06-Juror

by Parnell Hall

  On the day of Lincoln Monroe Jackson’s accident, the odd elevator had in fact been broken. So he had been forced to ride the even elevator to eight, and walk down the stairs to seven, thereby slipping in the urine. As far as I was concerned, that made the City of New York responsible, the New York Housing Authority responsible, and the stupid architect who had designed the odd/even elevators responsible, and made me feel damn good that this innate stupidity was getting its deserved comeuppance.

  I got out of the building by nine, hit only moderately bad traffic jams, and got down to Centre Street by ten of ten. That would have been fine if I hadn’t been in my car. I’d driven down, of course, rather than take the subway since I was planning on doing another signup at five o’clock. And a car in Manhattan is a great blessing unless you’re trying to park it. The municipal lot was jammed and two cars were circling. I joined in and made three, and was lucky enough to get a meter ten minutes later.

  The meters were good in that they were two-hour meters, and bad in that a quarter got you a whopping twelve minutes. I’d scouted the lot the day before, so I was prepared, having ripped off my wife Alice’s laundry money. I fed ten quarters into the meter, giving me a cool two hours, and hustled up to 111 Centre Street quick like a bunny, telling myself not to worry, these things never started on time anyway, and, wouldn’t you know it, when I got there College Boy was already calling the roll. And since he did it from the stack of ballots rather than alphabetically, I had no way of knowing whether he’d already gotten to me or not.

  I stood in the back by the doorway, listening for my name, which of course never came. Before I had time to wonder what I should do about that, College Boy said, “Anyone whose name I didn’t call, please come up to the desk.”

  So. College Boy thought the counter was a desk too. Maybe it was. I walked up to it, stood in line behind four other people. When it was my turn he said, “Name?” and I said, “Stanley Hastings.”

  There were two stacks of ballots on the counter/desk, one large and one small. College Boy picked up the small stack, riffled through it, pulled out a ballot, said, “Stanley Hastings?” When I said, “Yes,” he put it on top of the large stack and turned to the next person in line.

  And that was it. No reprimands. No, “You’re a naughty boy, and if you do it again you’ll be kept after court.” If you missed roll call, you just told College Boy and he found your ballot. Knowing that made me feel a lot better about the parking lot.

  As I turned away from the desk, I heard a voice say, “Hey, what’s with you?”

  I looked up to see my buddy, the old man from the day before. “Hi,” I said, “how you doing?”

  “Terrible,” he said. “I ain’t been called. So what’s with you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  He pointed. “Yesterday you were dressed like a shlump, today a suit and tie.”

  “Oh,” I said. I’d forgotten I was wearing my suit. I mean, I knew I was wearing it, but I hadn’t really thought about it. I was wearing it, of course, because I’d done a signup in the morning and was hoping to do one in the afternoon. “Oh yeah,” I said. “Well, I’m working today.”

  “Today?”

  “Well, I did a job before I came here. There wasn’t time to change.”

  “Well,” he said, “maybe it’s a good idea.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Dress for success. Maybe they’ll choose you if you look more respectable.”

  That was a disturbing thought, and one that hadn’t occurred to me. Shit, wouldn’t that be just my luck, to be chosen for my suit.

  But there was no sense explaining all that to my buddy. I just smiled and nodded. “Excuse me. I have to make a phone call.”

  So did half the room. All five phones were filled, and there was a line of six people waiting. I stood in it fifteen minutes and finally got a booth and called the office.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” said Wendy/Janet.

  “It’s Stanley.”

  I half expected her to say, “Stanley? I thought you had jury duty,” but she didn’t. “Hi,” she said. “Did you do the signup?”

  “It’s taken care of. But I need another one for this afternoon and one for tomorrow morning.”

  “Nothing’s come in yet.”

  “Okay. When it does, beep me.”

  “You’re on the beeper?”

  “Yeah, but I may be tied up, so don’t go nuts if I don’t call in right away. Just assume I’ve heard it and I’ll call in first chance I get.”

  That was a half-truth. The whole truth was, if she beeped me, I wouldn’t call in right away cause I wouldn’t hear it. That’s because there were a whole bunch of signs in the lobby about no electronic equipment allowed in the courtrooms. So I figured my beeper was a no-no. I was wearing it on the side of my belt, hidden by my suit jacket, and I had the silent switch on. When that’s on, if you get beeped it makes no noise and you don’t know it. But when you slide the switch from silent to on, if you’ve been beeped any time since you set it, it will start beeping then, and if you haven’t, it won’t. In the course of my regular work I use the silent switch mainly for going into hospitals. There, I’d set it when I went in, and check it when I came out. Here, I figured I could duck into the men’s room every half-hour or so to see if the office wanted me.

  I didn’t want to explain that to Wendy/Janet. Because if she knew I wasn’t supposed to have a beeper, maybe she’d decide I shouldn’t have one and she shouldn’t beep me. And if she got that idea, I’d never talk her out of it. She’d wind up taking the matter up with Richard, and I had no idea how he’d feel about it. Besides, explaining anything to Wendy/Janet was tough sledding anyway. Hence the half-truth.

  While I was still in the phone booth, College Boy said something that I couldn’t make out with the door shut. But I could see him setting up the metal drum again, so I bid a fond farewell to Wendy/Janet, and came out to see what was going on.

  It was, of course, another turkey raffle. The only difference was when he called their names, the people were now taking all their belongings and shuffling up the corridor to the right of the counter/desk. I had no idea where they were going, but when he called the name Stanley Hastings, I muttered some remark about College Boy’s parentage, and shuffled up the corridor behind.

  The destination turned out to be a room three doors down the corridor to the right. It was a small room with two rows of chairs, six in the front, and maybe eight or ten in the back. The front row was already filled and the back row was filling up fast, so I slid into the row and helped fill it.

  In the front of the room, close enough so that the people in the front row could reach out and touch them, were two attorneys sitting on chairs. One was young, clean cut and plump, with a baby-fat face that seemed to smile a lot, but hard eyes. The other looked as if when the first courthouse was built, he’d held the hammer. Emaciated, with a few wisps of stringy white hair, and a pair of pince-nez that seemed in danger of sliding off the point of his nose, he somehow gave the impression that it had taken all his energy just to get here, and we shouldn’t really expect anything more from him.

  When the room had filled up with about sixteen jurors, one of whom was my buddy who gave me a triumphant thumbs-up sign, the court officer came in holding the ballots and conferred with the attorneys. They talked together in low tones, seemed in agreement, and then the plump one said, “All right, let’s fill the seats.”

  The court officer took the ballots, shuffled them up, and began selecting jurors. The fact that he did this without the aid of a metal drum, somehow made this case seem of less importance. So did the fact there were only sixteen of us called instead of fifty. So did the fact we were in this tiny room with no judge and no defendant.

  All this was enough to make even one as slow on the uptake as I to suspect this was not a criminal case but a civil suit.

  It was. When the first six names had been called, I, of course, being one (Jesus Christ, how come I never w
in the fucking lottery? Perhaps because I never play), and we had had a fun game of musical chairs, moving the six people who had been called into the front six seats, and the people who had been occupying them into the back, the plump attorney said, “All right, ladies and gentlemen. This is a civil suit. We will be selecting six jurors and two alternates. I’m Mr. Kleinbaum, and I’m an attorney for the City of New York.” Indicating the elderly man, “This is Mr. Feldergrad, who is representing Ernestina Felicio. Mrs. Felicio is the plaintiff in this action. She claims she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk, fell down and broke her hip, and she is suing the City of New York.”

  I almost burst out laughing. Good lord. A trip-and-fall. Over fifty percent of the cases I handled were trip-and-falls. Hell, I’d handled one this morning. There was no way in hell they were going to want me on this case.

  When the two attorneys had each put their two cents in about the matter at hand, they began examining the jurors.

  When they got to me, I caused a minor splash by admitting to being a private detective. I went on to explain that a lot of the cases I handled were a lot like this one.

  But they didn’t let me go. The venerable Mr. Feldergrad merely peered down over his pince-nez and said, “And would your previous experience prevent you in any way from being fair and impartial in this particular case?”

  I should have just said, “Yes.” But I didn’t really want to admit to being a prejudiced moron. And damn it, it was unfair of them to make me evaluate what effect my experience might have had on me. Why couldn’t they take it at face value that having done the work was bound to influence me, and they should just let me go? But no, they left it up to me. Which just didn’t seem fair.

  So I waffled. “Well,” I said, “I would of course try to judge the case on its own merits. But I think anyone’s opinion has to be colored by their experience.”

  I figured that would do it. But Mr. Feldergrad merely nodded and said, “But you would still try to be fair?”

  I gritted my teeth. “I would certainly try to be fair. Whether or not it would be possible under the circumstances, I leave up to you.”

  He nodded again. “Tell me, in any of these cases you investigated, were you ever called upon to testify?”

  My heart sank. Good lord. This moron was actually going to put me on the jury. “No, I haven’t,” I said.

  “If you were called upon to serve, you say that you would put aside your previous cases, and make every effort to be fair?”

  I’m afraid I snapped. I tried to keep the anger out of my voice, but I’m afraid the exasperation showed through. “Yes,” I said. “I would certainly make every effort to be fair. But I must point out, it is impossible to have done the job I’ve done without forming opinions about it. Without becoming slightly jaded. And I cannot let you put me on this jury without knowing, however fair and impartial I might try to be, in over half the trip-and-falls I handle, my personal opinion is that the client fell down because he was too dumb to look where he was going.”

  There was a moment’s stunned silence. Then Mr. Feldergrad’s eyes blazed. He straightened in his chair, rammed the pince-nez back on his nose, and launched into as eloquent a diatribe as his reedy voice would allow, about how the laws of the land didn’t require people to walk around with their heads down looking at their feet all the time in case the pavement might be broken, and how everyone had a right to walk the sidewalks and expect the sidewalks to be maintained and free from hazard, and he went on and on and on until he finally sputtered and ran out of steam. At which point the plump attorney from the city tapped him on the shoulder and suggested they confer in the corridor.

  When that happened, I knew I’d won. I wasn’t pleased at having had to go so far, I was sorry to have upset the old attorney, and damn glad he hadn’t had a stroke, which had seemed highly likely, but at least I knew I had accomplished my purpose. I knew damn well when the lawyers came back they were gonna throw me out.

  They did.

  And not just me.

  They threw out the entire room.

  6.

  HIGHLIGHTS OF A WEEK IN HELL.

  After that, everything was a mish-mosh. A confused jumble of images, thoughts and feelings which are all blurred together in my mind. I spent the week racing around like a madman, signing up clients in Harlem in the mornings, bucking traffic jams, sometimes missing roll call and sometimes making it, rushing out every two hours to feed an endless succession of quarters into parking meters, sneaking into the bathroom every half-hour to check my beeper, calling the office, making appointments, changing appointments, winning turkey raffles, getting put on juries, booted off juries and just generally having a lousy time.

  And coloring all this was the overriding knowledge that I had betrayed a friend. The friend, of course, was my buddy, the old man whose one dream was to do a quick civil case and get out of there. For him, the Ernestina Felicio case must have seemed like a godsend, a simple trip-and-fall, quick, easy and over. But thanks to my irresponsible statement, he, of course, had been booted out with everybody else.

  Judas. Betrayer. Backstabber. He said none of those things to me. In fact, he said nothing to me. When I came up to him afterwards to apologize, he turned away. So it was not as if I had to put up with him berating me. With him whining, complaining, bitching, moaning, telling me what an asshole I am. In point of fact, he never spoke to me again.

  But he was always there, slumped in his seat, which was always the same one, smack dab in the middle of the Juror Assembly Room, his sour, hostile eyes smoldering, an odious, malevolent presence I never failed to see. A nagging conscience from which there was no escape. A constant reminder, as if I really needed one, that I was indeed a stupid asshole.

  I prayed that he would be called, get put on a case and leave. I wanted it as much for his sake as for mine. And I must say, I sure wanted it for me. And every time College Boy set up the steel drum, I crossed my fingers and thought, “Hey, you sour old codger, this one’s for you.”

  But, of course, it never was. Wouldn’t you know it. While I was there, he was never called again.

  I was called all the fucking time.

  I don’t know what it was, after a while I got to wondering if there must be some stickum on my ballot or something, but it sure seemed like every time College Boy stuck his hand in the metal drum, out it came.

  I got booted off four or five more juries, I’m not sure, after a while they tend to blend into one another. I know I was called for another criminal case, sent upstairs with a bunch of fifty people, sat through two complete interrogations, was never called into the box, and was sent downstairs again because the jury was finally filled. And I know I was called for another civil case that had something to do with a bunch of gold rings that were bought and never paid for. I was glad not to get put on that—it would have been boring as hell. And I was called once for car theft and once for sale of narcotics, though one of those may have been the one I already mentioned, the one I never got put in the box, as I say, it’s all kind of a blur.

  A few isolated incidents stood out.

  One was when I forgot to set my beeper on silent switch and it suddenly went off when I was sitting in the Juror Assembly Room. Thank god it wasn’t during roll call or a turkey raffle or anything like that, and thank god there were no court officers around, but still the room was pretty crowded, and every head in the place turned. I switched the thing off as quickly and unobtrusively as I could, and started looking around myself, as if trying to figure out where the noise had come from, but I don’t think I fooled anybody really, because after that I kept noticing people looking at me kind of strange. Of course, that might also have just been because I was constantly looking over my shoulder to see if a court officer was bearing down on me to whisk me away. Of course, none ever did.

  Another time was when I was sitting in the room and suddenly there came a crash and a scream from out in the hall. Naturally, we all got up and went out to see what had happen
ed. We found a man the size of a small whale lying on the floor beside a bench, moaning and holding his left arm. There was a piece of wood on the floor next to him, which on closer inspection proved to be the arm of the bench the man had previously been sitting on. He’d leaned on it, it had snapped under his weight, and he had fallen to the floor.

  We all crowded around, jabbering and being particularly unhelpful. Finally someone went to get a court officer to call a medic, but that was the extent of what anybody knew what to do. The guy was obviously in serious pain, and kept moaning and holding his arm, and the whole situation was real tense and uncomfortable until someone in the crowd deadpanned, “Is there a negligence lawyer in the house?” Which, of course, cracked everybody up, and I have to admit I laughed too, which would have made me feel bad if the whale on the floor hadn’t also found it funny.

  But even as I laughed, I couldn’t help thinking Richard paid a bonus for anyone who brought him in a negligence case, and if I could just sign this guy up, I could make a hundred and fifty bucks. It was a very fleeting thought, and one I pushed right out of my mind, having long ago found that kind of ambulance chasing distasteful. But I still couldn’t help thinking it.

  Another highlight wasn’t really a highlight, just a wild idea. I’d just been kicked off one jury or another, and the court officer had given me back my ballot and told me to report back to the Juror Assembly Room, and it suddenly occurred to me, I had my ballot. And if I didn’t turn it in to College Boy, if I just kept it in my pocket, they couldn’t call me. I could wander around, go out to the movies, go do a signup or a photo assignment, and no one would ever know. Of course, I didn’t do that, I turned in my ballot like a good boy, but what a great idea.