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 furnishings at the Market Center or shop more economically at the Army-Navy store, play golf at the exclusive Brook Hollow Golf Club, eat a wide variety of ethnic food, buy cheap used cars, illegal drugs, fake IDs, and counterfeit designer purses, enjoy topless strip clubs and all-nude salons, lodge overnight at the Salvation Army homeless shelter, get an abortion, or pick up a prostitute.
“Who’s we?”
“Me and Kiki.”
“What’s Kiki’s last name?”
“How would I know? That ain’t even her first name.”
“What time?”
“Maybe, ten.”
“P.M.?”
“Shawanda don’t work no morning shift.”
“What-”
“You want me to tell this here story or not?”
Scott held his hands up in surrender. Shawanda Jones continued her story, extremely agitated and animated, her arms flying about.
“Anyways, we was feeling good and looking good, me wearing my blonde wig, Kiki red. We was strolling, men driving by, whistling, yelling, ‘Yo, mama, suck this!’ Black dudes, Mexicans, they just window-shoppers, can’t afford no class girls like us. We wait for them white boys in nice cars. They like us ’cause we ain’t dark and we in shape- me and Kiki, we do them exercise tapes most every day, got us a new one, The Firm? Use dumbbells. Check this out.”
She pushed up the short sleeve of the jail uniform and curled her right arm and flexed her biceps, displaying an impressive bulge for a girl. Great, a heroin addict who worked out.
“So, maybe ten-thirty, white boy driving a Mercedes, one of them long black jobs got them blacked-out windows, he pull up alongside us and roll down the window and look us over. We know one of us is fixing to get picked up. He say, ‘Blondie, get in.’ Well, Shawanda don’t just get in when some trick say get in, so I saunter on over, lean in the window, car smell like a whiskey factory. He say he pay a thousand dollars for all night. I say, ‘Show me the money.’ I got that from that movie? He pull out a roll of bills could choke a horse, so I get in, almost slide down to the floor, my leather skirt on that leather seat. He reach over, grab my tit, say, ‘Them real?’ I say, ‘Honey, all a Shawanda real.’”
She abruptly groaned, grabbed at her midsection, and doubled over again.
“Shit!”
She remained in that position for a long moment. Scott had often suffered leg cramps back when he played ball, and man, they could really hurt. So he had some amount of empathy for her. Still, he checked his watch and thought of billable hours going unbilled and wished she would get on with it. Finally the cramps abated, and she straightened and started talking nonstop again.
“Anyways, we drive off. I figure we goin’ to a motel? ’Stead we go to Highland Park, street sign say. I ain’t never been in no Highland Park-black girl know better’n to go there. Pretty soon we drive up to the biggest damn house I ever seen, through big gates, behind a big wall, go round back. Get out, I follows him inside, place is fine. He ask me I want something to drink, I say okay. I’m thinking, white boy got money and place like this and good- looking to boot-what he want with Shawanda?
“We get upstairs, in bed, I find out. He climb on top and start working hard, he say, ‘You like it?’ Course, I say, ‘Oh, yeah, baby, you so big.’ Tricks, they like to hear that shit. Then he say, ‘Tell me again, nigger, you like my white dick?’ Now I don’t much like nobody calling me nigger, but for a thousand bucks I don’t say nothing but, ‘Oh, yeah, baby.’ Then he slap me, hard, say he always give it rough to his women. Well, nobody slap Shawanda. I punch that white boy in his mouth, knock him outta me and flat off the bed, jump up and say, ‘Ain’t gonna get rough with Shawanda, honky!’
“He come at me again, all mean now, so I scratch his face, then I pop him a good one, BAM!” She made a roundhouse swing with her left fist. “Right in the eye. We fall over the bed and he hits me again, with his fist this time, right here.” She was pointing to the left side of her face, where a bruise was evident. “But I got my knee right in his balls, he fall off and start cussing me: ‘You nigger bitch!’ I grab my clothes, my thousand dollars, his car keys, drive back to Kiki and leave the car.”
“And that’s the last time you saw Clark McCall?”
“That his name?”
“Yeah. He was the son of Senator Mack McCall.”
A blank face. She didn’t know Mack McCall from Mickey Mouse.
“Last I seen him, Mr. Fenney, he was rolling on the floor, holding his privates and cussing me something fierce.”
“He was murdered that night. Police found him Sunday, naked on the bedroom floor, shot once in the head, point-blank, 22-caliber gun next to him, with your fingerprints on it.”
“Must of dropped outta my purse.”
“So it was your gun?”
“Girl work the streets in Dallas, she gotta carry.”
