Hit List

Twenty-three

The hotel was a Days Inn in Queens, not far from JFK. It looked familiar to Keller, and he realized that he’d met a client in the lounge a couple of years ago. The man had flown up from Atlanta to hand Keller a couple of photographs and an address. Then he’d caught his flight to Europe, an ironclad alibi if there ever was one, while Keller flew down to Atlanta and back again. The client was at a business meeting in Brussels when he got word that his wife had been shot dead by a burglar. He cut his trip short and went home, and four months later he married his secretary.

But that hotel had been a Ramada, hadn’t it? Keller was positive of it, he remembered the client talking about the virtues of the Ramada chain. So it couldn’t be the same hotel, and yet the layout was somehow familiar to Keller.

There was nothing familiar about the room they gave him, but he hadn’t been in any of the Ramada’s sleeping rooms, just the lounge and the lobby. He took a quick shower, then called downstairs and ordered dinner from room service, then sat in front of the television set until the guy showed up with his food. Keller signed the bill, and added a couple of dollars in cash for the waiter, who seemed surprised. Keller figured he didn’t get many tips from sequestered jurors.

“I was wondering,” he said. “Was this place always a Days Inn?”

“If you go back far enough,” the fellow said, “it was a swamp.”

“How about if you go back two years?”

“It was a Ramada.” He flashed a grin. “But that was before my time, so that’s only hearsay evidence.”

Keller, eating his dinner, wondered how they could do that, take a hotel out of one chain and add it to another. It struck him as awfully arbitrary.

He was trying to decide whether he wanted another cup of coffee when there was a knock on his door. He checked the peephole, then opened the door. Gloria darted inside and closed the door behind her, reaching to lock it.

“It felt funny,” she said, “eating alone. And instead of Vietnamese food I had a hamburger and fries and a Coke. If you want me to get the hell out, just say so.”

“Why would I want that?”

“We’re not supposed to spend time together, remember? Because we might discuss the case.”

Her face was flushed, and she’d freshened her makeup. And had she done something different with her hair?

“You look different,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I had a quick shower. So I thought I’d try my hair like this.”

“It’s very becoming.”

“Thank you.”

“I had a shower myself.”

“Well, after spending a whole day in court-“

“A person needs a shower.”

“Definitely,” she said. She looked at him. “Well, what do you want to do? Do you want to discuss the case?”

“No.”

“Neither do I. And that’s good, because they told us not to. This is crazy, isn’t it? I don’t know what I thought I was doing, coming here.”

“Don’t you?”

“I mean this is so not me. After my shower I was staring at myself in the mirror. Like, you slut, what do you think you’re doing? I was standing there naked, if you can imagine.”

“I can imagine.”

“I was thinking about this when I was in the shower. Were you? Did you have any idea?”

“I had an idea.”

“Were you thinking about me in the shower?”

“Yes.”

“When you lathered up-“

“Yes.”

“We both took showers,” she said. “Isn’t that great? We’re both clean.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s get dirty,” she said.

“God,” she said. “All the fantasies I had, and here we are, and it’s better than the fantasies. Last night, when I packed my little suitcase? I was planning this.”

“Really?”

“Oh, absolutely. When we were first sitting around the table I thought, well, we are not reaching a verdict by five o’clock. If I’m the only holdout and everybody thinks I’m an idiot and stubborn as a mule, I don’t care. We’re getting sequestered.”

“I have to admit I was trying to drag it out myself.”

“I thought you were. Your face is very hard to read, but I had a feeling we were both on the same page.” She rolled onto her side, laid a hand on his chest. “You know what else I thought? I thought, if we do reach a verdict, if there’s no way to stall without looking too ridiculous, then we’ll walk out together-“

“The way we always do.”

“The way we always did from the first day,” she said, “and I had this script written. Like I go, I thought we were going to get to spend a night in a hotel. And you go, yeah, so did I. And I go, well, we still can, you know. We’ve even got luggage.”

“I do that sometimes,” he said. “Make up scenes in my head.”

“Did you make any up about us?”

“A few.”

“I don’t know if I’d have had the nerve,” she said. “To actually say let’s go to a hotel. I barely had the nerve to come to your room.”

“But you did.”

“But I did. What if I hadn’t? Would you have come looking for me?”

“I probably would have phoned.”

“Would they have given you my room number?”

“Three-fourteen,” he said. “I paid attention when you checked in.”

“That’s how I got yours! And you got mine the same way. So it wasn’t just my idea.”

“No, we were definitely on the same page.”

“That makes me feel better. I never did anything like this before. God, I can’t believe I said that! But it happens to be the truth. I’m a nice Italian girl, I went to parochial school, I don’t do this sort of thing. I never once cheated, and believe me, I’ve had opportunities.”

“I believe you.”

“I picked you out the first day, but just because I had the feeling you’d be interesting to talk to. Then at lunch I was like, he’s a nice man. And in a day or two it got to be, he’s a very attractive man. By the time the trial started I was having fantasies.”

“Fantasies?”

“Sitting across the table and thinking of all the things I wanted to do to you.”

“Well,” he said, “now you’ve done them.”

“Hmmm.”

“What?”

“Well,” she said, “not quite all of them.”

“Oh?”

“I have quite an imagination. Who the hell am I to even think of some of these things? I mean, I’m from Staten Island.”

“I thought Inwood.”

“I moved to Inwood when I got married. But where I consider myself from is Staten Island.”

“I’m from Missouri,” Keller said.

“You are? I thought… oh, it’s an expression, isn’t it?”

“Right,” he said. “Show me.”

“I guess I’d better get back to my room.”

“Why?”

“Well, what if somebody calls?”

“Did you give anybody the number?”

“No. I guess I could stay, couldn’t I? Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’d like to, because this one night is all we’re going to have. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“We read the verdict and I turn into a pumpkin.”

“Some pumpkin.”

“Well, a legal secretary and a faithful wife. I never did anything like this before. I’m not saying I’ll never do it again.”

“You’ll probably do it again in about twenty minutes.”

“I mean after tonight, silly. With the right person and the right circumstances and the right provocation at home it might happen again. But maybe not.”

“Maybe if you get picked for another jury sometime.”

“Maybe. But for you and me it’s ships passing in the night. I think that’s the way it’s got to be.”

“I think you’re right.”

“And you know something? Otherwise we’d wear it out. I was even thinking we could stretch the deliberations so that we got to stay here a second night. But a second night wouldn’t be the same, would it?”

“Not to mention the fact that the other jurors would kill us,” he said.

“You don’t think any of them are doing the same thing we are?”

“Well, I’ve got my suspicions about two of them.”

“Really?”

“Bittner and Chin,” he said. “A match made in heaven.”

“Oh, you,” she said. “I thought you were serious. What a bad boy you are. I think you’ll have to be punished. Hey, what have we here? You really are a bad boy, aren’t you? I thought I was going to have to wait twenty minutes.”

“It’s remarkable what a night’s sleep can do,” Keller said. “When I woke up this morning it seemed crystal clear to me that Huberman did everything the prosecution says he did. I don’t think it matters whether it’s the same VCR throughout. The man’s charged with selling a stolen VCR to a police officer, and they did a good job of proving it. I think the VCR he sold to Mapes is the same one that’s on the evidence table now, because a property clerk might borrow a camcorder, which is something you would use once for a special event, but who borrows a VCR and brings it back the next day?”

“Everybody’s got a VCR,” someone said.

“Exactly.”

He went on, dismissing the defense’s arguments one by one. Heads all around the table were nodding in agreement. It really was remarkable what a night’s sleep would do, he thought, even though he hadn’t managed more than an hour here and an hour there. It was just as well, he thought, that he was never going to see the woman again. Another such night might put him in the hospital.

“Well,” Milton Simmons said, “I get the feeling our overnight stay cleared things up for everybody. Unless Ms. Dantone’s still harboring some doubts.”

“I guess I’ve known all along the man’s guilty,” Gloria said, “but I wanted to be sure I was convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“And?”

“I woke up with better perspective,” she said, “just like everybody else. And, if I had even a trace of doubt, Mr. Keller cleared it up for me.”

“We could share a taxi,” Gloria said, “but let’s not.”

“All right.”

“It was a shipboard romance, and you have to know it’s over the minute the boat docks. Of course instead of the Love Boat we had the Days Inn.”

“It used to be a Ramada.”

“Well, there you are. I’ll think of you whenever I have Vietnamese food, but I’ll be staying away from Vietnamese restaurants for a while. And if we’re ever on the same jury again-“

“Hey, you never know.”

She hailed a cab. He watched it pull away, then caught one of his own.

There were four messages on his machine, all from the same person. He called back, and Dot picked up the phone and said, “Where were you?”

“Sequestered,” he said, and explained.

“So you went to court yesterday morning, and they kept you overnight at a hotel near the airport. Why the airport?”

“No idea.”

“You couldn’t agree on a verdict so they locked you up. Then you agreed and they let you go home. There’s a lesson there.”

“I know.”

“But they didn’t lock you up for the weekend, did they?”

“No.”

“You went down to Baltimore.”

“Right after court adjourned Friday.”

“And came back Sunday.”

“Right.”

“And called me, and we had a conversation.”

“No, I didn’t call.”

“No kidding, you didn’t call. Which would have been fine. I’m not your mother, I don’t get palpitations if a Sunday comes and goes without a phone call from you. If there’s nothing to report, why should you feel compelled to make a phone call?”

“Dot-“

“Then Monday afternoon I got a FedEx delivery. A little package about half the size of a cigar box, and guess what it was full of?”

“Not cigars.”

“Money,” she said, “and that threw me, because who would be sending me money? Coincidentally enough, it was just the amount we would have had coming if you’d closed the file in Baltimore. So I took a train to the city, bought the Baltimore Sun at the out-of-town newsstand, and read it on the way back to White Plains. Guess what I found.”

“Uh-“

“Macnamara surprised a burglar in her Fells Point home,” she said, “but his surprise was nothing compared to hers when he grabbed the fireplace poker and beat her head in with it. Now this has to be news to you, Keller, because of course otherwise you would have called. So it’s the famous Keller luck, right? Someone else helped us out and did the dirty deed, and we get the credit.”

“I did it, Dot.”

“No kidding.”

“It was late by the time I got home Sunday night.”

“Too late to call?”

“Well, pretty late.”

“And it was early when you left for court yesterday.”

“I was a little rushed,” he said. “I had to pack a change of clothes, in case we were going to be sequestered overnight, and by then I was running late.”

“And last night?”

“We were sequestered.”

“They didn’t let you make a phone call?”

“No telling how secure the line was.”

“I suppose. But what about before you got on the train in Baltimore? Sunday afternoon, Sunday evening, whenever it was. I’d have accepted a collect call, if you were out of quarters.”

“I didn’t think of it.”

“You didn’t think of it.”

“I had things on my mind.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the trial,” he said. “You want to know something, Dot? I had the trial on my mind the whole time. Even in Baltimore, figuring out how to close the deal and then actually going and doing it, I kept thinking about the lawyers and the witnesses and that poor jerk Huberman.”

“And how did it come out? And don’t tell me you’re not supposed to talk about the case, because the outcome’s a matter of record.”

“Actually,” he said, “it’s okay to talk about it now. And we found him guilty.”

“So he goes to jail.”

“I guess so, but that part’s not up to us. He’s remanded to custody until sentencing.”

“He’ll get what, a couple of years?”

“Something like that.”

“You went down to Baltimore and clipped a woman, and then you came back to New York and put a man away for a few years for selling a hot television set.”

“A VCR.”

“Well, that makes all the difference. Don’t you see a contradiction here, Keller? Or at least an irony?”

He thought about it. “No,” he said. “One’s my job and the other’s my duty.”

“And you did them both.”

“That’s right.”

“And we got paid, and Huberman’s headed upstate.”

“That’s right,” he said. “The system works.”