The Runaway Jury Part 8

Lonnie was the only black manager in a chain of seventeen stores. He earned forty thousand dollars a year, with health insurance and an average pension plan, and was due for a raise in three months. He'd also been led to believe he'd be promoted to the level of a district supervisor, a.s.suming his tenure as manager produced satisfactory results. The company was anxious to promote a black, he'd been told, but, of course, none of these commitments were in writing.

His office was always open, and usually occupied with any one of a half-dozen subordinates. An a.s.sistant manager greeted him, then nodded toward a door. "We have guests," he said, with a frown.

Lonnie hesitated and looked at the closed door, which led to a large room used for everything-birthday parties, staff meetings, visits from bosses. "Who is it?" he asked.

"Home office. They want to see you."

Lonnie rapped on the door, entering as he knocked. It was, after all, his office. Three men with their sleeves rolled up to their elbows sat at the end of the table, amid a pile of papers and printouts. They stood awkwardly.

"Lonnie, good to see you," said Troy Hadley, son of one of the owners, and the only face Lonnie recognized. They shook hands as Hadley made hasty introductions. The other two men were Ken and Ben; Lonnie wouldn't remember their last names until later. It had been planned that Lonnie would sit at the end of the table, in the chair eagerly vacated by the young Hadley, with Ken on one side and Ben on the other.

Troy started the conversation, and he sounded somewhat nervous. "How's jury duty?"

"A pain."

"Right. Look, Lonnie, the reason we're here is that Ken and Ben are from an outfit called SuperHouse, a large chain out of Charlotte, and, well, for lots of reasons, my dad and my uncle have decided to sell out to SuperHouse. The whole chain. All seventeen stores and the three warehouses."

Lonnie noticed that Ken and Ben were watching him breathe, so he took the news with a straight face, even offered a very slight shrug, as if to say, "So what?" He was, however, finding it hard to swallow. "Why?" he managed to ask.

"Lots of reasons, but I'll give you the top two. My dad is sixty-eight, and Al, as you know, just had surgery. That's number one. Number two is the fact that SuperHouse is offering a very fair price." He rubbed his hands together as if he couldn't wait to spend the new money. "It's just time to sell, Lonnie, pure and simple."

"I'm surprised, I never-"

"You're right. Forty years in the business, from a mom-and-pop fruit stand to a company in five states with sixty million in sales last year. Hard to believe they're throwing in the towel." Troy was not the least bit convincing in his effort at sentiment. Lonnie knew why. He was a witless dunce, a rich kid who played golf every day while trying to project the image of a hard-charging, a.s.s-kicking corporate honcho. His father and his uncle were selling now because in a few short years Troy would take the reins and forty years of toil and prudence would get spent on racing boats and beach property.

There was a pause as Ben and Ken continued staring at Lonnie. One was in his mid-forties with a bad haircut and a pocket liner stuffed with cheap ballpoints. Maybe he was Ben. The other was a little younger, a slim-faced, executive type with better clothes and hard eyes. Lonnie looked at them, and it was obvious it was his turn to say something.

"Will this store be closed?" he asked, almost in defeat.

Troy jumped at the question. "In other words, what happens to you? Well, let me a.s.sure you, Lonnie, that I've said all the right things about you, all the truth, and I've recommended that you be kept here in the same position." Either Ben or Ken nodded very slightly. Troy was reaching for his coat. "But that's not my business anymore. I'm gonna step outside for a bit while you guys talk things over." Like a flash, Troy was out of the room.

For some reason his departure brought smiles to Ken and Ben. Lonnie asked, "Do you guys have business cards?"

"Sure," both said, and they pulled cards from pockets and slid them to the end of the table. Ben was the older, Ken the younger.

Ken was also in charge of this meeting. He began, "Just a bit about our company. We're out of Charlotte, with eighty stores in the Carolinas and Georgia. SuperHouse is a division of Listing Foods, a conglomerate based in Scarsdale with about two billion in sales last year. A public company, traded on NASDAQ. You've probably heard of it. I'm Vice President for Operations for SuperHouse, Ben here is regional VP. We're expanding south and west, and Hadley Brothers looked attractive. That's why we're here."

"So you're keeping the store?"

"Yes, for now, anyway." He glanced at Ben, as if there was a lot more to the answer.

"And what about me?" Lonnie asked.

They actually squirmed, almost in tandem, and Ben removed a ballpoint from his collection. Ken did the talking. "Well, you have to understand, Mr. Shaver-"

"Please call me Lonnie."

"Sure, Lonnie, there are always shakeups along the line when acquisitions occur. Just part of the business. Jobs are lost, jobs are created, jobs are transferred."

"What about my job?" Lonnie pressed. He sensed the worst and was anxious to get it over with.

Ken deliberately picked up a sheet of paper and gave the appearance of reading something. "Well," he said, ruffling the paper, "you have a solid file."

"And very strong recommendations," Ben added helpfully.

"We would like to keep you in place, for now anyway."

"For now? What does that mean?"

Ken slowly returned the paper to the table, and leaned forward on both elbows. "Let's be perfectly candid, Lonnie. We see a future for you with our company."

"And it's a much better company than the one you're with now," Ben added, the tag-team working to perfection. "We offer higher salaries, better benefits, stock options, the works."

"Lonnie, Ben and I are ashamed to admit that our company does not have an African-American in a management position. We, along with our bosses, would like for this to change, immediately. We want it to change with you."

Lonnie studied their faces, and suppressed a thousand questions. In the span of a minute, he'd gone from the brink of unemployment to the prospect of advancement. "I don't have a college degree. There's a limit to-"

"There are no limits," Ken said. "You have two years of junior college, and, if necessary, you can finish your studies. Our company will cover the cost of college."

Lonnie had to smile, as much from relief as from good fortune. He decided to proceed cautiously. He was dealing with strangers. "I'm listening," he said.

Ken had all the answers. "We've studied the personnel at Hadley Brothers, and, well, let's say most of the upper- and mid-management people will soon be looking for work elsewhere. We spotted you, and another young manager from Mobile. We'd like for both of you to come to Charlotte as soon as possible and spend a few days with us. You'll meet our people, learn about our company, and we'll talk about the future. I must warn you, though, you can't spend the rest of your life here in Biloxi if you want to advance. You must be willing to move around."

"I'm willing."

"We thought so. When can we fly you up?"

The image of Lou Dell closing the door on them flashed before his eyes, and he frowned. He breathed deeply, and said with great frustration, "Well, I'm tied up in court right now. Jury duty. I'm sure Troy told you."

Ken and Ben appeared to be confused by this. "It's just a couple of days, isn't it?"

"No. The trial's scheduled for a month, and we're in week two."

"A month?" Ben asked, on cue. "What kind of trial is it?"

"The widow of a dead smoker is suing a tobacco company."

Their reactions were almost identical and left no doubt how they personally felt about such lawsuits.

"I tried to get out of it," Lonnie said in an effort to smooth things.

"A product liability suit?" Ken asked, thoroughly disgusted.

"Yeah, something like that."

"For another three weeks?" Ben asked.

"That's what they say. I can't believe I got stuck," he said, his words trailing away.

There was a long pause in which Ben opened a fresh pack of Bristols and lit one. "Lawsuits," he said bitterly. "We get sued every week by some poor clod who trips and falls and then blames it on the vinegar or the grapes. Last month a bottle of carbonated water exploded at a private party in Rocky Mount. Guess who sold 'em the water? Guess who got sued last week for ten million? Us and the bottler. Product liability." A long puff, then a quick chew on a thumbnail. Ben was steaming. "Gotta seventy-year-old woman in Athens claiming she wrenched her back when she allegedly reached up high to get a can of furniture polish. Her lawyer says she's ent.i.tled to a coupla mill."

Ken stared at Ben as if he wanted him to shut up, but Ben evidently exploded easily when the topic was broached. "Stinkin' lawyers," he said, smoke pouring from his nostrils. "We paid over three million last year for liability insurance, money just thrown away because of all the hungry lawyers circling above."

Ken said, "That's enough."

"Sorry."

"What about the weekends?" Lonnie asked anxiously. "I'm free from Friday afternoon until late Sunday."

"I was just thinking of that. Tell you what we'll do. We'll send one of our planes to get you Sat.u.r.day morning. We'll fly you and your wife to Charlotte, give you the grand tour of the home office, and we'll introduce you to our bosses. Most of these guys work Sat.u.r.days anyway. Can you do it this weekend?"

"Sure."

"Done. I'll arrange the plane."

"You sure there's no conflict with the trial?" Ben asked.

"None that I can foresee."

Ten.

After moving along with impressive punctuality, the trial hit a snag on Wednesday morning. The defense filed a motion to prohibit the testimony of Dr. Hilo Kilvan, an alleged expert from Montreal in the field of statistical summaries of lung cancer, and a small battle erupted over the motion. Wendall Rohr and his team were particularly enraged at the defense tactic; the defense so far had tried to bar the testimony of every plaintiff's expert. Indeed, the defense had proved quite effective at delaying and attempting to bar everything for four years. Rohr insisted that Cable and his client were once again stalling, and he made an angry plea to Judge Harkin for the imposition of sanctions against the defense. The war over sanctions, with each side demanding monetary penalties from the other and the Judge so far denying same, had been raging almost since the initial suit was filed. As with most large civil cases, the subplot of sanctions often consumed as much time as the real issues.

Rohr ranted and stomped in front of the empty jury box as he explained that this latest motion by the defense was the seventy-first-"count 'em, seventy-one!"-to be filed by the tobacco company seeking to exclude evidence. "We've had motions to exclude evidence of other diseases caused by smoking, motions to prevent evidence of warnings, motions to prevent evidence of advertising, motions to exclude evidence of epidemiological studies and statistical theories, motions to preclude reference to patents not used by the defendant, motions to exclude evidence of subsequent or remedial measures taken by the tobacco company, motions to preclude our evidence of the testing of cigarettes, motions to strike portions of the autopsy report, motions to exclude addiction evidence, motions-"

"I've seen these motions, Mr. Rohr," His Honor interrupted when it appeared as if Rohr might name them all.

Rohr hardly missed a beat. "And, Your Honor, in addition to the seventy-one-count 'em, seventy-one!-motions to exclude evidence, they've filed exactly eighteen motions for continuances."

"I'm very much aware of this, Mr. Rohr. Please move along."

Rohr walked to his cluttered table and was handed a thick brief by an a.s.sociate. "And, of course, each defense filing is accompanied by one of these d.a.m.ned things," he said loudly as he dropped the brief onto the table. "We don't have time to read these, as you know, because we're too busy preparing for trial. They, on the other hand, have a thousand lawyers billing by the hour and working even as we speak on another harebrained motion, which will, no doubt, weigh six pounds and doubtless take up more of our time."

"Can we get to the merits, Mr. Rohr?"

Rohr didn't hear him. "Since we don't have time to read these, Your Honor, we simply weigh them, and so our rather brief answer goes something like this: 'Please allow this letter memorandum to serve as our response to the defendant's four-and-a-half-pound, typically overdone brief in support of its latest frivolous motion.'"

With the jury out of the courtroom, smiles and manners and pleasant behavior were forgotten by everyone. The strain was evident on the faces of all the players. Even the clerks and the court reporter looked edgy.

Rohr's legendary temper was boiling, but he had long since learned to use it to his advantage. His occasional friend Cable kept his distance without holding his tongue. The spectators were treated to a loosely controlled brawl.

At nine-thirty, His Honor sent word to Lou Dell to inform the jurors that he was finis.h.i.+ng up a motion, and the trial would start in a few moments, hopefully by ten. Since this was the first delay in which the jurors were told to wait after being set to go, they took it well. The little groups reconvened themselves, and the idle chitchat of folks waiting against their wishes continued. The divisions were along the lines of s.e.x, not race. The men tended to group together at one end of the room, the women at the other. The smokers came and went. Only Herman Grimes kept the same position, at the head of the table, where he played hunt-and-peck with a laptop braille computer. He had let it be known that he was up until all hours of the morning plowing through the narrative descriptions of Bronsky's diagrams.

The other laptop was plugged into a socket in a corner where Lonnie Shaver had established a makes.h.i.+ft office with three folding chairs. He a.n.a.lyzed printouts of grocery stock, studied inventories, checked a hundred other details, and was generally content to be ignored. He was not unfriendly, just preoccupied.

Frank Herrera sat near the braille computer, poring over the closing quotations in The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal, and occasionally chatting with Jerry Fernandez, who sat across the table grappling with the latest Vegas line on Sat.u.r.day's college games. The only male who enjoyed talking to the women was Nicholas Easter, and on this day he was quietly discussing the case with Loreen Duke, a large jovial black lady who worked as a secretary at Keesler Air Force Base. As juror number one, she sat next to Nicholas, and the two had developed a habit of whispering during the trial, at the expense of almost everybody. Loreen was thirty-five with no husband and two kids, and a nice federal job which she missed not in the least. She had confessed to Nicholas that she could be absent from the office for a year and no one would care. He told her wild stories of bad deeds by the tobacco companies in trials past, and he confessed to her that he had studied tobacco litigation at great length during his two years of law school. Said he dropped out due to financial reasons. Their low voices were carefully gauged to land just outside the ear-range of Herman Grimes, who at the moment was slapping his laptop.

Time pa.s.sed and at ten Nicholas went to the door and jolted Lou Dell from her paperback. She had no idea when the Judge might send for them, and there was simply nothing she could do.

Nicholas took a seat at the table and began discussing strategy with Herman. It was not fair to keep them locked up during delays such as this, and Nicholas was of the opinion that they should be allowed to leave the building, with escorts, and engage in morning walks, as opposed to those of the noontime variety. It was agreed that Nicholas should put this request in writing, as usual, and present it to Judge Harkin during the noon recess.

AT TEN-THIRTY, they finally walked into the courtroom, the air still heavy with the heat of battle, and the first person Nicholas saw was the man who'd broken into his apartment. He was out there on the third row, plaintiff's side, in a s.h.i.+rt and tie with a newspaper spread before him and resting on the back of the pew in front. He was alone, and he barely looked at the jurors as they took their seats. Nicholas didn't stare; two long glances and the identification was complete.

For all of his guile and cunning, Fitch could do some stupid things. And sending this goon into the courtroom was a risky move with little potential benefit. What was he supposed to see or hear that would not be seen or heard by one of the dozen lawyers, or half-dozen jury consultants, or handful of other flunkies Fitch kept in the courtroom?

Though he was surprised to see the man, Nicholas had already thought about what to do. He had several plans, depending upon where the man surfaced. The courtroom was a surprise, but it took only a minute to sort through things. It was imperative for Judge Harkin to know that one of the thugs he'd been so overly concerned about was now sitting in the courtroom pretending to be just another casual observer. Harkin needed to see the face, because later he would see it on video.

The first witness was Dr. Bronsky, now in his third day but his first on cross-examination by the defense. Sir Durr started slowly, politely, as if in awe of this great expert, and asked a few questions that most of the jurors could have answered. Things changed rapidly. Whereas Cable had been deferential to Dr. Milton Fricke, he was ready to battle Bronsky.

He started with the over four thousand compounds identified in tobacco smoke, picked one seemingly at random, and asked what effect benzol(a)pyrene would have on the lungs. Bronsky said he didn't know, and tried to explain that the damage inflicted by a single compound was impossible to measure. What about the bronchial tubes and the membranes and the cilia? What did benzol(a)pyrene do to them? Bronsky again tried to explain that research could not determine the effect of a single compound in tobacco smoke.

Cable hammered away. He picked another compound and forced Bronsky to admit that he couldn't tell the jury what it would do to lungs or bronchial tubes or membranes. Not specifically, anyway.

Rohr objected, but His Honor overruled on the grounds that it was a cross-examination. Virtually anything relevant or even semirelevant could be thrown at the witness.

Doyle stayed in place, out there on the third row, looking bored and waiting for a chance to leave. His a.s.signed duty was to look for the girl, something he'd been doing for four days now. He'd loitered in the hallway below for hours. He'd spent one full afternoon sitting on a Dr Pepper crate near the vending machines, chatting with a janitor while watching the front door. He'd consumed gallons of coffee in the small cafes and delis nearby. He and Pang and two others had been hard at work, wasting their time but satisfying their boss.

After four days of sitting in one place for six hours a day, Nicholas had a sense of Fitch's routine. His people, whether the jury consultants or run-of-the-mill operatives, moved around. They used the entire courtroom. They sat in groups and they sat alone. They came and went silently when there were short breaks in the action. They rarely spoke to one another. They would pay strict attention to the witnesses and the jurors, and the next minute they would work crosswords and stare at the windows.

He knew the man would be gone before long.

He scribbled a note, folded it, and convinced Loreen Duke to hold it without reading it. He then convinced her to lean forward, during a pause in the cross-examination when Cable was consulting his notes, and hand it to Willis the deputy, who was standing against the wall guarding the flag. Willis, suddenly awakened, paused a second to collect himself, then realized he was supposed to hand the note to the Judge.

Doyle saw Loreen hand the note over, but he didn't see it originate from Nicholas.

Judge Harkin gathered the note while barely acknowledging it, and slid it across the bench close to his robe as Cable fired another question. Harkin slowly unfolded it. It was from Nicholas Easter, number two, and it said: Judge:That man out there, left side, third row from front, on the aisle, white s.h.i.+rt, blue and green tie, was following me yesterday. It was the second time I've seen him. Can we find out who he is?Nicholas Easter His Honor looked at Durr Cable before he looked at the spectators. The man was sitting alone, staring back at the bench as if he knew someone was watching.

This was a new challenge for Frederick Harkin. In fact, at the moment he couldn't recall an incident even remotely similar. His options were limited, and the more he pondered the situation the fewer choices he had. He, too, knew both sides had plenty of consultants and a.s.sociates and operatives lurking either in the courtroom or very nearby. He watched his courtroom closely, and he noticed a lot of quiet movement by people who had experience in such trials and didn't want to be noticed. He knew the man was likely to disappear in an instant.

If Harkin suddenly called a short recess, the man would probably vanish.

This was a terribly exciting moment for the Judge. After all the tales and rumors and lore from other trials, and after all the seemingly empty admonitions to the jury, there in the courtroom at this very moment was one of the mystery agents, a sleuth hired by one side or the other to monitor his jurors.

Courtroom deputies, as a general rule, are uniformed and armed and normally quite harmless. The younger men are kept on the streets to battle the elements, and trial duty tends to attract the seniors bearing down hard on retirement. Judge Harkin glanced about and his options shrank again.

There was Willis, leaning against the wall near the flag, and it appeared he had already lapsed into his usual state of semi-slumber with his mouth open partially at the right corner and saliva dripping. Down the aisle, directly in front of Harkin but at least a hundred feet away, Jip and Rasco guarded the main door. Jip, at the moment, was sitting on the back bench, near the door, with his reading gla.s.ses perched on the end of his beefy nose, scanning the local paper. He'd had hip surgery two months earlier, found it difficult to stand for long periods, and had received permission to sit during the proceedings. Rasco was in his late fifties, the youngest of the crew, and was not known for his quick movements. A younger deputy was usually a.s.signed to the main door, but at the moment he was on the atrium side manning the metal detector.

During voir dire, Harkin had requested uniforms everywhere, but after a week of testimony the initial excitement had disappeared. It was now just another tedious civil trial, though one with enormous stakes.

Harkin took the measure of the available troops, and decided against approaching the target. He quickly scribbled a note, held it for a moment while ignoring the man, then slid it to Gloria Lane, the Circuit Clerk, who was at her small desk below the bench, opposite the witness stand. The note indicated the man, instructed Gloria to get a good look at him without being obvious, then to ease away through a side door and go fetch the Sheriff. There were other instructions to the Sheriff, but, unfortunately, they were never needed.

After more than an hour of watching the merciless cross-examination of Dr. Bronsky, Doyle was ready to move. The girl was nowhere in sight; not that he'd expected to find her. He was just following orders. Plus, he didn't like the note-pa.s.sing around the bench. He quietly gathered his newspaper, and slipped unchallenged from the courtroom. Harkin watched in disbelief. He even grabbed his mounted microphone with his right hand as if he might yell at the man to stop, sit down, and answer some questions. But he kept his cool. Chances were the man would return.