The Unexpected Salami: A Novel (18 page)

By the door there was a tall woman—about sixty with obviously dyed-black hair—in jeans and a bright pink top. She wasn’t bad looking, but I wasn’t going to say that in front of Mick-O. “I don’t know who that woman is, how did she get past security?”

“I spoke to her,” Mick-O said, “she seemed harmless. She said
someone at one of the radio stations gave her a press pass because she had an important message for you.”

I walked over.

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Colin Dunforton?”

“Yeah, I believe so—”

“I have a message for you, Colin. An urgent message from Rachel Ganelli.”

“Rachel? You have a message from Rachel? I’ve been trying to reach her for a week—”

“Well, she couldn’t make it to the concert—she’s otherwise engaged—but she wanted me to give you this note.”

I took an envelope from her.

“That’s it, I guess,” she said. “She made me promise to give it to you and leave—what are mothers for but to order around, right?”

“Wait,” I protested, but Mrs. Ganelli was already out the door. I was about to follow her, when Phillip introduced me to a fat wanker he seemed to know from the dinner party. The head of EMI Records.

“No more get-out
-of-jail passes,” the clerk had said. “Tell it to the judge.” A hundred jurors were called down from the main jury room. They expected most of us to be dismissed. Word spread like wildfire; this was the media-saturated De Meglio murder trial: an Italian grandmother who shot her grandson’s dealer with a hunting rifle.

A woman climbing the stairs next to me whispered, “He’s going to let me out. I have three degrees, and they want malleable immigrants and blacks for trials.”

Judge Berliner welcomed us to the voir dire process. “
Voir dire
is from old French: ‘To speak the truth.’ You are obligated under New York state law to speak and say the truth. Many people in this room think they have indispensable jobs. I assure you that an important job is not enough for me. How many of you have not heard of this case?”

One hand went up. “He’ll be on the trial,” whispered my new hallway “friend.”

The judge dismissed him. A murmur went through the seats.

“This is a pragmatic court. Nothing’s wrong with watching a bit of TV. If you’ve been living in New York City and you haven’t
heard of this case, I don’t want you in my courtroom. The lawyers can dismiss you, but the judge can, too. The one excuse I’ll accept straightaway is if you are a woman with a child under six without daycare. If you are in this category please raise your hands now.” About twenty hands went up. “Bailiff O’Reilly is going to take names and numbers of these women, and we’ll be imposing a serious fine if we catch anyone lying.” About a dozen hands went down. The remaining women went over to the clerk single file and were dismissed. “Are there others who believe they cannot sit on this case?” Practically the whole room raised their hands.

“I see,” Judge Berliner said. “Someone’s going to have to sit on it.”

We went up one at a time with our creative predicaments. In the silent courtroom it was easy to hear his consistent reply: “I see. But you’ll have to take your seat.”

My turn. I went toward the bench and handed him my jury card. “I don’t think I could be impartial. My cousin’s a recovering heroin addict—I’m his caretaker. Also, I have no money to spare. I’m temping and jury wage is not going to take care of my rent.”

“Thank you, Ms. Ganelli, you may take your seat.”

“How can you do this?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“My cousin went through the program! You can call Beth Israel! Stuart Lipschitz—”

“Please sit down, Ms. Ganelli. I’ve been in this courtroom for thirty years and I know someone inconvenienced by jury duty is not the same as someone who can’t serve.”

“I’m telling—”

“Sit down, Ms. Ganelli.”

I sat there seething. Through the afternoon, Manhattanites unsuccessfully argued their right to rake in more than fifteen dollars a day. A sweet woman I had chatted with a bit in the women’s room provided Berliner with her son’s Yale graduation ceremony invitation. She was sent back to her seat with teary mascara.

She leaned over to a bunch of sympathetic jurors. “He said a smart son will respect me more if I went through the process.”

“Bastard!” the guy to my right said.

Berliner called him up to the stand. “I could fine you in contempt of court, but you’re not worth my time.” And he was dismissed. Why didn’t I think of that?

The clerk rolled the jury slips in a metal barrel that looked like the ones game shows use to pick out “this week’s lucky viewer.” Sixteen of the eighty-five left in the courtroom were asked to take their seats in the sturdy, wooden jury chairs and four fold-out chairs. The rumpled court-appointed public defender’s fly was at half-mast. “Ms. Rachel Ganelli? Ms. Ganelli, you wrote in
Ms.
?”

“Yes.”

“Briefly, what is your line of work?”

“I’m in between jobs, but I have worked as an acquisitions editor for a book firm.”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Do you live at home?”

“What do you mean by that—am I an unmarried woman living with my parents?” Plan B: let the lawyers think I’m a livewire.

He scratched himself on the head and nodded.

“Let the record show that Mr. Presticastro nodded his head in the affirmative,” Judge Berliner said.

“I’m subletting from my parents.”

“Ms. Ganelli, do you have relatives in the law profession?”

“I have a cousin who’s a police officer. I really respect him.” How were they going to check on cousins? Safe lie.

“Tell me about your hobbies.”

“I like reading trial books.”

“Do you think you understand the law?”

“Absolutely. I think I’d make an excellent lawyer.” I peripherally caught Judge Berliner’s face. He was on to me.

“You have heard of this case?

“Yes.”

“How did you first hear about it?

“Where? On TV—I followed it closely, a horrible case!”

“What station did you follow it on? Which anchor person do you like to watch?” He had asked this question before, and when the person in the front row said Fox he seemed pretty happy. But what if he asked me about Fox—I didn’t know their anchors. Shit, shit. What do I say? Defense, they hate public TV …

“I was in Australia at the time, and I saw it on their public broadcasting station. The ABC. Excellent foreign coverage.”

“So, in actuality, you were out of the country when the incident took place?”

Fuck! “Yes.” The defense attorney smiled at me. “Thank you, Ms. Ganelli.”

“Mr. Lanier, is it? What do you do in your spare time?”

“I’m into UFOs—”

The assistant district attorney,
Ms. Gorsham, spoke to us in a robotic manner. Before questioning me, she took a long pause to check her notes.

“Hangs her clothes on Shaker pegs,” the high school history teacher on my right whispered.

Ms. Gorsham sat on the edge of her lawyer’s table to get the skinny on me. How down-to-earth and confident, I knew I was supposed to think.

“Did you attend a university, Ms. Ganelli?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“Syracuse.”

“What did you major in?”

“TV, I loved my major, and, uh, science.” I looked her up and down. About fifty and rougeless. Barnard or Radcliffe. Jesus, she’s prosecuting, she wants me to be smart. Please don’t ask me which one.

“Science? How interesting, Ms. Ganelli. What branch?”

Hey what about the TV? Don’t you want to hear about my junior-year demographic analysis of Saturday morning cartoons? “Physics.” She raised her eyebrow to her young male assistant, who was downright hunky, even in my nausea I noted that. He made a mark on his pad next to a diagram of the juror seats.

After lunch the judge called us back from trial.

“When the clerk calls your name you are free to go.”

The clerk read from his book. “Ms. Pfister—Mr. Lanier—Mrs. Chu—Mr. Liss (the history teacher)—Mr. Rodriquez.” My name was not being called. “Mr. Molinari.” They’re dismissing the Italians.
Manga
! “Mr. Stein.” Name after not-my-name was called.

“Ms. Ganelli and Mr. De Jesus, after the clerk swears you in, you can join the two others sworn jurors in the jury room. We have eight other jurors and four alternates to secure.”

The clerk approached me. “Do you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?”

Wait a fucking second.

Nine jurors had been
picked. Three more jurors and four alternates to go. The bailiff opened the door to our jury room. He looked like Rusty Staub, Frank’s favorite Met from the 1973 pennant race: big build, ruddy complexion, and tawny hair. He asked us to write down our requests for sandwiches.

“Who ordered the cappy ham?”

“I did,” Mr. De Jesus said.

“What’s cappy ham?”

“Kind of ham.”

“If we don’t have cappy, can I get you a normal ham?”

“I guess.”

“Okay then,” the bailiff said, “first crisis down. This trial will last about a month, is my guess, but don’t quote me on it. Better get used to each other.”

A pushing-elderly man in a yarmulke inquired, “Can you ask the judge if we get Monday off for
Lag b’Omer
?”

“Lag what?” Bailiff O’Reilly said.

The juror wrote it down for him to take back out to the courtroom.

“What’s that holiday for?” asked a forty-ish children’s book editor, an oversize, overhealthy blonde straight out of Edna Ferber’s
So Big.
During the voir dire, she had said she was of Swedish descent.

“It’s the day the manna started raining down from the heavens to sustain the Jews in the desert,” I said.

“You’re Jewish?” the Orthodox juror smiled.

“Half,” I said.

“That’s one interpretation. It’s the thirty-third day of the seven-week period of mourning from the start of the seder—mourning for the Jews who died at the hands of the Pharaoh. Lag b’Omer is the thirty-third day, and
Shuvvuo
s is the fiftieth day. That’s the counting of the Omer. It’s a harvest preparation reprise from the mourning. You can be merry, plant wheat, and have haircuts.”

“Such knowledge!” the blond editor said.

“I’m a librarian at Yeshiva University,” he admitted.

“The counting sounds like the days leading up to Lent,” said Mr. De Jesus, the naturalized Dominican bartender from Washington Heights—the other juror selected from my batch.

“The Christians lifted many of their customs from the Jews; some of them I’m sure priests wouldn’t want you to know about,” the Orthodox juror said.

And the Jews borrowed heavily from the Phoenicians, I wanted to say, but I’d learned my lesson from the last nasty quarrel
with Benji at Passover. The bartender was of finer moral fiber than me. A bit later, as the two of us leafed through a stack of old
Reader’s Digests
, he told me to call him Louis. Louis said that he realized right off that the Orthodox juror was not used to talking to Catholic bartenders on a daily basis. He knew the man was merely trying to dispense information and not make a judgment, and had therefore forced a smile.

Five more jurors came in: a young woman who also looked Dominican or Puerto Rican, a black woman who later said she was a legal secretary, a young black man with dreds who worked for the post office, the three-degreed white woman from the hall, and the hot Indian or Pakistani guy I’d spotted in the far corner of the jury check-in room earlier that morning, reading Nietzsche. He had light brown skin, a chin-length bob, and a kissable mouth. He introduced himself as Raj.

The bailiff reentered our holding pen. “You will have Monday off for the holiday Lag b’Omer.” The big blond woman turned to the Orthodox juror and said, “Thanks! Let’s try Swedish Pancake Day.” The ones in on the joke laughed, except me, sourpuss with a recovering heroin addict back home.

“A few more items of information I need to pass on. We have a refrigerator,” the bailiff said, “but it’s pretty gross. There’s an inexpensive cafeteria in the building, and there is a decent Korean deli on the corner. I also recommend the vegetable dumplings at Excellent Dumpling House a few blocks down for a good quick lunch.”

“How about a microwave?” the legal secretary asked.

“What is this,
Fantasy Island
?” he responded with perfect timing.
“This is the New York State legal system. You’re lucky the fan is working.” Once again everyone except me laughed.

“Don’t look so glum,” the rasta post-office worker said to me. “How bad can this be?”

A few minutes later the bailiff, known to us now as Kevin, instructed us to join the final four selected jurors in the courtroom.

“Thank you for being patient,” Judge Berliner said. “We will begin the trial on Tuesday—one of our jurors celebrates the Jewish holiday of Lag b’Omer. I will not sequester you for now, but you may not talk about this case outside of the courtroom. We can expect media attention on the trial, and I will warn you that if it gets out of hand and the hoopla interferes with justice, I have the legal obligation to sequester you. Please report to the juror room at eight forty-five
A.M.
Bailiff O’Reilly will give you a pass so you can leapfrog the lines outside the courtroom. Have a nice weekend. You are dismissed.”

“You’re on the De
Meglio trial?” Frank gasped. He’d biked over to the apartment to bring my father’s minimum items for living: the
Times
, good virgin olive oil, sun-dried tomatoes, and fresh mozzarella, the latter three from the Italian Food Center on Grand Street. “What about Stuart? You’re going to leave it to Mom and Dad now, aren’t you? You’re from New York City. You don’t know how to get off a trial? What the fuck, Rachel? Didn’t you say your uncle is a cop?”

“I said my cousin was a heroin addict! And another cousin was a cop. What more could I do?”

“And another cousin was a gun-toting grandmother? You have to appear sincere.”