teacher grins. “She’s at work, Eddie.”

  “Yeah, right. Working for some guru who dicks her every Tuesday afternoon. Vincent, you ought to let this one go. You can’t read fuckin religious bozos. They get weird on you, they don’t think straight—”

  Then I’ll tame her, the Teacher thinks, with the simplicity of the Nameless.

  Says Eddie, “I’m telling you, she’s bad news, I smell trouble.”

  “Eddie, I think what you’re smelling is your own fear.”

  The Teacher disconnects.

  In the homey, sloppy TV room, he shoves aside a pile o
f old newspapers and Art in Americas and finds a wall socket. He unscrews the cover and installs a Hastings 3600 mike linked to a parasitic transmitter.

  He notices a photograph on the wall. Some hound-eyed guy looking soulfully toward the camera. Behind him is a thatch cottage and goats and a cornfield. He’s wearing a shirt with a Guatemalan ikat design.

  Her brother? Her lover?

  The Teacher recalls that Annie carried a Guatemalan handbag into court with her.

  He soaks up the photograph with the scanner.

  Then he takes his bag and goes upstairs, to the bungalow’s broad-shouldered garret, to where Annie and her child have their bedrooms.

  ANNIE has a mantra for times like these:

  If I’m a data processor now, a data processor and nothing but a data processor, I can be an artist two hours from now.

  She thinks it again. She shuts her eyes. She concentrates.

  If I’m a pure and immaculate vessel for data processing…

  She laces her fingers together and stretches them. Then she opens her eyes and goes to work.

  She becomes a fiend, a speed-trance demon, and she enters one order in one minute thirty-seven seconds, and the next in fifty-six seconds.

  Mostly the orders are for Knockin’ the Devil WAYYYY Back!—the new dual-cassette album featuring the hyperenthused Reverend Calvin Ming.

  Other orders ask for the Rev.’s golden oldies:

  You Need a POWER-Scrub for Those Sins!

  Say Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! To Jesus!

  One scoop of the wrist to slice the envelope open, a quick jerk to slip the order out. Some of the handwriting is atrocious, and only by reading the addresses with her gut and not letting her brain get involved can she decipher them. Her fingers skim over the keys like a horde of gnats.

  Eighteen more orders and I’m gone, I’m the wind blowing out of here.

  She doesn’t pause to consider how much she loathes this job. Knowing that if she stopped to reflect on that for even an instant, she’d be obliged to get up and pace around and fume and pound the desk and shriek Say No! No! No! No! NO! To This Shitwork! And scare the hell out of Oliver, who’s sitting peacefully in the corner pondering his math homework.