The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [103]
But working out made him think about football, and thinking about football made him think about the cheerleaders, and thinking about the cheerleaders made him think about Rebecca. He thought about their life together, the incredible sex, their vacations to Hawaii and San Francisco and London, and, of course, Boo. They had had eleven years together, and now she was gone. Had their marriage been a mistake from the beginning? Had she ever really loved him? Of course, it had never occurred to him that she might not have loved him because everyone—fans, coaches, cheerleaders—had always loved Scott Fenney.
He had so many questions, and no one to ask for answers. His mother would have said, “It’s God’s plan, and God has a reason, even if we don’t understand.” Butch would have said, “She’s a selfish bitch, running off like that.” The truth lay somewhere in between. But one truth he knew: if he hadn’t married Rebecca, there would be no Boo. And without Boo, there would be no life for Scott Fenney.
“What the hell was I supposed to do, kill him?”
“Jesus, Delroy, in the Highland Park Village?”
Delroy Lund was standing in the den of the McCall town house in Georgetown. The senator was standing at the window. He wasn’t happy to hear Delroy’s report about the incident with Fenney at the shopping center.
“I was just trying to send him a message, but Fenney went fuckin’ nuts…Oh, by the way, you bought a rental car.”
The senator dismissed that news with a wave of his hand. Delroy particularly appreciated that aspect of working for a guy worth $800 million: He didn’t blink an eye at an unexpected $35,000 expense. He just wanted results and screw the costs. Delroy Lund got results.
“Now he’s got a big black dude playing bodyguard. But I’ll try again if you want.”
“No, leave it alone. You and the black guy get together, someone will get killed. And that’s all I need, another murder connected to me. So Fenney’s wife left him?”
“Yeah, she ran off with the golf pro.”
The senator smiled for the first time that day. “Good.”
“Look, Senator, Fenney talked big on TV, but he ain’t got nothing to back it up. Those other girls, they’re not testifying. All they got is Hannah Steele.”
“She’s enough, goddamnit!”
The senator turned from the window and paced the room, talking like he was thinking out loud.
“Fifteen months until the election. If the hooker’s convicted, everyone will figure what Fenney said on TV was just the lies of a lawyer. It’ll all be forgotten a few months from now…The public’s got the attention span of a two-year-old. I can still get into the White House, Delroy, if she’s convicted. But if Hannah Steele walks into that courtroom and testifies that Clark beat and raped her…”
The senator started shaking his head.
“But, Senator, if she don’t testify, it’s just the word of a whore.”
The senator stared at Delroy a long moment.
“Delroy, go see if the fish are biting in Galveston.”
Scott Fenney hadn’t cried since his mother died. And the only time before that was when his father died. He didn’t cry when they drove his body into the ground, he didn’t cry when they broke his fingers or his ribs, he didn’t cry when they tore his knee ligaments. You don’t cry on a football field.
But Scott Fenney wasn’t on a football field now; he was in bed and he was crying.
His wife had left him for a golf pro. The final humiliation in a long list of humiliations, every detail of which had been duly reported in the local newspaper. All of Dallas knew