The Juror (11 page)

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
.

O
LIVER
’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 supposed 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.”

A
NNIE
, 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.

Says Bozeman, “Now Mr. DeCicco, you testified on direct that Louie Boffano was having ‘a problem’ with Salvadore Riggio, is
that correct?”

Paulie DeCicco has an imposing hairless skull, a craggy mountain of head. This gives him an air of thoughtfulness, even sagacity—at
least until he opens his mouth. “Huh?”

Says Bozeman, “Didn’t you testify that Louie Boffano had become a distributor of cocaine and heroin?”

“Yeh.”

“And how do you know this?”

“I was with him when he did it.”

“You were his faithful lieutenant, right?”

“Lieutenant? No.”

“You weren’t—”

“I was a
captain
.”

“Excuse me. Captain. Now,
Captain
DeCicco, who was Louie buying the cocaine from? Could you refresh our memories?”

“From Cali.”

“The Cali cartel?”

“Yeh.”

“Out of Colombia, South America?”

“Yeh.”

“And heroin? Who was the connection there?”

“The Ndrangheta.”

“This is a group in Italy, you say?”

“In Calabria, uh-huh.”

“A group that’s associated with the Mafia?”

“Huh?”

“Would you say the Ndrangheta is associated with the Mafia?”

“I’d say it
is
the Mafia.”

“But now Salvadore Riggio, he was the head of the Carmine fam-ily?”

“That’s right.”

“And the Carmine, this was
your
family?”

“Yeh.”

“And Louie Boffano is also in the Carmine family?”

“Yeh.”

“OK. But now Salvadore Riggio, he didn’t, he didn’t approve of Mr. Boffano’s connection with the Cali cartel, with the Ndrangheta…?”

“He had a beef.”

“OK. Tell us again, Mr. DeCicco, what was his beef?”

“You weren’t supposed to deal drugs. That was the law.”

“You mean the unwritten law of the family?”

“Correct.”

“Why was that the law, Mr. DeCicco?”

“I dunno.”

Bozeman stands at the rail to the jury box. He twitches his mustache and gives the jurors a playful glance. “It seems like
a somewhat strange law, doesn’t it? Mr. DeCicco? For a criminal organization?”

“I dunno.”

“I’m just, I think we’re all trying to picture Salvadore Riggio as this, this
crusader
against drugs….” Murmur of laughter in the courtroom. “Would you have called Salvadore Riggio an antidrug crusader?”