Free The Common Lawyer by Mark Gimenez Page A

phone rang. She pulled her purse from a lower drawer and fished the phone out.
    "Hello."
    The voice on the phone: "Is this Doris Sullivan?"
    "Yes."
    "Ms. Sullivan, this is Andy Prescott."
    "Who?"
    "Andy Prescott, your lawyer."
    "My lawyer? "
    "The traffic ticket on South Congress? Two years ago?"
    "Oh, yes, I remember now."
    Two years before, an Austin cop had stopped Doris for speeding down the 1500 block of South Congress Avenue; she had pulled into one of the angled parking spaces along Congress. The cop gave her a ticket for driving fifty in a thirty-five zone, a $240 fine. She had unwisely asked why he was wasting his time on speeders instead of dealing with the real criminals in Austin; he had added a reckless driving citation, an additional $200 fine. If she had told the cop who she worked for, he would have torn up the ticket and apologized. But her boss wouldn't have approved of her using his name to pull strings. So she had sat silent while the cop wrote the ticket.
    When the cop drove away, she had stewed in her car; her insurance premiums would double. When her anger had subsided, she noticed the sign on the door directly in front of her: TRAFFIC TICKETS. She climbed the stairs to the little office and hired Andy Prescott, Attorney-at-Law. She paid him $100 cash, and he gave her a guarantee: her ticket would be dismissed or he would pay the fine.
    "The ticket was dismissed this morning."
    "So it won't be on my record?"
    "No, ma'am."
    "My premiums won't go up?"
    "Not from this ticket."
    "Well, thank you, Andy."
    "You're welcome."
    She hung up, dropped the phone into her purse, and shut the drawer. She was smiling when she turned and saw Russell Reeves standing there with another armload of medical journals.
    "Your lawyer? Is something wrong, Doris?"
    "Oh, no, Mr. Reeves. Just a traffic ticket."
    She tried not to laugh as she recounted the story, including SoCo's version of Clarence Darrow.
    "He was wearing jeans and sneakers and a clip-on tie, said he was headed to traffic court—on a bicycle. His office, it's no bigger than a closet and it's above a tattoo parlor—tattoos and tickets. His desk was a card table. He had a motorcycle poster on the wall next to his diploma. I'm pretty sure he didn't graduate at the top of his class." She shook her head. "But he got the ticket dismissed."
    Mr. Reeves now had an odd expression on his face, as if he had just experienced another epiphany.
    "A traffic ticket lawyer in SoCo?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "He offices above a tattoo parlor?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "His name is Andy Prescott?"
    "Yes, sir."
    Mr. Reeves' eyes drifted off her, and he said, "He's perfect."
    He walked toward his office but abruptly turned back.
    "Call Darrell. Tell him to have the car out front in ten minutes."
    Doris Sullivan picked up the phone but thought, Perfect for what?

FIVE
    Andy was in no hurry to get back to the office. He never had appointments; his clients just dropped in (usually right after having been ticketed) or left their tickets and $100 bills with Ramon. And Britney's $200 was burning a hole in his pocket. So he had decided to eat lunch at Whole Foods, check out the bikes at REI, and then pay a visit to his mother.
    He turned the Huffy west on Sixth Street at the Texas Lottery Headquarters—gambling was illegal in Texas unless the profits went to the state—and gave a wide berth to a mentally ill man wandering aimlessly and obviously talking to God because no one else was listening. A block down, he waved at a pretty young woman in a blue dress pedaling a bike. The breeze blew her dress up to her thighs; she had nice thighs.
    Live-music clubs, shot bars, pubs, and lounges lined both sides of Sixth Street from the interstate to Congress Avenue—places like Bourbon Rocks, Blind Pig, Agave, Pure, and Peckerheads—and had earned Austin top ranking as the hardest drinking city in America. The street sat silent and seedy-looking that morning, but nights had become notoriously raucous with punks,