Read Online The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez - Free Book Online Page B

fearing that her hand—one of the hands into which she had just sneezed like she had pneumonia—might transmit a communicable disease, Scott gestured for his new client to sit down. But she did not sit. She paced.
    She walked from one side of the room to the other and back again. Back and forth she went, again and again, rubbing her arms as if the room were cold instead of warm and kneading her fingers like Consuela saying the rosary. Her eyes darted about the room. Her legs seemed out of sync, and they twitched uncontrollably. Halfway back, she suddenly doubled over and groaned.
    “You okay?”
    She grunted. “Cramps.”
    Like most men when a woman speaks of her period, Scott didn’t know how to respond. So he said, “My wife has bad cramps each month.”
    Between groans, she said, “Not from this she don’t.”
    After a moment the cramps apparently subsided, and she resumed her pacing. Scott sat, removed his business card from his pocket, and pushed it to her side of the table. On her next pass by the table, she abruptly pulled out the chair, sat, and flopped her arms on the table. Scott noticed dark spots on the insides of both of her forearms, like someone was going to play connect the dots but had never connected them. Then he remembered: she’s a heroin addict. She picked up his business card with her thumb and forefinger and held it before her face.
    “What the
A
stand for?” she asked.
    “Nothing.”
    “Your first name be a letter?”
    Scott didn’t want to discuss his name. He wanted to get this over with and get back to his office on the sixty-second floor of Dibrell Tower where he belonged.
    “Ms. Jones, I’m Scott Fenney. The court appointed me to represent you. You’ve been charged with murder, a federal offense because the victim was a federal official. If found guilty, you could be sentenced to death or life in prison. Which is why I want to talk to you about pleading out to a lesser offense. You could be out in thirty years.”
    Her hands abruptly shot out and grabbed Scott’s wrists. He instinctively recoiled from the woman with the wild eyes, but she was strong for her size and she had a firm grip. She said, “Get me a fix, please? I ain’t sleep in two days!”
    “A fix?”
    “Some H! I need it bad!”
    “You mean
dope
? No, I can’t do that!”
    “Thought you my lawyer!”
    “You’ve had lawyers give you dope?”
    “For sex. C’mon, I suck you right here!”
    “No!”
    She jumped up and resumed her pacing. Scott had to take a minute to gather himself. He’d had corporate clients offer him bribes (also known as legal fees) to destroy incriminating documents, suborn perjury, conceal fraudulent activities, and falsify filings with the SEC, but they were always well-dressed and well-educated white men—and none of them had ever offered him oral sex!
    After he recovered, Scott said, “Now, as I was saying, you can plead out and—”
    “Say I did it?”
    “Yes, but not with the specific intent to murder.”
    She stopped and stared at him with her hands on her hips and an incredulous expression on her face.
    “You telling me, say I killed him? Don’t you wanna know if I did?”
    “Uh, yeah, sure.” He leaned back. “Tell me what happened.”
    She waved a hand at the bare table.
    “You ain’t writing nothin’ down?”
    Scott reached down to his briefcase and removed a yellow legal pad and black pen.
    “Go ahead.”
    Shawanda Jones, prostitute, proceeded to pace the room and tell her lawyer the facts (according to her) of the night of Saturday, June 5.
    “We was working Harry Hines—”
    Harry Hines Boulevard, named after a Dallas oilman, begins just north of downtown and continues out to the loop, a north–south corridor that is culturally diverse, as they say. On this single stretch of pavement, you can obtain the finest medical care in the country at no fewer than four hospitals, earn a degree at the University of Texas medical school, purchase high fashion and fine