Джеймс Паттерсон - Killer Instinct

I feel you, Freddie…

Forty-five minutes later on the dot, my father was getting into character in an empty conference room at the courthouse. A sweaty and out of breath Freddie had delivered. No sooner had he handed off the goods to Elizabeth than she was scuffing them all up, making them looked used. Or, in the case of the flask, abused.

Meanwhile, through an open crack of the conference room door, I was watching everyone still remaining in the jury pool return from their lunch break. One after another they were filing back into the waiting area. Everyone except Sadira.

“Where the hell is she?” I asked.

“Are you sure she didn’t already go in?” asked Elizabeth. “You could’ve missed her.”

Elizabeth was still busy behind me with my father’s wardrobe. I looked back to see her actually ripping off a button from the flannel shirt. She kept glancing up at his old, beat-up John Deere cap as if it were the template for his overall look. The cap was probably how he got the idea for this in the first place.

I returned to staring through the crack in the door, waiting for a gray skirt and white blouse. The thought that Sadira had decided not to return to the courthouse crossed my mind like a wrecking ball. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon—where are you?

There she was.

She was almost hidden among a small group of other potential jurors. They were all returning at the same time. Most were talking to one another, surely commiserating about having to spend a perfectly good day waiting in an overcrowded room, all in the name of a nebulous concept that most New Yorkers tend to put in air quotes or utter with an eye roll: civic duty.

Sadira, on the other hand, wasn’t talking to anyone. Moreover, her body language was all but screaming, Keep your distance . Not exactly a good sign for what we were about to attempt.

Still, all that mattered for now was that it was her. It was definitely her. Sadira Yavari. Our mystery woman. Forget the gray skirt and white blouse. I’d know that walk anywhere.

I turned back to my father and Elizabeth. “It’s showtime,” I said.

Chapter 64

PLACES, EVERYONE.

Elizabeth went first. She walked out into the courthouse lobby, flashing her badge and prepping two security guards who were manning the door. They were nodding like a couple of bobbleheads. So far, so good.

I went next, walking straight past them and into the waiting room, where I took a seat with a clear view of Sadira. Not once, though, did I even glance in her direction.

A minute later, my father entered as a last straggler from the lunch break. If Simon & Garfunkel had written a song about how he looked, it would’ve been called “The Only Living Hick in New York.” Then again, that’s the beauty of the city. The diversity is so truly diverse that everyone ends up blending in. Until, for some reason, they don’t.

Exactly what we were banking on.

The Birthday Paradox is seemingly a mathematical improbability based on how many people would have to be in the same room before the odds were 100 percent that two of them shared the same birthday. The paradox is that the number of people is surprisingly low. Only twenty-three people are required in the room before the odds are fifty-fifty. At only seventy-five people, the odds of two sharing the same birthday jump to 99.9 percent. How can that be right when there are 365 days in a year?

But it is. The math proves it.

As for the Jury Pool Paradox, there was no math. Just instinct. How many people had to be in the room before no one noticed that two extra people had joined them after the lunch break?

Sure enough, no one seemed to give my father or me a second glance as we took our seats. Good thing. Because as fast as you can say Tim Tebow the entire room was about to notice us. Big time.

Whenever you’re ready, Pops…

Fittingly, it started with a fumble. Under the guise of trying to sneak a swig from inside his flannel shirt, my father dropped the flask to the ground. It landed with a metallic thud against the tile flooring, the sound echoing throughout the entire waiting room. Naturally, everyone looked. Their faces said it all. Oh, great. Some drunk guy.

Worse, a red-state drunk guy, given how he was dressed.

“Mind your own damn business, you liberal lookie-loos,” my father barked. He wisely didn’t go for the full-blown Barney Gumble and tack on a belch, but he did appear to lose his balance as he leaned over to pick up the flask.

Right on cue, someone nearby snickered.

“What are you laughin’ at, baldy?” my father asked, jabbing his finger at a follicularly challenged man, who immediately regretted the snicker, as well as not wearing a hat to jury duty. He dipped his eyes back into his magazine, hoping this nutcase would let it be. Fat chance.

“Do you think you’re better than me? ’Cause you’re not,” my father continued, slurring a word or two. “Hell, you’re probably not even an American. A real American, that is. Born here . In fact, I’m lookin’ around this room and I hardly see any real Americans at all.”

Sadira Yavari was a philosophy professor with an epistemological focus. A bigoted rant was right smack in her professional wheelhouse, and she had a front-row seat.

C’mon, Sadira, look up from your book and stare at the crazy lunatic. How can you resist?

She couldn’t.

Now, let the real show begin.

Chapter 65

“GREAT, SOMEONE else who can’t mind their own damn business,” said my father, his jabbing finger swinging over to the attractive woman in the gray skirt and white blouse. “Oh, and look, she’s another foreigner. I bet you’re a Muslim, aren’t you, lady? It doesn’t matter how American you dress. You can’t hide it.”

That was my cue. Muslim.

“That’s enough,” I announced from a few chairs over. “You’re out of line.”

Heads whipped back and forth now between my father and me, anyone within earshot waiting to see how he’d respond. But my father was only getting started with Sadira, as was the plan. I was merely setting the table.

“What are you reading there, Muslim lady? The Koran? Do you want to see what I read?” He stood and reached into his back pocket, pulling out the copy of the Constitution and all but shoving it in Sadira’s face. “See? This is what real Americans read.”

“Then why don’t you sit back down and read it,” I said, “and leave the woman alone. In fact, leave us all alone.”

“I wasn’t talking to you!” barked my father.

“I’m pretty sure I speak for everyone—you shouldn’t be talking at all.”

“This thing here says I have the right to speak my mind,” he said, pointing. Elizabeth had wrinkled, rolled, and dog-eared his pocket copy of the Constitution so much there was no doubting he’d been carrying it around with him for years, if not decades.

“You have the right to speak, and I have the right to tell you to shut the hell up,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Just try and make me, you commie-loving bastard.”

Damn, my father was good. Almost too good. Commie-loving bastard? I was ready to spring out of my chair and pop him one.

But no. I couldn’t be the guy who threw the first punch. Everyone loves a hero, only this wasn’t the movies. This was manipulation. Human psychology. Pavlov’s dog. We needed a precise reaction from Sadira, which meant there could be no doubt about what she was witnessing. It had to seem real.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” said my father, smirking as he watched me now try to ignore him. Most anywhere else in the country I would’ve been chickening out. But in Manhattan it was called living to fight another day. Ninety-nine percent of the time, it worked.