“Oh, so what you’re saying is that Mr. Hamilton is about to pull out the big guns?” Buzz laughed.
“Okay, then. No further questions. Hamilton, let’s see what you’ve got.”
“Because Mr. Charles Maycomb finds today’s matter too painful to discuss publicly, he has declined to take the stand and has asked instead that I screen this videotape, which I would like to do now, with permission of the court.” He held the videotape aloft in his diamond-ringed hand.
Judge Sanders sighed. “How long is this gonna take, Mr. Hamilton? The country club stops serving lunch in thirty minutes.”
“The running time on this tape is three minutes and twenty-two seconds, Your Honor.”
“Proceed.”
Hamilton popped the tape into the VCR. Lily watched as the Atlanta skyline appeared on the screen. The camera panned a long line of men and women carrying rainbow flags and placards. It was Atlanta’s gay pride parade — Lily wasn’t sure which year, but it was recent, judging from the, clothing and hairstyles.
A convertible in which a gorgeous black drag queen sat, smiling and waving, drove out of the camera’s range, and then another group of marchers came into view, carrying a banner reading LESBIAN, GAY, AND BISEXUAL PARENTS. The camera zoomed in on four faces. One of them, Lily noted with horror, was her own.
There, onscreen, were Lily and Charlotte wearing matching T-shirts that read GAYBY BOOM.
Marching alongside Charlotte and Lily was Ben, wearing a white polo shirt with a small, discreet pink triangle on the chest.
There was nothing discreet, however, about Ben’s marching partner. Dez was decked out in a hot pink caftan and a rhinestone tiara. Though he was not in full drag makeup, Dez was wearing hot pink lipstick and a set of false eyelashes so large that they re¬sembled a pair of tarantulas resting on his eyelids. He held the tiny baby Mimi, who was laughing and cooing, high above his head, while he shrieked at the top of his lungs, “We’ve come for your children! We’ve come for your children!”
As the screen went blank, the only sound in the courtroom was Big Ben’s laughter. When Judge Sanders banged his gavel, Big Ben said, still laughing, “I’m sorry, Your Honor. I couldn’t help it. That Dez may have had ruffles on his drawers, but he was funny as hell.”
Judge Sanders removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Well ... on that note, let’s break for lunch. Court will reconvene at two o’clock.”
Lily sat at the table as if she had been turned to stone. When Ben turned to face her, she whispered, “Lost.”
CHAPTER 20
In Buzz Dobson’s dingy office, over cold sandwiches no one seemed to have much of an appetite for, Buzz, Lily, and Ben grimly discussed the morning’s proceedings.
“I just don’t understand how that bastard got hold of that tape,” Lily said, pushing away her uneaten sandwich.
“Oh, he probably got it from Charlotte’s crazy brother,” Ben said. “That group he’s president of has a whole collection of videos of gay marches —so they can use them to show the evils of homosexuality.”
“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter how Hamilton got it,” Lily sighed. “All that matters is that he got it, and now we’re screwed.”
“Come on now, Mrs. McGilly,” Buzz cajoled. “We’ve not even made our argument yet. The testimony of the McGillys holds a lot of water in this town.”
Lily refused to be comforted. “Yeah, well, it’s kinda hard to compete with a man in drag shrieking,
‘We’ve come for your children!’ Did you see Judge Sanders’ face when he saw that? He turned positively gray.”
“Well, all we can do is get out there on the field and give it all we’ve got,” Buzz said.
Great, Lily thought. Super-slick Stephen Hamilton has proven our entire marriage to be a fraud, and now our lawyer thinks he’s back on the high school football team. Well, what do you expect from someone who graduated from a law school in a building that sits smack-dab between a Krystal and a Church’s Fried Chicken?
Back at the hearing, Jeanie McGilly testified that Lily was as good a mother as she had ever seen
—that she not only saw to Mimi’s basic physical needs, but also spent a great deal of time reading to her and playing with her. When Stephen Hamilton rose to cross-examine Jeanie, Lily’s stomach knotted in fear for her mother-in-law.
She needn’t have worried. When talking to Buzz, Jeanie’s demeanor had been warm and maternal, soft as the petals of a magnolia. But when she faced Hamilton, her entire presence changed until she could’ve been Joan Crawford playing a tough-as-nails businesswoman.
“Mrs. McGilly,” Hamilton smiled. “I just have to ask you... when you saw the videotape, the one with Miss Maycomb and your son and daughter-in-law and the man holding Mimi who was shouting,
‘We’ve come for your children ...’ “ He paused. “How did you feel when you saw that videotape, Mrs.
McGilly?”
Jeanie smiled a little. “Well, I didn’t laugh out loud the way my husband did, but I did think it was kinda funny. I mean ... you just had to know Dez. He didn’t mean nothing by what he was saying; he was just joking, like always. Benny Jack used to bring him down here to visit sometimes. We all just loved Dez. I cried my eyes out when I heard about the accident.”
Hamilton leaned toward her, going for maximum drama. “Did it ever occur to you that your son and Dr. Reed, or Dez, might have been ... more than just friends?”