Sycamore Row - John Grisham

equally, then concentrated more on Seth. Why have children if you don’t want them?
But he had wrestled with these questions for years and there were no answers. Let it go.
Enough. He locked the house, left it, and drove to Clanton, where he was expected
around 6:00 p.m. Ian and Ramona were already there, in the large conference room on
the second floor of the Sullivan firm. Their ace jury consultant, Myron Pankey, was
going on about their meticulous research when Herschel arrived. Cursory greetings and
introductions were made. Pankey had two staffers with him, two attractive young ladies
preoccupied with note-taking.
Wade Lanier and Lester Chilcott sat at the center on one side of the table, flanked by
paralegals. Pankey was saying, “Our phone survey also revealed that when given the
additional facts that the will was written by a wealthy man, age seventy, and the
caregiver was an attractive woman much younger, over half of those surveyed asked if
sex was involved. We never mentioned sex, but it’s often the automatic response. What
was really going on? Race was never mentioned, but of the black respondents almost 80
percent were suspicious of sexual activity. Of the white, 55 percent.”
“So the issue is very much in the air, though unspoken,” Lanier said.
Didn’t we know this six months ago? Herschel asked himself as he doodled on a legal
pad. So far, they had paid Pankey two-thirds of his $75,000 fee. The money was now
being fronted by Wade Lanier’s law firm, which was paying all the litigation expenses.
Ian had chipped in $20,000; Herschel nothing. If there was a recovery, there would also
be a war dividing it.
Pankey passed out thick booklets for their reading pleasure, though the lawyers had
already spent hours with the material. Beginning with Ambrose and ending with Young,
there was a one- or two-page summary of each juror. Many included photos of homes
and automobiles, and a few had actual photos of the jurors. These were taken from
church and club directories, high school yearbooks, and a few candid shots handed over
on the sly by friends.
Pankey was saying, “Our perfect juror is a Caucasian over the age of fifty. The
younger people went to integrated schools and tend to be more tolerant on race, and
obviously we are not looking for tolerance. Sadly for us, the more racist the better.
White women are slightly preferable over white men, and this is because they tend to
show more jealousy toward another woman who has managed to manipulate the will. A
man might excuse another man for fooling around with his housekeeper, but a woman is
not so understanding.”
Seventy-five thousand for this? Herschel doodled to himself. Isn’t this fairly obvious?
He shot a bored look at his sister, who was looking old and tired. Things were not going
well with Ian, and the Hubbard siblings had spoken on the phone more in the past three
months than in the past ten years. Ian’s deals were not paying off, and the strained
marriage was continuing to crack. Ian spent most of his time on the Gulf Coast where he
and some partners were renovating a mall. This was fine with her; she didn’t want him
at home. She talked openly of divorce, to Herschel anyway. But if they lost this case, she
might be stuck. We’re not going to lose, Herschel kept reassuring her.
They slogged through the research until 7:30, when Wade Lanier said he’d had