Linda Fairstein - Bad blood

Quillian and Howell were animatedly talking to each other.

“He’s the perfect lawyer for any case.”

“Your middle-class white jurors won’t want to think Quillian did it-don’t understand domestic violence when it happens outside the ghetto. Your upper-class white women will think he’s too handsome to be guilty, and your upper-class white men-”

“When’s the last time you saw an upper-class white man on a Manhattan jury?” I asked. “They use every excuse in the book to avoid service.”

“And your blacks-dammit, I guess everybody in the room-will fall under the spell of the silver tongue of Lem Howell.”

“I’m ready to open the doors, Mike,” Artie said.

“My money’s on you, kid. Make ’em believe, okay?” Mike said, slapping the table and heading to the courtroom door. “See you at the break.”

He walked out against the flow of incoming traffic, while I seated myself at the table with my back to the benches. The first five reporters made a beeline for Howell. The district attorney, Paul Battaglia, had firm rules that forbade each of us from talking to the press while a case was pending. Lem Howell, however, would leak like a sieve from now until the moment of the verdict, feeding the media tidbits helpful to his client that the jury would never be allowed to hear. So I sucked it up and sat quietly in place while the officers filled the rows with curious onlookers and tried to keep order in the court.

“Put your newspapers under your seats,” Tramm roared at the two hundred spectators. “No reading materials, no food or beverages, no cell phones, no talking among yourselves.

“All rise,” Tramm continued, “the Honorable Frederick Gertz presiding.”

The door from his robing room opened and the stern-faced Gertz, five foot six, strode into the well and climbed the three steps to his bench.

“Good morning, Ms. Cooper, Mr. Howell.”

“Good morning, Your Honor,” we both answered.

Jonetta Purvis, the court clerk, was standing at her desk close to the defense table.

“The defendant and his lawyer are present, the assistant district attorney is present. Shall we bring in the jurors, Your Honor?”

“You both ready to go forward? Any housekeeping to attend to?”

“Ready,” I said. I pushed the indictment aside-the written instrument that charged Brendan Quillian with “Murder in the Second Degree and Conspiracy to Commit the Crime of Murder in the Second Degree”-and reached for the thick purple folder beneath it.

Artie stood by the door next to the judge’s bench and opened it. “Jurors entering.”

The group of sixteen-the first twelve chosen and four alternates-filed in, taking their seats in the two rows closest to my desk. They fidgeted as they settled down, some staring at Quillian and Howell, others focusing on me and the full shopping cart behind me.

It was impossible to imagine how jurors had been able to obey the judge’s instructions not to listen to television accounts or read stories about the case. I stifled my desire to scan the group to see what reading materials each had brought along. Last evening’s news had led with a summary of the opening-day arguments, and this morning’s New York Post banner-DIAL M FOR MOGUL: HUBBY HIRES HITMAN-would have been visible on every subway and bus route that carried these folks downtown.

I lifted the flap of the folder and squinted at the bright yellow Post-it note stuck to my punch list of questions. It was in Lem’s handwriting, slipped onto the file when he had stepped over to greet me minutes ago. Alex-take your best shot. If you remembered half of what I taught you, you wouldn’t be leading off with Kate. Beneath the warning he had scrawled another word: SHOWTIME.

Gertz’s eyes swept the courtroom, making sure he had everyone’s attention before he pointed his gavel in my direction. “Call your first witness, Miss Cooper.”

My voice caught in my throat as I stood, and I coughed to clear it as I started the People’s case. I didn’t need to look over at Lem to let him know he had scored his first hit.

“Would you please state your full name for the jury?”

“My name is Katherine Meade. I’m called Kate.”

I was standing against the rail at the end of the jury box, trying to draw Kate Meade’s eyes in my direction. “How old are you, Ms. Meade?”

“Thirty-four. Thirty-four years old.”

The jurors had watched Artie Tramm lead her into the courtroom and onto the witness stand. They had all scrutinized her appearance while she stood, fidgeting slightly, facing the clerk as she was administered the oath. Most of them had probably seen her bite her lip and flash a glance in the direction of Brendan Quillian, who returned it with a broad smile.

“Are you single or married?”

“Married. I’ve been married for twelve years. My husband is Preston Meade. He’s a banker.”

There was little about Kate Meade that these jurors would relate to. The nine men and three women who’d been impaneled were a mix of working- and lower-class New Yorkers-white, black, Hispanic, and Asian-ranging in age from twenty-seven to sixty-two. The four alternates-three men and one woman-were equally diverse. The business clothes most of them had worn during the selection process had been replaced by T-shirts and cotton blouses, chinos and jeans and capri pants.

“Where do you live, Mrs. Meade? In which county?”

They stared at her well-made-up face, auburn hair pulled back and held securely in place with a tortoiseshell hairband. The pale pink suit-with its short-collared jacket and pencil-thin skirt-seemed as rigid as my witness. I tipped my head toward the jury box, a signal I’d arranged to make her remember that it was to the people sitting in it that she had to tell her story. I wanted her to warm up to her audience and speak more naturally, but her expression was frozen and her anxiety was palpable.

“In Manhattan. New York County. On the Upper East Side,” she said, turning to Judge Gertz. “Do I have to say exactly where-?”

“No, no. No, you don’t.”

Kate Meade exhaled as though relieved not to have to tell anyone who wasn’t a member of the Knickerbocker Club what her address was.

“Do you have any children?”

“We do,” she said, smiling at the foreman for the first time. “We have three children, all in elementary school.”

“Do you work outside the home?”

“No, ma’am. I mean, I volunteer on several boards, but I haven’t been employed since I married Preston.”

I extended my right arm in the direction of the defense table. “Do you know the defendant in this case, Brendan Quillian?”

“Yes, I do. For a very long time.”

“For how long, if you can tell us exactly?”

“I met Mr. Quillian-Brendan-when I was sixteen. He was seventeen at the time.”

“Would you tell us where you met?”

“Certainly.” Kate Meade was comfortable with this part of the story, and she shifted her body to face the jury box to talk. “I was in high school, here in Manhattan. Convent of the Sacred Heart.”

Some of the jurors would know that Sacred Heart was the city’s premier private school for Catholic girls, promising an education that intertwined intellect and soul. They might have some idea of what it had cost to educate Kate Meade and her friends if they knew that the current tuition was upward of twenty-five thousand dollars a year at the old Otto Kahn mansion on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninety-first Street.

“I attended Sacred Heart from kindergarten through high school. It’s where Amanda Quillian-well, Amanda Keating then-and I became best friends, since we were five years old. We were together, Amanda and I, the day we met Brendan. It was at a game, a football game. He was a junior at Regis, and we were sophomores.”