The Juror Read online

  Eddie hangs up the phone. “OK,” he says. “We’re going to take a drive. You’re gonna drive. But we’re going to take it real easy, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” says Slavko.

  “No games, no kamikaze shit, nothing. You speed up, I kill you dead. All right? Where’s the key?”

  “Jacket pocket.”

  “Left or right?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Eddie reaches over the seat back, fumbles in Slavko’s pockets, finds the keys.

  “Take one hand off the wheel, take these keys, start your car.”

  Slavko does.

  “Let’s go.”

  They move out of the lot.

  Says Eddie, “Slow now, cocksucker. Slow and easy.”

  A left. Half a mile, then another left.

  But what if I don’t go slow? Slavko wonders. What if I slam down on the pedal right here, where Wine Avenue drops down this long hill, just slam it and aim for that big tree down there, kill us both?

  Would there be any satisfaction in that?

  Slavko can’t find any.

  After all, E.R. would live on. E.R. would crush Sari. E.R. would crush the juror. While Slavko would be fuming and fidgeting in his coffin and wrestling with worms. Doesn’t seem satisfying in the least.

  “Hey,” says Eddie. “Turn here.”

  Onto Oak Avenue. Leafy old neighborhood. A leaf-scarecrow sitting in an apple tree. What can I do? I’ve got to get the word out about E.R. But how am I going to do that when I’m dead?

  Maybe I won’t be dead? Maybe they’ll let me go if I tell them I’m so so so sorry for any inconvenience I may have caused them, and actually I was working at the Caruso tonight on an unrelated matter—

  But all they have to do is read the log book.

  By the way, where is that thing?

  He remembers dropping it on the floor when Eddie surprised him. Now, while driving, he tries to look for it without shifting his head. He lowers his eyes. Can’t see a damn thing down there.

  Moving his left foot cautiously, he gropes for it.

  His heel touches something. He raises that heel, slides it over an inch and sets it down. Something underneath. He checks the thing out with his foot. It is the log.

  So now what? Slide it under the seat? But likely when we get to Frankie’s they’ll tear the car up and find it.

  Slavko has a better idea.

  He starts to move the notebook with his toe. Nudging it toward that hole where the floor is all rusted out, where the road-wind is whooshing in.

  It’s a small hole. But then it’s a small notebook.

  Says Eddie, “You gonna fuck up again?”

  “What?”

  “Slow down, fuckhead.”

  Slavko does.

  They pass the Methodist church. A sign for something called Alice’s Wonderland. Victorian houses. Slavko manages to get the log book right up to the hole in the floor, but it won’t go through. It’s sticking at one corner.

  He pushes it with the side of his foot. It still won’t go through.

  Says Eddie, “You know what, Sure-Knack? You remind me a that kid in school, whole class had to write some bullshit a hundred times ’cause one kid was a wiseguy, you remember that kid?”

  Damn, thinks Slavko. Square notebook, round hole—what did you expect? Finally he lifts his heel, stamps down on it.

  “What the fuck?” says Eddie. “What’re you doin?”

  Slavko feels the notebook bend—and suddenly it’s gone. Left behind on Oak Avenue.

  He tells Eddie, “I’m stamping my foot, that’s all.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “I’m stamping in frustration at my own stupidity.”

  Where are we? he wonders. Oak and, what’s that sign say? Holly. Can you remember that, Slavko? Oak and Holly? On the off chance, the unchance, that you ever get out of this alive, can you remember that you left your logbook at the corner of Oak and Holly?

  THE TEACHER, in Frankie’s kitchen, pays close attention to Mr. Czernyk. The Teacher is mindful that ugliness and suffering are woven into the warp of our lives, and that the sage embraces these things. So he watches with equanimity as Mr. Czernyk is restrained with cuffs. He watches with equanimity as Frankie and Eddie pommel the man with their fists, with their knees, with a chair leg. Behind his gag Mr. Czernyk is a portrait of pain. The Teacher watches from his chair. Despite his discomfort, he leans close and watches and hopes to learn.

  But what he’s learning, principally, is that these crude persuasions don’t persuade. When the gag is removed, when cold water is splashed on Mr. Czernyk’s face, a twinkle returns to the man’s eyes. A sort of nothing-left-to-lose twinkle. He tilts his head slightly. He keeps uncannily some measure of remove from his own suffering.

  The Teacher frowns and says, “OK, let me ask you again. What do you know about me?”

  “What I told you.”

  “How did you find me at that hotel?”

  “I followed you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like you.”

  “You’re not still working for Sari?”

  “No. She fired me.”

  “Then what did you hope to accomplish?”

  “Find out something about you maybe. Something I could hurt you with.”

  “Why?”

  “No reason.”

  “For vengeance?”

  “That’s right.”

  “To get even?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ve got nothing better to do with your time, Mr. Czernyk?”

  “Better than what?”

  “Better than seeking vengeance.”

  “There is nothing better.”

  “Who was the woman I was talking to tonight?”

  “Same woman you talked to at the reservoir.”

  “And what do you know about her?”

  “Big eyes.”

  “What else?”

  “Nightgown, sweater.”

  “What else?”

  “I dunno. Brown hair.”

  “What else?”

  “Nothing.”

  The Teacher squints at him. “You’re lying about that.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m certain. The art of dissembling is among the many gifts you lack. But what I’m not quite sure of is why you’re lying.”

  “Yeah. That’s a good question. Why would I lie to you? I’m not an imbecile.”

  Young Frankie chortles. “You sure, Sure-Knack?”

  “OK, maybe I am. An imbecile. But I still wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Why wouldn’t you lie to me?”

  “You’re too scary.”

  “No, I’m not,” says the Teacher. “Not yet. But soon.”

  The Teacher rises and opens the door to the garage. Frankie follows him.

  “What have we got here, Frankie?”

  Frankie seems amazed that the Teacher has deigned to show his face to him—that he has come without his mask. Frankie seems honored. Perhaps a bit dazzled. As the Teacher’s eyes sweep over the jumbled shelves of the garage, taking in the tiers of junk, Frankie tsks and says, “I really gotta clean this place out. I mean I been kinda busy lately—”

  The Teacher is scarcely listening. He murmurs, “What have we got that we can play with?”

  “Nothin,” says Frankie. “This is just stuff. I gotta get rid a this shit.”

  The Teacher stands on tiptoe. He tugs at the lip of an old cardboard box so he can see in. “What’s this? Trains? Toy trains?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know if none of em still work—”

  “But the transformer—do you have that?”

  “I guess.”

  “Also we’ll need a car battery. And let me see. A curling iron?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Electric toothbrush?”

  “Yeah. I think Mom left one.”

  Ten minutes later the Teacher has cleared out a workspace on the tool bench, and he’s
cobbling together an elaborate device using the car battery, the transformer, the gutted electric toothbrush and a coil of copper wiring. Frankie watches him. The Teacher muses out loud as he works.

  “What we need to bear in mind is that whatever Mr. Czernyk thinks he’s defending with his lies is sacramental to him. It lights up his eyes. Did you notice that, Frankie?”

  Frankie shrugs. “He’s defending his own ass.”

  “No.”

  The Teacher shakes his head. He snips at the wiring.

  He says, “Our guest doesn’t think his ass has any value. It’s sort of a reverse enlightenment—he himself, the I of him, he imagines that’s worthless. Meanwhile he values dearly the world around him. Some of the creatures in it. Its platitudes. Its jewels. Like all frightened losers, he makes too much of these things. What in Tibet they call the lokas—the blurred smoldering lights of temptation. He’s built an altar to them, Frankie. When we threaten him, he puts his back to that altar. He’ll defend that altar with his life.”

  Frankie asks him, “So what do we do?”

  “We strip away the gilt and the jewels. We teach him what the world is really like. We crush out those lights one by one.”

  The Teacher holds up his new toy, proudly appraising it.

  He says, “It won’t be easy. It’s not a matter of slapping him around a little. It takes great suffering and patience and persistence to change things at the soul’s core. But once he learns this lesson, I believe that he’ll be grateful for it. Or I hope he will. Despite his anger. Despite his bitterness.”

  SLAVKO won’t open his mouth when E.R. asks him to.

  E.R. asks him again.

  But still no.

  So E.R. gives the word, and Eddie snatches up a clump of Slavko’s hair in his fist, and jerks his head back and holds it fast. There’s not much Slavko can do about this, since his hands are cuffed behind his back.

  E.R. says with a sly grin, “Lao Tsu would tell you to give up your sainthood, Slavko. Toss your wisdom out the window, and it will be ten thousand times better for everyone.”

  Who the hell is Lao Tsu? Slavko wonders. Sounds like some kind of goddamn poet.

  Then the guy they call Frankie drives a broom handle into Slavko’s mouth.

  His teeth crumble inward. A ring of fire flares up all around his tongue. His lower lip catches on the broom handle’s metal hook, so that when Frankie pulls back, the lip is nearly torn away. Slavko can feel it dangling against his chin.

  After a thoughtful pause, E.R. says softly, “You might have considered simply opening your mouth when you were asked to do so.”

  He takes some weird jury-rigged gizmo, and gently works it through the hole in Slavko’s teeth. Slavko feels the thing, oblong, huge, as it presses against his tongue. It’s hooked up to a little black box with a lever on it. E.R. turns the lever. The shock rolls Slavko’s eyes back into his skull. He can gaze upon his own spinal cord, which is wrapped in a vine of blue lightning-flowers.

  Nothing has ever hurt so much since the beginning of time.

  When his eyes finally find their way out of the darkness he discovers that he’s vomiting. Yellow-and-ocher vomit streaked with blood. He’s throwing up into a pan that Frankie holds under his chin. Two of his teeth fall out and clink like pennies against the metal of the pan.

  But after he’s made that offering, his nausea subsides, and he feels his head start to loll. He thinks, Maybe I’ll take a little nap.

  Eddie snaps his head back.

  Again he’s compelled to look up at E.R. and his gizmo. But so what, it doesn’t hurt a bit to look at the thing.

  E.R. asks him, “Now what would you like to talk about, Slavko?”

  “Nozzung.” He can hardly speak.

  “Would you like to talk about the woman on the balcony?”

  “Nn.”

  “Why the obstinacy? Do you think it ennobles you? Do you think Sari would be impressed? But I promise you, she’d scorn all your efforts on her behalf. Being a loser doesn’t make you heroic, Slavko. It doesn’t cloak you in a mantle of righteousness.” He smiles. “It only makes you a loser.”

  But I’m not a loser, Slavko thinks. You’re mistaken about that.

  The huge prick-shaped thing comes back to rape his mouth again. Slavko’s eyes take another tumble. And the lightning, and the PAIN.

  When he fades back into the world, into this ugly kitchen, E.R. is talking again. Running on and on, in his quiet, rolling, lulling voice: “… you keep hurling yourself at the nature of the world, as though you thought you could defeat it. Knock it down, shove it out of your way. Then every time the world flattens you, you lie there whimpering and feeling sorry for your poor damaged illusions. As though misery were your portion in life. As though it were decreed that in this abundant universe, in the midst of this great feast of life, Slavko and Slavko alone has been selected to subsist on a diet of suffering and self-righteousness. Slavko Czernyk, Patron Saint of Losers.”

  But you’re wrong, Slavko thinks. I’m not a loser. It only looks that way.

  Again the electric bullcock is pressed into service.

  It mouth-fucks Slavko in dead silence, in the vacancy of this great spiny desert, this PAIN, this white boneyard.

  When Slavko can hear again, he hears:

  “… but suppose you woke to the Tao… ran with it and not against it…. With all your fever, your furor, all your desire?… look at you! The love you could draw to yourself… I swear to you if you were worthy of Sari, you’d have her. If your spirit ran with the Tao, I swear to you that no bliss could elude you….”

  Slavko sees E.R.’s fingers start to fiddle with the dial of the PAIN-maker. Bastard’s ready to give it another goose. Slavko feels a rage that he’s never felt before. Pure-boiled hyperdistilled hatred for that dial, for those long delicate fingers. He shakes his head. Just a little shake, but E.R. notices.

  He asks, “Are you ready to work with us?”

  A long time passes, then Slavko nods slightly.

  Says E.R., “This is a surprise. I’m glad. I thought we’d be here all night.” He looks to Frankie. “Take it out then.”

  Frankie pulls the bloody prod from Slavko’s mouth.

  “Now tell us about the woman on the balcony.”

  Slavko tries to speak. But his charred tongue won’t lift. Grunts and moans, no words.

  Says E.R., “What do you know about her?”

  Drool only.

  “Fucker can’t talk,” says Frankie. “Look at his fuckin tongue, man. How’s he gonna talk?”

  Slavko’s eyes slide all over this kitchen, and he spots a ballpoint pen in a basket by the sink. He jerks his chin at it.

  Says E.R., “Would you like to write it for me? That’s OK. Frankie, give him that pen. Some paper. Put that chair in front of him for a table.”

  Frankie brings all these things.

  “Eddie, take off his cuffs.”

  Eddie unlocks the cuffs and E.R. hands him the pen. Slavko grasps it in his fist as a child would.

  Frankie sits to the left of him, holding a MAC 10 to his temple. Eddie sits to his right. E.R. says, “What do you know about the woman on the balcony?”

  As he asks this, he walks across the kitchen to the refrigerator. He takes out a milk bottle full of water, and he sinks wearily to the floor in front of the fridge. He takes a long pull from the bottle.

  “Well?” he says.

  Slavko leans over the page and writes.

  “What’s that shit?” says Eddie. He takes the paper and brings it over to E.R. “Can you read that?”

  E.R. glances at it and declares, “It says ‘Juror.’ Am I right?”

  Slavko nods.

  “Very good. Who else knows about this, Slavko?”

  Eddie sets the paper before Slavko again. Slavko writes, “VIGRMFS.”

  Eddie brings the page over to E.R. But E.R. can’t make any sense of it. He says, “Write this again, please.”

  Again the paper is placed before S
lavko. Again he makes a fist around the pen. Again he writes “VIGRMFS.”

  Frankie leans forward, straining to make it out. “What the fuck is that?”

  Actually it’s short for Vengeance Is Gonna Restoreth My Fucking Soul. But Slavko doesn’t say this. Instead he demonstrates: he swings his pen up hard into Frankie’s face. Going for the eye, but he gets a swath of cheek instead—he can feel the flesh rip, the ballpoint sliding against bone. Slavko jerks back and slaps Frankie’s MAC 10 forward, so that when Frankie fires, the bullet just misses.

  It whizzes in front of Slavko’s eyes.

  Eddie starts howling—the shot must have hit him.

  Slavko cracks Frankie’s arm against the edge of the table, and the kid’s fingers loosen. He tears the MAC 10 from his grasp. At the same moment he looks across the room and sees that E.R. has risen and that he’s pulling out his own pistol. Slavko jams his ring finger into the trigger guard of Frankie’s gun—it’s the best he can do in this sliver of a second. He lurches to his left, to dodge E.R.’s bullet, and he squeezes off a shot.

  The roar and echo of the two shots fill the kitchen.

  Slavko’s round slams bootless into the fridge. But E.R.’s shot finds a home in Slavko’s right shoulder.

  It knocks him back and it turns him to the right—which gives him a view of Eddie, who’s scuttling backwards on the kitchen linoleum. Disappearing behind a counter. Slavko swings the MAC 10 and fires in that direction—too late.

  He jerks his eyes back to hunt for E.R., but E.R. has sidestepped into a hallway. And Frankie has taken cover in the laundry room. There’s no time even to take aim at his retreating legs, because at the edge of Slavko’s vision he catches a movement, and he turns to see E.R.’s arm reaching around the hallway corner and firing blindly.

  A rude braying of agony wells up from Slavko’s left hip. No time to brood over this, though, he has to keep shooting. One wild shot at E.R.’s arm, and one at Eddie, who’s poking his head above the counter, and one for Frankie sticking his puss out from the laundry room. Meanwhile Slavko keeps lurching backward, toward the only corner of the kitchen that doesn’t harbor an enemy.

  He makes it to the door leading to the garage.

  Parcels out another round of bullets.

  One for you and one for you and one for you.