06-Juror

by Parnell Hall

  I always feel self-conscious and out of place in new situations, and I fully expected the woman to give me a withering look and say something like, “Your summons says ten o’clock. We’re doing the nine forty-five people now.”

  But she didn’t. Giving her the summons was the right and proper thing to do. She took it, tore off the perforated three-by-three-inch square corner, and handed the larger part of the slip back to me. Then she checked my name off a list, and put the three-by-three-inch square stub on top of a pile of others. I didn’t know it then, but that three-by-three-inch stub would control my destiny from here on in.

  It was going so swimmingly, I dared venture a question. “What do I do now?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Have some coffee, have a seat, do whatever you like, just be back for ten o’clock roll call.”

  I nodded. Have some coffee. That sounded easy enough. I wondered if I should go downstairs for coffee or risk the machine. I opted for the machine. I fed two quarters into it, selected coffee light, no sugar, and was rewarded with a paper cup of coffee and a dime change. I took a sip of the coffee, found that I could drink it.

  Fine. Now what did I do next?

  I took a look around. The room was beginning to fill up. Of the people there, many were reading newspapers and many had brought books. Obviously, old hands at the game who had come prepared. I, of course, had brought nothing.

  Those who hadn’t brought newspapers or books were chatting in small groups. I’m shy at meeting people, particularly in new situations. And the people talking together were obviously not on their first day of jury duty, but had formed acquaintances during their days of service. I was an outsider, an intruder, the new kid on the block, and a schmuck who didn’t know the system. So rather than deal with the people, I dealt with the room.

  There were two open doorways on the right wall. One proved to be a small reading room with desk cubbyholes and chairs. The second proved to be a TV room. The TV was on and a half a dozen people were watching it. The program was an early morning talk show of the variety I would not watch if you paid me. A young woman was being interviewed. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but a graphic appeared on the bottom of the screen reading, HAD AFFAIR WITH HER BOSS. Why that qualified her to appear on television was beyond me, but somehow it did. And there she sat, the graphic proudly proclaiming her title, just as if it had read NYU SOCIOLOGY PROFESSOR or MANHATTAN BOROUGH PRESIDENT.

  So much for the rooms on the right. On the front wall, to the right of the counter/desk, was a corridor with several doors leading off from it. No jurors were wandering down it so I figured I shouldn’t. I figured right. It later turned out that was where the offices and juror examination rooms were. You only went there if asked.

  To the left of the desk was an alcove with a bank of six phones, and a corridor leading to the Men’s and Women’s rooms. I filed the information away for future reference and continued my inspection of the room.

  Though I had brought nothing to read, there was certainly no dearth of reading material. There were signs all over the place. I’ve already mentioned the one on the counter/desk. There was another one there saying, WE ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO GRANT DEFERMENTS OR EXEMPTIONS. Also on the desk was a wooden box which read, WHEN EXCUSED FROM THE COURTROOM, PLEASE PLACE BALLOT IN THE BOX HERE.

  I wondered what a ballot was. I strolled over and looked at the box. In it was one of the three-by-three stubs. My first clue as to how they would run my life.

  At least those signs made sense. I found two others that didn’t. On the wall near the coffee and candy machines, was a sign, NO SMOKING, EATING, OR DRINKING IN THIS ROOM. There was also a garbage can with a sign, PLEASE PUT REFUSE IN CONTAINER. I looked at those for a while. What refuse? Obviously the refuse from the coffee and candy you were allowed to buy but weren’t allowed to drink or eat.

  At this point I realized I was holding a cup of coffee. Uh oh. Blown it already. Not even roll call and I’m already doing things wrong. What will they do to me? Probably some court officer will show up and haul me away.

  I went out the back door into the hallway, where several people were sitting on benches, smoking and drinking coffee. Aha. The designated area. These people were also talking in small groups, but once again no one knew me. I stood, looked around and discovered another sign on the jury room door. On inspection it proved to be a blowup of a sample summons with instructions as to how to fill it out, which immediately made me start wondering if I’d filled out mine correctly, no help now since I’d already turned it in. On the bottom of the sign were the words GOOD MORNING JURORS, bordered by two yellow smiley-faced suns. Oh dear. Have a nice day.

  I finished my coffee, deposited my cup in the proper receptacle and went back into the jury room. No court officers appeared to handcuff me and lead me away. Hot damn. I’d gotten away with it.

  Just inside the door I found another sign. It said EVACUATION. That caught my attention. I went over and looked at it. It turned out to be a printed form with the appropriate information filled in in the blanks. In full it read:

  EVACUATION

  IN CASE OF FIRE OR OTHER EMERGENCY

  USE STAIRWELL C

  OR ALTERNATELY

  USE STAIRWELL D

  ROOM 362

  That was a hell of an ominous note. We were in an interior room with no stairwells whatsoever and no clues as to where they might conceivably be. Well, with luck the building wouldn’t burn down in the next two weeks. If it did, I could envision people trampling over each other screaming, “Where’s stairwell C, dammit?”

  I looked around some more and discovered the most peculiar sign of all. It was on the wall behind the counter/desk. It read IN REAR OF ROOM ONLY.

  I blinked. Surely that couldn’t be the entire sign. I walked up, looked closer. Sure enough, it wasn’t the entire sign. There was obviously a top part of the sign with other words on it. But here was the interesting thing. The top of the sign was not missing. Instead, it was covered up by a metal bar that had been screwed into the wall with four huge metal screws. The bar was just wide enough to cover up the top line of the sign. But the thing was, the metal bar had no conceivable purpose except to cover up the top line of the sign.

  Good lord. What was it that was going on in the rear of this room that they didn’t want us to know about? It couldn’t be smoking and drinking coffee—that was well advertised and took place in the corridor outside. But in the rear of the room? Hmmm. The mind boggled.

  I was not to find out. At that moment a young man in a suit and tie who looked like a college student stepped up to the counter/desk, picked up a microphone which had been concealed behind it, and suddenly his voice boomed throughout the room. “All right, listen up, jurors. I am going to call the roll. When I call your name, please answer by saying ‘here.’”

  With that he picked up the stack of ballots, the three-by-three summons stubs, and began reading the names off of them and then placing them facedown in two piles, one for those present and one for those absent.

  I glanced at the clock. It was ten after ten. Not bad.

  I heard the name Stanley Hastings.

  I answered, “Here.”

  Small beginnings.

  Idle musings.

  I wasn’t sure what I expected next.

  But I certainly never expected murder.

  3.

  THAT’S NOT REALLY TRUE. About my not expecting murder, I mean. Because after all, I’d been called as a juror, and it was certainly conceivable one of the trials they were assembling jurors for might be a murder trial.

  But that’s not what I meant. In that case, the murder would be a fait accomplis. Something that had happened in the past that we were now being asked to judge. What I mean is, I didn’t expect a murder to happen.

  Not that it happened right away. Nothing much happened right away.

  Except we saw a movie. It was, naturally, about jury duty. It concerned the experiences of three jurors of predictably racially mixed b
ackgrounds. All were serving jury duty for the first time. All began with certain reservations or doubts. All served on one form of jury or another—criminal, civil or grand. And—surprise, surprise—all emerged from the experience with a sense of pride, accomplishment and fulfillment at having done their civic duty.

  To the best I could determine, none of them was the sole proprietor of their business.

  When the movie was over the lights were turned on and the projector was wheeled away.

  And then nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. There was no announcement as to what we should be doing next. People merely returned to their reading, talking, what have you.

  I got up from my seat and eased my way out to the aisle.

  An old man in a faded suit and tie getting up from the other side of the aisle shook his head and said, “Sheesh.” He referred to his watch, an unnecessary gesture since there was a large clock on the wall. “Not even eleven,” he said. “You watch. They won’t do nothing till twelve.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He gave me a look. “Your first day?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Yeah, well it’s my third. Second time I seen that damn movie. I tell you, it ain’t any better the second time around.”

  “They show it every day?”

  He shook his head. “No. Mondays and Thursdays. That’s when the new jurors come in. I started last Thursday. It’s my third day.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s it like?”

  “It’s like bein’ in jail. I sit here all day, I ain’t been called yet. Some fun, huh? Sit here from ten till four and go home.”

  “I thought we had to stay till five.”

  “Yeah, well nothing’s doing, they give you a break. Send you home early. Some break. Two days, I ain’t been called yet. Some people been called three, four times.”

  “What?” I said. “You wanna be called?”

  He gave me a look. “You think I wanna sit here for two weeks? Hell no, I’d like to be called right now, get put on some nice civil case takes two, three days and I’m outta here.”

  “I thought you had to stay two weeks.”

  “That’s in theory. But what I hear, you been here a couple days like me, you get called, you serve a couple of days, you come back, you been here a week in all—well, they ain’t gonna make you go through it again. They send you home.” He nodded in agreement with himself. “Yeah, it’s easier than the other way.”

  “What other way?”

  “You keep getting kicked off one jury after another, nobody’s gonna use you, eventually they send you home.”

  A glimmer of hope began to stir. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. But that’s the hard way, and it takes longer. That way, they send you home the middle of the second week. Even so, you save two or three days. Big deal. Me, I wanna get on a case today, do two days and I’m outta here.”

  “You wanna go back to work?”

  “Hell, no. I’m retired. But who wants to spend the day sitting here?”

  It was a good question, and one to which I did not have an answer. But the old man expected none. He nodded in agreement with himself again, and shuffled off in the direction of the bathroom.

  I sat back down and did some serious thinking. What my buddy had told me was both encouraging and depressing. The depressing part was that jury duty was even more deadly than I had anticipated, which was saying something. The encouraging part was that they sent you home at four o’clock.

  That was nice. You didn’t have to be there till ten, and you could leave by four. So it wasn’t an eight-hour day, it was six. Which meant maybe my two weeks here didn’t have to be a total loss.

  I went to the bank of pay phones, all of which were occupied by prospective jurors trying to establish contact with the outside world and straighten out their disrupted lives, waited my turn, and called Rosenberg and Stone.

  Wendy/Janet answered the phone. Wendy and Janet were switchboard girls with identical voices, so it was impossible to ever know which one you were talking to.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” Wendy/Janet said.

  “Hi, it’s Stanley,” I said.

  “Stanley,” she said. “I thought you had jury duty.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “I found out it isn’t going to take as much time as I thought. I may be able to handle some work.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  That was not surprising. Between them, Wendy and Janet had the IQ of a tree stump. Explaining anything to one of them was never easy. I tried, but the end result was Wendy/Janet told me I would have to talk to Richard. That figured. The only decision Wendy/Janet was capable of making on her own was the decision to defer to Richard’s judgment.

  Richard wasn’t particularly glad to hear from me.

  “Yes?” he barked, in his familiar high-pitched nasal whine.

  “Yeah, Richard. It’s Stanley.”

  “Stanley. I thought you had jury duty.”

  “I do. I’m there now.”

  “Then why are you calling?”

  “It turns out I’m gonna have more free time than I thought. I’m gonna be able to handle some cases.”

  “Hey, you got jury duty, you gotta be there. You can’t be running out on ’em.”

  “I know that, but it’s a short day. I don’t have to be there till ten. So I can do a signup first.”

  “And get there by ten?”

  “If it’s in Manhattan, sure.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re gonna be late.”

  “No, I won’t. Look, I’m uptown already. I can do a case in Harlem—there’s always a case in Harlem, right? I can shoot up there, sign the guy up, I’m downtown by ten o’clock easy.”

  “Oh yeah?” Richard said. “What time you leave your house?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “For what, an eight-thirty appointment?”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re gonna meet the guy at eight-thirty, sign him up and get downtown by ten o’clock. You’re telling me you can do that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh yeah?” Richard said. “Then you ought to look at your time sheets. Every signup you do in Harlem you put down two hours. Now you’re telling me you can do the signup plus drive from Harlem all the way down to Centre Street in under two hours? I have to wonder what the hell you been billing me for.”

  Jesus Christ, what a cheap prick. I mean he only paid me ten bucks an hour and thirty cents a mile, so twenty bucks for a whole signup didn’t seem excessive.

  But I realized I was on dangerous ground. “All right, so I make the appointment for eight o’clock, I leave the house at seven thirty. Christ, Richard, give me a break. Every investigator charges two hours for a Harlem assignment. I should get paid less because I’m faster and more efficient? Hell, if I’m faster and more efficient, maybe I should get a raise.”

  Richard sidestepped that issue neatly. “It’s not the money,” he said, a ballsy remark, coming from him. “I just don’t want you showing up late for jury duty. I have to work in the system. It would be a real embarrassment to me to have you come late to jury duty, and then have them find out it was because you were out working for me.”

  “That won’t happen, Richard. I promise you.”

  “Oh, all right. Christ. So that’s all you called about? One lousy signup?”

  “No. Two lousy signups. I can handle one in the afternoon too.”

  “Oh yeah? How is that?”

  “I can make a five o’clock appointment.”

  “You don’t get off till five o’clock.”

  “Technically, yes. But I found out if nothing’s doin’, they let you off at four.”

  “What if something’s doin’?”

  “Then they keep you later.”

  “Then you can’t have a five o’clock appointment.”

  “Sure I can. In the fir
st place, nothing’s gonna be doin’. But if there was, there’s a bank of phones here, I could call the client, tell him I’m gonna be a little late.”

  “What if the client has no phone?”

  “Then I’ll call the office and tell Wendy/Janet I’m gonna be late, and when the client calls in to ask where I am, they can tell him.”

  “How’s the client gonna call in if he has no phone?”

  “He’ll go out to a pay phone, just like he did to make the appointment in the first place.”

  “Yeah, well what if he’s laid up in bed and can’t get out to a phone?”

  “Then he’ll be there when I get there.”

  There was a moment of silence on the line.

  Son of a bitch! I’d done it. I’d out-argued Richard Rosenberg, the master debater himself.

  Richard sighed. “All right,” he said. “You got your signups. Tell Wendy/Janet I said it was all right.”

  Now it was my turn to pause. “Well, listen, Richard, Wendy/Janet’s not too keen on the idea. I think they’ll have to hear it from you.”

  Richard was back in form. “Oh no you don’t,” he chuckled. “You want the job, you pay the price. You know if you tell ’em I said so, it will be all right. You want the job, you explain it to Wendy/Janet.”

  Still chuckling, Richard hung up the phone.

  What a prince. The least he could have done was transfer me back. And that was my last quarter, too. Well, hell, this was company business. I used the Rosenberg and Stone calling card number.

  “Rosenberg and Stone,” came the voice of Wendy/Janet.

  The worst part about dealing with Wendy/Janet was, if you have to refer to a previous conversation, you never know if you were dealing with her or the other one. And you can’t really ask, because for some reason not recognizing their voices tends to piss them off immensely.

  “Hi, it’s Stanley.”

  “Stanley,” she said. “I thought you had jury duty.”

  So. It was the other one. At least I knew that. Which didn’t really help me. If I knew I was talking to Wendy, I could ask to talk to Janet. Or vice versa. But I couldn’t just say, “Let me talk to the other one.” Not if I wanted to stay in their good graces. And I certainly did. Wendy and Janet, as incompetent as they were, were responsible for handling all incoming calls and parceling out work assignments to the investigators. Which made me dependent upon them for my livelihood.