California Fire And Life

85

The ritual sacrifice of Jack Wade starts with peanut M amp;M's.

Jack stands in the "observation room" behind the oneway mirror, gobbling peanut M amp;M's and watching the "jury" file in. Jack's been in a couple of dozen focus group facilities and it seems like whatever else they have or don't have, they always have bowls of peanut M amp;M's.

For nervous chomping.

They always serve dinner, too, except Jack's too edgy to enjoy the lasagna bubbling in the heater trays. The meals at these things are usually pretty good, but tonight it's really good – in addition to the lasagna there's roast basil chicken, fettuccine Alfredo, a Caesar salad, and profiteroles for dessert. Also, real plates, real silverware, and linen napkins.

The quality of the meal is a good news/bad news joke.

The good news is that it's a high-quality meal, the bad news is that the reason it's a high-quality meal is because the muckety-mucks from Mahogany Row are there.

Casey ordered the menu.

Casey knows that the mucks tend to take their meals very seriously, so it's prudent to at least feed them well. Especially when the bill's going to be $50 million.

Not counting the tip.

Jack watches them eat.

Half of freaking Mahogany Row bellied up to the trough. Twelve years with the company, and Jack's never seen these guys in the flesh before, just on a few motivational closed-circuit TV presentations. The boys can eat.

So there they are, VP Claims, VP Legal, and VP Public Relations. Goddamn Billy runs it down for him.

"Phil Herlihy, VP Claims," Billy says, pointing to a sixtyish guy with a shock of white hair and a paunch. "Came out of Agency, of course. Doesn't know a claim from a blow job. He's an administrator."

Billy gestures at a tall, thin guy in his fifties. "Dane Reinhardt, VP Legal. Couldn't buy a verdict in a goddamn courtroom, so now he's telling us what to do.

"Jerry Bourne, VP Public Relations," Billy says, pointing to a short fortyish guy with curly red hair and a red nose. "Basically in charge of arranging hookers for the visiting firemen and hiding the bills in his expenses. He's a fucking idiot, but at least he knows it. So's Reinhardt, except he doesn't know it. All he knows is it's a lot safer to settle claims than to take one to trial and lose. Last thing that no-balls so-called lawyer wants to see is another courtroom. Herlihy's the one to watch out for. He swings the big stick in the president's office."

Herlihy looks over at them.

"Billy," he says, "aren't you going to eat?"

"I'm watching my figure."

Herlihy looks at Jack.

"Are you this Jack Wade I've heard so much about today?"

"Guilty."

Herlihy says, "You Claims cowboys from So-Cal…"

Like he's so disgusted he can't even finish.

Jack figures it doesn't require a real answer so all he says is, "Yippi-yi-yo-ky-ay" and walks away, which doesn't score him a lot of points with Phil Herlihy, VP Claims, from the start of this thing.

The observation room itself is shaped like a slice of a lecture hall. A bunch of desks bolted onto the floor slanted down toward the observation window. The dining table is off to the left on the five feet of flat floor by the window and the door. On top of the room, a videographer is getting his camera ready to record the whole mess for the boys at corporate who couldn't make the live show. At the bottom, a table runs the width of the window. Seated at the table are two jury consultants with laptop computers and stacks of questionnaires.

What the two jury consultants also have is a monitor that's hooked up to each of twelve ProCon machines on the desk of each "juror."

The ProCon machines are simple little devices that measure how the juror is "feeling" – generally pro or vaguely con – at any given moment. It's basically a joystick attached to a base and the juror is supposed to keep his or her hand on it at all times. The juror's feeling con about something, he pushes the joystick down. A little con, a little down. A lot con, a lot down. Same with the pro feelings. A little pro, the juror pulls a little back on the joystick, a lot pro, she can whip that puppy all the way back.

It's basically a high-tech version of the old Roman thumbs-up/thumbs-down gladiator deal.

What it does is it allows you to instantly measure the jury's ongoing "instinctive" reaction on a scale from Negative 10 to Neutral to Positive 10 to any witness, question, or answer. They're carefully instructed that they don't need a reason for their reaction – they should just react. If they're feeling "bad" they should push the stick down. If they're feeling happy, they should push it up.

Jack knows this is only for the gut reaction, that they'll get the rational response from the questionnaires and the actual decision from a "verdict," but he also knows that the jury will rationalize its gut reaction onto the questionnaire and then onto the verdict.

Doesn't matter what a lawyer or a judge says; any jury will decide a case on its gut reaction.

So the ProCon machine is an important little fucker in this proceeding.

Everyone in the observation room is going to have their eyes on the ProCon monitor.

Not inside the actual "courtroom."

Inside the actual focus group room, on the other side of the window, the "jurors" are seated in a mock jury box, with individual little tables for their ProCon joysticks. There's a witness stand, tables for the plaintiff and defense, and a judge's bench, where the "rent-a-judge" for the focus group will sit.

The two jury consultants – a yuppie guy and a yuppie gal – and the moderator – a slightly older male yuppie – are all from TSI, Trial Science Inc., and this is what they do for a living. They're all a little frantic at the moment because this is a rush job. They've spent the afternoon assembling a demographically correct focus group that would be an accurate sampling of a potential Orange County jury. Age, gender, race, education, profession have gone into the mix, plus they had to figure in the attorney's preference.

"How do you want this one to come out?" the older yuppie had asked Casey.

Because the attorney is the one they have to keep happy, so they need to know if the attorney wants a real focus group or a dog-and-pony. A lot of times, the attorney is trying to use the focus group to persuade a client to settle or to go to trial, and because the TSI people already know the demographics that tend to be pro-defense or pro-plaintiff, they can slant their recruiting the lawyer's way.

They can also slant the questionnaires and the live discussion, and while they can't guarantee an outcome, they can take a lawyer a long way down his or her chosen path.

Hence the question, "How do you want this one to come out?"

"Accurately," Casey answered.

One, because he's not about to set up a Potemkin village for old friends like Billy Hayes and Jack Wade, and two, he already knows how this one's going to come out anyway.

He's going to kick their ass.

Which is what Jack thinks, too, when he sees the rent-a-judge walk in and take the bench. Dude is wearing black robes, just like this is the real thing.

Dude also looks very familiar.

"We're dead," Jack mutters to Goddamn Billy. Because the rent-a-judge is none other than retired Justice Dennis Mallon.

From the Atlas Warehouse trial.