The Juror Page 28
“What do you mean, till it’s finished? Jesus, what are you asking me, Annie?”
“I’m asking you to raise my child. Keep him healthy, he doesn’t have to be a big success or anything. Just give him whatever you can. I don’t care if he’s an artist, I don’t care if he goes to college, I don’t care if he stays here and raises sheep for the rest of his life, just tell him every night how much I love him, that’s all you have to do. I know how much I’m asking. I know it’s too much. But there’s no one else, there’s nobody else I can go to.”
“But why do you want to go back there?”
She stares at the waterfall. “I need to.”
“Is there something you don’t have? Something you forgot, what? If there’s anything—”
“I need to go back.”
“Why? To see that man again?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Turtle, tell Oliver about Juliet. Tell him what happened. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye, but I can’t. If I tried to say goodbye, I wouldn’t—how could I do that? Say goodbye? Don’t ask me that. Don’t ask me, don’t. I’m not strong enough. He’d talk me into staying. Or you would. And then sooner or later the Teacher would find us here.”
“No he won’t, Annie. He’ll quit looking.”
“He’ll never quit looking.”
“How do you know that? You don’t know that.”
“He’ll never leave us. Turtle, what we’ve been through together? The Teacher and I? It’s like some kind of marriage.”
OLIVER and Juan Calmo are up in the old ruined church. A narrow stone gallery wraps around and overlooks what used to be the nave—but now the roof is gone and the pews are gone and what’s down there is a sort of ragged sun-washed courtyard. There is a gnarled makeshift cross. And an old man kneeling before it, chanting. A fire smoulders around the base of the cross. The old man has a live turkey in his hands, and he holds it aloft. The turkey is struggling to get away, craning its neck, its wattle shivering. Oliver and Juan Calmo watch from the gallery. They crouch behind the stone railing and peek over it. They see the old man slash the turkey’s throat and shake the blood into the fire. Long rips of smoke issuing.
“Whoa,” Oliver whispers.
A small whisper. But the ruins pick it up and toss it about, and the old man hears.
He raises his eyes to the boys.
They duck and giggle. Juan Calmo, still in a crouch, shuffles down the gallery and Oliver follows.
They take a left and break into a run, skimming along the top of what used to be the wall of some side building. Stunning view of T’ui Cuch and of the mountains around it. At the wall’s end they come to a flight of rough white stairs. Juan Calmo holds up. He sits on the stairs. He pulls a couple of pearlike fruits from his pocket, and offers one to Oliver. Bitter—his face shrivels, and Juan Calmo grins at him. The crackling sunlight everywhere. Music coming up from the village. Oliver can look down and see a marimba band playing in the little square. Gearing up for some sort of festival they’re supposed to be having soon, something about All Saints’ Day. And also in the square, not far from where the band is playing, he spots that battered pickup, the one he rode in on. It’s full of T’ui Cuchians, waiting for the ride down to Huehuetenango. The pickup’s engine is running, little clumps of black smoke. Delicious, to sprawl back on these steps in this thick light and suck this impossible fruit and watch the day go by down there—
There’s a woman and a man approaching the pickup. The woman is carrying a suitcase.
It’s Mom.
She’s leaving. She’s leaving him here.
Oliver rises from the steps. Rises slowly. He can’t believe this. He stares. He doesn’t move. He watches her lug that suitcase. The driver of the pickup takes it from her and hefts it to some T’ui Cuch men in the back. Hands reach out to help her up. Oliver’s watching all this unfold as though he has no presence here, no power other than the power to witness.
And then Juan Calmo says, “Qué pasa?” and Oliver remembers that he has a voice too. He shouts:
“Mom!”
But with that music and the sputtering wind and the distance no one can hear him. Nobody even glances up to these ruins.
He starts down the steps. Three steps at a time, then down the slope of the hill, taking huge risky strides. Down a narrow beanpatch lane with goats squinting and dogs yapping at his passage. He slips in the mud and almost wipes out, but he does a wild dance, his feet falling all around him, and somehow he keeps his balance, he keeps running. A knot of chickens, a donkey laden with corn shuck. Then a stretch of open road, then a sharp turn, then he blasts into the square.
Turtle. The marimba band, the crowd.
But the pickup is driving away.
One last glimpse of her.
“MOM! MOM! MOM!”
She’s looking back, and though she doesn’t acknowledge him, he knows that she sees him.
His breath is raw in his lungs, sandpapery. He casts one look of bewildered fury at Turtle and keeps running. Hopeless because he’ll never catch the pickup now, but how could she do this, leave him here? He keeps after her. Even after the pickup vanishes he keeps running. Dogs at his heels, children staring, can’t even hear the pickup’s engine now, just his own gasping and the marimba. The pig that barked at them yesterday comes out and barks at him now.
ANNIE, the next morning, in the office of the New York State Troopers, refusing to answer Investigator Carew.
Does he think he can stare her down? Think again.
Eventually he makes a face and lowers his eyes to his desk. “Ms. Laird, if you won’t tell us where your son is, how can we shield him?”
“I don’t want you to shield him. I want you to do your job.”
He bristles. “What’s my job, Ms. Laird? Tell me my job.”
“Your job is to investigate murder. Juliet Applegate’s murder.”
“Well, we’re doing that.”
“And?”
“It’ll take time,” he says.
“Nothing?”
“Not yet.” He makes a fist with one hand and draws his finger around the knuckles. Looping up and down.
She presses. “But you do believe she was killed? That the Teacher killed her?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter one way or the other without evidence.”
“Then find some evidence.”
“We’re trying, Ms. Laird. You’re going to help us?”
“Yes. What do you want, do you want me to wear one of those, those radio things?”
“No, that’s too dangerous. If he figured out you were wired—”
“He wouldn’t.”
“If he decided to pat you down—”
“He wouldn’t,” she says. “He thinks I’m timid. He’s used to me being timid. He’d never touch me if I didn’t want him to. He likes to be thought of as a gentleman.”
“Ms. Laird, I think a better idea, a safer idea? Is for you to get him to come to some place where we’ve already hidden a mike—”
She shakes her head.
He says, “We’ll be right there.”
“But he won’t. He wouldn’t come anywhere with me if it was my idea—he’d sense the trick. You don’t know him the way I do. Listen, please, give me the wire. Please. One time, that’s all I need, just once. I’ll get you such juicy stuff you can put them all away. Boffano, rest of his life. The Teacher and his sidekick, fry them, Jesus. You wanted my help, here it is. I know the risks. They’re mine. I’ll take them. It’s a worse risk to let him get away.”
THE TEACHER hears the car in his drive. He goes to the school-house door and waits for Eddie to trudge up.
Eddie says, “Just talked to Tony Maretti. Annie called him. She’s back. She came back like you said she would. She said she wants to see you tomorrow at one.”
Vincent’s breath comes a little quicker, with a slight push on the exhale, almost a laugh. The ghost of a crow of triumph.
“Come in,” he says.
Eddie shakes his head. “Nah, I just wanted to let you know. I shouldn’t have come here at all.”
“No one knows where I live except you, Eddie. Come in.”
“Gotta run.”
“I’ll need your help with this.”
Eddie makes a face. “You know I’m not too wild about this fuckin deal.”
“I know.”
“I think we ought to shove it all.”
“And I keep encouraging you to have patience.”
“Shove the whole load a shit. Shove it, and clear out.”
“Eddie, she came back.”
“I’m outta this one. You hear me? I mean it’s time to leave her the fuck alone. Her and her kid, you can’t play with that no more, Vincent, it’s time to shove that whole load—”
“Eddie?”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
“Yeah.”
“I know you’re concerned. I also know that you’re my oldest friend, and I need your help.”
“Oh Jesus Christ.”
“Eddie.”
CAREW’s colleague Sue Ranzi checks under Annie Laird’s armpit. Feels the tiny Technidyne transmitter, no bigger than a pack of matches, and its humble battery. The antenna runs under the elastic of her bra to the back. The microphone’s up front, between her breasts. AH secure.
Sue Ranzi turns to Carew and nods.
In a quiet voice Carew says, “OK, Ms. Laird. Remember we’ll be tracking your transmitter. No matter where you go, you call for help and we’ll be there right away.”
She says, “But you’ll stay back, you promise? You won’t let him see you?”
“I promise.”
He turns and Murray Randall, wearing the headphones, gives him a nod—he’s receiving perfectly.
“OK then,” says Carew. “We’re set.”
Says Annie, “Can I go to the bathroom?”
“Sure.”
She smiles her vague drift-away smile. She goes down the hall.
Harry Beard asks, “What do you think?”
Says Carew, “I don’t know what to think. Usually a few hours before a setup like this, I start getting a hard-on for it? Antsy? This time, I don’t, this time nothing. I don’t really know who this woman is. I don’t really know who we got there.”
Beard nods. “Sometimes you think she’s all there and sometimes you think she’s off on Planet X.”
“All I want to know is, is she on our side?”
“Well hell, she wouldn’t be doing this if she weren’t.”
“You’re sure?” Carew wonders. “She’s on our side?”
“Gotta be.”
“Or has she been jumping through that bastard’s hoops so long she’s starting to like it?”
EDDIE pulls up to the curb at the Brewster train station. Annie comes out quickly and gets into his car.
As they pull away he asks her how she is.
“Fine,” she says. Scarcely opening her mouth. “Great.”
They drive north for a few miles.
He tries to say it.
“I wanted, Annie, I wanted to tell you something. I mean, I want to tell you what I think about all this—”
She says, “You know what?”
“What?”
She says, “I don’t really give a shit what you think about all this.”
That’s all she says. Not another word, and he churns inside. Hates this bitch. Also feels sorry for her. Also he’s scared because the chances are not inconsiderable that she’s rolling with the law now.
He keeps his mouth shut but his head keeps grinding out all this trash.
He hates this. He hates this whole fucking deal. He hates this.
They ride in silence till they get to a weedy turnaround up in North Stoneleigh. Opposite the old shut-down Mexican restaurant, with its giant sombrero creaking in the wind. He pulls over. Soon Vincent drives up.
She gets out of Eddie’s car. Vincent rolls down his window and he’s about to say something to her, but she puts her finger to her lips and shakes her head.
She points to her chest.
She looks up and down Route 22. No cars, nobody.
Then she unbuttons her shirt. A tiny microphone is clipped to her bra, between her breasts. She’s wired. She’s wearing a fucking wire.
Jesus Christ. Eddie wonders what he’s said, what that wire might have picked up—but then he remembers how she shut him up, how she wouldn’t let him say anything to her.
Now she hands him a note:
Eddie, don’t say a word. Drive around,
drive anywhere, give us half an hour, pick
me up here.
Meanwhile she tugs gently at the surgical tape under her armpit. She uproots the transmitter and disengages the antenna from her bra. Vincent watches with a small grin. She sets the wire carefully on the seat next to Eddie. Then she shuts the door, and gets into Vincent’s Range Rover.
So. Fuckin Vincent, he was right about her all along.
Fuckin Vincent. What is it about him that always gets to these women?
He gives Eddie a wink and the two of them drive away and leave him sitting there watching after them.
THE TEACHER asks her, “What do you think of them?”
“Who?”
“Your guardians. The troopers.”
“They’re clueless,” says Annie.
“They’re only trying to protect you.” He turns at a narrow dirt lane, and they drive up into a meadow full of autumn ghost-wild-flowers. He stops the car.
“No, they’re incompetent,” she says. “They’re bureaucrats. They irritate me. What irritates me most is their weakness.”
They take a walk through the fields of this old farm that he bought a few years ago. It’s risky to bring her here, he supposes, but it’s only one risk among thousands. It makes him smile. All this unseen, looming peril—as he and Annie cross a pleasant little footbridge and then amble along a bridle trail. Cottonwoods, mostly bare, lining the stream. Hierarchy of crows in that black-cherry tree over there. Risk, what is risk? Risk is a gift that teaches us what we love.
He says to her, “Still, Annie. I think you should try to forgive them. They’re weak because they deny the Tao. They deny the Tao because they’re afraid. But their hearts are fine, they love you, they—”
“Don’t tell me that,” she says.
She stops where she is. She says, “You tell me to forgive them? You? You bastard! I hate you, you know that? I’d kill you if I could! You talk about anyone’s heart, is that the lesson for today, Teacher? Or is it how terror is doing me so much good, how strong all this is making me? Or is it how your love will save my child—”
“Annie—”
“Shut up!”
They stand beneath the naked cottonwoods. It hurts him to see her in such anguish, but he loves the weave of her hair, and he loves the rich weave of the yellow grasses on the slope behind her.
She says, “Don’t smile at me. Don’t ever fucking think you can smile at me, I would kill you if I could! Do you think I even listen to your shit? Don’t even look at me!”
With an infinitesimal shrug, he lowers his eyes. But he knows that he hasn’t quite extinguished his sheepish and unconquerable grin.
“I HATE YOU!”
Then she walks on. He walks beside her, perhaps a step behind.
After a while, though, she pauses to pluck the last brown leaf off a white oak, and she says, “What I hate the most? What I hate the most is that you’re right. I am stronger. You’re right, OK? Does that make you happy?”
“Yes.”
She says—and now something softer, more yielding, something like resignation has crept into her voice: “I went back into my studio again, and looked at all my old work, and it all seemed restrained. Smothered. No guts, no pain, no fire. That’s the way my whole life was. Smother the passion. Anything that frightens me, lock it out. Eyes down, keep marching. OK? And now I don’t want to live li
ke that anymore. Does that please you, what a good student I am? Does it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it shouldn’t. Because it makes me hate you even more.”
He swallows. Tension in his rib cage.
“Annie.”
Now when he speaks her name he finds he can’t scrape together enough breath to speak above a whisper. “And is that, Annie, is that all you feel?”
“Stop it,” she says. She won’t look at him. “Please. Stop it.”
But he knows what she wants to say.
In silence then they climb a long broad open slope. Loosestrife and goldenrod, going off their colors. And Queen Anne’s lace. Halfway up she stops again, turns, and gazes at the view. She says, “This is what I don’t understand, though. Zach. You have all this strength. But still you work for Louie Boffano. For that, that—”
“That goon?”
“Well. If he’s a friend of yours—”
He laughs. “Louie Boffano’s not anyone’s friend. He’s a freak. He’s a monster. But he intrigues me. Does it seem depraved—my fascination for that man?”
“I don’t know. Yes. Or no, maybe not—”
“Everything about that family fascinates me. It always has.”
“Then why don’t you run that family yourself?”
She casts him a quick glance.
A metallic, acquisitive glance. My God, he thinks, this is Annie? Starving-artist Annie, my Annie?
He laughs again and tells her, “Maybe someday I will.”
“Soon?” she says.
“Maybe. I’m in no hurry. I’m relaxing. I’m cultivating allies, bringing them up through the ranks. Really, Annie, I do very little. I only stretch my limbs. My actions are the most trivial imaginable. Yet the power does flow toward me.”
“And will you get rid of Boffano?”
Again her directness delights him. “Oh, I don’t know. You think it would make any difference? I might discard old Louie, or I might not. Perhaps I think it’s wise to have a figurehead. To take the heat off me. Let him be the mountain, I’ll be the ravine.”
“But how—I mean, Zach, how do you do all this? How do you communicate with him without the police knowing?”