Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

Pajamae laughed, but she didn’t know Mother wasn’t being funny. Consuela held up the salt and pepper shakers and said from the stove, “Is twins, like these.” She pointed at Boo-“Is salt”-and then at Pajamae-“is pepper.” Consuela chuckled and her body shook like Jell-O. “Salt and pepper.”

Mother was shaking her head and her lips were a tight line across her face, normally not a good sign.

“Finish the enchiladas, Consuela.”

“Y’all expecting company?” Pajamae asked.

Boo turned to Pajamae, who was standing at the table.

“What?”

“All this food, are you having a party?”

The table was crowded with tacos and enchiladas and guacamole and refried beans and flour tortillas and hot sauce. Mexican food night.

“No.”

“This is all just for us?”

Boo shrugged. “Yeah.”

Pajamae smiled and said, “Where- as.”

Butch and Barbara Fenney had always discussed family matters at the dinner table, in front of their young son: good things and bad things, successes and failures, possibilities and problems. They figured he would learn by listening. Scott recalled one such conversation, not too long before his father died, when Butch said a contractor wanted him to cut some corners on a job to reduce costs and increase the contractor’s profits. The owner would never know. Butch was faced with either complying with the contractor’s demands or losing the job. He asked his wife for advice. Scott’s mother responded without a second thought: tell him no.

So after retiring to the master suite, while Rebecca stood naked before the bathroom mirror and removed her makeup and checked her body for early signs of aging, Scott told her about Dan’s visit to his office and Mack McCall’s demands and he asked his wife for advice. She, too, responded without a second thought: “Do it! If Dan says drop it, you damn well better drop it. Are you going to give up everything we have for a goddamn-”

“What, Rebecca? A goddamn what?”

She whirled around, incredibly naked, and said, “A goddamn black whore, that’s what!”

A. Scott Fenney, Esq., had zealously defended his rich clients against all comers-business competitors, the government, famous plaintiffs’ lawyers, and young women claiming sexual harassment. But never against his wife. Of course, he had never had a black whore for a client. Still, his natural lawyerly instinct was to defend his client. So, perhaps because McCall’s demands were still weighing on his mind or because he had never thrown a game in his life or because rich boys like Clark McCall had always graveled his butt or because he knew Louis was not right about Scott Fenney or because of the love Shawanda showed for Pajamae that very morning or because of two little girls with their hair in cornrows on the floor above…or maybe just because this beautiful woman standing naked before him had denied him sex for over seven months…and his heat for her now turned into anger at her-Scott Fenney lashed out at his wife, defending Shawanda Jones with a passion normally reserved for only the richest of clients: “What, she deserves to die just because she’s black and a prostitute? What if you had been born black, Rebecca? Would you still have been Miss SMU and chairwoman of the Cattle Barons’ Ball? Or would you have ended up a hooker on Harry Hines, too?” He pointed to the floor above. “But for the grace of God, Rebecca, Boo could be that little black girl!”

His naked wife laughed without smiling.

“Don’t you get self-righteous with me, Scott Fenney. You wanted money and all the things money can buy as much as I did-this house, that Ferrari…How much did you pay for that suit? I married you because you had ambition, you wanted to be a rich lawyer. You didn’t go to work at the legal aid so you could help poor black people in South Dallas. You went to a big law firm so you could make lots of money working for rich clients living in Highland Park. And now you’re suddenly growing a conscience? I don’t think so.”

She pointed a finger at Scott. “You do this, you ruin my life over a whore-who you know goddamn well is guilty as sin-and I swear to God, we’re through!” She now pointed upward. “And that little girl will be better off without her mother.”

Upstairs on the third floor, Boo and Pajamae were getting ready for bed. A. Scott had read to them, which Pajamae enjoyed. It was fun to have a friend. Boo had insisted they share her room so they could talk. Pajamae agreed. But now Boo was kneeling up in bed and wondering what the heck Pajamae was doing, spreading out a comforter on the floor with a pillow.

“What in the Sam Hill are you doing?”

“Whose hill?”

“It’s just an expression.”

“Oh. Fixing my bed.”

“On the floor?”

Pajamae looked at her bed on the floor, then at Boo in the tall bed. “You sleep in the bed?”

Boo laughed. “Of course, I do. Where do you sleep?”

“On the floor.”

“Oh, you don’t have a real bed?”

“No, I’ve got a bed.”

“Do you have a bad back? Sometimes A. Scott sleeps on the floor when his back acts up, from when he played football.”

“No, I don’t have a bad back.”

“Then why?”

“It’s safer.”

“From what?”

“Gunfire.”

After some discussion, Boo convinced Pajamae that it was safe to sleep in a bed in Highland Park, and they were sleeping side by side an hour later when Scott climbed the stairs, as he did each night before going to bed, to check on his daughter and to kiss her on the forehead. The two girls were lying so close together that when he leaned over and kissed Boo, he had only to lean over just a little more to kiss Pajamae on the forehead as well. When he did, she stirred and whispered in her sleep, “Daddy?”

The competition from other Dallas law firms for the top law graduates each year was fierce. Ford Stevens offered the same starting salary, required the same billable hours, and promised the same personal chemistry between partners and associates. Money and hours were easy sells; personal chemistry, though, took all of the partners’ lawyering skills, pretending to care about these students’ lives when in fact they cared more about their own shoes. But then, lying to law students was just part of the game.

And that game was being played in earnest today at 4000 Beverly Drive. Scott Fenney was hosting Ford Stevens’s annual Fourth of July party for the firm’s summer clerks at his Highland Park home. He was standing on the patio under the awning and shaking his head: forty out-of-shape law students in bathing suits, their pale white bodies frolicking in and around his fabulous pool and professionally landscaped backyard, was not a pretty sight. Thank God they had the good sense not to wear Speedos. If not for Missy and the other cheerleaders in bikinis, the view from the patio would have been downright dismal.

“Got some good news, Scotty.”

He hadn’t noticed Bobby there. “What’s that?”

“Talked to Hannah Steele. She’ll testify. Told me the whole story about Clark, said he was the nicest guy in the world until he got loaded, then he turned into an animal. His idea of foreplay was smacking her across the face.” Bobby took a swig of beer. “Shawanda did the world a favor, blowing his brains out.”

“So she’s it then, our only defense?”

“Yep. But she wants her name kept quiet until the trial. She’s scared shitless of McCall.”

“Don’t we have to put her on our witness list?”

Bobby shrugged. “We’re supposed to. But Buford, he’ll cut us some slack, seeing how he hates the death penalty and Burns won’t give it up. Did you read my brief on that, why the death penalty doesn’t apply to this case under the statute?”