The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [64]
The answer was obvious: not at all. The day after her conviction, he would be back at his desk, working to make rich clients richer and bringing home $750,000 a year. As he would the day after her execution. She would quickly become part of his past. A year from now he wouldn’t even remember her name.
Scott had always followed Dan Ford’s advice, and he knew he should follow Dan’s advice now. He should chalk up Shawanda’s pathetic heroin-addicted life as unimportant and irrelevant and inconsequential to his life. He should lose her case and move on, as he had with other clients whose cases he had lost. Even Scott Fenney couldn’t win every case. Those few times he had lost, he had moped around, cursing the judge and jury for a few days, but once the client paid his final bill and the check cleared, he had gotten over it and moved on.
But there was a difference.
Scott Fenney had never thrown a case. Or a contest. Or a game. He had always played to win. Every game he had ever played—football, golf, lawyering—had been a test of his manhood, so he had played every game to win. All-out, no-holds-barred, win at all costs—that’s what made him a winner. Every cell in his body was infused with the desire to win, a desire that had taken him from being the poor kid on the block to owning a mansion on Beverly Drive in the heart of Highland Park. But Dan Ford was now telling him to play to lose. Could Scott Fenney play to lose and still be a winner?
That thought bothered him all the way home. But as he pulled into the motor court behind his mansion, a new more bothersome thought had invaded his mind: How would Shawanda’s death affect Pajamae’s life?
Scott had said bedtime prayers with the girls, tucked them in snugly, and was standing to leave, but he needed to ask Pajamae a question.
“Pajamae, do you think your mother could hurt anyone?”
“No, sir, Mr. Fenney. Mama, she’s got a good heart. She cares about people. Her problem is, she doesn’t care enough about herself. She’s always telling me to love myself, but she doesn’t love herself. My daddy made her like that, hitting her, making her sick. So don’t blame her, Mr. Fenney, it’s not her fault.”
Then she turned her big brown eyes up at Scott and asked him a question.
“Mr. Fenney, are the po-lice gonna kill my mama, too?”
FOURTEEN
EXECUTION OF THE DEFENDANT would violate her civil rights under the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States…
The defendant. Her mother. Execution. Damn.
Pajamae was playing in the pool with Boo; they were standing in opposite shallow ends and tossing a Frisbee back and forth across the deep middle part of the pool. Scott was sitting on the patio reading Bobby’s brief that argued Pajamae’s mother should not be put to death if found guilty of murdering Clark McCall.
It was another blazingly hot Sunday afternoon in Highland Park. The girls were cool in the pool. Scott was sweating in the shade of the patio awning. Rebecca was down in the exercise room climbing the Stairmaster to nowhere in air-conditioned comfort. Consuela was in Little Mexico being courted by Esteban Garcia. Scott had driven her down that morning to the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe Catholic Church located at the northern boundary of downtown Dallas, which was also the southern boundary of Little Mexico. Esteban was waiting at the curb, dressed in black boots, black trousers, and a long-sleeve white shirt starched crisp; he was clean shaven and his hair was slicked back. He looked like a Mexican matador. He greeted Consuela de