The Color of Law
Authors: Mark Gimenez
Contents
This book is dedicated to
Frank Gimenez (1926–1990) and Janie Gimenez, my parents.
Jack Hutchison (1931–1998), my father-in-law.
Brigitte, my wife, for reading all those drafts, and Clay and Cole, my sons, for showing me how smart kids are.
Wm. E. (“Bill”) Douglass (1942–1994) and Sheldon Anisman, the two lawyers I have known who most resembled Atticus Finch in honor and manner.
Harper Lee, whose great novel inspired me to become a lawyer and to write this story.
Scout, simply by the nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally. This one’s mine, I guess.
—Atticus Finch in
To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to everyone at Doubleday for making this book happen, especially Stacy Creamer, for her brilliant editing and absolute belief in this book; Tracy Zupancis, her assistant; John Fontana, for the perfect book jacket; Ellen Elchlepp, for the great catalog spread; and Maggie Carr, for her excellent copyediting; Liv and Bill Blumer at the Blumer Literary Agency, for their hard work; Barbara Boo Kiesler, for the use of her name; and Tess Edwards and Doug Gimenez, for being there.
PROLOGUE
C
LARK
M
C
C
ALL
was thirty years old and the sole heir to his father’s $800 million fortune. He was also a major-league screwup. Or so his father often said, usually right before threatening to cut Clark out of his will. Usually because of nights like this—drinking, drugs, and girls.
It was Saturday night and Clark, drunk on whiskey and wired on cocaine, was trolling for a hooker in his father’s Mercedes-Benz. He had driven south on Harry Hines almost to downtown without luck. There were plenty of working girls; he just hadn’t found the right one. He was now stopped at a light and staring up at the Dallas skyline rising above him: shadowy structures outlined in white and blue and green lights visible for forty miles in the night sky. Looking up like that made him feel a little woozy, so he fumbled for the power switch and lowered his window. He leaned his head out and caught the summer breeze, warm on his face. He inhaled the night air, the sweet scent of sex for sale.
He closed his eyes and might have fallen asleep right there, except a cowboy in the pickup behind him hit his horn like a bugler sounding charge. Which startled Clark. His eyes snapped open—the light had changed. He punched the accelerator and yanked the wheel hard to make a U-turn, but he gave it too much gas and now he couldn’t find the fucking brake pedal so he swung across three lanes and one tire of the Mercedes climbed up onto the curb and he almost clipped a street sign.
What the hell was it doing there?
The vehicle bounced hard coming back down.
No sooner had Clark gotten the big German sedan traveling mostly in one lane when he spotted her—a nice girl from the black neighborhoods south of downtown out for a slow stroll on a warm night with her girlfriend. She was just the kind he liked—a slim black babe in a blonde wig, a hot pink miniskirt, matching high heels, and a white tube top, swinging her little pink purse back and forth in perfect tempo with the exaggerated side-to-side movement of her round ass. Her body was fit, her legs lean, her entire essence so sensual and seductive that he knew she was the one—a black hooker from South Dallas specializing in white men from North Dallas.
She would be his date this Saturday night.
Not that Clark couldn’t get a date with one of the many gorgeous single white girls seeking husbands in Dallas. He was handsome and his father was rich. In Dallas, rich was required; handsome was optional. Being both, Clark McCall had recently been named one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. But he preferred prostitutes for female companionship. Hookers did what they were told and did not file police complaints afterward, and he knew up front how much the relationship would cost his father.
Clark steered the Mercedes over to the curb and slowed alongside the two South Dallas debutantes. He lowered the passenger window and yelled, “Blondie!”
They stopped, so he stopped. The black girl in the blonde wig sauntered over to the car with the kind of sassy attitude he liked in a hooker. She leaned down and stuck half her body through the window. Her skin was smooth and light, more tan than black, and her face was angular with sharp features, more white than black. Her lips and fingernails were painted a shiny red; her pushed-up breasts were round and full and looked real; and her scent was more intoxicating than anything he had ingested that night. She was beautiful, she was sexy, and he wanted her.
“How much?”
“What you want?”
“All you got, honey.”
“Two hundred.”
“A thousand. All night.”
She smiled. “Show me the money.”
Clark pulled out a wad of hundreds and waved it at her like candy to a kid. She got in and slid down the slick leather seat and her pink leather skirt crawled up so high he could see her black panties tight in her crotch, and he felt the heat come over him. He hit the accelerator and turned the sedan toward home.
But his thoughts turned to his father, as they often did in times like this. Clark McCall was a political liability to his father and always had been—the drinking, the drugs, the girls. Oh, if the senior senator from Texas could see his only son now, drunk and high, buying a black hooker with
his
money and driving her in
his
Mercedes to
his
mansion in Highland Park! Of course, his father’s first thought would be political, not paternal: What damage would be done to his campaign if the press got wind of his son’s latest indiscretion?
Clark laughed loudly and the hooker looked at him like he was crazy. At least he came home to Dallas to be indiscreet. Still, if his father found out that he had flown back home again, there would be more angry threats of disinheritance; but Clark would be back in Washington before the honorable senator knew he was gone. He laughed again, but he felt the rage rising inside him, as it always did when he thought of his father, a man who wanted the White House more than he had ever wanted a son.
United States Senator Mack McCall looked over at his second wife and thought what a handsome first couple they would make.
They were sitting in the leather wing chairs, enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in their Georgetown town house. Across from them on the sofa sat the two men who would get them into the White House. Their political consultant and pollster were poring over the latest poll results and focus group studies and staking out McCall’s positions on the political issues of the day—positions carefully crafted to appease every identifiable voting bloc in America, whether based on race, religion, ethnicity, gender, geography, age, socioeconomic standing, or sexual orientation—anyone who could cast a vote for Senator Mack McCall. The senior senator from Texas held a commanding lead in the preprimary polls.
Mack McCall’s lifelong ambition was finally within his grasp. He glanced down at his hands, still strong and calloused from years of working the rigs. He still had the hands of a roughneck and the determination of a wildcatter. And he was determined, as always, that nothing and no one would stand in his way. He would officially announce his candidacy on Monday.
Then he would spend $100 million or $200 million or whatever it took of his own money to win the White House. He had learned long ago that with enough money a man can buy anything and anyone he wants, be it an election or a younger woman. Mack McCall had enough money to buy both. He turned his eyes to his wife again and admired her beauty as if for the first time. He was filled with a sense of proprietorship, the same as years ago when he had gone out into the oil fields and admired his wells, knowing that he owned what other men coveted.
McCall was sixty; Jean was forty. He had been a senator for two decades now, and she had been his aide since she graduated from law school fifteen years ago. She was a savvy, articulate, and photogenic asset to his political career. They had been married ten years now, long enough for the messy divorce not to be a negative in his polls.
She had no children and wanted none. He had a son, Clark, from his first marriage—the consummate ne’er-do-well offspring of wealth, a thirty-year-old adolescent. Six months ago, thinking a steady job might bring maturity to the boy’s life, and to get him out of Dallas, McCall had pulled some strings and got Clark appointed chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But the boy kept sneaking back home to do God knows what with God knows whom in their Dallas mansion. His son was not a political asset.
“Senator?”
Bradford, the butler, appeared in the arched entry to the living room, holding a portable phone and wearing a dazed expression.
“It’s Clark, sir.”
McCall waved him off. “Tell him I’m busy.”
“No, sir, it’s the FBI, from Dallas, calling about Clark.”
“The
FBI
? Jesus Christ, what the hell did he do this time?”
“Nothing, sir. He’s dead.”
ONE
W
HAT’S THE DIFFERENCE
between a rattlesnake lying dead in the middle of a highway and a lawyer lying dead in the middle of a highway?” He paused. “There are skid marks in front of the snake.”
His bar association audience responded with polite laughter and diplomatic smiles.
“Why did New Jersey get all the toxic waste dumps and California get all the lawyers?” He paused again. “Because New Jersey had first choice.”
Less laughter, fewer smiles, a scattering of nervous coughs: diplomacy was failing fast.
“What do lawyers and sperm have in common?” He did not pause this time. “Both have a one-in-a-million chance of turning out human.”
All efforts at diplomacy had ended. His audience had fallen deathly silent; a sea of stone faces stared back at him. The lawyers on the dais focused on their lunches, embarrassed by their guest speaker’s ill-advised attempt at humor. He looked around the crowded room, as if stunned. He turned his palms up.
“Why aren’t you laughing? Aren’t those jokes funny? The public sure thinks those jokes are funny, damn funny. I can’t go to a cocktail party or the country club without someone telling me a stupid lawyer joke. My friends, we are the butt of America’s favorite jokes!”
He adjusted the microphone so his deep sigh was audible, but he maintained steady eye contact with the audience.
“I don’t think those jokes are funny, either. I didn’t go to law school to be the butt of cruel jokes. I went to law school to be another Atticus Finch.
To Kill a Mockingbird
was my mother’s favorite book and my bedtime story. She’d read a chapter each night, and when we came to the end, she’d go back to the beginning and start over. ‘Scotty,’ she’d say, ‘be like Atticus. Be a lawyer. Do good.’
“And that, my fellow members of the bar, is the fundamental question we must ask ourselves: Are we really doing good, or are we just doing really well? Are we noble guardians of the rule of law fighting for justice in America, or are we just greedy parasites using the law to suck every last dollar from society like leeches on a dying man? Are we making the world a better place, or are we just making ourselves filthy rich?
“We must ask ourselves these questions, my friends, because the public is asking the same questions of us. They’re questioning us, they’re pointing their fingers at us, they’re blaming us. Well, I’ve asked myself these questions, and I have answers, for myself, for you, and for the public: Yes, we are doing good! Yes, we are fighting for justice! Yes, we are making the world a better place!
“And ladies and gentlemen, if you elect me the next president of the state bar of Texas, I will tell the people exactly that! I will remind them that we wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, that we fought for civil rights, that we protect the poor, defend the innocent, free the oppressed. That we stand up for their inalienable rights. That we are all that stands between freedom and oppression, right and wrong, innocence and guilt, life and death. And I will tell the people that I am proud,
damn proud
, to be a lawyer…because lawyers—do—good!”
Now, some might blame the Texas summer heat, but the audience, lawyers all—lawyers who had never protected the poor or defended the innocent or freed the oppressed, lawyers who stood up for the rights of multinational corporations—
believed
his words, like children who were old enough to know the truth about Santa Claus but who clung desperately to the myth anyway. They rose as one from their seats in the main dining room of the Belo Mansion in downtown Dallas and, with great enthusiasm, applauded the tall thirty-six-year-old speaker, who removed his tortoise-shell glasses, pushed his thick blond hair off his tanned face, and flashed his movie-star smile. He took his seat on the dais behind a nameplate that read
A. SCOTT FENNEY, ESQ., FORD STEVENS LLP
.
As the applause grew louder, the corporate tax lawyer whom Scott was campaigning to succeed as the next state bar president leaned in close and whispered, “You know, Scotty, you’ve got an impressive line of bullshit. Now I see why half the coeds at SMU dropped their drawers for you.”
Scott squeezed the knot of his silk tie, smoothed his $2,000 suit, and whispered back through brilliant white teeth, “Henry, you don’t get laid or elected telling the truth.”
He then turned and again acknowledged his fellow members of the bar, all standing and applauding him.
Except for one lawyer. Sitting alone in the back of the dining room, at his usual table, was an older gentleman. His thick white hair fell onto his forehead. His bright eyes remained sharp at long distances, but he wore the black reading glasses to eat. He was not a tall man, and his slightly hunched posture made him appear almost short. Even so, he was a lawyer the other lawyers either avoided outright or approached with great caution, like vassals to their lordship, waiting patiently for him to look up from his chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and pecan pie and acknowledge them with a nod or, on the best of days, a brief handshake. But never did he stand. Come hell or high water, United States District Court Judge Samuel Buford remained seated until he was through eating. Today, though, as he dwelled on the young lawyer’s speech, a slight smile crossed his face.
A. Scott Fenney, Esq., had just made a tough judicial decision easy.
