Accused Read Online Free Page B

Dallas versus South Dallas. Rich versus poor.
    The story of Dallas.
    Judge Buford dismissed the jury and motioned Scott back to his chambers then disappeared through a door behind the bench. Scott consoled the lead plaintiff, Mabel Johnson, a black woman who lived in South Dallas just east of the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Malcolm X Boulevard. She was a single mother. Her three young daughters walked to school past a half dozen liquor stores every morning and home every afternoon. She fought back tears.
    "I'm sorry, Mr. Fenney."
    "No, I'm sorry, Mabel. I'm sorry I couldn't make life better for you and your kids. For all the kids down there."
    "Down there," as if she lived in Mexico instead of just a mile south of where they now stood. She reached up and touched his cheek.
    "You're still my hero, Mr. Fenney."
    "I lost."
    "You tried."
    Mabel embraced him then walked out of the courtroom. Scott sat on the plaintiff's table and stared at his shoes. He no longer represented the trophy clients of Dallas, rich people who bestowed social status on their lawyers; the mere mention of his clients' identities at bar association meetings typically evoked perplexed head shaking or muffled laughter from other lawyers. He no longer worked the margins of ethics and the law, that gray area where a lawyer's money is made; nor did he make much money. He no longer practiced law like he had played football. For one thing, he no longer viewed the law as sport; for another, he lost. A. Scott Fenney was not a man accustomed to defeat, either on the football field or in a courtroom. Two years before, in this very courtroom, he had experienced his greatest victory as a lawyer when the jury had returned a "not guilty" verdict for Pajamae's mother. But the last two years had brought defeat into his life.
    He had tried to make a difference. He had failed.
    Another pair of shoes now entered his field of vision—brown wingtips—and Scott knew whose feet were in them before he heard the familiar voice.
    "Hell of a closing argument, Scotty. Almost made me want to pay my hundred bucks. Almost."
    He raised his eyes to Dan Ford standing there. Dan was sixty-two, bald, and the senior partner at Ford Stevens, the two-hundred-fifty-lawyer Dallas firm that had previously employed A. Scott Fenney. Dan Ford was the man who had taught Scott everything he knew about practicing law, the man who had been Scott's father-figure for eleven years, the man who had single-handedly destroyed Scott's perfect life. He had come for closing arguments. A ten-lawyer team from Ford Stevens had represented the city. They had won. They would make millions. Which explained why Dan was smiling when he stuck his hand out to Scott. They shook, and Dan's expression turned to one of profound empathy.
    "Scotty … you're trying to make the world a better place when you should be making money. You're wasting your talents, son. Come back to the firm. You can have your old office back."
    "I have an office."
    "Yeah, but your old office comes with a Ferrari, a Highland Park mansion, a country club membership, and a million-dollar paycheck."
    A million dollars. Funny, but Scott's first thought wasn't the Ferrari or the mansion and certainly not the country club where his wife had met the assistant golf pro. It was braces for Pajamae.
    "Sid's driving my Ferrari and sitting in my office."
    "He won't be if you come back. Scotty, watching you today, it was like watching Secretariat in his prime pulling a tourist buggy. Made me sad, thinking of all the money you could be making. The hooker's case made you famous, you could be working the biggest cases in Texas. Instead, you're working for the little people, doing good instead of doing well. You take this case on a contingency?"
    Lawyers his age at big firms like Ford Stevens billed $750 an hour—$12.50 every minute, almost twice the U.S. minimum hourly wage—and they billed in minimum six-minute increments: thirty seconds