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"Duhts’ But you knohat? I think you’re right"

The next day she said, "I was talking to my brother-in-law about Mr Bittner and how he can’t keep his eyes open"

"Oh?"

"I didn’t say he was on the jury, and I didn’tto do with Mr Bittner being morbidly obese"

"Morbidly obese?"

"He’s a paramedic, he knows all the terh to have his own zip code But where did ht around hts? Did you spend hours wondering how many men it would take to carry your coffin?

"Maybe he’s just tired," Keller suggested "Maybe he can’t sleep nights because he’s weighed down by the responsibility of sitting in judgment over his fellow man"

"Or maybe he’s just bored to the point of petrifaction It’s really boring, isn’t it?"

"It has its moments," he said, "but they’re few and far between, and the rest of it’s like watching water evaporate"

"On a hu until you want to scream They ask the sah opinion of jurors"

"It’s not like TV"

"No, or you’d turn it off Well, take Law and Order The two cops catch the guy in the first thirty minutes, and Sam Waterston puts hier than that to find out what brand of VCR we’re talking about"

"Court TV’slive Otherwise they just show you the part where soe, they tend to cut away during the dull parts" She stirred her iced coffee "I guess we shouldn’t be talking about this"

"You can relax," he said, deadpan "I’ a wire"

She stared at hi And put her hand on top of his

"The cop’s black," he told Dot, "and the defendant’s white I don’t think I mentioned that before"

"You and Justice," she said "Both color-blind"

"At first," he said, "we didn’t know I mean, we knew about the defendant, because there he was sitting with his lawyers, analish class? You knohat Iis," she said, "whether it’s got a naood one But what’s an OTB face? Off the books? On the button?"

"Off-track betting," he said "There’s a look horseplayers get"

"A kind of a woulda-coulda-shoulda look"

"That’s the one Anyway, you don’t get to see the cop until he gives testi by then And it turns out he’s black And the thief’s black, too"

"A o you said he hite"

"Not the defendant The thief, the guy who stole the VCR in the first place and sold it to Huberman He’s a prosecution witness, and he and the cop are both African-Americans"

"So?"

"So that explains a lot about jury selection The big question in voir dire was do we believe cops lie or tell the truth Well, generally speaking, white people generally have more faith in the police than black people do"

"Gee, Keller, I wonder why"

"Right So you’d think the prosecution would hite jurors, and the defense would want blacks"

"Got it When the defendant’s white and the cop is black, everything gets turned on its head"

"But I don’t think anybody’s sure just how far it gets turned I wish I’d known all this before voir dire, because it would have been interesting to watch See, the ideal juror for the prosecution is a black hly of cops, and the ideal for the defense is a white man who doesn’t"

"Black man, white man Don’t they have any women on your jury?"

"Seven of the twelve are women And one of the two alternates"

"And the black and white balance?"

"Four whites and three blacks, plus both the alternates are black"

"Doesn’t add up, Keller"

"Plus three Hispanics and two Asians"

"How do they factor in, as far as believing in cops is concerned?"

"No idea"