From the Eyes of a Juror

  Chapter 51 – Mahoney’s Pub (Dead on Arrival)

  Thursday evening June 12, 2008 – 8:00 PM

  Frank Newlan was literally and figuratively dead-to-the-world as he kicked back on his leather sofa and groggily awaited the start of game 4 of the NBA Finals. The series, which pitted the local favorites, the Boston Celtics against the hated LA Lakers, was still up for grabs, and with the Celtics leading two games to one, tonight’s contest could prove to be a pivotal turning point for the victors.

  Newlan hated every team in every sport that had the audacity to match up against one of his beloved Boston teams in an important playoff game, and yet he just couldn’t seem to get worked up for this series the way he normally would.

  “Maybe I’m just getting old,” brooded Newlan, although deep inside he knew full well that his lethargy had a lot more to do with the stress of the John Breslin murder trial -- which was weighing heavily on his mind and squeezing the life out of him like a 350 pound defensive lineman blindsiding a helpless quarterback -- than it did with the natural process of aging.

  It was becoming obvious to him that the trial was draining the gas out of his tank at such a rapid rate that he didn’t possess enough energy leftover with which to focus his full force on the drama that was taking place on the basketball court when the drama that was going on in the courtroom had such life-altering implications.

  As a matter of fact, Newlan was so inwardly focused on processing the day’s events that someone could have lit his hair on fire and he may not have noticed.

  Newlan spent the entire drive home from the courthouse replaying the Grateful Dead song “Built to Last” over and over again at increasingly deafening volumes; all in a desperate attempt to pick up on some secret hidden message that Fred Miller was hoping to convey to Tracy Stone.

  Newlan got so lost in the music that he wasn’t sure how he even made it home in one piece, but make it home he did; he was completely exhausted and barely functional, but he was home, safe and sound, and on this spectral evening that’s all that really mattered.

  By the time Newlan had eaten dinner and settled in on the sofa for the night, he had come to the uneasy conclusion that Breslin may have somehow been involved in Fred Miller’s death. But at this point there was nowhere near enough evidence for him to vote guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, no matter what the rest of the jurors thought.

  And so it was against this backdrop that Newlan began his evening. He was trying his damndest to get excited about the game, but he just couldn’t seem to erase Tracy Stone’s scandalous testimony from his mind; and what might have been the strangest aspect of this utterly strange day was the fact that he found her to be equal parts captivating and repulsive all at the same time.

  “Man, she must have some sort of magical power, because I feel like I’m falling under her spell,” reflected Newlan as Stone’s face flickered across his brain, sending him into a dreamlike torpor.

  It seemed that the more Newlan pondered Tracy Stone’s tale, the more he identified with Fred Miller’s anguish…and it pained him to no end. He never even met the man, but whenever his wandering mind lingered on Miller’s specter, he clearly envisioned the carefree, fun loving, Grateful Dead fanatic who numbly partied his way through life only to have his whole world shattered by the unrequited love of his one-and-only. And now when he looked at himself in the mirror, he could see nothing other than the embodiment of Fred Miller glaring back at him, cautioning him to watch his step and to keep one eye always looking over his shoulder, reminding him to keep one eye always looking back.

  “Poor Fred, he was just following his heart. As much as Tracy screwed him, he still wanted to be with her…and I can relate to that,” deliberated Newlan’s good conscience, while his bad conscience also weighed in with a verdict of its own. “But on the other hand, she was already taken. He was just asking for trouble, screwing around with a married woman.”

  To make matter worse, as much as Newlan saw himself in Fred Miller, he saw even more of Marianne Plante in Tracy Stone; more than he was willing to admit. And yet regardless of the similarities between the two women, he still didn’t fully appreciate the predicament that he was about to wriggle himself into. And yet regardless of the cords that bonded him to Fred Miller, he still couldn’t bring himself to fully believe that Breslin was capable of planning Miller’s murder. And yet regardless of how many psychic sentinels came crashing down across his slumping shoulders, he still couldn’t seem to accept the warning signs of things to come which were staring him right in the face like a dead man’s skull in an ominous bad dream.

  Newlan’s feelings for the parties involved in the case, much like his feelings for Marianne Plante, seemed to change like the weather, but one thing was clear; he was sick and tired of the gut-wrenching grind that the trial had become, and he wished that he could come up with some conniving scheme to maneuver his way off of the jury.

  But luckily for Newlan’s sanity, every time he reached the point where he thought that he was going to explode if he mulled over the trial for even one more second, he would somehow manage to snap his head out of the clouds and get his mind focused back on the upcoming basketball game, at least for a little while…and back and forth the pendulum went. Back and forth until Newlan’s game-face was firmly in place; back and forth until the bizarre Grateful Dead connection between himself and Fred Miller popped into his head again and again and again.

  “How could this be possible? I dreamed that I encountered Fred Miller’s ghost at a Grateful Dead concert before I even knew a single thing about him. And then I’m listening to an obscure Grateful Dead song on the drive to the courthouse this morning, only to find out that he decided to use the lyrics of that same freakin’ song to help him win back his one true love…what are the fuckin’ odds?” wondered Newlan who was suddenly shaking in his shoes over the uncanny stroke of unpredictability that had been permeating his life of late.

  Newlan truly believed that he was born with a gift which fueled his psychic tendencies. But whenever some unusually portending occurrence took place, such as the foretelling Fred Miller dream, it frightened him to no end. These strange occurrences had become more and more common to Newlan over the years, so one would think that he should have been use to it by now, but his reaction was actually quite the opposite, and at times he felt as if he was losing his marbles.

  The problem, as Newlan saw it, was that he had no control over his purported power, and this lack of command was very disconcerting to him. Unbelievable visions would come rushing into Newlan’s brain, like radio waves of static, only to later materialize when he least expected it. Unexplainable dreams would somehow become reality, like some unearthly apparition, whether he liked it or not. But at the same time, he was also plagued by unreliable notions which were too blurry for him to decipher, and this only added to his confusion.

  Newlan often mused; “if only I could harness this gift. If only I could fine-tune the hazy reception. Then maybe I could use my ability to help others, rather than scaring myself silly every time this sixth sense of mine rears its ugly head. Then maybe my transcendental acumen might end up being more useful to mankind, kinda like those psychics who delve into their inner-energy forces to help locate long-lost missing children.”

  But despite his misaligned signals, on this night, as Newlan tried in vain to relax, the voice in his head was a familiar one; on this night, the voice in his head was well pronounced; on this night, the voice in his head was crystal-clear. On this night the voice of the late Jerry Garcia singing “Built to Last” was calling out to him like a murmur from beyond the grave. On this night the voice of a dead man was being systematically etched into his brain like a knife carving into a knot of wood until it produces a haunted voodoo doll.

  On this night, Newlan’s heart was being torn in many disparately different directions. On this night he surmised, “Maybe I should search out a spiritual advisor who can teach me how
to tap into my psychic abilities. Maybe I should seek out a woman who can help me to forget the past….who can teach me to never look back. Maybe I should embrace Fred Miller’s eidolon…channel his soul…and maybe then I might discover what really happened to him. Ah, but first things first, let’s play some basketball…and maybe, just maybe, that will get my mind off my troubles for a few hours.”

  And with that desperate proclamation, Newlan once again attempted to turn off his mind and float down the lazy river. But as had been the case since day one of the trial, even his best efforts were doomed to failure.

  However, even though Newlan’s many issues may have been interfering with his enjoyment of another Celtics championship run, his pals were having no such problems. This was an event that was 22 years in the making. This was an event that might not happen again for God knows how long. This was an event that should be savored like a fine wine. This was an event that should be shared amongst friends.

  And so when Newlan’s phone rang, he had a feeling that it was his lifelong sports-watching buddy, Pat Horn, on the end of the line; but this time, it was by no means a psychic revelation. On the contrary, it was merely an expected ritual that was practiced by sports fans throughout the world, and nowhere more so than in the metropolitan Boston Massachusetts area.

  “Frankie let’s go! Get up off that sofa you lazy bastard. Bruce and I are going down to O’Toole’s to watch the game. I’ll pick you up in half an hour,” exclaimed Horn. But Newlan, who was suddenly torn between choosing a night on the town or spending the evening at home catching up on some much needed rest, replied in an uncommitted fashion.

  “I don’t know Pat, I think I’m gonna pass. I’m really beat. Oh and by the way, how the hell did you know that I was on my sofa?”

  Unlike Newlan, Patrick Horn suffered no illusions of being a psychic, but after more than thirty years, he knew his old friend all too well, and he told him just that before adding, “Come on Frankie. It’s the Celtics. It’s the Finals. And you’re too tired. You can’t be serious. When did you become such a wimp?”

  Newlan hemmed and hawed for a while, but ultimately he gave in as usual. He had wanted to go with the flow all along. He just needed to endure little bit of coaxing before he was willing to succumb to his friend’s peer pressure.

  “OK Pat, I guess a few cold brews won’t kill me,” reasoned Newlan, but as soon as he hung up the phone he realized that there remained a fatal flaw in their master plan.

  “Oh my God, I can’t go back to O’Toole’s so soon, not after last week’s brawl,” mumbled Newlan as he anxiously rang Horn back and explained his dilemma.

  After an animated one-sided discussion in which Newlan did most of the talking, the friends decided to watch the game at Mahoney’s Pub in nearby Somerville, Massachusetts. In the end, the change of venue turned out to be no big deal. As long as the game was on the big screen TV and the tap was flowing with beer, it didn’t much matter where the old pals watched the game.

  On the ride over to the pub, Newlan’s buddies were quite interested in his colorful recounting of every last detail pertaining to the previous week’s fisticuffs at O’Toole’s, particularly the authority-averse Bruce Reardon.

  Reardon passed around a joint, exhaled, and coughed up a lung while at the same time rasping out his own commentary regarding the scrapping police officers.

  “It figures that Jimmy Leach was involved. He always did enjoy a good barroom brawl. Man, I still can’t believe he’s a cop, even after all these years.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you tell us about this?” scolded Horn.

  “I’m sorry Pat, I meant to call you the next day, but I’ve been so preoccupied with the trial that it slipped my mind,” explained Newlan.

  “Trial…what trial…you still on that trial?” wondered Reardon.

  “Jeez, it must be something serious,” added Horn.

  “Yeah well, it’s a murder trial, so what did you expect? And it still has a long way to go. I thought I told you guys that I was gonna be out of commission for a while because of this damned jury duty,” replied Newlan…and naturally, his pals spirited reaction to the news was to egg him on until he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Can’t you give us any info at all? Come on dude, just a hint. It’s not the Townshend trial is it? Is it the Breslin trial? Or maybe it’s the McMahn trial?” pestered Reardon and Horn simultaneously…and as the barrage of nonstop questions were being rained down upon him, at some point Newlan caved-in to the harassment and he reluctantly decided, “The hell with Judge Gershwin.”

  Much like his rendition of the O’Toole’s fight-night escapades, Newlan went on to provide his friends with a complete lowdown of the trial, right on down to and including every last detail he could think of.

  “Wow, the Hit Man Murder trial! You could become a celebrity because of this,” predicted an excited Horn.

  “Yeah, but if I had it my way, I would have never gotten chosen to serve on this frigging jury in the first place. It’s eating me up inside,” lamented Newlan.

  “What’s the big deal?” retorted Horn. “I was on a jury once…assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. The defendant was this lonely old guy…he was hitting on his sexy next door neighbor. But unfortunately for him, her ex-boyfriend just so happened to be an ex-con. So ex-con confronts lonely boy…slaps him around a bit and a fight breaks out. You should have heard the ex-con when he was up on the stand testifying. He was like, ‘I asked the dude, you wanna dance? ‘Cause if you wanna dance, I’ll dance witcha mofo, and I’ll cut you up too’.”

  “No fuckin’ way, he said that in court,” Reardon chuckled.

  “Yeah,” continued Horn. “But the only problem was that the ex-con didn’t realize who the hell he was messing with, because lonely boy also happened to be an ex-marine. So lonely boy pulls out a gun and pistol-whips the ex-con. Can you believe this shit? But the sad part about it was that based on the law, we had to find lonely boy guilty.”

  “That’s cold dude! He was an ex-marine, couldn’t you cut him a break?” protested Reardon.

  “That’s what I was thinking…but I was outnumbered,” rationalized Horn, while at the same time he turned towards Newlan who was in the back seat and offered up a corollary. “Hey Frankie, the trial that I was on sounds a little bit like your case, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah…it just about always ends up being over some fuckin’ bitch,” added the distrusting Reardon.

  However, Newlan had the last word, and as usual he ended the conversation with a bang; a typical sarcastic slant of a bang we might add.

  “I agree…there are some similarities between the two cases…but the big difference is the little fact that in my trial, we have a freakin’ dead body on our hands,” offered Newlan, and his observation had his buddies roaring with laughter.

  As the three old friends sat and joked inside Horn’s automobile which was idling in the parking lot of Mahoney’s Pub while they finishing up their second joint of the evening, they happened to be listening to the classic rock radio station WXLZ, but when a commercial interrupted their merriment, Horn pushed the button on his CD player and drifting out from the car speakers came the Grateful Dead song, “Estimated Prophet”.

  “Crank it up Pat,” urged Reardon, while at the same time Newlan blood turned so cold that he was frozen on the spot.

  It seems that the one detail of the trial which Newlan had neglected to mention to his friends was Fred Miller’s reference to the Grateful Dead song “Built to Last” in his foreboding letter to Tracy Breslin

  But now, as the growl of Grateful Dead rhythm guitarist Bob Weir’s deep baritone voice grew stronger with words of a visionary’s forecast, Newlan had a critical decision to make. Should he inform his friends of the 411 regarding how the Grateful Dead had muscled their way into the trial…and into his deepest fears? Would they think he was possessed? Would they think he was crazy? Wo
uld they think he was out of control?

  Newlan was stoned and scared straight all at the same time, and the flare-up was due in its entirety to the fact that his old buddy just so happened to have a Grateful Dead CD playing in his car stereo. They were all big Grateful Dead fans, so it shouldn’t have come as any great shock to Newlan that Horn had decided to bring along one of their CD’s for the ride. But he wasn’t thinking rationally, and the mighty harmonic convergence of events which had entered his life lately were so incomprehensible that he felt he just had to tell somebody what was going on. He weighed the pros and cons wearily in his mind, but in the end he figured that if he couldn’t tell his life-long friends, then who the hell could he tell?

  As they strolled into Mahoney’s Pub and plopped down onto three stools at the corner of the bar, Newlan waveringly explained the “Built to Last” anomaly to his friends so as to gauge their opinions; strange coincidence, or one-in-a-million psychic revelation?

  The verdict was split. Horn thought that their meeting-of-the-minds so to speak was bizarre, but just a coincidence and nothing more. Reardon, on the other hand, thought that the intersection of their falling dominos was rather spooky, bone-chillingly so, but he still wasn’t quite buying into Newlan’s psychic “bullshit”.

  Newlan, on the other hand, as you might expect, insisted that there had to be some higher power at work pulling the strings that tied him to Fred Miller. He insisted that someone upstairs was trying to tell him something. He insisted that it was all part of some great big master plan. But Reardon was having none of it, and by way of paraphrasing the late master of the avant-garde, Frank Zappa, he counterpunched Newlan with the following quizzical inquiry; “come on now Frankie...who you bullshittin’ with your fuckin’ cosmic debris?”

  But of course, being the music aficionado that he was, Newlan immediately recognized the Zappa reference and he grumpily replied, “Very funny Bruce.”

  And as is if to further prove his point, Newlan went on to recall one of his most infamous pseudo-psychic episodes of all time.

  “OK Bruce, then what about the night back in 1980 when we were watching the Patriots on Monday Night Football over your house, and I was in the mood to listen to some John Lennon at halftime. Remember how I jokingly said that if any of the Beatles ever died, from natural causes or whatever, the world was gonna come to an end? And then just seconds before the end of the game, Howard Cosell made his famous announcement that Lennon had been shot and killed. Remember how we were all spooked out, and you said right then and there that I must have some sort of eerie psychic power because I practically predicted his death?”

  And for his part, Reardon, who remembered the incident all too well, melancholically stared into his beer as he replied, “Yeah, I remember we sucked down at least ten whiskey toasts in his memory after the game. We drank ourselves into a coma, but we never did quite kill the pain and depression.”

  “I remember sitting there stunned,” sadly added Horn as they reminisced back on the loss of one of their childhood heroes.

  “I’ll never forget Howard Cosell’s voice, his words are still stamped into my brain; ‘yes we have to say it, remember, this is just a football game, no matter who wins or loses…an unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City…John Lennon, outside of his apartment building on the West Side of New York City, the most famous perhaps of all The Beatles, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital, dead ... on ... arrival’” recited Newlan in a voice that was meant to be a poorly rendered Howard Cosell impersonation.

  As Newlan’s remarkably photographic mind began punching up intimate details from the long-ago episode, he came down with a phobic reaction, and in a panic he muttered, “It was fucked up then and it’s fucked up now. I’m telling you something bad is gonna happen.”

  However, Reardon knew the drill when it came to Newlan and his paranoid, stoned mood swings. He shot up out of his seat and grabbed Newlan by the collar while at the same time he looked him dead in the eyes and calmly commanded, “Calm down Frankie. Don’t go freaking out on me now.”

  But the mounting fear in Newlan’s eyes served to inform Reardon that this wasn’t one of his average run-of-the-mill adverse reactions, brought on by the ingestion of one-too-many hits of semi-potent marijuana; no, this was something far worse.

  “What’s bugging you Frankie?” probed Reardon in a confessional tone, and all of a sudden, for some inexplicable reason, visions of Marianne Plante invaded Newlan’s mind and he thought to himself, “Should I tell them? Should I tell them how I heard from Marianne after all these years? Should I tell them how much I miss her? Should I tell them how messed up I feel inside? I told them about the Dead song, why shouldn’t I tell them about this?”

  But alas, in the end, Newlan didn’t have the nerve to brief his lifelong friends on the unforeseen return of the only woman he ever loved into his life. Instead he merely grumbled, “It’s nothing really. I’ve just that been under a lot of stress lately over the trial, that’s all. It’s not easy holding a man’s life in your hands.”

  And truth be told, Newlan did calm down to some degree after he revealed his anxieties as they related to the trial…but Reardon wasn’t totally buying his explanation. He had no doubt that there was something else bothering his best friend, something more personal, and as such he decided not to pry. He figured that Newlan would come clean when he was good and ready, and in the meantime, it was probably for the best that he just let it go and order another round of beers instead.

  With his mind made up, Reardon let go of Newlan’s collar, as well as his pride, and he slouched back down onto his bar stool, but not before first adding, “you said the world was gonna end after John Lennon died…but it didn’t end did it? And it’s not gonna end now either. So whatever’s bothering you, it will eventually fade away because…well, as they use to say in the 60’s, all things must come to pass.”

  Of course, not to be outdone, Newlan’s reply to his pop-philosopher friend was equally abstract. “Yeah but, until then…for the love of God, somebody please…give us a world that’s built to last.”

  In the final analysis, Reardon could only shake his head and laugh at Newlan’s rejoinder, and on top of that, he couldn’t think of anything better to do other than to put him in a bear hug and whisper in his ear; “You’re one of a kind Frankie.”

  Newlan smiled in spite of himself, and his individualistic reply seconded Reardon’s emotion; “And it’s a good thing too, since I’m not sure whether the world is ready for more than one of me.”

  Meanwhile, when the bartender became aware of the commotion going on at the other end of the bar, he hustled over to the boys and shouted, “Tone it down fellas. No horseplay inside the lounge. Take it outside if you wanna fight.”

  But Reardon immediately eased the bartender’s fears by replying, “Us fight? We’ve known each other way too long for that. Set us up with another round.”

  And so with beers in hand it was onto the start of the 3rd quarter. And with the resumption of the action, the nerve-wracked Pat Horn had his own set of marching orders for his rowdy friends; calm down or hit the highway.

  “Come on guy’s, enough already with the distractions. This game’s getting way too intense, so shut the fuck up or take a hike.”

  “Relax Pat,” groaned Reardon and Newlan as one, but nevertheless they took Horn’s directive to heart and settled in to watch the game.

  Unfortunately for the barroom packed full of Boston-aligned patrons however, before they knew what hit them, the Celtics were down by 24 points…but then, just when all seemed lost for their beloved green team, they began to stage a furious comeback.

  “It took too much energy to catch up. There never gonna make it all the way back,” offered the-glass-is-half-empty Newlan. But the never-say-die Horn’s reply was as optimistic as Newlan’s was pessimistic.

  “It’s possible Frankie. Once again I’ll
remind you that you never thought that the Sox could come all the way back from three games down against the Yankees in 2004. Jeez, and I thought you were finally starting to become a believer.”

  “Yeah, I was a believer…until last week when I got on this murder trial, that is. Now I’m not sure of anything anymore. Anyway, how about 1986 when we were one strike away?” countered Newlan.

  “Come on Frankie, what does that have to do with it? The Sox finally won their World Series in our lifetime, so don’t be so negative. We’re gonna win this game. I can feel it,” urged Horn, while at the same time, Reardon, who always got a big kick out of his two best friends constant back and forth sports banter, added in his own jibe.

  “At least we’re talking about the basketball game and not all that weird stuff.”

  Newlan let the dig go. By now it was the fourth quarter and he was totally engrossed in the game. For a few minutes his mind had removed itself from the crushing grip of the Breslin trial. For a few minutes he was completely focused in on the Celtics and their colossal struggle. For a few minutes he was reliving the Celtics mid 1980’s heyday, partying like there was no tomorrow.

  Amazingly enough, the Celtics managed to march all the way back and complete one of the biggest comebacks in NBA Finals history, holding on for a 97 – 91 victory, which prompted Newlan to put his arm around Horn and happily blurt out, “you were right Patrick, you son of a gun! Maybe you’re the one who’s the real psychic”

  The crowded partisan bar was absolutely giddy over the Celtics win, and the celebration commenced as soon as the final buzzer sounded. For their part, the trio decided to hang out for a few more beers and a couple of victory shots of whiskey…for old time’s sake.

  The Celtics now held the lead in the series three games to one, and another championship season was so close to becoming a reality that the three friends could almost taste the champagne. And as they exited the bar Horn predicted as much.

  “The series is the bag now. Even if they lose the next game, they’ll still be coming back to Boston leading the series with the last two games to be played at the Garden.”

  Newlan on the other hand wasn’t so sure.

  “Come on Pat, after what happened to the Patriots in the Super Bowl, I’m not counting my chickens until their hatched…or else we might end up in the middle of another Yogi Berra quote, you know, something about it being déjà-vu, all over again.”

  And then, just like that, it happened again; just like that, the Breslin trial came storming back into the forefront of Newlan’s mind as soon as he began to contemplate the vagaries of life…and from that point on, he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the trial for the rest of the night.

  The three friends were pretty well smashed by the time they left the bar, and since they all had to be up at the crack of dawn, it wasn’t much of a surprise that they were somewhat subdued during the short ride back to Newlan’s condo.

  However, there was a lot more to Newlan’s somber mood than the fact that he was drunk; he was also lost in dreaded contemplation over the realization that he had another long day at the courthouse staring him squarely in the face, bright and early in the AM.

  Meanwhile, the extended live version of the Grateful Dead tune “Estimated Prophet” came to an end just as they pulled up to the hotel-like entrance of Newlan’s condo complex, and the sudden stop of the car, as well as the song, jarred Newlan out of his funk.

  “Man you got some nice digs here Frankie. You must be making some decent money to be living in a place like this,” conjectured Reardon. For whatever reason, even though he had been over to Newlan’s condo countless times before, his awed reaction was always the same, as was Newlan’s understated reply.

  “I guess I’m doing all right,” wistfully smiled Newlan, and then without a moment’s hesitation, he added, “You guys wanna come up for a nightcap?”

  Newlan’s pals decided to pass on his offer, tempting though it may have been. Because, as it turned out, even though they were extremely intoxicated, they were still coherent enough to realize that if they ingested even one more drop of booze, they would have been in grave danger of calling in sick to work in the morning, which in turn would have incurred the wrath of their wives…and that in itself was a fate worse than death.

  And so the childhood buddies said their reluctant goodbyes, while at the same time the reggae beat of the just concluded Grateful Dead song became stuck in Newlan’s alcohol-soaked mind as he extricated his body from of the back seat of Horn’s vehicle.

  In response to the haunting melody and the “my time is drawing near” sentiments of the lyrics, Newlan absentmindedly hummed the portentous song to himself, repeatedly, as he rode the elevator on up to his sixth floor apartment; all the while, never fully comprehending…just how much…the words rang true; all the while, never fully conceiving…the danger…that lied in wait.