Grisham's Juror

by Timothy Braatz

  I stood up, took a few deep breaths, I was ready to roll, and…I was stuck. Boxed in. Exiting the jury box was like disembarking an airplane. Roya had a first class seat and was out the door, through the terminal, and staking out a spot at the luggage carousel while I was still trapped near the aft lavatories, waiting for Grandma Strawberry Jam to gather up her carry-ons, delayed by The Elephant as she waddled down the aisle. Something like that. My pulse slowed. The butterflies melted away. The pressure was off. Our second encounter would have to wait. Unless Roya sought me out. That could happen. After all, she was the one who initiated encounter number one on Friday. At the very least, she finds me approachable, and maybe something more. She might be waiting for me outside the courtroom door, hoping I look her way. She wasn’t. I took the elevator to the third floor and poked my head into the cafeteria. When I finally spotted her, in the first floor lobby, she was deep in a cell phone conversation and examining her nails.

  I found a bench where I could keep an eye on her without being obtrusive, and opened Grisham number five. I had snuck it off Marissa’s shelf the evening after jury selection, so why not give it a try, maybe improve my batting average, currently at .250—four Grishams attempted, one completed. I had whiffed on number four on Sunday afternoon. Once the corporate tax lawyer started providing legal assistance to the indigent, the story lost momentum. Nothing bad was going to happen to someone doing something that good, not after he’d already lost everything, not in Grisham’s universe. I was catching on, there was a pattern to his stories: greed, suffering, then redemption.

  The bad stuff started early in number five. While Roya chatted away, Danilo was kidnapped and drugged. Danilo aka Patrick Lanigan had stolen ninety million dollars—talk about greed—and his abductors wanted to know where it was hidden. They tied him down, taped electrodes to certain sensitive spots of flesh, and hit the switch. Talk about suffering. Roya ended her conversation, fiddled with her phone, made another call. Patrick screamed in pain and begged for mercy. I was hooked. How would Patrick Lanigan, big-time embezzler, find redemption? How would Grisham get him out of this fix? When Roya walked past me, still talking on the phone, heading for the elevators, they were handing him over to the FBI. Even under extreme duress, Lanigan hadn’t given up the loot. He couldn’t, he didn’t know where it was. At the first sign of his disappearance, a woman named Eva had cleverly dispersed the money by wire to different banks around the world. I caught up with her at the courtroom door. Roya, not Eva. She was just turning off her phone, depositing it in her purse.

  -Hi, Roya.

  She smiled her flawless smile…at Sir No-Sir.

  -Oh, hi, Kevin.

  The juror with the bad transmission and terse replies had beaten me to punch.

  -Ready for more law and order?

  She never looked back to see who had held the door open for her, and I was stuck again as more people filed in, including Grandma Strawberry Jam.

  -Thank you, dear, you’re a real gentleman. How are you this morning?

  Slightly nauseated, actually, seeing Juror Number Six, she of the long black curls and first class seat, already on a first name basis with Juror Number Five, he of the crew cut hair and cowboy boots. Sitting side by side in the jury box, they’ll exchange knowing glances, whisper clever asides, unconsciously mimic each other’s body language. Meanwhile, down in chair one, I’ll be stranded next to a little mouse of a man who reeks of cigarette smoke and gives me an awkward nod whenever we make eye contact.

  -I’m fine.

  Gramma Jamma patted my hand and smiled. Well, at least one woman on the jury digs me.

  With Silverson back on the bench, Sloan called to the stand Rex Ruffman, Huntington Beach police officer and street gang expert. He repeated his name for the stenographer—Rex Ruffman, two f’s. He had an air of confidence, like he knew his way around a courtroom. He had a good name for socorepery.

  -We’ve got one bank robbery and two car wrecks, Rex.

  -It’s Ruffman.

  -It sure is.

  The source of his expertise, he said in reply to Sloan’s first question, was ten years interviewing gang-bangers, cataloguing their tattoos and graffiti, learning their sociology.

  -It’s no mystery. Mostly young men from broken homes, looking for a family to belong to, looking for respect.

  Ruffman served on task forces, advised neighboring communities, taught college courses. And, yes, Orange County has gangs.

  -Mostly this area. Mid-county. Anaheim, Santa Ana, over in Garden Grove. Not along the coast. The exception being Huntington.

  He spoke with professorial authority, but wasn’t he forgetting the Laguna Beach gangs? I’ve seen them—disaffected white teens sporting yin-and-yang tattoos, rampaging through downtown wielding credit cards and firing off text messages, defiantly flashing their gang signs: the two-fingered peace symbol, the ironic thumbs-up. I looked down toward Roya. Would she appreciate my droll wit? The Mouse in chair two saw me looking his way and nodded. I took it as a yes.

  Professor Ruffman continued his lecture.

  -Southside Huntington Beach is our most established gang. Latinos. They claim the area from Beach Boulevard to Nichols. Call themselves Playeros. Beach boys. Asian bangers roll through town sometimes, from Garden Grove or Westminster. They’re less territorial. Mostly concerned about their Asian rivals. We’ve got some resident skinheads. White supremacists. Informal links to Nazi Lowriders. Also not territorial. We keep a data base—names, photos, gang affiliation, internal relations like who’s giving orders, who rolls with who. Our policy is low tolerance. They act up, we shut them down.

  Yeah, but who wears cowboy boots in Orange County? Seriously. Out of the corner of my eye, just past The Elephant in chair four, I could see Sir No-Sir’s pointy toes. Is there a gang for white thirty-somethings with tough-guy exteriors and no sense of humor? I mean, besides the police department. I couldn’t remember if he was asked his occupation during jury selection. Probably tends bar. Or works in a liquor store. Definitely not a cowboy, wrong kind of jeans. Probably rides a motorcycle since his transmission went out. That explains it. All boots and no cattle. No college degree either, I bet. I could still hear his responses to Sloan: Do you have any independent knowledge of this case? No, sir. Any opinion on his guilt or innocence? No, sir. Can you factor equations, ever take a paddleboard two miles offshore, do you know the difference between Iran and Persia, does Roya go for the macho routine or is she just being polite?

  -Tell us about Juan Castro, Mr. Ruffman.

  Sloan handed the witness a document identified as a print-out from Ruffman’s data base.

  -We pegged Juan Castro as a Southside Playero seven years ago, when he was fifteen. Pretty young. He served five months in juvy—juvenile detention—for repeated vandalism, mostly graffiti. Never returned to high school. When he was nineteen, got picked up dealing coke. He was running with a gangster named Sleepy Cedeño, a hardcore Playero with connections to La Eme, the Mexican mafia. That’s a major prison gang. Not good.

  Not good, indeed, Mr. Ruffman, witness for the prosecution. Shouldn’t you be making the victim sound innocent, win sympathy from the jury, not detailing what a troublemaker he was?

  -I interviewed Juan Castro last year, after he got popped for a parole violation. No charges were ever filed. He told me he was done slinging dope. He had a baby daughter with his girlfriend.

  Oh, okay, Juan Castro was getting out, going straight. The man had a bright future before the dastardly deed. Anything else, Mr. Ruffman?

  -We didn’t have any more trouble with him, so maybe it was true. Nine months later he shows up dead in a parking lot. Nasty bullet hole in his head. Because of his gang tats, I was called in to have a look.

  Sounds rough, man.

  His expert testimony, under Sloan’s questioning, took up the rest of the morning, and when we recessed for lunch, it wasn’t looking good for Bud Jack. My guess: if we had gone into deliberation right then, the vote goes 12-0, he
did it, no shadow of a doubt, send Bud Jack to the big house, send us home. Ruffman knew gangs, Ruffman had even figured out why Bud Jack was hurrying to the bus stop, how could Limping Lawson counter that? I didn’t give it much thought. I had other moves on my mind. This time I wasn’t getting boxed in, Cowboy Kevin wasn’t beating me to the punch. This time, the gloves were coming off. Judge Silverson stood, we stood. She exited the court, the jurors started the slow file leftward. I went right, casually hopped the low railing, and walked unimpeded in front of the jury box. The aisle to the rear door was clear except for a few court spectators. I was the first juror out of the courtroom, and I waited for the others. Gramma Jamma came through, chatting with Lady Yoga. The Cowboy followed—tight jaw, dull eyes. Ever read a novel? No, sir. Not even a Grisham? Then came his lovely neighbor, taking her phone from her purse.

  -Hi, Roya.

  -Oh, hi.

  She smiled her flawless smile…at me.

  -How are you doing?

  -Good. Hungry.

  She laughed. She checked her phone.

  -Mr. Fletcher, could I speak with you?

  The bailiff, stern and bald—the so little hair left I might as well shave it clean kind of bald—and short, five-foot-six tops—what could he want? A message from the judge, I bet, she wants to sound me out, get a sense of the jury’s mood.

  -Mr. Fletcher, we don’t hop the rail in the courtroom.

  Lack of humor to compensate for lack of stature.

  -Oh. Sorry. I was—

  -Thank you, Mr. Fletcher.

  He was gone. So was Roya. The elevator had closed. Now what? Stairs! I hurried down two flights. She was hungry—what an opening! The third line was easy. Should we go to lunch? Feel like getting some lunch? Would you mind some company for lunch? She wasn’t in the cafeteria. The escalator to the first floor was crowded and moving in slow motion. She wasn’t in the lobby, wasn’t near the security checkpoint at the front doors. Maybe she had slipped into a restroom and I was ahead of her. I waited a few minutes, then back up to the cafeteria. Still no Roya. She wasn’t with the smokers on the outdoor patio, thank God, but my neighbor in the jury box was, The Mouse, standing in the hot sun, puffing away. I gave up the search, half disappointed, half relieved. She must have gone out for lunch, pork and beans with Cowboy Kev. I had a teacher’s sack lunch: yogurt cup, roast beef sandwich, chocolate chip cookies. I found an open seat next to a familiar face.

  -Hey, how you doing? I’m Chad.

  One of the three moderate men I had chatted with on Friday.

  -Fletcher.

  We shook hands. In a lunchroom full of strangers, we were comrades, but sitting down next to Chad was a tactical error, immediately regretted. I wanted to eat my sandwich and read, he wanted to talk.

  -Didn’t know they had gangs in Huntington Beach. Did you? I knew Anaheim was bad.

  -Yeah?

  -We live in Placentia. Pretty quiet there. Where are you from?

  -Laguna.

  -We love Laguna. Always try to get down there for brunch when the kids are in town. What’s the name of that—?

  -Las Brisas.

  -Is that it—the restaurant on the cliff? Great view.

  Las Brisas—the breezes—Mexican seafood for the weekend crowd. I’ve never eaten there, but it’s always the first thing they mention. That and…

  -And the Pageant of the Masters. We’ve missed the last few years. We need to get down there. Maybe once this trial’s over. Ever been on a jury before?

  -No.

  -It takes longer than you think.

  -Yeah?

  He lowered his voice and gave me a conspiratorial look.

  -These lawyers. We can’t discuss the case. They can’t shut up.

  I forced a smile and scanned the room. Still no Persian dental hygienist. The man sitting opposite us took Chad’s bait, started complaining about his jury service.

  -Three weeks in, and the defense is still calling expert witnesses, paid by the hour I’m sure. It’s unbelievable.

  Chad shook his head in commiseration.

  -What kind of case?

  -We’re not suppose to say.

  -Actually, you can say what you want, we just can’t discuss it.

  The man hesitated, worked his eyebrows into a quizzical squint as he pondered Chatty Chad’s subtle rendering of the law, then unloaded his grievance.

  -These clowns were exiting the freeway and slammed into a retaining wall. They claim the off-ramp was flawed. No one takes responsibility anymore. So we have to listen to everything there is to know about freeway design, traffic safety standards, the braking system on the VW Beetle. Literally clowns. Eleven of them. In one small Volkswagen. It’s a joke.

  Meanwhile, in Grisham land, coastal Mississippi was in an uproar, Patrick Lanigan the embezzler having returned from the dead. The car accident three years earlier—a Blazer, not a Beetle—was staged. Lanigan had faked his death, changed his identity, stolen the ninety million, and fled to Brazil, leaving behind a widow and daughter. What a creep. I’m guessing Eva, the Brazilian lawyer transferring the loot around the globe, is his lover. And beautiful. If it was my novel, I’d make the hero’s girlfriend ugly, even if he’s filthy rich, just to confuse the reader.

  -I’m not buying it.

  Chad was looking at me. So was the guy across the table. With my nose in the book, I had missed something.

  -Sorry?

  -I’m not saying he didn’t do it. But that whole drug story—these lawyers will come up with anything.

  Chad was referring to how Sloan, over two half-hearted objections from Lawson, had elicited a complicated thesis from Ruffman. They had started with a second document, which Ruffman barely glanced at.

  -Yeah, this is a report from the Long Beach Police Department. They have a big gang task force. Lots of gangs in Long Beach. Most notably Eastside Rollin’ Twenties. That’s a Crip set. African Americans. Their rivals are the Latino sets, especially Longo 13.

  Sloan let him run with this a while, then asked where Juan Castro and Southside Huntington fit in.

  -Drugs. Castro’s buddy, Sleepy Cedeño, through his ties to La Eme, had connections to Longo 13, moving cocaine from Long Beach to Huntington. Sold it to rich white kids, like from Newport. Longo 13 had a minor turf war going with Eastside Rollin’ over control of the cocaine pipeline. If Eastside Rollin’ wanted to weaken Longo’s position in the south Orange County market, going after Sleepy Cedeño would be a place to start. He was shot and killed in Long Beach. Long Beach PD says it was Crips. Then a carload of Latinos, reportedly flashing Longo signs, shot up two Crips in a drive-by. One dead, one on life support. That was two weeks before Juan Castro was killed.

  Chad wiped his mouth with a napkin and gave me his analysis.

  -They got a body and a suspect. Anyone can come up with a motive. That’s all I’m saying. You’re a math teacher, right?

  -Yeah. What about you?

  -I own a tire shop. Nothing like teaching. No summers off.

  They always have to remind you of that, always hard to tell if they’re happy for you or resentful. I noticed Chatty Chad’s hands—smooth skin, clean nails. Not hands that mount tires for a living. I bet the shop owner takes off whenever he wants. I didn’t say it, though. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have a second line. I took a spoonful of yogurt to buy time.

  -You know how I got my start, Fletcher? Car detailing. Isn’t that something? Just like our guy.

  Bud Jack ran a car detailing service, Ruffman had explained, gesturing to the Long Beach PD report as he spoke

  -Him and this guy working with him. Wash your car in your driveway or your place of business. They come to you. But check your odometer. Sometimes he puts thirty miles on your vehicle, or his guy does, maybe driving to Huntington Beach. Long Beach started getting complaints. They looked into it—the task force did—because Bud Jack has known ties to the Eastside Rollin’ Twenties.

  Again, Chad knew better.

  -I never onc
e took a car out of a driveway. There’s no reason. You let a guy detail your car, you unlock the door for him, that’s it. He doesn’t need to touch the keys. He says he has to take it somewhere, you tell him take a hike. So I’m not buying it. I’m not saying guilty or innocent, you understand. What did you say that restaurant was called—Las Brisas? I need to tell the wife.

  Ha! I could hear Sharon’s laugh. It’s a chum bucket, darling, they seat you like sardines, they toss you soggy shrimp.

  -The wife loves their shrimp. I go for the cocktails.

  Actually, the shrimp are cocktails—chemical cocktails—that’s what Pete had told me one night in his favorite Italian restaurant.

  -It’s all farm-raised, dude, pumped full of antibiotics, pesticides, algaecides. Toxic shrimp. They put it in everything, including that pasta you’re eating, and the more antibiotics we ingest, the more our infectious diseases develop resistance to them. We’re creating super germs. You wanna know what else is in that shrimp?

  -No, Pete, I don’t.

  When Pete’s in biology teacher mode, he can really ruin a meal.

  -Rotenone. It causes Parkinson’s. I’m just saying.

  I excused myself from the cafeteria table, descended to the first floor, to my favorite bench, and got myself situated: cookies, Grisham, and a clear view of the entrance. When Roya comes through security, does her hotness set off the metal detector? Her Roya Hotness. I was hoping to intercept her, walk with her to the courtroom, but my mind was already headed back there, sorting through the testimony. Did Bud Jack really kill Juan Castro? Did it really go down the way Ruffman posited? Bud Jack takes the bus to Huntington Beach for a meeting with Juan Castro, wants to establish an Eastside-Southside cocaine connection now that Sleepy Cedeño is sleeping for good, but Juan isn’t having it, for any number of reasons, so Bud Jack caps him, then catches the last bus home. Lawson had objected to this as farfetched speculation. Sloan insisted that Ruffman was offering an expert opinion. Silverson allowed it, saying Lawson could address this in cross-examination. Maybe it was speculation, but Ruffman had expressed no doubt.