The Color of Law (6 page)

“So she doesn’t have any money to pay you?”

“Who, the defendant? No.”

“Doesn’t she have a job?”

“She’s a, uh…”

“Prostitute. I heard it on TV. And a drug addict. What’s a prostitute?”

When Boo asked him questions like that, Scott was never quite sure how to answer. She always seemed to know when he wasn’t telling the whole truth, but, even though she was born twenty-five years old, he was reluctant to always tell the truth. So he answered like a lawyer. He fudged the truth.

“A personal escort.”

“What’s that?”

“She entertains men.”

“Like you entertain clients?”

A closer analogy than she knew. “Well, sort of.”

“Do you have any clients like her?”

“No, Boo, I don’t represent prostitutes and drug addicts.”

“I mean, black clients?”

“Oh. No, I’ve never had a black client.”

“Why not?”

“Well, because I represent corporations, not people.”

“What about those people who call you all the time?”

“My clients are corporations, but my contacts are executives at the corporations.”

Boo screwed her mouth up. She was thinking.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you represent corporations instead of people?”

“Because people can’t afford me. Heck, Boo, I couldn’t afford to hire myself, not at three-fifty an hour.”

Her eyes got big. “You charge three dollars and fifty cents
an hour
?”

Scott chuckled. “No. Three
hundred
and fifty dollars an hour.”

“
For real?
Is that why you work so slowly?”

Nine years old and she was qualified to be the managing partner at the biggest law firm in the country.

She said, “So we’re rich because corporations can pay you three hundred fifty dollars an hour?”

“Yes…well, no, we’re not rich, Boo.”

“We live in a big house and you drive a Ferrari.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got to work to keep all this. Rich people don’t.”

“Cindy’s dad got fired and they had to sell their house.”

“Don’t worry, baby, that’ll never happen to us.”

From the Jacuzzi tub, his wife said, “You’ve got to talk to her, Scott, she’ll listen to you! How am I ever going to be selected chair of the Cattle Barons’ Ball if my daughter dresses like a boy!”

Rebecca Fenney was thirty-three, fit, and gorgeous, still the most beautiful woman in Highland Park—the perfect wife for a perfect life. And she desperately wanted to chair the next Cattle Barons’ Ball, the biggest society party put on each year in Dallas, the one night when the sophisticated men and women of Highland Park get to dress up like cowboys and cowgirls and play Texan to the hilt. The twangs become stronger, the cigars longer, the skirts shorter, and the diamonds bigger; and everyone tries to out-Texan one another, arriving in Hummer limousines, Rolls-Royces, and even helicopters at Southfork Ranch, J. R. Ewing’s home on the TV show
Dallas
, or another fitting venue. They drink champagne and whiskey, eat fried alligator and fajitas, ride the mechanical bucking bull, bet on the armadillo races, and dance to the likes of the Oak Ridge Boys or Dwight Yoakam or Willie Nelson.

The men compete with money, betting at the craps table in the casino or bidding at the auction offering diamonds and Porsches. The women compete with clothes. They wear black, blue, red, pink, and white cowboy boots made of lizard, ostrich, elephant, kangaroo, and suede; they wear low-cut satin bustiers, lambskin halters, leather vests, and evening gowns; they wear matching cowboy hats. Last year Rebecca wore a powder blue fringed suede miniskirt, matching cowboy boots, a low-cut pink fringed halter top, and a pink suede cowboy hat—and she was furious because no one noticed her. Scott was always amused by it all, but the Cattle Barons’ Ball was deadly serious business to the women of Highland Park, all competing to be the belle of the ball. The lucky woman who chairs the ball is forever enshrined among the society elite of Highland Park—except maybe for one former chairwoman who got nabbed for shoplifting at Neiman Marcus. Providing she kept her criminal record clean, Rebecca Fenney was the front-runner to be the chairwoman of the next Cattle Barons’ Ball.

Scott and Rebecca were in the master bathroom on the second floor; she was naked in the Jacuzzi tub, he was irritated in a robe. Scott had tried to talk to his wife about his day, but she had shown no interest at all. The McCall case had him irritated; his wife had ratcheted it up a notch. All she wanted to talk about was the Cattle Barons’ Ball and the latest Highland Park scandal, another extramarital affair, which wasn’t exactly shocking news to Scott.

Rebecca said, “Muffy, you remember her, from the last party at the club.”

Scott didn’t recall Muffy and wasn’t particularly interested in trying to recall her. He shook his head.

“Bleached blonde, boob job, acts snotty all the time…”

“Well, that narrows it down to only ninety-five percent of the women in Highland Park.”

“She’s married to Bill what’s-his-name, old, bald, fat.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember her. She was wearing that tight two-piece outfit, nice abs. She’s about twenty years younger than Bill. So she was stepping out on him?”

“He caught her in bed with the neighbor.”

“Again, not exactly shocking, Rebecca.”

She gave him a sly smile, which from prior experience told Scott that she was about to deliver the punch line.

“He didn’t catch her with the man who lives next door. He caught her with the woman who lives next door.”

“She was in bed with another woman?”

“Yes! I called to tell you, but Sue said you were busy.”

“Rebecca, don’t bother me at work with gossip.”

“It’s not gossip if it’s true, you said so yourself.”

“That’s defamation, Rebecca—truth is an absolute defense to slander and libel claims. There’s no defense for gossip.”

“Not even a lesbian affair?”

“Don’t they have a girl about Boo’s age?”

“They did. Muffy and her girlfriend ran off to California.”

“She left her kid? Why?”

Rebecca shrugged. “Everyone knows. She can’t show her face in this town again. Besides, she’s a lesbian; the child’s better off without her.”

“Rebecca, is that all you do at your lunches, gossip?”

“No…just during dessert. We call it scandal soufflé.”

She seemed pleased with herself, which made one of them. The thought of his wife sitting at lunch gossiping while Boo sat at home alone jacked up Scott’s irritation level to a new high. He was about to say something guaranteed to grate on her, but seeing her slick wet body as she climbed out of the tub, her red hair stuck to her face, her full breasts pink from the hot water, her abdomen flat from hours on her Ab Master, and her firm bottom that hadn’t dropped an inch since their wedding day eleven years ago, desire drove the McCall case, the Cattle Barons’ Ball, scandal soufflé, and all lingering irritation from his mind. He let his robe slip off his shoulders and looked down: he had a full erection. He went over to her, wrapped his arms around her from behind, pressed himself against her, and reached around and cupped her genitals, an act which not that long ago would have produced a soft moan leading to sex on the marble vanity. Tonight it produced only an exasperated sigh.

“Not tonight, Scott. I’m tired.”

She had been tired a lot the last six months. He released her and walked into the bedroom and over to the sitting area against the bank of windows. He sat and listened to the
tak tak tak
of June bugs banging against the outside glass, seeking the light like reformed sinners. He used the remote to turn on the television and then he looked down: his erection had melted away like a Popsicle on a hot summer day.

It hadn’t always been this way. They had met in his third year of law school, at a party at his old frat house after a football game. She was a senior cheerleader and the reigning Miss SMU. Scott Fenney was a football legend and a campus celebrity, so approaching the most beautiful coed at SMU was easy. They had sex in an upstairs bathroom that night. And at every other imaginable venue in the months that followed: in her car; in his car; at her sorority house; at his apartment; in a stairwell at the law school; in the park in broad daylight; on the eighteenth green at the country club late at night after jumping the fence—to this day he could not putt out on that green without thinking of that night. They were so hot, they couldn’t get enough of each other.

But somewhere along the way—when, he wasn’t sure—the heat had faded. And now they slept back to back, separated by two feet of king-sized mattress like a demilitarized zone. They weren’t mad at each other—they seldom had words—but they seldom had sex. She had just drifted away.

He sat slumped and limp as all the irritating thoughts—the McCall case, his wife’s lack of interest in his day, being denied sex again, scandal soufflé, and his daughter home alone all day—came rushing back. He yelled to his wife in the bathroom: “Why don’t you spend more time with Boo? Maybe she’ll listen to you then.”

Rebecca appeared in the bathroom door, still naked, her hands on her hips.

“She’s never listened to me. I’ve got these hideous stretch marks because of her, but she’s your child. By the time I was her age, I had won two beauty pageants. She wears overalls. And, besides, I’m busy this summer. Why don’t you spend more time with her?”

“I’m working.”

“Oh, I see. What I do isn’t important.”

“Sounds like all you do is gossip.”

“Only during dessert. During lunch we plan the ball.”

“A big society party.”

“Which raises money for charity.”

“Which you don’t give a damn about. It’s just another step up the Highland Park social ladder for you. You’re social climbing and Boo’s being raised by Consuela!”

She glared at him, whirled, and disappeared into the bathroom. Scott was about to yell after her,
You need to spend as much time with your daughter as you do gossiping with those old society broads
, but then she’d say,
Well, you need to spend as many billable hours with me as you do with your clients
, and then he’d say,
Those clients pay for this house and those cars and your dresses and
…

“McCall…”

The reporter’s voice pulled Scott out of his thoughts and focused his attention on the television.

“His son’s murder,” the reporter was saying, “has given the senator a sympathy boost in the polls, thus solidifying his position as the clear front-runner for the White House.”

SIX

T
HE
N
OVEMBER
22, 1963, edition of the
Dallas Morning News
included a full-page black-bordered advertisement titled “Welcome Mr. Kennedy to Dallas.” It was not a welcome. It was an indictment of President Kennedy that had been paid for by several right-wing Dallas oilmen, “America-thinking citizens” they called themselves. They accused Kennedy of being soft on Communism, despite the president’s successful standoff with the Russians over the Cuban missile crisis. On Air Force One’s flight to Dallas, an aide showed the ad to the president. Kennedy read it and remarked, “We’re heading into nut country today.” The ad identified the mayor of Dallas as a Kennedy sympathizer.

Earle Cabell was the mayor. He met President Kennedy at Love Field that morning and rode in the presidential motorcade, three cars behind the president’s blue limousine. As his car turned onto Elm Street, Cabell heard three gunshots ring out from the Texas School Book Depository. He arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital just as the president was being removed from his limousine. Cabell remained at the hospital until the president’s body was taken away. He had hoped to show the president that Dallas was no longer the “Southwest hate capital of Dixie.” He had failed. But they still named the federal building in downtown Dallas after him—Cabell, not the president.

Of course, when A. Scott Fenney, Esq., arrived at the Earle Cabell Federal Building on Commerce Street shortly after nine the next morning, he didn’t know who Earle Cabell was or why they had named this dull-as-dirt twenty-one-story structure after him. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be in Earle’s building that day and all he cared about was getting his client to cop a plea and then getting himself the hell out of there. He exited the elevator on the fifth floor, the federal detention center. After passing through the metal detector and having his briefcase searched, he was met by a black guard.

“Scott Fenney to see Shawanda Jones.”

“You her lawyer?”

Scott wanted desperately to scream,
Hell, no, I’m not her lawyer!
Instead, he nodded. The guard led him down a narrow hallway to a small room, bare except for a metal table and two metal chairs. Scott entered and stared at the bare walls until the door opened and a black woman entered, bringing with her a foul body odor that filled the room like thick smoke. She looked him up and down, covered her mouth with both hands, and sneezed violently several times. Then she said, “You the lawyer?”

“Yes, I am.”

Shawanda Jones was twenty-four but she appeared much older. She was a small woman, rising only to Scott’s shoulders. Her hair was neither kinky nor slicked straight; it was brown, hung just over her ears, and appeared soft, although obviously it had gone untouched by a brush for days. Her eyes were creamy ovals with big brown centers, but they seemed hollowed out and vacant. The area below her eyes was a darker brown than the rest of her face, which was tan and smooth and glistening with a light coating of sweat. Her nose was narrow and her lips thin. Her body seemed slim but shapely under the baggy white jail uniform. Her face was angular with prominent cheekbones. She was attractive, but at one time in her life, she must have been beautiful. She reminded Scott of Halle Berry on a bad day. A very bad day.

Scott was not wearing his glasses that morning; he didn’t care whether this client thought he looked smart or not. And he did not extend a hand to her even though he always shook hands with a new client: Dan Ford had explained to Scott early in his legal career that a lawyer had only one opportunity to make a good first impression on a new client, so he should always look the client directly in the eye and give him a firm handshake, which, Dan said, would project a sense of forthrightness and honesty, thus making the client less likely to question his legal bills. Instead, fearing that her hand—one of the hands into which she had just sneezed like she had pneumonia—might transmit a communicable disease, Scott gestured for his new client to sit down. But she did not sit. She paced.

She walked from one side of the room to the other and back again. Back and forth she went, again and again, rubbing her arms as if the room were cold instead of warm and kneading her fingers like Consuela saying the rosary. Her eyes darted about the room. Her legs seemed out of sync, and they twitched uncontrollably. Halfway back, she suddenly doubled over and groaned.

“You okay?”

She grunted. “Cramps.”

Like most men when a woman speaks of her period, Scott didn’t know how to respond. So he said, “My wife has bad cramps each month.”

Between groans, she said, “Not from this she don’t.”

After a moment the cramps apparently subsided, and she resumed her pacing. Scott sat, removed his business card from his pocket, and pushed it to her side of the table. On her next pass by the table, she abruptly pulled out the chair, sat, and flopped her arms on the table. Scott noticed dark spots on the insides of both of her forearms, like someone was going to play connect the dots but had never connected them. Then he remembered: she’s a heroin addict. She picked up his business card with her thumb and forefinger and held it before her face.

“What the
A
stand for?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Your first name be a letter?”

Scott didn’t want to discuss his name. He wanted to get this over with and get back to his office on the sixty-second floor of Dibrell Tower where he belonged.

“Ms. Jones, I’m Scott Fenney. The court appointed me to represent you. You’ve been charged with murder, a federal offense because the victim was a federal official. If found guilty, you could be sentenced to death or life in prison. Which is why I want to talk to you about pleading out to a lesser offense. You could be out in thirty years.”

Her hands abruptly shot out and grabbed Scott’s wrists. He instinctively recoiled from the woman with the wild eyes, but she was strong for her size and she had a firm grip. She said, “Get me a fix, please? I ain’t sleep in two days!”

“A fix?”

“Some H! I need it bad!”

“You mean
dope
? No, I can’t do that!”

“Thought you my lawyer!”

“You’ve had lawyers give you dope?”

“For sex. C’mon, I suck you right here!”

“No!”

She jumped up and resumed her pacing. Scott had to take a minute to gather himself. He’d had corporate clients offer him bribes (also known as legal fees) to destroy incriminating documents, suborn perjury, conceal fraudulent activities, and falsify filings with the SEC, but they were always well-dressed and well-educated white men—and none of them had ever offered him oral sex!

After he recovered, Scott said, “Now, as I was saying, you can plead out and—”

“Say I did it?”

“Yes, but not with the specific intent to murder.”

She stopped and stared at him with her hands on her hips and an incredulous expression on her face.

“You telling me, say I killed him? Don’t you wanna know if I did?”

“Uh, yeah, sure.” He leaned back. “Tell me what happened.”

She waved a hand at the bare table.

“You ain’t writing nothin’ down?”

Scott reached down to his briefcase and removed a yellow legal pad and black pen.

“Go ahead.”

Shawanda Jones, prostitute, proceeded to pace the room and tell her lawyer the facts (according to her) of the night of Saturday, June 5.

“We was working Harry Hines—”

Harry Hines Boulevard, named after a Dallas oilman, begins just north of downtown and continues out to the loop, a north–south corridor that is culturally diverse, as they say. On this single stretch of pavement, you can obtain the finest medical care in the country at no fewer than four hospitals, earn a degree at the University of Texas medical school, purchase high fashion and fine furnishings at the Market Center or shop more economically at the Army-Navy store, play golf at the exclusive Brook Hollow Golf Club, eat a wide variety of ethnic food, buy cheap used cars, illegal drugs, fake IDs, and counterfeit designer purses, enjoy topless strip clubs and all-nude salons, lodge overnight at the Salvation Army homeless shelter, get an abortion, or pick up a prostitute.

“Who’s we?”

“Me and Kiki.”

“What’s Kiki’s last name?”

“How would I know? That ain’t even her first name.”

“What time?”

“Maybe, ten.”

“
P.M.
?”

“Shawanda don’t work no morning shift.”

“What—”

“You want me to tell this here story or not?”

Scott held his hands up in surrender. Shawanda Jones continued her story, extremely agitated and animated, her arms flying about.

“Anyways, we was feeling good and looking good, me wearing my blonde wig, Kiki red. We was strolling, men driving by, whistling, yelling, ‘Yo, mama, suck this!’ Black dudes, Mexicans, they just window-shoppers, can’t afford no class girls like us. We wait for them white boys in nice cars. They like us ’cause we ain’t dark and we in shape—me and Kiki, we do them exercise tapes most every day, got us a new one,
The Firm
? Use dumbbells. Check this out.”

She pushed up the short sleeve of the jail uniform and curled her right arm and flexed her biceps, displaying an impressive bulge for a girl. Great, a heroin addict who worked out.

“So, maybe ten-thirty, white boy driving a Mercedes, one of them long black jobs got them blacked-out windows, he pull up alongside us and roll down the window and look us over. We know one of us is fixing to get picked up. He say, ‘Blondie, get in.’ Well, Shawanda don’t just get in when some trick say get in, so I saunter on over, lean in the window, car smell like a whiskey factory. He say he pay a thousand dollars for all night. I say, ‘Show me the money.’ I got that from that movie? He pull out a roll of bills could choke a horse, so I get in, almost slide down to the floor, my leather skirt on that leather seat. He reach over, grab my tit, say, ‘Them real?’ I say, ‘Honey, all a Shawanda real.’”

She abruptly groaned, grabbed at her midsection, and doubled over again.

“Shit!”

She remained in that position for a long moment. Scott had often suffered leg cramps back when he played ball, and man, they could really hurt. So he had some amount of empathy for her. Still, he checked his watch and thought of billable hours going unbilled and wished she would get on with it. Finally the cramps abated, and she straightened and started talking nonstop again.

“Anyways, we drive off. I figure we goin’ to a motel? ’Stead we go to Highland Park, street sign say. I ain’t never been in no Highland Park—black girl know better’n to go there. Pretty soon we drive up to the biggest damn house I ever seen, through big gates, behind a big wall, go round back. Get out, I follows him inside, place is fine. He ask me I want something to drink, I say okay. I’m thinking, white boy got money and place like this and good-looking to boot—what he want with Shawanda?

“We get upstairs, in bed, I find out. He climb on top and start working hard, he say, ‘You like it?’ Course, I say, ‘Oh, yeah, baby, you so big.’ Tricks, they like to hear that shit. Then he say, ‘Tell me again, nigger, you like my white dick?’ Now I don’t much like nobody calling me nigger, but for a thousand bucks I don’t say nothing but, ‘Oh, yeah, baby.’ Then he slap me, hard, say he always give it rough to his women. Well, nobody slap Shawanda. I punch that white boy in his mouth, knock him outta me and flat off the bed, jump up and say, ‘Ain’t gonna get rough with Shawanda, honky!’

“He come at me again, all mean now, so I scratch his face, then I pop him a good one, BAM!” She made a roundhouse swing with her left fist. “Right in the eye. We fall over the bed and he hits me again, with his fist this time, right here.” She was pointing to the left side of her face, where a bruise was evident. “But I got my knee right in his balls, he fall off and start cussing me: ‘You nigger bitch!’ I grab my clothes, my thousand dollars, his car keys, drive back to Kiki and leave the car.”

“And that’s the last time you saw Clark McCall?”

“That his name?”

“Yeah. He was the son of Senator Mack McCall.”

A blank face. She didn’t know Mack McCall from Mickey Mouse.

“Last I seen him, Mr. Fenney, he was rolling on the floor, holding his privates and cussing me something fierce.”

“He was murdered that night. Police found him Sunday, naked on the bedroom floor, shot once in the head, point-blank, .22-caliber gun next to him, with your fingerprints on it.”

“Must of dropped outta my purse.”

“So it was your gun?”

“Girl work the streets in Dallas, she gotta carry.”

“But you didn’t shoot him?”

“No, sir, Mr. Fenney.”

“You’re innocent?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Fenney. And I ain’t coppin’ no plea.”

“But, Ms. Jones—”

“Miz Jones my mama. You call me Shawanda. And I ain’t pleading out. And what about bail? When I get outta here? I’m in bad need of some—”

“Dope?”

“Mr. Fenney, you looking at me like I ain’t nothing but worthless dirt, but you ain’t never been where I been.”

Scott sighed. This wasn’t going as planned.

“I’ll check on the bail hearing, but don’t count on getting out on a murder charge. And if the court grants bail, it’ll be high. Do you have any assets?”

She slapped her butt. “This here Shawanda’s only asset.”

“A nice ass won’t get you out of jail.”

“It will in some counties.” He thought she was joking, but she didn’t smile. “So I be locked up till the trial? Mr. Fenney, I gotta see my baby!”

“You have a child?”

“Name Pajamae, she nine.”

Scott put the pen to the pad. “How do you spell that?”

“P-a—j-a—m-a-e.
Pa
—
shu
—
may
. It’s French.”

“Where is she?”

“Our place down in the projects. We been through this before, but only couple days. I tell her, ‘Don’t even open that door, girl.’”

“Does this Kiki take care of her?”

“No, sir, Mr. Fenney. Kiki, she live with a man. I don’t let no man in my place might hurt my Pajamae. Louis, he watch out for her, take her groceries, make sure she okay. He like her uncle but he ain’t.”