The Color of Law

TEN

The rest of June passed quietly. The temperature climbed steadily as summer set in so that by the end of the month the mercury was pushing one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Rain became an infrequent occurrence and the sun beat down on the landscape with a vengeance. Native oak trees burrowed their roots deeper into the earth to suck the last drop of moisture from the parched Texas soil, and all God’s creatures hunkered down for another merciless summer, except those wealthy Dallas families who could afford to flee to the cool air of Colorado or California. The less fortunate remained behind and relied on air-conditioning and backyard pools to survive the heat.

Rebecca Fenney continued her relentless climb up the Highland Park social ladder; Boo Fenney occupied herself at home with her computer and her books; Consuela de la Rosa was reunited with Esteban Garcia, just back from the border; Scott Fenney billed two hundred hours at $350 an hour for Ford Stevens’s paying clients; Bobby Herrin billed one hundred hours at $50 an hour for the firm’s only nonpaying client; and the federal grand jury formally indicted Shawanda Jones for the murder of Clark McCall. The federal magistrate set her bail at $1 million, which meant she would remain in custody until the verdict was read, at which time she would be either set free or shipped off to a federal prison to serve her sentence or await execution. She called her lawyer daily, sometimes several times a day, always crying hysterically from the combined effect of craving both her daughter and heroin. Having no idea where he might acquire heroin for her, her lawyer did the only thing he knew to get her to shut the fuck up: he agreed to bring her daughter down to the detention center to see her. Or at least to have Bobby bring her daughter to her.

But Bobby copped a plea: fear. “Shit, Scotty, East Dallas is scary enough for me,” he said. “Fat white dude like myself, I wouldn’t last five minutes in South Dallas. Sorry, man, but no way I’m risking my life for fifty bucks an hour!”

So it was that on the second day of July and the first hundred-degree day of the summer, A. Scott Fenney, Esq., $750,000-a-year corporate partner at Ford Stevens LLP, found himself driving a shiny red Ferrari 360 Modena slowly through a grim public housing project in South Dallas, past the rhythmic pounding of loud rap music and the glares of tough-looking young black men, and feeling as if he were driving a flashing neon sign that screamed CARJACK ME! Scott had played football with black teammates at SMU fourteen years ago, but he didn’t figure that would count for much with these guys. Without conscious thought, Scott slid down the leather seat until he could barely see over the steering wheel.

Thirty-six years Scott Fenney had lived in Dallas and not once had he driven into South Dallas. White people drove south of downtown three times each year and only for events held within the gated Fair Park grounds-the State Fair, the Oklahoma-Texas football game, and the Cotton Bowl game-being careful to stay on the interstate, to take the Fair Park exit, and to drive directly through the park gates without detour or delay. White people never drove into South Dallas, into the neighborhoods and mean streets of South Dallas, into the other Dallas of crime and crack cocaine, prostitution and poverty, drive-by shootings and gangbangers, into black Dallas, where a white boy from Highland Park driving a $200,000 Italian sports car was considered neither welcome nor very smart.

But here Scott was, parking in front of a concrete block building euphemistically called a “garden apartment” by the housing authority, although not a blade of grass much less a garden was evident to Scott’s eye. He cut the engine and was working up the courage to get out-the Ferrari had attracted a crowd-when the sun was suddenly blocked out by a Dallas Cowboys jersey on the biggest black man he’d ever seen on or off a football field. Black knuckles rapped against the blacked-out window. Scott lowered the window an inch.

The jersey moved down until Scott saw wide shoulders, a thick neck, and finally a broad black face. The man lowered his sunglasses and peered in.

“You the lawyer?”

“What?”

“You Shawanda’s lawyer?”

“Yeah.”

“You here for Pajamae?”

“Yeah, how-”

“Shawanda call me. She figured you might need a, uh…chaperone, if you know what I mean.”

Scott knew what he meant. He looked out both sides of the car at the crowd looking in, black women-girls really-with babies on their hips and toddlers clutching their thick legs and muscular black males, and he thought of Fight Night, the last time he had been in such close proximity to strong young black males. Started during the depths of the great Texas real-estate bust when the Dallas real-estate community desperately needed a distraction, Fight Night had become an annual tuxedo tradition: a boxing ring was set up in the swanky Anatole Hotel and black boxers were brought in to beat themselves senseless for the entertainment of rich white men smoking big cigars, eating thick steaks, drinking hard liquor, and playing patty-cake with beautiful young models hired for the night. Scott remembered thinking that the black boxers might be has-beens in the professional ranks, but they could KO every white guy in the joint with one punch-and probably wanted to.

Scott put on his glasses, not to appear smart, but in the hope that these black guys wouldn’t beat up a white guy wearing glasses. He took a deep breath, opened the door, climbed out, and stood pressed against the Ferrari. He felt his face flush and heard the big man’s voice boom out:

“Y’all back off, give the man some room! He’s the lawyer!”

The crowd eased back several steps. Scott exhaled with relief, then inhaled the air, which felt even hotter down here, not a whiff of breeze or a tree in sight to offer shade from the sun, its full force seemingly directed down on him. Beads of sweat popped out of the pores on his forehead like popcorn and his starched shirt stuck to his skin. He glanced around at the gray bunkerlike buildings, the gray dirt yards, the gray concrete landscape, and the black residents, a strange world in the shadows of the downtown skyscrapers. If Scott’s office faced south, his view would be of these projects, hence, the preferred northerly view, toward white Highland Park. Only five miles of pavement separated these projects from Highland Park, but the black kids plastering their faces against the Ferrari’s windows to catch a glimpse of the plush leather interior might as well have been living in China.

“That a fine ride, mister,” one black boy said with a wide grin.

The big man said, “I’m Louis.” He gestured at the crowd. “Don’t mind all them. We don’t get many lawyers down here.”

Louis stood maybe six six and weighed well over three hundred pounds. His huge hands dwarfed Scott’s. So Scott didn’t offer to shake hands; instead he said, “Scott Fenney,” and handed his card to Louis, who examined it intently.

“What the A stand for?”

“Nothing.” Scott pointed a thumb at the Ferrari. “Maybe I should wait in the car.”

Louis said sternly to the boys: “Touch that car, you answering to me.” Then he smiled at Scott and said, “Car be okay, Mr. Fenney.” Louis turned and the crowd parted. Scott followed Louis a few paces up the sidewalk, but Louis abruptly stopped and turned back. “Still, you might wanna lock it.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Scott dug the keys out of his pocket and beeped the Ferrari locked and one of the boys said, “Aw, man!” Scott turned and followed Louis through a gauntlet of shirtless young black men bouncing basketballs so hard against the concrete it sounded like high-powered weapons discharging- boom boom boom. Their torsos were knotty with muscles and glistening with sweat, their sinewy arms etched with barbed-wire tattoos, their expressions sullen. They were wearing long shorts hung low on their hips and those $100 Nikes Scott couldn’t afford as a boy and looking on Scott Fenney as prey, which no doubt he would have been but for the presence of Louis. Scott avoided direct eye contact with them like they say to do with wild animals for fear of inciting them. He wanted to cut and run back to the car and drive full throttle out of here. But he’d never make it to the Ferrari: the image of a pack of wolves pouncing on a fat little rabbit flashed through his mind. So he closed the gap with Louis and followed in the black man’s shadow. And he had to admit to himself, he who had never felt fear on a football field felt it now. Scott Fenney was terrified. By the time they arrived at apartment 110, Scott’s heart was beating against his chest wall like a jackhammer and he had broken a full-body sweat. Louis knocked on the door.

“Pajamae, it’s Louis.”

No answer. Louis knocked again. Still no answer. The front window was covered with thick drapes inside and black burglar bars outside. No light was visible from within the apartment.

“Maybe she’s not home,” Scott said.

Louis’s body shook with a chuckle. “She home all right. She afraid to come outside. Don’t even open the windows even though ain’t no air-condition in there. She ain’t come outside since Shawanda arrested.” He leaned down and lowered his voice and said, “It’s a good thing you doing, Mr. Fenney, taking Pajamae to see her mama.”

Scott’s mind was busy considering his chances of making it back through the gauntlet alive so the words, “Why didn’t you?” were out of his mouth before he realized what he was saying. But Louis didn’t react angrily. Instead, his big round face folded into a gold-toothed smile.

“Well, Mr. Fenney, me and the Feds, we got some, uh, outstanding issues, if you know what I mean.”

Scott knew what Louis meant. He noticed the peephole in the door turn dark. And he heard a tiny voice: “That the lawyer?”

“Yeah,” Louis said.

The peephole went light again and Scott heard the sound of a heavy object being pushed away from the door, then the releasing of five deadbolts. The door opened a crack and a small brown face with big brown eyes gazed up at Scott.

“You gonna save my mama?” she asked.

“Pajamae. That’s a, uh, different sort of name.”

Her face glued to the Ferrari’s air-conditioning vent, the little black girl said, “Mama says it’s French, but it’s really just black. We don’t do names like Susie and Patty and Mandy down here. We do names like Shantay and Beyonce and Pajamae.”

“My daughter’s name is Boo.”

She smiled. “That’s different.”

Scott smiled back. “She’s different. You’d like her.”

Scott had relaxed considerably once they had left the projects and turned onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, the main thoroughfare through South Dallas. His heartbeat was near normal and his body wasn’t sweating like a sprinkler hose. He wasn’t even slouched in his seat. He was sitting upright, looking around at this strange environment like a Japanese tourist at a rodeo. On one side of the street was the tall black wrought-iron fence that guarded the Fair Park grounds; inside were the Cotton Bowl stadium where the Cowboys had played until they struck out for the suburbs, and the historic Art Deco buildings dating back to the Texas Centennial Exposition of 1936 that now sat abandoned and decaying like an old movie set. On the other side of the street were overgrown vacant lots that apparently served as the neighborhood’s unofficial dumps, and boarded-up structures with broken-out windows and black men loitering outside.

“Crack houses,” Pajamae said.

Run-down strip centers offered pawn shops and liquor stores. Ramshackle frame houses slanted at twenty-degree angles, their paint peeling like skin from a badly sunburned body. Sofas sat on droopy porches, old cars were jacked up on cement blocks in the yards, garbage was backed up at the streets, and black burglar bars guarded every door and window of every house and storefront as if each structure were its owner’s personal prison. The entire landscape was dull and colorless, except for the graffiti adorning every wall and fence and the thick-bodied black women strolling by in colorful skirts and shorts and heels.

“Working girls,” Pajamae said. “Mama says they work down here because they’re too fat to get white tricks on Harry Hines.”

Scott was imagining living in this neighborhood, walking these streets with Boo, or worse, Boo walking alone, when his peripheral vision caught a commotion at the side of the road, and he slowed…a little.

“What’s going on?”

On the sidewalk outside a dilapidated apartment complex was a massive pile of belongings, everything from a microwave to clothes, a basketball to dolls, as if someone had backed up a truck and dumped the stuff there. Sitting on the curb were two black kids, their elbows on their knees, their chins cradled in their palms, looking like their world had just come to an end. An obese black woman in red stretch shorts and a white T-shirt was yelling and gesturing wildly at a skinny black man wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a tie. Pajamae strained her neck to see, then slumped back down.

“Eviction day,” she said matter-of-factly.

“They got evicted from their apartment?”

“Yeah. Happens first of every month.”

As a young lawyer, Scott had appeared in J.P. court numerous times on behalf of landlords to evict deadbeat tenants. But he had never witnessed firsthand the law in action-a family’s personal property removed from their apartment and dumped on the sidewalk out front, exactly as the eviction statute mandated. He glanced back at the scene and then accelerated away. When the Ferrari’s expensive racing tires hit the interstate heading north to downtown Dallas, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“My daddy, he was white,” Pajamae said.

He glanced over at the girl in the passenger’s seat. She was a cute kid with facial features that were more white than black. Her hair was done in neat rows braided lengthwise and snug to her scalp with long braids hanging to her narrow shoulders; she was wearing a pink T-shirt, jean shorts, pink socks folded down, and white Nike sneakers. Other than her light brown skin, she was no different from all the little girls Scott had seen in Highland Park-except for the cornrows.

“Where is he?”

“Dead.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not. He hurt my mama.”

“How did he die?”

“Po-lice shot him. He was dealing.”

She ran her finger lightly over the dash, as if checking for dust, and then she turned to Scott.

“Mr. Fenney, did my mama kill that white man?”

“No, baby, I ain’t killed no one,” Shawanda said through the glass partition, her right palm plastered to her side of the window and matched by Pajamae’s left palm on the other side. Both mother and daughter were crying and aching to hold each other. When Shawanda had said she had a child, Scott had naturally assumed she was a lousy mother-she was a prostitute, for God’s sake. But seeing them together now, it occurred to him that this woman loved her daughter as much as he loved his. He turned to the black guard.

“Can’t they be together?”

The guard’s eyes dropped; he scratched his chin. When his eyes came back up, he said, “You here to discuss her defense?”

Scott caught on quickly. “Yes.”

The guard gestured at Pajamae. “She a material witness?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

The guard led them to the small room where Scott and Shawanda always met. He patted Scott down, but he only patted the top of Pajamae’s head. When he brought Shawanda in, she dropped to her knees and embraced Pajamae for the longest time. The guard said he’d wait outside. Shawanda finally released Pajamae, then cupped her daughter’s face and just stared at her, as if examining every inch of her smooth face. Then she held Pajamae at arm’s length and looked her up and down.

“You dress yourself real nice,” Shawanda said. “Louis bringing you groceries, watching out for you?”

Pajamae nodded. “Yes, Mama.”

“You staying inside?”

Another nod. “Yes, Mama.”

Shawanda appeared in much better health than the last time Scott had seen her, more alert, making Scott less worried she might puke on his suit.

“You sleeping now?” Scott asked.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Fenney. I’m over the worst part, except the headaches.”

“I brought your medicine, Mama,” Pajamae said.

“Good girl.”

“I always take Tylenol for headaches,” Scott said.

“I need something stronger.”

“Ibuprofen?”

“Yeah, Ibu…that.”

“When are you getting out, Mama?”

“I ain’t, not till after the trial. If Mr. Fenney here prove me innocent.”

Scott said, “No, Shawanda, I don’t have to prove you’re innocent. The government’s got to prove you’re guilty.”

Shawanda looked at him like an adult at a naive child.

“Mr. Fenney, you got a lot to learn.”

“When’s the trial?” Pajamae asked.

“End of August,” Scott said.

Pajamae made a face. “But that’s two months from now! What am I supposed to do for that long? Mama, I’m scared to be alone in the projects!”

And the fear Scott Fenney had experienced less than an hour earlier returned with a vengeance. Sweat broke out on his forehead again. His heart beat faster again. His mind played out his odds of survival again, a fat little rabbit chased by a pack of wolves. He did not want to go back into South Dallas, not today, not ever. He did not want to take this little black girl back to her apartment in the projects and get out of the Ferrari and walk her to the door through a gauntlet of strong young black males looking upon him as prey. What if Louis weren’t there to chaperone? But he couldn’t very well put a little girl on a public bus or in a taxi alone. What the hell could he do with her? While mother and daughter embraced and shared tears, Scott’s agile mind worked through all the available options until it arrived at an answer: Consuela de la Rosa.

He figured, Consuela’s raising one little girl this summer, why not two? It was a perfect solution: Boo would have a playmate, this little girl wouldn’t be scared and alone in the projects, and he wouldn’t have to drive back into South Dallas. So in the emotion of the moment, Scott Fenney said words his wife would soon regret: “Pajamae, why don’t you stay at my house until after the trial?”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with her?”

Rebecca’s face was as red as her hair, her fists were embedded in her narrow hips, and she was glaring at him like he was a Neiman Marcus salesclerk who had brought her the wrong size dress to try on.

Scott had driven home directly from the courthouse. But as luck would have it, he had picked the one day his wife was not out social climbing to bring this little black girl home to Highland Park. Boo had said, “I love your hair,” and then had taken Pajamae upstairs. Consuela had retreated to the kitchen, and Scott found himself facing Rebecca’s wrath alone. Of course, Scott wasn’t about to tell his wife the whole truth, that he had brought this little black girl home mostly because he was scared to death to take her back to her own home. So he responded like a lawyer. He told her only part of the truth, the part that supported his position.

“She’s living alone down in the projects, she’s nine years old, she doesn’t have anyone else-she doesn’t even have air-conditioning! Hell, Rebecca, you go to Junior League and sit around with other Highland Park ladies dreaming up ways to help the less fortunate. This should win you the goddamn grand prize!”

“We help those people, Scott, but we don’t invite them home. You said yourself her mother’s going to be convicted. What are you going to do with her then, adopt her? Raise her as your daughter? Send her to Highland Park schools? Scott, there’s not another black kid at Boo’s school!”

Sometimes, as now, the intensity of his wife’s anger unnerved Scott, much as when his college coach would grab his face mask and pull him close and chew him out over a blown play. Back then Scott Fenney would stand mute before his coach, and now he stood mute before this beautiful angry woman. Only difference was, little bits of chewing tobacco were not spewing out of her mouth with each angry word and sticking to Scott’s face. Still, he would gladly swap this angry woman for wet tobacco in a heartbeat.

“And there’s sure as hell not another girl named Pajamae!”