Con Law by Mark Gimenez

made it to Marfa safely?’
    The mother in Myrna.
    ‘We did.’
    ‘How’s Nadine?’
    ‘Homesick. How’d you know we’d stay at the Paisano?’
    ‘Nadine didn’t seem like the camping-out type, not with all that hand sanitizer. When are you coming back?’
    ‘Tomorrow, probably. You remember Nathan Jones? He interned for me four years back?’
    ‘Of course I remember Nathan. He saved my job.’ She thought that was funny. ‘Why?’
    ‘He wrote me that letter, asking for help.’
    ‘Are you going to help him?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘He’s dead.’
    Book called hissister next. Joanie was thirty-one and a new mother. He had given her away at her wedding three years before to a doctor named Dennis. Book’s new brother-in-law had advised them to put their mother in a home. But what the hell did he know about Alzheimer’s? He was a proctologist.
    ‘Book, we’ve got to talk about putting Mom in a home.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘I know you don’t want to, but—’
    ‘She didn’t put us in a home. She went back to work after Dad died.’
    Clare Bookman had kept the books and paid the bills for a dozen small businesses in Austin; now she couldn’t balance her own checkbook.
    ‘And Dad sure as hell wouldn’t have put her in a home.’
    Alzheimer’s had made his mother a stranger in her own body. In her own house. To her own children. She would not have wanted to live like that. But it was too late for her to make that choice. The disease had made the choice for her. When the time came for Book, he would make the choice before the disease made it for him.
    ‘Book, she doesn’t even know who we are anymore.’
    ‘We know who she is.’
    ‘Book—’
    ‘Joanie—that’s not going to happen. She can live with me.’
    ‘And all your sleep-over girlfriends?’
    ‘They won’t sleep over anymore.’
    ‘And how will you take her anywhere? On the back of that Harley?’
    ‘I’ll buy a car.’
    ‘What would you buy that’s fast enough and dangerous enough?’
    ‘A minivan.’
    She laughed. He liked Joanie’s laugh.
    ‘Indiana Jones in a minivan? I don’t think so. Besides, Book, you’re always gone. Like now.’
    ‘I’ll hire around-the-clock caregivers.’
    ‘That’s expensive.’
    ‘Can yousay “book royalties”?’
    ‘I thought that was going to be your retirement fund?’
    From the rooftop balcony two stories up, Book could see all of Marfa and the desert beyond. The prairie grass gleamed yellow in the sun.
    ‘I don’t figure on living to retirement age.’
    ‘Oh, Book, don’t talk like that. Just because Mom … that doesn’t mean …’ She sighed into the phone. ‘What are you doing in Marfa?’
    ‘Working.’
    ‘Another adventure?’
    ‘A dead lawyer.’
    His last call was to James Welch, chairman of the Board of Regents for the University of Texas System, a nonprofit organization possessing a $21 billion endowment, numerous real-estate developments, two million acres of prime oil land, stakes in a world-class golf club, a radio station and a cable TV sports channel, the most expensive and profitable football team in America, and fifteen universities and medical schools throughout Texas educating over two hundred thousand students. The University of Texas at Austin is the flagship campus. James Welch had earned an MBA from UT thirty-three years before; today, he boasted a $3 billion net worth. He was the most powerful man in higher education in Texas.
    ‘Professor Bookman, thanks for calling me back.’
    ‘Sorry for the delay, Mr. Welch. I had to leave town unexpectedly.’
    ‘Your secretary said you were in Marfa. The wife and I went out there a few years back. She wanted to see the art. Boxes and crushed cars and fluorescent lights—I didn’t get it.’
    He exhaled.
    ‘Well, as youmay have heard, Professor, my son, Robert, was arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute. They took his blood without his consent.’
    ‘What was he doing when the police