“But you don’t know who.”
He nods. “Lucky for whoever did it.”
“You haven’t convinced me it’s not Galloway.”
“You think I give a shit if you’re convinced?”
I seem to have gotten all I can get out of Double J, which isn’t much.
“Why do they call you Double J?”
“’Cause my name’s Jesse Jackson. I got sick of the ‘Reverend’ jokes.”
“That’s the first thing you’ve said that makes sense. Let’s go, Marcus.”
But Double J is not finished. Despite his claim that he doesn’t care if I’m convinced, he takes another shot at it. “You like money?” he asks.
“Why?”
“Just tell me, you like money?”
“I’ve got more than I need.”
He stifles a moan. “Damn, you’re a pain in the ass. If you liked money, more than anything else in the world, and a whole shitload of it was sitting on this table, would you set fire to it? Or would you take it?”
I see where he’s going with this, and not only does it make perfect sense, but it’s something I should have seen long ago. Maybe I should hire Double J to write my closing arguments. “So there were drugs in that house?”
“Enough to keep Galloway wasted for a hundred years.”
“And he would have known that?” I ask.
“Absolutely. And there’s nothing he wouldn’t have done to get it. He would have burned the house down, but to get the shit, not to destroy it.”
“So who could have done it? Who were your enemies?”
“They weren’t after us,” he says. “We were what you assholes call ‘innocent bystanders.’”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I ran my own little investigation, you know? It wasn’t nobody after us. No way.”
“Maybe you didn’t investigate that well,” I say.
He frowns. “I’m the top guy in my operation, you understand? It starts and ends with me. If there was somebody out to get us, they wouldn’t have done it when I wasn’t there. If someone was pissed off, I’d be the guy they were after. And if they left me alive, they’d know they’d be in deep shit.”
The argument makes sense, though of course the arsonist might have believed Double J was in the apartment. In any event, while his logic is surprisingly compelling, it’s nothing that advances the ball for me, and certainly nothing I can use in court.
Marcus and I leave and head back downstairs, where Laurie is still watching over the two unconscious morons who messed with Marcus.
“They’re both breathing,” she says.
“Is that meant to be good news?” I ask. “You think they might come after us?”
“Nunh,” Marcus says.
Well put.
I’ve never been on a jury.
Since I vote in every election, I’ve been called for jury duty a bunch of times, but I’ve never made it on to a panel. There is more chance they would take an admitted Islamic terrorist than a defense attorney.
One time I went through voir dire on a DUI case, and the defense attorney pronounced that I was acceptable to their side. The prosecutor, a friend of mine named Norman Trell, said that he was rejecting me “for cause.” When the judge asked him to state the cause, Norman laughed and said, “’Cause he’s a defense attorney!”
But at this moment I know how jurors feel, because it’s verdict time in the Noah Galloway trial that’s been taking place in my mind. For me to take the case, or at least to try and convince Noah to plead not guilty, I have to be able to find reasonable doubt in my own mind, which is pretty much what juries have to do in order to acquit.
Of course, in this case I can impanel whoever I want as my fellow juror, and since I’m thinking about this in bed, the logical candidate is the woman I sleep with, Laurie Collins. As a former police officer, she’s generally more of a prosecution-favoring witness, but if I don’t use her, there’s no alternate to choose from, since I’m monogamous.
Laurie and I go over what we’ve learned about the case so far. Within ten minutes she says, “I’ve got doubts. I think you should go to trial.”
“That was quick. I was hoping we could deliberate a while longer, maybe even sequester ourselves.”
“No reason,” she says. “I’m sure.”
“How can that be?”
“Beam yourself,” she says.
Laurie often employs a rather unique decision-making technique. She imagines beaming herself into a future situation that will result from her decision. She goes on to imagine how she will feel, and if it is intolerable, then she’ll beam herself a second time, with the decision variable reversed. Often the second beaming results in a more palatable situation.
“I don’t think I’m in a beaming mood,” I say.
“Try it. It’ll clear things up.”
“Okay. Where am I beaming myself?”
“The courtroom. You’ve just watched Noah enter a guilty plea, and the judge is in the process of sentencing him. He’s calling him the perpetrator of an unbelievably heinous act, and he takes pleasure in sentencing him to a maximum security prison for the rest of his natural life.”
I’m going along with this, imagining myself in that situation, and it truly does feel awful. But beaming myself into months of a difficult, probably futile murder trial doesn’t brighten my mood either.
“Let me speak to juror number three,” I say, and I get out of bed and walk over to the corner of the room, where Tara is sound asleep on a bed of her own. She has a contented smile on her face; maybe she’s beaming herself to the biscuit aisle at Petsmart.
I wake her by petting her head and saying, “Bark if you think I should take this to trial.”
Stunningly, shockingly, she sits up and barks. I turn around in amazement to see if Laurie has seen this, and Laurie is grinning and holding up a rawhide chewie where Tara can see it. The prospect of chewies gets her to bark one hundred percent of the time.
I get up and head back to bed. “Doesn’t matter what Tara thinks; Galloway saved her life, so she’s biased. I’m rejecting her for cause.”
Laurie goes over to give Tara the chewie, and says to her, “Don’t listen to him. You can be the jury forewoman.”
Visiting Noah in jail is unlike visiting any client I’ve ever had.
The trappings are the same… the security routine upon entry, the dreary grey room with the metal table, the sullen guards, and the strict attention to routine. The change begins when Noah is brought in.
He seems genuinely happy to see me. He even seems happy to see Hike, as counterintuitive a reaction as I can imagine. But that in itself is not unusual. The incarcerated, especially those who haven’t been convicted, always like it when their lawyers show up. The reason for this, simply put, is that there is always the possibility they are bringing good news.
Noah doesn’t really seem to care what kind of news we’re bringing, if any. He has accepted his fate, and considers it just and fitting. He welcomes our arrival not because we might change that fate, but rather because he’s looking forward to a conversation with people he regards as new friends.
I’m about to shake up his world, and I’m not sure I should.
We exchange pleasantries, though pleasantries with Hike are fairly difficult to achieve. Noah mentions that he has a cold, which sends Hike off on a diatribe about attracting diseases in close quarters.
“That’s the problem with airplanes,” he says. “You’re in a close area, sucking down everybody’s germs. And cruise ships, they’re the worst. If you take a plane to a cruise ship, your chances of winding up in a hospital with tubes down your throat are like eighty percent.”
Noah is not quite sure how to respond to this, so he makes a joke and says, “Maybe I should try and get into the prison hospital. It’s probably nicer in there.”
Hike practically snorts his disagreement. “Yeah, I’m sure it’s great. You probably have to cut through the bacteria with a machete and a blowtorch.”