Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

Shawanda said nothing, so Ron left, shaking his head. Scott released Shawanda, and she dropped to the floor. He sat in one of the chairs and looked down at this young black woman.

“Why do you do it?”

Shawanda’s eyes came up. “’Cause it make me feel special.”

“You don’t need that. You are special.”

She laughed. “You sound like Louis. He always saying ‘Shawanda, you God’s special girl.’”

“He’s right.”

“No, he ain’t, Mr. Fenney. Nobody never give a damn ’bout Shawanda, not my daddy, not my mama, not no one.”

“Pajamae does.” He turned to her. “You love your mother, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Fenney, I love her very much.”

“So that’s me, Louis, Pajamae, Boo, Bobby…and Ron. Six people who think you’re special.”

“That sound real nice, Mr. Fenney, but if I get out, I don’t figure me and you gonna see much of each other.”

“Sure we are. Our daughters are best friends. They’re like sisters.”

She turned to Pajamae. “That right? Boo like your sister?”

“Yes, Mama.”

She turned to Boo. “Pajamae like your sister?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

And she smiled the sweetest smile Scott had ever seen on her face. “That’s good.” She looked up at Scott. “Mr. Fenney, if I don’t get out of here or if they…well, you know…you promise me something?”

“Sure. What?”

“Take care of my Pajamae.”

Five weeks ago, when Scott had taken a little black girl home to Highland Park, his wife had asked him what he was going to do with her when her mother was convicted: Adopt her? Raise her as his daughter? Send her to Highland Park schools? He did not answer his wife that day because he wasn’t thinking of Pajamae that day; he was thinking only of himself, his fear of returning to the projects. But this day he answered.

“Yes, Shawanda, I promise.”

“It’s perfect!” Boo said.

They had looked at six houses, Scott and the girls, each cheaper than the prior one, until they walked into this tiny fifteen-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath cottage over by SMU with a backyard that had a rope swing and a pool the size of the master bathtub at 4000 Beverly Drive. It was priced at only $450,000, within Scott’s reduced financial reach, and it was in the Highland Park School District, so Boo wouldn’t have to start over at another elementary school.

“One bedroom for us,” Boo said, “and one for you. You can have the big bedroom.”

Pajamae ran into the backyard, and Scott said to Boo, “Honey, you understand, if her mother gets out of jail, Pajamae’s going back to live with her.”

Boo turned her green eyes up at him. “Well, we’ve been thinking.”

“I bet you have.”

“She doesn’t have a father and now I don’t have a mother, so we thought maybe you and her mother could get married or something.”

“ Married? But she’s-”

“Only twenty-four, I know. But Pajamae said it’s okay for a man to marry a younger woman. She said they do it all the time in Hollywood.”

“But, Boo-I’m still married to your mother.”

Scott was running at 7.5 miles per hour up a ten-degree incline on a commercial treadmill. But he wasn’t at the athletic club in downtown Dallas; his mind was not clear, his spirits were not high, and his eyes were not firmly attached to the backside of a beautiful young woman running in front of him; there was no girl running on a treadmill behind him checking out his butt; he did not feel young and successful and virile-or special. He was running on the treadmill in the exercise room of his Highland Park house, which would be his for only two more weeks.

Their visit to Shawanda that morning had raised the same questions in his mind: Had he done the right thing? Had he made the right choice? Was saving Shawanda’s life worth sacrificing his perfect life? Was a heroin addict’s life worth his lawyer life? He couldn’t save her life, not with the evidence Ray Burns had against her. She would be convicted and sentenced to death or a long prison term. But he had already made the sacrifice; his life was already ruined. There was no quid pro quo, no something for something, to this bargain. He had given up his perfect life and would get nothing in return. And thinking about that brought the darkness back into his mind. So he did the only thing he knew to do when he was down: he exercised. Hard. Twice a day. Every day. He had begun working out as if he were getting in shape for another football season, running and weight lifting, torturing his body to ease his mind.

But working out made him think about football, and thinking about football made him think about the cheerleaders, and thinking about the cheerleaders made him think about Rebecca. He thought about their life together, the incredible sex, their vacations to Hawaii and San Francisco and London, and, of course, Boo. They had had eleven years together, and now she was gone. Had their marriage been a mistake from the beginning? Had she ever really loved him? Of course, it had never occurred to him that she might not have loved him because everyone-fans, coaches, cheerleaders-had always loved Scott Fenney.

He had so many questions, and no one to ask for answers. His mother would have said, “It’s God’s plan, and God has a reason, even if we don’t understand.” Butch would have said, “She’s a selfish bitch, running off like that.” The truth lay somewhere in between. But one truth he knew: if he hadn’t married Rebecca, there would be no Boo. And without Boo, there would be no life for Scott Fenney.

“What the hell was I supposed to do, kill him?”

“Jesus, Delroy, in the Highland Park Village?”

Delroy Lund was standing in the den of the McCall town house in Georgetown. The senator was standing at the window. He wasn’t happy to hear Delroy’s report about the incident with Fenney at the shopping center.

“I was just trying to send him a message, but Fenney went fuckin’ nuts…Oh, by the way, you bought a rental car.”

The senator dismissed that news with a wave of his hand. Delroy particularly appreciated that aspect of working for a guy worth $800 million: He didn’t blink an eye at an unexpected $35,000 expense. He just wanted results and screw the costs. Delroy Lund got results.

“Now he’s got a big black dude playing bodyguard. But I’ll try again if you want.”

“No, leave it alone. You and the black guy get together, someone will get killed. And that’s all I need, another murder connected to me. So Fenney’s wife left him?”

“Yeah, she ran off with the golf pro.”

The senator smiled for the first time that day. “Good.”

“Look, Senator, Fenney talked big on TV, but he ain’t got nothing to back it up. Those other girls, they’re not testifying. All they got is Hannah Steele.”

“She’s enough, goddamnit!”

The senator turned from the window and paced the room, talking like he was thinking out loud.

“Fifteen months until the election. If the hooker’s convicted, everyone will figure what Fenney said on TV was just the lies of a lawyer. It’ll all be forgotten a few months from now…The public’s got the attention span of a two-year-old. I can still get into the White House, Delroy, if she’s convicted. But if Hannah Steele walks into that courtroom and testifies that Clark beat and raped her…”

The senator started shaking his head.

“But, Senator, if she don’t testify, it’s just the word of a whore.”

The senator stared at Delroy a long moment.

“Delroy, go see if the fish are biting in Galveston.”

Scott Fenney hadn’t cried since his mother died. And the only time before that was when his father died. He didn’t cry when they drove his body into the ground, he didn’t cry when they broke his fingers or his ribs, he didn’t cry when they tore his knee ligaments. You don’t cry on a football field.