Paul Levine - Paydirt

Bobby Gallagher had it all. A beautiful, savvy wife he adored, a whiz kid son who amazed him, and a high-profile, high-prestige job that his law school classmates would have sued their mothers to land. So what the hell was wrong?

I bend the rules until they break. I use my degree as a license to warp justice and perpetuate frauds. I'm a lawyer who's lost his moral compass and doesn't know how to find it.

He pondered these thoughts while sipping margaritas. After the third drink, he reached a conclusion. He would change his life.

But how, without giving up all the perks that come with my job as a professional prick?

Bobby was reclining on a wooden chaise lounge on his father-in-law's patio, an expanse of flagstone shaped like the Texas Panhandle and nearly as large. The patio jutted from the rear of Martin Kingsley's weekend ranch house, a rustic building the size of several football fields in the Hill Country southwest of Dallas.

The margarita was heavy on tequila and light on lime, just as Bobby liked it. Just as singer Peggy Lee liked it when she guzzled the first one ever poured, according to local legend, in a Galveston bar fifty years ago.

My life has become a Peggy Lee song. "Is that all there is?"

Bobby caught sight of Kingsley, sending him deeper into a funk.

My host, my boss, my father-in-law. Mein Fuhrer.

Kingsley owned pro football's Dallas Mustangs, which he liked to call "America's Team." Today, Kingsley wore a white chef's hat and a shimmering black suit with silver shoulder piping and a string tie, as he supervised a dozen cooks who were roasting corn-fed turkeys-plump as country parsons-on a brick grill the size of a factory furnace. White plumes of smoke swirled in the clear November air, carrying the aroma of dripping meat and savory spices, whipping up appetites, adding to the holiday mood.

Bobby doubted that the Pilgrims ever imagined Thanksgiving the way Kingsley celebrated it. Turkeys stuffed with corn tamales, venison picadillo, walnut bread pudding with rum sauce, all prepared by Dallas' finest chefs. The nouvelle Texas cuisine was far from Kingsley's hardscrabble roots of hog jowls and black-eyed peas, Bobby knew.

The Thanksgiving feast was held one day late because Kingsley's Mustangs were busy on the holiday making mincemeat out of the Eagles. All of the team's higher echelon employees and their families were here, herded down from Dallas across cypress-lined rivers, through the bigtooth maple forests aflame with autumn colors. Bobby and the other front office folks came by bus. Traveling by chartered jet to a private airfield were the on-the-field folks-the agile, mobile, hostile young men who each Sunday wore knickers and plastic hats and crashed into each other with felonious intent at ferocious speeds. They all headed to Kingsley's ranch house known modestly as Casa del Conquistador. It was one of the man's possessions, along with his Dallas mansion that resembled a Southern plantation, his private jet, various oil and gas exploration companies, extensive real estate, two refineries, and, of course, his prize football team.

And me, too. He's got clear title to my sorry ass.

Bobby considered his father-in-law to be both the most giving and most demanding man he had ever known. After Bobby married Christine, Kingsley made him general counsel of the team, though his credentials were thin. The two men constantly clashed, Bobby balking at Kingsley's insistence that he zealously defend the players from the law, the league, ex-wives, and creditors.

No, strike that, Your Honor. We haven't "clashed." I'm too chicken shit for that. Kingsley gives orders. I whine my lawyerly dissent. He orders again, louder, and I comply. I'm a rebel without balls.

When it came to the Mustangs, Kingsley instructed Bobby to follow the rule coined by the late Al Davis, owner of the Oakland Raiders.

"Just win, baby."

Earlier that week, Bobby had again followed that simple instruction. He walked Buckwalter Washington out of the courthouse, beating an assault and battery charge. He didn't win with courtroom theatrics, but rather by quietly suborning perjury. Bobby listened as his chief witness took the redundant oath-the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth — then told a lie, a whole lie, and nothing but a lie.

Under Bobby's questioning, the witness, a bar patron, swore that Buckwalter didn't clobber the obnoxious Tennessee Titans fan. The poor fellow simply toppled over in a drunken stupor, banging his head.

The team's security consultant-nice name for a bag man-had paid the witness in cash, insulating Bobby from criminal responsibility, but not from corruption of his soul.

Thinking about it now, stewing in the juices of his self-loathing, Bobby knew he was trapped. Owing Martin Kingsley so much, how could he stand up to him?

Attack his father-in-law's character? Hell, Kingsley wasn't a bad man, at least not by robber baron standards. He had clawed his way into money and power and used both to buy a big kid's toy, the Mustangs. He adored his daughter and grandson and blessed his son-in-law with a dream job.

So what am I complaining about? Why not just do what I'm told? Everybody compromises, right?

Bobby spotted his wife, Christine, slipping out a rear door of her father's sprawling house, headed his way with a pitcher of pale-green margaritas. The house was a constructed of cross-hatched logs and was intended to look both historic and western, but in fact, was designed by a Boston architect and built in the 1990's for six million dollars. The fireplace was made of multi-colored river rock and was large enough for a man to step into the open hearth without stooping, large enough to consume an ungrateful son-in-law, Bobby figured.

She offered to refill his glass, and he didn't say no. On this cool day, with the tangy scent of pine trees mixing with pungent mesquite smoke, she wore a Dallas warm-up suit and running shoes. Holiday attire gave way to more practical outdoor wear in the Kingsley household, especially with the touch football game to come before dinner. "You've been so quiet all day," she said, sounding worried, "and now you look depressed."

"My job has no social utility," he blurted out, surprising both of them.

"Would you rather still be in the P.D.'s office, defending penniless criminals?"

"Penniless criminals, wealthy criminals," he said. "What's the difference?"

Christine ran a hand through her blond hair, which was pulled straight back and revealed a widow's peak and smooth, high forehead. Her eyes were greenish gold, cloudless as a spring day, and crinkled with laugh lines. Her lips were delicate, peach toned, and expressive. He thought she was even more lovely at thirty-six than a dozen years earlier when they met.

Christine, you could have done better. You could have snagged a man who was smarter, richer, better looking. And honest. How do I even merit such a woman?

Bobby stood an even six feet, had shaggy brown hair and deep brown eyes. Women did not run from the sight of him, but they didn't exactly throw their thongs at him, either. At thirty-nine, his stomach was starting to turn soft from too many cocktail parties and too little racquetball. Bobby always saw himself as not bad looking, not a bad lawyer, and not a bad guy.

I define my life by the absence of negatives while Christine is the epitome of superlatives.

She was competent at everything she tried. Phi Beta Kappa in college and a track star, too. Running cross country might have given her some of that calm confidence, that steadiness and stamina, Bobby thought.