Rough Justice Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t like to show his thumb, so he didn’t. What would Antoinetta say?
    “Fuck that,” Kenny said. “We don’t need a foreman. We can vote right now.”
    Ralph winced. He didn’t like swearing around the women. He’d asked Kenny not to do it but that only made him do it more. Ralph knew there was no reasoning with them. His thin lips set in a hyphen of determination. “Kenny, we’re gonna do this orderly. We all want to vote and go home but first we have to pick the foreman.”
    “Foreperson,” Megan said, to cut the tension. She felt uncomfortable when it got racial, and it always got racial lately. A white man had killed a black man, and Kenny couldn’t see it any other way. God, Megan wanted to go home, where it was just her and her Compaq, and they never fought. “How about foreplay?” she quipped, and the jurors laughed.
    Even Kenny smiled. “I’m down. Now let’s vote. Elliot Steere is guilty. That’s one vote for guilty. Who else? Lucky?”
    “Me too,” said Lucky Seven, and he snatched the verdict sheet from the center of the table.
    “Hey!” Ralph shouted. “You can’t take that. The foreman has to fill that out, and I should be the foreman. I nominate myself.”
    Megan shook her head. If Ralph were the foreperson, he’d never shut up. It would take forever. “No, I had first dibs. I’d like to be the foreperson. All in favor, raise their hands.”
    “People, don’t fight. If we’re going to elect a foreperson, it should be a secret vote,” said Mrs. Wahlbaum. Esther Wahlbaum was a retired English teacher at a city high school, and she knew how to keep order in a classroom. “That’s the official way to do it. A secret ballot.”
    Martin Fogel, sitting next to her, rolled his eyes. “Thank you, resident expert in everything.” Mr. Fogel was an old watchmaker who wore steel-topped bifocals and a thin white shirt. A stripe of thin gray hair covered his head like a seat belt. “The woman is amazing. You need a plumber, she’s a plumber. You want dance lessons, she does the fox-trot.”
    Mrs. Wahlbaum pursed her lips. “Don’t start up, Mr. Fogel. Everybody knows a secret vote is more official. Just like with the regular elections.”
    Gussella Williams shifted impatiently in her seat, her jersey dress stretched between her large thighs. Gussella was black, a heavyset bookkeeper still unhappy over missing Christmas vacation for this trial. She’d planned to go to South Carolina to see her new grandbaby, who was growing like a weed. “I’ll be damned if I’ll miss his first birthday, too,” Gussella grumbled, and nobody asked what she meant because they knew already. “Let’s just get to voting. Secret, public, makes no difference to me. Lord, let’s just vote.”
    Heads were nodding around the table, even of the two jurors who never participated, Wanthida Chandrruagphen, a thin, graceful Thai whose name no one could pronounce, and Ryan Parker, a shy man who worked for a yarn manufacturer. The jurors could hardly wait to have the trial over with and go home. They thought the lawyers repeated themselves and the exhibits were too technical. The experts talked down to them and the witnesses droned on forever. By the last two weeks of trial, nobody was even taking notes and crankiness had turned to hostility.
    Nick looked confused. “A secret vote? How we gonna have a secret vote? If we close our eyes, who’s gonna count?”
    Christopher closed his eyes at their chatter. He hadn’t heard as much yapping in his life as he’d heard these past two months. Since Lainie had left, he barely talked to anyone at all. At the barns where he did his shoeing, his only contact was with the horses. He avoided the rich ladies who took dressage lessons in tan jodhpurs and velvet helmets; ignored the barn managers who would steady a skittish mare as he pounded a nail into her hoof. No woman had ever really interested him until recently. Christopher felt like he’d been waiting for her his