The Juror Page 30

  “It was nothin.”

  “I value loyalty.”

  “No big deal.”

  “But I have to tell you, Frankie—as for these promises I made about taking over Louie’s operation and setting you up as boss? On further consideration, I think those were all cloud-castles. Do we have enough sway in the organization? You and I? I think we don’t. Besides, I’m preoccupied—I’ve got this tragedy of Annie Laird and her son thrashing around in my head.”

  “Wait a second,” says Frankie.

  He stops, under the dripping trees. “What the fuck are you talking about? We made plans, we got—”

  “The truth, Frankie? I don’t think I have the patience for any fancy family footwork just now. Will you excuse me?”

  “What the FUCK ARE YOU—”

  Frankie scrabbles under his jacket, gets hold of his pistol. The Teacher shoots him in the carotid artery, and Frankie’s neck snaps out long whips of blood. The Teacher has to stand to one side to avoid the spray. He slams the butt of his HK into Frankie’s hand and he can hear tiny bones breaking. Frankie’s pistol drops and the Teacher catches it.

  “God damn,” says Frankie.

  Those arcs of blood-spume, one after the other.

  The Teacher heads up the path at a rapid pace. But Frankie comes running after him.

  “What the fuck is the matter with you!” he still wants to know. The words come out soggy with blood, but they come. And the Teacher, as he trots up the road, turns to look at him and to smile wonderingly.

  He says, “Frankie, how in the world are you still able to talk?”

  “I don’t trust you for shit!” says Frankie. He puts on a burst of speed and tries to grab at the Teacher.

  The Teacher bats his hands away. “Frankie, you’re not thinking.”

  “Shut up. I don’t trust you no more, I don’t trust you for shit,” Frankie says, and then his eyes roll back in his head, and he pitches forward and his face drops into the mud.

  SARI is driving slowly on a dirt road near Garrison. This is where Eben told her she could find him. But there seems to be no one here. Only these barren trees and the railroad tracks and the river below. Then suddenly he’s in front of her car, standing in the road, and she slams on the brakes, skids on the wet mud. He gets in. He’s grinning. Blood on his jacket and on his shirt. His hair is wild, his irises are plates of hammered gold, and he kisses her passionately.

  He tells her, “Drive, lover.”

  She drives to the end of the dirt road, then turns onto a blacktop road that loops along at the foot of great estates. Glimpses of Tudor mansions.

  He says, “I thought perhaps you wouldn’t come.”

  “Of course I came. Tell me what happened.” She’s begging her heart to ease up on her.

  “No, I really shouldn’t.”

  “Tell me, Eben.”

  “Better not to involve you.”

  “Are they chasing you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you innocent?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of whatever they think you did.”

  “What man born to woman is innocent? But I was trying to save a child’s life. I struggled in the name of love.”

  In a patch of woods, she pulls over. Not enough room on the shoulder to get all the way off the road, but it’s a lonely road—there are no cars coming anyway.

  She turns to him.

  “Did you fuck her?”

  This feeling that she has for him, she can’t call it love anymore. No name for it. Just lips inside of her skull, sucking at her brain, that’s what you could call it. As though her brain were a rotten black lemon.

  He sighs. “Why are you asking me all this?”

  “Did you fuck her?”

  “Have I made love to Annie? No.”

  “Who is she then? Don’t give me any bullshit because—”

  “Sari. I won’t tell you any lies. But I shouldn’t say who she really is.”

  “No? Well, that’s too bad, Eben. Because you know what? If you told me the truth, I’d do something for you. I’d tell you something. Something about a little trip to Guatemala.”

  She turns to look at the gold flecks in his eyes. She sees them shimmer like struck gongs.

  “Where?” he asks her.

  “No.” She shakes her head. “First tell me why you want to know.”

  “Because if I know I can rescue her. And her child. I can rescue them both.”

  “Rescue them from what?”

  “Not from tragedy. They can’t evade fate. But from mendacity and hypocrisy, yes. I can’t tell you any more, though. You have to trust me. Don’t you trust me?”

  “No.”

  “Then simply love me, Sari.”

  “I think I was insane to love you.”

  He says, “Tell me. Where did Annie go?”

  “No!” She’s adamant. “First I have to understand what’s happening.”

  “What’s happening?” He laughs. “Certain constellations are burning up the sky. Scorching the heavens, destroying all in their path. Now what in this universe can shelter us from such danger? Do you know? Do you know, Sari?” He puts one finger under her chin and lifts it up, so she’ll have to look at him again. He tells her, “Love. Of course. Nothing less. Love will deliver us. Where did she go, Sari? Lover? Tell me.”

  She looks out the window. She looks at him. Maybe he’s right, she thinks, maybe she ought to stop fighting this and simply follow her heart.

  No! Her heart’s misled. He’s a liar. He’s a cancer.

  But he’s the man I love. And love will deliver us.

  He’s grinning at her. He says, “Where did Annie Laird go in Guatemala?”

  She hates him.

  She looks at her lap and says, “She didn’t go at all.”

  She can feel his eyes upon her.

  She says, “I have friends in the airlines, I got them to look through every damn passenger list on every flight to Guatemala City in the last week. I made up every excuse I could think of. I was breaking the law, and I could lose my ARC number, but I wanted to do this for you, Eben, because you asked me to. Annie Laird’s name never turned up.”

  He mutters something under his breath.

  Then she says, “But guess what? There was somebody else from Pharaoh, New York, who flew to Guatemala City. A Dr. Juliet Applegate. I remembered meeting her at the poetry cafe and how you were flirting with her, so it got my curiosity going. Maybe she’s Annie Laird’s friend? Maybe she went for her? The agent who booked the flight, I know her a little. I called her and told her Juliet’s father had died, I told her we had to find her. And she told me that Juliet Applegate had asked for a connecting flight to this village, T’ui Cuch, but there aren’t any—”

  Eben’s glowing. “Sari,” he says softly. “Sari! You’re astounding!”

  He takes her head in his hands and gives her such a warm sweet affectionate kiss and then laughs so heartily that her heart can’t help but warm a little toward him.

  “This makes you happy?” she says.

  “Oh yes! It’s revealing. It opens avenues that I had imagined were completely shut.”

  “But who are these women, Eben? Juliet Applegate and Annie Laird, if they’re not your lovers—”

  But by now Eben isn’t listening to her. He’s thinking. He stares at the dashboard.

  Then his head stirs slightly, an almost imperceptible nodding. He says with sudden decision in his voice, “Sari, I need this car.”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “No, actually I need the car with you out of it. I need to be alone right now.”

  “You what? You… Is this a joke?”

  He laughs. “It is! Yes. But it’s also true that I couldn’t possibly handle listening to your vapid prattle just now. Sari lover.”

  “You son of a bitch! I leave my job in the middle of the day, look what I’m doing for you, and you hav
e the fucking nerve—”

  “Please give me the keys and get out.”

  “Fuck you! What are you talking about? What, do you think I’m going to walk?”

  Eben sighs. “No.” He sighs again. “No, I guess that wouldn’t be practical. All right, wait.”

  He reaches over and jerks the keys from the ignition. He gets out and goes around back and pops open the trunk. Then he comes and opens her door. She feels the pistol barrel against her neck. He tells her, “Come on. I want you to get in the trunk.”

  She looks sidelong at him. “Eben.”

  “Now. Sari. Or I will kill you.”

  “Eben!”

  “Sari, I’m grateful to you for your help, and I do love you, and I don’t want you to suffer, but the Tao is restless today, today all the Tao’s patience is flowing in another direction.”

  He takes her elbow, hauls her out of the car. In a daze she lets him lead her back to the trunk. He pushes her head down. She puts her palms on the felt floor of the trunk and tries to resist. But this is a dream, she doesn’t understand any of it, she doesn’t know what to do. He stands behind her and lifts her legs, folds them, and she falls forward onto her elbows. He tells her, “Sari, I’m sorry about this, I ask your forgiveness. But if you’ll just do this, you’ll be all right. Nothing bad will happen to you.”

  She shouldn’t trust him.

  She should never have loved him.

  She shouldn’t be curling up into a fetal ball in this musty space, but she’s scared witless, and she does.

  The pistol touches her cheek. She sets her eyes on the barrel. She tries to focus on it, but it’s too close.

  He tells her, “I promise you, if you’ll listen this once to Lao Tsu? If you’ll stay in the center and embrace death with all your heart, you’ll endure forever. Forever, OK?”

  He gives her a moment to answer. When she doesn’t, he answers for her. “OK,” he says, and it’s the last thing she ever hears.

  EDDIE gets a call from Vincent.

  “Touch of chaos, Eddie. I advise you to pull up roots, take your daughter south, find a more serene home.”

  “What the fuck you talking about?”

  Vincent laughs. “It was a difficult meeting. With your cousin and his retinue. We had divergent approaches to the same problem.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “A whittling. It was a complex situation, and it needed to be whittled. Seek shelter, Eddie.”

  “You coming?”

  “Not right away, no. I’ve got something to take care of first.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m curious, Eddie. I wonder if Annie thinks that real love is somehow not my portion in life? Does she think that it’s too simple for the Teacher? Or too common? I wonder if she thinks I’m some kind of ghost, I just wander the Earth dispensing ageless wisdom?”

  “I dunno,” says Eddie.

  “Does she think it would be a sin to offer me a seat at the table?”

  “I dunno,” says Eddie.

  “Did I tell you that I found out where she’s keeping that child? A little village in Guatemala, up in the mountains. End of the earth. But didn’t I warn her about that? Didn’t I patiently explain to her that there was nowhere she could go? Didn’t I move Heaven and Earth trying to stop this tragedy?”

  “You’re crazy,” says Eddie.

  “But no, it’s pointless, trying to interfere. Because it’s all under the wings of the Tao. It’s set. There’s nothing I can do, there’s nothing Annie can do. It’s set. I’ll see you soon, Eddie. Give your daughter my love.”

  He hangs up.

  Eddie says to the dial tone, “You’re crazy.”

  He cradles the phone.

  Then he says to the air:

  “Kill my family, you cocksucker? Kill my cousins and then call me like nothing’s happened? Treat me like I’m your fuckin poodle all my god damn life, and you think I’m gonna let you get away with KILLING MY OWN FAMILY? Oh, you’re a stupid crazy fuck.”

  ANNIE is rehanging the curtains in her studio when the news comes on the radio. She’s replaced all the broken windowpanes, sealed them. Now she’s standing on the arm of the dog-eared recliner, reaching up, trying to fiddle the aluminum tab on the curtain rod into its slot. Trying to keep busy here. And it’s almost working. For a sliver of a moment there’s nothing else in her head, nothing but this curtain rod. Then a snatch of quick thumping theme music comes on the radio—the local news:

  “Car bombing near Cold Spring. Police suspect a mob hit. Details after this….”

  Annie drops the curtain rod. It clatters, bounces. She steps back off the recliner. She’s pushing her knuckles together in an attitude close to prayer. She approaches the radio. She bites her lower lip, and her eyes shimmer. Oh, Jesus. They blew him up? Up? You bastard. Up, blew you up.

  She’s on tiptoe. The ad drones on and on. This studio of hers has a good smell, what is it? It’s all the lacquer. And all this fresh cold October air from the window being broken for days. She only just now noticed how sweet it smells in here. Please, it’s him. It’s got to be him, doesn’t it? Blew the bastard to little tiny bits? She tries to catch her laugh and smother it, but it jumps up out of her throat. Don’t, wait till they say his name, but she’s laughing this long childish ungovernable laugh as though this were the funniest ad in the history of radio.

  The newsman comes back and he says:

  “Four bodies have been recovered from a car bombing at an abandoned school near Cold Spring. Police say they have evidence that the bombing was mob related. At least two of the victims have been identified. Their names are being withheld pending…”

  Four?

  Killed four? Why? Louie, you only had to blow up the one. Or maybe his buddy Johnny, OK two, but—

  The phone rings.

  She picks up and a voice says, “He knows where your kid is.”

  She says, “Who is this?”

  But she’s asking only to gain time, to collect her thoughts. She recognizes Johnny’s voice.

  “He knows your kid’s in some little town in Guatemala. You gotta stop him. I can’t stop him. I got my own kid. I gotta get my daughter outta here. I can’t help you now. You gotta do it. You gotta stop him, Annie.”

  THE AGENT at the American Airlines ticket counter looks at this poor woman before her. Then she glances up at the clock, shakes her head. “I’m afraid you’ve just missed that one, ma’am. But the Aviateca flight leaves in a hour, that ought to be—”

  “I can’t wait! My child. My child is down there!”

  “Ma’am, I believe the plane has already left the gate.”

  “My child, please! My child—I’ve got to get there now. He’s dying.”

  “Your child is in Guatemala?”

  “He’s dying. Please. It’s—there was an accident, he’s hurt. He’s dying. My husband called me. He’s dying.”

  There are rules of course, strict guidelines, and the ticket agent knows them, she knows she’s going to get herself in trouble. But there’s also this woman before her, and this woman is the most desperate and frantic and unstrung creature she’s ever set eyes on. The ticket agent tells her, “Hold on,” and she reaches across the counter and takes hold of the woman’s wrist and gently squeezes it, and with her free hand she reaches for the telephone.

  ANNIE, three minutes later, sprints down the great wide vacant corridor until a steward steps out and signals to her, and they hustle her aboard.

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” as they show her to her seat. The plane is backing away from the gate even before she gets her belt fastened. She has the window seat. No seatmates, thank God. She’s been given this simple oblong of gray window. Whorls of minute scratches on the plastic. Something meaningless for her to look at. Why did I ever challenge him? Why did I imagine I could fight him? He’s huge, he could crush us both with one finger—why didn’t I do what he asked? Why didn’t I? Why didn’t I? The plane takes off and the
boroughs of the city reveal themselves beneath her. Grim brick, the streets crosshatched or whorled like the scratches on the window.

  Then the Teacher takes the seat next to hers.

  THE TEACHER says, “This is somewhat eerie, isn’t it? That we find ourselves on the same flight today?”

  He can feel her rage, he can feel the scream that’s boiling up inside her. He puts his hand on top of hers—urging, with this gesture, her restraint. “Don’t raise your voice,” he says. He opens his jacket just enough to show her his weapon. “I have friends who let me carry this pistol aboard. I won’t mind using it. I’ll kill you, kill the pilot, kill the crew, kill myself. Will that help Oliver? On the contrary, it will seal his fate. A colleague of mine is on his way to T’ui Cuch right now. He’s flying down from California. He’ll be there in the morning. Your only chance of saving your son is to stay alive. Get to him first. If you approach this calmly, if you meditate on this, I think it will start to make sense.”

  But the fear keeps pouring off of her. The fear and the indecision. He knows what she’s thinking: What if there is no colleague, what if the Teacher is lying to her?

  In fact he is lying, which he hates to do, but this is the necessary work of the Tao—the Tao, which turns temporal lies into eternal truth.

  “Believe me, Annie. This time, please listen to me. If you had listened to me before, I mean to me and not that foolish raggedy-ann doctor? I think we wouldn’t have come to this in the first place.”

  He pushes the stewardess call button over his head. When she appears he tells her, “I was sitting in first class? Seat 3A? But then I ran into this old friend, it’s an unbelievable coincidence, and I’d like to stay with her a while? Will that be all right?”

  “That’ll be fine, sir. Of course.”

  “Could you bring us a couple of drinks?”

  “What would you like?

  “Gin tonic for me.” He turns to Annie. “How about you?”

  She expresses no preference.

  So he orders two gin tonics.

  After the stewardess goes he says, “I had a dream about you today. In the taxi, I fell asleep, and I had a nightmare. You were drunk, Annie. We were at a cocktail party at the house where I grew up in Bay Ridge, and you were drunk, and for some reason I went out and found your car. Oliver was in it. I locked him in and set fire to it. Then I went up and told you, but I couldn’t make you understand. You kept trying to blow out the birthday candles. I yelled, “No, Oliver is on fire!” and you poured your drink on the cake. And I woke up in a cold sweat. In the taxi. It’s incredible, how scary that was—and now you’re here and everything’s fine. I don’t blame you, Annie. For anything.”