The Common Lawyer

by Mark Gimenez

  His mother had protested war and fought football-she said the government was controlled by the military-industrial complex and the university by the athletic-alumni complex-since she had first arrived on campus as a freshman in 1966. She had never left the campus or quit the fight.

  Andy had seen photos of her from 1970 when professors and students had chained themselves to thirty oak trees along Waller Creek to block their being bulldozed for the football stadium expansion. Frank Erwin, Jr., an LBJ crony and chairman of the Board of Regents at the time who had loved Longhorn football, driven a school colors orange-and-white Cadillac, and been dubbed the "Emperor of UT" by Time magazine, called in the cops and had everyone arrested, including Jean Prescott. Then he bulldozed the trees and expanded the stadium. His mother had lost that fight and every fight since. But she had never tired of the fight, and she wasn't tiring now. So Andy changed the subject.

  "How's Dad?"

  She took a deep breath.

  "He won't leave home. Won't even sing in church. At least he still tends his garden. You need to come out, Andy, he'd like the company. How about this weekend? I'll pick you up on the way home Friday, bring you back in Monday."

  Her face showed her hope that he'd say yes.

  "I'll ride out Saturday morning."

  The bike would be faster than the twenty-year-old Volvo his mother drove.

  "It's forty miles."

  "Piece of cake."

  "And ice cream."

  "I mean, the ride out and back."

  "I mean cake and ice cream. It's my birthday."

  " Your birthday? Mom, I'm sorry. I forgot."

  "But no presents, okay?"

  She said the same thing every year.

  "Saturday, then?"

  "I'll be there."

  "Promise?"

  He went over and kissed her on the cheek.

  "Cross my heart."

  "Bring Max. Your father misses that dog." She hugged him then said, "Oh, tickets."

  She handed him two tickets; a $100 bill was clipped to each. The left-wing UT professors drove hybrids, but they drove them fast. They knew that Professor Prescott's kid could take care of their tickets; and Professor Prescott acted as if she were not the least bit ashamed that her only son was a traffic ticket lawyer. What kind of woman was she?

  "Do you need more money?"

  "I'm good."

  He was very good. Four hundred bucks in one day-his all-time career record. He considered how he would spend that $200. He could (a) pay next month's office rent, (b) ask Suzie out, although a date with Suzie would run $500 minimum, or (c) upgrade the replacement bike with a RockShox suspension and a gel saddle, which sounded particularly good. But Andy was just kidding himself. He knew all along that he would spend the $200 on (d) a birthday present for his mother.

  SIX

  Andy Prescott always had a thing for redheads.

  He was staring at one now. She had long legs and a sensuous smile. Her lips were red and her skirt was short. Her red hair was a wig, but she was still incredibly sexy. For a mannequin.

  "Need a date for the prom, Andy?"

  Andy hadn't noticed Reggie standing there. They were at the display window out front of Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds. Reggie chuckled and entered the store. He was a real funny guy for a white dude wearing black eyeliner and dreadlocks.

  Andy had arrived back in SoCo on the little Huffy, checked for Max at Guero's only to learn that Oscar had sent him down to Ramon's, and found Floyd T. pushing his grocery cart from dumpster to dumpster searching for treasures in other people's trash. His responsibilities satisfied, he had then begun his quest for the perfect birthday present for his mother.

  He had first tried Tesoro's Trading Company and then Maya Star and was walking the bike past Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds when the mannequin had caught his eye. He took one last look at her then continued down the sidewalk to Yard Dog. And there in the front window he spotted the perfect present for Jean Prescott: a white owl hand-carved from a small log. Yard art for her native Texas garden. She'd love it. He checked the price tag: $1,000.

  He sighed and shook his head. He couldn't even afford a nice birthday present for his mother. Natalie was right: he needed ambition.

  Andy walked down the street to Uncommon Objects. He searched the booths for a secondhand gift he could afford but found nothing special except an armadillo purse for $125-a real armadillo made into a purse. It was cool but creepy. Jean Prescott was a different sort of woman all right, but maybe not that different.

  He gave up and went into the tattoo parlor to collect Max and his mail. His email. He couldn't afford a computer or Internet service either, so Ramon let Andy use his computer and maintain an email address on his Yahoo account.

  The parlor reeked of antiseptic. Fortunately for his clients-hepatitis C was a constant concern in a tattoo shop-Ramon Cabrera was a clean freak; he wiped the entire place down a dozen times a day. It was as clean as a hospital and had the same look: bottles of alcohol and green germicidal soap, sterile gloves and gauze, the autoclave, a hazardous waste disposal box for used needles, vials of colored ink… well, maybe not the ink.

  Andy walked around the front counter and found Max snoozing in the corner so he headed over to Ramon's computer on the back desk-but he stopped dead in his tracks. Lying face down on Ramon's padded table was a blonde girl clothed only in a black T-shirt and thong; her shorts lay on a chair. Her bare bottom was smooth, round, and glowing in the light of the bright fluorescent bulbs overhead. No doubt she was a UT coed getting a tattoo to assert her independence from her parents-at least until she needed more money.

  "Tickets on the counter," Ramon said without looking up.

  Ramon was sitting next to the girl and leaning over and peering through his little reading glasses only a few inches away from her smooth skin. Jesus. First Britney at traffic court, then Suzie at Whole Foods, and now a bare butt at Ramon's. The pressure of daily life in Austin was almost unbearable.

  Andy grabbed the two tickets, each with a $100 bill attached-the day just kept getting better-then stepped over for a closer look, careful not to breach Ramon's sterile field. Ramon wore a white muscle T-shirt and white latex gloves; he was inking in a "Yellow Rose of Texas" tattoo on her left buttock, one of a matched set. The buttock, not the tattoo.

  "Not polite to stare, dude," Ramon said.

  But he smiled when he said it. Ramon Cabrera was only six years older than Andy, but the hard life he had lived and the tattoos on his body had aged him. Ramon had practiced what he preached: his entire upper body was a mobile mural commemorating Austin and Mexico, Latino culture and the Catholic religion, the Aztec sun god and the Tejano goddess Serena. It was beautiful and weird at the same time.

  Ramon Cabrera was an artist with a tattoo needle.

  The thing sounded like a dentist's drill, which made Andy's skin crawl. With his left hand Ramon stretched the skin on the girl's bottom tight and with his right hand he moved the needle from spot to spot on the stenciled outline of the yellow rose in rhythm with the Latino music playing in the background. The tattoo machine drove the needle into her skin-actually through the epidermis and into the dermis, the second layer of skin-puncturing her bottom hundreds of times per minute and depositing a drop of insoluble ink upon each insertion.

  It hurt like hell.

  But the girl had iPod buds stuck in her ears and her eyes closed, oblivious to the pain and the world around her… including Andy admiring her butt. After a long, wonderful moment, he broke eye contact and sat in front of Ramon's computer. He logged onto his email account and checked his messages. He shook his head.

  "All I get is spam promising to make my penis longer."

  "Don't waste your money," Ramon said. "None of that stuff works."

  Andy logged onto the Chronicle 's website and clicked "Classifieds" then "Personals" and then "Lovers Lane." He checked for responses to his ad. There were none. So he looked for new ads from "women seeking men." A
ll were from women over forty hoping to find their Prince Charming (since the first two hadn't worked out) and live happily ever after. He wondered if it ever really worked. His mother said she had fallen in love with his father when she was a grad student at UT and saw him on stage at the Broken Spoke. It was love at first sight. They had married three months later and were still married thirty-five years later. Those kind of relationships weren't found in the personal ads. But Andy still looked.

  "Man, you ain't gonna find a woman in those ads," Ramon said. "You gotta find a woman the old-fashioned way-in a bar."

  "Like that worked for you."

  Ramon had met his wife in a bar two years ago. She left him a year later for another man she had met in a bar. Which reminded Andy: he had promised Tres the phone number of a private investigator.

  "Ramon, who's that PI you hired to tail your wife?"

  "My ex — wife."

  "She was your wife when you hired the PI."

  "She was a cheating, no-good, two-peso…"

  Andy was never sure what bothered Ramon more, that she was cheating on him with another man or that she was cheating on him with another tattoo artist. She had allowed her lover/artist to finish the mural that Ramon had begun on her body. Once he got started, Ramon could go on about his ex-wife like Andy's mother could about football.

  "The PI's name?"

  "Lorenzo Escobar, down Congress a few blocks."

  Andy logged off, took one final glance at the coed's bottom, and headed to the door.

  "Wake up, Max."

  But he stopped short when Ramon said, "Oh, dude was here looking for you. In a limo."

  Andy turned back.

  "A limo? Down here? Looking for me? "

  "What'd I say?"

  "Who?"

  "White dude. In a suit. Checked out my flash"-his standard tattoo designs displayed on a flip rack like art stores used for prints-"asked did I know where you were at. I said, 'I look like a secretary?' "

  "These tickets his?"

  "Didn't leave a ticket."

  "Who was he?"

  Ramon wiped blood from the girl's butt then pointed the needle end of the tattoo machine at a newspaper on the counter.

  "Him."

  Andy picked up the paper. On the front page was a photograph of three middle-aged white men wearing suits and a younger white woman: the mayor of Austin, the governor of Texas, a famous billionaire, and his beautiful blonde wife, all faces well known in Austin.

  "The mayor was here?"

  Ramon laughed. "What the hell would the mayor want with you?"

  "The governor?"

  A bigger laugh. "What've you been smoking?"

  That left only one, the least likely of all.

  "Russell Reeves was here?"

  Ramon nodded without looking up from the girl's butt.

  "When?"

  "Couple hours ago."

  "What'd he want?"

  "You."

  "Why?"

  "Didn't say. I didn't ask. I mind my own business."

  "Since when?"

  Ramon gave him a look over his glasses and a half-smile.

  "Okay if I borrow the paper?"

  A nod. "Later, bro."

  Andy and Max climbed the stairs to his office. Max turned around three times and curled up on his pad in the corner. Andy sat and read the newspaper article. Russell Reeves had just donated $100 million to a scholarship fund so low-income students could attend college. He was being hailed as a visionary philanthropist by the governor and the mayor, the latest in a long line of politicians to honor Russell Reeves.

  Russell Reeves was an Austin legend, like Michael Dell. When Reeves was only twenty-two, he invented a computer gizmo that had revolutionized the Internet; he sold it for billions in stock during the high-tech boom years on Wall Street. He then invested in other high-tech companies and made billions more as the NASDAQ climbed to 5000. But he saw the technology boom about to bust, so he sold everything right before the stock market crash of 2000. He walked away from the nineties with over $20 billion in cash. Everything he touched had turned to gold.

  Then he gave the gold away.

  He gave money to liberal politicians and poor people, environmental causes and alternate energy research, the arts and AIDS; he gave money to build low-income housing and health clinics in East Austin and to buy computers for the public schools and parkland for the people; he gave money to fight global warming and defeat Republicans. Russell Reeves was a devout do-gooder with a heart of gold and a bank account to match. To date, the Russell and Kathryn Reeves Foundation had donated over $2 billion to make Austin a better place.

  Reeves was forty now and married to a former Miss UT. Seeing him standing there next to his beauty queen wife in the photo while the governor called him a Texas hero and the mayor said he was Austin's favorite son, and knowing he was worth $15 billion according to the latest Forbes ranking, you'd probably think Russell Reeves was the luckiest man on the face of the Earth… unless you knew about his son.

  His seven-year-old son was dying.

  Zachary Reeves had a rare, incurable form of cancer. All known medical therapies-chemo, radiation, bone marrow transplant-had failed. So his father had established the Reeves Research Institute on the UT campus, a state-of-the-art cancer research laboratory dedicated to finding a cure for his disease. Russell Reeves had hired renowned scientists from around the world and brought them to Austin. He had spent money and spared no expense. But five years and $5 billion later, there was still no cure. The doctors gave the boy a year.

  Consequently, while Russell Reeves was beloved and admired by everyone, he was envied by no one. He was viewed as a tragic figure in Austin. And he was standing in Andy's doorway.

  "May I come in?"

  Andy dropped the newspaper and stood. Max sensed something was up, so he stood, too.

  "Mr. Reeves. Yes, sir. Please come in."

  Reeves glanced over at Max. "Does it bite?"

  "Only Jo's muffins. Name's Max." Andy stuck his hand out. "I'm Andy Prescott."

  Andy had never before shaken the hand of a billionaire. Or even a millionaire, except for Tres.

  "Andy, I'm Russell Reeves."

  Russell Reeves' net worth made him seem bigger than life, but he was actually no bigger than Andy. His suit was tailored and expensive and draped like silk over his shoulders. He had once worn thick glasses, but Andy had read that he had gotten laser eye surgery. His black hair, once famously thick and curly, was now thinner and shorter and gray on the sides. None of the girls at Whole Foods would call him handsome, but they'd be all over him like politicians on special-interest money. Especially Suzie. Fifteen billion dollars in the bank improved a man's looks.

  Russell Reeves was frowning.

  "You get mugged?"

  "Trail biking. Took a header on the greenbelt yesterday."

  Reeves nodded then surveyed the small office.

  "No wasted space. I like that."

  "You do?"

  Reeves smiled. "When I first started out, I lived at work, an old building in the warehouse district. Couldn't afford an apartment, so I showered at the Y." He gestured at the open window. "No air-conditioning, like this place."

  Violin music drifted in from next door. The student was advanced. Reeves cocked his head to listen.

  "Nice."

  "Comes with the rent."

  "Mind if I sit down?"

  "Oh, yeah, sure, Mr. Reeves."

  They sat across the card table from each other. Russell Reeves studied Andy for a long, uncomfortable moment; the last time Andy had felt this uneasy was when he had met with the dean of the law school to learn whether he had been admitted.

  "Andy, I need a lawyer."

  "You've got hundreds of lawyers."

  "This is special."

  "You got stopped speeding through a school zone?"

  Reeves smiled. "A little more special than a speeding ticket, Andy. I want to fix SoCo."

  "What's wrong w
ith it?"

  "Nothing a billion dollars can't fix."

  "I don't represent developers."

  "Ah, a man of principle."

  "Uh, no. I've just never been asked."

  "Oh. Well, Andy, I want to purchase those eyesores-old abandoned grocery stores, strip centers, slum apartments-and build quality low-income housing so regular people can afford to live in SoCo. Town homes with pools and playscapes for kids."

  "We've been trying to get the city to build low-income housing down here for years."

  "Governments are bureaucracies, Andy. I have the money and power to cut through the bureaucracy and get things done. The same people said it couldn't be done in East Austin, but we did it. And I want to do it here. Austin should be for all people regardless of wealth and I want you to help me make it that way. Andy, I want you to be my lawyer in SoCo."

  "Why me?"

  "Like I said, Andy, I've got the money and power to make this happen at city hall. What I don't have is the trust of the people down here. They'll say I'm trying to take over SoCo. Change it. Make it like North Austin."

  "People down here don't trust anyone north of the river."

  "Which is why I need a lawyer who's trusted south of the river."

  "I do traffic tickets."

  "You're a lawyer, aren't you?"

  Andy glanced up at his diploma hanging on the wall next to the American IronHorse poster.

  "Yeah, I guess so."

  "And you know everyone down here and everyone knows you?"

  Andy shrugged.

  "And everyone down here trusts you?"

  Another shrug.

  "And you office above a tattoo parlor, so I'm betting you've got a tattoo?"

  Andy nodded. Russell Reeves held his hands out.

  "You're perfect."

  "I am?"

  "Andy, I send my downtown lawyers into SoCo wearing Armani and acting like assholes, the locals will shut us down before we get started. It'd be a disaster."

  He was right.

  "Mr. Reeves, how'd you get my name?"