“Doesn’t he come with the house? He’s your help, right?”
“No, he’s my friend. And he doesn’t go with the house. Slavery ended a few years back, maybe you read about it.”
Jeffrey frowned, but Penny smiled and said, “I’ll have to measure for furniture, maybe Monday morning? Will you be available, Scott? I’d really like to come.”
“I can’t believe none of Clark’s other victims have come forward,” Scott said.
It was after dinner. The girls were upstairs, Scott and Bobby were sitting on the kitchen floor drinking a beer, and the trial was only two weeks away.
“They’re scared,” Bobby said. “They’ve seen what McCall did to you.”
“Our whole case rests on Hannah.”
“And my briefs,” Bobby said. “You read them yet?”
“Yeah. You’re a good writer, Bobby.”
“That’s the only thing about the law I really like doing.”
“Why do you stay in it?”
Bobby shrugged. “Too late to do something else. And debts-I can’t afford to quit. And, dumb as it sounds, I care about my clients, probably because no one else does.”
“You were always taking in stray dogs.”
“I was at that.”
“I remember that brown and white mutt, you called him Shitface. What ever happened to him?”
“Got run over by a delivery truck.”
“Ouch.”
“I liked that dog.” They sat in silence, and then Bobby said, “When this is over, maybe you should get out of Dallas.”
“McCall’s not running me out of town. I’m staying.”
“Good.” Bobby drank his beer, then said, “Let’s subpoena Dan Ford, make him give up the names of the six other girls he paid off for McCall.”
Scott shook his head. “No way he gives them up. And the judge won’t bust through the attorney-client privilege. I’ve hidden enough damaging evidence about my clients behind the privilege to know.”
“Then Hannah’s our only witness, other than Shawanda.”
“Did you tell Carl to check into Delroy Lund?”
“Oh, yeah. Way into Delroy.”
“What about the prosecution witnesses?”
“I got Ray’s list, shows how the trial’s gonna go.”
“And how’s that?”
“It’s a circumstantial case, most cases are. Ray’ll first put on the Dallas cops who found Clark’s car and called it in. Then he’ll put on the Highland Park cops who went over to the McCall mansion and found Clark. Next, the FBI agents who processed the crime scene and took the photos, which he’ll put up on the big screen. Then the Dallas County medical examiner will testify as to cause of death and time of death. And last up will be the crime lab guys who lifted Shawanda’s prints from the gun and the car, test-fired the gun, and matched the ballistics, and a forensics expert to give his opinion as to how the crime was committed. Scotty, by the time Ray’s through, the jury’s gonna believe she did it for sure.”
“And then we’ll put Shawanda on, a heroin-addicted hooker.”
“She has to testify, Scotty. Fifth Amendment sounds great, but juries expect an innocent person to take the oath, look them in the eye, and swear she’s innocent.”
“She looks like hell.”
“You would too, Scotty, if you were injecting Mexican black tar heroin three times a day.”
Four miles due south, Shawanda Jones withdrew the needle from her right arm, leaned back on her cot in her cell, and waited for the heroin to enter her bloodstream, travel to her brain, cross the blood-brain barrier, and bind itself to the opioid receptors on her brain’s nerve cells. When the heroin hit the receptors, it triggered a euphoric rush that swept over her slim body like an orgasm, only better. Then the rush dissolved and she drifted off into a peaceful little dream world.
She thought of her short life. She had turned her first trick at twelve. Unless you counted her uncle, who fingered her when she was six, then gave her fifty cents for a snow cone. She was using cocaine regularly at fourteen, pregnant at fifteen, and hooked on heroin at sixteen. Twelve years a prostitute, eight years a smack addict.
The only time she felt good about herself was times like this. When she was on the stuff, she felt like a little girl again, all happy and light and clean. She wasn’t poor or a white man’s whore. She was young again and didn’t know anything about drugs or hooking on Harry Hines or white men wanting black girls. She was just a happy little girl like Pajamae.
And thinking of her baby made her cry. She cried because she pictured her Pajamae shooting smack into her arm and lying down for money and never being loved for anything else. She wanted her baby to have better than she’d had. She wanted her to have a good life, marry a good man, and live in a good home. She wanted someone to love her Pajamae as much as she did. The only thing Shawanda Jones loved more in life than heroin was her daughter.
TWENTY-ONE
Scott, Louis, and the girls arrived at the federal building at noon the next day, Saturday. Louis stayed outside in the car because of his outstanding issues with the Feds. Scott carried the big picnic basket inside, which the weekend security guard manning the metal detector checked thoroughly, as he always did. Now that Scott was no longer eating lunch at the Downtown Club, they had gotten into a regular habit of eating lunch with Shawanda at the federal lockup.
“Another picnic, Mr. Fenney?”
“Yep. How ’bout some fried chicken, Jerry?”
Jerry, an overweight white man about fifty, smiled and took a drumstick. They rode the elevator to the fifth floor and were met by the black guard.
“Ron,” Scott said. “Picnic time, buddy.”
Ron led them down the hallway to the same small conference room, but he seemed different today, silent and solemn. He had already moved the table and chairs to one corner. Boo and Pajamae spread the blanket on the cement floor and plopped down in their places. Ron left and returned shortly with Shawanda, who hugged Pajamae first and then Boo. She turned to Scott.
“Mr. Fenney, your woman leave you?”
“Yeah.”
“’Cause of me?”
“No, Shawanda, because of me.”
“We’ve got chicken, Mama, from the Colonel!” Pajamae said. “And potato salad and beans and rolls, the kind you like.”
Ron scratched his head and said, “Mr. Fenney, I, uh-”
“Ron, how many times I gotta tell you? It’s Scott. You can’t eat fried chicken with me and call me Mr. Fenney.”
“Scott, I’ve, uh…I’ve got to search everyone.”
“What? Why? ”
“We searched Shawanda’s cell and found some, uh”-he glanced down at Pajamae-“some controlled substances.”
“You think I’m bringing it to her?”
Ron shook his head. “No, sir, not you.”
When the meaning of Ron’s statement finally registered with Scott, they both slowly turned to Pajamae. Scott
