The Juror (23 page)

“Ah, you treat your own father like dirt. He comes out to sing for you, he loves you—”

The bedroom window opened and his father yelled out, “Mary! Leave him alone! Huh? He’s with his friend, can’t you leave the
poor kid—”

“Shut up, you jerk! You greaseball fairy—”

“Leave my son alone, you dumb bitch!”

She said to her son, “Your father’s a fairy, you know that? You know why—”

But that was as much as he heard, because by then he had triggered the mixture of the hydrogen and the oxygen. A great white
roaring fart of smoke and flame. His mother shrieked and ran toward the house and Eddie had a big wide grin on his face and
the thing took off into the cream-colored heavens. Blue-and-yellow rocket, white smoke, cinnamon skirts of flame. Up into
the sky. His ears ringing, his skull, all his thoughts, scoured and scorched clean. Clean!

O
LIVER
’s trying to get her out of the house, so he can find out what happened. But she doesn’t seem to catch his hints. She pours
a box of Rice-A-Roni Chicken & Broccoli into a saucepan, stirs it. Ignores him.

He says, “I thought, I thought we’d get some, maybe pizza. Or something.”

Still not a word from her.

“Come on, I want to tell you what I did in school today.”

She stirs the rice. She says, “Tell me, Oliver.” The rancor is back in her voice. The old regime. “Tell me about your day.”

“Oh. It was…” He shrugs. “But I mean, how was
your
day, Mom?”

No answer.

“Mom.”

“What?”

“I asked you how was your day?”

“I don’t remember.”

She won’t meet his eyes.

He suggests, “Maybe we’ll go out after? Get some ice cream?”

“No,” she says.

He tries a new tack: “Did you talk to Juliet today?”

She wheels on him. Puts her finger to her lips. “Sh.”

Then she says, “Juliet? No.”

He gets up and goes into the TV room and gets his school notebook and comes back and turns to the last page. He writes her
a note:

The guy knows that Juliet
is your friend. So why can’t we talk
about her?

She writes back:

Don’t ever mention her name in the house.
Ever.

He writes:

What happened today?

She writes:

It won’t work.

He writes:

Why? What happened?

She writes:

I’ll tell you later.

He writes:

Mom we got to fight him.

She writes:

If we fight him, he’ll kill you.

He writes:

I’ll take the chance.

She glares at him. She grips the pen hard, she’s in a fury. She writes:

If we fight him, he’ll kill me.

She underlines
me
.

That stops him.

She gets up and walks around the kitchen table and kneels before his chair. She’s crying, but she’s quiet about it. She takes
him in her arms and puts her lips close to his ear and whispers, “Oliver. No.”

After a minute she rises. She tears the page from the notebook and rolls it into a cone and lights it.

T
HE TEACHER
thinks, That’s wrong. There’s something wrong there.

He unfurls from his lotus. He rises and crosses to the console.

Switches to the tape. Rewinds. Hits PLAY for a moment, then rewinds some more. Hits PLAY again.

He hears Oliver say it again: “Maybe we’ll go out after? Get some ice cream?”

The Teacher wonders, Why is he so eager to get out of the house?

Annie: “No.”

Pause.

Oliver: “Did you talk to Juliet today?”

Silence. Then a minuscule hiss. Maybe distortion? Maybe an escape of steam from the saucepan?

He plays it again. The least spit of sound. But he thinks he knows what it is. He thinks she’s hissing at Oliver to shut up.

He plays it again.

OK. Why would she have wanted him to shut up about Juliet? The question he asked, wasn’t it a reasonable one?

All he asked her was, had she talked to Juliet today?

Next, he hears a faint, scratchy, whispery crackle—what is it?

Wait.

He opens a drawer and takes out a pen. And on the flyleaf of a book of Tibetan meditations he scribbles:

AnnieLairdAnnieLaird

He stops writing. He replays the tape.

He writes:

mysoulmysoulmysoul

Yes, what he heard was the sound of writing.

They were writing messages to each other.

And that crackle at the end? That was the page burning. And the sizzle as it dropped into the sink.

Of course. They thought they had to burn that page of notes or the Teacher would have rooted in their garbage and found it.

So Oliver knows about me. And about the bugs. And about everything.

And who else knows?

Juliet.

That doctor, of course. Annie must have told that fool of an arrogant doctor. It’s she who would have counseled interference.
Juliet, the wild adventurer.

It’s she who put the boy’s life at risk.

Dr. Juliet Applegate, North Kent Road, Pharaoh, NY.

It astounds him, such a paucity of prudence. For the chance to think well of herself, to think herself valiant, for such a
paltry thrill, she wades headlong and splashing against the rhythm of the Tao.

How can she tolerate the grasping recklessness of her own soul? the Teacher wonders.

E
DDIE
, the next afternoon, is driving the Hutchinson Parkway. He’s tired. It’s been a busy day, and it’s not over yet. First he
had to help Vincent wire up Juliet Applegate’s apartment for sound. This was hairy because she lives under a grocery store
and the store was open while they worked.

Next he had to drive all the way down to Queens, where he had a big problem with the Jamaicans. Instead of finding the expected
$28,000 in the paper towel dispenser at Luca’s Texaco, he found $24,000.

Oh! What a bullshit crank-sucking low-esteem boost!

Probably the Jamaican mule made the skim. But Eddie talked the problem over with the kid’s bosses. If the kid did it, Eddie’s
confident his bosses will worm it out of him. Then they’ll kill him. No fuss no muss. Kill his family too. Kill his neighbors.
Kill the entire staff of the corner liquor store, for good measure. All in plenty of time for the six o’clock news.

Eddie envies the crisp organization and the forthrightness of the Jamaicans.

But still he’s got a vicious headache.

And still he’s on the road. He’s back on the Hutch, headed north, because he’s got to stop by Frankie’s and deliver a gift
from Vincent. A thank-you for Frankie’s help in kicking the shit out of that nosy private eye: $20,000 in cash and an orchid
for his girlfriend.

This particular chore isn’t so bad. Frankie’ll cream his jeans to see all that money. The orchid’ll give him a kick too. He
already worships the ground Vincent walks on. He’s never even seen his face, but he thinks Vincent is the Second Coming of
the Virgin Mary. Now the guy’s giving him $20,000 and an orchid? For an hour’s work? He’s gonna build a fuckin shrine.

Eddie knows the feeling.

Eddie himself, he’s worshiped Vincent ever since he was a kid. Maybe he still does. Although for the last twenty-four hours
all he’s been able to think about is that question Annie asked him.

Why do you let him do this?

Lady, get the fuck out of my head with your stupid questions, OK? All I want is to deliver this gift and then go on home and
find that my daughter is more or less sane. I want to fry us up a couple nice steaks. Shrimp, boiled potatoes, watch
Married with Children.
That’s all I want. I don’t want to think about fuckin Vincent all night.

Let
him do this? What do you mean,
let
him? Vincent does what he pleases.

Always has. Since St. Xavier’s. Fourth grade. Never gave a shit what the nuns told him. Had his own mind, kept his own counsel.
Like the time they were studying that big computer UNIVAC. Vincent raised his hand and said that soon there would be a computer
that’d do nothing except try to figure out what God was like.

This was in Sister Francesca’s class.

Said Vincent, “We’ll feed it everything we know, right? And it’ll find the pattern.”

Said Sister Francesca, “What pattern?”

“The pattern behind the Creation. The pattern of God.”

Said Sister Francesca, “I think, young man, that the Bible tells us what we need to know about God.”

Vincent ignored her. “But if a computer wants to understand God? It’ll have to
become
God. It’ll have to create its
own
universe. And maybe that one will replace ours. Sort of, part of a cycle. Don’t you think, Sister Francesca?”

In the hubbub of the cafeteria, or homeroom, in the wild free-for-all of recess, Vincent was always stiff and ill at ease.
You had to see him in some situation where he felt completely in control—then he’d scare the hell out of you, the way he could
draw you in.

Though there was always some question, Eddie recalls, as to Vincent’s sanity.

There was, for example, the time he sent a rocket up from his backyard and his mom and dad were drunk, and nobody but Vincent
and Eddie knew that Vincent’s cat was riding in the nose cone.

Some three or four days after the rocket and its cargo disappeared into the sky over Bay Ridge, Eddie came by and caught Vincent
crying.

“What are you crying for?”

“Madame Butterfly.”

“Your cat? You’re sad about your cat?”

“I miss her.”

“Well then why did you blast her up to the fuckin sky?”

“They stepped on her all the time. They kicked her. They never cleaned her shitbox. My dad put whiskey in her bowl. I had
to do
something
.”

Eddie remembers how Vincent always wanted to hear stories about Eddie’s father and uncles and cousins in La Cosa Nostra. Didn’t
care too much about the crimes. What he got off on was what he called the hierarchy. He always wanted Eddie to introduce him
to his relatives but Eddie didn’t think that was such a good idea.

By the time Vincent was a senior in high school his geekiness was gone. This lovely girl, this strange brainy hippie-girl,
fell for him, and at first everyone laughed at her. But then one by one other girls fell under his spell. He’d talk to them
about his Eastern religions, he’d talk and you could see them getting relaxed, curling their legs up under them and saying,
“Mm, omigod, it’s amazing, I had a thought
exactly
like that the other day,” and pretty soon you could score another one for Vincent.

He won a scholarship to Fordham. By then Eddie had dropped out and was running in the gang headed by his second cousin Louie
Boffano. Lifting auto parts mostly. Liberating cartridge players, jerk-off stuff. They kept getting fucked around by this
Gambino cocksucker who figured Louie was so young, still so wet from his mama’s pussy that he’d be no trouble to lean on.

That summer Louie said if he knew how to make a bomb he’d put one under the Gambino’s car.

Eddie said, “I got a guy I bet can make a bomb for you, Louie. Make it right.”

So he got Vincent to make a bomb. The Gambino’s car started out in the northbound lane of the BQE, and when it came back to
earth much of it came down in the southbound lane. The chassis, the drive shaft, the radiator, and the spare tire. Also, separately,
the steering wheel with the Gambino’s hands holding on for dear life. But the rest of the Gambino was never recovered. The
rest of the Gambino had joined Madame Butterfly in the ozone.

Louie held a barbecue to celebrate the death of the Gambino. Of course Vincent came, and Louie drank a toast to him. He said,
“You know, this kid is like a young, a young, what the fuck’s his name?”

“Who?” said somebody.

“I don’t know. Some inventor or something. But give him, give him a round of applause.”

Everybody put their paws together except cousin Tony Speza, who hadn’t taken a shine to Vincent. He said to him, “Hey, you’re
not Sicilian, right?”

“I’m northern,” said Vincent.

“You’re not even that, you scumbag. Come on, you got the complexion of a ghost. Your mother’s a mick, isn’t she? And your
father, he don’t count. He’s that crazy asshole who sings opera, isn’t he?”

Couple of months later, Vincent had a secret meeting with Louie Boffano. Eddie set it up. At this meeting Vincent claimed
that Tony Speza was pulling some shit behind Louie’s back. He produced Tony Speza’s telephone bill as evidence. He explained
patiently the pattern of treason it revealed, how several of the calls had been made to law enforcement agencies. Louie laughed
and said he was jumping to conclusions. But a few weeks later when Tony Speza vanished, Louie didn’t boo-hoo much.

And from then on there was something between Vincent and Louie that nobody could get a handle on, that nobody could touch.
Vincent pursued his own life—college and an MBA and work on Wall Street and his art and his women and his religions—but any
time Louie was in a jam, or needed to thread his way through the eye of a needle, he’d tell Eddie, “Go find your friend. I
gotta talk to him,” and Vincent would always show up. With his eyes glowing. Always glad to help. Glad to scheme out a disappearance
or a frame-up, glad to assay the loyalty of an ally, glad to strategize the fancy heroin deal with the Ndrangheta and the
Jamaicans.

And whatever Vincent does, he does flawlessly.

Flawlessly.

And Louie stays out of jail, or at least he did till he tripped up on his own wagging tongue.

Very few of our people get killed.

Louie gets stinking rich.

All of us get stinking rich.

And Annie, I mean you really wonder why we let him him do this?

J
ULIET
says, “Come in before the bugs do.”

But Annie doesn’t budge. She stands at the door.

She says, “He showed me what he can do. You said he could be reasoned with?”

“I said—”