The Juror (38 page)

He reaches, takes her hand.

She doesn’t pull away.

They walk together up the hill.

They quicken their pace, and he leads her to the top of the rise. From there they can look down to the other side and see
the old sagging farmhouse under its stand of sugar maples. The windows all broken, the porch pilasters rotten. As they gaze
at it, he strokes her palm with his fingertips. The lightest touch possible—but he can feel how it makes her shiver.

He tells her, “I’d like to restore this house. It’ll cost me more than building from scratch. But think of it, Annie: a farmhouse
with calico curtains and a rocking chair on the porch. And polished floors. And kids. A kid like Oliver. And then no more
trafficking with power. Then nothing but love. Do you think I could turn myself into sheer love, Annie? Do you think I have
that
power?”

He doesn’t look at her, but he can feel the warmth of her.

He says, “I want to find a lover who’s creative and maybe a little chaotic, a chaos to balance my structure, does that, does
that—? Annie? Let me say this, Annie. OK? I’m sorry you hate me. Because I love you.”

They stand there gazing at that house. Is she as scared as he is? he wonders. He’s scared, but he’s devoted to his fear. He’s
devoted to the feel of the big clapper ringing inside his hollow chest.

He turns to look at her, and then she meets his eyes and she reaches up and lays her hands on his temples and draws his face
down to her.

She weeps as his lips touch hers.

No tongue, no pressure. Just the touch of her lips against his, the taste of her tears.

Never been kissed that softly in his life.

He leans into her but she pulls back. “No,” she says. “No.”

She turns and hurries away from him, back down the wide-open slope.

He catches up with her at the car. She’s standing at her door. “Drive me back,” she says.

“When will I see you again?”

It’s hard for him to have to ask. But it’s hard for her, too. She can’t speak. She seems as though she’s going to shake her
head, but then she’s saying, “Soon. Yes. But not tomorrow. Soon. Oh, give me time, Zach. Please.”

A
NNIE
, forty minutes later, is back in her favorite FBI cubicle, and Carew is giving her hell. He’s flushed and squinty-eyed, hoarse.

“What the HELL were you doing getting out by Papa Taco?”

“Excuse me?” she says.

“On Route 22. In Stoneleigh. You were riding with the guy you call Johnny, he pulled off the road. We heard the door open,
we heard the door shut. Why? What was going on?”

“He told me to get out.”

“Oh yeah? How come
we
didn’t hear that?”

“He
motioned
me, OK? I thought that’s where I’d be meeting the Teacher. But after a minute nobody showed up, so he told—he
motioned
me to get back in the car.”

“And then?”

“And then we drove around.”

“Without saying a word?”

“He wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Maybe that’s because you told him to shut up.”

“Maybe. Did you
want
me to talk to Johnny? I thought you wanted me to talk to the Teacher.”

“Then half an hour later you went back to the same place?”

“Yeah. Same thing happened all over again.”

“That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“For some reason,” she says, “the Teacher didn’t show up. I think he must have guessed what’s going on.”

“How would he have guessed?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. You figure it out. Me, I’m going home.”

He shakes his head. “We have a lot of things to talk about.”

“Great.” She grins. “We’ll talk tomorrow. We’ll set up another sting, huh? Oh boy. It’ll be a blast. But right now I’m exhausted
and I want to go home.”

She rises.

“We’re not done, Ms. Laird.”

“I’m going home.”

“Sit down. I want to know what the hell is going on in your head.”

“What’s going on in my head? My child. I’m thinking about my child. That’s all. Nothing else. Nothing fancy. Just my child.”

“Sit down.”

“No.” She fixes him in her gaze. “You want more out of me today, arrest me. Get me a lawyer. Otherwise I’ll be in tomorrow.
Tomorrow afternoon, say four o’clock?”

“Annie—”

“Don’t call me Annie.”

“Ms. Laird—”

“Meanwhile, get fucked.”

She walks out.

She gets in her car and drives toward Greenview Cemetery.

F
RANKIE
and Archangelo stand guard at the Boffano mausoleum while Louie Boffano communes with his late beloved mother. Frankie’s
looking down the long corridor of angels when suddenly this woman appears. Wearing a black windbreaker with the hood up, walking
swiftly toward them.

He barks the news to the others: “Who the fuck is that?”

Can’t be a mourner. No mourners are allowed in here this late on Sunday. Except Louie Boffano.

Louie turns and sees her himself. “Wait a
minute
,” he says.

Frankie knows that if anyone were of a mind to, it’d be a good time to kill Louie Boffano. After his stretch in stir, he’s
vulnerable. He doesn’t have his land legs under him yet. This babe coming on, coming so quick out of nowhere—this babe could
be bad news.

Frankie steps back to stand in front of Louie. He calls out, “Hold it!”

She keeps coming.

He reaches into his jacket and puts his hand on his Glock. “I said hold it!”

She keeps coming. “Mr. Boffano?” she says. “I need to talk to you.”

Nothing in her hands. Her handbag’s slung over her shoulder—no immediate problem there. Unless she’s planning on strangling
Louie with her bare hands, we’re all right, Frankie thinks.

But Archangelo isn’t feeling so relaxed. He pulls out his piece and drops into a stance and bellows: “STOP OR I’LL BLOW YOUR
FUCKIN HEAD OFF!”

Just like a
police.

Jesus.

It works, though, the woman holds up. Ten yards away. She stands there on the grass in the corridor of angels.

“Archangelo,” Louie chides gently. He waves the pistol down. Then he asks the woman, “What can I do for you?”

She says, “Do you recognize me?”

“Yeah, sure. The lady juror. What do you want?”

“I have something for you.”

Reaching for her handbag.

Frankie shouts, “DON’T TOUCH THE BAG!”

She shrugs. She dips one shoulder and lets the bag slump off of her. “Then you come get it.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a peace offering,” she says. “I want to make an arrangement with you. I give you what’s in my bag. And I promise I won’t
cooperate with the state investigators. And you leave me alone. Me and my family and my friends.”

Says gracious Louie, “Of course I would never hurt your family. Nor you, nor nobody. I don’t even know you, why would I—”

“Swear it, Louie, and I’ll give you your gift.”

“Well, I tell you the truth, I’m not interested in your fuckin gift.”

“Oh, yes you are,” she says, and goes for the bag again.

“DON’T!” cries Frankie.

She smiles at him. “You think I would want to kill Louie Boffano?” Contemptuous sneer when she speaks his name. “But he’s
nothing to me. Why would I want to kill
him?
”

Louie signals Frankie to ease up.

The woman picks up her handbag, and opens it. She brings out a minicassette recorder. She presses the PLAY button.

They hear the Teacher’s laughter.

“Louie Boffano’s not anyone’s friend. He’s a freak. He’s a monster. But he intrigues me. Does it seem depraved—my fascination
for that man?”

She stops the tape. “Did you enjoy that, Mr. Boffano? Would you like to hear more?”

“When did you tape this?” says Louie.

“Today.”

“Who wired you?”

“I wired myself. It’s an Olympus something—I bought it last night on Forty-second Street.”

Louie holds out his hand. He wants her to bring the thing to him. Frankie can see that his hand is trembling.

“Louie,” Frankie warns him under his breath, “this could be some kind of tricky shit. The Teacher wouldn’t, he wouldn’t—”

“Get that thing from her,” Louie tells him.

She says, “No. Not till you swear. Swear you’ll never hurt me. Not me, not my child, not my friends—”

“Just gimme the tape,” he says. “I swear I’m outta your life forever.”

She fixes him with her huge eyes, with the black pouches under them. Frankie thinks, Isn’t she the one Eddie called a beauty?
But she’s no beauty. She’s a scary damn witch.

She walks up to Louie, and she hands him the machine.

“Waste no time,” she tells him.

She turns and walks away. As Louie finds the PLAY button and depresses it. They watch her walk down the corridor of mausoleums.
On the tape they hear her asking the Teacher, “
Then why don’t you run that family yourself?
”

And they hear the Teacher laugh and tell her, “
Maybe someday I will
.”

They watch her disappear among the graves.

On the tape the Teacher is saying, “
I might discard old Louie, or I might not. Perhaps I think it’s wise to have a figurehead. To take the heat off me. Let him
be the mountain, I’ll be the ravine
.”

T
HE TEACHER
, bright and early on Monday morning, rides in Eddie’s car down the long rutted drive of what was once St. Theresa’s on the
Hudson. Used to be a private school for girls, until that went belly up a few years ago. The campus is still used in the summer
by the Fresh Air Fund, but the rest of the year it’s deserted.

Eddie pulls up beside a cedar-and-glass cafeteria. They get out and wait. The Teacher rests his briefcase on the hood of Eddie’s
car, and gazes down through the chestnut oaks, through branches as dark as the lead in stained-glass windows, to a shattered
view of the river. He waits calmly, saying nothing.

But Eddie keeps checking his watch and muttering, and finally he says, “Hey, Vincent, if you’re worried about this, let’s
get out of here.”

“I’m not worried.”

“You’re not?”

“Are you worried, Eddie?”

“Yeah. To be honest? Yeah.”

The Teacher smiles. “Louie’s not going to hurt me. Louie and I, we go back a long way.”

“Yeah, I know that.”

“He says he wants to talk about the deal with the Calabrians. Why shouldn’t I believe him?”

“’Cause why is it such a fuckin emergency? Why does he want to see you
today?
”

“Louie’s been in prison. He’s restless. He wants to get moving on our plans. Seems reasonable to me.”

“I dunno, Vincent.”

The Teacher ambles up to the cafeteria’s door, to examine an alabaster Virgin in her alabaster niche. What do they find to
worship, he wonders, in such a bland, expressionless totem?

Except perhaps that her eyes look a little like Annie’s eyes.

He waits.

At last the black Lincoln appears. Louie Boffano and his party—his brother and Frankie and Archangelo. Frankie gets out of
the backseat and stands by the open door. Louie, in the front passenger seat, asks the Teacher, “What’s in the briefcase?”

“Spreadsheets. Plans for the Calabrian deal. Isn’t that—?”

“Check it, Frankie.”

Frankie opens the briefcase, rifles through the papers, feeling for a false bottom.

“Nah, it’s just fuckin paperwork, like he says.”

“Search him.”

Frankie pats him down.

“He’s clean.”

“All right. Gotta check these things, right, Vincent? You never know, right? Come on in.”

The Teacher gets in the back. But when Eddie moves toward the door Louie says, “Ah, not you. We don’t need you for this one,
Eddie.”

Eddie peers anxiously into the car.

Says the Teacher, “I’ll be fine, Eddie. I’ll see you later.”

Says Eddie, “Well, I’ll wait for you here then.”

Says Louie, “Nah, go on home. Why wait? Wait for what? You just take the day off. How’s your daughter? How’s Roseanne?”

“She’s OK, Louie. But—”

“Spend some time with her. Give her a smooch from Uncle Louie, huh? We’ll get Vincent home.”

They drive off, down the narrow road.

The Teacher is squeezed between Frankie and Archangelo in the backseat. Louie sits up front. His brother Joseph is at the
wheel.

“Vincent,” says Louie, and he turns to give him a smile. “I’m glad you came.”

The Teacher shrugs. “Command performance, what could I do?”

The lane gets rougher as they descend toward the river. A gopher-haunted soccer field opens to their left, and they start
to angle across it. But in the middle of the field, they stop.

Louie turns again. “More than twenty years we’ve been working together, isn’t that right, Vincent? Any time you had some fancy
idea, well shit, I got the manpower, I got the organization, we worked it out. We both got rich. More than twenty years of
this, you know?”