The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [100]
“Can’t afford? I can afford this place! Three million four!”
Jeffrey should’ve paid closer attention to Scott during those negotiations because the boy obviously hadn’t learned much. First rule of negotiating, don’t bring your ego to the bargaining table. Second rule, don’t bring your wife. Jeffrey had violated both rules; now he would pay dearly. Scott stuck his hand out.
“You just bought yourself a house.”
Jeffrey said, “I want the appliances, the window treatments, and the black man.”
“What?”
“The appliances—”
“You can have the appliances, Jeffrey. What do you mean, you want the black man?”
“Doesn’t he come with the house? He’s your help, right?”
“No, he’s my friend. And he doesn’t go with the house. Slavery ended a few years back, maybe you read about it.”
Jeffrey frowned, but Penny smiled and said, “I’ll have to measure for furniture, maybe Monday morning? Will you be available, Scott? I’d really like to come.”
“I can’t believe none of Clark’s other victims have come forward,” Scott said.
It was after dinner. The girls were upstairs, Scott and Bobby were sitting on the kitchen floor drinking a beer, and the trial was only two weeks away.
“They’re scared,” Bobby said. “They’ve seen what McCall did to you.”
“Our whole case rests on Hannah.”
“And my briefs,” Bobby said. “You read them yet?”
“Yeah. You’re a good writer, Bobby.”
“That’s the only thing about the law I really like doing.”
“Why do you stay in it?”
Bobby shrugged. “Too late to do something else. And debts—I can’t afford to quit. And, dumb as it sounds, I care about my clients, probably because no one else does.”
“You were always taking in stray dogs.”
“I was at that.”
“I remember that brown and white mutt, you called him Shitface. What ever happened to him?”
“Got run over by a delivery truck.”
“Ouch.”
“I liked that dog.” They sat in silence, and then Bobby said, “When this is over, maybe you should get out of Dallas.”
“McCall’s not running me out of town. I’m staying.”
“Good.” Bobby drank his beer, then said, “Let’s subpoena Dan Ford, make him give up the names of the six other girls he paid off for McCall.”
Scott shook his head. “No way he gives them up. And the judge won’t bust through the attorney-client privilege. I’ve hidden enough damaging evidence about my clients behind the privilege to know.”
“Then Hannah’s our only witness, other than Shawanda.”
“Did you tell Carl to check into Delroy Lund?”
“Oh, yeah. Way into Delroy.”
“What about the prosecution witnesses?”
“I got Ray’s list, shows how the trial’s gonna go.”
“And how’s that?”
“It’s a circumstantial case, most cases are. Ray’ll first put on the Dallas cops who found Clark’s car and called it in. Then he’ll put on the Highland Park cops who went over to the McCall mansion and found Clark. Next, the FBI agents who processed the crime scene and took the photos, which he’ll put up on the big screen. Then the Dallas County medical examiner will testify as to cause of death and time of death. And last up will be the crime lab guys who lifted Shawanda’s prints from the gun and the car, test-fired the gun, and matched the ballistics, and a forensics expert to give his opinion as to how the crime was committed. Scotty, by the time Ray’s through, the jury’s gonna believe she did it for sure.”
“And then we’ll put Shawanda on, a heroin-addicted hooker.”
“She has to testify, Scotty. Fifth Amendment sounds great, but juries expect an innocent person to take the oath, look them in the eye, and swear she’s innocent.”
“She looks like hell.”
“You would too, Scotty, if you were injecting Mexican black tar heroin three times a day.”
Four miles due south, Shawanda Jones withdrew the needle from her right arm, leaned back on her cot in her cell, and waited for the heroin to enter her bloodstream, travel to her brain, cross the blood-brain barrier, and bind itself to the opioid receptors on her brain’s nerve cells. When the heroin hit the