"He should've audibled into a hot route," William said.
"Who?" his dad said.
"The Cowboys quarterback. Watch the Sam's feet."
"Sam who?"
"The strong safety. In the NFL, they call him the Sam. Watch his feet, you can see he's going to blitz."
"You can?"
Last Sunday they had thrown the football on the beach in Galveston, but this Sunday they were watching football in the den of the River Oaks house. William sat in front of the big-screen TV with the sports pages spread out on the floor. His dad sat in his leather chair next to the lamp. Becky lay sprawled out on the couch. William was watching the Cowboys play; his dad was working on his closing argument; his sister was reading about wizards. Dad had to drive back to Austin after the game. Closing arguments in the senator's trial were tomorrow morning. The game went to commercial, so William went back to the sports pages.
"Roger Clemens won his three hundredth game."
Dad grunted.
"Sammy Sosa hit his six hundredth home run."
Another grunt.
"Oh, shit—Kobe got arrested!"
That got Dad's attention. Kobe Bryant was a huge star in the NBA.
"Language, William. For what?"
William read the story.
"Rape."
William knew generally what rape was—a man forcing himself on a woman—because he had asked his dad, but he wasn't entirely sure what "forcing himself" meant. He had started to ask his dad—Dad's rule was, "If you ask a question about stuff like that, I'll tell you the truth. Just make sure you want to know the truth"—but he wasn't sure he wanted to know that truth. Not yet.
"They say he raped a girl at a hotel in Colorado. Desk clerk."
"Where?"
"His room."
"Witnesses?"
"Nope."
"He said, she said."
"Huh?"
"Her word against his."
"He'll win."
"Why do you say that, William?"
"Because Kobe's special. He's a star athlete. No jury will convict him."
"He might be special on a basketball court, son, but that doesn't make him any more special as a human being than that girl."
His dad always said stuff like that—"Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" … "No man is above the law" … "Every person is equal under the law"—same as William's social studies teacher. But even kids his age knew adults didn't really believe all that stuff. They just said it because they were supposed to. Except maybe his dad. Sometimes William thought maybe his dad really did believe it.
"We're all God's children?" William said.
He remembered the priest's sermon from that morning.
"That's right."
"Well, maybe so, Dad, but God must've liked His son Kobe a heck of a lot more than he liked His daughter the desk clerk."
"Why?"
"Because He made Kobe six-six and gave him a killer jump shot. So he's a rich and famous basketball star. He didn't give that girl shit. So she's a desk clerk."
Dad grunted. Which made William proud. Because when Dad grunted, that meant William had said something that made him think.
"Language, William."
A thought struck him.
"Hey, Dad, maybe Kobe will hire you to be his lawyer. I bet he could pay you millions. You'd be really famous if you were his lawyer."
"He doesn't represent clients accused of rape," Becky said.
Frank Tucker represented wrongly accused defendants in white-collar criminal cases. Corporate executives and politicians. Corporate executives charged with various kinds of criminal fraud—Houston was home to thousands of multinational corporations; consequently, the white-collar criminal defense business was booming—and politicians charged with violations of state and federal ethics and campaign finance laws and official misconduct—this was Texas, so that business was always booming.
White-collar criminal defense attorneys seldom became famous like the defense lawyers who represented accused murderers. Everyone knew who Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey were after they had represented O. J. Simpson in his murder trial. But white-collar cases generally weren't as sexy as murder cases. Consequently, Frank Tucker had been well known only to other lawyers who referred their indicted clients to him. But he had made the leap to the front page the year before when he had represented an Enron defendant. Enron Corporation had been a high-flying energy trading company headquartered in Houston in the nineties. It had gross revenues of $100 billion. It had assets of $60 billion. It had a stock price of $90. It had engaged in pervasive criminal fraud. After the company collapsed in 2001, corporate executives, including Ken Lay, the chairman of the board, and Jeffrey Skilling, the CEO, had been indicted. Even Enron's accounting firm, the venerable Arthur Anderson, had been indicted for obstruction of justice.
Frank's client, a thirty-year-old vice president in title but in fact just a Harvard-educated paper-pusher, had been charged with criminal fraud. He was guilty only of criminal stupidity, and there weren't enough prison cells in America to incarcerate all the executives guilty of that offense. He was just a kid who had followed orders and believed in the company; he had put every dime he made into Enron stock. He had lost everything—his job, his savings, his retirement funds, his reputation—just like the employees. But he had been caught up in the wide net of justice thrown out by the Justice Department in response to political posturing by members of Congress. They netted the sharks but also the shrimp. After a four-week trial, the jury had acquitted his client, one of the few Enron defendants who weren't convicted. As he walked out of the courthouse after the verdict, angry former Enron employees spat on Frank. That was a first. Many Americans had cheered O.J.'s acquittal, but then, he had only been accused of brutally murdering two innocent people, including his ex-wife whose head had almost been cut off. Frank's client had been accused of financial malfeasance resulting in the loss of jobs and the value of Enron stock. But Frank had long ago learned that being a criminal defense lawyer meant having the courage to live with the fact that just verdicts often were not popular verdicts.
And that the hardest verdict to live with was his own verdict of himself.
Frank gave William a man hug and a high-five and Becky a bear hug and a forehead kiss.
"I'll see you guys Thursday or Friday. Becky, you're in charge until Mom gets home."
His wife was house hunting.
He would rehearse his closing argument during the three-hour drive to Austin. He would face the jury at 10:00 A.M.