He wished, of course, that he knew more (one always did). But what he had in hand would suffice. For it was a simple matter, really—a matter of making the young woman feel a part of a grander endeavor.

Marcus had learned this in his early days as a litigator in Arkansas. In the jury box of the Pulaski County Courthouse (in any jury box in the country, for that matter), one could expect to find a sample of the human condition: a patchwork of intellects and experiences, personalities and prejudices. To convince these twelve disparate souls of an argument’s merits, an attorney could not rely on logic, or science, or even justice. After all, Socrates couldn’t convince the elders of Athens of his innocence, anymore than Galileo could convince the pope, or Jesus Christ the people of Jerusalem. To convince the men of a jury, one must instead draw them into the course of events.

One must show that they have not been called to the courthouse to fulfill some civic obligation—to observe and assess. Rather, they have been called to participate. Each juror is a principal who must play his part in the trial as one plays his part at a family gathering, or at the supper table of a friend, or in the pew of a church—those places where consciously or unconsciously we know the frailties and strengths of our neighbors to be inseparable from our own.

That is how Marcus extricated David from his little problem back in Arkansas. Thanks to the papers, weeks before the trial the good people of Little Rock already knew that Selznick was a Hollywood mogul. They knew he was a millionaire, a city slicker, a Jew. And this was the essence of opposing counsel’s case. Thus, acknowledging that all of this was true, Marcus (his suit a little rumpled, his hair a little unkempt) took the jury back to the beginning. Calling David to the stand, Marcus inquired about his youth in a blue-collar corner of Pittsburgh; he inquired how David at the age of twenty-one had helped his family make ends meet when his father fell on hard times; overcoming objections of relevancy, Marcus inquired how David had fallen in love with the cinema at the age of ten—tucked among his fellow citizens in a crowded theater, thrilling to the sound of the upright piano and the flicker of celluloid, imagining a day when the Lone Ranger would call Hi ho, Silver aloud . . .

Six months later, Marcus found himself pursuing a similar line of questioning in Los Angeles County Court.