The Case Against William Page 4

  William groaned. The varsity quarterback threw another interception.

  "He missed the read."

  William didn't just watch the games; he studied the games. Analyzed the plays, the alignments, the defenses, what worked and what didn't work. What he would do when he played on the varsity in four years. This year's varsity fumbled and stumbled their way to a losing 0-40 halftime score.

  "When's the last time we won a game, Frank?" the dad behind them asked. "Back in ninety-seven?"

  "Ninety-eight," his dad answered.

  "That'll change when William's our quarterback."

  Chapter 3

  "They ought to put William on varsity now," the dad sitting next to Frank said. "He's already better than the senior quarterback."

  "He'll be playing for the Aggies in six years," another dad said.

  "Like hell," the first dad said. "He'll play for the Longhorns. Right, Frank?"

  "Maybe Harvard," Frank said.

  They both regarded him as they might a Chevrolet cruising down River Oaks Boulevard.

  "Harvard?" they said in unison.

  It was the next afternoon, and Frank was again sitting in the same stands at the same football field. William's middle-school team was playing another private school. The Academy's classes were small, so the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders played together on one team against larger private school teams comprised mostly of eighth graders. William's team was equally as bad as the varsity, but he was good. Very good. Abnormally good. William Tucker was a prodigy, like Mozart or Bobby Fischer. Except his gifts were physical in nature. He was a natural athlete. He excelled at all the sports—basketball, baseball, soccer, tennis, golf—but what he could do with a football—what he could do on a football field—defied explanation. He was not a normal twelve-year-old boy. He was bigger, stronger, and faster than the fourteen-year-old boys. He had thrown three perfect passes for touchdowns, but his receivers had dropped the balls. He had run for four touchdowns. And he was now running for a fifth.

  Frank stood to watch his son.

  William had dropped back to pass. The defensive team had converged on him, and a sack was imminent. But at the last second, he spun around and broke wide, leaving the would-be tacklers grasping air. He hit the sideline and turned on the speed. His feet were fast, his gait smooth and rhythmic. No one touched him.

  Touchdown.

  The other dads whooped and hollered. There is something about football. Frank did not know what it was because he was not afflicted with the football virus, odd for a man in Texas. He had played in high school, as most boys do, but he had never dreamed of a football career. He hadn't been big enough, strong enough, or fast enough. His son was more than enough, but Frank did not live or die his son's football. Most men, even men who were successful at the law or medicine or business, want their sons to be like Frank's son. A man's desire for his son to be a star football player transcends race, religion, and socioeconomic status. Whether a poor uneducated black man in the Fourth Ward or a rich educated white man in River Oaks, he wants his son to be the star quarterback. He wants to bask in his son's glory. To watch him do football feats he could never do. Success on a football field is different than success in the courtroom or boardroom or operating room.

  Football is manly.

  Consequently, men stand in awe of football ability. You can work hard and become a competent lawyer or doctor or businessman; such success is the stuff of hard work, not the stuff of God-given genius. Football success also requires hard work; but no matter how hard you work, if you're not big, strong, and fast you will fail as a football player.

  Hard work won't make you six-five, two-thirty-five, and fast.

  Frank Tucker's life was not wrapped up in a leather ball. Or in his son's football heroics. He did not need his son to resolve his father's football failures. Or to make his father's dreams come true. But, like other men, he watched great athletes and wondered what it felt like to hit a home run to win the World Series or score a touchdown to win the Super Bowl or hit a four-iron stiff to win the Open. Few humans will ever experience that feeling. And those who will cannot explain it to those who won't. Consequently, Frank stood among a dozen other fathers, and like them, he watched his twelve-year-old son running down the field and wondered what it felt like to be William Tucker.

  William Tucker felt like that lion in the film they had watched in natural science class. The lion had stalked an antelope then chased it across the African savannah, pounced on it, bit into its neck, and then ripped it apart. It was gross, sure, but it was exciting to see that lion let the beast out. Did the lion think about what it was doing? No. It was just doing what came naturally. He had watched the film and thought, That's me. That's what I do on a football field. What comes naturally. On the field, he let the beast out. And it felt good. Really. Really. Really. Good.

  "Frank, I've got another client for you."

  The game had ended, and Brian Anderson had walked up. He was an IPO lawyer in a large Houston corporate firm. Three years before, when the dot-com bubble had burst, the Feds had brought securities fraud cases against insiders who had cashed out their stock before the crash. When the market goes up and investors get rich on paper profits, everyone's happy and the economy hums along; when the market goes down and investors' profits become losses, they are unhappy and the economy stumbles. In order to distract the people, the government puts people in prison. Brian referred his clients to Frank. They had been indicted on technicalities in the securities laws, traps for the unwary or politically unconnected. They were twenty-something whiz kids who had dreamt up the next big thing; they became political sacrifices in a capitalist society like pagans sacrificing lambs to the sun god. After a three-week trial, the jury acquitted them.

  "Who?"

  "CEO. Dumped his shares right before a bad quarterly report."

  "That's called insider trading."

  "Not if he was a member of Congress."

  Congress routinely exempted itself from the laws it imposes on the citizens, much as the ruling parties in Russia and China do. Consequently, the five hundred thirty-five members of Congress could freely and legally trade stocks on inside information whereas the other three hundred million Americans could not. Frank disagreed with the law, but it was still the law.

  "Is he guilty?"

  Brian shrugged. "He can pay."

  "Sorry, Brian."

  Brian turned his palms up and laughed. "My God, how do you make any money, not representing guilty people?"

  Criminal defense lawyers must make their peace with one harsh fact of life: most of their clients are guilty. They will devote their professional careers not to defending the innocent but instead the guilty: rapists, murderers, gangbangers, drug dealers, conmen, scammers, fraud artists, embezzlers, thieves, cheats, and liars.

  Frank Tucker had never made his peace. He only defended the innocent. In Texas, there was no shortage of clients, of innocent defendants wrongfully accused by overzealous or misguided or politically ambitious prosecutors. Many such defendants now resided in the state penitentiary. Unless they were defended by Frank Tucker. He had never lost a case.

  Of course, he had no quarrel with the constitutional principles that even guilty defendants were entitled to due process, a fair trial, and a competent lawyer. But they weren't entitled to him. And his children's rights trumped their constitutional rights: his children were entitled to a father they could be proud of, and he didn't think defending a brutal rapist would make his children proud. So he defended the innocent. For his children.

  "Great game, William."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Super run, William."

  "Thank you, sir."

  The dads had congregated on the field behind the bench to greet the boys. William's team had lost again. They were 0-6 this season. He shrugged it off. Few boys at the Academy were athletes. Like Ray. He stood four feet ten inches tall and weighed ninety pounds. His shoulder pads dwarfed him. His uniform
pants hung so low that his kneepads protected his ankles. He couldn't run, block, or catch. Heck, he couldn't catch a football if it was made of felt and he was covered in Velcro. But he was still William's best buddy. He walked over and sat next to Ray on the bench. He was bent over with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand. William tried to cheer him up.

  "Good game, Ray."

  "My dad's gonna be mad."

  "Why?"

  "He wants me to be a football player."

  William tried not to laugh. "Seriously? What's he smoking?"

  "On the grill?"

  "Uh … no. Did he play?"

  Ray shook his head. "Does your dad want you to be a football player?"

  "I think he wants me to be a lawyer."

  "But you're so good, William."

  He shrugged. "I'm good at sports, but you're good at math. Man, you do math stuff that I can't even dream of doing. I wish I was as smart as you."

  Ray was captain of the math club. More Academy students tried out for a spot in the math club than on the football team. That's how bad it was at the Academy.

  "You do?"

  "Sure."

  "I am pretty good at math."

  "Everyone's good at something, Ray."

  "Being the star of the math club isn't the same as being the star of the football team. Dude, you're going to be a famous athlete one day."

  "Math people are famous."

  "Name one."

  He could not.

  "But math people do all kinds of neat stuff," William said. "My dad said they invented the Internet."

  "Al Gore said he invented the Internet."

  "Who's Al Gore?"

  "Algorithms, maybe."

  Ray laughed as if it were the funniest joke he'd ever heard. William didn't have a clue.

  "Is that a math club joke?"

  "Yeah."

  Ray sat up straight. He seemed happier now.

  "You want to come over tomorrow, play video games?" William asked.

  "Sure."

  "Right after the Cowboys game." William stood. "You okay?"

  "Yeah. Thanks, William."

  William held his arms out to the smaller boy.

  "Reel it in, buddy."

  Ray stood, and William gave him a buddy hug, like the pros do after a good play. Ray walked off just as William's dad walked up and stuck out an open hand. William slapped his hand against his dad's.

  "Good game, William," his dad said. "Sorry y'all lost."

  "No big deal. It's fun to play with my buddies."

  They watched Ray drag his helmet over to his dad.

  "What's that boy's name?"

  "Ray."

  "Is he a nice boy?"

  "Yeah. He's a little nugget, but I like him."

  Most of the boys at the Academy were little nuggets. Others, like Jerry, the school photography club, were Mc-nuggets. He hurried over with his big camera hanging around his neck.

  "William, let me get a shot of you and your dad."

  Dad put his arm around William's shoulder pads, and they smiled for the camera.

  Chapter 4

  "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."

  Hid 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.

  Fr
ank'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.

  Chapter 5

  "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Over the last two weeks, you have witnessed something that is not supposed to happen in America: a political persecution. A politically motivated criminal prosecution brought by a politically ambitious district attorney. Mr. Dorkin, the Travis County District Attorney, desperately coveted the seat in the United States Senate that the defendant, Martha Jo Ramsey, now holds. Mr. Dorkin, a life-long Democrat, sought support for a campaign run from the leading Democrats in Texas. But he received no support. So he plotted his revenge. Not against his fellow Democrats, but against the defendant. Against a Republican. He took trumped-up charges to two grand juries, both of which declined to indict. But as they say, the third time's the charm.