Sacrificial Lamb: a Legal Thriller

By Nino Lama

Sacrificial Lamba Legal Thriller is likely the most fast paced novel to be found anywhere. Two murders, two trials, conspiracies, twists and turns, a struggling defense lawyer and his lawyer son committed to saving their clients make this a fast page-turner, a novel you wont want to put down.
Vince DiMarco and his son defend two murders. One defendant is Vinces best friend and doctor, Billy Andrews, M.D. The second, Sterling Pierce, is the senior vice president of a local bank involved in international internet banking.
The book begins with the trial of a young boy charged with statutory rape. Vince and Mike get him acquitted, much to the rage of the girls father, Sterling Pierce. The boy is murdered, and Pierce is charged.
The second murder takes place when Billy Andrews reveals to his wife hes having an affair. She takes an overdose of prescription drugs, and Andrews is charged with illegally providing her with narcotics leading to her deathmurder.
Real trial proceedings, and a look behind the scenes of action packed criminal defense make this novel a must.



Aging trial lawyer Vince Di Marco would like to sit back and let his son run the firm, but his friends won't let him. They keep getting involved in things like divorce, bank fraud, and murder. How can Vince refuse someone he once was an altar boy with? So turn off your Law and Order reruns. Nino Lama's second book, Sacrificial Lambs is full of surprises, and will keep you entertained and guessing until the final pages.

Stephen Poleskie, author of The Balloonist -- The Story of T. S. C. Lowe, Inventor, Scientist, Magician, and Father of the U. S. Air Force

Nino Lama writes with a hard-boiled, ironic voice that you would expect from a fedora-wearing gat-packing hotshot of the 1930's -- only his hero Vince DiMarco isn't that at all: lawyer, family man, lonely hearted lover man, Vince lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York and has a distinctly 21st Century sense of humor. In this quick paced legal thriller, he's trying to do the right things for the right people and figure the angles on the bad guys, too -- and wow, how tricky that can be!

Peter Fortunato, author of Letters to Tiohero.




A rape and a divorce turn into a double murder, and his banker is suspected of fraud. Lawyer Vince di Marco thinks he has it all under control - but when the bad guys looking to hit him mistakenly shoot his son and law partner, Mike, Vince loses it. Another fast-paced and engaging mystery from Nino Lama, featuring the funny and endearing father and son team of two lawyers fighting crime and corruption while trying to hold their own lives together.
Anna Maclean, author of Louisa and the Crystal Gazer and the other Louisa May Alcott mysteries.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 22, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469113319

Nino Lama

Nino Lama is a trial attorney practicing in partnership with his son, Ciano, in Ithaca, New York.

Book preview

Chapter One

I started preparing for the trial in earnest a week ago, but last night was the crunch. I didn’t wrap it up until well into the morning, and I’m feeling it now, having had only a few hours of restless sleep. I don’t even know why I stayed in bed this long; I’ve been awake for a while, tossing and turning, going over things in my head, and wondering if I’m really about to do what I’ve planned, and If I can carry it off, and if I do, what the repercussions will be. It’s going to be all or nothing, and my career will be at stake. No one knows my intentions, not the DA, not my law partner —my son—not even my client, and certainly not the judge. It has to be this way. I’ve been in practice a long time, and this will be a first for me, and from what I know, a first for the county. Defending a case like this—I’m told it can’t be done.

I get dressed in standard lawyer outfit: dark pin striped suit, white shirt, and red tie signifying confidence. I’ll need all the help I can get in this case, props like the tie included. I look myself in the mirror: Vince DiMarco, attorney for the defense. I adjust my tie, and smoothen my hair.

Knowing what I’m about to face, I feel a dull rolling in my gut, but choose to ignore it, and go into the living-dining-TV-room/study and gather up my books, notes, and briefs from last night—scattered on the floor around the coffee table like somebody dropped a deck of cards—and I’m wondering what I’ve missed, what I’ve forgotten, and when and where I’ll mess up.

I drag myself to the kitchenette for a cup of coffee. The last pot I made—the one that kept me up working until 3:00 a.m.—is cooked down pretty well, and I think about brewing a new pot; but the clock says forget it, so I pour a cup anyway and put in extra creamer. I take a slug; it tastes like pencil grinds with extra creamer. Maybe I’ll stop at McDonald’s for a real cup on the way to court.

I head out the door, throw my rather worn, or should I say experienced, black leather trial case in the backseat of my faithful old 1979 black Caddy—bigger than some Honda dealerships—pop in, and take off to get Mike. Mike hates the car and rides me to get something new. Problem is, all the new cars look the same to me—all having been designed to please the wind tunnel. My Caddy’s got distinction, angles—a thing of the past.

I told him to be at the curb so I won’t have to wait. His two-story suburban mansionette—where he lives with his little wifey, Cindy, a Cornell law student—is only about fifteen minutes from my 1970s apartment complex, but the traffic is light this morning, so I make it in ten.

Here he is, ready at the curb, little Mr. Neatnik—pressed gray suit, bright white shirt, and blue tie. Slim, trim, and neat—got the neatness from his mother, not me. I pull up in front of him; he hops in the car and gives me hell for being so late. What’s a father to do?

I change the subject. That a new suit, Mike?

You’re kidding, right, Dad?

No, really, is it new?

Mike’s looking at me with one of those are-you-serious? looks.

I ignore it and move on, asking if he’s ready for trial, even though I know the kid’s usually about twice as ready as I am. Something about being that young—he can still work until three in the morning and not look like death warmed over at eight. I look at myself in the rearview mirror: not too bad for fifty at eight in the morning—still have a full head of brown hair, although my forehead seems to be getting bigger. We have time to stop for coffee at McDonald’s, I tell the kid.

He nods, looking off into the distance, and I’m thinking, Only five more years and I get my senior coffee discount.

So, Dad, he says, did you get Kim a jacket and pants for this morning?

I don’t answer right away. I was supposed to bring him one of my old sports jackets—maybe one with wide lapels that I wouldn’t mind losing—and a pair of pants to wear at the trial so he wouldn’t have to wear jail stuff; that’s never any good. The jury figures the defendant’s guilty before the trial starts even when he’s wearing Armani, let alone an orange jumpsuit and flip-flops. So I tell the kid, I think the jail’s got something for him to wear.

He looks at me and says, Whatever.

I know what that really means.

I look back at him, and he’s got the file open on his lap as he shuffles through his notes—all computerized. I don’t think he knows how to write with a pen anymore.

You feel good about this? he asks.

I take a deep breath and wonder if I’ve ever felt good about a felony trial.

I feel good, I tell him, my gut rolling.

He says, Uh-huh.

I know what that means too.

I start thinking about the case, about the puny twenty-one-year-old Vietnamese immigrant kid named Kim Nguyn, charged with rape in the third-degree—statutory rape. I see his mother sitting in the office across from Mike and me last night, using the few words she knows in English to tell me that her son’s a good boy. They’re all good boys, right? But no, she’s tough about it, he’s good boy, never do no wrong! I have to believe her; he doesn’t have the eyes—the dead, shallow eyes—of a guy that would do real evil. Besides, this kid didn’t do anything evil, just illegal. I get a sick feeling in my gut thinking how these two probably barely escaped death to get to the United States to start a new life, and this is what they get.

Mike’s pissed that I took the case, says there’s no defense. I know it, but I like the kid, and I don’t like the charges, and I don’t like the lousy plea offer from the DA—draconian—two to four in state prison. For a kid like this one, it might as well be a death sentence; he’d never make the two. If he did, he’d be deported to where he escaped from—certain death.

Mike’s reading something, and I see him shaking his head in my peripheral vision, so I look at him. His face is all scrunched up. I ask him, What?

He answers me without looking up. "The confession, that’s what."

Yeah, I know, I tell him.

Well? he asks me.

Now I have to think. He wants to know what I’m going to do with it, what I’m planning, why and how it might work. He looks at me and says, She was fourteen, Dad, fourteen years old.

I nod and pretend that there’s something in the road that I really have to look at. I push my Led Zepplin CD in, and it hammers Communication Breakdown. Mike turns it off, but I don’t care, I turn his stuff off too. Then we ride for a while without a word. The leaves are starting to change, and I try to take note of the bright reds, golds, and oranges. It’s Ithaca in the fall.

The kid’s sharp and straight as an arrow. But this case needs bobbing and weaving, and that’s up to the old man. I’d given him the file to read and organize—he’s good at that. But that’s all I want him to do on this case. The rest is mine; it’s too dangerous for him. He’s clean, and it’s got to stay that way. He’s judge material in embryo, and I’m not. I passed that up with my second divorce—too many skeletons in the proverbial closet.

His mother going to be there? Mike asks me.

The only thought that comes to my mind is what mother on earth wouldn’t be there? I can’t imagine what agony the poor woman is going through right now. But I didn’t walk her through the rose garden last night. I gave it to her straight. It’s bad, real bad. That’s why we got no real plea offer from the DA, just plea to the charge and do two to four. We could do a little worse losing the trial; that’s why we’re tossing the dice—his dice. She was brave, though, I have to say that—no tears, no begging, no anger, just He’s a good boy. He does no wrong. I nodded to her a lot, but I told her the evidence was overwhelming, and he gave a confession after being Mirandized twice on video.

Cops:   You tell us everything that happened, and we’ll talk to the DA for you. You help us, we’ll help you. It’s really not a big deal. We just want to clear things up, hear your side of the story.

Right—the check’s in the mail, and, honey, I never look at other women. But Kim didn’t know, and he sang like a stuck pig, or is it like a canary? I don’t know. But either way, he gave it all up, in detail, on videotape—a tape that the jury’s going to watch today or tomorrow, depending on how long it takes for the DA and me to pick a jury. His helping the cops got him an indictment.

I look over at Mike. What a son I have: a lawyer, my partner, handsome, works out at five every morning, graduated law school as cum laude, not cum lucky like me. Then I think about Kim’s mother and her son. I mean, the kid’s OK. This is his first and only run-in with the law. But, how’s a mother deal with that? I don’t know. I can’t even imagine. They’d have to just put me out of my misery. I just can’t imagine.

I change the subject. How’s the Emerson case going? You’re law guardian on that case right? Or do you—

The kid cuts me off. Law guardian, he says.

That means he represents just the kid in the custody trial. So there’s the judge and three lawyers. One lawyer represents the father, and he knows just what’s best for the kid—what his client, the father, wants. The other lawyer represents the mother, and he knows exactly what’s best for the child, what she wants. The way I figure it, there are really two judges in the trial: the judge and the law guardian. The law guardian wants one thing—what’s best for the kid, no matter who it pisses off. Judges listen to that. I figure law guardian work has to be the most honorable practice of law there is.

Ah, I say. So how’s it going?

The boy huffs like he doesn’t really want to talk about the Emerson case, but I don’t care; I push it. So? I ask.

I feel Mike looking at the side of my head, but I don’t look back. Then he tells me, I don’t think either parent should have the kid. They both suck.

Yeah? I say, glad that we’re on the new topic.

Yeah, he answers. Mother’s a crack addict, says she’s straight and wants her kid back. The father’s a hardcore alcoholic, been unemployed—says he’s disabled—for the last ten years. They both suck.

I take it in; nothing new in these law guardian cases that Mike does.

And your client? I ask him.

My client’s three years old and looks like she’s one, can hardly talk and isn’t potty trained.

Poor kid, I tell him. What are you going to recommend to the judge?

Foster care, psych evals for all three of them. Daddy goes to in-house rehab, Mommy too. Then we look at it again in six months, Mike says, looking out the window.

Any hope? I ask him.

He just says nope and goes back to Kim’s file.

Then he tells me that he’s pretty sure what I’m up to in Kim’s case, and says I could get disbarred for it, but I shrug and let it fall on the floor.

We pull into McDonald’s drive-thru, and I ask if I can get a senior coffee. The chubby girl with a blue paper hat—that must mean something about her rank—asks if I’m fifty-five. Damn, I’m an officer of the court, so I can’t lie, so I tell her no and ask for it anyway. She gets a frown on her face and says she can ask the manager—he’s standing behind her with a red paper hat, a sign of authority, probably about sixteen years old, and shaking his head. I give up on it, and I hear Mike tapping his pen on top of the file in his lap as if he’s playing a snare drum. I ask him if he wants anything, but he says no with a forced tight-lipped smile, then asks me if Harry’s going to put the videotaped confession into evidence. (We call the DA Harry because he’s really a close friend outside the courtroom, but in the courtroom we call him "the government.")

I tell him I’m sure he will, probably right after the girl testifies. He nods and looks out the window and tells me that the leaves are starting to change color. I tell him I know.

We pull up to the old three-story brick-and-granite courthouse, and Mike says, Oh damn. I look at the courthouse and say damn too. He looks at me like I shouldn’t have said it. Maybe it’s something about me being the father. Anyway, the press is all over the broad white marble front steps; it’s not Walter Cronkite or CNN, just the local guys, but they’re making a big deal about the trial because the only other news in town is the weather’s lousy again. I don’t worry about Kim; he’s coming down in the county limo with the red star on the side and the caged backseat, and they’ll whisk him in around back and through the basement.

I practice my No comment, no comment, and I’m ready. We park the car, and Bernadette, the pretty blonde reporter that I’ve been fantasizing over for the past three years, comes at me with her mike that looks way too big for her and is covered with a foam sock so her breathy talk won’t sound so breathy.

Mr. DiMarco, can we ask you a few questions about the trial?

I forget my No comment, no comment rehearsal and say, Sure. Mike shakes his head, and I’m sure he’s thinking about the rules of ethics that say I shouldn’t do this, but the blonde gets my blood going, and I throw caution to the wind. Then I say the most stupid thing a lawyer heading into the coliseum with the lions can say: My client is innocent until proven guilty! Then I say damn to myself, and I see the blonde give me a look like I just told her I have cancer, so I give her a wink. Then Mike and I make our way through the mikes and cameras and guys writing stuff on little spiral notebooks that flip over the top. I think the way I put it, it sounds as if my client’s only going to be innocent for a little while longer.

We make our way up the stairs and push through the old massive brass barred doors to the security desk, flash our lawyer IDs to the guard, and he waves us through the metal detector. The alarm goes off, but nobody cares because we’re lawyers. We see Harry coming down the stairs from the second floor, directly ahead of us. Harry’s Harry, and he’ll never change. I think he has an allergy to a suit jacket—never wears one, but one magically appears when he enters the courtroom—brown tweed. I don’t get it; he’s more Mike’s age than mine, but we see eye to eye when it comes to fashion. He sees us and comes right over. He’s a good guy, but just a little too zealous—sees himself as Batman or Spiderman or one of those superheroes fighting crime and protecting the innocent. I don’t have much argument with that. He’s told me a hundred times he can’t understand for the life of him why Mike and I take the other side. I’ve tried to tell him it has something to do with the Constitution, presumption of innocence, civil rights, and all that; but he still doesn’t get it.

Hey, Vince, hey, Mike, he says as if we just showed up at his house for a beer. Then he looks at me and says, "You’re trying this one, right?"

I say, Yupper.

He nods, looks at Mike, and then says to me, Honest to God, Vince, I have no idea where you’re going with this one. I just don’t get it.

I know what he’s thinking; he’s thinking that all I can do is cross-examine his little girl witness, and I can’t do a whole lot of that because of the rape shield law. I couldn’t ask her about her past sexual activities even if she was a prostitute, and she’s far from that. He doesn’t know that I’m thinking about Bernard Goetz, the subway vigilante who shot a bunch of kids that asked him for money on the A-train, and I’m thinking about some stuff John Adams said about two hundred and twenty years ago.

Then he lays it on me and tells me that when he gets the conviction, he’s going to go for the maximum sentence, that he’s going to make sure the INS hears about it so Kim’ll get a one-way ticket back to Vietnam when he gets out of prison, a much older man. I am not surprised; I’d done the math.

Mike’s lips are so tight I don’t see any red in them, and I figure he’s holding back giving Harry—or maybe me—hell.

I thank Harry then ask him if Elvis is in the building. He says, Yeah, if you mean your client, he’s in the holding tank, and his mother’s over there. He points to a clump on the bench down the hallway, and I recognize her ratty old coat—about the same age as my suit. She’s hunched over with her face almost in her lap. I didn’t know a person could bend like that, and I hope that none of the press took pictures of her. I should’ve warned her. Mike and I leave Harry standing there and walk down the hallway toward the clump. We’re standing right in front of her and she doesn’t look up, so I think she’s sleeping; but Mike whispers something about honor or shame or something cultural like that in my ear, so I reach down and take her by the hand. She’s cold and bony to the touch, and I don’t like it. I wish she’d just looked up at us like most defendants’ mothers do, with fire in their eyes, but she doesn’t. She looks up at me still scrunched down, so that I feel like the pope or somebody like that, standing over her, holding her hand, as if she’s supposed to kiss my ring. I look at Mike, and he shrugs, knowing that I feel like hell. I pull her hand up, and she gets the hint and stands up. Doesn’t make much difference, she’s tiny—probably about four and a half feet tall. Anyway, I ask her if she wants to see Kim before we go upstairs to the courtroom, and she says no but asks if she can sit in the courtroom for the trial. I’m a little surprised since I’d told her that she could last night, but I figure she was just making sure, so I say yes. She nods and smiles and sits down again. This time, not so scrunched down.

Mike says, We have to go, Dad. And I figure he’s right, so we head back down the hall to the holding tank.

We say hello to the badge guarding the room, and he lets us in and he shoots up from his chair as if he’d sat on a tack, and reaches his hand out to me, so I shake it. Then Mike shakes it, and we all sit down in those miserable metal folding chairs.

Nobody says anything, but I can feel the tension building; and I figure both these boys are waiting for some revelation, or at least some words of wisdom from the old man, so I clear my throat twice, slap my hands on my knees, and say, So we got a trial today, boys! Kim’s eyes bug, and I hear Mike make a tsk. So I’m thinking, What am I supposed to say? We got a trial today, and that’s it. It is what it is. So I give them the rundown: I tell them that we’re going to pick a jury this morning from a hundred people dragged in here from their jobs and families and that they’re all pissed. They’re probably going to all be white, Anglo-Saxon, with about a 3 percent chance of any minorities showing up in the pool. That’s just the way it is; it’s the demographics of this county.

I tell them that the DA’s going to make an opening statement and tell the jury that he’s going to prove that Kim’s guilty of rape in the third degree, two counts, and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, and that he’ll prove each and every element of the crime, which won’t be hard because all it takes is that a guy, over eighteen, had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl. I remind them that that’s exactly what happened, and Kim nods his head. Then I tell them that I get to make an opening statement, and I’m going to tell the jury that an eighteen-year-old guy had sex with a fourteen-year-old girl.

Mike goes pale, and Kim doesn’t catch it.

What are you going to do, Dad? Ask for a conviction in your opening statement, for chrissake?

He’s pissed; I can tell. So I tell him no. When I’m done with my opening, I’m going to tell the jury that at the end of the trial, they’re going to acquit Kim. Now Mike nods, then shakes his head. I don’t think he gets it yet. Kim’s lost interest in the conversation and is trying to button the crappy jacket the jail gave him to wear, which is about six sizes too big. Only thing, the jacket only has one button left, but it fits him better than the pants they gave him.

Then I tell them that the girl’s going to be the DA’s kick-off witness and she’s going to say that she had sexual intercourse with Kim on two different days—once at her house when her parents weren’t home, and once at Kim’s place when his mother wasn’t home. She’s going to say that she’s fourteen, and in the ninth grade at the middle school; and she’s going to be wearing a Shirley Temple outfit with a bow in her hair and patent leather shoes with lace-top socks. Kim looks at Mike and asks him who Shirley Temple is, and Mike shrugs. Then I tell them that she’s going to admit that Kim didn’t force her, and that she did it of her own free will, and that she kept calling Kim, but that it doesn’t make a fig of difference because force isn’t one of the elements of the crime. Harry’s going to have her admit that to take all the fire out of my cross-examination.

Mike knows all this and just sits there, and I can feel his eyes on the side of my head again, but I don’t look.

I tell them the jury’s going to watch the two-hour videotape of Kim telling the cops everything because he’s trying to clear things up and cooperate like the cops told him to do so they’d get him a deal. Mike says, Yeah, the only deal’s state prison. I nod and wish he hadn’t said that in front of Kim but figure what difference does it make now anyway?

Then I remind Kim that Harry’s probably going to play the controlled phone conversation that the girl made from the DA’s office with the tape recorder rolling.

Mike turns to me and says, I think I get it now, as if a lightbulb just went off in his head; so I look at my kid, so proud that he’s figured me out. Mike smiles, and shakes his head. Kim’s still trying to figure out his clothes.

We all go up to the main courtroom.

Voir dire is cool; that’s where the DA and I pick our jury: twelve jurors and two alternates that’ll serve if one of the twelve gets hemorrhoids or something worse during the trial. Otherwise, the alternates have the lousy job of sitting through the whole trial and getting kicked out just before the lucky twelve go back and deliberate. Funny though, after a trial, every alternate I’ve ever interviewed came up with the opposite verdict that the big twelve did.

A lawyer can swing pretty wild during voir dire. The only time the judge really gets touchy is when a lawyer tries to tell the panel what the law is. That’s the judge’s job; that’s why he gets the big bucks. He’s the law; the jury’s supposed to find out who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. Only thing is, in this trial, nobody’s lying. We have Kim’s incredibly detailed confession. Poor kid, played right into the cop’s hands, leaning forward in his chair, eye to eye with the guy, spilling his guts trying to be helpful, not even knowing what it was about—that it was about him. He had no clue that he was confessing to two felonies and misdemeanors. I mean, damn, the cop even high-fived Kim when Kim told him they’d gone all the way—I guess to encourage him to tell them more. Well, the jury’s going to see it in living color, a complete and total confession after Miranda. Then they’re going to hear the tape-recorded call where the girl grills Kim about the facts, with him not knowing that the cops were on the line running a tape recorder.

Thing is, I think I can use all this.

So we’re in our place in the courtroom—Mike, Kim, and I—sitting at the defense table, the one on the left side, the sinister side. That puts Harry on the right side—the side closest to the jury. He’s all smiles and gives me a tiny baby wave, and I wink. The place is packed with the jury pool, so I turn and look them over, as if I’m trying to find somebody I know at the airport. Some look at me, but most are trying not to. Just like I thought: all white.

A guy in the front pew behind Harry catches my eye—too tall, head of blond hair, spiffy suit, about forty, forty-five, looks a little familiar, but I can’t place him. He’s glaring at me, or Kim—maybe Mike—but whoever he is, he isn’t going to be on my jury. His look says it all. For whatever reason, he has it in against the defense

Mike asks if I have my notes for voir dire. I look puzzled, and he starts to panic. I smile and pull a crumpled piece of paper out of my shirt pocket, show it to him, and say, Relax, I’m ready.

He squints his eyes at me and turns to his computer-printed notes.

Don, the old guy in the chair with a blue blazer and badge—the same guy that passes the collection basket at church on Sundays—suddenly jumps up as if his chair was on fire, and says, All rise, the county court for the county of Tompkins is now in session, the Honorable Judge Morrow presiding.

Of course, everybody stands in the pews, and it sounds like the end of Mass. I look over notes I prepared last night while I was watching Jaws. I don’t know why, but that movie always soothes me. Go figure. Then I think, Damn, is that all I have? But then, what the heck? It must have seemed good enough last night when I had all those TV commercials to work through. I put it back in my pocket and look up at the bench.

Judge Morrow’s as good as they get. I don’t think the man has a vice, and I don’t think he’s ever had a speeding ticket. I’ve seen him nice, but I’ve seen him cranked too. You don’t want to rub this guy the wrong way if you can help it; he’s got way too much power. Problem is, today I have no choice.

He asks the whole pool if anybody has a really good reason why they can’t be on the jury and tells them that if they think they do, they should line up at the bench. About thirty people line up, go up to him, whisper a bunch of stuff in his ear, and he shakes his head at half of them and rolls his eyes at the rest, and they all go back and sit down—nobody’s excused.

The clerk calls up twelve at a time, and they sit in the jury box so we can grill them. First, Morrow asks them a bunch of boring questions, then he asks the one question that drives me nuts. He asks them if they have any problem believing that Kim is innocent unless Harry proves the crimes beyond reasonable doubt. Guess what? They all nod yes. Go figure. Fact is, probably eleven of them figure he’s guilty, or he wouldn’t be sitting next to me in a clown suit with an armed guard sitting ten feet away. The other one isn’t paying attention.

So then Harry gets up and asks some more boring questions and tries to joke with them a little so that they’ll like him. He goes on for a long time.

Then it’s my turn. I tell the panel that the judge and Harry pretty much asked all the good questions, and I only have two multiple-choice questions for them to answer. I see the guy in juror chair 4 wince, so I tell them not to worry, there’s no wrong answer, and he sits back in his chair. Now he’s cool with it.

So I unwrinkle the yellow piece of paper I showed Mike and try to smooth it out on the podium, but it stays crumply. I look the panel over, then the other hundred or so people in the peanut gallery, and I can’t find any friendly eyes, but I go on anyway.

I tell them that they need to really take their time before they answer. They all nod, whether they are paying attention or not. I say it again, this time loud, so it echoes off the marble walls—that way everybody