The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [17]
The Highland Park police did not stop the Ferrari: Scott Fenney was white and he lived there. Like other white men of means, he made his money in Dallas but came home to Highland Park, raised his family in Highland Park, and sent his child to Highland Park schools. He turned right onto Beverly Drive and into the driveway of his two-and-a-half-story, 7,500-square-foot, six-bedroom, six-bath, $3.5 million residence. He had bought the home three years ago for $2.8 million when the previous owner had filed bankruptcy and the bank had foreclosed. Dan Ford had called in a personal favor and persuaded the bank to sell the house to Scott with one-hundred-percent financing at prime plus five. Sitting on one acre in the heart of Highland Park, the place had been a steal at that price. Scott had jumped in with both feet, into debt up to his neck. In many towns in Texas, men who owe large sums of money are looked on with suspicion; in Dallas, such men are looked on with awe.
Scott drove up the brick-paved driveway and into the rear motor court. He cut the engine, but he didn’t get out. Usually when he arrived home each evening and again admired his residence, he was filled with a sense of pride, that through brains and hard lawyering, he had achieved the perfect home for a perfect life.
But this evening was different.
For only the second time in his life, a distinct feeling of impending doom darkened his mind, just as it had when he was ten and his mother had picked him up early from school and said his father had been hurt. He knew his father was dead.
Butch Fenney had been a construction worker. A cable snapped and a load of lumber fell, crushing him. Scott’s mother did the best she could, but they had to sell their small house in East Dallas. She worked for an orthopedic surgeon who lived in Highland Park and owned a teardown over by SMU, a tiny sixty-year-old home that would fall over if given a good push. The house was worthless, but the 75- by 125-foot lot it sat on was worth at least $250,000. The doctor planned to hold the property until his retirement, when he would demolish the house and sell the lot for a substantial profit. The good doctor rented the home to the Fenney family, mother and son.
So Scott Fenney attended Highland Park schools with the sons and daughters of governors and senators and millionaires and billionaires, scions of the great Dallas families like the Hunts and Perots and Crows. He was the poor kid on the block, the kid who didn’t wear designer jeans and $100 Nike sneakers, who didn’t go to Europe for spring break, who didn’t get a $50,000 BMW for his sixteenth birthday. But Scott Fenney possessed something no snotty rich boy could ever buy with daddy’s money: athletic ability. Remarkable God-given physical talent revealed with a run the town would never forget. High school football. Friday night fever. Legitimate, structured violence, organized by men, inflicted by boys, cheered by all—and a tried-and-true method for pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps in Texas. Scott was strong and he was tough and he was fast. He became the star running back for Highland Park High, the best since Doak Walker.
After high school, he went to SMU. Most Highland Park kids are deathly afraid of leaving the safety and security of the Bubble, so going off to college for them means moving out of their parents’ home in Highland Park, driving the Beemer a few blocks, and moving into a sorority or fraternity house on the SMU campus in Highland Park. Scott Fenney went to SMU because the school offered him a football scholarship. He starred on the varsity for four years; his 193 yards against Texas made him a legend. He was also popular enough to be elected class president and smart enough to graduate first in his class. When the pros passed on the six foot two, 185-pound white running back with jagged scars down both knees, he enrolled in SMU law school.
Now, you don’t go to Southern Methodist University School of Law if you