“My preliminary vote was guilty,” said Delahey, “but I’m not firm on it. I’m willing to listen to reason.”
“I’m firm on my not guilty vote,” said Number Four, an African American man named Harvey, who worked as a super in a midtown apartment building.
“Naturally,” said Smithers, from the other end of the table.
“No, not naturally,” Harvey said. “It’s just that I’ve got plenty of reasonable doubt.”
“Of course you do.” Smithers was pushing it.
“I guess you don’t,” Harvey said.
“Not a particle.”
“Naturally not. You probably thought Simms was guilty the moment you walked into court and saw him.”
“Or heard his music,” Mimi said with a laugh.
“Stuff you’re too old to dance to,” Harvey said.
Mimi merely smiled. “I was only joking. If we don’t joke now and then, we’ll go mad in this stifling little room that smells like Lemon Pledge.”
Melanie hadn’t counted on this. She took a quick count. Six of the jurors were Caucasian, one Asian, one Hispanic, and three African American. “I don’t believe race enters into this,” she said. “We all need to agree on that.”
One of the other black jurors, a middle-aged nurse named Pam, looked dubious and said, “You ain’t noticed we’re trying a black rap artist?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Wilma. “The law’s color blind.”
“He might as well be a Martian,” Mimi said.
“See what I’m sayin’?” Harvey said. “How many Martians been acquitted in New York courts?”
“I think you understand my meaning,” Mimi said imperiously.
“You some kinda diva?” Harvey asked, obviously pleased to have gotten under Mimi’s skin.
“What we want to make sure we do,” said Wilma, “is not let the Justice Killer murders influence our judgment. If we really think we should acquit Richard Simms, we must do it.”
“Maybe you don’t think the Justice Killer’s guilty,” Pam said.
“I think he deserves all his constitutional rights and a fair trial even if he enjoys cutting people’s throats.”
“Nicely put,” Smithers said. “What kind of writer are you?”
“Right now I’m doing book reviews.”
“We’re getting off point,” Melanie said. “We’re here to discuss a man’s guilt or innocence. Race has nothing to do with it.”
“Amen,” said a lanky blond man with shoulder-length hair. Juror Number Two, Harold Evans. He was about forty, with narrow blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a long, pinched looking nose.
“You a preacher?” asked Harvey.
“Comedian.”
“You shittin’ me?”
“Nope. I play the clubs, had an HBO special. Stage name’s Happy Evans. Hap, offstage.”
“So say somethin’ funny, Hap offstage.”
“That’s not bad, Harvey. But comedians aren’t necessarily funny offstage.”
“Robin Williams is.”
“He’s got a point,” Pam said.
“Billy Crystal!” said Delahey. “I bet you could wake up that man at midnight and he’d tell you a joke.”
“I thought your name was Hap,” said Number Ten, a tax accountant named Hector Gomez. “So make us happy so we don’t notice the Lemon Pledge.”
Everyone was staring at Hap.
Melanie was afraid she was losing control. She was supposed to be setting the agenda here, and her jurors were turning on each other. Her throat was dry.
Hap shrugged. “A guy goes into an apartment and shoots his wife.” He grinned. “That’s it, folks.”
The Asian woman, Number Six, Marie Kim, held her nose between thumb and forefinger.
“Not funny,” Delahey said.
Hap shrugged again. “Then here’s the punch line: he didn’t do it.”
No one said anything.
“I abstained, but I’m a firm not guilty man,” Hap said. “I figure the more people I acquit, the better my chances if I ever get in trouble.”
“That one I liked,” Delahey said.
Melanie smiled, counting her allies. She’d need them if she was going to save Richard Simms from people like Walter Smithers.
Manfred Byrd told the woman from Detroit that what she needed was a patterned sofa that contained all the colors of the room.
The woman, whose name was Marge Caldwell, looked angry and waved her flabby arms about. She’d confided to Byrd that she’d been on a severe diet and had lost over fifty pounds. Byrd thought fifty more might be in order. “I paid a fortune to move all this stuff here from Michigan,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me how to arrange it, not advise me to sell it.”
“Keep all the stuff, dear. Only not the sofa. It’s Early American. Nothing else is.” Except for you, dear. “It’s a solid drab brown. Everything else you have is solid colored like the sofa. The room is static. You need something, one thing, that is busy, busy, busy.”
Marge looked around. The expensive Third Avenue apartment was a puzzle to her, as was how to spend her money. She didn’t mind that Manfred Byrd was one of the most expensive interior decorators in the city, anymore than she minded the exorbitant rent she was going to pay. Marge, while in the middle of her divorce from a Detroit Dodge dealer, had won the state lottery and managed to come away with all the money. The Dodge dealer was angry and had run out of appeals. She didn’t want the Dodge dealer to find her. She wanted to start a new life in a new city she could lose herself in. What better place than New York? And if the Dodge dealer did locate her, the doorman wouldn’t let the bastard in the building. Manfred Byrd loved clients like this. She would put complete trust in him.
He knew how to dress for this sort of client, too. Clothes made the man, and sometimes made the deal. He was still young, only forty-two and a half, and he exercised regularly to keep his slender body youthful. His suits were tailored and he favored silk in blacks and grays. His regular features were the sort that would always be boyish-he’d heard that said about him more than once. And it showed that he used a variety of skin conditioners. His hair was buzz cut and he sported no facial hair other than a tiny dark beard on the very tip of his chin. He wore one conservative diamond stud earring, and a silver bracelet. Byrd was intentionally obviously gay, but not too gay for a straight woman from Michigan.
“I suppose you’re right,” Marge said.
“Of course I’m right, dear. I’d better be. You’re paying me to be right.” Byrd laughed. “I’m right all the time.” He touched her flabby arm and smiled. “Sometimes I get so sick of myself.”
Marge smiled along with him. “We lived in the suburbs in Detroit. This is so different. I’m not used to being so high.”
“I won’t get into your personal life, dear.”
Marge laughed and waved a ring-laden hand. “I meant high above the street.”
“I know, and it’s good that you chose this place. High above the street is safer, even in a good part of town like this. You are an attractive woman alone.”
Marge wasn’t buying into that one, but she seemed to consider what he’d said about being safer on a high floor. “Is New York really that dangerous?”
“Not after you learn to take a few precautions. And not for someone from Detroit.”
“The suburbs,” she reminded him.
“Uh-huh. Where John Wayne Gacy murdered and buried all those boys.”
“That was Chicago.”
“Ah, you’re right! Well, Chicago!”
“I get your point, though. New York’s no more dangerous than anyplace else.”
