The Juror Page 8
Eddie drives along Pharaoh’s main street. Cones of streelight. One lonely cop car, trolling. On the phone he hears Vincent say softly, “I don’t know, Eddie. Find a mother for your child?”
“Yeah? Where am I gonna find a good woman? Guy as ugly as me?”
“You’re not ugly.”
“Fat, face all squashed-in on one side, what’re you giving me here?”
“There’s plenty to love about you, Eddie. Talk to one of your friends. For example D’Apolito, who has that nightclub? Let him set you up with one of the girls.”
“I’ve had enough fuckin whores in my life! Girl’s mother was a fuckin whore! Fuckin Rita, don’t get me going about Rita, Vincent.”
“All right. The important thing is, do you love your daughter?”
He’s asking this in his whispery trance-voice that he sometimes uses.
“Yeah,” says Eddie.
“Well then I think she’ll muddle through. You must keep showing her you love her. Sooner or later she’ll get rid of the padlock. In the meantime, at least you know she’s not sleeping around. Now let me go back to bed, Eddie.”
3
You’re not afraid of anything when you’re around this man.
ANNIE, a week later in the courtroom, turns the page of her transcript, and so does everyone else. It’s like test time in school: GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE NOW.
On the tape, Louie Boffano is speaking. The tape comes from a microphone that was hidden in the back room of a shoe repair shop in Queens. Mostly it sounds like those bristly bursts of CB chatter that sometimes stray into TV reception. Annie can’t understand more than a few words without the help of the transcript. Even with the transcript, Louie Boffano’s gassing is all but incoherent:
“So I said, you know, I said what, what, what the fuck’s going on, he’s coming in? He’s coming to see me? You know, Paulie? He says, no he don’t want to. He’s not, he doesn’t want to see you. I say, OK. So what the fuck is going on with Carbone Construction? He says he talked to this guy Wilton.”
Then Paulie DeCicco’s voice, bed of gravel, muttering something that the transcript interprets as “Who?”
Says Louie, “Or… Walton. What the fuck? You know? Or Wal-ton or something, I don’t know. You know this guy?”
This time the transcript gives up on Paulie DeCicco. It reads: “(IN-AUDIBLE).”
Louie rolls on: “I don’t know. I don’t know, Paulie. But if he’s working for me, Wilton or Walton, I don’t know. You know?”
Grunts Paulie, “He’s a scumbag.”
Louie says, “Who? Walton?”
“Who?” says Paulie.
“Or Wilton or I don’t—you know this guy?”
“I don’t (INAUDIBLE). Talking about, weren’t you talking about Vito?”
“Vito,” says Louie. “You know what I’m saying? And they’re all fuckin hard-ons. And those, those, Paulie, those are the good ones. But that’s where the shit comes in. Minchia!”
Paulie DeCicco makes some hawking noise.
Annie has no notion, none, not the least shred, of what Louie Boffano is talking about.
Perhaps lack of sleep has something to do with her confusion.
But she’s pretty sure no one else in this courtroom knows what he’s talking about either. Although nobody’s going to give that away.
Everyone stares down at his script, everyone turns the page in unison—everyone except Annie and Louie Boffano.
Louie looks bored. He pays no attention to the tape. Annie watches him. He bounces his pen against his legal pad. He smirks for an instant at something he hears inside his head. He tears off the corner of a sheet from the pad and crumples it and pops it in his mouth. A spitball, he’s making a spitball. Everyone else is so studious but not Louie the class cutup.
He leans back and sticks his tongue out at the ceiling—and there, up on the tip of his tongue, behold: the little yellow spitball.
But they’re all so busy reading that nobody notices, nobody laughs.
So after a moment he flicks the tongue and the spitball back into his mouth. Straightens up. Looks at the jurors. Annie slaps her eyes down to the page but not quick enough: Louie Boffano has seen her watching him.
And then abruptly, through all the murky chatter on the tape, she gets one glimmer of meaning, of intention.
Louie Boffano is saying:
“I mean, Paulie, does the stupid fuck think he can hide from me? ’Cause that’s what Salvadore thought, you remember? Fuckin Salvadore Riggio, fucking invincible, right? Everybody said he was invincible. Remember? He can’t be killed. He won’t come out of his house, and he’s got twenty fuckin guards and an electric fuckin fence. The works, Paulie. But then I was talking to the Teacher, and he says to me, ’Man doesn’t want to be killed? Man won’t come out of his house? So what? We can dig a tunnel,’ Remember, Paulie?”
Says Paulie, “(INAUDIBLE).”
Says Louie, “I told the Teacher, OK, you want, you want to dig a tunnel, dig a tunnel. Kill that motherfucker! Jesus!”
Says Paulie, “Yeah, that was funny.”
Says Louie, “It wasn’t so fuckin funny to Salvadore Riggio. And it’s not fuckin funny if you’re some scumbag you won’t come in, you won’t come see me, you’re trying to hide from Louie Boffano. Am I right?”
“(INAUDIBLE),” says Paulie.
“(INAUDIBLE),” says Louie.
“(INAUDIBLE),” says Paulie.
Annie looks up again and Louie has his eyes shut. His lawyer Bozeman is still wincing from the blow. Must have known it was coming but he’s wincing anyway. And in the corner of her eye Annie notices that the juror next to her is slowly, unconsciously, shaking his head.
Annie knows that before this trial is over she’ll hear this part of the tape played over and over and over again.
You idiot, she thinks. Why not tell the world, make a formal announcement, take out an ad in the Times? How the hell do you think anyone can sit down in a jury room and explain that idiotic rooster-strut away?
I told the Teacher, OK, you want, you want to dig a tunnel, dig a tunnel. Kill that motherfucker! Jesus!
SLAVKO sits in a booth of the Croton Dam Diner with this astonishing seraph Sari Knowles.
“So,” he says. “You just want me to find out where he’s been going at night? Whether he’s sleeping with this client of his?”
“Yes.”
“Got any ideas?” he asks her.
“About what?”
“About where he goes.”
She shakes her head.
Slavko presses. “Well, where does he say he goes?”
“I don’t know, his work. Deals. I told you, he manages a commodities fund.”
“So when he says he’s busy with that, why don’t you believe him?”
She thinks about it. She puts the tip of her tongue between her teeth.
She must know what a piece of work she is. That hair of hers, all that honey-white hair breaking sumptuously across her shoulders. It reflects in the mirror beside her. It reflects again in the mirror across the way. It seems to glimmer all over this noontime diner. She’s got to be aware of this. The short-order cook who leers at her, the two truckers who murmur and snicker—she pays them no mind at all but she must know what effect she’s having.
She’s probably used to it by now.
Probably she’s come to depend on it.
Slavko notes the crispness of her eyeliner, the freshness of her mascara. The DKNY business suit with the Hermes scarf—she hasn’t forgotten how to look smart and casual at the same time. She may be living in the eye of an emotional hurricane but she’s not going to let the short-order cook know it.
She sips her tea and shrugs and tells Slavko, “I don’t know why I don’t believe him. You think I should trust him?”
“Have you asked him that?”
“If I should trust him? If he’s lying to me? No.”
“Why not?”
She blinks. “Ask him if he’s lying
to me?”
“Right.”
“Oh no. I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have to know him.”
“Why would I have to know him?”
“Because if you knew him you wouldn’t ask that question.”
“Why not?”
“Is this how you talk to all your clients?”
“It’s how I talk to my prospective clients. Yeah. This can be a tricky business. I want to find the firm ground here. I want to know where the solid ground stops and the, where the, where the—”
She helps him. “Where the bullshit starts?”
“Right. But if you think I’m badgering you—”
“Oh, ask away,” she says, and she flashes her palms as if to show she has nothing to hide. “All right, look. I don’t want Eben to know about my… concerns or doubts or whatever, because, well, because then he’ll think I’m weak.”
“And your boyfriend—you say his name is Eben?”
“Eben Rackland.”
“You mean like short for Ebenezer?”
“Just Eben.”
“Uh-huh. And this Eben, he doesn’t care for weak people?”
“Well, nobody likes weakness, right? Jealousy and all? I don’t think anybody—”
“You don’t like weak people, Sari?”
She gives him a look: What does this have to do with the business at hand? Slavko’s wondering the same thing. He’s asking himself, What’s all this, Slavko? Just because Juliet once, on that trip to Bannerman’s Island, hinted that she didn’t like weak men, and you thought she was hinting about you? So now you’re going to get all bent out of shape with this client?
But he leaves his question out there, and after a moment Sari takes it up.
“Well, I suppose I do find strength more attractive than weakness. Sure.”
“I see. And this Eben Rackland? You think he’s strong?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “He’s powerful. Yes.”
“What do you mean, powerful?”
For Christ sake, Slavko, leave it alone. What, are you jealous of Sari’s boyfriend? You have a thing for Sari? You probably do, you little worm. Like the short-order cook over there, with his drool. Very good, very professional, Slavko. I’m sure you’re just her type, too. No doubt she’s been searching her whole life for a nosy, balding, posturing loser.
Still, even in the teeth of his own self-mockery, he plunges on. Can’t seem to help himself. “Do you mean if he was, if he was here with us, he’d just tear me up?”
This question clearly weirds her.
“Tear you up? I don’t—Eben doesn’t hurt people. Is this what you mean?”
“I mean I’m trying to figure out why you don’t throw in the towel on this one. Here’s this guy, he’s a great guy with a great biblical name, but you don’t trust him. You can’t be happy with somebody you don’t trust. Right? So why don’t you toss him back? Find some-body else? You know?”
She looks into her tea. She seems to be fighting back tears. She says, “Have you ever been obsessed?”
But she doesn’t wait for an answer. She says, “It makes me feel stupid. Like a child. I mean, look at me, I’m successful, I told you that. I own my own travel agency. I’ve never had problems before with self-esteem. And now I keep saying to myself, So he works a lot of nights, he’s a workaholic, so what? When he’s with me he loves me. And other times I say, No. He’s got to be seeing someone else. I mean, I’m going out of my mind. But Eben—when you’re around Eben five minutes you think, This man understands. You’re not afraid of anything when you’re around this man. I said he’s powerful? He’s powerful because of his soul. Oh, you don’t get it. I think, I think I’d kill myself, I would, before I’d leave him. But you don’t get it. It doesn’t make any sense to you.”
“Yes it does,” says Slavko.
She dabs at her eyes. Her makeup comes off on her napkin. Black smears. Why does she wear so much makeup, he wonders, when she doesn’t need any makeup at all? Does she think she has to wear it for him? Who is this man who’s hurting her, who can this bastard be?
He says, “Sari, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there myself.”
He lays his hand on hers and she flips her hand and clutches his wrist, hard. Then she lets him go.
He’s thinking, I still am there.
OLIVER’s got Jesse up in his room with their noses close to the computer screen. Oliver’s sketching a dragon. Working on its fang, but it’s not coming out right. Too cute, a wimpy little snaggletooth.
“Come on,” says Jesse. “A fang. Big fang.”
Oliver says, “Oh, yeah? You want a big one?”
“Yeah.”
“A big one?” Oliver clicks the palette, then slides the mouse against its pad. From between the dragon’s rear legs, a blood-red phallus emerges.
“You buttwipe,” says Jesse. But he laughs as the organ keeps growing.
“Big enough?”
“Bigger!”
Oliver coils the thing like a lariat around the dragon’s neck.
“Oh yeah!” says Jesse. “Now that is phat!”
A bloom of sharp yellow barbs.
“What are those?” says Jesse.
“Herpes,” says Oliver. “Dragon herpes.”
“Wait, let me!” says Jesse, and he reaches for the mouse.
“No, wait!” says Oliver. Now he’s putting leaves on the dragon’s member. Turning it into a tree for some reason, dozens of twigs and leaves. Jesse trying to snatch the mouse, but Oliver holds him at bay with one hand and works the mouse with the other, clicking more and more green leaves onto the screen. Both of them roaring with laughter.
Then Oliver looks up, and his mom is standing in the doorway.
She’s got that strange bitter look that she’s had for days now, and she says, “What’s he doing here?”
Oliver quits laughing. “Jesse? What do you mean—”
“You’re supposed to be doing your homework.”
Winter in her voice. She never sounds like this except when she’s really over the edge. And even then not in front of his friends.
“Mom, it’s not, it’s not even six—I don’t have to—”
“You have to do what I tell you to do. First thing you have to do is say goodbye to your friend.”
The blood whooshes up into his cheeks. His voice skips half an octave. “Mom, that’s not fair. We were just—”
“Goodbye, Jesse,” she announces.
Jesse slouches down the stairs.
Oliver’s eyes sting. He swallows. “Mom, I don’t understand why you did that.”
She says, “Who the hell’s been cutting up the newspaper?”
She holds it up. The front page, with an oblong missing.
“I did,” he says. Not meeting her eyes.
“Oh really? It was you? I thought Mr. Slivey had snuck in here and done it. The missing piece, what was it about?”
She speaks so sharply and with such venom that all he can do is gape at her.
She says, “It was about the trial, wasn’t it? I looked through this whole newspaper, I can’t find anything about the trial.”
“Mom, you told me to. You told me to cut out everything about the trial.”
“Oh Jesus.” Rolling her eyes. “You don’t do anything I say. You never do anything I ask you to, now why the hell did you do this? Where is it?”
He hesitates.
She asks again. “Where is it?”
“It’s in, I tore, it’s in little pieces.”
“Why?”
“You told me to!”
“I didn’t tell you to make confetti! Did I tell you to make confetti, god damn you!”
That’s it—he’s lost his hold. He stares down at his lap, and his tears fall straight down. “Mom, you told me—”
“What did it say?”
“Mom, you’re not supposed to know. You’re not, you’re not sup-posed to read the newspaper, you’re not s
upposed to watch the TV, you’re—”
“Tell me what it said!”
“I don’t know! It said—what? There was a guy they said like a police guy, there was a, they played a tape—”
“What was on the tape?”
“But you were there, Mom. Why ask me?”
“What did they say was on the tape?”
“I don’t know. I think they said Louie Boffano told a guy he should dig, a tunnel, and, and kill him.”
“Did they say Boffano was guilty?”
“I don’t, I don’t know.”
“What did they say? Did they say there was persuasive evidence, compelling evidence, what?”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Persuasive. Do you recognize the word persuasive? What did they say?”
“They said—they just said everybody got quiet.”
“But what did they want you to think?” She’s holding his arms now. Squeezing them, digging in with her claws. Hurting him some, but that’s not so bad. What really scares him is her voice. “Do they want you to think he’s guilty?”
“I don’t know. Mom!”
“Who have you talked to about this?”
“About the trial? Nobody! You asked me not to.”
“Yeah? Well I’m not asking you not to anymore. I’m saying, You talk to somebody about this trial, and this is what I’ll do, I’ll take your bike and I’ll back the car over it, and I’ll take your computer and throw it out the window, and then I swear to God I’ll come up here and I’ll kill you. I will kill you. You listening?”
“Yes.”
She lets go of him. She rises. He rubs his face into the crook of his elbow and sniffs. But she gets him by a clump of his hair and pulls his face into the light. “What’s this bullshit? You think ’cause there’s no man around you can be a crybaby? This is garbage. This, no. This stops now.”
4
bounced around like a dunce with my jaw hanging open….
ANNIE, a week later, watches Louie Boffano’s lawyer, Bozeman, with his big amiable walrus mustache and cunning yellow teeth, as he picks gingerly at the government’s star witness.