The Color of Law by Mark Gimenez Page A

floor-to-ceiling windows and filled with dark wood paneling, dark wood columns, and dark wood tables covered with white tablecloths. Young brown men in white waistcoats and black bow ties served old white men. Roberto snapped his fingers at his underlings and gestured at glasses that needed to be filled and plates removed. The alluring aroma of grilled steaks, fresh fried shrimp, and charbroiled fish and the symphony of silver utensils against crystal and china joined together to remind Bobby of what might have been had his life taken a different turn here or there. He usually had lunch at the barbecue joint down the block where you ate at picnic tables on paper plates with plastic utensils.
    While Bobby felt like Ralph Nader at a chamber of commerce meeting, Scotty strode through the dining room like the star halfback onto a football field, greeting and shaking hands with everyone he passed—that familiar Scotty Fenney entrance Bobby had witnessed so many times in the old days and from the same vantage point: behind Scotty Fenney. Bobby recognized the faces of the men Scotty was greeting from the business section of the newspaper. These men owned Dallas—the land, the buildings, the businesses, and everything else worth owning in the city. Scotty’s attention was suddenly drawn across the room. He said to Bobby, “I’ll be right there,” and went over to a table of four men.
    Bobby followed Roberto to a table by the window through which Bobby could gaze out upon the city where he had lived his entire life. Born poor in East Dallas, he had moved with his parents to a rental duplex near SMU the summer before ninth grade. They wanted a better life for their son, but they couldn’t afford private school on his father’s truck driver’s pay. Instead their son would be educated in the Highland Park public school system just like the sons of the richest men in Dallas.
    Bobby had met Scotty Fenney that first year, two renters seeking similarly situated companions—renters occupied a social status in Highland Park only a step above the Mexican household help. Bobby became Scotty’s faithful follower, like Robin to Batman; and as Scotty’s status rose with each football game, Bobby was pulled along in his friend’s considerable wake, welcomed anywhere in Highland Park, as long as he was with Scotty Fenney.
    After high school, Bobby had followed Scotty to SMU. Scotty got a football scholarship; Bobby got student loans. Four years later, he followed Scotty to law school. But a law degree had not led to a better life for him. The money is in the big law firms, and the big firms take only the best of the best, the top ten percent—the Scotty Fenneys, not the Bobby Herrins. All through law school, they had talked about practicing law together, but the big firms came calling and Scotty answered; and suddenly, like a Texas summer storm that dumps two inches of rain and then abruptly disappears, Scotty was gone. For the first time since he was fourteen, Bobby did not have Scotty Fenney to follow.
    For eleven years now, Bobby had wandered through life like Moses in the Sinai Desert, trying to find his way without Scotty. He had caught glimpses of his old friend in the society section—Mr. and Mrs. A. Scott Fenney at such-and-such society ball—and sometimes in the business section—another courtroom victory or major deal engineered by A. Scott Fenney, Esq. Each time he read something about his old friend the memories would return and he would feel so completely alone again.
    Still, through no real intent, Bobby had fashioned a life of sorts. Not much of a life—his exact thought that morning as he arrived at the office and stepped over a drunk on the doorstep, the start of another day of bailing out dopers at the jail, fighting evictions in J.P. court, eating Korean donuts, and drinking Mexican beer and playing pool in the bar next door. But then the phone rang and the caller identified herself as Scott Fenney’s secretary.