The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [38]
He had spent $25 million to purchase a Senate seat, only to discover that the sole power senators wielded was the power to deliver pork to their home states, not unlike a mailman delivering Social Security checks. It was power that served only to ensure their incumbency.
But Mack McCall wanted to leave his footprints on this earth; he wanted history to know he had been here. Before the divorce, Martha had suggested he establish a private foundation, use his wealth to help the world’s poor: AIDS victims in Africa, uneducated children in Mexico, homeless people in America. But even $800 million was a drop in the bucket when it came to the world’s social problems. And besides, he had never concerned himself with the plight of poor people; it just wasn’t his thing. So he divorced Martha and married Jean, and now he would spend as much of his fortune as necessary to buy the power he so coveted, the power to dispatch the United States Army. Wipe out a few Middle Eastern dictators, and history damn sure knows you were here.
Mack was standing in the bedroom of his Highland Park mansion where his son had been murdered. His mind began playing out the last moments of Clark’s life according to the police report, moments filled with alcohol and cocaine and lust and rage and fear and a hooker—a nigger, for God’s sake! His son had screwed her and fought her and then died right there on the floor where the carpet had been cut out and removed by the FBI. He saw Clark lying dead and felt the emotions welling up inside him and he thought, as he always thought when Clark came to mind:
What a major-league fuckup his son had been.
Anyone else’s son and Mack would say the boy deserved it, living a reckless life, bringing a hooker home to Highland Park. But it was his son and that made it different: no one else in Highland Park was running for president. For the last twenty years, Mack McCall’s every act, speech, public appearance, Senate vote—every breath he took—had been judged against one overriding concern: How would it affect his presidential ambitions? So now no conscious effort was required for his mind to judge his son’s murder and all the publicity the hooker’s trial would bring against the same concern.
Mack didn’t like the conclusions his mind arrived at.
He had threatened to cut Clark out of his will on more than one occasion, an attempt to curb his son’s reckless ways by threatening his future. But now it was the son who was threatening his father’s future: the circumstances of Clark’s death and his many indiscretions posed an imminent threat to Mack’s White House dreams. And Mack McCall was not one to wait passively for a threat to become reality.
Two hours later, Mack was standing at the open double doors of the foyer, saying good-bye to those who had come to pay their respects. Dan Ford was the last to leave. Mack watched Dan walk down the long walkway to the circle drive where the valet held open the door to Dan’s waiting Mercedes-Benz. Dan Ford would cooperate: a lawyer’s loyalty could always be purchased for a reasonable fee.
“This Fenney boy,” Mack said, “he played ball at SMU, pretty damn good as I recall.”
Mack shut the front doors and turned to Delroy Lund, a big, bald, no-necked slab of beef. Delroy was not the brightest former DEA agent in the country, and he was plenty rough around the edges—subtlety wasn’t Delroy’s strong point—but he had proved himself a loyal bodyguard and capable private investigator, adept at uncovering dirty little secrets about senators who opposed Mack on various pork barrel bills and his ex-wife during their divorce proceedings.
“Find everything there is to find on Fenney, and I mean everything. I want his transcripts, bank records, debts, tax returns. I want to know his clients, his friends, his enemies, whether he’s fucking around on his wife or she’s fucking around on