Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

“What’s gonna happen to Consuela, Mother?”

Sitting at the table were the two little girls.

“I don’t know, Boo. Eat some breakfast.”

Pajamae jumped up. “I can cook, Mrs. Fenney. I cook for Mama all the time, eggs, bacon, biscuits, grits-”

“Skip the grits.” Rebecca tried another cabinet. “Where’s the coffee?”

Pajamae was now pulling out frying pans and utensils and dragging a chair to the range. She climbed up.

“Where-as. This is a cool stove.”

Rebecca gave up on coffee. “I’ll be downstairs on the Stairmaster. You girls try not to start a fire. We’ve got to get another maid. Soon.”

“INS came to your home in Highland Park? Jesus, Scott, who’d you piss off?”

Scott had called Rudy Gutierrez, the immigration lawyer.

“Her name is Consuela de la Rosa. Get her out today.”

“No way, Scott. INS won’t let go of her.”

“Why not? She’s just a maid.”

“Scott, since 9/11 every Mexican here illegally is an international terrorist as far as INS is concerned. They play hardball. They were pricks before-now they’re goddamned pricks.”

“I’ll pay whatever it takes, Rudy, just get her out.”

“Scott, it’d be cheaper not to fight deportation. Let INS bus her across the border, then she can cross back over and work her way back up here.”

“Consuela can’t handle that.”

“Okay, but it ain’t gonna be cheap.”

“How much?”

“Twenty-five…thousand.”

“I’ll send you a check today. You find her today, Rudy, tell her everything is gonna be okay, that we’re her family and she’ll be back with us…and Rudy, tell her I’m sorry.”

Bobby had returned from the library shortly before noon. They were now taking the elevator upstairs to the Downtown Club. Scott was still aching to punch something. Or someone. He straightened his tie in the mirrored wall and said, “Bobby, we’re gonna show the world what kind of boy Clark McCall was.”

“For Shawanda or because McCall got your maid arrested?”

Scott stared at himself in the mirror a moment.

“I don’t know.”

“Let me know when you do.”

The elevator doors opened and Scott led the way down the corridor to the maitre d’s station.

“Two, Roberto.”

Roberto stood frozen, his brown eyes wide, as if the Virgin Mary herself stood before him. Scott expected him to make the sign of the cross.

“Roberto?”

“Uh, Mr. Fenney, I, uh, I, uh…”

“What, Roberto? We want lunch.”

“Mr. Fenney, I no can do.”

Roberto was suddenly no longer the suave maitre d’ of the Downtown Club; he was a no habla ingles immigrant just up from the border.

“You no can do what?”

“Give you seat.”

“Why not?”

Roberto’s forehead shone with a layer of sweat.

“You no member.”

“What the hell you mean I’m not a member?”

“Mr. Fenney, is no more.”

“You’re telling me I’m not a member anymore?”

Roberto nodded. “Si.”

“Get Stewart.”

Roberto hurried off in search of the club’s manager. Scott turned and nodded at the three men waiting behind him to be seated. In less than a minute, Stewart appeared, trailed by Roberto-and the club’s security guard.

“What the hell’s going on, Stewart?”

Stewart regarded Scott with the same disdain he would a homeless person seeking a handout at the swanky Downtown Club.

“Mr. Fenney, your membership has been revoked by action of the board of directors, effective immediately. I must ask you to leave the premises.” He gestured at the members in line behind Scott. “Roberto, seat these gentlemen.”

The three men followed Roberto into the dining room, but not before giving Scott a curious glance and whispering among themselves, “That’s Scott Fenney, Tom Dibrell’s lawyer.”

“You’re joking?”

“No, Mr. Fenney.”

Stewart held out an envelope. Scott snatched it, opened it, and removed a letter from the board of directors of the Downtown Club informing A. Scott Fenney, Esq., that his membership had been terminated. Scott’s blood pressure ratcheted up until the veins in his forehead felt like they would blow any second.

“Please leave, Mr. Fenney. Or Darrell will escort you out.”

Darrell, the security guard, took a step toward Scott. Darrell was young, early twenties, maybe two hundred pounds, wearing a clip-on tie and a brown polyester sports coat the sleeves of which were straining against his thick arms. Sporting a flattop, he had a square jaw and the protruding brow of a weight lifter fashioned from steroids. Scott had played football with what God gave him; he hadn’t bought it in a goddamned drugstore. But he had played against many such freaks. Problem with drugstore muscles, though, was they weren’t real, they weren’t strong, they weren’t powerful. They just looked good. At least that was his theory. Scott Fenney was still 185 pounds of natural muscle and he could still kick Darrell’s ass up and down the seventy floors of this skyscraper. He now took a step toward Darrell, so close he could smell Darrell’s foul breath. Scott said through clenched teeth: “I wouldn’t recommend trying.”

Scott wadded up the letter and tossed it in Stewart’s face, then he turned and walked away. They were ten paces down the corridor when he heard Bobby’s voice: “Scotty.”

Scott stopped and turned back. Bobby was pointing to a portrait on the wall, one of the club’s founders: Mack McCall.

If Mack McCall had appeared before him at that moment, Scott Fenney might well have found himself sleeping in a cell like Shawanda Jones that night. He had never before been this mad at another human being, not even on a football field. He knew he couldn’t return to the office in that state, so he and Bobby took the skywalk across to the athletic club.

“They got a juice bar,” Scott said.

They were met at the front desk not by the trim little blonde Scott normally saw after work but by Han, a hulking bodybuilder who made Darrell look like a runt. Han greeted Scott like a stranger.

“Please wait here, Mr. Fenney.”

“Oh, shit,” Bobby said. “Deja vu all over again.”

Han returned with a cheap little gym bag the club gave to guests. He held it out to Scott.

“What’s this?”

“The contents of your locker.”

“Why?”

“Your membership is terminated.”

“As of when?”

“This morning.”

“Why?”

“Orders.”

“From whom?”

“The club manager.”

“And who gave him orders?”

“I don’t know.”

Han crossed his arms over his chest, creating a mass of muscle, bulging biceps and triceps and forearms and pectorals. Scott wasn’t sure he wanted to test his theory about steroid-induced muscle on Han. Scott had been in his share of bar fights in college, but never in a juice bar and never sober and never with anyone as big as Han. And he had always been backed up by one or two offensive linemen; those guys were crazy enough to fight a grizzly bear hand to hand. So when Bobby grabbed his arm and said, “Let’s get out of here,” Scott did not resist.

For the first time since he made partner at Ford Stevens, A. Scott Fenney, Esq., ate a hot dog for lunch, purchased from a street vendor, in the company of people whose collective net worth was less than the price of his suit.

After choking down two dogs, which he was beginning to regret, he and Bobby walked down Main Street, something else Scott hadn’t done in years. Or ever. And for a good reason.

Five minutes in the July heat and Scott was soaked from head to toe in sweat. His hair and face were wet, and his crisply starched shirt now clung to him like wet tissue. The sweat from his chest and back was rolling down and collecting in his underwear; the sweat from his legs was collecting in his socks. Hoping to at least save the coat of his $2,000 suit, he removed it and draped it over his shoulder. Bobby was saying something, but to Scott it was just background noise. Scott’s mind was on Mack McCall.