The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [47]
Scott turned his palms up. “So…?”
“So our defense is twofold. First, she didn’t pull the trigger, which is gonna be tough with her fingerprints on her gun and one of her bullets in his brain. And if she didn’t, who did? Clark? He suddenly realizes his evil ways and decides to make the world a better place and off himself? I don’t think so. Our backup is self-defense. He called her racial slurs, he attacked her, so she shot him in self-defense. But she’s black, a hooker, and a drug addict—who’s gonna believe her, right? That’s where Hannah Steele comes in, corroborating testimony. Nice white girl testifies Clark beat and raped her a year ago, jury figures maybe Shawanda’s telling the truth. And the jury’s got to include some blacks. We show them that Clark McCall was a racist and a rapist, we might just save her life.”
“An acquittal?”
Bobby gave him a look. “No, not an acquittal, Scotty. Life in prison, maybe parole in thirty with good time. You don’t get acquitted when your gun is the murder weapon and your fingerprints are on the gun and the gun was fired point-blank into the victim’s brain while he was lying on the floor. With that kind of evidence, life in prison is a win for her.”
“Goddamnit, Dan, you tell him to drop it and drop it now!”
The senator’s voice was so loud in Dan Ford’s ear that he pulled the phone away a few inches. Dan had just gotten a status report from Scott on the Shawanda Jones case and, per his agreement with the senator, he had immediately placed a call to Washington. Mack McCall, the senior senator from Texas, didn’t like what he heard.
“Bad enough, Dan, a hooker taking the stand and saying Clark beat her and called her nigger. But your boy starts parading white girls up there saying Clark beat and raped them, too, I’m fucking finished! I thought that girl was taken care of! And what if they dredge up that crap from college, Clark and his fraternity?”
Clark McCall had organized a “Minority Night” fraternity party where everyone dressed up as their favorite minority; Clark had gone in blackface as a pimp. Mack had bought off the newspaper to keep the story quiet. Dan Ford had been the bagman.
“The public will think he learned that at home! From me! Press gets hold of that, I’ll be branded another Strom fucking Thurmond! I’ll never see the inside of the White House!” A pause. “And, Dan, you will never be the president’s lawyer.”
“George W. Bush?”
“Yes,” Scott said.
Sid Greenberg seemed stunned. “The president used eminent domain to take people’s land for a baseball stadium?”
“He wasn’t the president back then, Sid. He wasn’t even the governor yet. While you were at Harvard being taught by left-wing professors, George Bush was running the Texas Rangers. They were playing in a crappy old stadium, so he got the city to condemn land to build a new stadium.”
“How is that a public use?”
“It’s not.”
“Then how could the city condemn the land?”
“Because the law allows it…or at least the courts haven’t stopped it. They did it for the Rangers stadium, they did it for the NASCAR motor speedway, they’re doing it for the new Cowboys stadium…Hell, Sid, they’re doing it all across the country and not just for roads and parks, but for stadiums and shopping malls and big box stores…”
“And now we’re going to do it for Dibrell’s hotel.”
Scott shrugged. “That’s the deal Tom made with the city.”
“We’re going to take poor people’s homes so rich people can stay in a five-star luxury hotel?” Sid looked indignant. “Why don’t they ever take rich people’s homes?”
“Because rich people can afford to hire lawyers and fight it in court. Poor people can’t.”
“So the city’s gonna buy them out cheap—with Dibrell’s money, bulldoze their homes, and give the land to Dibrell so he can build his hotel? What’s in it for the city?”
“Millions more in property taxes. The hotel will be worth a hundred million, minimum. Those little homes are worth a million, max.”
“Dibrell gets his hotel, the city gets more taxes, and poor people get screwed. And it’s all perfectly legal.”
“Sid, we do what the