Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

Bobby ran his hands over his head of thin hair.

“All my clients are just like her, poor, black or brown, living in an alternate world where daddies are dealing and mamas are hooking. Difference is, all my clients are guilty, no bones about it. But she may really be innocent-or at least have acted in self-defense. We drop Clark’s past, we’re sentencing her to death by lethal injection-you and me, Scotty, not a jury. We’ll be responsible, same as if we push that needle into her arm.” He shook his head. “Scotty, I need the money you’re paying me for working this case, but I can’t live with that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you drop this evidence, I’m out.”

“Bobby-”

“Scotty, I followed you every step of the way-high school, college, law school. Back then, I would’ve followed you anywhere. I was weak and you were strong and you protected me. But you ain’t Batman no more, and I ain’t Robin. I can’t follow you on this. It just ain’t right. She may not be a white society girl…she may be a junkie hooker, living in the projects, but her life means something, too. Maybe not to you, maybe not even to herself…but to me. And to her little girl. She needs someone strong to protect her…someone like you used to be.” He paused. “When your secretary called that day, said you wanted to have lunch, man, I about cried. All those years, I really missed you.” His eyes were watering. “And being around you again now, it’s been great…just to breathe your air again.” He breathed in and out. “But, Scotty, you do this to that girl, I don’t want to see you no more.”

“Come on, Bobby.”

“Scotty, the court appointed you. You’re her right to counsel. You do what you think is right.”

Scott turned away, wishing this gut check could be answered by simply running into five frothing-at-the-mouth testosterone-charged linebackers.

Scott got into the Ferrari, but he couldn’t go back to the office. Downtown suddenly felt claustrophobic. So he drove onto the Dallas North Tollway and hit the accelerator hard. He felt the power of the machine beneath him as he took the engine through the gears. The 360 Modena topped out at 180 miles per hour, but Scott eased off the accelerator at eighty, the customary highway speed in Dallas. No one drove the speed limit in Texas, not even women putting on their makeup. Northbound traffic was light at this time of the morning, so he drove unimpeded in the left lane. He often drove aimlessly about the 4,000 miles of roads in Dallas when he needed to think. For some reason, he thought better in a Ferrari.

Without thinking, Scott suddenly veered across three lanes of traffic and exited at Mockingbird Lane, cut over to Hillcrest, and drove north. He turned left, stopped three doors down on the right, and stared at the new two-story monster house, arched entry, dormers, vaulted roof. But in its place he saw the small one-story cottage that had once occupied this lot, the home he and his mother had rented from the good doctor. Living room, kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, less than one thousand square feet including the porch where they often sat after dinner and waved at neighbors taking their evening walks. He remembered crawling into bed, lying back on the pillow, and waiting for his mother to come in, sit down, open the book, and read a chapter. And when she finished, she’d close the book and say, “Scotty, be like Atticus. Be a lawyer. Do good.”

It’s hard to do good when your clients are bad.

Lawyers never believe their clients because clients lie. They lie to the IRS and the SEC and the FBI. They lie about their taxes, they lie about their financial statements, and they lie about their lies. Most of the time, they don’t get caught. When they do get caught, usually for lying about their lies to the FBI-a felony called obstruction of justice-their lawyers stand outside the courthouse and proclaim their client’s innocence right up to the moment the client plea-bargains, pays a fine, and lives to lie again.

A lawyer always assumes his client is lying.

So Scott naturally assumed his heroin-addicted hooker-client was lying. But maybe he would believe a nice white sorority girl. He had gotten Hannah Steele’s unlisted phone number in Galveston from Bobby. Now he sat in the Ferrari and listened to the call ring through. A soft voice answered.

“Hello.”

“Hannah Steele?”

“Who’s calling?”

“Scott Fenney. I’m Shawanda Jones’s lawyer. My cocounsel, Bobby Herrin, spoke with you.”

“Yes, Mr. Fenney.”

“Hannah, I need to hear your story. I need to hear you tell me what Clark McCall did to you.”

A long sigh. “I’ve told Carl and Bobby, I don’t-”

“I know this isn’t easy, Hannah, but Senator McCall is pressuring me not to bring up Clark’s past at the trial, not to call you as a witness. For me to make a decision, I need to hear for myself what happened.”

“All right.”

Hannah Steele told Scott of her encounter with Clark McCall. She had met him on the SMU campus after a football game. He asked her out for the next night. He picked her up at her sorority house. They had dinner at a Mexican restaurant in the Uptown section of Dallas, the nightlife area between downtown and Highland Park. They had a few drinks and they went to the McCall mansion, where Clark attacked her, beat her, and raped her. Afterward, he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. He gave her a ride back to the sorority house and even smiled at her when she got out of his car. She got in her car and drove straight to the police station and filed a complaint. She was taken to Parkland Hospital for a rape analysis and then returned to the sorority house. The next morning, a man came calling for her, saying he was Senator McCall’s lawyer. He handed her a document and a pen, said it was a release and confidentiality agreement, and he gave her a cashier’s check for $500,000 to settle all claims against Clark and cover her relocation costs.

“Relocation costs?”

“He said I had to leave town. He said my life would be better that way. He said I didn’t really have a choice, that if I pressed charges against Clark, his father would destroy me. He said they would bring out my prior sex life at trial, make me look like a whore.”

“What was his name, this lawyer?”

“I don’t think he told me.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like a lawyer. Old. Bald. Creepy. The way he looked at me and talked to me-my God, I’d been raped! He acted like it was just business.”

Scott ended the call and he knew. Lots of old lawyers he knew were bald and most were creepy. But he knew one such lawyer who would view paying off a rape victim as just business.

“You knew about Hannah Steele?”

“Of course.”

Scott had driven directly back to the office, parked in the underground garage, taken the elevator straight to the sixty-third floor, and hurried down the hall to Dan Ford’s office. He was now staring in disbelief at his senior partner, who was looking at Scott with a bemused expression.

“Scotty, you think this is the first time something like this has happened-college girl claiming a rich boy raped her? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t, but she wanted money, she got money, everyone’s happy.”

“She didn’t seem so happy when I talked to her.”

Dan shrugged. “Seller’s remorse.”

“And you just bribed her to drop her complaint? Threatened to destroy her by bringing out her sexual history at trial?”

“Bribed her? Threatened?” Dan laughed. “How many girls have you paid off for Tom Dibrell? How many times have you threatened to bring up their sexual histories at trial if they didn’t settle? Do you still use my ‘every swinging dick’ line?”