Chill of Night

14

Melanie Taylor was juror number five and would act as foreperson in the capital criminal trial of Richard Simms, the rapper known professionally as Cold Cat.

Melanie was thirty-nine, single, and office manager of Regal Trucking, a general hauling company with executive offices in lower Manhattan. She’d been married briefly, to a man who turned out not to love her when it was discovered she’d be unable to bear children. The divorce had been fifteen years ago, and she hadn’t again considered marriage. It was, after all, about children.

Her heart-shaped face, radiant smile, and generous figure had garnered her more than a few proposals of marriage. Some of the proposals she’d accepted, but without the marriage part. She was living alone now, in a small apartment in Tribeca, and seeing no one romantically. After her last bitter parting, she’d decided to take time off from romance-maybe the rest of her life.

“…can be no doubt that he dearly loved his wife, Edie Piaf,” Robert Murray, Cold Cat’s attorney was saying.

Melanie’s gaze went from Murray to Richard Simms, whom she could think of by no name other than Cold Cat. She’d heard some of his songs, violent, assaults on the ear, full of deprecating lyrics about society in general, and women in particular. He didn’t look at all angry or menacing now, a rather placid seeming black man about thirty, with pleasant, even features and liquid dark eyes. His hair was cropped short, and he was wearing a well cut conservative gray suit, white shirt, blue tie. To Melanie, he appeared more the type to be selling insurance or continuing his education than the author and performer of his big hit “Do the Bitch Snitch!” As the prosecutor had pointed out, the song advocated using a knife in unpleasant ways on a woman who’d turned evidence over to the police. But Cold Cat wasn’t on trial for cutting or stabbing his wife, the singer Edie Piaf. Allegedly, he’d shot her.

Murray, a smiling, calm man with rust-colored hair and a spade-shaped red beard, paced before the jury and talked soothingly of Cold Cat’s many musical accomplishments, his generosity to artists less talented or fortunate than himself, his participation in charity performances for AIDS victims and starving children.

“I must object!” Nick Farrato, the lead prosecuting attorney, blurted out, standing up from his chair as if jerked by strings. “Mr. Murray seems to be nominating Cold Cat for sainthood rather than making an opening statement. This defendant is the man who writes songs about slaughtering women, and who took his own lyrics too seriously and willfully-”

“You shut your lyin’ mouth!”

Astounded, Melanie and the rest of the jurors turned in their chairs and saw a heavyset black woman standing near the middle of the crowded courtroom. Farrato, a chesty little man in a dark blue suit, normally cocky as Napoleon, was momentarily nonplussed by the outburst.

“You know nothin’ ’bout my boy, you fat-headed piece of shit. You gonna be sued yourself, you don’t watch that ugly mouth of yours.”

Laughter rippled through the courtroom, but it was nervous laughter.

Judge Ernestine Moody, a somber African American woman with gray hair and deeply seamed features, was the only one who seemed unsurprised and unshaken. Melanie figured Judge Moody had seen it all.

“I’m going to ask you once to sit down and be orderly, ma’am,” she said to the woman making all the fuss.

“I sit you down, you keep messin’ with my boy!” the woman said, bringing gasps this time rather than laughter.

And Melanie understood. This was Cold Cat’s mother. Late forties, overweight, overdressed, overheated, mad as hell.

Still, the judge was unmoved. “Ma’am-”

“I ma’am you, the way you helping these police an’ bald-faced lyin’ lawyers tell what ain’t true an’ railroadin’ my boy straight to jail. You think I’m gonna sit here an’ watch that happen?”

“Ma’am-”

“That ain’t gonna happen!”

Murray was sidling up the far aisle, a smile stuck on his face, motioning with his arms for his client’s mother to sit down.

The judge simply sighed and nodded to the bailiff, a husky blond man, who in turn nodded to a uniformed patrolman on the other side of the courtroom. The one in uniform made a hand motion that stopped Murray, and he and the bailiff converged on Cold Cat’s mother.

That was when Cold Cat leaped to his feet. “You best leave my mom alone. Lay a hand on her an’ I’ll buy your ass and sell it to somebody not gonna treat it kindly.”

From somewhere behind the bench two more uniformed cops appeared, a beefy man and a small, determined looking woman. They grabbed Cold Cat and forced him back down in his chair. Farrato was dancing around now, waving his short, stocky arms and objecting to everything. He finally lapsed into simply yelling, “Outrage! Outrage!”

Cold Cat’s mother calmed down immediately when the two men reached her, as if she’d suddenly been shot through with a mild anesthetic that allowed her enough consciousness to remain on her feet, but no more. Braced between the two men, she accompanied them from the courtroom without a struggle until they reached the doors behind the gallery. Then she turned suddenly, as if she’d experienced a brief last surge of energy.

“This here’s a place of lies!”

She repeated herself loudly in the hall after she was led from the room.

“Everybody,” Judge Moody said, holding out both palms toward the courtroom. “Everybody calm down, and sit down.”

“Put-up deal for the media!” Farrato grumbled. “Cheap stunt by the defense!”

“You sit down too, Mr. Farrato. You too, Mr. Murray.”

“Certainly, your honor.” Murray seemed sobered and much concerned over what had occurred.

“We’re going to continue these proceedings in an orderly fashion,” the judge said.

“Thank you, your honor.”

“Quiet, Mr. Murray.”

“Your honor-”

“I will not entertain an objection during an opening statement, Mr. Farrato. And for purposes of this trial, you will refer to the defendant as Richard Simms, not Cold Cat. And of course the jury is to disregard this…disturbance.” To the defendant: “When Mrs. Simms-the defendant’s mother-agrees to behave herself, she will be allowed back in the courtroom.”

Murray smiled beatifically, as if he’d just achieved a victory. “Thank you, your honor. Your demeanor and judicious temperament are commendable.”

“I’d like to request a short recess,” Farrato said.

“Not in the middle of an opening statement, Mr. Farrato.” The judge fixed her baleful stare on Murray. “You may continue, Mr. Murray.”

“Despite attempts to silence those who know my client as a kind and generous man,” Murray began, seizing on opportunity and making Farrato squirm, “the defense will prove to you that it was absolutely impossible for Richard Simms to have murdered Edie Piaf.”

“Right on!” a Cold Cat supporter in the courtroom said softly.

Judge Moody silenced him with a laser-like glance.

Melanie knew the judge’s instruction to ignore the disturbance was simply a matter of form. How on earth could a juror actually put such a thing out of his or her mind?

She knew she couldn’t, and decided that if any relevant impression stayed with her from the recent outburst, it was that Cold Cat loved his mother.

Of course, it was possible to love your mother, hate women, and murder one.

Wasn’t it?