The case was Lucchesi versus Pacific Bastion Mutual Insurance Company, and Judge Moy explained it to the panel in the plain, unhurried voice she used for everything from murder to parking. In February of that year, a fire had destroyed the Lucchesi Bakery on Grant Avenue in North Beach, which had been at the same address since 1931. The owner, Mrs. Amalia Lucchesi, had filed a claim on her policy. Pacific Bastion had denied the claim on the grounds that, in its view, the fire had been deliberately set, and that Mrs. Lucchesi, who had fallen behind on her loan payments, had set it or caused it to be set. Mrs. Lucchesi denied this. Mrs. Lucchesi was suing. The trial was expected to last five or six weeks. The jury would decide who was telling the truth.
At the plaintiff's table Mrs. Lucchesi sat very straight in a black dress and a small black hat with a pin in it, a woman of perhaps sixty-five with forearms like Remy's and an expression of terrible dignity. Beside her sat her lawyer, Sy Feinberg, who was rumpled in the way only an expensive suit can be rumpled, and who had the lugubrious, intelligent face of a basset hound that had gone to Boalt Hall. At the defense table sat three lawyers from a firm on California Street whose names had been printed on the docket as though carved: Brill, Kittredge and Pratt. The one who did the talking was Pratt himself, Sterling Pratt, tall and silver and courteous, with a voice like a cello and a reputation, among the reporters on the fourth floor, for asking questions so fast that you could hear the women in the steno pool begin to pray.
The clerk spun the wooden drum and drew names, and eighteen people went up and sat in the jury box and the chairs in front of it, and the questioning began.
Remy's name was drawn ninth.
He walked up to the jury box with the book still under his arm, and Thurston had to gently take it from him and set it on the rail. He sat in the seventh chair, and folded his hands, and Judge Moy began with the usual questions, and Mina's fingers began to move.
THE COURT: Would you state your name for the record, please.
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Remy Agostini. Remy James.
THE COURT: And what do you do, Mr. Agostini?
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: I'm a gripman for the Municipal Railway, Your Honor. Powell and Hyde line. Eleven years.
THE COURT: I've ridden your line, I think.
PROSPECTIVE JUROR: Then you've been yelled at by my conductor, Your Honor. I apologize on behalf of the Railway.
(Laughter.)