Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  He licked wet lips. He gazed into her eyes, knowing he was being taken but not knowing how, unable to refuse the siren call of hope. He reached out, palm down, and closed his hand over hers and the canister both. “Have dinner with me,” he said.

  She smiled, sunny and sweet, her hand held in his. “Sure, Binx, I’d like that.”

  Desire and doubt brewed on his face. “You will?”

  “Sure I will,” she said. “I’ll have dinner with you, and then I’ll go to bed with Jack.”

  He grinned with relief. “Oh, that’s okay, then,” he said, and squeezed her hand tighter around the canister. “Maybe I’ll get you drunk.”

  “Maybe.” Gently she removed her hand from his, leaving the canister behind. “What time?”

  He smiled as that hand went into his pocket. “Right after I develop the film,” he said.

  23

  Ray’s cook had quit, being a decent patriotic Christian woman who couldn’t wait to prejudge him, so he arranged to have some kind of edible shit sent in from Jjeepers! for himself and his dinner guests out to his place after his evening show on Thursday, the night before the trial began. These dinner guests were Cal and Jolie and Warren, and the occasion was a combination strategy meeting and pep talk. They all had a drink before dinner, and Jolie and Warren shared a bottle of Italian white—a pretty good Orvieto—over the bland fried chicken, but generally they were light on the booze, though God knows, they all had reason enough to drink.

  Warren’s primary cause for thirst was Ray’s insistence on testifying. “I’m the one they’re charging with all this bullshit,” Ray pointed out. “How’s it going to look if I don’t stand up there and throw the lie in their fucking faces?”

  “Dignified,” Warren said.

  “Too late for me to be dignified,” Ray told him, and conjured up a burp to prove it.

  They were dining in the dining alcove, between the spread-out living room and the spread-out kitchen, a roomy hexagonal box stuck onto the golf-course side of the house, wide windows on three angles overlooking the thirteenth tee, where not that much happened after dark.

  Warren wasn’t satisfied with either Ray’s answer or Ray’s burp. “You won’t keep your cool,” he said, twirling the wine in his glass, ignoring the steam-table green beans and wet roasted potatoes. “I know that about you, and you know it about yourself. You don’t like authority figures, and that courtroom’s going to be full of them, and if our fat friend Buford Delray doesn’t have the wit to pull your chain, I assure you the fella from Springfield, that state prosecutor, whatever the hell his name is—”

  “Fred Heffner,” said Jolie, who was good at details. Turning to Ray, she said, “Warren’s right, you know. I figure about sixty-five percent of my time is spent keeping you away from places where the only thing you can possibly do is get yourself in trouble.”

  “I’m in trouble,” Ray said, which was merely God’s own truth. Not over the Bob Golker thing, though; that was just crap. True, the discovery that Bob had not gone to California after all but had gone instead to a watery—and boozy—grave had at first shaken Ray’s confidence, made it seem as though maybe his idea wasn’t as golden as he’d been thinking. But then he saw that everybody, down to the dumbest deputy, knew that Bob had really died in a drunken accident and that the whole charade this morning had simply been the prosecution taking advantage of a heaven-sent opportunity to play some dirty pool, poison the jurors’ minds with images of Ray Jones in handcuffs. Bob’s death might complicate things a little, eventually, but there was no reason to give up the original idea.

  Ray grinned to himself, a private grin. If Jolie or Warren were even to suspect what was actually going on here, they’d shit a brick. Well, Warren would shit a brick. Jolie would shit a silo.

  Warren said, “Ray, I don’t need you on that stand. All the state’s got is circumstantial evidence, and not enough of that. I’m talking about Belle Hardwick here. The other thing, the Robert Wayne Golker thing, that’s a joke and even the state knows it. If they convict you on Hardwick, they’ll just fold Golker into it, and if they lose you on Hardwick, they’ll drop Golker.”

  “It’s all bullshit, Warren,” Ray said, “and you know it, and I am determined to stand up and tell the world it’s so.”

  “Right on, Ray,” Cal said, grinning like an idiot. Well, of course, he was an idiot, but a damn good one.

  Jolie lowered a bunch of chins at the idiot. “You keep out of this.”

  “Cal can have an opinion if he wants,” Ray said mildly.

  Jolie transferred her chins to Ray. “Where would he keep it?”

  Warren said, “Ray, the reason you pay a lot of money for a high-priced attorney is because he knows his job. So you ought to let him do his job.”

  Ray swallowed chicken; it wasn’t that bad. He said, “Warren, are you threatening to quit?”

  “Absolutely not,” Warren said. “Whatever damn fool thing you do, I’m in for the long haul.”

  “Good.”

  “But if you do a lot of damn fool things and get yourself convicted,” Warren went on, “I shall protect my own fundament by making it clear in every post-trial interview that you went down only and solely because you failed to follow my counsel.”

  “Fine,” Ray said, and grinned. “Sock it to me, man. At that point, I won’t much give a shit, will I?”

  “You’re saying,” Warren concluded, “that I can’t dissuade you.”

  “You got that right,” Ray said. “And just to put us out of our misery quick, I want to go on the stand the very first day, tomorrow. Morning.”

  Warren and Jolie smirked at one another, which Ray didn’t like one bit. Then Warren said, “Ray, let me explain a little bit what a trial is, how it works. First, the state tells us why it arrested you. It presents its case, produces its witnesses and its evidence. Then we get our turn at bat, to poke holes in their evidence, cast doubt on their witnesses, and present our own version of events. But they go first, with their witnesses. As big a fool as you are determined to be, Ray, you are still not one of their witnesses; you’re still on this side of the battle.”

  “Oh,” Ray said, feeling like maybe he was a bit of a bumpkin, like everybody thought. But a smart bumpkin, he was sure of that much. “In that case,” he said, “I want to be first up when we get to the bottom half of the inning.”

  Warren smiled at him. “No.”

  “Damn it, Warren,” Ray said, “it’s my goddamn trial, and I can—”

  “You can go to hell for yourself, boy,” Warren said, and now he glared across his cooling chicken at his fractious client and said, “You can go on the stand against my counsel and advice, if you insist, but you’ll go on there when I say so. You are not going to alter and confuse and addle my strategy. To continue with your baseball analogy, the player does not tell the coach the batting order.”

  Time to back down; old Warren was getting pretty steamed. Ray could still work his own agenda, whenever he finally got to the stand. “Okay, pal,” he said. “I’ll be good, and I’ll be patient, and I’ll wait for you to point your high-price finger my way. But don’t forget I’m sitting there.”

  “Hardly,” Warren said, and put his napkin on the table. “Excuse me.” He rose and left the room, dignified and self-assured and just a little pissed off.

  Jolie sipped wine and said, “Let me take the opportunity to present my pet peeve.”

  “Fire away,” Ray said. “It’s open season.”

  “Sara Joslyn,” Jolie said.

  Ray looked blank, though he knew whom she meant. “Who? Oh, Cal’s friend.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” Cal allowed.

  Jolie looked sour. “She’s a nice girl reporter,” she said.

  “I kinda like her,” Ray admitted.

  “So do I,” Jolie said. “She’s a nice girl, as you say. After the trial, maybe we’ll all become pen pals. But tomorrow, we get serious. From here on, I don’t want her around.”

  “Aw
gee,” Cal said.

  Ray said, “Jolie, don’t be a pain. The girl works for a nice news magazine up in New York City. They’re a weekly magazine; they aren’t going to print a word about the case until the trial’s all over and done with. What’s the harm in having her around?”

  “What’s the point in having her around?”

  “Cal’s got the hots for her,” Ray said.

  Jolie gave that the look of contempt it deserved. “Bull,” she said.

  “Why not?” Ray asked her. “Cal’s been married a couple times, he likes girls, he isn’t some faggot or anything.”

  “I think I’m gonna score, too,” Cal said, grinning like Ichabod Crane.

  Ray, listening, heard a voice. “Is Warren on the phone?”

  Jolie said, “Maybe he’s calling a psychiatrist.”

  Ray grinned. “You mean I’m driving him crazy?”

  “Calling a psychiatrist for you,” Jolie said. “If Cal wants to hang out with this girl reporter, at least I don’t want her around our strategy sessions.”

  Ray spread his hands. “Jolie, look at this table. Do you see her here?”

  “If I see her where I don’t want to see her,” Jolie threatened, “I am going to scream until she goes away.”

  “You do that,” Ray said, and Warren came back to the table, looking both grumpy and satisfied. Taking his seat, putting his napkin on his lap, he said, “The next couple of minutes should be rather interesting.”

  “Why’s that?” Ray asked.

  Instead of answering, Warren looked around at them all and said, “What were we discussing?”

  “Reporters,” Jolie said with a curl of the lip.

  “What a coincidence,” Warren said as a whole lot of really bright floodlights flashed on, out there on the golf course, impaling from half a dozen directions a golf cart stopped on the little golf-cart road out there, midway on a line between these windows and the little ball-washing box on the thirteenth tee. On the golf cart were two shabby men and a lot of expensive equipment: infrared cameras, high-definition long-range microphones, shortwave radio scanners to monitor police calls, professional-quality earphones.

  The men on the golf cart, in the middle of that sudden glare, tried to do thirty things at once, and accomplished none of them. They tried to shield their eyes from the blinding light, they tried to get the golf cart started and run away from there, they tried to keep their equipment from falling off the cart, and they tried to pretend they weren’t doing any of those things. So, for about ten seconds out there, the clumped mass of golf cart and men and equipment looked like some sort of windup toy gone bonkers.

  Then the Porte Regal security cops arrived, running in from all directions, waving nightsticks and Mace cans and handcuffs, and collected up the windup toy gone bonkers, then took the whole tangle away from there. And the lights went out.

  “There,” Warren said. “Wasn’t that fun?”

  “You saw something,” Jolie said to him.

  “I saw light reflect from something shiny that moved,” Warren explained. “Probably a camera lens. I doubted there were many golfers out there in the pitch-dark, so I phoned security. I assume they were reporters of some sort.”

  Jolie raised a significant eyebrow at Ray. “Reporters,” she said.

  “Jolie, have some more wine,” Ray suggested.

  24

  Binx wanted to talk about Marcie. Sara wanted to talk about what the Galaxy was up to in connection with Ray Jones, but she couldn’t ask that question head-on, so they talked about Marcie. That is, Binx talked about Marcie. Sara could have sung the whole song right along with him, but she didn’t, because he thought he was making it all up. So she let him take a solo.

  “The thing is, we were too young when we got married, we didn’t know our own minds, we didn’t know who we were. I’m not blaming Marcie, I think it’s just as tough on her as it is on me, and she’s stuck just the same way I am. And now with the kids, you know, and that drives us even further apart. We were just kids ourselves, somebody should have told us, ‘Don’t do it! Find out who you are first, don’t tie yourself down before you ever even tested those wings.’ I’m not blaming Marcie, I know it’s hell on her, too, and she’s got the kids more than I do. We came together and we thought it was love, you know, love for the ages, but what did we know? It was just sex, that’s all. We were just kids, and sex was like a new lollipop, you know, in those days we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and then the kids started coming. I’m not blaming Marcie, we made all the decisions together, but we were wrong. What did we know? Nothing. We met in college, and her folks were all over her to marry me, and my folks were just as bad. I’m not blaming them, it was our own decision, but we weren’t ready to make a decision, neither of us. I’m not blaming Marcie, I’m as responsible as she is. More. It was up to me to be the mature one, and I just wasn’t. And then the Galaxy job came along, and the money looked so good, and we just spent it, we just bought stuff, and everything you buy it winds up you still owe on it, we’ve got all these mortgages, and paying off the cars, paying off the furniture, paying off the swimming pool, paying off all this stuff. I’m not blaming Marcie, I wanted that stuff as much as she did, or almost as much. But it means we’re stuck again, all over again. The kids, and all the debts, and when I was fired for a while we really fell behind, taking out loans and I don’t know when we’re gonna get caught up. I’m not blaming Marcie, it’s the whole lifestyle, you get it, you spend it, you know how it is at the Galaxy, the money isn’t real, so you spend it as soon as it comes in, and then you’re behind the eight ball, and you don’t know what the hell you’re gonna do. You’re stuck, that’s all. You and Jack were right to get out, you really were, but I’m stuck in it. I got Marcie, and the kids, and the house, and the cars, and the pool, and all this stuff, so I can’t make a move. I wanted life, you know? And I got the Sargasso Sea. I’m not blaming Marcie, but if only I could get away from her at some point, find somebody that understands me, has confidence in me, faith in me, I know I could turn my life around, get out from under all this shit. And I have to tell you, I’m not blaming Marcie, but she’s no help at all, she doesn’t try to save any money, give me any encouragement, act like she’s gonna stand by me, you should have heard her when I was fired for a while, no support, nothing. And sex. On a good day our sex is down to something that looks like an illustration in a plumbing manual, but when I was fired for a while it was hopeless, she had Krazy Glue in there, I swear I couldn’t—”

  “Maybe,” Sara interjected, “you shouldn’t tell me about your sex life.”

  “Well, it isn’t what you’d call a sex life,” Binx said. “It’s more like your dance of the dead, if you know what I mean. Now, I’m what I think I’m a pretty passionate guy, if you know what I mean, I mean in terms of like technique and understanding what a woman likes, you know, what she’d like a guy to—”

  “I don’t think you need to tell me about that,” Sara said, definitely not wanting to hear an offer of cunnilingus.

  “I’m just saying,” Binx explained, “what I’m saying, I’m not a turnoff. In bed. I give good orgasm, I really do, but I gotta have a partner, it’s been so long since there was any kind of satisfaction in the marriage, I mean any kind of satisfaction, I honestly believe if I could meet a woman who would appreciate me and encourage me and give me the kind of boost of the ego that I just don’t get at home, I honestly believe, Sara, I’d even be a better husband for it. Better able to go home, better able to face the problems, put up with Marcie and the kids, maybe see my way clear at last, figure out some way out of this mess. I mean, I’m not blaming Marcie, but I can’t do it all on my own, and I’m on my own, Sara—in every way that really matters, I’m on my own. I’m not blaming Marcie, but she isn’t satisfying in the way that a woman ought to be and could be and most of the time is in the life of a man. You know what I mean. We’ve known each other a long while now, Sara, and—”

  “Mr. Radwell?�
��

  Binx, having just hurtled from the roof in this mad attempt to teach himself to fly, now faltered, fluttered, wings collapsing, as he looked up at the waiter. Rage and hatred seethed so fully in Binx’s red-rimmed eyes that the waiter, a slender chap, took a nervous step back. Through gritted teeth, Binx said, “Yes?”

  “Telephone for you, sir.”

  Binx was torn. He was shredded. Sara could see it in the clench of his jaw and she felt a kind of amiable pity for him. This must be the Galaxy, his master’s voice, and both he and Sara knew it. But he didn’t want to stop, not when he was—he apparently believed, or desperately hoped—at last getting somewhere, just starting to make his pitch, just about to dream the impossible dream, scale the unscalable mountain, bed the unbeddable broad. No; not the Galaxy; not now.

  But yes. “I’ll be right back,” Binx threatened Sara, in a new voice, low and guttural, as he rose, trembling all over, to follow the waiter to the phone.

  Binx, in his pursuit of Sara, had brought her to Branson’s only attempt at a prestige restaurant, the Candlestick Inn, high on the cliff directly across Lake Taneycomo—a river-narrow Lake Taneycomo—from downtown Branson, whose lights, both in themselves and in their reflections in the water, were the view. The Candlestick was hushed, dim, candlelit instead of fluorescent-lit, and there was no buffet table at which you could have all you could eat. Therefore, the tourists weren’t here, the bargain-seeking families who didn’t care what they ate just so long as it was cheap and there was lots of it. What was here on a Thursday night, fairly late, therefore, were locals of the professional class, in pairs and quartets, eating slowly, chatting quietly, drinking wine, and looking only occasionally out the plate-glass window at the seductive lights of Branson.