Con Law Part 24

'Well, Professor, I don't know what Nathan thought he knew or what you've heard around town, but I'm a good guy.'

Book had spent the last hour trying to get Billy Bob Barnett to incriminate himself in the death of Nathan Jones; Billy Bob Barnett had spent the last hour trying to convince Book that fracking was good for the world. Neither had succeeded. Nadine returned with another donut.

'I couldn't resist.'

Billy Bob winked at her. 'I like women who don't resist.'

She sat and ate the donut then licked chocolate from her fingers. Billy Bob watched her like a teenage boy with a serious case of puppy love. He finally broke away and tapped the newspaper on the desktop.

'There's no murder mystery in Marfa, Professor. Nathan drove too d.a.m.n fast, like everyone else in West Texas. He fell asleep at the wheel. He ran off the road and hit a pump jack.

He died. It's a d.a.m.n shame. But it wasn't a crime.'

He tossed Nathan's letter across the desk to Book.

'My operations are run by the book. h.e.l.l, I'm an Aggie. We don't cheat. If we did, we'd have a better football team.'

He grinned. Billy Bob Barnett had not taken the bait. Perhaps he was guilty of nothing more criminal than being a boor. Or perhaps he was smarter than he put on; perhaps his good ol' boy routine was just that. Book decided to take one last shot at baiting Billy Bob, to lure him with a big piece of in-your-face red meat. He held up Nathan's letter.

'You know, Billy Bob, what Nathan wrote, some people might consider that a motive for murder. Your own lawyer accuses you of environmental crimes that could destroy your company and put you in prison for the rest of your life and says he has the evidence to prove it, that might make a person take action. Maybe even murder.'

Billy Bob's grin was gone. His jaw muscles clenched so tightly he bit the cigar in two; the end dangled from his mouth. The clenching spread upward until his entire bald head seemed to clench; his skin turned red and his dark eyes stared Book down, like two kids seeing who'd blink first. Book thought, Wait for it ... like when he went fishing as a kid, watching a big catfish circling the bait, trying to decide ... but the big fish didn't bite. Instead he took the cigar and tossed it into a trash basket.

'And some people, Professor, might consider it rude to walk into my office uninvited, eat my G.o.dd.a.m.n donuts, and then accuse me of murdering my own lawyer.'

His expression softened. He blew out a breath.

'Professor, I punch holes in the ground. I don't break laws and I don't kill lawyers, although we'd be a h.e.l.l of a lot better off if we followed Shakespeare's advice. So why don't you and Honeywell play tourist today, go look at Judd's boxes, eat at Maiya's, maybe take in the Marfa Lights tonight, then get up tomorrow morning and ride that Harley back to Austin and wait with all those other liberals for the sun and the wind to power your world.'

'Are you trying to run me out of town?'

'Is it working?'

'No.'

'Then I'm not.'

'Good. And I'm not a liberal.'

'Professor, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck.'

Billy Bob Barnett, fracking zoologist, escorted them out of his office and down the hallway-Nadine ducked into the lunchroom and grabbed another chocolate donut-past Earlene the receptionist, and out the building. They stood on the sidewalk; Nadine finished the donut and licked her fingers.

'So, Ms. Honeywell, what did we learn in there?' Book said.

'Billy Bob's a creep who breathes through his mouth. I generally don't trust mouth-breathers, but he's got good donuts.'

'What else did we learn in there?'

'Earlene is a lesbian.'

'No. We learned that Billy Bob Barnett didn't take the bait.'

'And Earlene's a lesbian.'

Book exhaled. He was trying to be patient with his intern.

'Okay, so this gay-and-lesbian identification skill you've mastered allows you to a.s.sess a person's s.e.xuality simply by looking at them, is that correct, Ms. Honeywell?'

She shrugged a yes. He decided to demonstrate for his intern's benefit how skillful cross-examination can make such a.s.sertions seem utterly foolish and the person making such a.s.sertions even more foolish. He employed his courtroom voice and questioned her as if she were sitting in the witness chair.

'So what gave Earlene away as a lesbian? Her clothes? Her hair? Her lack of makeup? The way she looked at you and not me? The fact that she's got shoulders like Michael Phelps? Ms. Honeywell, please tell the jury how you can know con clusively that Earlene the receptionist is in fact a lesbian?'

Nadine shrugged again.

'She grabbed my b.u.t.t in the bathroom.'

Chapter 15.

'They're boxes.'

'Works of art, Ms. Honeywell.'

Nadine Honeywell stared.

'Boxes.'

They stood in a renovated artillery shed on an abandoned cavalry outpost just south of town; it was more monastery than museum. Arrayed before them were fifty-two of Donald Judd's 100 Unt.i.tled Works in Milled Aluminum. The other forty-eight were installed in an adjacent shed. The works were rectangular boxes, each with identical exterior dimensions-41 51 72 inches-but unique interior configurations-a box within a box, a floating box, part.i.tions like cards in a deck or slanted shelves on the wall-that created optical illusions; each was open to the inside, each weighed one ton, each had been factory fabricated to exacting specifications, each cost $5,000. The boxes were perfectly aligned in three northsouth rows under a high ceiling topped by a Quonset hut roof; ma.s.sive east-and west-facing windows allowed the sun to bathe the boxes in light and set the shiny surfaces aglow. A young man sat cross-legged on the floor before one box, his elbows on his knees and his hands cupping his chin, and stared as if in a trance, like a disciple before a religious shrine. Donald Judd was a crusty gray-haired and bearded Midwesterner; he lived on a ranch overlooking Mexico; he was a towering figure in contemporary art in New York; and he created his life's masterpiece in Marfa, Texas.

Which masterpiece was funded by oil money.

Donald Judd began his artistic career as a painter but became renowned as a sculptor of boxes. He was a leader of the Minimalist art movement in New York in the sixties, but he became disenchanted with the New York art scene. He hated museums. 'Art is not commerce or show business,' he said. He believed that art cannot be separated from the s.p.a.ce around it and said he put as much thought into 'the placement of the piece as into the piece itself.' He wanted to permanently install his art in big open s.p.a.ces, inside and outside, where it would exist forever. In 1973, he moved to Marfa to realize his vision.

Which required money. A lot of money.

Philippa de Menil had a lot of money and a love of contemporary art. Her money came from oil; she was the granddaughter of Conrad Schlumberger, the French physicist who founded Schlumberger Ltd., an international oilfield service company. Her love of art came from her mother, Dominique de Menil, who founded the Menil Collection, a contemporary art museum in Houston. In 1974, Philippa founded the Dia Art Foundation in New York with her husband, Heiner Friedrich, and her inheritance, Schlumberger stock. Their vision was 'one artist, one place, forever,' to be achieved by funding permanent installations of major art projects; that is, one-man museums.

Heiner had long been a dealer of Donald Judd's work, both in his native Germany and in New York. Dia's vision matched up perfectly with Judd's. In 1978, Philippa and Heiner agreed to fund Judd's Marfa project, including the one hundred aluminum boxes as well as sixty large concrete boxes to be installed in an adjacent field just to the east of the artillery sheds. Dia purchased the decommissioned Fort D. A. Russell, paid Judd a monthly stipend of $17,500, and poured $5 million into the project. Dia funded other artists as well, including John Chamberlain and Dan Flavin; it acquired hundreds of artworks, many by Andy Warhol. It was a heady time indeed for the Dia Foundation and Philippa's Schlumberger stock, which traded in the $90 range.

But the oil crash of 1982 hit oil stocks hard; Schlumberger's stock price plunged to under $30. Despite putting $35 million of her inheritance into Dia, the foundation faced financial ruin. Philippa and Heiner told Judd that Dia could no longer fund his Marfa project.

Judd was not pleased.

After he threatened a lawsuit, Dominique de Menil stepped in to save Dia and her daughter's fortune. Heiner was removed from the board; Philippa's inheritance was placed in a trust overseen by her brothers. Dia conveyed the entire Marfa project-the buildings, the fort, and the art-and $2 million to Judd's new Chinati Foundation. They parted ways. Judd completed his masterpiece in 1986.

Judd's boxes are now something of a shrine. Art lovers from around the world make the pilgrimage to the old fort. With permanent installations of masterpieces by three giants of contemporary art-Judd's one hundred boxes, Chamberlain's twenty-two crushed cars, and Flavin's 336, eight-foot-long fluorescent lights in four colors (green, pink, blue, and yellow) installed in six U-shaped barracks at the fort, which the New York Times dubbed 'the last great work of 20th-century American art'-Marfa itself has been deemed 'Minimalism's masterpiece'; but Marfa will always be about Donald Judd. Marfa is a one-man museum; one artist, one place, forever. The vision of Judd, Heiner, Philippa, and Dia was realized and validated. The vision lives on without them.

Donald Judd fell ill on a trip to Germany in early 1994 and died in a New York hospital at the age of sixty-five. He is buried on his beloved ranch south of Marfa. The Dia Foundation survived but without Heiner or Philippa. Heiner Friedrich, now seventy-four, recently opened a museum in Germany and bought a $2 million home in the Hamptons. Philippa de Menil, now sixty-five, converted to Sufi Islam and is known as Shaykha Fariha Fatima al-Jerrahi; she is on Facebook. And the source of it all-Schlumberger stock-now trades near $80, giving it a market cap of $103 billion. The company is a leading international player in shale gas fracking.

'You reading a book at lunch?'

Border Patrol Agent Wesley Crum stuffed the last of the large pepperoni pizza into his mouth. He and Angel Acosta sat on stools at the counter.

'What are you reading?'

His words came out garbled through the pizza he was chewing. Angel looked up from the book.

'What?'

'What are you reading? That Shades of Grey book they was talking about on The View?'

'No, I'm reading his book.'

'Whose?'

Angel nodded past Wesley; he turned and saw the professor and his gal walk into the place. Angel waved like a kid to a sports star. Wesley shook his head. This was G.o.dd.a.m.n embarra.s.sing.

'Professor,' Angel said. He held up the book. 'Would you sign my book?'

The professor stepped over, greeted them, and autographed the t.i.tle page.

'It's very enlightening,' Angel said.

'Thanks, Agent Acosta,' the professor said.

He and the girl found a table across the room. Angel stared at the professor's signature on his book. Wesley sighed.

'Jesus, Angel-he ain't one of the Kardashian sisters.'

'It smells great in here,' Book's intern said. She inhaled the place. 'Olive oil. I love extra virgin olive oil.'

Her eyes glazed over and her mind seemed to drift off into another world.

'Ms. Honeywell?'

Nothing. He spoke louder.

'Ms. Honeywell.'

She snapped.

'What?'

She had a wistful expression on her young face.

'Oh, sorry, Professor, I was, uh ... thinking about olive oil.'

'Cooking with it?'

'Something like that.'

She shook it off with a full-body shiver.

'So why'd we go look at the art?'

'You're a student. I'm a professor. I'm trying to educate you.'

'In art?'

'In life.'

She eyed him with suspicion. 'You're not telling me the whole truth.'

'See? You've already learned an important life lesson.'

'Don't trust law professors?'

Book smiled.

'Can we go home now?'

'No.'

'When?'

'Tomorrow.'

She groaned then pulled out her cell phone and began tapping with her thumbs on the little keyboard.

'What are you doing?'

'Tweeting.'

'What?'

She read off her phone: '"Help! I'm being held hostage in West Texas by a deranged law professor."'

'How many followers do you have?'

'Two. Including my mom.'