The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [48]
“You know, Scott, screwing the government and plaintiffs’ lawyers, that’s fun, it’s just a game. But poor people? My parents were poor. I grew up in a house like those.”
“Look, Sid, I don’t like it either, but that’s our job. At least we’re only taking thirty homes. They took a hundred twenty homes for that mall out in Hurst, and they’re taking ninety homes for the Cowboys stadium.”
“Well, that makes me feel better.” Sid shook his head. “This is what I went to Harvard Law School for?”
Scott turned his palms up. “Sid, what do you want me to do? Tell Dibrell we won’t do it? If I say no to Dibrell, he’ll find another lawyer who’ll say yes. This deal is gonna get done, those homes are gonna get condemned, and that hotel is gonna get built. The only question is which lawyers are going to get paid half a million dollars for doing it. If Dibrell takes this deal to another firm, Sid, that means I’ve got to fire one of my associates. Are you willing to give up your job—and your two-hundred-thousand-dollar salary—so you don’t have to condemn those people? So you don’t get your hands dirty?”
Sid stared at his shoes. Finally, he shook his head slowly and said, “No.”
“Sid, when I was a young lawyer, Dan Ford told me, ‘Scotty, check your conscience at the door each morning or you won’t last long in the law.’”
Sid looked up. “The law sucks.”
“It’s just business, Sid.”
“They don’t tell you that in law school, do they, that the law is just a business, a game we play, with other people’s lives and money? No, they need someone to pay tuition, kids who don’t have a clue what being a lawyer’s all about, kids who think…”
Scott sat silently, nodding like a therapist as his patient vented. Every lawyer goes through the same metamorphosis that Sid was now going through, like a caterpillar changing into a butterfly, only in reverse: from a beautiful human being to a slimy lawyer. Scott recalled Dan Ford nodding as a young patient named Scott Fenney vented.
Sid was saying, “Last time I went back home, my parents had all their friends in the old neighborhood over so they could show me off, their son the big-time lawyer. How am I supposed to tell them what we really do, Scott?”
“You’re not. You can’t. You don’t. You walk out that door each night, you leave it here, Sid, your lawyer life. You don’t take it home with you. Look, Sid, you’ve only been at this for five years. It takes a while to learn that you only talk about these things with other lawyers. Regular people just don’t understand what we do.”
“That’s the thing, Scott, I think they do.”
“Sid, wait till you get married, have children, you’ll see. You’ll go home and your wife and kids are gonna say, ‘Daddy, what did you do today?’ What are you going to tell them, the truth? Hell, no. You’re gonna lie. We all lie.”
Sid took a moment to consider Scott’s words, then slowly stood and walked to the door, but turned back.
“Oh, Scott, we closed Dibrell’s land deal. We got the environmental report, escrowed $10 million of the purchase price. We’ll start paving over the lead soon. TRAIL will never know about the report, and the EPA will never know about the lead.”
“Aggressive and creative lawyering, Sid.”
Sid nodded and turned away, but Scott could hear him say, “I should’ve gone to med school.”
After Sid left Scott turned to his computer. He was logging in one billable hour to Dibrell’s account for the thirty-minute “office conference” with Sid when he felt a presence. He turned and saw Dan Ford standing in his doorway, about as ordinary an occurrence as going to Sunday morning Mass and seeing the Pope standing at the altar.
“Dan, come in.”
Dan entered, his face creased with worry. He started shaking his head slowly and sighed like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
“I knew this case would bring no good.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just got off the phone with McCall.”
“The senator? You mentioned him before, but I didn’t realize you knew him personally.”
Dan nodded. “Mack and I were fraternity brothers at SMU. I’m the