From the Eyes of a Juror

by Frank Terranova

  Chapter 26 – O’Toole’s Tavern and Grill (Celtics Pride)

  Thursday evening June 5, 2008 – 7:45 PM

  For all intent and purpose, Frank Newlan was numb to the world as he drove home from the courthouse in a state of utter exhaustion, and he envisioned a nice quiet evening focused on another court; except tonight it would be a basketball court, and nothing short of murder would prevent him from watching Game One of the NBA Finals where his beloved Boston Celtics would be taking on the hated Los Angeles Lakers.

  To appease a national television audience, the TV network powers-that-be scheduled the opening tipoff for just after 9 PM, so Newlan was uncertain as to whether he was going to be able to stay awake for the entire game, but he sure was planning on giving it the old college try. The Celtics hadn’t been to the finals in over 20 years, and he was hell-bent on doing his best not to let this damned murder trial spoil the experience of watching another Boston team make a run for a championship.

  While waiting for the game to get started, Newlan indecisively mulled over what to do about dinner, but then he remembered that he never ate his lunch; a steak-and-cheese sandwich which was now sitting in a plastic shopping bag next to his Rolling Stone magazines. After his long, emotional day, he didn’t feel much like cooking, or ordering out for that matter, so he whipped up a salad, warmed up the sandwich in the microwave, and treated himself to an ice-cold beer.

  “Ah that hit the spot,” exclaimed Newlan as he stretched out on the leather sofa in front of his wide screen HDTV. “Now for some NBA action…FANtastic, as the commercial says.”

  “Nothing like a world class sporting event to get your mind off your troubles…well maybe a little bit of sex and drugs and rock & roll, but sports comes in a close fourth,” murmured Newlan as he popped open another beer and attempted to get his game-face on while at the same time trying to ignore the backdrop of the trial which was ominously floating through his mind like a slow-moving dark cloud.

  But try as he might, Newlan couldn’t help but reflect on the day’s events, no matter how many beers he guzzled down. As such, he dutifully tallied up the points for and against the government’s case, much as one would decide an athletic contest, and he came to a telling conclusion.

  “Not a good day for the prosecution…not even Jane could convict Breslin after what we heard today.”

  And despite his insistence that he wasn’t going to let the trial rule his life, Newlan was having a hard time putting the proceedings out of his mind; sure he’d be able to block out the echoing memory of the courtroom battle for a little while, but then something would suddenly remind him of the case, and Breslin’s uncertain fate would commence to rankle at his brain again like an irritating itch that no amount of ointment could ever sooth.

  For example, as Newlan pondered the Celtics chances against the Lakers and their high flying star, Kobe Bryant, he thought to himself, “win or lose…no matter what happens tonight, it’s only game one.” But somehow that thought morphed into, “it’s only day one of the trial as well…too early, either way, for me to come to any definitive judgments. I just gotta be patient and let this thing play out…and at the same time, not let it consume me.”

  Newlan’s mind would continue play these ping-ponging games on him throughout the course of trial, but since it was only the first day of testimony, he erroneously concluded that for now, maybe he could control his anxieties by smoking some weed.

  Newlan had cut back on his partying ways quite a bit over the years, but as he was known to say; “Drastic times call for drastic measures.”

  And so after a few puffs of a pregnant joint, Newlan was sufficiently numb and stretched out on the sofa. With nothing better to do, he decided to catch up on the news until game-time, and sure enough, as soon as he changed the station, the anchorwoman declared, “Opening arguments were heard today in the John Breslin murder-for-hire case.”

  A clip of DA Lyons’ opening statement was shown as a lead-in to the segment and regardless of what Judge Gershwin had instructed the jurors, Newlan decided to watch the clip anyway.

  “Hey I was there…what’s the harm in watching the replay? I’ll pretend it’s a basketball game replay,” figured Newlan with a yawn, and truth be told, the news report didn’t really reveal anything that could have gotten him in much trouble with the honorable judge anyhow.

  The game hadn’t even tipped-off yet and Newlan’s droopy eyelids were already beginning to grow heavy on him when the phone rang, startling him back into consciousness; and on the other end of the line was none other than his lifelong friend, Patrick “Pat” Horn.

  “Hey Frankie…me and Bruce are going over to O’Toole’s to watch the Celts game. Why don’t you meet us there?” offered Horn, referring to their old pal, Bruce Reardon, and their local watering hole, O’Toole’s Tavern and Grill.

  “I don’t know Pat, I’m really tired, and I’m already sprawled out on the sofa,” griped Newlan, and as a compromise he suggested a more convenient option, at least for him anyway. “Why don’t you guys come watch the game over here?”

  “Come on Frankie…come out for a couple of beers...you only live once,” countered Horn who preferred to watch the big game at a crowded bar.

  After all these years, Horn understood that when it came to going out for a night on the town and hoisting down a few beers on a work night, Newlan just about always needed to be plied with a fair amount of coaxing before giving in, and so little-by-little he chipped away at his old pal’s resolve.

  Although, technically, Newlan would be commuting to the courthouse instead of the office for the next few weeks, it was just semantics as far as he was concerned. He might as well have been going to work in the morning since he was going to have to get up even earlier than usual in order to make it to the courthouse on time. And on top of that, he had a feeling that after listening to witness testimony for hours on end, he’d routinely be coming home from the courthouse even more worn out than he ever would have, had he been at work all day.

  In any event, regardless of where Newlan’s destination was destined to be in the morning, and how grueling of a day he was expecting, Horn ended up getting his way, as he usually did when the debate involved convincing his old friend to come out for a night of liquid merriment.

  “Alright already, Pat! I’ll meet you guys at O’Toole’s by game time. Tipoff’s just after 9 o’clock, right? Besides, remember I was saying that I had jury duty coming up? Well I got on this big case so I gotta tell you guys all about it,” blabbered Newlan

  Of course, in retrospect, knowing full well that he wasn’t supposed to be discussing the trial, as soon as he put the receiver down, Newlan mumbled to himself, “shit, I should have kept my big mouth shut.”

  But on the flipside, Newlan promptly changed directions in midstream and thought, “What harm can come from me throwing the guys a bone or two to pick on? Besides, if I have to keep this trial a secret for the next month then I’m gonna totally lose my mind.”

  While Newlan internally debated the quandary even further in his mind, he swiftly changed out of his grubby sweatpants and into something more appropriate to wear out in public, and he arrived at the bar, which was less than a mile from his condo, in no time flat.

  O’Toole’s was located in Malden, Massachusetts which was the next town over to the East from Medford, and it was your basic run of the mill sports bar/restaurant. A place for the locals to go to watch a ball game and have a few beers, and if you were hungry you could order up your essential pub food; burgers, fries, steak tips, buffalo chicken wings, and the like.

  Medford was a partially dry town in that it was licensed to allow larger restaurants to serve drinks with a meal, and it had its fair share of liquor stores, but if you wanted to go to a local pub strictly for a few beers, then you had to pop over to one of the adjacent towns such as Malden or Somerville which were overrun with seedy barrooms.

  O’Toole’s it
self was your typical neighborhood pub; equal parts cozy and sleazy, just a notch above a dive, but for the regulars who frequented this locally owned and operated establishment it was a home-away-from-home. The majority of the patrons were familiar with each other, but strangers were more than welcome, particularly strangers of the female variety, preferably unencumbered by significant others.

  For the most part, O’Toole’s maintained a welcoming environment as far as watering hole’s go, but like any ale-house where the drinks flowed freely, an occasional barroom brawl wasn’t out of the question, usually instigated by the young lions who claimed a corner of the room as their own personal clubhouse.

  There was a time when Newlan’s gang of friends would have been right in the thick of things whenever a fight broke out, but by now they had outgrown their fisticuffs phase, and as a result of this peacekeeping attitude, they avoided even making eye-contact with any of the boyish hoodlums who currently ruled the roost, so to speak; for just the act of looking at one of these punks the wrong way was cause enough to start a ruckus.

  And although one could never predict when a spilt drink or a misinterpreted signal might ignite an incident, Newlan and his crew of burly friends didn’t dwell on the possibility of a rowdy encounter too much, seeing as how they had been regulars at O’Toole’s from day one (and if need be, they could still roughhouse with the best of them). In fact, at one time, their band, Don’t Panic, played every Saturday night at this very same pub, although at that time the place was called Dino’s Bar and Grill (infamously named after the bar in the Thin Lizzy song, “The Boys are Back in Town”).

  The three old friends were roughly the same age and furthermore, they shared an indescribable kindred spirit of defining moments which had bonded them for life. Horn was a tall, handsome man of 6’ 3” who possessed a healthy head of neatly cut hair which was slowly going gray. Whereas Reardon was the shortest of the three and he tended to let his stringy hair grow long, similar to Newlan’s, except that his was a lighter shade of brown.

  There was a time when all three men were as skinny as a toothpick, but as the decades passed by, their metabolism, and in turn their body shapes, changed for the worst. Over the years, each of them had packed on quite a few pounds, especially around the midsection. Horn, who could eat with the best of them, had a particularly large paunch belly which was hard to miss, and Newlan easily spotted his buddies at a table in the back corner of the bar with a good view of the large screen TV. The lifelong friends didn’t make it over to O’Toole’s as often as they once did, and Newlan was genuinely happy to see some familiar faces after the events of the last couple of days.

  Newlan truly loved these guys like they were his brothers, but unlike many brothers, their personalities balanced each other nicely, which only begins to scratch at the surface of why they got along so well.

  Horn was an easy-going, happy-go-lucky type who trusted everybody and didn’t have an enemy in the world. Whereas Reardon could come across as an extremely cynical and suspicious character when placed in the company of strangers, especially strangers from foreign cultures which were unfamiliar to him, and so not surprisingly, he had antagonized his fair share of interlopers over the years with his brusque attitude.

  Newlan’s temperament was somewhere in the middle. By and large, he was a people person, but he could also become very standoffish until he got to better know and trust a newcomer who dared to invade the inner sanctity of his closed circle of acquaintances.

  Conversely however, if you somehow made it past the transitional “feeling out” period with Newlan, he would welcome you with open arms and quickly transform into the good-natured, outgoing person that he was; a person who would do anything for a friend.

  Newlan sometimes felt as if Horn and Reardon’s polar-opposite attitudes rubbed off on him, which he considered to be a good thing since it kept him on an even keel.

  Of course, before joining his drinking buddies at their table, Newlan had anything but the straight-and-narrow in mind as he first stopped off at the bar to order a round of suds from the bartender, Quentin or “Q” as he was referred to by the regulars.

  “Hi Q…three Guinness’s please.”

  After all these years of hanging out at pubs and nightclubs, Quentin was still the only bartender who Newlan got to know well enough that they were on a first name basis with each other.

  “What’s up Frankie?” asked Quentin. “Long time no see.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I had jury duty yesterday and I got picked for a big trial.”

  “It’s not the Townshend case, is it?” wondered Quentin as he towel-dried an empty mug.

  “No, but even if it were, I wouldn’t be able to talk about it anyway,” replied Newlan with a smile.

  Newlan and Quentin exchanged in the usual sports small talk while he waited for his pints of Guinness, which, as anyone who has ever been to an Irish pub will tell you, take a few minutes to pour correctly.

  When the thick creamy heads of the chocolaty brown drinks had sufficiently stabilized, Quentin handed them over to Newlan, and with a wink he offered up his generosity as well.

  “This round’s on the house, Frankie…for doing your civic duty.”

  “Thanks Q…I owe you one,” replied an appreciative Newlan.

  With drinks in hand, Newlan carefully balanced the three pints as he carried them over to the table where his friends were sitting, and the three amigos, who were truly thrilled to be in each other’s company, rowdily slapped each other with high fives and exchanged hugs all around.

  “This place never fails to bring back memories,” marveled Newlan as he gazed at the tiny stage on the other side of the room which was flanked on the far wall by the photos of all the deceased former patrons of the bar. The stage was empty tonight, due to the fact that the current owners only had bands playing on Friday and Saturday nights these days, but otherwise the interior of the bar hadn’t changed a bit in over 20 years.

  Within minutes, the deserted stage had the friends reminiscing about the good old days, and invariably their memories drifted back to the rock & roll nights of their youth.

  “Remember the time that chick wrote her phone number on a dollar bill and stuck it down your pants in the middle of song,” Horn chirpily asked Newlan in between gulps of Guinness.

  “Yeah…but the funny thing was…I got pissed off because she distracted me from my solo. I had no idea who she was…and by the way, I never did call her. Come to think of it…what an idiot I am! What the hell was I thinking?” replied Newlan with a sarcastic laugh. “I wonder if I still have that dollar bill saved somewhere. Knowing me, I probably do. I should dig it out and punch up the number, just to see who answers. I could use a hot new babe in my life right about now…I’d just say ‘hey bitch this is Frankie Newlan, do you remember stuffing a dollar bill down my pants twenty years ago?’”

  As they pictured the scene in their minds, Newlan’s friends howled with laughter, and they sucked down their stouts with a reckless abandon.

  “Dudes, remember our theme song? How the hell did the words go?” slurred Reardon who was already well on his way to achieving the nirvana of complete intoxication.

  Their band had started out playing simple three chord cover tunes, but they eventually branched out into writing some of their own songs, and Newlan served as their primary songwriter. One day, out of the blue, he decided that they should have a theme song with a title that matched the band’s name, Don’t Panic (he was the first to admit that he got the idea from the Bad Company song called “Bad Company”), and the resulting tune wasn’t half bad.

  It took a moment for them to remember all of the lyrics, but after a while they were cheerfully singing the words to themselves, taking turns with the verses just as they did when they performed the song live all those years ago.

  Newlan still had the handwritten words saved, along with the hundreds of other song
s he had written over the years, and he would occasionally go through the pile of lyrics and think to himself, “Mostly crap…but a few masterpieces too” and in his mind “Don’t Panic” belonged in the latter category, but you the dear reader can judge for yourself:

  DON’T PANIC (words and music by Frank Newlan)

  Don’t panic

  Come what will

  Relax yourself

  Take a pill

  Don’t Panic

  It’s out of your hands

  Let the pieces fall

  And see where they land

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Don’t Panic

  Take it in stride

  The pedals to the metal

  So just go for the ride

  Don’t Panic

  Don’t get down

  Do your thing

  And I’ll see you around

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Don’t Panic

  We all have to work

  The money sucks

  And the boss is a jerk

  Don’t Panic

  What else can you do?

  Just do the best you can

  And may your dreams come true

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Don’t Panic

  Let’s just say

  This is the end

  And live for today

  Don’t Panic

  I’ll tell you what

  You let it get to you

  And that’s the deepest cut

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  Dooon’t Panic…DON’T PAN-IC

  “You know something guys…that was actually a decent song. Man, we shouldn’t have given up on the band so quickly. We were ahead of our time. If we were still playing today we could probably do a hip-hop version of that song,” predicted Reardon, whose two teenage sons kept him up-to-date with the current trends in music.

  “Yeah right…but hey, you know how I felt about calling it quits? We should have at least booked a studio and cut a few tracks,” replied a skeptical Newlan who, unlike Reardon, didn’t even keep up with the contemporary fads in rock music, never mind the rap artists. But regardless of the direction that modern music was headed in, they unanimously agreed that their band might have had potential for bigger and better things if they had only given their music careers a little more time to develop.

  “I should listen to my own advice sometimes,” admitted Newlan as he brooded over his uplifting musical composition, even though at the moment it seemed as if it had been written in another lifetime. But if nothing else, the cryptic, lyrical blast from the past had the unintended effect of serving as a reminder that he and Reardon had some important business to attend to.

  Reardon was Newlan’s marijuana connection, and so, for convenience sake, he made a purchase while they were seated at their table; and to complete the transaction, Reardon passed Newlan a plastic baggy full of reefer under the table in exchange for a hundred dollar bill.

  “Thanks Bruce…man, if it weren’t for you…I’d probably be straight by now,” predicted Newlan with a laugh.

  “I can’t help it if you don’t know what’s good for you boy…its killer stuff by the way…just came in…we’ll have to go out to my van at halftime and check it out,” replied Reardon with a broad smile in return.

  Newlan and Horn still enjoyed taking the occasional hit of a reefer over the course of their busy days, but their smoking habits were relatively minor compared to Reardon who, even after all these years, still got stoned morning, noon and night.

  Newlan would often jest with Reardon that he might as well grow dreadlocks and become a Rastafarian, referring to the Jamaican religious movement that, as far as he was concerned, seemed to go hand-in-hand with smoking ganja.

  Reardon and his moody wife, who was also a pot smoker (which was probably the main reason why they hadn’t filed for divorce by now), had even gone so far as setting up a closet-sized “smoking room” in the basement of their house, which he appropriately nicknamed, “the launch pad.”

  Newlan himself had staked a claim for his extra bedroom to serve as his “smoking room” shortly after moving into his condo, “but only for weed, no cigarettes allowed,” was his stock response to anyone who dared to light up a butt.

  Reardon’s curious kids were strictly forbidden from his basement “smoking room”, but Newlan wasn’t sure how much longer his buddy would be able to keep his little secret from his sons. The last time Newlan saw Reardon’s boys was when they came over to his place in February to watch the depressing Patriots Super Bowl loss, and he was stunned to see how far they had evolved, not only physically but in a street-smart sense as well, in such a short period of time. They seemed to have magically sprouted up like beanstalks; close to a foot, in the last six months alone. And to top off their growth spurt they were sporting the drooping pants, the sideward’s baseball caps, and the studded fake diamond earrings that were popular with the kids these days.

  Newlan immediately recognized the changes in Reardon’s budding teenagers as they shuffled into his condo on that cold winter day, and he took him aside as he warned; “Bruce, you won’t be able to hide the weed from your kids much longer…they’re probably already smoking themselves.”

  “Awesome…then we’ll be able to get baked together,” jokingly replied Reardon before adding, “But seriously, they’re respectful kids. I got them playing football and taking karate lessons…I don’t want them to make the same mistakes that we made.”

  “That’s all well and good. But remember when we were that age? Just keep an eye on them is all I’m saying. Hey, remember Windowpane?” cited Newlan, referring to an old song that he had written specifically for the band; an old song which was sprinkled with double-meaning lyrics that coyly described a psychedelic experience; an old song which popped into his head out of the blue (although, of all the songs that Newlan had ever written, the fact that “Windowpane” was Reardon’s all-time favorite may have had something to do with his sudden recollection).

  As if on cue, Newlan and Reardon recited a line from the song; a verse which could never be confused for anything other than a chemically-induced, reality-avoiding trip; “now and then I’m floating out in space, the kids today disown the human race.”

  And as the rebellious words melted into their souls like butter on a warm ear of corn, they laughed heartily at their unspoken telepathy.

  Meanwhile, halftime found the Celtics trailing by 5 points when Horn, who was a decent athlete in his time, and a member of the Medford High School basketball team, admitted to his concerns.

  “Fuck, I’m nervous…the Celts are playing like shit. Bruce I’ll take you up on your offer. What do you say we go out to your van and smoke a spleef,” suggested Horn…and out the door they went.

  By the time the partying trio returned back to the barroom they were sufficiently stoned, and Horn caught Newlan off guard, like a basketball player throwing up a full court inbound pass, by tossing out a topic which he had managed to forget about for a few minutes.

  “So Frankie what where you saying about being on jury duty?” wondered Horn.

  “Oh that…thanks for reminding me Pat,” replied Newlan rather dryly. He was having such a fun time shooting the breeze with his buddies that he had completely put the trial out of his mind for the moment. But Horn’s innocent inquiry brought it all rushing back to the forefront of his brain and turned his stomach at the very thought of having to be in attendance at the Middlesex Superior Courthouse first thing in the morning.

  Newlan initially reasoned that it would do him some good to discuss the trial with his friends, but now that he was out on the town, having a good time, he just didn’t feel like talking about it, so he shrugged Horn off with what was a very valid excuse.
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  “Oh it’s no big deal…and besides the judge made it clear that we aren’t allowed to discuss the case with anyone…but believe me, after everything is said and done, I’ll fill you guys in on all the gory details.”

  However, Reardon, who after all these years could read Newlan like an open book, intervened with his own cross-examination.

  “You sure you’re OK? I’ve had this feeling that something’s been bothering you all night,” scrutinized Reardon, and then, as if he were scanning Newlan’s mind, he added “don’t let anyone influence you Frankie…always stick to your guns dude…always.”

  “Oh believe me I will,” confidently replied Newlan, even though in reality he wasn’t so sure just how resolute he would be in his ability to stand up to the rest of the jurors if it turned out that he was the only one in the minority.

  Consequently, Newlan preferred to change the subject, so he cleverly broached Reardon on a topic from his recent past which he had wanted to ask him about for the longest time, even though he was pretty sure that it was an episode Reardon probably would have rather not discussed.

  “Bruce what ever happened to you…you know, that time you got busted for selling weed?” inquired Newlan, and although it was a sore subject, Reardon took the bait anyway.

  Reardon had gotten arrested a few years back carrying a half pound of marijuana in a secret compartment under the rug of his van; he had just dropped off a delivery to a friend/customer, and he got pulled over as soon as he left the guy’s house. It was obvious to him that someone had tipped off the cops since they knew exactly what they were looking for, and his response made it clear that he was still bitter about the unfortunate episode.

  “What do you think happened? I got ratted-out by someone who I thought was an acquaintance, but who turned out to be an asshole. The guy had just gotten busted himself so he probably turned me in to save his own skin. When I was at the police station, the detectives told me that they’d go easy on me too, if I’d give up my source, which of course I didn’t do. It cost me ten grand for a lawyer, and court fees on top of that, so I guess you could say that I bought my way out of a jam, but it was worth every fuckin’ penny. Granted, I’m still on fuckin’ probation, but luckily I didn’t end up doing any time. Hey, you know what they say…keep you friends close, but keep you enemies closer.”

  “Sorry I brought it up…no sense reliving bad memories,” replied Newlan in a sincerely apologetic tone. But on the bright side he had successfully steered the conversation away from his role as a juror in the John Breslin murder trial which was his goal in the first place.

  “Speaking of jury duty and getting busted, remember that time during our junior year when we had to put on a trial for our Criminal Law class?” reminisced Horn who was always one to keep the mood positive.

  Before deciding to take up instruments and forming a rock & roll band together, the high school classmates had made a pact to attend the same university, and the three of them wound up enrolling at Boston State College. The inseparable friends even made it a point to meet before every semester and sign up for all the same classes, so back in those days they were practically joined at the hip.

  Their assignment for the Criminal Law class which Horn was referring to was to pair up into teams and stage a mock trial, and the trio decided to recruit a few of their pals to help out with the acting. Many of their friends were the creative types, but most of them didn’t have the drive to go to college; although they were definitely up for spending a day hanging out on a college campus, gawking at the coeds.

  The crew of studious college classmates and their high school dropout friends met for breakfast and got wasted before attending class on the day of the mock trial, but they still managed to put on an entertaining show which revolved around a limo driver who got into an accident while driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

  “Yeah, and to this day I insist that Professor Hemmingday knew we were all stoned,” replied Newlan with a laugh as he pounded down another Guinness.

  “No way,” countered his friends as they made a toast to life in general…and with the clinking of their mugs, just like that, Newlan’s memory went drifting back in time to the end of his senior year in college; baked to the gills as he walked into his advisor, Professor Hemmingday’s office.

  Hemmingday was a hip African American criminal defense lawyer who also doubled as a professor, and in Newlan’s opinion, he was also one of the college’s most respected lecturer’s.

  “Are you OK? You look a little tired,” remarked Hemmingday as Newlan took a seat in his office. The observant professor made it a point to peer directly into a person’s eyes when he spoke to someone; and on this particular morning when he met with Newlan to discuss his future after college, all he saw were blank, red eyes staring back at him in return.

  “Oh you know…been staying up late, studying for finals,” explained Newlan, who back in those days was an expert at the art of sleepwalking his way through life in a foggy haze.

  “Mr. Newlan, have you given any thought as to what you’d like to do for a career, post graduation?” inquired Professor Hemmingday, after having decided to ignore Newlan’s red-eye symptoms.

  “I’m not sure…but lately I’ve been thinking more and more about giving music a chance and forming a rock & roll band,” replied a dead-serious Newlan.

  “It’s nice to have dreams Mr. Newlan, but I think you should give some consideration to law school. I’ve observed you oratory skills in class, and I’ve been very impressed with your essays. I think you would make a fine litigator,” encouraged Professor Hemmingday.

  “Really? I’ll think about it,” promised Newlan, even though he knew full well that he had his heart set on being a rock star.

  After a brief pep talk, Newlan awkwardly got up out of his chair, shook Professor Hemmingday’s hand, and then with one long accidental sweeping motion of his right arm, he promptly proceeded to knock the telephone off his advisor’s desk.

  “I’m so sorry professor,” moaned Newlan as he stumbled to picked the phone up from off the floor.

  Back in his college days, Newlan’s gangly, growing frame would betray him from time to time, which in turn led to the odd fit of uncoordinatedly spastic limb movements. However, on this particular occasion, his clumsiness was due primarily to the fact that he was flying with his head in the clouds, as high as a kite.

  “It’s quite alright… but are you sure you’re OK?” gestured Professor Hemmingday again.

  “Trust me, I feel fine,” replied Newlan, but of course his definition of the word “fine” may have differed from Professor Hemmingday’s interpretation.

  “Well, take care of yourself…and stay out of trouble,” advised Professor Hemmingday as he stared skeptically at Newlan.

  “I’d bet a million bucks that he knows I’m stoned, and he’s probably mad at me because I didn’t offer him any,” surmised the comical, if somewhat paranoid, Newlan with a laugh as he exited Professor Hemmingday’s office for the very last time.

  Newlan never crossed paths with Professor Hemmingday again after that day, but he’d still think about him from time to time, and in fact he’d even see his name mentioned in the local newspapers every once in a while for his role in defending some down-and-out criminal. Much like R. J. Gleason, to this day, Hemmingday still vigorously represented his share of inner-city youths who had gotten themselves into serious jams with the law, some of them, violent gang members.

  And now in the present tense, as Newlan hypnotically stared into his thick mug of foaming Guinness, he wondered what direction his life would have turned in had listened to Professor Hemmingday’s advice all those years ago.

  “Who knows, maybe I’d be defending John Breslin. How strange would that be? I should look up Hemmingday…I bet he could advise me on how to get off this fuckin’ trial,” conjectured Newlan. But like many of his brainstorms, he was fully aware that it was
just a fleeting thought; a thought that he’d never follow up on.

  With all of these random patterns flowing through his mind, Newlan was ripe to fall deep into one of his legendary trances, but luckily he was snapped out of his flashback by a loud groan that echoed through the crowded bar. The Celtics star forward, Paul Pierce had just injured his knee and was being carted off the court in a wheelchair.

  “Shit, we’re screwed now…there goes the fuckin’ series,” lamented a disgusted Horn.

  “Come on, hang in there Pat…remember how we thought the Sox were cooked after they went down three to nothing in 2004?” replied Newlan semi-hopefully.

  Ever since the Red Sox improbable comeback against the New York Yankees, Newlan had finally became a reluctant believer in the old Yogi Berra saying, “it aint over ‘til it’s over,” which for some reason, suddenly reminded him of the Breslin trial as well, and he sullenly thought to himself, “I have a feeling that this trial’s gonna be one hell of a white-knuckle ride.”

  Newlan’s labored attempt at concentrating on the basketball game, alongside the rest of his barroom-mates, was proving to be a futile effort. Once again, due to the omnipresent Breslin trial hovering around his brain like a swarm of locusts, he was having trouble focusing his gaze on the TV screen.

  Although, as far as Newlan was concerned, his lack of focus on the fast-paced, back-and-forth action was no big deal, because he totally agreed with the old saying that you really only needed to tune in for the last two minutes of an NBA basketball game, which was the only time that the score really mattered. And so being the pragmatic person that he was, he figured he’d wait until then to lock-in his suddenly poor attention span.

  “I wonder if there are any single women floating around the bar,” mused Newlan as he got up to go for another one of his many trips to the bathroom…and by chance, as he was making his way back to the table, he glanced upon a supposedly happily-married old girlfriend locked in a passionate embrace with a man who definitely wasn’t her husband.

  “That’s depressing…her husband’s a decent guy. I have a good mind to squeal on her. Although on second thought, that’s a big dude she’s swapping spit with. I better just stay out of it. But is it any wonder that so many men end up killing each other over a woman?” contemplated Newlan, and at that exact moment, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a man at the bar who looked a lot like John Breslin.

  “Shit, the resemblance is eerie…that guy could be his brother,” hissed Newlan while at the same time he was overcome by a reflexive urge to duck down his head, just to make sure he wasn’t in the suspiciously familiar man’s range of vision.

  As was often the case, Newlan was left physically shaking by the tricks that his mind so callously played on him. However, by the time he rejoined his friends, he had come to his senses, and he muttered to himself, “What the hell’s wrong with me? What are the odd that that guy could be related to Breslin? I gotta stop letting this trial get to me. Man, you can’t make this shit up.”

  But just the same, Newlan realized full well that he was in for a few rough weeks. And yet despite the fact that, invariably, he always looked back, he was confident that once the trial was over, regardless of how it turned out, he’d be able to at least regiment the grim episode to a remote corner of his mind and chalk it up as an unavoidable life experience. Nevertheless, for the foreseeable future, while he found himself stuck, smack dab in the middle of this inconvenient ordeal, he was just as sure that the trial would weigh on his mind until it drove him to the edge of insanity.

  And as if by some celestial symmetry, at the very moment that Newlan was attempting to convince himself that everything was going to be alright, a roar came sweeping across the bar like a tsunami as Paul Piece returned from the locker room, apparently none the worse for wear. The crowd’s reaction to the miraculous return of the Celtics star player onto the court brought to mind another analogy which Newlan illogically related to his own situation.

  “After the trial is over, I’ll walk out of that courtroom unscathed…you can count on it,” predicted a suddenly determined Newlan, and with that simple little bit of self-encouragement egging him on, he was now pumped to put the Breslin case out of his mind and watch the riveting end of the basketball game with his lifelong friends.

  “Crunch time,” shouted out Horn as he held up his dripping mug for a toast.

  “Yeah, but I wish it were garbage time,” slurred Reardon.

  “Whether it is crunch time or garbage time, you just gotta go with what you know,” insisted Newlan with a mischievous laugh. But what his friends would never know was that he was referring to the Breslin trial and not the basketball game.

  In the end, the Celtics won Game One of the 2008 NBA Finals by a score of 98 to 88, and as the three friends got up to leave the bar, Newlan eagerly remarked, “…and a good time was had by all.”

  However just as they reached the door of the bar, in walked two partially uniformed Medford cops, which momentarily spooked the liquored-up pals, none more so than Bruce Reardon. But when the imaginary sawdust settled in their minds, they were relieved to discover that one of the cops just so happened to be their lone ally on the other side of the fence, Newlan’s childhood friend, James “Jimmy” Leach.

  The two defenders of the law had removed their hats, their ties, their weapons, and their equipment belts…and yet they still could not be mistaken for anything other than the police officers that they were.

  “Relax Bruce, we’re off duty…and beside we have no jurisdiction in Malden,” explained Leach who immediately recognized the temporary look of fear in the predominantly cop-hating Reardon’s face.

  With the case of mistaken identity cleared up, Leach enthusiastically shook hands with his three old buddies and offered up a greeting.

  “So what’s going on boys?” curiously wonder Leach as he stopped to chat with the departing trio. Over the years, Leach had worked his way up to the rank of Sergeant, and as such he nodded over to his subordinate partner and barked out the orders.

  “Grab us a table and I’ll be right over,” instructed Leach before turning back to his friends, and in a tempting tone he added, “Why don’t you guys stay for another beer? I’m buying.”

  “Maybe some other time,” replied Horn and Reardon almost simultaneously; they were both drunk and tired, not to mention the fact that they had to be up bright and early in the morning, so another drink, inviting though it may have been, was absolutely out of the question. However, for the trooper Newlan tomorrow suddenly seemed like a long way off, and although he thought long and hard about calling it a night, in the end, he indiscriminately decided, “The hell with it…I’ll take you up on that beer Jimmy.”

  And with that devil-may-care proclamation as his calling card, Newlan strolled unsteadily back into the bar…but this time…with police protection.