The Common Lawyer

by Mark Gimenez

  Just good clean American fun.

  They joined a wide stream of fans wearing school colors flowing west toward the double-decked stadium that rose in front of them like "The Coliseum," Curtis said.

  He had studied abroad in Rome.

  "It's amazing," he said, "how American football parallels the gladiator combats of ancient Rome… except American football crowds are more bloodthirsty, of course."

  "I feel another Roman history lesson coming," Tres said.

  "Did you know that most gladiators were slaves or poor men desperate for a way out of poverty-same as black football players from the inner cities today?"

  UT had fielded the last all-white national championship team back in 1969. After that, the school had started recruiting black players from the wards of Houston and Dallas; the 2005 UT championship team had been mostly black.

  "Gladiators were unusually large men fighting for the entertainment of wealthy spectators. Some became national celebrities. They wore tattoos, endorsed products, had groupies, just like football players today."

  "Jeez," Dave said, "even back then, girls loved athletes."

  "And the games were public spectacles held in specially built amphitheatres, just like cities today spend hundreds of millions to build stadiums to lure football teams to town. There were bands and mascots, fans placed bets and scalped tickets just like-"

  "I could have done," Andy said.

  "The Coliseum seated fifty thousand and had separate entrances and reserved seating for VIPs, just like this stadium. And the arena was almost identical in size to a football field. It's really interesting how similar our society is to Roman society, when you think about it."

  "Didn't the Roman Empire fall?" Andy said.

  "Curtis," Tres said, "you're a walking encyclopedia. Is there anything you don't know?"

  "Women."

  "Amen, brother."

  Dave gave Curtis a fist-punch.

  "Andy," Curtis said, "thanks for the gig with Reeves' kid."

  "You meet Zach?"

  "Yesterday. Reeves sent his limo to pick me up. He's paying me six hundred an hour."

  "That's more than he's paying me."

  "Can you teach algebra?"

  "I can't spell it."

  "Geeks rule."

  "Hey, Andy," Dave said, "can you get me a job with Reeves?"

  "What can you teach?"

  "I've got a Ph. D. in beer-drinking."

  "Zach's smarter than most of the college kids I teach," Curtis said.

  "Curtis," Andy said, "what's the deal with red hair being recessive?"

  "That's random. Okay, red hair is recessive, which means that both parents usually must have red hair in order for their offspring to have red hair because black, brown, and blond hair genes dominate over red hair genes. See, the red hair gene is M-C-One-R-melanocortin-one receptor. Everyone has that gene, but to have red hair you've got a mutated M-C-One-R gene… actually, two mutated genes, one from your mother and one from your father. If your parents both have red hair, you have a one hundred percent chance of having red hair."

  "What if a kid has red hair but only one of her parents does?"

  "Then one of her four grandparents will have red hair. Statistically, anyway."

  Russell Reeves hadn't lied. But why had Andy wondered if he had?

  After being searched at the gate, they entered the stadium. Ninety-six thousand screaming fans from Texas wearing burnt-orange shirts and Ohio wearing red shirts-the Buckeye fans had traveled a thousand miles for a football game-had packed the bowl of the stadium that surrounded the green playing field. They found their seats on the fifty-yard line just up from the governor of Texas. Tres pointed down at the UT bench.

  "Look who's standing on the sideline-McConaughey."

  "Why does he get to be on the sideline?" Dave said. "He never played football when he was a student here."

  Tres shrugged. "The allure of celebrity."

  A blimp advertising an insurance company circled overhead like a vulture eyeing road kill. It would provide a bird's-eye view of the game which could be seen on the Godzillatron, the huge video screen in the south end zone. It was like looking at… well, at Godzilla's flat screen TV.

  "Only bigger HDTV screen in the world is in Tokyo," Curtis said.

  Andy Prescott had attended most of the Longhorns' home games while he was a student at UT-he had never told his mother-but he hadn't come for the football. He had come for the girls. There was something about a football game on a Saturday afternoon-even on the first day of November-that made college coeds want to wear the most revealing outfits they owned. He always figured it was the TV cameras. Gorgeous UT coeds hoped to be discovered at a nationally-televised football game. So they put their best breast forward.

  Which alone was worth the price of admission.

  For the next three hours, the Texas fans-rich white folks from the nice parts of Dallas and Houston-cheered the UT team-mostly poor black guys from the bad parts of Dallas and Houston, the guys watched the game, Andy watched the girls, Bevo, the Longhorn mascot, crapped in the end zone, the Ohio State quarterback was carried off the field on a stretcher with a head injury, the cheerleaders jumped and vaulted and somersaulted on the sideline as if auditioning for Matthew McConaughey, the lucky bastard, and, oh yeah, UT won.

  Cecil Durant peered out the window of the airplane and said, "Look, they're playing a football game, down in that stadium. Must be the Texas-Ohio State game."

  Harmon shook his head. Traveling with Cecil was like taking the kids on vacation. You'd think the guy had never been away from New Jersey in his life.

  "My first time in Texas. Can we see the Alamo while we're here?"

  "Cecil, the Alamo's in San Antonio."

  "Oh. How about J.R. Ewing's Southfork Ranch? I loved that show."

  "That's in Dallas, Cecil. Which is why they called the show Dallas. "

  Cecil nodded. "Makes sense. NASA?"

  "Houston."

  "Well, what's in Austin?"

  "Andy Prescott."

  Cecil Durant wasn't a Phi Beta Kappa candidate, but he was a skilled driver and handy with a tire iron when the need arose. They had landed, rented a black Crown Vic, and driven out of the airport. When they hit Interstate 35, they turned south. Harmon's ribs hurt like hell.

  "Can I buy some cowboy boots?" Cecil said.

  "Let's buy some guns first."

  The only problem with flying commercial these days-well, other than crying kids, complaining passengers, lost luggage, late planes, and being strip-searched in the security line-was packing your weapons. There were forms to fill out and questions to be answered, and the silencer always raised the Feds' eyebrows when the luggage went through the X-ray machine. So while Harmon had flown to Texas, his weapons had stayed home in Jersey. Fortunately, a man could buy an arsenal in Texas considerably easier than a woman could get an abortion.

  Harmon had first checked the Austin paper for a gun show; he could buy every imaginable firearm, silencer, ammo, assault weapon, and even a machine gun at a gun show for cash and with no questions asked or forms filled out or ID presented. Harmon had read that Mexican drug cartels were now buying their weapons at Texas gun shows and smuggling them across the border because Mexico's gun laws were stricter. But the nearest gun show that weekend was in Waco, ninety miles north of Austin. So he had checked the phone book at the airport and found the address of the nearest Cabela's. It was fifteen miles south of Austin in a town called Buda.

  Cabela's is housed in a log structure roughly the size of an airplane hangar. Outside stands a life-size bronze of a cowboy on horseback. Inside stands a two-story faux-mountain stuffed animal display featuring deer, elk, moose, caribou, musk ox, Arctic wolves, and bear (grizzly, black, brown, and Polar). Stuffed animal heads line the walls. Stuffed birds hang from the ceiling. And Cabela's sells the guns to shoot all those creatures dead. The gun department offered weapons manufactured by Browning, Smith amp; Wesson, Winchester, Ruger, G
lock, Savage Arms, Bushmaster, Remington, Colt, Sig Sauer, and Beretta. Middle-aged white men crowded the gun counter.

  Americans were sure as hell exercising their Second Amendment rights that day in Buda, Texas.

  Harmon was standing at the counter and hefting a short-frame Glock 21 semiautomatic handgun with a thirteen-round magazine, on sale for $549.99. Cecil stood next to him making quick side-to-side movements with a. 44 Magnum as if sighting in a target and growling through clenched teeth, "Get off my lawn!"

  Harmon sighed.

  "Put the gun down, Cecil. You're making me nervous. You're a driver, not a shooter."

  Harmon Payne was a shooter. And, notwithstanding his twenty years with the New Jersey mob and over two hundred shooting jobs, he had never been questioned, arrested, or convicted. Not once. He was that good. So the criminal background check called NICS-the Feds' National Instant Criminal Background Check System, enacted into law after that little wacko Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan-went through like a charm. Thirty seconds after feeding Harmon's name, address, place of birth, date of birth, social security number, height, weight, sex, race, and state of residence into the computerized Internet-based NICS E-Check System, the response came back: PROCEED WITH TRANSACTION. The clerk smiled at Harmon and said he had been cleared to purchase any weapon or weapons he desired.

  He desired the Glock.

  In Texas, there was no waiting period to purchase a firearm, no requirement for a license to own a firearm, and no required permit to carry a firearm in your vehicle. So fifteen minutes after entering the store and another fifteen spent searching for Cecil-he found his driver in the ocean of camouflage that was the clothing department wearing a hunter's cap with the ear muffs down and holding up a tiny camo bikini "Harmon, you think Harriet would like this?"

  "Your wife in a camo bikini? I don't think so, Cecil."

  — Harmon Payne and Cecil Durant walked out the front door with two brand new Glocks (no silencer, but he'd have to make do), two thirteen-round magazines, and enough ammo to outgun the Texas national guard.

  It was that easy.

  Of course, it wasn't as if Harmon Payne was a whacked-out college kid pissed off at his professor for giving him a B on his term paper and heading directly back to the campus to go on a shooting spree and kill fifty or sixty students. Harmon Payne was a professional. He was only going to kill one person.

  "Let's go find Andy Prescott."

  Cecil turned the Crown Vic north on I-35.

  "That's it," Harmon said. "Fifteen fourteen and a half South Congress. Says 'traffic tickets' on the door. Park down the street."

  Cecil continued north on Congress until they were in front of the Texas School for the Deaf, then he made a U-turn and parked in front of a shop called Blackmail. He chuckled.

  "We're in the same line of business. Sort of."

  They got out. One quick look around told Harmon they were overdressed in their sharkskin suits; they always dressed as middle-management executives on business trips. So they removed the ties and unbuttoned the top buttons of their shirts. Harmon kept his coat on to conceal the Glock tucked into his back waistband. Even so, they still looked like middle-aged accountants.

  They had parked in the 1200 block; they would walk the three blocks back to Andy Prescott's office. They proceeded past stores called Pink Hair Salon amp; Gallery, Creatures Boutique, and Cocoon Massage amp; Bodyworks.

  "We could catch a massage later," Cecil said. "Might make your ribs feel better."

  "If things go right, we could catch a plane home later."

  "If we stay the night, let's get some hookers."

  "What, you're the governor of New York now?"

  They walked past a little motel, a coffee shop called Jo's, a bum playing a guitar, a Mexican food place called Guero's, and the weirdest looking people Harmon had seen outside a circus.

  "Now we know what happened to all the hippies and Beatniks from the sixties." He gestured at a young tattooed female loitering outside a store called Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds. "That broad, she looks like a side-show freak, the tattooed lady." Harmon shook his head in utter disgust at America's young people. "Jesus."

  Cecil nodded. "And the Beatles."

  "What?"

  Cecil pointed up at the facade of painted faces. "Jesus, the Beatles, Marilyn Monroe… you think she really slept with Kennedy?"

  "I don't think either one of them slept."

  They arrived at 1514?. Harmon tried the door, but it was locked. A bum was sitting on the steps of the tattoo parlor next door and writing in a notebook like Harmon's youngest daughter used.

  "You know Andy Prescott?"

  The bum didn't look up.

  "Nope."

  They stepped away from the bum to get a breath of fresh air.

  "He must not work on Saturday," Harmon said.

  "The bum?"

  "Prescott."

  "Oh." Cecil stretched and said, "I'm hungry. Let's go back to that Mexican joint, get something to eat."

  "Yeah, okay. Then we'll find a hotel."

  "And hookers?"

  "No hookers, Cecil."

  They walked back down the block to the place called Guero's. College kids crowded the porch fronting Congress Avenue. Harmon and Cecil could barely squeeze past the sidewalk tables. Three guys at one table were drinking Coronas-one wore a T-shirt that read "Keep Honking — I'm Reloading"; Harmon liked that-and making fools of themselves with passing females.

  "Dave, put your tongue back in your mouth, dude!"

  Another guy carrying four beers joined them.

  "McConaughey's inside. Ronda's trying to get his autograph, so I bought the beers at the bar. This round's on me."

  "You the man, Tres!"

  They punched fists across the table like the Yankees players do after someone hits a home run. A scrawny little guy with black glasses and hair that looked like it had been cut with a weed-whacker said, "What does McConaughey have on us?"

  "Looks, money, fame…"

  "Other than that?"

  They all laughed like he was Letterman or something.

  The scrawny guy said, "Listen to this girl's ad: 'I'm just a girl looking to share my heart with someone who doesn't mind my dog sharing the bed.' "

  The guy with Elvis hair said, "Her dog? Man, that's too kinky even for me."

  The scrawny guy said, "And the fleas."

  They laughed again.

  Harmon shook his head. Spoiled college kids getting drunk on their daddies' hard-earned money. Harmon had not gone to college. His father had died when he was only ten, and he had a mother and two sisters to support. So he had gone to work for the mob right out of high school. He had wanted to be an engineer; he became an enforcer.

  "Let's go inside. Maybe it'll be quieter."

  It wasn't. The Texas football team had beaten Ohio State, so the college kids were celebrating by getting drunk and being loud. Their waitress said a movie star was in the back room, which only added to the commotion. Harmon sighed; it wasn't going to be a nice quiet dinner.

  Just inside the front door was the bar with a fountain in the wood floor and a stuffed wild turkey on the wall. Obviously a real classy joint. And the customers dressed to fit the decor. Their hostess-a cute little broad in a miniskirt and a Guero's T-shirt tight around her chest-led them into the main dining room and past the open kitchen and an attractive Mexican woman making tortillas on an open grill. Harmon caught her eye and winked at her; she responded with a demure smile. On a job in Cancun-staged to look like a drug buy gone bad-he had scored with a Mexican waitress at their hotel, his first bilingual experience.

  The dining room's decor looked like something out of Cancun with Mexican calendars, curios, and art. They were seated in a booth along a brick wall covered with black-and-white prints of old Mexican bandits and graffiti like Harmon had written on the bathroom stalls at his school when he was a kid: JK luvs RL. A mariachi wearing a bolo tie and playing a guitar strolled by singin
g a Mexican ballad. He was good. The music and noise of the crowd reverberated off the concrete floor and brick walls and pounded into Harmon's head.

  Maybe a beer would relieve his headache.

  They ordered Mexican food and Dos Equis beer from a waitress tattooed and pierced from head to foot. She had to be a Democrat. The entire place was filled with Democrats.

  "What a friggin' zoo," Harmon said. "Any normal people live in Austin?"

  "Haven't seen any yet."

  But the beer was cold and the food was good. His spirits were starting to lift until he spotted a family man with his family. Harmon's own wife and kids were at his son's soccer game at that moment. Two soccer games in a row he had missed. He was feeling like a lousy father. Cecil must have read his mind.

  "Harmon, let's get some hookers. That'll improve your mood. And make your ribs feel better."

  EIGHTEEN

  Harmon Payne found Andy Prescott's office door locked all day Sunday as well because Andy had flown first class that morning to San Diego to find the eighth woman on Russell Reeves' list. So while Harmon and Cecil spent the day in the hotel bar resting Harmon's ribs and watching the pro football games on the big-screen TV "Harmon, says here one-point-five million Mexican free-tailed bats nest under the Congress Avenue bridge and come out every day at dusk? Can we go watch? They say it's really neat."

  "No."

  "Can we go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center?"