Just Wanna Testify (20 page)

“How about if we invite them over to West End and you can talk to them together?” he asked. “That might make it easier.”

“It would,” she said. “But that’s okay. I know you don’t care about these guys.”

He looked at her. “I care about
you.
”

“Thank you, baby,” she said. “Don’t let me forget it, okay?”

“I promise.”

“I’m exhausted,” Regina said, and she kissed his cheek lightly. “I’m going to turn in.”

“All right,” he said. “I’ll be up directly.”

But halfway up the stairs, he called her name.

“I know you think this is how to love us, baby,” he said softly when she turned back toward him. “But no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.”

She smiled at him in the dim light. “No law against trying, is there?”

The next day, Regina called each woman and identified herself as Blue Hamilton’s wife. In no instance did anyone answer
Who?
There was usually a brief pause and then a fairly tentative
Yes?
Reassuring them immediately that everything was fine, Regina invited each one to come by the West End News and speak with her and her husband about the contract they had signed with one Ms. Serena Mayflower a few years back. This was followed by another long pause.

“We’ll send a car for you tomorrow around five thirty,” Regina said, as they searched their brains for a way to decline the invitation. “And I promise not to keep you more than an hour.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Jerome Smith’s grandmother, Alice, had said, sounding nervous.

“Nobody’s accusing you,” Regina replied soothingly. “We’ve just got some information that my husband wants to share before you make any final decisions.”

“What kind of information?” Hayward Jones’s high school sweetheart, Jennifer Monroe, had wanted to know.

“The driver will be there at three,” Regina said. “I look forward to seeing you then.”

Blue had agreed to host the gathering and do most of the talking. Regina thought that would give them the best chance of succeeding with at least one of the potential witnesses.

At Regina’s suggestion, Blue had high tea prepared for his visitors. One table held an elaborate silver tea service, delicate bone china cups, and a mouthwatering assortment of pastries and fresh fruit. When the women were ushered through the entrance to Blue’s private office at the rear of the West End News, Regina welcomed them as if it were her home. She told them her husband would be there momentarily and offered refreshments while she tried to put their names with their faces.

Judy Hughes, a friend of Stan Hodges; Kendra Brownlee, Lance Johnson III’s self-described babymama; Louise Solomon, Jackson Stevens’s neighbor; Jennifer Monroe, Hayward Jones’s high school sweetheart; and Alice Smith, Jerome Smith’s grandmother. She couldn’t really be sure who was who. They were all neatly dressed and they took coffee or tea, but nobody touched the food. They were probably too nervous to eat, which was completely understandable. They were being asked to make life-or-death choices in the company of some other women they hardly knew at all, under the watchful eye of a man they knew by reputation only. Regina looked closely at the women as they gathered around the table.

When the last guest had seated herself, Regina stepped forward and smiled, but before she could say anything, the smoked-glass door opened and Blue stepped into the room.

“Good afternoon,” he said pleasantly. “I hope I’m not late.”

“You’re right on time,” Regina said, turning to the women with a smile she hoped was reassuring. “Let me introduce my husband, Blue Hamilton.”

The women blinked or blushed or simply gawked at him, but nobody said a word.

“Good afternoon,” Blue said, bowing slightly. “I thank you for responding to our invitation on such short notice.”

“Who you think is gonna tell you no, Mr. Hamilton?” a young woman with a honey blond weave pulled back into a neat ponytail said with a smile that was more nervous than flirtatious.

“Well, Miss Brownlee,” Blue said, calling her by her name, as if he had done it a hundred times before. “I hope that means we’re going to be able to work together on a problem I’m having with some young men whose names I think you already know.”

As he spoke, he walked over to stand beside Regina.

“I don’t know what you talkin’ about,” Kendra said, tossing that ponytail and meeting his eyes defiantly.

“Didn’t you sign a contract to be a character witness for Lance Johnson III?”

The other four women looked at Kendra and held on to the handles of their china cups for dear life.

“Or not,” she said.

Blue frowned slightly. “Or not what?”

“Or not to be a witness for him.”

“She was very clear about that,” one of the younger women said, and another one, also one of the younger ones, nodded. “She said we weren’t required one way or the other. It was totally up to us.”

“I see,” Blue said. “Are you Jennifer Monroe?”

The first girl blushed and nodded. “Yes.”

“What else did she say?”

“She told us that the guys had signed up for a really important, top secret assignment,” Jennifer said, and the others nodded in
agreement. “And as part of their file, they had to list a woman who would testify to their good character, if the need ever arose and if we … How did she put it?”

“If we were so moved,” the other girl responded. “I remember because it sounded kind of formal. When I asked her what that meant exactly, she said all we had to do was give our honest opinion of the guys if anybody ever asked us and be prepared to swear to it. I said okay, and then she gave me fifty thousand cash and told me when he graduated, there was two hundred thousand more where that came from.”

The others nodded again, and some actually sighed at the mention of the money, almost like some women will coo at an infant, moved in some primal way that they can’t control.

“What was the money for?” Regina asked.

“I’m not sure exactly,” Judy said slowly. “They said it was kind of like insurance money since the top secret job the guys had to do was dangerous and they thought it was only fair.”

“Did that make sense to you?”

She shrugged. “He’s the one who put my name down, so I figured he knew what he was doing.”

“Did you tell him about Ms. Mayflower coming to see you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She asked us not to mention it,” said the oldest of the women.

“Mrs. Smith?” Blue said.

Jerome Smith’s grandmother nodded.

“And you just went along without wondering why?”

“I don’t know about you, Mr. Hamilton,” said the last woman to speak, which would make her Louise Solomon, Jackson Stevens’s neighbor. “But where I’m from, fifty thousand falling in your lap out of the sky clears up more questions than it raises.”

“And it wasn’t like I was still seeing him anymore,” Jennifer added. “By the time that woman came by, he had left me for a girl
he started sneaking around with freshman week, even though I gave up a scholarship to Yale Drama School to follow him down here!”

Even four years later, she was clearly still angry.

“Why did you do it?” Regina said.

“Do what?”

“Give up your scholarship.”

Jennifer looked at Regina and her eyes filled up with tears. “I loved him,” she said softly. “He was my first.”

“See, that’s what happens,” Kendra said. “You fall in love wit ’em and all they do is take advantage of you.”

Regina knew that it was not a good sign that nobody disagreed. “What do you mean?”

“Look, I loved Lance,” Kendra said, sounding weary of the whole topic, “and I thought he loved me, too. When I got pregnant all of a sudden, he acted like I was the biggest slut in Atlanta.” She tossed her hair for emphasis. “All those Morehouse guys are like that. They don’t respect girls from Atlanta, even when they chasin’ after us.”

“They don’t respect girls,
period,
” said Jennifer. “It doesn’t even matter where you’re from.”

“All I know is that he told everybody I had been with all his boys, so how did he know it was his baby anyway?”

The other women were watching her intently. Mrs. Solomon clucked her tongue sympathetically.

“I was dancin’ at the clubs just to make ends meet and you can’t do that once you start showing, so I moved back in with my mama. Once the baby came, he act like he didn’t even have no son. He never paid one dime and never even laid eyes on my baby’s face. When that woman told me he had put my name down as the beneficiary for all that money, I figured it was his way of finally taking responsibility. That money will give my baby a real future. I’m not throwing that away because all of a sudden his daddy is tryin’ to back out of the deal he made. That’s his problem, not mine.”

“What did they tell you about the project the boys signed on to be a part of?” Blue said. “Did they give you any details at all?”

“She said something about a space station,” Louise Solomon said. “That they might be gone for a long time.”

“Now they don’t want to go,” Judy Hughes said. “But you know what? Nobody twisted their arms, Mr. Hamilton, just like nobody twisted ours.”

She fiddled with her cup for a minute then put it down. “The truth is, Stan Hodges owes me. He owes me big time.”

“And why is that?” Blue said quietly.

“Because he stole my research.” She practically spat out the words. “Freshman year, we were lab partners. He was good at chemistry, but not as good as I was, so the professor asked if I would tutor him so he wouldn’t lose his scholarship. He said he really appreciated it, and asked me a lot of questions about my work since I was already doing independent research. I was trying to get a grant so I could stay in school and he knew that, so when I shared my research with him, he was always so interested and supportive. And you know what he did? He stole everything and used it to submit an early submission grant to the same foundation I was trying for and he got it! When my proposal came up for review, they not only turned me down, they cautioned me about claiming another student’s work as my own.”

“Why didn’t you show them your original research?” Regina asked. “Wouldn’t that have proven you were the rightful owner?”

“There was a fire in the lab where I had been working,” Judy said slowly. “Everything was destroyed. There was some talk of arson, but nobody could ever prove anything. I couldn’t pay my fees so I had to drop out of school and get a job.”

There was silence for a minute, and then Blue had a question. “Do you consider what he did to be a capital offense?”

“I don’t know what kind of offense it is,” Judy said. “I know I wanted to be a doctor and now I’m working at Macy’s. When he put my name down on that contract, we were friends. I never would have considered saying a word against him. But after the way he treated me? I don’t care what happens to him.”

“I don’t think you would say that if you knew all the facts,” Blue said. “There’s no way to make this any easier, so I’m just going to tell you what I know. This person who came to see all of you with that contract you signed is not a woman. She’s a vampire.”

Regina had expected them to recoil, maybe even to faint or scream or start calling on God for protection, but they didn’t. They just sat there, waiting, as if Blue had said, “She likes to eat at the Waffle House.”

“Do you understand what we’re saying?” Regina said, wondering if they were in shock.
“She’s a vampire!”

Still no surprise. They nodded slowly, but no one said or did anything. Did they need Blue to spell it out, she wondered? Did they already know about the sex-slavery part of it? Even worse, did they know about the head-biting thing?

“I don’t think you understand what’s going to happen to these boys,” Regina said. “These vampires are looking for smart men to impregnate them. That’s why they came to Morehouse.”

“They got robbed,” Kendra muttered, rolling her eyes at Jennifer.

“And then when they’re finished with them, when they’ve had babies to keep themselves going for a while, they’re going to
bite their heads off.
”

She said each word slowly and distinctly. Alice Smith shuddered a little and closed her eyes, but Judy didn’t blink.

“I thought vampires drank your blood,” she said, looking at Regina.

That’s when Regina understood. She drew in her breath so sharply that she heard it herself. “You already know about the head biting and you’re still not going to speak up for them?”

In the silence, Mrs. Solomon spoke up quietly. “I have something to add.”

They all turned in her direction.

“I’m here because Jackson Stevens put my name down. I’m seventy-six years old, on a fixed income, so I rent out half my duplex to students to help with my expenses. I rented the place to Jackson
the second semester of his freshman year. He told me he had just inherited some money and he wanted to pay six months in advance. The place had been empty for a while and, to tell the truth, I was having some problems making ends meet. Everything is up so high these days.”