He had been the face of it, for a lot of people. Pierce had been a voice on the phone, a name on a document, a man who never raised his voice. Krol was the one who'd come around in person. Krol was the knock after closing, the walk through the stockroom like he owned a piece of it, the hand on the doorframe, the pleasant, reasonable tone: Nice place. Be a shame. Claire had heard that tone in her sleep for two years.
Now he stood at the defense table in a jacket that didn't fit him anymore — he'd lost weight in custody — and he answered the judge's questions one by one, yes, Your Honor, no, Your Honor, I understand, Your Honor, in a voice Claire had to lean forward to hear.
The plea was not a small thing, and Sullivan made sure the record showed why. Guilty to extortion. Guilty to conspiracy. And in exchange for the state's recommendation at sentencing — a recommendation, not a promise — Danny Krol would tell the truth: all of it, on the record, about how the squeeze had actually worked, from the inside, with names, dates, and the second set of everything.
The allocution took most of an hour. Claire sat with her hands folded and listened to the machine described by one of its own parts.
It began, Krol said, with paper. Pierce bought bad debts and worse mortgages, pennies on the dollar, from banks and finance companies — real, legal paper with seals on it. Then came the visit, always polite, always with the paper in a folder. The terms got "re-examined." Fees appeared like weather. A payment plan was offered that was designed — designed, Krol said, and the word hung in the air — never to be finished. Interest on the fees. Fees on the interest. A treadmill with a man's name misspelled on the contract.
"And if they paid?" the judge asked.
"They kept paying."
"And if they couldn't?"
Krol looked at his hands. "Then it was my job. I'd go by. I never — " He stopped. Started again, because the deal required all of it. "I never hit anybody. That wasn't the — Mr. Pierce said we weren't animals. We were a reminder. I'd stand in their place and I'd talk about accidents. Fires. What things cost to replace. I'd talk about their kids' cars, where they parked. Just talk." His voice went thinner. "It worked better than hitting. Hitting gets a man arrested. Talking just gets him paid."
In the gallery, Rosa Delgado made a small sound that she covered with her hand.
He described the ledgers — the real ones, in a storage unit off Route 9, in boxes labeled by year like tax records. He described Pierce's own calls, always from a clean phone, always under four minutes. He described the night of the diner — his voice failed him there, briefly, at the memory of the parking lot filling with motorcycles, row on row, headlights coming on like a field deciding to be morning — and how Pierce, watching from a car a quarter-mile off, had said only: Drive. And how that was the first time Krol had understood that the thing he'd been part of was not power. It was just fear, rented out, and the rent had come due.
When it was over, the judge accepted the plea and set sentencing after Pierce's trial, so that Krol's cooperation could be weighed in full. He was led out past the gallery. Passing Claire's row, he stopped — the deputy touched his elbow to keep him moving — but in that half-second he looked at her, and she saw that he wanted to say something and had finally learned what it was worth.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It isn't enough. I know it isn't enough. But it's the first true thing I've said in this building, so I'm saying it."
Claire nodded, once. She couldn't have said why. Grace, maybe, or just the plain recognition of a fact: he had told the truth for an hour, under oath, at cost, and the truth was going to hang Roland Pierce higher than any rope of hers.
Outside, June bought coffee from the cart across the street and handed her daughter a cup. "You feel sorry for him," June said. It wasn't a question.
"I feel — " Claire wrapped both hands around the warmth. "His mother was wearing her church coat, Mom."
"So she was," June said. "And he did what he did. Both things. That's the whole of most people, baby. Both things." She sipped her coffee. "Now he tells the truth and takes his sentence, and that's called the world working. Drink your coffee. It's cold out here and we've got a diner."
Chapter 20: The Trial
Roland Pierce's trial lasted nine days, and Marlow talked about little else, and the Route 9 Diner fed half the courthouse, though Claire charged the prosecution and the defense the same for pie, which June said was the most American thing she'd ever heard.