“That property clerk was lying.”

“Yeah, I’m with you on that one.”

“Took home a camcorder to tape his kid’s party. That don’t mean the evidence got tainted about the VCR.”

“And it doesn’t mean Mapes lied.”

“Doesn’t mean he didn’t, either.”

At a quarter to five Morgan Freeman polled them again, informally this time, going around the room. By the time it got to Keller there were six voting to convict and three voting to acquit. Keller figured it didn’t matter, they weren’t going home that night no matter how he voted, but he had to say something. “Guilty,” he said.

“Not guilty,” said the woman to his left.

So it evened out. Last time they’d done this, Keller had been for acquittal, the woman to his left for conviction. Now Morgan Freeman voted to convict, and they were eight to four, with fifteen minutes left to work it out.

“Okay,” the foreman said. “I don’t say we’re deadlocked, not by any means. It’s just taking us a little while to sort things out. It’s whether or not a man goes to prison, and we don’t need to rush ourselves. Looks like we’re going to spend the night in a hotel.”

There was some grumbling, but Keller thought it seemed pretty good-natured. These people were New Yorkers, after all. You had to expect a certain amount of grumbling.

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?”