The Juror (41 page)

He fires two more shots, and two more waves of mad panic spread outward. He runs out onto the street. He has only to raise
his HK and a path is cleared for him. Ten steps across the street. Hurtling down a flight of stone stairs and over a fence
and alongside a culvert and into a dense slum of tin-roofed shacks, a warren, a maze, he’s perfectly safe. Annie, struggle
as hard as you like and I won’t love you any less for it, but there’s other work as well, a work of meditation. You should
be preparing yourself for the morning.

A
NNIE
begs this Officer Foncea to understand. “You have to find him tonight. Tonight. My child, tonight!”

“But you say that your child is in T’ui Cuch. This man, this teacher you call him? He is here in the capital.”

“But he’s
going
to T’ui Cuch.”

“T’ui Cuch is hundreds of miles distance. The teacher of your son is on his feet. The car rental agencies are alerted, no
one will rent him a car. All the police of the capital is looking for this man. There is no danger for your son tonight. In
the morning we will inform the Guardia in Huehuetenango. They will visit T’ui Cuch. They will visit your son—”

“Tonight! Please!”

“Tonight?”

“Yes! They’ve got to go there tonight. Oh please!”

“Tonight is not possible. Tomorrow is the day of All the Saints. That is the feast day of T’ui Cuch. There is no telegrams
to T’ui Cuch tonight.”

“But you could call there!”

“I am certain there is no telephones in T’ui Cuch.”

“OK, but you could call Huehuetenango. They could drive up there.”

“Yes. Exactly. This is a good, a good… idea.”

“You’ll call them?”

“Yes, yes.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Now! Please. Oh please God. Please call them
now
.”

“I cannot call them now.”

“Why not?”

“I cannot make this call.”

“Why not?”

“It will be made at the headquarters.”

“No,
here
, please. I’ll pay for it.”

“I will first need to file my report.”

“God damn! Damn you!”

She looks away. Looks out the office at the customs booths. Already another planeload of gringos, another line.

“Is this from California?” she says.

“This? No, this is the Aviateca. From Miami. The flight from San Diego arrived two hours ago.”

“Two hours?
Two hours?
”

The policeman asks her, “Why are you no relax? The teacher of your child, we will find him soon, I am certain.”

“But there’s another one! Another killer! He was on that flight!”

“To kill your child?”

“Yes!”

“Why they kill your child?”

“Please! Listen, the New York, the New York State Troopers! Just call, call an Investigator Carew in New York—”

“The New York—I’m sorry?”

“The troopers. They know this man! This man is a killer! Please!”

“I will call them.”

“From here?
Now?
”

“I cannot call from here.”

“You bastard! Call them right now! These men are killers! If you don’t do what I say, I swear I’ll have you fired!”

“You will what? Are you threaten me?”

“Yes! I’m threatening you, I’ll have your job!”

“If you threaten me I will arrest you. You think because you are from the United States—”

“I’m not threatening you, I’m begging you, please, just let me call Carew, I’ll pay for the call, please how would it hurt
you to let me call—”

“This is Guatemala. The New York policemen can do nothing in Guatemala.”

Then the officer raises his eyes.

She hears a voice behind her. “Annie?”

She turns. It’s Johnny.

“Where is he, Annie?”

“He got away. How did you—”

“I came on the Aviateca flight. First I had to get my daughter off to a friend in Curaçao. Where’s your kid, Annie? We got
to get to your kid.”

Says Foncea, “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of the lady’s. You?”

“I am Officer Rogerio Foncea.”

“Well, Captain Foncea, can I speak to you a moment in, uh, in private?”

Twenty minutes later, Johnny’s driving and Annie’s navigating the little Celica they’ve rented. On the winding highway that
rises steeply out of the city, Johnny careering through both lanes and sometimes even sliding onto the thin right shoulder
to gun past a lumbering truck. He’s driving like a fiend. But still not nearly fast enough for Annie. He tells her, “Thank
God a couple hundred dollars was enough to shut the creep up.”

“Johnny,” she says.

“My name’s not Johnny. It’s Eddie.”

“Eddie. We have to stop. I’ve got to call Carew.”

“Who’s Carew?”

“The New York State—”

“Forget it.”

“But they could, they could send a helicopter.”

“They could but they won’t. Not in time. Think about it. This guy Carew, he’d have to call
his
boss. Then his boss would have to call his boss. Then that guy’d have to call the fuckin FBI. The FBI’d have to call, I don’t
know, the fuckin State Department. Twenty more calls and six weeks later somebody’d send a helicopter to Brazil. Forget it,
girl. It’s just us. Holy Jesus.”

A herd of cattle are crossing the road. Eddie lays into the horn and veers and the car lifts onto two wheels and they thread
a needle between a pair of horned steers. But Annie scarcely notices. “Is there another killer?” she asks. “He told me there
was someone from California.”

“Yeah? Well that was a story for you. That was a bedtime story, to keep you quiet. Nah, there’s nobody come here from California.
There’s nobody come here but just him. But Jesus, he’s enough, isn’t he?”

T
HE TEACHER
drives over the crest of a hill in an old Z-car, and looks down this packed-dirt hinterlands highway, and spies another car
on the road far ahead of him.

A pair of taillights, glowing through a thick membrane of dust.

It still strikes him as an absurd extravagance that he had to
kill
for this jalopy he’s driving—that he had to proffer two bullets to the head of some rich Guatemalan mama’s spoiled girl-child
as she waited for a red light not far from the airport. It’s certainly not a car worth killing for. It’s out of tune. The
steering feels far too plush and the tires too fat. The tachometer is palsied. The headrest is still uncomfortably sticky
from the previous owner’s blood.

But this is the vessel granted. The Teacher’s not complaining. This Z-car is no odder, nor any less stunningly appropriate,
than any vessel the Tao picks out to bear its cargo. And for all its infirmities, it’s still much more agile than the car
ahead. The Teacher gains quickly. And when he’s close enough to see the tag of that car up ahead, he sees that it’s a rental.

There’s a twinge in his gut.

He speeds up. He’s been missing her, he’s desperate to be near her again. He comes to a curve and takes it at seventy-five,
closes in.

He flicks to his high beams.

There are two people in that car. In the passenger seat, the shape of Annie’s head. Faint, haloed. He’s thrilled. A wire stretches
from one end of the universe to the other, and it’s full of juice. Where this wire happens to cross another such wire, a spark
is created. A blinding throb of passion, a roaring howl in the darkness. Then the wires are fused. No matter what you do,
my stubborn bride.

She turns to look back into his fierce-headlight gaze.

He can see that her face is full of animal fear and confusion. She’s tender and childlike and afraid. Her image wavers and
wobbles because the Teacher has tears in his eyes. She says something to her driver and then she raises a pistol. She points
it back at the Teacher’s car.

She fires, and her rear window shatters. The bullet wanders off into space.

The Teacher hangs back, biding his time.

He waits until he comes to a bend in the road, a long seesaw S-curve, and here he pours on the gas. The driver of Annie’s
car is trying to block him from getting by, and that driver is clever, but the Teacher feints once to the right and once to
the left, and then as they break out of the curve he downshifts and comes burning along on Annie’s side of her car. The Teacher
has no music, but one high ledge of his brain plays a Vivaldi allegro motif to another. He rolls down his window and squeezes
out a precise sequence of shots from the HK. Not that he wants to hurt her. He doesn’t dream of hurting her. But he needs
to distract her from her fantasy of stopping him. So he fires over her head, one shot after another exploding her car’s windows
as he comes. But even with the glass shattering all about her she doesn’t cringe. She calmly draws aim. He can’t believe her
courage. He’s so proud of her. He fires a final shot, and it sails over her head and slaps into the windshield in front of
her driver.

The driver grabs her head, forces her to duck. And hits the brakes at the same moment.

And the Teacher takes the opportunity that’s been handed him. He crushes the gas pedal under his foot and surges ahead of
them, loses them in his dust.

But before he does he gets enough of a look into that car to see Annie’s driver. To see that he’s his oldest friend in the
world.

A
NNIE
and Eddie drive on in the dark, rising higher and higher into the mountains. The cool air whistles in through the busted
windows. But it doesn’t whistle loud enough for Annie. She’s going crazy with frustration. Why does this fool slow down at
every nothing nuisance bend in the road? Sometimes he slows so much there’s no wind-whistle at all, nor any sound from the
tires. The tires should be screaming, because when they’re not screaming they’re losing,
we’re
losing, we’re still hours from T’ui Cuch and we’ll never catch him if the tires don’t scream, doesn’t he realize that?

She says, for the fifth time, “
Please
let me drive.”

“No,” he says.

“Please! Why not?”

“You’d kill us. You want to drive so fast you’d kill us.”

She sits silently for a moment. Then she says, “You’re still working for him.”

Eddie says, “I’m going as fast as anyone fuckin can. I think we’re gonna die anyway, I’m goin so fast. But at least with me
driving, we got a fuckin chance.”

“You’re still working for him.”

“Christ.”

“If you’re not working for him, why didn’t you let me kill him?”

“
When he was shooting at you?
He was gonna kill you, Jesus Christ, why don’t you shut up?”

She says, “He wouldn’t have killed me.”

They sweep through a narrow pass, black scarps pressing in, the road twisting along and the car twisting with it.

“Yeah, well, you’re right,” he says. “Maybe you’re right, he wouldn’t have killed you. You understand him? ’Cause I known
him all my life, and I don’t understand shit about him.”

“I could have killed him.”

“All right.”

“Let me drive.”

“No.”

They pass a cluster of mountain cottages, then another. A road sign announces some village. Lights. A stew of lights up ahead.

He comes down hard on the brakes.

“No, don’t stop!” she cries. “Whatever it is, who cares what it is, just go!”

But how can he? The way is blocked. They’ve come to the edge of some town and there’s a chain across the road and a crowd
of revelers on the other side of it. Marimbas and dancers and the smallest Ferris wheel that Annie’s ever seen. All right
out in the middle of the road, and a string of dim cheerless yellow lightbulbs hanging over them.

And a hand-lettered sign:
Vía Cerrada
. The road is closed.

For this fool block party.

“Go through them!” she pleads.

He looks at her. “Can’t go through a Ferris wheel.”

“Well then go around! Let’s go back, there’s got to be some way around!”

He shakes his head. “If there was? He’d have taken it.”

He shifts his eyes and points with his chin, and she looks in the direction indicated. The Teacher’s car is parked beside
the white stucco wall of a little store.

“He’s here?” she says. “He’s waiting for us?”

“Fuck if I know, Annie. Give me my thirty-eight. Let’s go.”

They get out and step over the chain, wade into the crowd of drunken celebrants. A row of three marimbas has been set up under
torchlight, and each marimba is played by three stone-drunk Mayans. Nine madmen in all, all in a row. All hammering as hard
and as recklessly as they can, an earwash of burning red chord. The Ferris wheel, no lights, goes round and round, nobody
in the gondolas. The dancers are dancing each to himself. Looking up at the stars and howling. Some of them carom off of Annie
as she struggles down that street. “Let me through! Please!” A firelit drunk in a monkey-mask falls into her, clutches at
her. Burbles into her cheek. Confusion of stinks she can’t begin to sort out. Eddie peels the man off of her, tosses him back
into the melee, takes her hand and bulls a path.