Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

But Scott Fenney wasn’t on a football field now; he was in bed and he was crying.

His wife had left him for a golf pro. The final humiliation in a long list of humiliations, every detail of which had been duly reported in the local newspaper. All of Dallas knew about Scott Fenney’s fall from grace. A few weeks ago, he had had the perfect Highland Park family: a trophy wife and a smart daughter and an illegal Mexican maid and a fast Ferrari. Today his family consisted of a white girl with cornrows, a street-smart black girl, a jailed prostitute, a lawyer who advertised in the TV guide, and a six-foot-six, 330-pound black bodyguard who lived in the garage.

“A. Scott, you okay?”

Boo’s voice in the dark. Scott wiped his face on the bedsheet and said, “Yeah.”

She climbed up onto the bed. “It’s okay. I cry, too.”

Scott sat up and pulled his daughter close. He felt her little body sag slightly in his arms. He thought she was falling asleep, but she spoke quietly.

“I’ve always been different. Now I’m really different.”

“How so?”

“I’m the only kid I know without a cell phone or a mother. Pajamae says none of the kids she knows have dads, but they all have mothers. Rachel and Cary, they don’t have dads…well, they have dads, but they don’t live with them. They’re divorced. But they see their dads on weekends.” She was quiet again. Then she said, “I don’t think we’re gonna see Mother on weekends.”

Scott held her tightly.

“It’s just us now, baby.”

And they cried together.

Bobby came by at nine on Monday morning. He gave Scott the once-over and said, “You’re wearing jeans and a polo shirt to a pretrial conference with the judge?”

“What’s Buford gonna do, fire me?”

“Good point.”

They walked out the back door just as Louis was walking in. After almost three weeks living in the garage and nonstop pleading by Scott, Louis had finally relented and agreed to come inside the house for his meals. Pajamae was cooking breakfast.

When Scott turned the Volkswagen south on Turtle Creek Boulevard, Bobby asked, “How do you like the Jetta?”

“Well, the Ferrari could do zero to sixty in four-point-five seconds and the Jetta takes half a day, but hey, this little baby gets great gas mileage.” Bobby laughed, but turned sober when Scott said, “Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“For what?”

“For quitting on you back then.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “What good would that do? You were gone. Didn’t know what to do, so I married the first girl who said yes. Lasted less than a year, took her that long to figure out she’d married a loser. Second wife, we got married four years after the first divorce. She’s the sister of the guy who owns the bar next door to my office, Mexican girl, most beautiful woman I ever saw naked. Problem was, I wasn’t the only guy seeing her naked. She was stepping out with most of the guys at the bar. Some of them were my clients. Still are.”

Bobby made a face.

“Is that a conflict of interest?”

“They repo your suits, too?”

Ray Burns had that same smart-ass expression on his face. Scott and Bobby had met him outside Judge Buford’s chambers, where the pretrial conference would take place.

“Shit, Scott, why didn’t you just stick a gun to your head and blow your brains out like your girl did to Clark? Would’ve been a hell of a lot less painful.”

“What are you talking about, Ray?”

“Throwing your career away for her. Jesus, were you really making seven-fifty a year? And driving a Ferrari? What, you got a death wish or something?”

Scott glared at Ray Burns as he stepped past him and entered Judge Buford’s chambers, but he heard Bobby say, “Ray, your mouth is writing checks your body can’t cash.”

“Jury selection on the nineteenth, opening statements on Monday the twenty-third,” Judge Buford said. “Anything else, gentlemen?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Scott said. “Mr. Burns is persisting in claiming that the alleged crime is eligible for the death penalty when that is clearly not the case.”

Ray Burns shrugged. “Our position is that the victim was an officer of a federal agency, and the defendant killed him in the perpetration of a robbery.”

“Give me a break, Ray. Clark McCall was with a prostitute. The statute requires that the officer be engaged in the performance of official duties. And she didn’t commit robbery. She only took the thousand dollars Clark owed her. He had another sixteen hundred on him. She didn’t take that or anything else in the house.”

“She took his car.”

“Only to get back to her part of town.”

“She had his skin under her fingernails.”

“She scratched him when he attacked her. She’s not denying she was there.”

“But she’s denying she pulled the trigger, even in self-defense. See, Scott, if she’d come clean about that, maybe we’d be willing to discuss dropping the death penalty.”

“Using the death penalty to coerce a confession-that’s prosecutorial misconduct, Ray.”

Ray shrugged. “We call it prosecutorial discretion, Scott.”

“You’re full of shit, Ray,” Scott said.

“And you’re unemployed.”

“Gentlemen,” Judge Buford said as Scott fought back the urge to punch the Assistant U.S. Attorney. “The death penalty has been well briefed by Mr. Burns for the government and by Mr. Herrin, I presume”-Judge Buford eyed Scott over his reading glasses-“for the defense. We will address that issue if and when it becomes necessary. Anything else?”

“No, sir,” Ray Burns said.

“No, Your Honor,” Scott said.

“Fine. We’ll reconvene on the nineteenth.”

The three lawyers stood to leave, but the judge said, “Scott, may I speak with you alone?” Buford turned to Ray. “If you have no objection, Mr. Burns?”

“No, sir, I have no objection.”

Ray and Bobby exited the chambers and shut the door.

“Sit down, Scott.”

Scott sat. Judge Buford stared at him like a psychiatrist addressing his patient. “You holding up okay?”

Scott lied: “Yes, sir.”

“I’ve read what’s happened. I suppose all of Dallas has. They really deported your maid?”

“Yes, sir. She’s down in Nuevo Laredo, waiting on a green card. I’ve done everything, but the INS says they’re backlogged.”

“Scott, if I had any idea all this would happen, that you’d lose your job, I would’ve never appointed you. I’d expect something like that from McCall, but Dan Ford…” His shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “I don’t know what’s become of the legal profession. When I was practicing, handling a case like this, it meant something. Now it’s to be avoided because it might hurt the firm’s business.”

He looked at Scott with an expression of genuine puzzlement.

“Do lawyers today care about anything except money?”

Scott spoke the truth: “No, sir, not in my experience.”

The judge grunted. “Scott, may I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure, Judge.”

“Your speech, that day at the bar luncheon…did you mean it, what you said about defending the innocent, protecting the poor, fighting for justice?”

Lie or tell the truth? Scott saw in the judge’s eyes the desperate hope that he had meant it, so his first inclination was to do what experienced lawyers do often and well: lie. But the judge needed to hear the truth today. So A. Scott Fenney, Esq., went against fourteen years of legal training and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“No, sir. Not a word. I said what those lawyers wanted to hear.”

The judge nodded solemnly and said, “I appreciate your honesty, Scott. I’m letting you off the case.” The judge’s eyes dropped to his docket sheet. He began writing. “I’ll substitute Mr. Herrin. He seems capable. He’s certainly written some good briefs.”