Silent Justice (50 page)

Ben allowed himself a small smile. “Thank you for your time. We’ll wait around till you get back.”

C
HRISTINA CONFRONTED JONES IN
the hallway outside the office kitchenette.

“Excuse me, Mr. Office Manager.”

Jones whirled around. “Yes?”

“I’ve just been to the refrigerator. There are no Cokes. None. Nada.”

“I’m well aware of that. There are no Cokes and, for that matter, no exotic blended teas, no Chivas Regal, and no Bollinger 1953.”

Christina’s right hand went to her hip, the sure sign that her Nordic temper was rising. “Jones, Ben has had a hard day. He needs a Coke.”

“If you’ll recall, I was instructed to cancel or eliminate all unnecessary expenditures.”

“Emphasis on
unnecessary,
Jones. Ben wants a Coke.”

Jones made a sniffing noise. “He should learn to drink water. Soft drinks are bad for your health.”

“Let’s cut him some slack, Mr. Jones. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t do drugs. He doesn’t even eat powdered doughnuts, unlike a certain office manager I know.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, Ms. McCall, this office is massively in debt. I have a fiscal responsibility—”

Christina grabbed him by the collar and yanked him right under her nose. “This trial isn’t over yet, Jones. We don’t know what’s going to happen next. The only thing we know for sure is—we need Ben. So get him a Coke, understand?”

Jones swallowed, then yanked a dollar bill out of his pants pocket. “There’s a soda machine on the second floor.”

She pushed him away, her eyes still narrowed. “Go.”

When Jones returned with the Coke, Ben was deep in a strategizing session with Christina and Professor Matthews.

“Did you see the expression on juror number twelve’s face as she left the courtroom?” Ben asked as he took the Coke from Jones. He drank half the can in a single swallow. “I don’t think she liked me.”

“Of course she liked you,” Christina reassured him. “She just had a lot on her mind. This is a very complex case. They all know that.”

“Colby doesn’t,” Ben replied. “He thinks it’s all very simple. We represent quacks; he represents the forces of goodness and light.”

“That guy makes me insane.” Jones inflated his chest and emulated Colby’s slightly swaybacked posture. “Please believe me when I say I have nothing but sympathy for the parents of those children,” Jones said, in a dead-on impersonation of Colby’s voice. “My heart weeps for them. See? It’s weeping now. Really. Boo-hoo. Boo-hoo-hoo.”

Everyone in the room burst out laughing. It was a release they had long needed.

“Colby called over here about an hour ago,” Ben informed them. “Made another settlement offer.”

Jones’s eyes lit. “Generous?”

Ben shook his head. “Barely more than last time. Not even enough to pay our clients" medical bills. He’s hoping to exploit the fact that the jury is still out.

Jones raised an eyebrow. “So? …”

“I told him to go to hell.” Ben’s eyes seemed almost hooded. “I haven’t come this far to sell our clients short now. I just hope …” His voice drifted off.

“I think you should relax, Ben,” Matthews said, after a bit. “You put on the best case possible. We won the legal arguments—”

“Thanks to you,” Ben interjected.

“And you did great on the questions of fact,” he continued. “It was just a tough case, bottom line. And you can’t always win the tough cases. No matter what you do.”

“We have to win this one,” Ben said. His eyes wandered over to the picture of Cecily’s little boy, Billy, which had been mounted over his desk since the first day Cecily walked into his office. “We have to.”

“Ben,” Matthews said, “you need some major stress relief. I’ve got a little yacht down south, near Corpus Christi. When this is all over, I want you to come be my guest. That goes for you, too, Christina.”

Ben looked up. “Now that’s a deal.”

Loving stepped inside from the outer hallway. As always, his shoulders were so broad he barely fit through the doorframe. “Skipper? I got news.”

“Good news, or bad?”

“Some of both. I found Mrs. Marmelstein’s son.”

Ben leapt out of his chair. “You did? Where is he? Here in Tulsa?”

“Not by a long shot. He lives in Manhattan. Got a crummy little one-room apartment on the Lower East Side. I don’t know how people live like that. Do you realize those people don’t even have garbage disposals?”

Ben wasn’t interested in a discussion of the relative merits of urban living. “Did you talk to him?”

“Oh, yeah. And then some. That’s the problem.”

“What? What’s the problem?”

“Seems there’s a major-league dispute between the older generation and the younger. I can’t get all the details. I gather Paulie’s dad didn’t approve of Paulie’s choice of wife. Mrs. Marmelstein stood by her husband. There was a big row. Paulie got mad and split town—and never came back. The sad thing is—Paulie split with that wife more than twenty years ago. But he and his parents still never made it up.”

“Did you tell him what’s happening?” Ben asked. “Did you tell him she’s asking for him?”

“I did. And he refused to come see her. Absolutely refused. Said they told him he wasn’t welcome in their house, a million or so years ago, so he’s never coming back.”

“But surely if you tell him his mother is dying—”

“Believe me, I played every card in my deck. It made no diff to this schmuck. Talk about carrying a grudge.”

Ben fell back into his chair. “I’m sure he’s hurt. Still angry about what happened in the past. But I stopped by the hospital this afternoon and—” He shook his head. “We don’t have much time left. If Paulie doesn’t come now—it’s going to be too late.”

Loving frowned. As Ben well knew, he didn’t like to disappoint. “I’ll keep working on him, Skipper.”

“Please do.” Ben glanced at his watch. “I’m going out to Blackwood and talk to Cecily and some of the other parents. I think they had some hope that the jury would be so outraged they would render a unanimous verdict for the plaintiffs on the first vote. They must be even more nervous now than we are.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Then I’m going to go over to the courthouse.”

“Why?” Christina asked. “The judge’s clerk will call when the jury is ready.”

“I want to be there,” Ben replied. “I can’t concentrate on anything else anyway. The jury is still working; I should be, too. I want them to see me. I want them to know I haven’t forgotten about them.”

“But what will you do?”

Ben grabbed his briefcase and jacket and headed for the door. “The only thing there is to do. Wait.”

Carl Peabody, the farmer from Catoosa, sat at the head of the single long conference table in the jury deliberation room. His frustration was evident. He had been chosen to serve as the jury foreman, and was currently walking his charges through the jury instructions, not for the first time.

“I just can’t make head nor tail outta some of these instructions,” Carl groaned. “I like to think of myself as a reasonably smart fella, but they’re just too complicated, with all their parts and subparts and ten-dollar words.”

“I don’t know how that attorney could let this happen,” said Mrs. Cartwright, the housewife from Broken Arrow.

“Which attorney?” asked Mary Ann Althorp, the TU college student. “The big fancy one?”

“No,” Mrs. Cartwright answered. “He probably wanted the instructions to be confusing. I meant the other one. The little cute one. With the tiny bald spot on the back of his head.”

“The plaintiffs" attorney,” Foreman Peabody clarified. “Kincaid.”

“Right,” Mrs. Cartwright agreed. “He was always so good about explaining things during the trial. I don’t know why he allowed these awful instructions.”

“Probably didn’t have any choice,” grumped Evan Marshall, the black self-employed body shop owner. “I got the distinct impression the judge was none too fond of Mr. Kincaid.”

“You know, I thought that, too,” Mary Ann said. “Why do you think that is?”

“Who knows?” Marshall replied. “Colby probably contributed to the judge’s reelection campaign.”

“I don’t think federal judges are elected,” Foreman Peabody said. “Though I’m not totally sure about that.”

“Whatever.” Marshall waved a hand in the air. “Colby and the judge are tight. You could see that. And Kincaid wasn’t in the club.”

“I liked him, though,” Mary Ann said. She looked down shyly. “I believed him. I don’t think he’d lie to us.”

“You know, I had the same feeling,” Mrs. Cartwright said. “He seemed like a good boy. He reminded me of my sister Clara’s boy, Rudy. He was killed in Vietnam, you know.”

“Could we just cool it with the jury instructions?” Marshall said. “They’re not getting us anywhere. Let’s take another vote.”

Foreman Peabody tilted his head to one side. “I don’t have any reason to think this one will come out any differently.”

“We can but hope,” Marshall said. “Let’s do it.”

Peabody tore a piece of paper into twelve strips and distributed them around the table. Each of the jurors scribbled down their vote. A moment later, Peabody collected them.

“No change,” Peabody said grimly. “Eleven votes in favor of awarding damages to the plaintiffs. One against.”

“I’m tired of this anonymity crap,” Marshall said, banging on the conference table. “We could be here forever at this rate. I’ve got a business to run.”

Peabody shrugged. “I don’t know what else we can do.”

“I sure as hell do. I want to know who the holdout is. I want to know now.”

“Now, Evan,” Peabody started, “we agreed—”

“I don’t care what we agreed. This has gone on long enough. I want to know who it is.”

“Evan—”

“It’s all right.” The quiet, high-pitched voice came from the other end of the table. “I don’t mind. He’s probably right. You deserve to know.”

The woman straightened, minutely adjusting her dress. “I’m the holdout,” said Carol Johnson, the middle-aged housewife married to the stockbroker. Juror number twelve. “I’m sorry for what happened to those parents, but I just can’t believe those kids got cancer from tap water—no matter what was in it. They didn’t prove it to me. So I’m voting for the defendant. And I’ll never change my mind.”

On the executive office floor of H. P. Blaylock headquarters, the mood was subdued but undeniably tense. No one in any position of responsibility with the company could be unaware that the jury was still out in the largest class action lawsuit ever lodged against the company. Nor could they be unaware that their CEO, old man Blaylock himself, was taking the lawsuit as an affront to his personal integrity. Since the trial had begun and the accusations had become public, he had been in an uninterrupted foul mood, ranting at employees he didn’t even know, raving with the energy of a man half his age.

One executive, a junior leaguer named Frank Chadwick, had been reassigned. Currently, his duty was to do nothing more than stay in touch with the courthouse and to report anything—anything at all—to the top brass, starting with Blaylock. Frank had an in with Judge Perry’s clerk, so he was able to get information that would otherwise be off-limits. He reported everything—the expressions on the jurors" faces as they walked into the deliberation room, notes scribbled on scraps of paper found in the trash, offhand remarks overheard in the men’s room. Anything.

Meanwhile, in Blaylock’s office, a familiar group was assembled—Blaylock himself, trial attorney Charlton Colby, and his young up-and-coming associate Mark Austin. They had met together every day since the jury had begun deliberating. Even on weekends.

“Still no news?” Blaylock asked, his fingers drumming the desktop.

“Nothing concrete,” Colby replied. “Nothing worth repeating.”

“We can’t let this go on,” Blaylock said. “Do you know what this is doing to the stock?”

“Unfortunately, we don’t have any choice,” Colby said. “I have no way of coercing the jury to return faster. Unless you want to settle and pay the plaintiffs everything they want.”

“I’d sooner choke on a porcupine and die.” Blaylock pushed out of his chair and began pacing. “What a waste of time and energy this has been. Profits are down. Productivity is down. While you legal bloodsuckers play your games, people’s livelihoods are at stake.”

“Relax,” Colby reassured him. “Those aggrieved parents aren’t going to hurt your company. I won’t let that happen. Judge Perry won’t let that happen. It’s not going to happen. We’ve spun Mr. Kincaid and his friends six different ways to Sunday, haven’t we, Mark?”

His associate, Mark, had been strangely silent through the majority of the conversation. “We certainly have, sir.”

“Charlton,” Colby reminded him, not for the first time. “Call me Charlton.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“At any rate,” Colby continued, “no matter what this jury does, we’ve scored one major victory.” He leaned forward and tapped a report bound in a blue folder. “This didn’t get out.”

Blaylock whipped around. His agitation had increased, rather than diminished. “I’m still worried about that, Charlton. Are you sure—”

“It’s privileged,” Colby said, his hands raised. “You have nothing to fear. The report was distributed on a strict "need to know" basis. You’ve made it perfectly clear that loose lips sink ships—and careers. And my name is all over it, so it’s protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

“Still, I worry that some judge might take a different view—”

“Don’t worry about Judge Perry. He wants to be considered one of the big boys so bad he can taste it. Hell, I can taste it. He’ll never cross Raven, Tucker & Tubb. He’s probably hoping we’ll hire him when he retires and give him a nice fat salary for doing nothing.” Colby leaned back in his chair. “I’ve got him eating out of my hands. Don’t I, Mark?”

Mark pulled himself up in his chair. “It certainly seemed that way. During the trial, I mean, s—er, Charlton.”

Colby smiled. “So don’t worry yourself into an early grave, Myron. Take it easy and wait for the jury to return. You won’t be disappointed. That’s a promise.”

“You’d better be right, Charlton,” Blaylock said, his lips pressed tightly together. “That’s all I can say.”