Chapter 541 - 254: 12 Angry Men
SLAM!
Cobb slammed a thick stack of files onto the table.
He stood there, his chest heaving violently.
His broad face was flushed red, and the veins on his forehead bulged, pulsing with his heartbeat.
He looked at Davis across the table and said, "That’s right. That evaluation report is disgusting."
"Arthur Vance is a bastard, a Vampire who’d sell his soul for money. If I ran into him on the street, I’d want to punch him out too."
Cobb jabbed a finger at the photograph on the table.
"But, Davis, that doesn’t change one fundamental fact."
"Luigi Randall killed someone."
"He took a gun, pointed it at a living human being, and pulled the trigger."
Cobb looked around the room, trying to overwhelm the wavering jurors with his logic.
"If we can just pick up a gun and kill someone because an insurance company is crooked, or because someone is a bastard, then what’s the point of the law? What’s the point of the police? What’s the point of us sitting here?"
"What we are here to uphold is order!"
Cobb roared.
"If there’s no order, if we don’t punish killers, then tomorrow someone will shoot their neighbor because their dog is barking too loud. The day after, someone will start a fire because their boss won’t give them a raise."
"When that happens, who will protect us?"
"Who will protect my trucks from being hijacked? Who will protect your houses from being burned down?"
"Luigi crossed the line."
"He must pay the price."
Having said his piece, Cobb sat back down heavily in his chair.
The chair let out a pained creak, groaning under his weight.
’He was right,’ he thought.
He was in the transportation business; he understood the importance of rules better than anyone.
Stop at red lights, go on green. Deliver on time, pay according to the contract.
If everyone just did whatever they felt like, society would fall into chaos.
Cobb’s words carried weight.
Order. For the middle class, it was the core source of their sense of security.
Davis did not shy away from Cobb’s gaze.
"Mr. Cobb."
Davis began, his tone even.
"You just mentioned order."
"I’d like to ask a question."
Davis looked at Cobb.
"This order you speak of—whose order is it?"
Cobb frowned. "The order of the law, of course! The order written in the Constitution!"
"Alright."
Davis nodded.
"You’re an honest man, Cobb. I’ve seen your file. You run a company with fifty trucks. You never withhold your drivers’ wages, you pay your taxes on time, and even when gas prices go up, you grit your teeth and honor your contracts without raising your shipping fees."
"You follow every traffic law. You teach your children to be honest and trustworthy."
"You believe in the rules of this society."
"You believe that as long as you follow the rules, society will protect you. Is that right?"
Cobb snorted. "Of course. That’s the contract."
"But."
Davis’s voice suddenly turned cold.
"What if someone uses the rules to legally take your house?"
"What if someone uses the rules to legally watch you die when you need help the most?"
Davis picked up the insurance company’s denial-of-claim memorandum.
"Did Arthur Vance follow the rules?"
"Of course he did."
"He followed the rules of business. He followed the principle of profit maximization. He even followed every single liability clause in contract law."
"He used the most legal means possible to kill the people who believed in him."
"When the police helped him drive those patients demanding justice out the front door, whose order were they upholding?"
Davis stood up and looked at Cobb.
"Cobb, you despise people who default on their debts, people who break contracts."
"But in this transaction, were the patients really the ones who broke the contract?"
"The patients bought insurance and paid their premiums. They fulfilled their obligations. But when they needed that money to save their lives, the insurance company tore up the contract."
"Not only that, they used complex legal jargon to package this treachery as standard business practice."
"What do you call that?"
Davis’s voice grew sharp.
"It’s called cheating."
"It’s like rigging the game at a casino."
"When the law becomes a robber’s shield, when the rules become a tool for con artists to plunder honest people."
"Do you still want to uphold that order?"
"If we continue to uphold this order, don’t we, the honest people who follow the rules, become accomplices?"
"Don’t we become watchdogs for those con artists?"
Cobb was stunned.
His lips moved, wanting to retort, but he couldn’t find the words.
’Cheating.’
The word was like a thorn that had lodged itself in his heart.
He was a businessman, and a tough man.
He could tolerate business failure, he could tolerate market competition, but the one thing he could not tolerate was someone cheating.
In his simple value system, fair play was everything.
If someone cheated in a competition, they deserved to be kicked out, maybe even beaten up.
What the insurance company did... was cheating.
They took the money but didn’t deliver.
They used informational asymmetry and legal loopholes to legally rob their policyholders.
This crossed Cobb’s line.
But Luigi killed someone.
That was also a fact.
Cobb felt an unprecedented sense of being torn apart.
Two voices were fighting in his head.
One voice said: ’Luigi is a destroyer. He shattered the peace. He’s a criminal.’
The other voice said: ’The insurance company are con artists. They deserved to die. Luigi just did what had to be done.’
Cobb shot to his feet.
He felt agitated, suffocated.
He paced back and forth in the small room, his leather shoes thudding heavily on the floor.
He was like a lion trapped in a cage, unable to find an escape.
"Damn it!"
Cobb swore.
"But that can’t be an excuse!"
Cobb spun around and pointed at Davis, his voice laced with struggle.
"If everyone who feels they’ve been wronged goes out and kills someone, the world is finished!"
"We can’t encourage this kind of behavior!"
"That kid broke the law! He killed a man! He has to pay the price!"
"That’s the rule! No matter how bad the other person is, you don’t kill them!"
Cobb tried to use this absolute moral imperative to convince himself, to suppress the deep-seated disgust he felt for cheaters.
"He has already paid the price."
An old voice spoke up from the corner.
Juror Number Nine, the old woman, had spoken.
Her hair was pure silver, and she had a kind face. But right now, her eyes held a moving sort of compassion.
"Mr. Cobb."
The old woman looked at the agitated, burly man.
"Luigi Randall... he was a top student at an Ivy League School, a mathematical genius. He should have had a bright future."
"He could have gone to Wall Street, or Silicon Valley. He could have been one of those people living in a mansion."
"But he gave it all up."
"The moment he pulled that trigger, he killed the version of himself who had that limitless future."
"He destroyed his own life."
"He’s sitting in the defendant’s box now, in shackles, waiting for us to deliver a verdict."
"He has already lost his freedom, lost his future."
"Isn’t that price enough?"
The old woman’s voice was soft, but in the quiet deliberation room, it hung in the air like a heavy sigh, weighing on everyone’s heart.
"The question now is,"
The old woman looked around the room.
"are we going to be the ones to completely destroy this young man’s future with our own hands?"
She looked at Cobb.
"If we find him guilty, if we send him to prison..."
"...then we are telling the world, telling every insurance company, telling every Arthur Vance out there..."
"...’You were right.’"
"’You can keep cheating. You can keep killing people with forms. You can keep trampling on contracts.’"
"’Because the law will protect you.’"
"’Because anyone who dares to resist you will be put down by us—the rule-abiding citizens—with our own hands.’"
"Is that the message you want to send?"
"Is that the order you want to uphold?"
Cobb froze.
He stared into the old woman’s cloudy eyes, and it was as if he were looking at himself.
If one day, he too was old, sick, and denied by his insurance company...
...lying on his deathbed, would he hope for someone to stand up for him?
Or would he hope everyone abided by that "a life for a life" rule and just watched him die?
Cobb’s hands were trembling.
In that moment, a crack appeared in the hard shell of his values.
He had always believed he was upholding justice.
But now, he suddenly realized he might be becoming the last line of defense for that evil system.
He was helping the cheater punish the one who exposed the fraud.
It made him sick.
Everyone in the room was watching Cobb.
They were all waiting.
Waiting for this lion to either bow his head or finally erupt.
Davis sat there, saying nothing.
He knew that more logic wasn’t needed now.
Cobb grabbed the glass of water from the table and gulped it down.
The water had long gone cold, but he didn’t feel it.
All he felt was a burning sensation, rising from his stomach to his throat.
"Shit."
Cobb slammed the glass back down on the table.
He turned his back to the others and stared at the black-and-white clock on the wall.
The second hand ticked.
Once. Twice.
Every tick felt like a hammer blow to his nerves.
"I..."
Cobb’s voice was hoarse, laced with exhaustion.
"I don’t want to be an executioner."
The words were spoken softly.
But in the deliberation room, they were louder than his earlier roars.
It meant that the hardest stone had finally begun to shift.
The stockbroker, Juror Number Four, put down his pen.
The salesman, Juror Number Seven, stopped looking at his watch.
The ad man, Juror Number Twelve, sat up straight.
A subtle current shifted in the room.
The believers in order were shaken.
Because they had discovered that the very order they believed in had betrayed them.
"Then,"
Davis once again picked up the unsigned verdict form.
"Let’s vote again."