Chill of Night

32

It was too warm in the jury assembly room. Melanie thought that might be on purpose, so juries would come in sooner with their verdict. One of the jurors asked the bailiff, who was standing just outside the door, to kick up the air conditioning. He smiled and complied. It made no difference.

Light spilled in through grilled windows that didn’t allow for much of a view. Heat seemed to rise from the humidity-damp wood table and chairs, along with a subtle scent of furniture polish and painful deliberations past. No one on the jury thought this was going to be brief.

Melanie was the foreperson, primarily because no one else wanted the job.

The eleven other jurors stared at her for guidance. Each had a legal-size pad in front of them on the table, on which to make notes, but after only a preliminary discussion, Melanie suggested they take an anonymous vote and find out where everyone stood. So pieces were torn from the top sheets of legal pads and used simply to write “guilty” or “not guilty” on, then folded and passed to Melanie.

She unfolded and tallied them on what was left of her top yellow sheet. Three abstentions. Two not guilties. Seven for conviction.

“I’m a ‘not guilty,’” she said.

“What’s your reasoning?” asked Juror Number Three, a greengrocer from the Bronx named Delahey. With his rimless glasses, refined air, and conservative suit, he looked more like a college professor than anyone in the room.

His question was a good one, because Melanie simply knew that Richard Simms-Cold Cat-wasn’t a killer. “The time element,” she said. “If Simms was seen outside Knee High’s apartment around the time Knee High said he was there, he wouldn’t have had time to cross town on foot, or even by cab or subway, to his own apartment and murder his wife.”

“Barely time enough,” said Juror Number One, Mimi, a dance instructor who looked like, and in fact was, an aging ballerina and was always dressed in black.

“And for time to be a factor in the defendant’s favor,” said Number Eight, a portly, sweaty gentleman who was a financial analyst, “we would have to believe Merv Clark. And, frankly, I didn’t find him credible. Nor did I find his wife credible when she testified as to what a sterling husband he was.”

“She almost made you think her broken teeth were her fault,” said the ballerina.

“Clark might be a wife beater, but he was slightly more credible than Knee High,” said Number Two, a freelance writer named Wilma King who lived in the Village. “Why should anyone believe anything said by someone who’s legally changed his name to Knee High?”

“Because he was under oath,” said Melanie.

Several of the jurors laughed. Others looked at her as if they were having second thoughts about her being foreperson.

“If you believed Clark, you don’t have to believe Knee High,” Melanie pointed out to Wilma.

“I know. And I believed Clark’s testimony.”

“There’s also the fact that Edie Piaf was shot,” Melanie said, “and Simms didn’t have any powder burns on his hands.”

“He could have worn gloves, like the prosecution said.” Delahey the greengrocer added.

“Knee High and Clark were both lying,” Mimi said. “This seems to me like a slam dunk.”

“I thought you were a dancer, not a basketball player,” said a gray-haired man at the far end of the table. Number Twelve, Walter Smithers. No one laughed. A few of the jurors groaned.

“My preliminary vote was guilty,” said Delahey, “but I’m not firm on it. I’m willing to listen to reason.”

“I’m firm on my not guilty vote,” said Number Four, an African American man named Harvey, who worked as a super in a midtown apartment building.

“Naturally,” said Smithers, from the other end of the table.

“No, not naturally,” Harvey said. “It’s just that I’ve got plenty of reasonable doubt.”

“Of course you do.” Smithers was pushing it.

“I guess you don’t,” Harvey said.

“Not a particle.”

“Naturally not. You probably thought Simms was guilty the moment you walked into court and saw him.”

“Or heard his music,” Mimi said with a laugh.

“Stuff you’re too old to dance to,” Harvey said.

Mimi merely smiled. “I was only joking. If we don’t joke now and then, we’ll go mad in this stifling little room that smells like Lemon Pledge.”

Melanie hadn’t counted on this. She took a quick count. Six of the jurors were Caucasian, one Asian, one Hispanic, and three African American. “I don’t believe race enters into this,” she said. “We all need to agree on that.”

One of the other black jurors, a middle-aged nurse named Pam, looked dubious and said, “You ain’t noticed we’re trying a black rap artist?”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Wilma. “The law’s color blind.”

“He might as well be a Martian,” Mimi said.

“See what I’m sayin’?” Harvey said. “How many Martians been acquitted in New York courts?”

“I think you understand my meaning,” Mimi said imperiously.

“You some kinda diva?” Harvey asked, obviously pleased to have gotten under Mimi’s skin.

“What we want to make sure we do,” said Wilma, “is not let the Justice Killer murders influence our judgment. If we really think we should acquit Richard Simms, we must do it.”

“Maybe you don’t think the Justice Killer’s guilty,” Pam said.

“I think he deserves all his constitutional rights and a fair trial even if he enjoys cutting people’s throats.”

“Nicely put,” Smithers said. “What kind of writer are you?”

“Right now I’m doing book reviews.”

“We’re getting off point,” Melanie said. “We’re here to discuss a man’s guilt or innocence. Race has nothing to do with it.”

“Amen,” said a lanky blond man with shoulder-length hair. Juror Number Two, Harold Evans. He was about forty, with narrow blue eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a long, pinched looking nose.

“You a preacher?” asked Harvey.

“Comedian.”

“You shittin’ me?”

“Nope. I play the clubs, had an HBO special. Stage name’s Happy Evans. Hap, offstage.”

“So say somethin’ funny, Hap offstage.”

“That’s not bad, Harvey. But comedians aren’t necessarily funny offstage.”

“Robin Williams is.”

“He’s got a point,” Pam said.

“Billy Crystal!” said Delahey. “I bet you could wake up that man at midnight and he’d tell you a joke.”

“I thought your name was Hap,” said Number Ten, a tax accountant named Hector Gomez. “So make us happy so we don’t notice the Lemon Pledge.”

Everyone was staring at Hap.

Melanie was afraid she was losing control. She was supposed to be setting the agenda here, and her jurors were turning on each other. Her throat was dry.

Hap shrugged. “A guy goes into an apartment and shoots his wife.” He grinned. “That’s it, folks.”

The Asian woman, Number Six, Marie Kim, held her nose between thumb and forefinger.

“Not funny,” Delahey said.

Hap shrugged again. “Then here’s the punch line: he didn’t do it.”

No one said anything.

“I abstained, but I’m a firm not guilty man,” Hap said. “I figure the more people I acquit, the better my chances if I ever get in trouble.”

“That one I liked,” Delahey said.

Melanie smiled, counting her allies. She’d need them if she was going to save Richard Simms from people like Walter Smithers.

Manfred Byrd told the woman from Detroit that what she needed was a patterned sofa that contained all the colors of the room.

The woman, whose name was Marge Caldwell, looked angry and waved her flabby arms about. She’d confided to Byrd that she’d been on a severe diet and had lost over fifty pounds. Byrd thought fifty more might be in order. “I paid a fortune to move all this stuff here from Michigan,” she said. “I was hoping you could tell me how to arrange it, not advise me to sell it.”

“Keep all the stuff, dear. Only not the sofa. It’s Early American. Nothing else is.” Except for you, dear. “It’s a solid drab brown. Everything else you have is solid colored like the sofa. The room is static. You need something, one thing, that is busy, busy, busy.”

Marge looked around. The expensive Third Avenue apartment was a puzzle to her, as was how to spend her money. She didn’t mind that Manfred Byrd was one of the most expensive interior decorators in the city, anymore than she minded the exorbitant rent she was going to pay. Marge, while in the middle of her divorce from a Detroit Dodge dealer, had won the state lottery and managed to come away with all the money. The Dodge dealer was angry and had run out of appeals. She didn’t want the Dodge dealer to find her. She wanted to start a new life in a new city she could lose herself in. What better place than New York? And if the Dodge dealer did locate her, the doorman wouldn’t let the bastard in the building. Manfred Byrd loved clients like this. She would put complete trust in him.

He knew how to dress for this sort of client, too. Clothes made the man, and sometimes made the deal. He was still young, only forty-two and a half, and he exercised regularly to keep his slender body youthful. His suits were tailored and he favored silk in blacks and grays. His regular features were the sort that would always be boyish-he’d heard that said about him more than once. And it showed that he used a variety of skin conditioners. His hair was buzz cut and he sported no facial hair other than a tiny dark beard on the very tip of his chin. He wore one conservative diamond stud earring, and a silver bracelet. Byrd was intentionally obviously gay, but not too gay for a straight woman from Michigan.

“I suppose you’re right,” Marge said.

“Of course I’m right, dear. I’d better be. You’re paying me to be right.” Byrd laughed. “I’m right all the time.” He touched her flabby arm and smiled. “Sometimes I get so sick of myself.”

Marge smiled along with him. “We lived in the suburbs in Detroit. This is so different. I’m not used to being so high.”

“I won’t get into your personal life, dear.”

Marge laughed and waved a ring-laden hand. “I meant high above the street.”

“I know, and it’s good that you chose this place. High above the street is safer, even in a good part of town like this. You are an attractive woman alone.”

Marge wasn’t buying into that one, but she seemed to consider what he’d said about being safer on a high floor. “Is New York really that dangerous?”

“Not after you learn to take a few precautions. And not for someone from Detroit.”

“The suburbs,” she reminded him.

“Uh-huh. Where John Wayne Gacy murdered and buried all those boys.”

“That was Chicago.”

“Ah, you’re right! Well, Chicago!”

“I get your point, though. New York’s no more dangerous than anyplace else.”

Huh? “Exactly, dear. Well, Mayberry perhaps.”

Marge pressed a finger to her dimpled chin and looked around, a thinking pose to let him know she was weighing his advice. “Pattern…”

“Pattern, dear. Fewer solids and unbroken surfaces, less blah. More busy, busy.” He raised a cautioning forefinger. “But not too much. Only the sofa. And with a throw in an accent color.”

“Yes, I do think I see what you mean. I wouldn’t have realized it myself.”

Byrd sent an offhand wave the way of the drab sofa. “I’ll make arrangements for you to have that removed, then you and I will go shopping for a divine divan. It will be fun.”

Marge put on another smile, waging the ongoing battle to push away her past and fit into her new life. “It will be,” she agreed. “There’s no reason for it not to be.”

“What I like about you, dear,” Byrd said, “is you got the spirit!”

As he left the apartment, he was already planning their shopping expedition, a series of specialty furniture stores that wouldn’t have what they needed, then Niki’s Nook on Second Avenue, where there was plenty of pattern and he received twenty percent of markup for furniture sold to his clients. Furniture was such fun merchandise. Even after Marge’s special discount, Byrd’s finder’s fee would be considerable.

Down on the sidewalk, he was waiting while the doorman tried to hail a cab, when he glanced across the street and saw the same man-he was sure it was the same one-he’d noticed twice during the last few days watching him in the Village. He was wearing a blue or black T-shirt with an eagle on its chest, dark sunglasses, tight Levi’s tucked into black boots. Going for the Harley Davidson look, not so noticeable in the Village, but here on this block of Third Avenue, he stood out the way Marge’s old sofa would. Though his eyes were concealed behind the dark lenses, Byrd was certain the man was staring directly at him. He could feel it.

The Dodge dealer? Had the Dodge dealer found Marge? Byrd had been spending a great deal of time in her apartment; might the man think he was Marge’s new lover, moving in on her money that her ex-husband believed should be half his?

Me and Marge? Hah!

But everybody loved somebody, if they were lucky, and Marge had been the Dodge dealer’s wife.

Or maybe the Dodge dealer’s interested in me!

Am I insane? Maybe it isn’t even the same man.

“Heads up, sir!”

Brakes eeped and tires scraped on concrete. Byrd had to leap back from where he’d wandered off the curb while lost in thought. The vehicle’s right front fender had barely missed him.

His heart hammering, Byrd tipped the doorman and hurriedly got into the cab and blurted out his destination. He was determined to get hold of his imagination. His analyst had cautioned him about flights of paranoia that could lead to panic attacks.

Think pattern, think pattern…something that will pop…something wild…

But as the cab accelerated away from the curb, Byrd craned his neck to peer out the rear window.

Everyone else on the busy street seemed to be facing any direction other than toward the cab, but Harley Davidson man was looking directly at Byrd.