by Mark Gimenez
"Authentic?"
"Unh-huh. See, black folks street talk when they play hoops, it's part of the culture. So if I'm gonna be a black basketball star when I grow up, I've got to sound authentic, like I came from the streets. Shoe sponsors love that kind of life story."
It actually sounded reasonable.
"And I'll have to get tattoos."
"Why?"
"You ever see an NBA player without tattoos?"
Boo joined them. "If she gets a tattoo, I'm getting my ears pierced."
"She's not getting a tattoo and you're not getting holes in your ears."
"Shit."
"Don't cuss."
Being a father wasn't easy, on or off a basketball court. Texting, sexting, sex, drugs, cable, profanity, porn, tattoos, NBA, NFL, MLB-there were just too many bad influences in kids' lives these days. But a good parent fought the fight every day. As Scott Fenney had and would. He would get these two girls through middle school, high school, and college, hopefully without any permanent damage or tattoos. He would be there for them when they were tempted or taunted or teased. He would answer their questions about sex honestly. And he would never use drugs.
He would be their father.
"Happy Father's Day, Scott."
Two hours later, Rebecca brought him a bowl of ice cream out on the deck. She sat and watched the waves wash ashore. Just beyond the surf, a guy and a girl cut through the water on a jet ski, moving fast. The girl screamed with either delight or fear.
"Those are fun," Rebecca said. After the jet ski was gone, she said, "Do you still have fun, Scott?"
"Sure."
"But you're broke and you don't have anyone."
"I have fun with the girls."
"Do you have the kind of fun a man needs?"
"I have father fun."
"Is that enough?"
"It may have to be."
"It doesn't have to be, Scott. You can have man fun with me again."
The girls needed a mother, and he needed a woman. Could Rebecca be a mother to Boo again… and to Pajamae? Could she be his wife again? Could they all go back to the way they were, as if the last two years had never happened? As if she had not run off with the golf pro, as if he were not now dead, as if she had not been accused of his murder, as if she had not used cocaine? How could she be a good mother if she were a bad influence? Would that work? Could it ever be the same? Could they have fun again?
And when they went to bed, would Trey lie down with them?
"Pete still winning?" Scott asked.
"He's up by one, on the fourteenth hole."
"Unbelievable. Better eat this inside, see if he can finish it off."
They went inside and found everyone lounging on the couch and chairs and eating cake and ice cream and the girls rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.
"What's so funny?" Scott asked.
"Cialis commercial," Karen said. "They mentioned the possible side effects, you know, 'seek immediate medical help for an erection lasting more than four hours.' That tickled the girls."
"That'd damn sure tickle me," Carlos said. "But I wouldn't call no doctor. I'd throw a party." He gestured at the TV. "What I don't get is, that Cialis commercial always shows the man and woman in separate bathtubs. How can you do it like that?"
"Oh," Bobby said, "what you do is-"
"Bobby!" Karen said. "The girls."
"Oh." To Carlos: "Later."
"When those commercials come on," Scott said, "change the channel."
"They're on every channel," Karen said.
"What's a four-letter word for 'Turkey neighbor'?" Louis said.
"Peas," Carlos said.
"Iran," Bobby said.
"I ain't never had no turkey and iran for Thanksgiving."
"They're countries-Turkey and Iran."
"Oh."
Scott plopped onto the sofa and watched the U.S. Open, which featured pudgy white boys and Tiger playing golf on narrow fairways and fast greens, glamour shots of WAGs in the gallery, and commercials targeting WM squared: fast cars, long drivers, and drugs for prostates that have enlarged and penises that won't. Pete Puckett resorted to his trusty one-iron and hit every fairway and green the final round. On the eighteenth hole, he tapped in a short putt to win.
Pete Puckett had won the U.S. Open.
It was his first win in over twenty years, and hands-down the sports shocker of the year. Pete high-fived Goose then walked off the green and wrapped his arms around his young daughter and lifted her into the air. The TV crew stuck cameras in their faces as they cried together, and the microphones caught Pete saying, "I wish your mama was here." Nick Madden stood next to them. When Pete released Billie Jean, Nick hugged him like a boy hugging his grandpa. After he signed his scorecard, Pete accepted a check for $1.35 million and the silver trophy then stepped to a microphone set up on the green.
"I dreamed of this day for twenty-six years out here on tour. And now, for that dream to come true… I just wish my wife could be here." He hefted the trophy high and gazed into the sky. "Dottie Lynn, this is for you."
He put his arm around his daughter. Tears streamed down Billie Jean's face, but Scott couldn't help wondering if some of her tears were for Trey Rawlins.
Holding the U.S. Open trophy aloft, Pete Puckett didn't look like a killer-but a father would kill to protect his child. A twenty-eight-year-old man had seduced his seventeen-year-old daughter. Pete had learned of the affair and had threatened to kill Trey if he didn't stay away from Billie Jean. He had done what any father would do. He had tried to protect his daughter.
Had he killed for his daughter?
The law allowed network TV to show commercials for erectile dysfunction cures and seventeen-year-old children to have sex, but fathers didn't. What would Scott do to a man who lured Boo or Pajamae into sex at seventeen? It frightened him to think what he might do… what he could do. What any man could do. What a father would do. That dark side of a man resided in every father. We suppress it and control it and deny it-but it's always there. Waiting. For when it was needed. When a father needed to be a man… in the worst way a man could be.
Had Trey Rawlins brought out the worst in Pete Puckett?
"Louis, if Mr. Fenney marries Miz Fenney again, Boo'll have her family back together. They won't want a little black girl in the way."
"Mr. Fenney, he adopted you. You ain't no little black girl. You're his girl."
"You think it's okay for a white man to be my daddy? Even if he can't play basketball?"
"I think you're blessed to have any man love you as much as Mr. Fenney does and want to be your daddy. Ain't no color to love."
"But my mama's dead."
"Your mama was gonna die sooner than later, that's just the way it was for her. But you could've ended up with no one instead of Boo and Mr. Fenney."
"I'd still have you."
"That's a fact, but Mr. Fenney, he knows how to be a daddy. I don't."
"But I already had a daddy, so how can Mr. Fenney be my daddy?"
"You already had a daddy?"
"Unh-huh."
"So what'd he look like?"
"I don't know."
"He ever play with you?"
"No."
"Live with you?"
"No."
"Take care of you?"
"No."
"Love you?"
"No."
"Then you ain't never had no daddy, girl. Till Mr. Fenney."
"But he's Boo's daddy. Don't seem right, me taking some of his love from her."
"It don't work that way. A man's love expands to meet the demands."
"Huh?"
"You ain't taking love from Boo, you adding love to Mr. Fenney. His heart is like a tree-it grew bigger for you."
"Huh?"
Louis put his hands on his hips like he did when he got annoyed.
"He's got twice as much love now that you're in his life."
"Oh."
"Pajamae!"
> She looked over to Mr. Fenney and Miss Fenney and Boo playing in the surf. Mr. Fenney was waving her over. Louis nudged her.
"Go on over to your father, girl."
What was he doing here?
Had he made a mistake when he agreed to represent Rebecca? He had no doubt there was a good explanation for her fingerprints being on the murder weapon, but there was no good explanation for her using cocaine. How would he explain that to the jury? Juries don't like that kind of evidence in a murder case. They like a clean and sober defendant-and no direct evidence tying the defendant to the crime-in order to acquit. They have to believe beyond all reasonable doubt that the defendant is innocent. An American jury's greatest fear is not convicting an innocent person but acquitting a guilty person. Being ridiculed in the press for abdicating their responsibility-their duty-to put people in prison. Why would the police have arrested her and the D.A. have charged her and the grand jury have indicted her if she weren't guilty? A presumption of guilt burdens every juror's mind when he or she takes a seat in the jury box on the first day of trial-which was now only twenty-nine days away. Would he be able to overcome that presumption and prove his ex-wife innocent? Would he be able to prove that Pete Puckett-or perhaps the Muertos — had killed Trey Rawlins? Or had A. Scott Fenney taken on the biggest lost cause of his career? And sacrificed his career? Again.
He realized he was staring at Rebecca and Boo was standing next to him. He looked down at her. Her eyes went from him to Rebecca and back to him. She grinned.
"Are you having a Cialis moment?"
Two hours later, the sun was low, the girls were inside, Miss Fenney was doing her yoga on the beach, and Carlos had talked Louis into going out on the surfboards.
"Miss Fenney, she's a fine-looking woman. And flexible."
"Don't go there, Carlos."
They had paddled out-way out. Louis and Carlos were bobbing on surfboards in the Gulf of Mexico, Carlos looking like he should be the lifeguard at a maximum security prison pool with his black hair slicked back, his dark sunglasses, his tattoos on his muscular arms-and Louis feeling scared. He gazed around at the sea of brown water that surrounded him. It was vast and it was deep and it was filled with creatures that belonged in the water-unlike him. He was a three-hundred-thirty-pound black man who belonged on dry land.
"Louis, you think you ever gonna be a daddy?"
"I hope so. You?"
"Hell, I might already be one. We got machismo, we don't need no Viagra or Cialis."
"Figure you'll get married and have a normal family, like Mr. Fenney?"
Carlos laughed. "Normal?" He waved a hand at the beach. "Ain't nothing normal going on over there, the boss defending his ex-wife. That's abnormal. And no, I don't figure either one of us is ever gonna get married."
"You're handsome."
"Why, thank you, Louis, you're kind of cute yourself… in a big way."
"Why not? We're good men-a few priors maybe, but no violent crimes."
"No convictions."
"I stand corrected."
" 'Cause women, Louis, they don't want good men, they want rich men. And I don't figure on ever being rich. Hence, I ain't never gonna have a wife."
" Hence? "
"I heard the boss say it. Sounds good."
Louis nodded. "It does. So you're saying we're gonna be alone all our lives?"
" 'Fraid so, bro."
"Damn."
"But think of the bright side."
"What's that?"
"You ever get a chance to cheat with a fine-looking woman like Miss Fenney, you can cheat without getting caught."
"But it ain't cheating if you don't have a wife."
"Exactly my point."
"Your point don't make no sense."
"My point is, you'll always be a free man."
"And alone."
"That, too."
"You done with your point?"
"Yep."
"Okay. Now that you got me out here, what the hell am I supposed to do?"
"Wait for a good wave, then lie down and paddle like the devil himself is after your ass. Once we get going, we just stand up on the board and ride that mother all the way to shore."
"Just like that?"
"Yep."
"What if we fall off? Figure that could kill us?"
Carlos laughed. "Hell, Louis, it ain't falling off that's gonna kill you-it's the sharks eating you."
" Sharks? You see a shark?"
Five hundred yards due north, Scott, Karen, and Bobby were on the back deck. Bobby said, "Tell me they're not really going to try that."
They did. A big wave-for Galveston Beach-rose behind Carlos and Louis. They lay down on the boards and started paddling. When the wave was almost upon them, they squatted on the boards then… stood.
"I'll be damned. They're surfing."
They waved their arms wildly trying to maintain their balance on the boards, and they did-for about five seconds. Then the wave overcame them and sent them and their boards flying. They went under… and stayed under. Scott stood. Just when he was about to run down to the beach and play lifeguard, their boards surfaced, then Carlos popped up, followed by Louis. The waves rolled them ashore. They coughed sea water then struggled to their feet and looked at each other; then they smiled and high-fived. "Now that's what I'm talkin' about!" Carlos shouted.
"They're nuts," Karen said.
"Hank Herrin," Bobby said.
Karen stared at him with an incredulous expression. "And you are too if you think I'm naming our son Hank."
"I'm seeing a home run hitter."
"I'm seeing a guy with tattoos wearing a wife-beater T-shirt and spitting tobacco juice out the window of his pickup truck."
Bobby shrugged then turned to Scott. "I checked in with the answering service. The network morning shows called. They all want an interview with you and the Guilty Groupie."
"That's not gonna happen." Scott sat back down. "Okay, guys, we're on the clock. Four weeks till trial. Where do we stand?"
"Our strategy," Bobby said, "is to (a), explain why her prints are on the murder weapon, and (b), find out who killed Trey. Anything on (a)?"
"No. What about (b)?"
"The suspect list keeps getting longer," Karen said. She tapped on her laptop. "So far we have the construction workers, Goose, Brett McBride, Donnie Parker, Vic Hager, Pete Puckett, and Benito Estrada and the Muertos."
"Brett, Donnie, and Vic have alibis for that night, but anyone with a motive stays on the list. And I don't rate the construction workers very high, but I asked Carlos to go back to work there, see if he can get some information about the cocaine… if they stole it. Which would explain why Trey thought Benito cheated him."
"So that leaves Goose, Pete, and Benito and the Muertos."
"Goose's prints didn't match the ones on the kitchen counter."
"We need Pete's prints."
"I'll get them."
"So the prime suspects are the pro golfer who just won the U.S. Open, a Mexican drug cartel, and your ex-wife." Bobby unwrapped a piece of gum and popped it into his mouth. "Should've waited until after this case to quit smoking."
"I completed the asset searches on Trey and Rebecca," Karen said. "No surprises. Rebecca's got nothing except the Corvette. I got the subpoenas to Hank, he served them on Facebook and the cell phone carrier."
"Anything on the sister?" Bobby asked.
"No," Scott said. "But her lawyer, Melvyn Burke, he knows something."
"What?"
"I don't know. Terri won't waive the attorney-client privilege." To Karen: "What about the judge?"
"UT undergrad, dean's list, cheerleader. UT law school, graduated with honors. Private practice for ten years, then elected judge five years ago. No big cases."
"Until now. Pretrial motions?"
"I'm going to file a motion to exclude the crime scene photos as inflammatory. The D.A.'ll still get some in."
"Can we exclude evidence found at the house?"
"She called nine-one-one, invited them in, consented to a search. Even if she hadn't, it wasn't her house. And it was a crime scene, so that room was open to a search. But I'll still file a motion to suppress."
"What about the tox report? Did they have probable cause to draw her blood?"
"Probably not. I'll file a motion to exclude that, too."
There was an awkward moment of silence, then Scott said, "She's not an addict."
Scott gazed at Rebecca on the beach with the girls. She seemed like a girl herself, skipping through the surf, as if she were not soon to stand trial for murder.
"Has the possibility of life in prison registered yet?" Karen said.
Scott gestured down at the beach. "One day she's acting happy, talking about us getting back together… the next day she's on suicide watch. I don't get her."
"It's the cocaine," Bobby said.
"What cocaine?"
"Scotty, I represented users. I know the symptoms. Cycles of depression and euphoria, that's a cocaine user. She's using."
Scott shook his head. "She only used it a few times with Trey. She'd never use it around Boo. No way."
"Way." Bobby pointed to the beach. "Go down there and do a blood draw, I guarantee a tox screen would come back positive for cocaine."
"Where would she get it from? And how would she pay for it?"
"Scotty, you staying objective? About her?"
Think like a lawyer, not like a man.
"I found a polygraph guy," Karen said. "On Bolivar Peninsula, retired FBI. Is she willing to do it?"
Scott nodded.
"Are you worried?"
"She's not."
"It's the cocaine," Bobby said.
"Crack dealers," Pajamae said, "they killed this man down in the projects one day. Just walked up and shot him dead, right in front of everyone."
"Shit," Boo said. "I mean, damn. I mean, wow."
Scott had come upstairs to say goodnight to the girls. "Fear. They wanted to scare you."
"Well, Mr. Fenney, it worked."
"Why'd they kill the man?" Boo asked.
"He owed them money."
"Why didn't the dealers just hire a lawyer and sue him?"
"Boo, folks in the projects don't sue each other. Lawsuits are for white folks who don't have guns."
Boo nodded, as if Pajamae's statement made perfect sense.
"Nothing exciting like that ever happens in Highland Park. It's so boring."