The Holdout, page 9
“This is by far the longest conversation I’ve ever had about one-way streets.”
He sighed with playful, exaggerated condescension.
It was fun to tease him. There seemed to be a part of him that enjoyed the back-and-forth of being teased.
“Chicago’s Hyde Park,” he continued, “is the classic example. Barack Obama’s own University of Chicago is a lovely upper-class island planted right in the middle of a poorer, historically black neighborhood. So how has the city preserved the upscale enclave over a half a century? With a maze of one-way and dead-end streets between Cottage Grove and Lake Shore Drive. Lake Shore is a major freeway.”
“I thought only California had freeways.”
“So highway, then.”
“What’s the difference between a freeway and a highway?”
Rick paused. “I think it has something to do with whether or not there are on- and off-ramps? This isn’t really related to what I do.”
“I thought you were supposed to be an expert.”
“On one-way streets. Highways are two-way. My point is that Hyde Park’s one-way streets make it really inconvenient to drive through the campus, if you’re trying to get from the highway to the poorer neighborhoods on the west. It’s not segregation through fiat—it’s segregation through subtle inconvenience.”
“The city draws the one-way streets…”
“And everyone travels in the same direction.”
Rick’s plate was still full of mushy scrambled eggs. He’d forgotten to eat. It was cool, the way he made her look at something as simple as one-way streets in an entirely new way.
“What about L.A.?” she asked.
“Well, downtown, just west of Skid Row…” he began. But then, abruptly, he stopped.
“What?”
“I guess I can’t talk about L.A.”
“Why?”
“Because one of the big forces behind L.A.’s infrastructure planning is…well…” He whispered: “Lou Silver.”
Maya nodded. Of course he was right to hush up. It would be against the rules to talk about Lou Silver. Talking about him would essentially mean talking about the case.
Maya respected the look she saw in Rick’s eyes just then. It was the look of someone who wasn’t going to skirt his commitment to justice by breaking a rule that was there for a reason.
“I understand,” she said.
But still she was dying to know: What did Rick think of the case? What did he think about Bobby Nock? Or the line of conflicting DNA experts who’d been paraded through the witness box all week? She searched for a clue on his face. She wished so much that she could ask him. That they could just for a minute talk about the thing that consumed their days.
For her part, Maya was feeling more and more confident that Bobby Nock had been railroaded. How many times, in the United States, had murder charges been brought against a defendant when there wasn’t even a body? The defense attorney had actually posed this question to one of the testifying detectives and then provided the answer: 480 times…since 1800.
Bobby, the defense attorney suggested, had a better chance of getting hit by lightning. And then getting hit by lightning again.
Unless, of course, there were other forces at play. Like, for instance, if the police simply needed to arrest somebody for the murder of a billionaire’s daughter, and Bobby made a convenient scapegoat.
Was there any chance, Maya kept asking herself, that Bobby Nock would be on trial right now if he was white?
She didn’t think so. And while she wouldn’t dare say it out loud, she was sure Rick agreed with her. Not because he, like Bobby, was black. That would be reductive and essentialist and, frankly, offensive. No, no. Maya knew in her heart that Rick agreed with her because he was savvy and thoughtful and fair-minded. Because a man who was this well versed in the segregationist history of one-way streets must be considerably more attuned than she was to the systemic discrimination that had resulted in the tragic prosecution of Bobby Nock.
Silently, Maya looked into Rick’s bright, dark eyes.
She could see it there, even though it remained unspoken between them.
They were on the same side.
JUNE 24, 2009
The jurors were all in the van, headed back to the hotel in silence. They’d heard six straight hours of forensic testimony, and everybody seemed kind of fried. Follicles of hair that matched Jessica Silver’s DNA had been found in the front passenger seat of Bobby Nock’s car. Tiny drops of blood, also matching Jessica Silver’s DNA, had been found both in the front passenger seat of Bobby’s car…and in his trunk.
Maya reminded herself that the defense attorney hadn’t begun her cross-examination yet. Up to this point, she’d presented quite a reasonable explanation for everything the prosecutor offered.
But this didn’t look good.
As the van dropped them off, Lila leaned in and whispered in Maya’s ear, “Kellan’s room. Twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes later, Maya knocked on Kellan’s door. Kellan had a long-hair, California surfer vibe about him. He was by far the most gregarious of them all; everyone liked him, though he seemed to spend most of his time with Peter. Maya had never been to Kellan’s room before. She didn’t think Lila had either. Six other jurors were inside. Soon all the rest arrived.
“So,” Kellan said, taking charge. “Here’s the deal. I have something that I think you’re all going to want to see. It has nothing to do with Bobby Nock or Jessica Silver, or our ability to render a fair and impartial verdict. But technically I’m breaking the rules. So I guess what I want to say is this: I trust all of you. I hope you trust me too.”
Maya was fascinated by the mystery of what Kellan might have.
“If you don’t want any part in this, just leave now. No questions asked, no hard feelings.” He turned to make eye contact with each of them, one by one.
They all stayed.
“Okay then.” Kellan went into his bedroom and returned with a brown paper bag. He reached inside. Was it cocaine? Amphetamines?
Out of the bag came a DVD of the Will Ferrell movie Step Brothers.
Fran picked it up from the coffee table, gazing at the cover like it was a precious jewel. Next came Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Reader, and Yes Man.
“Where did you get these?” Rick asked.
Kellan shook his head. “Sorry. The only way this works is if I keep my connect protected.”
The jurors passed the DVDs around. Fran had never heard of Yes Man. Lila said it was pretty funny. Trisha asked if Kellan thought she’d like Taken.
That night, Maya, Rick, and Lila stayed up late watching The Reader in Lila’s room. Rick made a joke about how it was the perfect “high-middle-brow” movie. Maya found his pretentious streak endearing. He still teared up toward the end.
When Lila feel asleep, Maya sensed Rick inching closer to her. But they did not so much as touch.
Maya had never cheated on someone in her life and she wasn’t about to start now.
* * *
—
THE FIRST TIME she called Hunter at their assigned nightly hour and he didn’t pick up, she was relieved. Then she felt guilty for having been relieved. She should want to talk to her boyfriend. That’s what people did when they were apart. They spoke on the phone every day and they missed each other.
Still, finding thirty minutes’ worth of stuff to say to him, when she couldn’t talk about the thing she was doing all day, was impossible. It wasn’t like he had much to say about his job either. The stilted pauses grew unbearable. She found herself watching the clock whenever they talked, wondering how long she’d have to stay on the line so as not to hurt his feelings.
After he missed that one call—a work dinner had gone late—she told him not to worry about it. She felt good about being able to forgive him. Theirs was not the kind of relationship in which either of them was the bad guy.
She began calling every other night.
Then every third.
JULY 6, 2009
Maya and Rick were watching Michael Clayton on his bed. And then, in an instant, they weren’t. They were completely sober. They knew what they were doing. The feeling of Rick’s skin against hers was thrilling and scary and dizzying.
At six the next morning, she snuck back to her room, one floor below his. She showered, dressed, and made a much-needed coffee in the single-serving brewer. She realized that if she died that day, no one would know the previous night had ever happened.
On the phone with Hunter that evening, she was garrulous. She spoke at greater length about that morning’s breakfast buffet than anyone, ever, had spoken about scrambled eggs.
Of course, she felt guilty. Brutally guilty. But the only person with whom she could discuss her sickening guilt was Rick. Cheating didn’t feel the way she thought it would. Affairs were things that cowards chose when their relationships weren’t giving them what they needed. Infidelity was the refuge of romantic weaklings. That was how affairs were talked about among Maya’s friends, more than one of whom had found themselves in the role of the cheated on. But none of the betrayals for which she’d provided consolation, validation, and alcohol had sounded anything like this.
She spent the next night with Rick. Somehow the idea of going back to her room to be alone with her guilt seemed unbearable. The third night, Rick suggested they sleep in Maya’s room. It came off, honestly, as gallantry.
Their mutual impropriety bonded them even further. What should she do about her boyfriend? What could she say to him, and when? They discussed this openly. Between them, there would be no secrets. Finally, there was someone from whom neither had to keep a thing.
In the private space of their two-person world, they could talk about the entire universe outside the trial. They could talk about everything that wasn’t in front of them, which was most things. The novels they’d admired, the films they hadn’t, why Rick had chosen graduate school, why Maya never had, and what love was supposed to be about, anyway.
They agreed that love should be, first and foremost, about total and complete truthfulness.
The clandestine nature of their relationship created a feedback loop: Their romantic secret could only be picked apart and philosophized about together. So they wanted only to spend more time with each other. Sex was both the cause of their closeness and its effect.
Their subterfuge became a routine: Some nights she would sneak up to his room via the back staircase, the alarm for which they’d learned wasn’t actually hooked up to anything. Other nights, Rick would sneak down to hers. It wasn’t hard to avoid the guards that late. The mornings were trickier. They’d have to tear themselves out of bed early to beat anyone else into the hallway so they wouldn’t be spotted. Every other morning, when Maya crept from Rick’s room, she experienced a single moment of terror as the membrane between their secret world and the one outside broke. And then the danger was gone and the world she’d left was a dream again.
There was one morning, about ten weeks into the trial, when Rick left Maya’s room and then immediately returned.
“Wayne saw me,” he said as he hurried back in.
“What do you mean, he saw you?”
“I went into the hall…Wayne was there.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t say anything.”
“What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Did he see you coming out of my room?”
“I don’t know. He saw me, walked by…gave me this look…and then he was gone.”
“What sort of look?”
“Like…a look.”
“A look like he knows?”
Oh, the hours that they spent discussing that look. Was a smile involved? At what pitch were his eyebrows? Did he really make no sound at all?
They never found out what Wayne knew, or who he told, if anyone. He obviously never ratted them out to the judge. If any of the other jurors ever found out, they never said a word.
And as the trial ground on, Maya and Rick remained steadfast to their one spoken commitment: They never discussed the case.
Breaking so many other rules was what made keeping that one sacrosanct. Of course they wanted to talk about Jessica Silver as they lay in bed, wrapped around each other like twine. But they were there to provide Bobby Nock a fair trial. If that didn’t happen, then all the sacrifices they’d made in order to serve would have been for nothing.
Because they could not talk about the present, they talked about the future. On those late nights among the crisp hotel sheets, they planned.
Maya loved the way he talked about the future. Rick painted such scenes. They were varied, they were compelling, they were detailed:
When the trial was over, Maya would leave Hunter. Rick would move out of Gil’s apartment. Together, they’d find a new place. Wouldn’t Echo Park be fun? The future of Los Angeles was to the east. Rick would finish his doctorate. Maya would finish her book. Surely their time on this trial would provide great fodder for them both.
They would share each other with their families immediately. By then, they would have hatched a narrative in which their romance had not been consummated until the trial was over.
The relationship they invented for themselves was deeply romantic. Two like-minded compatriots met, by blind luck, while performing a just act of civic service. What were the odds that out of all the Angelenos summoned to jury duty, these two would have been thrown together?
They joked about it being the sort of cheesy story that the New York Times wedding section would eat up.
Together, they invented a future in which they reinvented their past. Maya fell for the person Rick hoped he would eventually be. Rick seemed to fall for the person she genuinely thought she was on her way to becoming.
Lying beside Rick on those nights, Maya could hear the faint sounds of the city below. The low hum mingled in her ears with Rick’s slow breathing as she felt herself on the precipice of something wonderful.
SEPTEMBER 28, 2009
Mere minutes after the trial was over, the jurors were led into their room to begin their deliberations. Maya could barely contain her excitement. Finally, after four months of principled silence, so much that had long gone unspoken among them could be discussed. She kept glancing at Rick, who was avoiding eye contact. He must have been just as overwhelmed with anticipation as she was.
But before the group fell into any conversation about the case, their foreperson decided that they should start with a blind vote. The foreperson distributed index cards and black Sharpies. Everyone leaned over their papers as they scribbled.
Maya wasn’t sure how all of the others would vote. Rick, of course, would be on her side, as would Lila, Trisha, probably Kathy.
The foreperson collected the cards and read them aloud:
“Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Not guilty…Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.”
Maya went dizzy. How was this possible? She didn’t know what to say as everyone searched one another’s faces, trying to figure out who the holdout was.
“Maybe,” Fran Goldenberg said, “we should go around the room one at a time and share our thoughts.”
“Maybe,” Rick said, “the person who voted ‘not guilty’ should go first.”
Maya wasn’t even aware of what she was doing as she slowly raised her hand.
CHAPTER 7
HOW MANY PEOPLE KNOW ALL THIS?
NOW
The midday sun revealed specks of dust on the surfaces of Maya’s living room while she told Craig everything.
“You were the lone holdout for not guilty?” Craig asked.
“Yes.” She leaned back in her chair and took a sip from the white paper cup of coffee. It had gone cold.
“And Rick was committed to his ‘guilty’ vote.”
“Yes.”
“That sounds…tense.”
“By the time we got back to the hotel that night, my throat was sore. The idea of arguing more with Rick…Nobody said a word during dinner. The silence was awful, just twelve people chewing. After everyone else was asleep, Rick rang my doorbell. As usual. He came in, and…”
She took another sip of cold coffee. “We were both delirious by that point. I said I couldn’t talk anymore. He said we didn’t have to talk, we could just lie down and go to sleep. He said he just wanted to feel close to me. But there was no way…Our whole relationship had been built around avoiding the case. But now—how could I lie there next to him and not talk about the fact that he wanted to send Bobby Nock to jail? It wasn’t right to argue without the others. The court’s rules were clear: No side conversations outside the jury room. It was even more important then than it had been before. I told him we had to pause.”
“How did he take it?”
Maya knew where Craig was going. “Not well.”
“He was angry?”
“He didn’t understand. He kept saying, ‘What about us? What about our life together? You just don’t care?’ But that was the whole problem. Rick was a man of certainties. He needed to be certain about Bobby Nock murdering Jessica Silver just like he needed to be certain that we were going to be together. He couldn’t live with not knowing. And I—well, I didn’t know. He kept asking, how could I be sure Bobby hadn’t killed her? And I kept saying, ‘I’m not sure! I don’t think he did it, but he might have….’ And that just made Rick angrier. I get it. Wanting to know. Everybody wants to know. But maybe growing up means accepting that you’re not always able to.”
