“I’ll throw it into bankruptcy. I can hold you off for six months, maybe a year.”
“Also not likely. The bank holds a note on Judge Schneider’s home in Highland Park. He’s the bankruptcy judge. And he understands favors.”
Scott had run out of lawyerly rebuttals, so he fell back on the universal football retort: “Fuck you, Ted.”
He slammed the phone down.
Bobby was sitting up. “What was that about?”
Scott realized his face was damp with sweat. “The bank called my notes, on the cars and the house.”
“How can they call your mortgage?”
“Because it’s not a mortgage like you think. You don’t get a thirty-year five percent Fannie Mae mortgage for two-point-eight million, Bobby. You get a demand note callable on thirty days’ notice.”
“ Jesus. Can you refinance?”
“Not likely. I got this note only because Dan used his influence with the bank president, that asshole.”
“Guess who’s influencing the bank president now?”
Scott nodded.
“You could sell the place.”
“Rebecca would die. That house means everything to her.”
“Shit, Scotty, you got three million in fees. You can swing something.”
Scott could barely give voice to the words: “Dibrell just fired me.”
Rebecca said, “If you’re not Tom Dibrell’s lawyer anymore, who am I?”
All the way home, Scott had bucked himself up for this moment; he hoped his performance was more convincing to his wife.
“I don’t need him.”
“No, but you need his three million in fees. Look, Scott, most lawyers’ wives don’t have a clue what their husbands do at the office, but I do. God knows you’ve educated me over the last eleven years. I know how things work in a law firm. And I know that a partner who just lost a three-million-dollar client won’t be a partner for long. And what are we going to do then, Scott? How are we going to pay for this house?”
Scott walked to the windows of the master suite. He could not bear to look at his wife when he said what he had to say.
“Well, that’s the other thing, Rebecca. The house. The bank called the note. I’ve got to pay off two-point- eight million in thirty days or lose it. Unless we sell it first.”
He turned and saw the color drain out of Rebecca’s face and her legs give way; she sat down hard on the bed and stared blankly at the wall in front of her. After a moment, she spoke as if to herself: “Without this house, I’ll never be chairwoman of the Cattle Barons’ Ball.” Her eyes, vacant and lost, turned to Scott. “How will I ever show my face in this town again?”
Scott Fenney felt the sting of his wife’s disappointment. He had let her down, failed her, betrayed her. He had promised her this life, a life in this house, with these things, driving those cars. Now he had broken that promise. For the first time in his life, he felt the pain of failure. And behind the pain, he felt something else, an anger building deep inside him, not the anger of a lawyer at a client who doesn’t pay his bill or a judge who rules against him, but the kind of anger he had previously felt only on a football field, a base anger that had been in man since Adam, an anger that clouded your mind and strengthened your body, that made you say things you shouldn’t say and do things you shouldn’t do, the kind of anger that usually resulted in Scott Fenney being flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. The kind of anger that meant some son of a bitch was fixing to feel some Scott Fenney payback.
EIGHTEEN
OVER THE COURSE of four seasons of Division I-A college football, playing against teams like Texas, Texas A amp;M, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, teams with players that outweighed the SMU players by forty or fifty pounds per position, Scott Fenney, number 22, had taken a beating. At 185 pounds, he was strong, fast, and tough; but when a 250-pound linebacker tackled him and drove him into the hard turf, he still hurt. He suffered two knee surgeries, a dislocated shoulder, five broken ribs, four broken fingers (the same one twice), two broken noses, one concussion, numerous abrasions and contusions, and a cumulative total of 117 stitches. But he never missed a single game.
Scott Fenney got up every time they knocked him down. And when he did, he always gave them payback, breaking a long run, returning a kickoff, scoring a touchdown. The payback helped make the hurt go away.
Senator Mack McCall had shown Scott the true meaning of hurt. He had hit Scott like no linebacker had ever hit him. Now it was time for payback.
Scott checked his watch and stood. He glanced out at the night lights of downtown. It was almost nine the next evening and Scott was in his office.
“Scotty,” Bobby said from the sofa. “I know this was my idea, but maybe it ain’t such a good idea.”
“You coming or not?”
Bobby stood. “Oh, yeah, I’m coming. Course, I feel like I’m boarding the Titanic.”
Mack McCall’s eyes roamed over the naked body of Jean McCall, and he recalled the first time they had had sex, fifteen years ago, not a month after she had graduated law school and joined his Senate staff. She was young, she was lean, she was sexy, and she was not his wife. His wife was not sexy or lean or young; she was old, forty- five, same age as he was back then, but he did not feel as old as she looked. Martha looked like her mother-not a woman he was particularly interested in having sex with.
At age forty-five, Mack McCall still felt young and randy, and he needed a woman who was young and randy, like Jean. They had sex nearly every day, anytime and anywhere-his private bathroom, the backseat of the limousine, the Senate cloakroom. She had an incredible body, a body that made him feel twenty-five again and brimming with testosterone. And she possessed a sex drive that could permanently disable a man half his age.
She was also a TV camera’s dream, beautiful, articulate, charming, and intelligent. When Mack began dreaming of the White House, he had to make a decision: Did he want a first lady who looked like a grandmother or a fashion model? The decision took less than a minute to make. He divorced Martha.
She hired an asshole for a lawyer and threatened to confirm what the tabloids had suggested: that Senator Mack McCall was having an affair with a member of his staff. Not that that was any big news on Capitol Hill, a member of Congress screwing around on his wife. But it was a sensitive issue when the particular member ran on a conservative family values platform and had his eye on the White House. Of course, Mack McCall could cut a business deal when the need arose. For $100 million, Martha kept her mouth shut and went home to Texas.
Jean had been worth every penny.
But the years had taken their toll on Mack McCall. Now, at age sixty, he didn’t feel twenty-five anymore; he didn’t feel forty-five, or even fifty-five; he didn’t feel young and virile and brimming with testosterone. So he did what any self-respecting sixty-year-old man with money and a wife twenty years younger than him would do: he went to the doctor. Every morning now, Senator Mack McCall showered, shaved, and slapped on aftershave and a testosterone patch, and every night he popped a Viagra pill, all in an effort to satisfy his sexual fantasies and Jean’s sexual desires.
That evening she was stretched out naked on their bed. Her body was still incredibly shapely and inviting; her black hair was draped over her shoulders and fell onto her firm breasts; her belly was flat with no stretch marks from pregnancies; her lean legs didn’t look like road maps. She was wearing her Clark Kent glasses and working on her laptop; the TV was on but the sound was muted. He was taking no chances tonight: he had replaced this morning’s testosterone patch with a fresh one an hour ago when he had swallowed the Viagra pill. The patch was secreting that elixir of youth into his bloodstream and the little blue pill was expanding the arteries leading to his penis, physiological actions that resulted in an impressive erection. Feeling pretty damned proud and young and virile (albeit chemically and momentarily enhanced), Mack went over to Jean and stood by the bed until her eyes left the laptop and found him. Her eyebrows rose, and she smiled.
“I take it we’re not going to watch Dateline tonight.”
Mack could not know his wife was thinking, Or at least the first five minutes of Dateline, as she removed her glasses, set the laptop on the night table, slid down onto the bed, and spread her legs. Mack McCall’s version of
