The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [36]
“Keep Herrin on the case, let him do all the heavy lifting, write all briefs and motions, make all pretrial appearances—that’ll keep the firm’s name out of the papers and off TV. And no goddamn interviews, make sure Herrin knows that! You”—a finger pointed at Scott—“you work for our paying clients.”
Dan checked his watch and walked over to the coatrack. “Keep me posted. I don’t want any surprises, Scott.”
Scott departed, and Dan slipped into his coat; he was wearing a black suit today. He had to go to a funeral.
NINE
MOST RESIDENTS of Highland Park who knew Clark McCall always assumed he would die young. He was wild and reckless, to the degree only a child of enormous wealth could afford to be. A son of the middle class could not afford to squander his chances at admission to a top college and then law or medical school. But for Clark McCall, those considerations were of no concern: his father possessed a net worth in excess of $800 million.
Dan Ford was sitting in the sanctuary of the Highland Park United Methodist Church situated at the southern end of the SMU campus, waiting for Clark McCall’s funeral service to begin. He had known Clark all the boy’s life because he had known Clark’s father for forty-two years. Dan had met Mack their freshman year at SMU when they had pledged the same fraternity.
With America at war in Vietnam and Uncle Sam drafting more young men to die, Dan Ford had decided to fight the war at a private college and then a private law school. He did not pursue a legal career out of any particular love of the law, only because of a particular fear of dying in some rice paddy ten thousand miles away. He wasn’t alone in that fear: enrollment at America’s law schools doubled during the war.
But once his future career was fixed, Dan Ford plotted a path to success. He knew lawyers got rich by representing rich clients. So, while most freshmen busied themselves with drinking and screwing, free of mommy and daddy for the first time, young Dan Ford began cultivating future clients.
Mack McCall was at the top of his list. As soon as you met him, you knew Mack was going places. He had that look about him. Born in Odessa, son of a roughneck and one himself, Mack was engaged to his high school sweetheart, the only daughter of an oil company vice president. His future father-in-law paid Mack’s way through SMU.
Summers, Dan clerked in Dallas law firms, learning the ways of lawyers. Mack worked on West Texas oil rigs. Back then, oil was going for two bucks a barrel; Mack predicted ten dollars a barrel. Even he didn’t dream of oil at fifty dollars a barrel.
By graduation day, Mack knew how to drill wells and, more important, he knew where to drill. Over the four years of college, he had mapped every producing well and dry hole in the Permian Basin. He hit his first wildcat well the summer after graduation. By the time Dan had graduated law school, Mack McCall was worth $20 million. Like H. L. Hunt and other Texas wildcatters before him, Mack McCall soon bored of what he could buy in an oil town, so he moved to Dallas. And Dan Ford, Esq., had his first rich client.
Dan now watched as the senior senator from Texas worked the church crowd as if his son’s funeral was just another campaign stop, although he was wearing his version of a grief-stricken face. He was a handsome man, with a full head of starched gray hair, immaculately dressed as always, the kind of man teenagers go “yuk” at, but women of AARP find irresistibly attractive.
Organ music was playing softly in the background, voices were subdued, and Dan was sitting in a pew in the middle of the church, a good vantage point from which to see who came and who did not. Martha McCall, Mack’s first wife and Clark’s mother, arrived early and sat in the front pew with the other family members. She looked so old next to Jean McCall, but