Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga (23 page)

       “Excuse me?” he said as if he had no clue what she was talking about.

       “Don’t encourage her, Ethan,” Jules warned.  “She would rather talk about everything and anything but her legal situation, that’s what she’s trying to do.”

       Shay looked sidelong at her sister.  “And who died and made you Doctor Phil?” she asked.

       “Anyway,” Ethan said, taking Jules advice to heart, “as I told you last week, Serita, the state attorney is willing to deal if you’re willing to talk.”

       “No.”

       “Shay!”

       “No, Jules.  I told y’all I’m no snitch.  Y’all can forget that.”

       “But think of what will happen to you if you don’t turn state’s evidence, child!  Mookie Davenport is not worth it and you know it!”

       “You don’t know nothing about Mookie, so don’t even go there, all right?”

       “He’s a low-life, low-class, drug-dealing piece of scum ruining the black community, what else I need to know?”

       “You need to mind your business, Jules, that’s what else you need to know.”

       “You need to mind yours, Shay,” Simone finally spoke and everybody, especially Ethan, looked at her.  “As soon as those officers arrested this boyfriend of yours he couldn’t wait to implicate you, to try and blame this entire mess on you.  Are you minding that part of your business, Shay?  Are you really so far gone that you’ll take the heat for a man like that?”

       “Look who’s talking,” Shay said.  “At least I wasn’t so desperate in love that I tried to–” 

       “Shay, that’s enough!” Jules said urgently, and Shay folded her arms. 

       “Y’all just need to back up and stay off my case, all right?”

       “Impossible,” Ethan said and Shay looked at him.

       “That’s what you think.”

       “Your sisters are right, Serita.  Davenport hasn’t just implicated you, he’s asking to turn state’s evidence against
you
.  He wants to plea big time and his attorney did not hesitate to make that fact well known.”

       “What’s that supposed to mean?”

       Ethan exhaled.  “It means, Serita, that he’s asked, no, begged, to testify against you at trial; to take that witness stand and back up everything he’s already said about your central role in the organization; how you, not he, ran the whole drug dealing scheme.  He’s making every overture he can to cop a plea even as we speak.”

       This had the effect of cutting Shay short, something Simone and Jules rarely ever witnessed.  “He’s trying to get the deal y’all want me to take?”

       “As we speak.”

       “We’ve been telling you that all along,” Jules said.  “Mookie ain’t thinking about you, girl.  All he wants is to save his own behind and he doesn’t care who goes down with him.  His own attorney will tell you that.”

       “But how can he. . .,” Shay wanted to ask but stopped.  She looked at Ethan.

       “He can because Jules is right,” Ethan said.  “He doesn’t care a thing about you.  He’s putting the entire weight of the crimes he’s been charged with right back on you, as if you’re some modern day Ma Barker pulling all of the strings on his poor, helpless self.  It’s his testimony against you he’s offering in exchange for some serious leniency.  That way, they’ll get you both. That’s his big trump card.  Nobody gets to walk.  He knows he won’t, and, if the state attorney makes a deal with him, you won’t, either.  Of course, if you agree to cooperate you’re be released, all charges dropped, and only Davenport will have to face the music.  But either way, Serita, Davenport will face the music.  The question here today is will you face it with him.”

       Shay just sat there, unable to say another word, her long, fake lashes leaned down against her eyes.  Jules leaned over and patted her hand. 

       “What kind of time are we talking about, Mr. Graham?” Simone asked and Ethan looked at her.  “Ethan,” she amended.

       “Twenty-five to life,” he said and Serita swallowed hard.

       Simone looked at her baby sister.  She’d been nothing but a headache since she returned to them from Georgia, but she never would have taken her for a fool.  “Did you hear that, Shay?  Twenty-five years in prison.  Twenty-five years.  Can you imagine what that’ll be like?  You’re no hardened criminal, but that’s who you’ll be around.  Hard criminals. 

       “And they’ll have a field day with a pretty girl like you,” Jules added.  “You wouldn’t stand a chance in a place like that.”

       “All right!”  Shay said so forcefully that others at nearby tables looked over.  Then she exhaled and spoke lower.  “All right.  Y’all ain’t got to play up the drama, I get it.”  Then she looked at Ethan.  Looking, Simone thought, like the child she remembered her as.  “All charges will be dropped?”

       Ethan began nodding his head.  “Every one,” he said. 

       Shay thought about it and thought about, as all of the others sat in suspended animation, stunned that she could possibly believe that there was anything to think about.  Finally she, too, nodded her head.  “Okay,” she said and Jules shouted hallelujah.

       “Yes, Lord!” Jules said.  “It’s about time!”

       “I’m set to meet with State Attorney Edmonds this afternoon,” Ethan said.  “I’ll tell him it’s a go.  He’ll set up a meeting.”

       “And they’ll drop the charges at that meeting?” Simone asked.

       “Well, now, it won’t be that easy, as Shay already knows.  She’ll have to give them a proffer first.  And if her testimony at Davenport’s trial turns out to be what she said it would be, then, yes, they’ll drop the charges.”        

       “Why can’t they do it right away?  They may not trust Shay, but why should she have to trust them?”

       “Because, my friend, she has no choice in the matter.  This is a sweetheart deal for your sister, I assure you.  They have enough on her and Davenport to prosecute them both right now.  If it wasn’t for my reputation as a hard nose, somebody they don’t want to mix it up with at trial- and I’m not bragging- but they would have otherwise never went along with a plea like this.  Normally they would want Serita to do some time, a year or two at the least, especially given her ill-advised, dumb, stupid, crazy confession.  But—”

       “But because of you they’ll let her walk free.  That’s what you’re telling us?”

       “I’m not bragging–”

       “Yes, you are,” Jules said.  “But you’re right.  That’s why all of these big firms around here want you on their payroll.  You get results.  That’s a fact.  And that’s why me and Jeremy hired you.”

       Ethan looked at Jules.  “Speaking of Jeremy,” he said.  “What’s up with that? I know he’s full of wonders, but that’s kind of weird, don’t you think?  I mean, why would they want to give it to  a man with a black girlfriend?”

       Jules was sincerely lost.  She had no clue what Ethan was talking about. “Pardon me?” she said.  “Give what to him?”

       Ethan couldn’t believe she didn’t know.  “That award, Jules, come on.  I’m sure he’s not going to accept it, but the fact that they would offer it was just. . . weird to me.”

       Jules stared at Ethan.  “Will you please tell me what you’re talking about?”  she asked him.

       Now he stared at her.  “You’re jiving, right?”

       “Does it look like I’m jiving?”

       Ethan’s smile vanished as he looked at Jules and realized that she was completely serious.  She was, in fact, undeniably baffled.  He looked at Simone and Shay.  “Y’all know, though, right?”

       “Know what?” Shay asked, unable to hide her anticipation.  “Something about Jeremy?”

       “Yeah, but. . . I don’t know.  This is weird.  It was in the morning paper,  so I just assumed... Maybe Jeremy should—”

       “Don’t even try that with me, Ethan,” Jules said impatiently.  “Just tell me what it is, please?”

       Ethan exhaled, ran his hand across his face, and then reached into his briefcase and pulled out a newspaper.  Shay snatched the paper from him just as he was about to open it up. 

       “
Building Inspector Accused of Rape
,” she read from the paper’s headline.

       “It’s in the metro section,” Ethan said.  “You mean to tell me none of you read the paper this morning, or saw the news?”

       “I read the paper,” Simone said.  “But it was an Atlanta paper.”

       “That’s right, you’re the out-of-towner.”  Then he smiled.  “Gracing us with your beauty.”

       “He’s been named Citizen of the Year by the Drake Society,” Shay said, and then looked over at Jules.  “Isn’t the Drake Society like the Ku Klux Klan?”

       Jules, stunned to the point of disbelief as she grabbed the paper from Shay and read it for herself.  Simone looked over the top and saw, upside down, the headline:
Well-known Surgeon Given Controversial Drake Award.

       “And he accepted it?” Simone asked Jules.  Simone wouldn’t put it past that Jeremy Druce, but even he, she figured, couldn’t be that crazy. 

       “They’ve offered it,” Jules said, “according to this paper.”

       “But the Drake Society is a joke.  It’s one of the worse white supremacy groups in this country,” Simone said.  “They spread their hate in the name of conservatism; in the name of politics.  But Shay’s right.  They’re no better than the KKK.”

       “That’s why I was so surprised,” Ethan said.  “I never took Jeremy as that kind of dude.”

       Jules, so tired of Jeremy’s mess that she couldn’t even muster the will it took to get angry, sat the paper down.  Shay immediately picked it back up again, reading.  Simone shook her head.

       “What is wrong with Jeremy?” she asked.

       “Darn if I know,” Jules finally admitted, and Ethan chuckled.

       “It says here,” Shay said, reading the paper, “that this Drake group wants him to throw his hat into the ring.”  Shay looked at Jules.  “Like when since Jeremy started wearing hats, and why he got to throw it into some ring?”

       Simone rolled her eyes.  “You need to put down those boyfriends of yours  and pick up some books, girl.”

       “What?”

       “You’re clueless, Shay.”

       Shay was offended.  “Because I got male friends who happens to look out for me?  I can’t help it if men knock you down to get to me.   I can’t help it if I got it like that and you don’t.  Ain’t that right, Ethan?”

       “I don’t know about that,” Ethan said with a grin on his face.  “You’re a knock-out, Serita, but you’ve got yourself a beautiful sister here.  Very classy.”

       “Classy?” Shay said, disbelieving.  “Where?  I mean she’s aw’ight.  She got a pretty face, a curve here and there, but she can’t touch this over here and I know that’s right.”

       “I don’t know about that,” Ethan said again.

       “You don’t know about a lot of things for a lawyer,” Shay replied.  “You sure you know what you’re doing with my case?”

       “Jules, are you all right?” Simone asked when she saw her sister reach for her purse. 

       “I’m fine,” Jules said with a laugh, smiling one of those desperate, manic smiles as she grabbed her purse and began sliding out of the booth.  “But it’s late and I do need to get back.”

       “You haven’t even had lunch yet,” Shay reminded her, but she wasn’t interested in any reminders.