The Juror (32 page)

At last she holds up and looks around her.

She sees him waiting for her in the boxcar’s open door.

“Annie. Come up,” he says. He reaches out his hand to help her into the car. But she stays where she is.

“Why do you want me?” she asks him.

“So I can thank you. Also so I can sing your praises.”

She has no reply to that.

“I listened to you in that jury room,” he says. “The way you spoke to them—your power took my breath away. And you, I think
you were equally astonished. I think you’ve just found out what you’re capable of. I think that soon you’re going to be ruling
the art world.”

He crouches, lays his palms flat on the boxcar’s wood floor, swings out and drops lightly to the ground.

She says, “What do you
want?
”

“I want you to know I believe in you. In your fierce talent. I’ll stand behind you.”

“Don’t,” she says.

“As much as I can help your career, I will.”

“Don’t.”

“You remember when I said this would change your work, this would make you stronger? Has it done that yet, Annie?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Ariel, thou shalt be as free as mountain winds.”

“And get your bastards to stop following me.”

He wonders what that means.

She says, “We made a deal. I did my part. Now get out of my life.”

“Who’s following you?”

“Your two mules or whatever you call them, why the hell are they following me?”

“Two men? What do they look like?”

He can hear the impatience surfacing in his own voice. The sudden concern—and Annie picks up on it too.

“Wait,” she says. “Those two men.
Those two men
.”

“Not mine.”

“They have to be.”

“You’re certain they were following you?”

“Well, I thought… I don’t know.”

“What happened to them?”

“I slowed down. Sort of challenged them. They pulled off.”

“What make of car?”

“How would I know? Just a plain car. Green. Boxy. Are you playing with me? They’re really not yours?”

“Annie, why would I have you followed
now?
” He steps up close to her and sets his hands on her shoulders. He studies her eyes. “Perhaps you only imagined—?”

“Let go of me,” she says.

She can’t get much threat into those huge soft eyes of hers, but he sees her trying, and he grins. “OK,” he says, and he takes
his hands off her.

“The police?” she asks. “You think it’s the police? That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? But how would they, how could they
know about—”

“You tell
me
, Annie.” And then when she has no answer he prompts: “Perhaps Oliver.”

“No.” She’s firm on that. “If he had told anyone, I’d know it.”

“Your friend Juliet, then?”

That one grabs her, as he had expected it would.
He knows about Juliet?
He watches her trying to regain her composure.

“Annie?”

She’s still searching. “I don’t, I don’t—Juliet would never have put my son in danger.”

“She told you to go running to the judge. That wasn’t putting him in danger?”

“But I went
along
with that. And after I gave up on that idea, I made her promise to stay out of it. She said she
would
, she promised. She swore to me.”

He tells her, “Right now, Annie, right now Louie Boffano is on top of the world. If we bring him down from there… you cannot
conceive of how much that will anger him.”

“Maybe they
weren’t
following me. Maybe it was—”

“If you see them again, I want to know it.”

“Yes.”

“I want to know right away.”

“Yes.”

“I want to know everything.”

“All right.”

“If you need to find me, call Maretti. Tell him where you’ll be. I’ll have Eddie pick you up. OK?”

“Yes.”

He reaches up and with his fingertips he touches the silky hair of her temple.

“Who will protect you?” he asks her.

“You will,” she says.

“And why will I protect you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because I can’t possibly let anything happen to you now.” He places his full palm against her cheek, and leaves it there
long enough to feel her warmth. “We’ve come too far together.”

F
RANKIE
takes his girlfriend Molly to Louie Boffano’s Emancipation Party. They drive down to Louie’s spread, which looks like a Virginia
plantation on the south side of Staten Island. A long smooth driveway that curves up to the house like a question mark. Then
some jockey takes the car—the new Viper—and Frankie goes sweeping up the marble steps with Molly on his arm. She looks god
damn flawless. Wearing the Lacroix gown that he bought her today. Frankie himself doesn’t look quite so perfect. His right
cheek is bandaged and his right eye is still swollen. But the eye patch is dashing. The Oxxford tux is brand new and dazzling
white, the shoes are Luciano Barbera. He’s in a good mood, he’s having a good time.

And he keeps having a good time right up until he’s in the middle of a jitterbug with Molly and suddenly he looks up and Louie
is standing right there. With his bodyguard Archangelo by his side. Of course Frankie quits dancing right away. Louie asks
Molly, “Mind if we borrow your beau for a minute?”

But it isn’t a question.

Louie’s already got his hand on Frankie’s back just below the neck, and he’s steering him through the crowd. Archangelo on
the other side of him.

Under the huge chandelier and through the big sculpture gallery full of naked women and angels with little wee-wees. Down
some stairs and their steps echoing. The way footsteps do in prison, Frankie thinks.

Then out into the garden, into the chilly misty evening. Despite the chill, every inch of Frankie is covered with sweat. They’re
moving so briskly, the three of them, and they’re saying nothing. Frankie wonders if maybe there isn’t something he should
say in his defense.

I ought to at least
try
to talk them out of it.

He says to Louie, “I mean I know how I fucked up the other night when I let that prick Sure-Knack get away, I’m really sorry,
Louie, but shit, I was trying to, trying, to do the best I, I mean the best I could…”

He looks over. Louie’s not even listening. He keeps up the pressure on Frankie’s back.

Past the pool, past a row of shrubs all pruned to the shape of the Virgin Mary. Trees, a tennis court. Sort of a thicket with
a path cutting through it, and here Louie makes a sign to Archangelo and he drops back.

Frankie and Louie arrive at a small clearing.

The Teacher is sitting on a wrought-iron bench.

“Hello, Frankie,” says the Teacher.

Says Louie, “Frankie was just telling me about the incident from the other night. About how sorry he is for what went down.”

The Teacher shakes his head, slowly.

Louie takes a seat on the bench beside the Teacher. He leans back. He takes out a cigar and lights it. “Do you have a problem
with what went down?” Louie asks the Teacher. “Do you have a problem with Frankie?”

“Yes I do,” says the Teacher. “My problem is that he’s too quick, too sharp, far too loyal for the work he’s doing.”

“So what are we gonna do about it?”

“I think you’d better make him into a captain, Louie,” he says, and he grins, and presently Frankie realizes that his jaw
is hanging wide open like he’s brain-damaged, and he shuts it.

A
NNIE
is just back from the Laundromat, opening the trunk of the Subaru to get her basket of laundry, when she hears a car crunch
on the drive behind her.

Two doors open at once. Two official visitors, their ID cases tumbling out of their palms.

“Annie Laird? I’m Investigator Carew of the New York State Troopers. This is Investigator Beard.”

She’s still got the basket of laundry in her arms. She looks toward the street. Investigator Beard sees her doing it, and
he glances that way himself.

Says Investigator Carew, “We’d like to ask you some—”

Again she cuts him off. “Not here.”

She turns and puts the laundry basket back into the trunk. “You want to ask me questions, we’ll go to your office. We’ll go
right now.”

She slams the trunk shut.

“Our office is in White Plains, ma’am.”

She walks right past him to the rear door on his sedan. She says it again. “Now.”

That seems to suit the investigators. Carew holds the door open for her.

An hour later, she’s sitting in the antiseptic windowless office of inquisition, before a square desk. Carew and Beard on
the other side of it. There’s a painting on the wall to her left. Hazy hillside. Below this painting is a brass-colored plastic
plate that reads “
Summer Birches
.” That’s nice, how thoughtful of them to provide me with this happy smudge of Art.

The wall opposite has a darkened sheet of glass. Annie supposes it’s a one-way mirror. But why are you hiding, whoever you
are? Does the Dread Juror frighten you? Come out, come out, you weasely cowards.

Investigator Carew is grilling her. “Roger Boyle?”

“Don’t know him.”

“The name means
nothing
to you?”

“Nothing.”

“The Caruso Hotel?”

“Where we stayed. The jurors.”

“You remember the room you were in?”

“Vaguely.”

“You recall it had a balcony?”

“Hmm-hm.” Get
to
it, she thinks.

“On Friday night you stood on that balcony and had a conversation with someone on the balcony of the next room. You remember
that?”

“No.”

He sighs. “Ms. Laird. It’s not the sort of thing that happens every day, is it?”

“I guess not.”

“An eyewitness saw you.”

“Maybe saw my roommate.”

“No, Ms. Laird. The witness says he saw the same woman that he saw at the Mapougue Reservoir.”

“What’s that?”

“October 17. You were sitting on the rocks by the reservoir, you were talking to a man. Remember?”

“Not really.”

“The same man you were talking to on the balcony.”

“Oh?”

“The man who called himself Roger Boyle.”

“Oh?”

“You recall?”

“Not really.”

“Not really? You weren’t there?”

“I wasn’t there.”

“But we know that you were. So now we’ve got this conflict, don’t we? How would you explain it?”

“Explain what?”

“This conflict.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, give it a stab. What do you think?”

“Mushrooms?”

“What does that mean?”

“You, you investigators, maybe you take a lot of mushrooms and you see things that aren’t there.”

Now the other one, Investigator Beard, speaks up. “Ms. Laird.”

“What.”

“What do you do for a living?”

“I used to process orders for a company called Devotional Services. But this trial went on a while, I suppose by now my boss
has found somebody else.”

“Ms. Laird, your bank account took a real friendly little bounce this month—”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“I sold some artwork.”

Says Carew, “You did? Good for you. But you know what? We don’t really care how you got it. Because we don’t think you did
this for the money. We think these guys scared you. They’re still scaring you. But now it’s time to quit being scared. Let
us get you out of this mess.”

“How would you do that?” she asks.

“If you open up to us, help us, testify for us, we’ll put you somewhere safe. You and your boy. Then we’ll put Mr. Boyle and
his friends in jail. We’ll put them away for a long time.”

“And then what?”

“Then whatever you want. You could relocate for good if you liked. Or come back here—”

“You mean to Pharaoh?”

“If you want.”

“To my house? After I testify—”

“The mob’s not what it used to be, Ms. Laird. Their bark is worse than their bite. They don’t often kill civilians.”

“Often? Not
often?
You’re sweet. Now can I go?”

Investigator Carew glares at her. She glares back.

“Not yet,” he says.

“Well, make it quick then. I’ve got to get home before my kid gets out of school.”

Says Investigator Beard, “We could send someone over to pick your son up. Take him wherever—”

She erupts. “No! Stay away from my house! You put me in danger when you come around my house! Don’t you stupid bastards understand
that?”

Carew looks over at Beard. Then he makes a steeple of his fingers in front of his face, and asks, “In danger, Ms. Laird? In
danger from what?”

“From the Man in the Moon. Let me out of here.”

“I’m afraid we’re not finished.”

“I’m finished.”

“Ms. Laird, we’re trying to help you. But you have to cooperate.”

“Well, I can’t.”

She pushes her chair back. Ready to get up, but Carew shakes his head and says, “All right. Listen. Suppose the press got
hold of some bad information. All sorts of crazy things happen—suppose there was a leak to the effect that you
were
cooperating. That’d make a great story, wouldn’t it? State to Bring Tampering Charges Against Boffano, Juror Will Testify—something
like that. Your friend, your visitor at the hotel, he’d be glad to see himself in print, wouldn’t he?”

“You do that,” she says, “and they’ll…”

“What?”

She feels the skin tightening around her cheekbones. The hell with it, she thinks. They know anyway. So she says it. “They’ll
kill my child.”

He’s ready for that. “No, they won’t. If you help us they won’t.”

“Oh fuck you! You don’t know them! You don’t—”

“Ms. Laird, I’ve spent the last twenty-five years of my life locking these punks away. They always threaten. Always. But they
don’t do squat. They’re not going to hurt you. Or anyone close to you. They know we’d consider that an act of war, we’d use
that to wipe them off the face of the earth. They’re dumb but they’re not
that
dumb.”

“But you can’t be
certain
—”