The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [37]
Dan’s station wagon was parked next to him; she was almost his age and looked it. They had married right out of law school and immediately had a child, added insurance that Dan Ford would not be touring Indonesia courtesy of Uncle Sam. Over the years, Dan had had three brief affairs, if you called making it with a drunk secretary on the sofa in his office after the firm Christmas party an affair, but he had never considered divorcing his wife for another woman. First, there hadn’t been another woman who had expressed any interest in becoming his next wife; and second, his true love was and had always been his law firm.
Political animals of every breed were making an appearance at Clark McCall’s funeral. They came not out of grief for the deceased, but because it was good for business: CEOs who needed McCall’s vote to extend their special tax break or exemption from some onerous environmental regulation; members of Congress who dared not cross the most powerful man in the Senate; the vice president because network news cameras were present; cabinet members who hoped to be in a McCall administration; and judges—district court judges who wanted to be appeals court judges and appeals court judges who wanted to be Supreme Court justices, promotions requiring Senate confirmation. Clark McCall’s funeral had brought together a collection of national figures from politics and business the likes of which Dallas had seldom seen. When you’re the leading bet to be the next president, people come to your son’s funeral.
And the stalwarts of funerals, the old ladies of Highland Park, had come, recalling how handsome Clark had been as a boy. The funeral guests were friends of the family, not friends of Clark. A few young men about Clark’s age had come, themselves sons of great wealth who would forever be burdens to their parents. But no young women had come. Clark did not seem to have any female friends who mourned his passing.
Just as Dan’s own son would have no female friends at his funeral; he had recently confessed to being gay. God knows, Clark’s heterosexuality had never been in question. How many times had the senator called Dan in the middle of the night to bail Clark out of the Highland Park jail? Once a month, it seemed, during Clark’s college career at SMU and a dozen times since. Drinking, snorting, screwing—Clark McCall had definitely enjoyed himself. Fortunately, the boy had the good sense to get himself arrested in Highland Park, where money mattered.
The reverend stepped to the lectern, the people took their seats, and the background music faded away. The reverend spoke of God and heaven and peace, that Clark was in a better place; the good preacher was selling eternity, but Dan Ford wasn’t buying. Right here, right now, that’s all we have. Don’t wait for the hereafter. Get what you want here and now.
After ten minutes of the reverend, Senator Mack McCall stood and walked to his son’s coffin by the altar, placed his palm on the top, and closed his eyes, as if in prayer. But Dan wasn’t buying that either; he knew Mack too well.
Mack went to the lectern and gazed out at the assemblage with a grim expression. He spoke slowly and with great emotion of his only son, of how it was against nature for a son to die before his father, of how he had experienced pain in his sixty years, but nothing like this. Clark had been a troubled boy and for this he blamed himself, which Dan Ford knew was an absolute lie. Mack blamed Martha for not letting him send Clark to a military boarding school when he was ten. But Mack McCall was very good at this sort of thing, and by the end of his eulogy, most of the funeral guests were crying or damn close to it.
His only son was dead and buried.
They had never bonded, Mack McCall and his son. Clark had bonded with his mother; Mack had bonded with money. He reached into his inside coat pocket and removed and opened his billfold: not a single photograph of his son or either of his wives, but thick with