The Color of Law sf-1

by Mark Gimenez

  Earle Cabell was the mayor. He met President Kennedy at Love Field that morning and rode in the presidential motorcade, three cars behind the president’s blue limousine. As his car turned onto Elm Street, Cabell heard three gunshots ring out from the Texas School Book Depository. He arrived at Parkland Memorial Hospital just as the president was being removed from his limousine. Cabell remained at the hospital until the president’s body was taken away. He had hoped to show the president that Dallas was no longer the “Southwest hate capital of Dixie.” He had failed. But they still named the federal building in downtown Dallas after him-Cabell, not the president.

  Of course, when A. Scott Fenney, Esq., arrived at the Earle Cabell Federal Building on Commerce Street shortly after nine the next morning, he didn’t know who Earle Cabell was or why they had named this dull-as-dirt twenty-one-story structure after him. All he knew was that he didn’t want to be in Earle’s building that day and all he cared about was getting his client to cop a plea and then getting himself the hell out of there. He exited the elevator on the fifth floor, the federal detention center. After passing through the metal detector and having his briefcase searched, he was met by a black guard.

  “Scott Fenney to see Shawanda Jones.”

  “You her lawyer?”

  Scott wanted desperately to scream, Hell, no, I’m not her lawyer! Instead, he nodded. The guard led him down a narrow hallway to a small room, bare except for a metal table and two metal chairs. Scott entered and stared at the bare walls until the door opened and a black woman entered, bringing with her a foul body odor that filled the room like thick smoke. She looked him up and down, covered her mouth with both hands, and sneezed violently several times. Then she said, “You the lawyer?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Shawanda Jones was twenty-four but she appeared much older. She was a small woman, rising only to Scott’s shoulders. Her hair was neither kinky nor slicked straight; it was brown, hung just over her ears, and appeared soft, although obviously it had gone untouched by a brush for days. Her eyes were creamy ovals with big brown centers, but they seemed hollowed out and vacant. The area below her eyes was a darker brown than the rest of her face, which was tan and smooth and glistening with a light coating of sweat. Her nose was narrow and her lips thin. Her body seemed slim but shapely under the baggy white jail uniform. Her face was angular with prominent cheekbones. She was attractive, but at one time in her life, she must have been beautiful. She reminded Scott of Halle Berry on a bad day. A very bad day.

  Scott was not wearing his glasses that morning; he didn’t care whether this client thought he looked smart or not. And he did not extend a hand to her even though he always shook hands with a new client: Dan Ford had explained to Scott early in his legal career that a lawyer had only one opportunity to make a good first impression on a new client, so he should always look the client directly in the eye and give him a firm handshake, which, Dan said, would project a sense of forthrightness and honesty, thus making the client less likely to question his legal bills. Instead, fearing that her hand-one of the hands into which she had just sneezed like she had pneumonia-might transmit a communicable disease, Scott gestured for his new client to sit down. But she did not sit. She paced.

  She walked from one side of the room to the other and back again. Back and forth she went, again and again, rubbing her arms as if the room were cold instead of warm and kneading her fingers like Consuela saying the rosary. Her eyes darted about the room. Her legs seemed out of sync, and they twitched uncontrollably. Halfway back, she suddenly doubled over and groaned.

  “You okay?”

  She grunted. “Cramps.”

  Like most men when a woman speaks of her period, Scott didn’t know how to respond. So he said, “My wife has bad cramps each month.”

  Between groans, she said, “Not from this she don’t.”

  After a moment the cramps apparently subsided, and she resumed her pacing. Scott sat, removed his business card from his pocket, and pushed it to her side of the table. On her next pass by the table, she abruptly pulled out the chair, sat, and flopped her arms on the table. Scott noticed dark spots on the insides of both of her forearms, like someone was going to play connect the dots but had never connected them. Then he remembered: she’s a heroin addict. She picked up his business card with her thumb and forefinger and held it before her face.

  “What the A stand for?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Your first name be a letter?”

  Scott didn’t want to discuss his name. He wanted to get this over with and get back to his office on the sixty-second floor of Dibrell Tower where he belonged.

  “Ms. Jones, I’m Scott Fenney. The court appointed me to represent you. You’ve been charged with murder, a federal offense because the victim was a federal official. If found guilty, you could be sentenced to death or life in prison. Which is why I want to talk to you about pleading out to a lesser offense. You could be out in thirty years.”

  Her hands abruptly shot out and grabbed Scott’s wrists. He instinctively recoiled from the woman with the wild eyes, but she was strong for her size and she had a firm grip. She said, “Get me a fix, please? I ain’t sleep in two days!”

  “A fix?”

  “Some H! I need it bad!”

  “You mean dope? No, I can’t do that!”

  “Thought you my lawyer!”

  “You’ve had lawyers give you dope?”

  “For sex. C’mon, I suck you right here!”

  “No!”

  She jumped up and resumed her pacing. Scott had to take a minute to gather himself. He’d had corporate clients offer him bribes (also known as legal fees) to destroy incriminating documents, suborn perjury, conceal fraudulent activities, and falsify filings with the SEC, but they were always well-dressed and well-educated white men-and none of them had ever offered him oral sex!

  After he recovered, Scott said, “Now, as I was saying, you can plead out and-”

  “Say I did it?”

  “Yes, but not with the specific intent to murder.”

  She stopped and stared at him with her hands on her hips and an incredulous expression on her face.

  “You telling me, say I killed him? Don’t you wanna know if I did?”

  “Uh, yeah, sure.” He leaned back. “Tell me what happened.”

  She waved a hand at the bare table.

  “You ain’t writing nothin’ down?”

  Scott reached down to his briefcase and removed a yellow legal pad and black pen.

  “Go ahead.”

  Shawanda Jones, prostitute, proceeded to pace the room and tell her lawyer the facts (according to her) of the night of Saturday, June 5.

  “We was working Harry Hines-”

  Harry Hines Boulevard, named after a Dallas oilman, begins just north of downtown and continues out to the loop, a north-south corridor that is culturally diverse, as they say. On this single stretch of pavement, you can obtain the finest medical care in the country at no fewer than four hospitals, earn a degree at the University of Texas medical school, purchase high fashion and fine furnishings at the Market Center or shop more economically at the Army-Navy store, play golf at the exclusive Brook Hollow Golf Club, eat a wide variety of ethnic food, buy cheap used cars, illegal drugs, fake IDs, and counterfeit designer purses, enjoy topless strip clubs and all-nude salons, lodge overnight at the Salvation Army homeless shelter, get an abortion, or pick up a prostitute.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and Kiki.”

  “What’s Kiki’s last name?”

  “How would I know? That ain’t even her first name.”

  “What time?”

  “Maybe, ten.”

  “P.M.?”

  “Shawanda don’t work no morning shift.”

  “What-”

  “You want me to tell this here story or not?”

  Scott held his hands up in surrender. Shawanda Jones continued her story, extremely agitated and ani
mated, her arms flying about.

  “Anyways, we was feeling good and looking good, me wearing my blonde wig, Kiki red. We was strolling, men driving by, whistling, yelling, ‘Yo, mama, suck this!’ Black dudes, Mexicans, they just window-shoppers, can’t afford no class girls like us. We wait for them white boys in nice cars. They like us ’cause we ain’t dark and we in shape-me and Kiki, we do them exercise tapes most every day, got us a new one, The Firm? Use dumbbells. Check this out.”

  She pushed up the short sleeve of the jail uniform and curled her right arm and flexed her biceps, displaying an impressive bulge for a girl. Great, a heroin addict who worked out.

  “So, maybe ten-thirty, white boy driving a Mercedes, one of them long black jobs got them blacked-out windows, he pull up alongside us and roll down the window and look us over. We know one of us is fixing to get picked up. He say, ‘Blondie, get in.’ Well, Shawanda don’t just get in when some trick say get in, so I saunter on over, lean in the window, car smell like a whiskey factory. He say he pay a thousand dollars for all night. I say, ‘Show me the money.’ I got that from that movie? He pull out a roll of bills could choke a horse, so I get in, almost slide down to the floor, my leather skirt on that leather seat. He reach over, grab my tit, say, ‘Them real?’ I say, ‘Honey, all a Shawanda real.’”

  She abruptly groaned, grabbed at her midsection, and doubled over again.

  “Shit!”

  She remained in that position for a long moment. Scott had often suffered leg cramps back when he played ball, and man, they could really hurt. So he had some amount of empathy for her. Still, he checked his watch and thought of billable hours going unbilled and wished she would get on with it. Finally the cramps abated, and she straightened and started talking nonstop again.

  “Anyways, we drive off. I figure we goin’ to a motel? ’Stead we go to Highland Park, street sign say. I ain’t never been in no Highland Park-black girl know better’n to go there. Pretty soon we drive up to the biggest damn house I ever seen, through big gates, behind a big wall, go round back. Get out, I follows him inside, place is fine. He ask me I want something to drink, I say okay. I’m thinking, white boy got money and place like this and good-looking to boot-what he want with Shawanda?

  “We get upstairs, in bed, I find out. He climb on top and start working hard, he say, ‘You like it?’ Course, I say, ‘Oh, yeah, baby, you so big.’ Tricks, they like to hear that shit. Then he say, ‘Tell me again, nigger, you like my white dick?’ Now I don’t much like nobody calling me nigger, but for a thousand bucks I don’t say nothing but, ‘Oh, yeah, baby.’ Then he slap me, hard, say he always give it rough to his women. Well, nobody slap Shawanda. I punch that white boy in his mouth, knock him outta me and flat off the bed, jump up and say, ‘Ain’t gonna get rough with Shawanda, honky!’

  “He come at me again, all mean now, so I scratch his face, then I pop him a good one, BAM!” She made a roundhouse swing with her left fist. “Right in the eye. We fall over the bed and he hits me again, with his fist this time, right here.” She was pointing to the left side of her face, where a bruise was evident. “But I got my knee right in his balls, he fall off and start cussing me: ‘You nigger bitch!’ I grab my clothes, my thousand dollars, his car keys, drive back to Kiki and leave the car.”

  “And that’s the last time you saw Clark McCall?”

  “That his name?”

  “Yeah. He was the son of Senator Mack McCall.”

  A blank face. She didn’t know Mack McCall from Mickey Mouse.

  “Last I seen him, Mr. Fenney, he was rolling on the floor, holding his privates and cussing me something fierce.”

  “He was murdered that night. Police found him Sunday, naked on the bedroom floor, shot once in the head, point-blank, 22-caliber gun next to him, with your fingerprints on it.”

  “Must of dropped outta my purse.”

  “So it was your gun?”

  “Girl work the streets in Dallas, she gotta carry.”

  “But you didn’t shoot him?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Fenney.”

  “You’re innocent?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Fenney. And I ain’t coppin’ no plea.”

  “But, Ms. Jones-”

  “Miz Jones my mama. You call me Shawanda. And I ain’t pleading out. And what about bail? When I get outta here? I’m in bad need of some-”

  “Dope?”

  “Mr. Fenney, you looking at me like I ain’t nothing but worthless dirt, but you ain’t never been where I been.”

  Scott sighed. This wasn’t going as planned.

  “I’ll check on the bail hearing, but don’t count on getting out on a murder charge. And if the court grants bail, it’ll be high. Do you have any assets?”

  She slapped her butt. “This here Shawanda’s only asset.”

  “A nice ass won’t get you out of jail.”

  “It will in some counties.” He thought she was joking, but she didn’t smile. “So I be locked up till the trial? Mr. Fenney, I gotta see my baby!”

  “You have a child?”

  “Name Pajamae, she nine.”

  Scott put the pen to the pad. “How do you spell that?”

  “P-a-j-a-m-a-e. Pa — shu — may. It’s French.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Our place down in the projects. We been through this before, but only couple days. I tell her, ‘Don’t even open that door, girl.’”

  “Does this Kiki take care of her?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Fenney. Kiki, she live with a man. I don’t let no man in my place might hurt my Pajamae. Louis, he watch out for her, take her groceries, make sure she okay. He like her uncle but he ain’t.”

  Scott pushed the pad and pen across the table.

  “Write down your address…and Louis’s phone number.”

  Shawanda stopped her pacing, sat, took the pen in her left hand, and began writing, but her hand was shaking like an old person with tremors. Scott realized the awkwardness of the moment.

  “My daughter’s left-handed, too.”

  She stopped and stared at her hand. After a moment, she stopped writing, put the pen down, and looked back up at Scott with wet eyes.

  “Mr. Fenney, the smack, it just own me.”

  Then she doubled over and vomited.

  Dan Ford was on the phone when Scott arrived at his senior partner’s office and dropped his body onto the sofa like a load of cement.

  Dan was saying into the phone: “Of course we support your reelection, Governor. Your fine leadership gave the business community everything we asked for from the legislature-no new taxes, tort reform…Yes…Yes…All right, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Dan hung up the phone and shook his head in amazement.

  “That boy couldn’t find oil at an Exxon station.” A long sigh. “But he is the governor.” Finally, he focused his attention on Scott. “Did she go for it?”

  “No. She won’t cop a plea.”

  A knowing nod. “Figured she might not.”

  Scott had braced himself for one of Dan Ford’s profanity-laced tirades, but his senior partner didn’t seem all that upset.

  “What should I do?”

  “Hire her out,” Dan said.

  “Hire her out?”

  “Yeah, hire a criminal defense attorney to take your place. It’s a simple mathematical calculation, Scotty.”

  “Dan, what the hell are you talking about?”

  Dan stood and stepped over to the grease board mounted on the wall under the head of an elk, opened the wood doors, and picked up a marker. Writing as he spoke, he said, “Say the case takes a thousand lawyer-hours, worst-case scenario. We pay a defense lawyer-now I’m not talking a summa cum laude graduate; I’m talking anyone with a license-fifty dollars an hour-”

  “ Fifty an hour? We charge a hundred an hour for our summer clerks’ time.”

  “They’re top of their class. I’m talking a bottom-of-the-class lawyer, Scott, someone who needs fifty bucks an hour. So a thousand hours
at fifty an hour, that’s a fifty-thousand-dollar expense to the firm.”

  Scott knew his senior partner had thought this through because Dan Ford didn’t part with fifty cents easily much less fifty grand. He was a lawyer who calculated the profit the firm generated on each copy machine-forty cents per page-and made damn sure the copiers ran around the clock, spitting out paper and adding almost a million dollars to the firm’s annual bottom line. Ford Stevens marked up the cost of everything in its offices, animate and inanimate, turning a profit on every associate, paralegal, secretary, typist, courier, copy, fax, and phone call. And Dan Ford kept tabs on everyone and everything.

  He was saying, “But that frees up those thousand lawyer-hours for you to work for our paying clients at three-fifty an hour. That’s three hundred fifty thousand dollars in revenues for the firm. Deduct the fifty thousand we pay the defense lawyer, and the firm still nets three hundred thousand, versus losing the entire three hundred fifty thousand if you have to work the case.”

  Scott’s spirits started to lift. “Will Buford go for that?”

  “Sure. Before the federal court had a public defender’s office, we got appointed all the time. Hiring them out was standard operating procedure for the big firms.” Dan shrugged. “And besides, it’s a win-win situation: she gets a lawyer who knows more about criminal defense than you do, and you get rid of her.”

  Dan closed the doors to the grease board and said, “You know a cheap criminal defense attorney?”

  RO ERT HERR N, ATT NEY-AT-L W, the sign out front read because the landlord was too damn cheap to replace the letters that had been shot off. Didn’t matter, it was the only sign printed in English, and most people in this part of town couldn’t read it anyway. This attorney’s office was not in the best part of town; it was in a piece-of-shit strip center in East Dallas. He was a street lawyer; hence his office was at street level. He would often arrive to find someone sleeping on the stoop. He never kicked them awake as the other business owners in the strip did: hell, the guy might be his next best client. And he never called the police, which would be a monumental waste of a phone call; the police only kept the peace in the parts of town that mattered. He simply stepped over them and entered the law offices of Robert Herrin, Esq.