The Juror (24 page)

“No. He can’t.”

“Now wait a minute, Annie. I said if we were strong, we could reason with him. But first we have to get strong. We have to
hide Oliver, we—”

“He’ll find him. No.”

“Look, why don’t you sit for a while? Have some tea, OK, Annie? So we can talk?”

“Promise me you won’t tell anybody.”

“Wait.”

“You’ve got to leave us alone now.”

“Wait. What does Oliver think?”

“Oliver’s twelve, what does it matter what he thinks? I guess he thinks we should be heroes. I just took him over to Mrs.
Kolodny’s. Jury’s going to be sequestered tomorrow. Mrs. Kolodny’s going to keep him till we get a verdict. He was upset,
he was pissed at me. But he promised to keep his mouth shut, and that’s all I care about. You’ve got to promise too, Juliet.”

“Promise what? That I’ll abandon you?”

“That you won’t tell anyone. It’s my life, Juliet. What you said, remember? He’s
my
child.”

So. Put it that way, what can Juliet do? A slight cocking of her head and showing of her palm, and she’s surrendered.

And Annie turns to go.

Juliet calls to her. “Hey listen, girl, I’m going to Nightbone’s tomorrow night, me and Henri, why don’t you come with?” She
means Nightbone’s Poetry Cafe in the East Village, in Manhattan. She knows Annie won’t come, but she asks anyway, maybe just
to remind her that there’s still a world outside of the one the bastard’s made for her.

Or maybe it’s just to keep her here for another moment.

“I mean why not?” Juliet says. “You’re not his prisoner. Get out, relax a little, I swear I won’t talk about the trial—”

“Juliet, you don’t understand. I’m going to be sequestered, I’m going to be in some hotel somewhere. I couldn’t see you if
I wanted to. Which I don’t, I
can’t.
Which you know. Anyway. So why do you ask?”

Then she doesn’t say goodbye. She simply turns and walks back to her car.

A
NNIE
, in the jury room early the next morning, folds her yellow sheet of legal paper and passes it up.

One slice of daylight gets in through a casement window. One mottled sliver of the rainy day—that’s as much as she can see.

The Forewoman uses her wrists to scoop all the votes into a pile. Then she starts reading.

“Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.
Not
guilty.”

A stirring among the jurors. There I am, thinks Annie. That’s mine. They think I’m nuts.

“Guilty,” says the Forewoman. “Guilty. And here someone’s voted ‘Yes’? I’m not sure what ‘Yes’ means.”

“It means guilty,” says Maureen, a grandmother in a lilac suit.

The Forewoman keeps reading.

“Guilty.
Not
guilty.”

The news stuns Annie. My God, someone else? How is that possible?

“Guilty. Guilty.”

The Forewoman unfolds the last ballot.

“
Not
guilty.”

Three!

Annie thinks it’s a miracle.

“All right, wait a minute.” This from a little wiry guy, Pete, who works for OSHA. He wears a cheap suit and snake hairs grow
from his ears. “I mean, I’m sorry. Can I, can I say this?”

“Sure,” says the Forewoman.

“I just, I mean, how can anybody think the guy’s not guilty? I just—who voted
not
guilty? Can I ask that?”

Says the Forewoman, “You can ask. But nobody has to say if they don’t want. I don’t think.”

“Well, I voted not guilty,” says an Ann Taylorish housewife from Mount Kisco.

Says OSHA Pete, “You telling me you think Boffano didn’t order the killing?”

She shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. I guess maybe he did. But don’t we have to discuss it? We don’t want to—”

“We’re gonna discuss it!” says OSHA. Raising his voice. Already. “We just, I mean, Christ. Who else? Who else voted not guilty?”

“Me.” This from a retired postal clerk.

“You? Roland?
Why?
”

The Clerk shrugs. It takes him a long time to get started, and when he does he speaks slowly:

“I don’t. Think the government. Made. Its case. Necessarily. That’s all.”

The Clerk jams his tongue into his cheek. His skin looks liverish and his eyes are bloodshot and pulpy. He peers up at the
acoustic tiles, and Annie tries to read him. Is he working for the Teacher? She wishes he’d look at her. Maybe she could figure
him out if he’d meet her gaze.

“Proved?” says OSHA. “It’s open and shut.”

“So
you
say,” says the Clerk.

“I mean there’s a tape, right? There’s a tape! Did you hear the tape?”

“So
you
say.”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking you.”

“So
you
say.”

“What do you mean, so
I
say? Stop saying that, Roland, you’re driving me nuts.” He looks around. He sighs and folds his arms. “Jesus.”

Says the Forewoman, “Anybody else?”

Annie draws a breath. That’s all it takes—all eyes swing to look at her.

Says the Forewoman, “And your, what’s your reasoning, Annie?”

But Annie finds she can’t speak. Her vocal cords are stitched tight.

“Well—” she says. Some of the eyes drop away compassionately. She tries again. “Well, I just—”

A new voice breaks in. “Maybe it’s not fair to pick on the not guiltys. Maybe, maybe
we
should have to explain
our
case. You know?”

Big and slouchy, an easygoing guy. His name is Will and he’s got blue jeans and a black jacket and long blond hair. He plays
clarinet for a jazz combo in Briarcliff. Weddings and conventions.

He says, “Why don’t we put up on the blackboard what we think the evidence is? OK? Then we’ll take it point by point.” He
shambles over to the portable blackboard on its easel. “OK? So what do we got? How many witnesses for the prosecution were
there?”

“Three,” says OSHA Pete. “First that big guy, that, uh, ‘captain’? What’s his name?”

“DeCicco,” says the Mt. Kisco matron. “Paulie DeCicco.”

“Right,” says Clarinet Will. He writes “DeCicco” on the blackboard. “So what do we think about him? Do we trust him?”

Says OSHA, “I wouldn’t trust him to feed my pet rat. But about this? Yeah, he sounded like, I thought he was more or less—”

“But he was trying to get a lighter sentence.” This from a baker, a black man from New Rochelle.

“Yeah, but that’s the only way to get them to testify,” says Clarinet Will. “It’s the only way they ever get anyone in the
Mafia. That and tapes.”

“Tapes!” OSHA Pete pounces on this. “Put down ‘tapes.’ Write that down!”

“Well, right now we’re discussing—”

“Put tapes in
red
,” OSHA insists.

“Do we have red chalk?” someone asks.

Says the old Postal Clerk, “This is how we should do it. We should keep red. For important evidence. Green, for evidence that’s
comme ci comme ça
—” He waggles his fingers.

Says OSHA: “
Comme ci comme ça?
”

“It’s French. It’s French my friend.”

“Just hold it,” says OSHA. “Just wait, just listen.”

He looks directly at Annie. “Suppose,” he says, “suppose they were all lying. DeCicco, that ‘mule,’ that cop. Suppose they
don’t know Louie Boffano from Adam. But we still got that
tape.
Right?”

Says Clarinet Will, sweet and placid, “You know, we’re sort of trying to do this in order.”

“Forget the order!” says OSHA. Again he addresses Annie. “Lady, when you hear that tape, when you hear him say—what is it?—about
the tunnel?”

Three voices at once, reciting by rote—for they’ve all heard these words dozens of times:

“‘I tell the Teacher, okay, you want, you want to dig a tunnel…’”

Three more join in: “
‘Dig a tunnel! Kill that motherfucker! Jesus!’
”

Smattering of laughter. OSHA Pete asks Annie: “So when you hear that, what in God’s name do you think? You think he’s talking
about the Tunnel of
Love?
”

Annie knows she’s blushing, and she knows they all see that.

Come on now, answer him. I can speak, I know how. What am I so scared of?

What I’m scared of is that they’ll see right off what a fraud I am, that I don’t believe a shred of what I’m saying.

But she has to try. “I don’t… I don’t think that tape proves anything. He could be, maybe, I don’t know, it wasn’t a direct
order.”

“
‘Kill that motherfucker’?
That’s not a direct order?”

“But… he was telling a story, right? Maybe he was boasting. He was boasting that he gave the order to kill Riggio, but he
really didn’t…”

She fades out. She’s looking to Clarinet Will. He’s got such a sweet face, such a friendly slouch, and she feels weak, and
she might be getting ready to cry. She wants protection, she wants someone to take care of this thing for her….

Says OSHA, “You kidding me, lady? You think he’s really innocent? He was just
bragging
on how he sent a hit man to kill Riggio?”

There are a lot of smiles around the table.

But so what? Let them smile. It really doesn’t matter, she thinks, because all she has to do is hold fast. Hold fast no matter
how they come at her. Be a stone wall, that’s all. Don’t even listen to them. A week of this torture. Maybe ten days. Maybe
two weeks, even—but they
will
give up on her, eventually they’ll have to call this jury hung….

S
LAVKO
at AA. Awaiting his turn to speak. He listens to one tale of pallid death-in-life after another, and he wonders, How in the
world can this ritual help anyone? This singsong, what good is it? The lovers who dump us, the kids who disdain us, the TV
that proposes and disposes, the hotshots who fuck with our heads: that the complaints are universal, how the hell does that
make them any easier to bear?

Jesus he hates these meetings.

Though he thinks they might not be so bad if they’d only serve cocktails.

When his turn finally comes around, he says, “My name is Slavko and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hello Slavko,” they all harmonize.

“I’m an alcoholic, and I’m also what you call a love-addict and a nicotine freak and a fuck-up in my former career of private
investigator, which I never much liked anyway. My new career of poet is going OK. This is one bright spot. In fact I’ve just
finished my first poem, but right now this new line of endeavor isn’t earning me any royalties, you know what I mean? Takes
a while to get established, to start making the big bucks. I’ve been living out of my office but today I was evicted, so now
I’ll be living out of my car. What else? Smoking, Jesus, smoking is just chewing up my lungs. Vague achiness in my lower back,
so I guess pretty soon another kidney stone’s gonna make its move. And my heart? My heart isn’t just broken but shattered.
I mean pulverized, I’m telling you it’s sown with
salt
so nothing can ever grow there again. I’m a hopeless dawdler, I feel sorry for myself with a capital S, and I’m sick and
tired of dancing the twelve-step in these fuckin honky-tonks of yours. Is that enough for one sitting or not?”

He shuts up.

He waits through a few more sob stories, a few more slowwww deaths, and then he gets the hell out of there.

He gets in the Buzzard and drives.

Soon he finds himself driving by Gillespie’s Tavern in North Tarrytown. There are three cars out front. One belongs to Gillespie
himself and one to an obnoxious rummy who frequents the place. The third car Slavko doesn’t recognize but it must belong to
someone so vile that he can stand even the company of Gillespie and that rummy.

So what’s the point in lingering here, Slavko? Can’t we move on now?

He has only three drinks at Gillespie’s.

Then he drives some more.

He finds himself driving to Ossining. He finds himself driving by Sari’s house, and slowing down. Like he did last night.
Driving by and slowing and checking.

Checking what?

Don’t know, who’s asking?

Tonight her car is there, but all the lights are out. Too early for her to be in bed. So she must be on a hot date somewhere.
Steaming hot passionate date with that bastard.

Maybe she’s over at the bastard’s townhouse.

He heads more or less in that direction, until he happens to glance down and note that the gas gauge has fallen to empty.
Far below empty, in fact. It’s somewhere down in the Pit of Vapors.

But luckily he’s not far from a gas station.

One of these new moonbase gas stations. He pulls in and stops at a bright sodium-fluorescent pump island. The pump starts
right up when he squeezes the trigger. They let him pump before paying. What classic green-gilled suckers!

He fills up. He goes in and the sad fellow at the register tells him, “Fifteen dollars and forty-two cents.”

“Really? That much? I don’t have that much.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think I’m made of money?”

“You mean you can’t pay?”

“Of course not.”