-This is what Sigrid said would happen. It’s totally unfair. She said you had to get on the jury.
-Does she think I’m black?
-No, but I told her you would do the right thing.
The Sophist had one last comment for me before he got into his car.
-It’s up to you now, brother.
-What is?
-Justice, baby. I’m counting on you.
And now Marissa.
-Fletcher, he needs your help.
-What if he’s guilty?
-Sigrid said—
-Sigrid said her husband said somebody said. This is crazy. I should tell the judge I’ve been compromised.
I was serious. First thing in the morning. Your Honor, my sort of girlfriend—I mean, our relationship is she doesn’t want commitment right now, she needs to explore her freedom, that’s just the place she’s at, and under these circumstances, my status being already precarious, if we find him guilty it’s going to be ex-sort of girlfriend, so I don’t think I can be impartial. But I could already hear Judge Silverson’s scold: this is the last straw, Mr. Fletcher, your cell phone, the sick dog story, now this. You are going to sit on that jury like a model citizen and you are going to listen to the arguments and weigh the evidence and make the right decision, do you understand? Not that there was any chance of this conversation taking place.
-Promise me you won’t. Promise me you’ll stay on the jury.
Marissa was hugging me again. She knew how to get what she wanted, Pete was right about that. I could hear his voice: Dude, she’s got you pinched, she hangs out with that painter guy, and you can’t even look at another woman. Well, he was half right. I looked at other women all the time. I even smiled. Rarely, this being Laguna and me driving an old Honda, did they smile back. Marissa had said go ahead, see whoever you want. But if I did, if I had a dinner date with the nice Spanish teacher for example, Marissa would be hurt. That much I knew. She’d feel betrayed, get angry, and that would be the end of us.
-Okay.
-That’s a promise? You’ll stay on the jury?
I really didn’t have a choice.
-Yes. But listen, if the evidence says guilty—
-Of course. Thank you.
Another hug, then she went for her cell phone.
-I need to text Sigrid. I told her I’d let her know. Do you want to go to First Thursday?
She can type a text message and carry on a conversation at the same time.
-I told Pete I’d come over. How about dinner tomorrow night?
-Okay, dinner tomorrow. I can’t wait to hear about your day in court.
She closed her phone. Message sent.
-Marissa, I’m serious, I can’t talk about the trial. I don’t want you to—
-To what?
Hug number four. And this time a kiss. I didn’t know a juror was such a turn-on.
-You know. Sway my opinion.
-Sway your opinion? I can’t even get you to go to First Thursdays. Sigrid says there’s great new stuff.
On the first Thursday of the month, the numerous art galleries in downtown Laguna stay open late and entice locals with free hors d’oeuvres and the promise of a cultural outing, only the paintings on display always seem so self-conscious, like they’re trying hard to be something, whimsical or cubist or I guess mostly they’re trying to be sold. Also, I’m not big on cheap white wine served warm in plastic cups. I’d rather drink beer.
-I promised Pete I’d watch the Angels game. I’m sorry.
-It’s okay, I’ll find someone else.
Great. Someone, for example, who appreciates bright sunny oil paintings, someone who doesn’t talk sports. What do they talk about? Sigrid, I hope. I hope Mr. Seascape has to listen to all the updates on Sigrid’s heroic struggle against injustice.
-I’ll go next month.
-Right. Is Bud Jack’s lawyer good?
-Hard to say.
-Sigrid says he couldn’t afford a decent one.
I knew it. Lawson is incompetent. I knew it all along.
-You know what she told me? Public defenders almost always go for a plea bargain. They know they’re probably going to lose, it’s their word against the police, so they tell the defendant to take the smaller sentence, guilty or not. What do they care? They get paid the same and it’s less work. A poor black guy doesn’t stand a chance in that system. That’s what she kept saying—Marissa, he doesn’t stand a chance. She can be dramatic sometimes, but you have to admire her passion.
-Why doesn’t she hire him a lawyer? I mean, if she’s so concerned and everything.
Sigrid went on and on to Marissa about her causes—the malnourished sea lion pups that wash ashore, the scandalous lack of art in public spaces around town—and then Marissa went on and on about Sigrid, such a generous woman, such great energy, you know she won an award from the city council, she’s amazing. But a few hours of charity work squeezed in between the spa and the gym and a salad at the natural food café downtown doesn’t impress me. Try being in a high school classroom for thirty hours a week, grading papers all weekend, taking phone calls from parents who are absolutely shocked by the D on our daughter’s progress report, she’s never had any trouble in math before, we’re very concerned, maybe you’re using the wrong approach. Try having nightmares about students who refuse to take their seats and keep flipping the lights on and off, on and off. If Bud Jack is innocent and the jury is racist and grandma’s losing her house and the system is a fraud, why doesn’t the amazing and passionate Sigrid skip the eco-vacation—they’ll be on a sailboat for two full weeks, she told Marissa, one island to the next, no carbon footprint except the plane ride but how else can you get there?—and hire a defense attorney clever enough to excuse the one juror who said the defendant looks guilty?
-She is. I mean her husband. I wasn’t supposed to say anything. She wasn’t even supposed to tell me. She said her husband doesn’t want anyone to know because they don’t like to wear their generosity on their sleeve.
-They’re paying Bud Jack’s legal expenses?
-That’s what she said. Because even if he did it or not, everyone deserves competent representation.
Oh.
For the record, I’m no math whiz. Yes, I teach algebra and geometry and enjoy solving logic puzzles. And I’d done a little research. I knew a “small” house in Laguna started at a million bucks. I knew Sigrid was spending over $200 a week on spa treatments. I knew the two-week all-inclusive Galapagos excursion cost seven grand, I had looked it up online. Don’t ask me why, but for some reason I was curious how much money Super Sigrid threw around. But I wouldn’t know where to begin to figure the odds of a jury member dating the masseuse of the wife of the man secretly funding the defense counsel. In a mega-sprawling population center. And finding out about it. I mean, that’s one hell of a coincidence.
On the drive over to Pete’s, I stopped at a burrito shop on Pacific Coast Highway. Pete lives in a condo too close to school and refuses to shop within a five-mile radius because he will run into students or former students or, worst of all, other teachers.
-They’re going to want to chat.
-So?
-So I don’t want to chat.
So it goes without saying that when we watch a game at his place, I pick up dinner. Inside the restaurant, next to the front window, a small woman was sitting by herself reading a paperback, a half-eaten meal in front of her. I couldn’t help myself.
-Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt. How are you enjoying that book?
-I can’t put it down. Have you read it?
-No, I…is it about a jury?
-No, this billionaire rewrites his will right before he jumps out a window. He’s got it all planned out, he leaves the entire fortune to a missionary in Brazil because his heirs are…well, you’d have to read it.
I usually feel bad for someone eating alone. I wonder if they’re lonely, if they wished they had someone to talk to. For me, eating alone is like filling yo
ur gas tank, something you do quickly, when you have to, something to keep you moving, not a time to savor and enjoy. This woman, though, seemed quite content. When I left the restaurant with a warm bag of takeout, she was back in her novel and didn’t look up.
-So she was reading a Grisham. So what?
Pete was sitting on his couch, watching the baseball game, eating his burrito straight from the wrapper, dripping hot sauce onto his lap.
-It wasn’t just her. The woman next to me in the courtroom had one. And so did I. We’re both reading Grisham while waiting for a murder trial. Kinda weird, huh?
He wasn’t impressed.
-Yeah, spooky. What does the guy look like, anyway?
-Grisham? The picture on the back of the book—
-No, the defendant.
-He looks like a point guard.
-Small and quick, or big like Magic Johnson?
Pete knew exactly what I meant—a physical description, nothing more.
-Small and quick, like John Stockton.
Stockton who, for the record, happens to be white, very white, as white as the walls in Pete’s condo.
-Well, we know the guy can shoot.
White walls, brown carpet, a couch-and-tv living room, common walls with neighbors on two sides—it’s not a charming home. Pete pretends to love it, says it’s cool, he can plug the cord in behind the couch and the vacuum reaches every room. I call the place The Cave. There’s almost no natural light, just a sliding glass door that leads to a tiny, walled patio facing north. I guess you can’t be picky if you want to live walking distance from the beach on a science teacher’s salary—walking distance, but the roar you hear when the television is off is not crashing waves, it’s traffic on the nearby highway.
-You think he did it?
-I don’t know. The trial hasn’t really started yet. And anyhow, I’m not supposed to discuss it.
I turned my attention to the ball game.
-Or what?
-Or I’ll get kicked off the jury.
I took a big bite of food.
-I thought that’s what you wanted.
Pete wasn’t getting the hint.
-Yeah, well….
I had planned on telling him, man, they stuck me on a jury, there was nothing I could do. I didn’t want him to know how the judge gave me a chance to escape and how, after weeks of anguishing over jury duty, I had declined the judge’s offer simply because Marissa’s text message insisted I stay. I knew what he would say. But when I stopped chewing and opened my mouth, the same mouth that lied under oath in a court of law, the truth came out, the whole truth. Go figure.
Pete, for one, couldn’t believe it.
-You’re kidding. You told the judge you wanted to serve?
-Crazy, huh?
-I don’t know.
That surprised me. I had expected to hear dude, she’s got you pinched. I wasn’t expecting him to be understanding. I mean, Pete had never really warmed up to Marissa. I think partly he wanted me to be in his situation, without a date on Friday night and no prospects for Saturday. Misery loves company. Mostly, though, he was concerned that Marissa was stringing his friend along. He understood the physical attraction—she was tall and thin, with green eyes and long straight hair dyed some shade of reddish-brown depending on her mood, and every once in a while, not often enough, she invited me to spend the night. But he wondered if she and I were otherwise compatible. I guess I did too. We liked watching movies together. We made each other laugh with horror stories from work—the drunk student throwing up under his desk, the obese client with old toilet paper caught in the thick folds of skin below her hips. We enjoyed walks on the beach. If sometimes our conversations got stilted, it was because she was afraid of being too vulnerable. She had suffered through an unfriendly divorce and she was wary. Pete should have understood that, that’s what I told him, he’d been through the same thing. Marissa said it was like starting over, figuring out who you are and what you want, trying to get past the anger and the blaming. No, she should stick with the blaming, Pete said, it comes in handy. Marissa was thinking about going back to college, studying sociology, or maybe just starting a private massage therapy practice. Pete said I was the guy between her ex and her next. I disagreed. I thought that once she decided to trust me, once she was ready, she would be able to open up.
-Pete, I’m grabbing another beer. You want one?
Feeling relieved at not being criticized, I headed for the kitchen, a room so narrow you can’t have the refrigerator and oven doors open at the same time, not that Pete ever opens the oven door.
-You sure Marissa won’t mind? Maybe you should text her.
-Funny.
I was opening the refrigerator when it hit me—not the refrigerator, though it should have been that obvious all along: the whole thing is like a Grisham. Sigrid’s husband hires Lawson who knows he can’t win the case on its merits, so with money to burn, what does he do? He hires professional jury consultants to analyze all the potential jurors, everything about them—education, political affiliation, automobile type, racial attitudes. Only I hadn’t seen anyone in the courtroom who could be a jury consultant. No one was scrutinizing body language, taking notes, whispering knowingly to Lawson. Just anxious prospective jurors, bored court personnel, and two mismatched attorneys. And I hadn’t seen Lawson putting much effort into building a sympathetic jury. Maybe he figured a hung jury was the best he could do, so he only needed one juror who would decide not guilty and refuse to be swayed. That’s it—he only needs one. So Sigrid’s husband arranged my jury summons. I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Maybe he bribed someone in the courthouse or hacked into the computer system. With enough money, you can do anything. Then he used Marissa—Bud Jack? Get on the jury!—to persuade me to serve. The whole thing was set up to make sure the math teacher who drives an old Honda and knows how to shake hands with a black man will get on the jury and…The Sophist! Why was he still outside the courthouse when we were dismissed for the day? He had been excused much earlier, but there he was, waiting to say that justice was up to me. Obviously, someone put him up to it.
But when I presented my hypothesis to Pete….
-Dude, that’s the most stupid-ass thing I ever heard.
-Have you ever read a Grisham?
He deftly ignored the question.
-Okay, suppose you’re right, suppose the woman’s husband wants you on the jury to make sure the guy isn’t convicted. I mean, there’s no way, but for the sake of argument, a rich white guy in Laguna, what does he care?
-Good question.
-What’s the guy’s name—the husband? I’ll look him up.
He had his laptop computer open.
-All I know is he’s Sigrid’s husband.
-Oh, that’s helpful. Sigrid’s husband. Let’s see. Two thousand hits. Sigrid and her husband Otto own a German bakery in Cincinnati. Is that them?
-Search for Sigrid and Laguna Beach marine mammal rescue. Something like that. She arranges their annual dinner.
Pete frowned as he typed, deepening the furrows on his expansive forehead. Marissa complained to me about Sigrid, I complained to Pete about Marissa, and Pete complains about his hairline, which is receding faster, he gripes, than the goddamn glaciers. Just looking at him he is hard to place, a grocery store manager or maybe he sells insurance, just your average guy, unremarkable to be sure. But usually he wears a baseball cap, and with the baldness concealed, you can see the lanky first baseman he used to be, the energetic teacher-of-the-year and weekend warrior he still is. Funny what a bare scalp suggests. Thank God for my thick, unruly mop. You swing like my sister, Pete razzes me when we golf, but I’d kill for your hair, so would she.
-Here it is. Benefit dinner. Sigrid Wilhite?
-That’s it. That sounds right.
-Richard and Sigrid Wilhite.
-Really?
-There’s even a picture. Richard and Sigrid. You weren’t kidding. Holy shit.
-What
?
-The woman has disproportionates.
Fake breasts come in two categories. Proportionates seem genetically plausible, at least size wise, though their defiance of gravity gives them away. Disproportionates are just absurd. You can see them from behind, reaching out wider than the ribcage. From the front, they look like separate entities unrelated to the torso, two cantaloupes on a cello, they simply don’t fit. But they do get your attention. When they’re bearing down on you in the canned goods aisle or making a mockery of a bikini top on the boardwalk, you can’t not look. Pete thinks they’re fantastic, says they’re the reason he loves south county: Dude, there’s a disproportionate number of disproportionates here. Actually, some scientists believe the breasts of American women are, on the whole, larger than in previous generations. The causes are not clear—hormones in meat, microwave radiation, pesticides? I argue for natural selection, Pete’s in the high fructose corn syrup camp, but we agree that further observation and analysis are in order. We’re academics, it’s what we do.
Reluctantly, Pete left the photo behind and resumed sleuthing. A search for Richard Wilhite was too broad to be helpful. A search for Richard Wilhite in television led us to a salesman in Indiana. A search for Richard Wilhite in television in Los Angeles gave us two stories about a high school football player. A search for the point guard who washes your car in your driveway turned up one useful news sentence: Bud Jack, 28, of Long Beach was charged in the death of Juan Castro, 22, of Huntington Beach. A search for Juan Castro could go on for days. Something wasn’t adding up. I had thought Bud Jack and I were about the same age. Turns out he was younger than he looked. That’s an honest mistake. But how can a philanthropist in the entertainment business who smiles happily to the photographer at the marine mammal benefit dinner be otherwise completely off the internet radar?
-Dude, I got it. Where does he live?
-Laguna somewhere. Marissa might know. Why?
-Call her. We’ll stake out his house.
One problem with being around high school students all day is you end up thinking like one. Pete teaches biology mostly to sophomores, and it shows. One time he stood up at an emergency faculty meeting, with the principal and two vice principals seated nearby, also the campus safety officer, and suggested we encourage the students to smoke more, especially the angry, alienated ones.
Grisham's Juror Page 4