The Color of Law_ A Novel - Mark Gimenez [93]
But today was different.
He wasn’t enjoying the ride home. Because at the end of the ride, he would have to tell his wife and daughter that he had been fired, that he was no longer a partner at Ford Stevens, that he would no longer be bringing home money each night, that he had lost the family fortune. That Scott Fenney was now a loser.
How could he face his wife as a loser? His daughter? His neighbors in Highland Park? Scott hit the right turn signal and braked to turn onto Beverly Drive…but at the last second he changed his mind and accelerated straight through the intersection and continued north past Highland Park Village. He couldn’t go home. Not yet. A few blocks later he turned left and pulled over in front of the Highland Park High School football stadium, where life as he knew it had begun the first day of fall football practice his freshman year.
Inside a stadium that shamed many college stadiums, this year’s team was practicing on the artificial turf. Scott cut the engine and got out of the Ferrari. He walked over to the fence and watched the boys working out on the field while the cheerleaders went through their routines on the sideline, white boys dreaming of being another Highland Park football legend like Doak Walker or Bobby Layne or Scotty Fenney and white girls dreaming of being another Hollywood starlet from Highland Park like Jayne Mansfield or Angie Harmon, but knowing that if their dreams were not realized they could always fall back on their daddies’ money, fortunes that assured them futures as bright and certain as the blue sky above. And he wondered if he had fooled himself all these years, thinking he belonged here, that his football heroics were enough to make him one of them. Maybe the son of a construction worker is always the son of a construction worker. Maybe a renter is always a renter. Maybe the poor kid on the block is always the poor kid on the block, even if he lives in a mansion. Maybe you are what you’ve always been.
His dream had begun right out there, on that very field, twenty-one years ago when he was fifteen. And that dream had ended today. And he found himself wondering, for the first time since that day so long ago, what he would do with the rest of his life.
He walked back to the Ferrari. Now he would drive home and tell his wife and daughter that he had lost everything, his only consolation being that there was nothing more for Mack McCall and Dan Ford to take, nothing more for Scott Fenney to lose.
When he opened the car door, his cell phone was ringing.
A. Scott said he’d be there in less than a minute. He didn’t lie. They were standing on the sidewalk outside the store again when Boo heard the familiar roar of the Ferrari’s engine. She turned and saw the bright red vehicle veer sharply into the Village and accelerate through the parking lot. She held her arms above her head and waved wildly and jumped up and down. And then she pointed directly at the bald man in the black car. He sat up quickly when he saw her pointing; then he saw the Ferrari coming toward him. He started his car and drove out of his parking place and turned left, but another car was backing out of one of the slanted spots by the sidewalk.
His car was blocked.
The red Ferrari screeched to a stop behind the bald man’s black car. A. Scott jumped out. He didn’t even shut his door. He ran up to the black car with a golf club in his hand.
Why did A. Scott have a golf club in the Ferrari?
Boo’s lawyer-father, wearing one of his starched white shirts and a silk tie flapping over his shoulder, reared back and swung the club at the driver’s window.
WHACK!
The glass cracking sounded like an explosion and froze everyone within earshot. A few old people ducked. Ladies from inside the store