The Runaway Jury (24 page)

“Of course not.”

He could play the tape in his sleep for all she cared. He had nothing to gain by sharing it with anyone. He carried too much baggage to run to the cops or to the Judge, and that didn’t fit into his modus operandi anyway. The thought of blackmailing her with the authorities never occurred to Fitch, and she knew this too.

He could take all the photos he wanted, and he and his thugs scattered around the hotel could follow and watch and listen. She’d play along for a while, dodging and darting and making them work for their money. They’d find nothing.

“Let’s not talk about money now, okay, Fitch?”

“We’ll talk about whatever you want to talk about. This is your show.”

“Why’d you break into his apartment?”

“That’s just what we do.”

“How do you read Herman Grimes?” she asked.

“Why do you ask me? You know exactly what’s happening in the jury room.”

“I want to see how smart you are. I’m interested in knowing if you’re getting your money’s worth from all those jury experts and lawyers.”

“I’ve never lost, so I always get my money’s worth.”

“So what about Herman?”

Fitch thought for a second and motioned for another glass of water. “He’ll have a lot to do with the verdict because he is a man of strong opinions. Right now, he’s open-minded. He absorbs every word in court and probably knows more than every other juror, with the exception, of course, of your friend. Am I right?”

“You’re pretty close.”

“That’s good to hear. How often do you chat with your friend?”

“Occasionally. Herman objected to the strike this morning, did you know that?”

“No.”

“He was the only one of the fourteen.”

“Why’d they strike?”

“Conditions. Phones, TV, beer, sex, church, the usual yearnings of mankind.”

“Who led the strike?”

“Same one who’s been leading from day one.”

“I see.”

“That’s why I’m here, Fitch. If my friend was not in control, I’d have nothing to offer.”

“And what are you offering?”

“I said we wouldn’t talk about money now.”

The waiter set the fresh glass in front of Fitch and again asked Marlee if she wanted something to drink. “Yes, a diet cola in a plastic cup, please.”

“We, uh, well, we don’t have any plastic cups,” the waiter said with a puzzled look at Fitch.

“Then forget it,” she said, grinning at Fitch.

Fitch decided to press on. “What’s the mood of the jury right now?”

“Getting bored. Herrera’s a big fan. Thinks trial lawyers are dirt and severe restrictions should be placed on frivolous lawsuits.”

“My hero. Can he convince his pals?”

“No. He has no pals. He is despised by all, definitely the most disliked member of the panel.”

“Who’s the friendliest girl?”

“Millie is everybody’s mother, but she won’t be a factor. Rikki is cute and popular, and very health conscious. She’s trouble for you.”

“That’s no surprise.”

“Do you want a surprise, Fitch?”

“Yeah, surprise me.”

“Which juror has actually started smoking cigarettes since the trial started?”

Fitch squinted and cocked his head a little to the left. Did he hear her correctly? “Started smoking?”

“Yep.”

“I give up.”

“Easter. Surprised?”

“Your friend.”

“Yeah. Look, Fitch, gotta run. Ill call you tomorrow.” She was on her feet and gone, disappearing as quickly as she’d come.

Dante with the hired woman reacted before Fitch, who was stunned for a second with the speed of her departure. Dante radioed Pang in the lobby, who saw her exit the elevator and leave the hotel. Jumper tracked her on foot for two blocks before losing her in a crowded alley.

For an hour they watched the streets and parking garages and hotel lobbies and bars but did not see her. Fitch was in his room at the St. Regis when the call came from Dubaz, who’d been dispatched to the airport. She was waiting for a commuter flight that left in an hour and a half and landed in Mobile at ten-fifty. Don’t follow her, Fitch instructed him, then called two standbys in Biloxi, who raced to the airport in Mobile.

Marlee lived in a rented condo facing the Back Bay of Biloxi. When she was twenty minutes from home, she called the Biloxi police by dialing 911 on her cellphone and explained to the dispatcher that a Ford Taurus with two thugs in it was following her, had been in fact since she left Mobile, that they were stalkers of some odious variety and she was fearful for her life. With the dispatcher coordinating movements, Marlee did a series of turns through a quiet subdivision and abruptly stopped at an all-night gas station. As she filled her tank, a police car pulled behind the Taurus, which was trying to hide around the corner of a closed dry cleaner. The two thugs
were ordered out, then marched across the parking lot to face the woman they’d been stalking.

Marlee performed superbly as the terrified victim. The cops got angrier the more she cried. Fitch’s goons were hauled away to jail.

AT TEN, Chuck, the large deputy with a sullen attitude, unfolded a chair at the end of the hallway near his room, and set up watch for the night. It was Wednesday, the second night of sequestration, and time to breach security. As planned, Nicholas phoned Chuck’s room at eleven-fifteen. The instant he left his post to answer it, Jerry and Nicholas slipped from their rooms and walked casually through the exit door near Lou Dell’s room. Lou Dell was in bed sound asleep. And though Willis had slept most of the day in court, he too was under the covers, snoring furiously.

Avoiding the front lobby, they eased through the shadows and found the taxi waiting precisely as instructed. Fifteen minutes later they entered the Nugget Casino on Biloxi Beach. They drank three beers in the sports bar as Jerry lost a hundred dollars on a hockey game. They flirted with two married women whose husbands were either winning or losing a fortune at the crap tables. The flirting took a turn toward serious, and at 1 A.M. Nicholas left the bar to play five-dollar blackjack and drink decaf coffee. He played and waited and watched as the crowd dwindled.

Marlee slipped into the chair next to him and said nothing. Nicholas pushed a short stack of chips in front of her. A drunk college boy was the only other player. “Upstairs,” she whispered between hands as the dealer turned to talk to the pit boss.

They met on an outdoor mezzanine with a view of the parking lot and the ocean in the distance. November had arrived and the air was light and cool. There was no one else around. They kissed and huddled together on a bench. She replayed her trip to New Orleans; every detail, every word. They laughed at the two boys from Mobile who were now in the county jail. She’d call Fitch after daybreak and get his men released.

They talked business briefly because Nicholas wanted to return to the bar and collect Jerry before he drank too much and lost all his money or got caught with somebody’s wife.

They each had slim pocket cellphones which could not be completely secured. New codes and passwords were exchanged.

Nicholas kissed her good-bye and left her alone on the mezzanine.

WENDALL ROHR had a hunch the jury was tired of listening to researchers tout their findings and lecture from their charts and graphs. His consultants were telling him the jurors had heard enough about lung cancer and smoking, that they had probably been convinced before the trial started that cigarettes were addictive and dangerous. He was confident he had established a strong causal relationship between the Bristols and the tumors that killed Jacob Wood, and it was now time to ice the case. Thursday morning he announced that the plaintiff would like to call Lawrence Krigler as its next witness. A noticeable tension seized the defense table for the moment it took to call Mr. Krigler from somewhere in the rear. Another plaintiff’s lawyer,
John Riley Milton from Denver, rose and smiled sweetly at the jury.

Lawrence Krigler was in his late sixties, tanned and fit, well dressed and quick in step. He was the first witness without Doctor stuck to the front of his name since the video of Jacob Wood. He lived now in Florida, where he’d retired after he left Pynex. John Riley Milton rushed him through the preliminaries because the juicy stuff was just around the corner.

An engineering graduate of North Carolina State, he’d worked for Pynex for thirty years before leaving in the midst of a lawsuit thirteen years earlier. He’d sued Pynex. The company’d countersued him. They settled out of court with terms being nondisclosed.

When he was first hired, the company, then called Union Tobacco, or simply U-Tab, had shipped him to Cuba to study tobacco production down there. He’d worked in production ever since, or at least until the day he left. He’d studied the tobacco leaf and a thousand ways to grow it more efficiently. He considered himself an expert in this field, though he was not testifying as an expert and would not offer opinions. Only facts.

In 1969, he completed a three-year, in-house study on the feasibility of growing an experimental tobacco leaf known only as Raleigh 4. It had one third the nicotine of regular tobacco. Krigler concluded, with a wealth of research to support him, that Raleigh 4 could be grown and produced as efficiently as all other tobaccos then grown and produced by U-Tab.

It was a monumental work, one he was quite proud of, and he was devastated when his study was at first ignored by higher-ups within his company.
He slogged his way through the entrenched bureaucracy above him, with disheartening results. No one seemed to care about this new strain of tobacco with much less nicotine.

Then he learned that he was very wrong. His bosses cared a great deal about nicotine levels. In the summer of 1971 he got his hands on an intercompany memo instructing upper management to quietly do whatever possible to discredit Krigler’s work with Raleigh 4. His own people were silently knifing him in the back. He kept his cool, told no one he had the memo, and began a clandestine project to learn the reasons for the conspiracy against him.

At this point in his testimony, John Riley Milton introduced into evidence two exhibits—the thick study Krigler completed in 1969, and the 1971 memo.

The answer became crystal clear, and it was something he’d come to suspect. U-Tab could not afford to produce a leaf with markedly lower nicotine, because nicotine meant profits. The industry had known since the late thirties that nicotine was physically addictive.

“How do you know the industry knew?” Milton asked, very deliberately. With the exception of the defense lawyers, who were doing their best to appear bored and indifferent, the entire courtroom was listening with rapt attention.

“It’s common knowledge within the industry,” Krigler answered. “There was a secret study in the late 1930s, paid for by a tobacco company, and the result was clear proof that the nicotine in cigarettes is addictive.”

“Have you seen this report?”

“No. As you might guess, it has been well concealed.” Krigler paused and looked at the defense table. The bombshell was coming, and he was thoroughly enjoying the moment. “But I saw a memo—”

“Objection!” Cable shouted as he rose. “This witness cannot state what he may or may not have seen in a written document. The reasons are plentiful and are set out more fully in the brief we filed on this point.”

The brief was eighty pages long and had been argued over for a month now. Judge Harkin had already ruled, in writing. “Your objection is noted, Mr. Cable. Mr. Krigler, you may continue.”

“In the winter of 1973, I saw a one-page memo summarizing the nicotine study from the 1930s. The memo had been copied many times, was very old, and had been slightly altered.”

“Altered in what way?”

“The date had been deleted, as had the name of the person sending it.”

“To whom was it sent?”

“It was addressed to Sander S. Fraley, who at that time was the president of Allegheny Growers, the predecessor of a company now called ConPack.”

“A tobacco company.”

“Yes, basically. It calls itself a consumer products company, but the bulk of its business is manufacturing cigarettes.”

“When did he serve as president?”

“From 1931 to 1942.”

“Is it then safe to assume the memo was sent prior to 1942?”

“Yes. Mr. Fraley died in 1942.”

“Where were you when you saw this memo?”

“At a Pynex facility in Richmond. When Pynex
was still Union Tobacco, its corporate headquarters were in Richmond. In 1979, it changed its name and moved to New Jersey. But the buildings are still in use in Richmond, and that’s where I worked until I left. Most of the company’s old records are there, and a person I know showed me the memo.”

“Who was this person?”

“He was a friend, and he’s now dead. I promised him I’d never reveal his identity.”

“Did you actually hold the memo?”

“Yes. In fact, I made a copy of it.”

“And where is your copy?”

“It didn’t last long. The day after I locked it in my desk drawer, I was called out of town on business. While I was out, someone went through my desk and removed a number of things, including my copy of the memo.”

“Do you recall what the memo said?”

“I remember very well. Keep in mind, for a long time I’d been digging for some confirmation of what I suspected. Seeing the memo was an unforgettable moment.”

“What did it say?”

“Three paragraphs, maybe four, brief and to the point. The writer explained that he had just read the nicotine report that was secretly shown to him by the head of research at Allegheny Growers, a person who went unnamed in the memo. In his opinion, the study proved conclusively and beyond any doubt that nicotine is addictive. As I recall, this was the gist of the first two paragraphs.”

“And the next paragraph?”

“The writer suggested to Fraley that the company take a serious look at increasing the nicotine levels
in its cigarettes. More nicotine meant more smokers, which meant more sales and more profits.”

Krigler delivered his lines with a fine flair for the dramatic, and every ear soaked up his words. The jurors, for the first time in days, watched every move the witness made. The word “profits” floated over the courtroom and hung like a dirty fog.