James Patterson - Judge & Jury

We were talking adios -excused. Even if it was on the grounds of being thought an airhead or a bimbo.

Then there was the single-mother thing. That was legit. Jarrod was nine, and he was her best buddy as well as her biggest handful these days. Who would pick him up from school, answer his questions, help him with his homework, if she couldn't be there for him?

Finally, there were her auditions. Her agent at William Morris had scheduled two for this week alone.

To amuse herself, Andie counted the faces of people who looked intelligent and open-minded and didn't seem to be conveying they had somewhere else to go. She stopped when she got to twenty. That felt good. They only needed twelve, right?

Next to her, a heavyset Hispanic woman knitting a pink baby's sweater leaned over."Sorry, but jou know what kinda trial dis is?"

"No." Andie shrugged, glancing around at the security."But from the looks of it, it's something big. You see those guys? They're reporters. And did you notice the barricades outside and those cops milling around? More uniforms in this place than in an NYPD Blue wardrobe closet."

The woman smiled."Rosella," she said amiably.

"I'm Andie," Andie said, extending her hand.

"So, Andie, how jou get on dis jury, anyway, jou know?"

Andie squinted at her as if she hadn't heard right."You want to get picked?"

"Sure. My huzban say you get forty dollars a day, plus train fare. The woman I work for, she pay me whichever way. So why not take the cash?"

Andie smiled and shrugged wistfully."Why not?"

The judge's clerk came in, a woman with black glasses and a pinched, officious face, like an old-time schoolmarm."All rise for Judge Miriam Seiderman."

Everyone pushed themselves out of their seats.

"So, Rosella, you want to know how to get on this thing?" Andie leaned over and whispered to her neighbor as an attractive woman of around fifty, with touches of gray in her hair, entered the courtroom and stepped up to the bench.

"Sure."

"Just watch." Andie nudged her."Whatever I do, do the opposite."

JUDGE SEIDERMAN STARTED OUT by asking each of them a few questions. Name and address. What you did for a living. Whether you were single or married, and if you were, if you had kids. Highest level of education. What newspapers and magazines you read. If anyone in your family ever worked for the government or for the police.

Andie glanced at the clock. This was going to take hours.

A few of them got excused immediately. One woman announced she was a lawyer. The judge asked her to come up to the side of the bench. They chatted a few seconds, and she let her go. Another man complained that he'd just served on a jury up in Westchester. He'd only finished up last week. He got a pink slip, too.

Some other guy who was actually half cute announced he was a crime novelist. In fact, another woman in the jury pool held up his book. She was reading it! After he finished up, Andie heard him snicker,"I don't have a prayer of ending up on this thing."

Then, Judge Seiderman nodded Andie's way.

"Andie DeGrasse," Andie replied."I live at 855 West One eighty-third Street, in the Bronx. I'm an actress."

A few people looked back at her. They always did."Well, I try to be," she said, qualifying."Mostly I do proofreading for The Westsider. It's a community newspaper in upper Manhattan. And regarding the other question, I was, Your Honor, for five years."

"Was what, Ms. DeGrasse?" The judge peered over her glasses.

" Married. The nuclear option, if you know what I mean." A couple of people chuckled."Except for my son. Jarrod. He's nine. He's basically a full-time occupation for me now."

"Please continue, Ms. DeGrasse," the judge said.

"Let's see. I went to St. John's for a couple of years." What Andie really wanted to convey was, You know, Your Honor, I dropped out in the fourth grade, and I don't even know what exculpatory evidence means.

"And let's see, I read Vogue and Cosmo and, oh yeah, Mensa. Charter member. I definitely try and keep up with that one."

A few more chuckles rippled around the courtroom. Keep it going, she said to herself. Push out the chest. You're almost off this thing.

"And regarding the police"-she thought for a second-“none in the family. But I dated a few."

Judge Seiderman smiled, shaking her head."Just one more question. Do you have any reason or experience that would prejudice you against Italian Americans? Or render you unable to reach an impartial verdict if you served on this trial?"

"Well, I once played a role in The Sopranos, " she replied."It was the one when Tony whacks that guy up at Meadow's school. I was in the club."

"The club?" Judge Seiderman blinked back, starting to grow short.

"The Bada Bing, Your Honor." Andie shrugged sheepishly."I was dancing on one of the poles."

"That was you? " a Latino guy cracked from the first row. Now a lot of people were laughing around the courtroom.

"Thank you, Ms. DeGrasse." Judge Seiderman suppressed a smile."We'll all be sure to check out the reruns when they come around."

The judge moved on to Rosella. Andie was feeling pretty confident she had done her job. She felt a little guilty, but she just couldn't be on this jury.

Now, Rosella was perfect. A juror's dream. She'd cleaned house for the same woman for twenty years. She'd just become an American citizen. She wanted to serve because it was her duty. She was knitting a sweater for her granddaughter. Oh, you're alock. Andie grinned to herself. Rosella hit every question out of the park. She was like a juror commercial!

At last the judge said she had just one question for the jury at large. Andie's eye checked the clock. One fifteen. If she was lucky, she could still catch the Broadway number 1 and pick Jarrod up at school on time.

Judge Seiderman leaned toward them."Do any of you know the name, or have you been associated with in any way, Dominic Cavello?"

Andie turned toward the stolid, gray-haired man seated in the third row of the courtroom. So that's who that was. A few people murmured. She glanced at Rosella, a little sympathetic now.

These people were in for one scary ride.

I WAS SITTING in the second row, not far from the judge, during the jury questioning. Security marshals lined the walls, ready to go into action if Cavello so much as scratched his nose. Most of the marshals knew I was the one who had taken Cavello down and that this case was personal for me.

It was driving me crazy waiting to have the opening arguments begin, to have the first witness take the stand.

We got Miriam Seiderman as the judge. I'd had her on trials twice before, and she always seemed to bend for the defendants. But she was thorough, fair, ran a tight court. We could have done a lot worse.

I was thinking this looked like a pretty decent pool of jurors. A couple of them were downright entertaining.

There was a Verizon guy with a New England accent who said he had three town houses in Brooklyn he'd fixed up and that he was bagging the phone company job anyway, so he could care less how long the trial ran.

And a crime novelist who someone in the jury pool recognized. In fact, she was actually reading his book.

Then the woman in the third row. The actress and single mom. She was feisty and cute, with thick brown hair with reddish streaks in it. There was some writing on her T-shirt-DONOTDISTURB. Kind of funny.

Once or twice, Cavello glanced back at me. But most of the time he just sat there, hands joined, staring straight ahead.