Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  With no Binx before her, singing his aria of the hog-tied husband, Sara sat back, observing the people at the other tables, watching the Branson lights shiver and shatter in the waters of Lake Taneycomo, and thought about what weird places one found oneself in if one were a reporter. This is not a place Sara would come to on vacation, but that hardly meant much of anything, since vacation was not a word in Sara’s personal lexicon, anyway. Vacation? What do you do when you’re on a vacation? If you love your work, if you derive your sustenance and your heartbeat and your very air from your work, what’s a vacation for? What’s the difference between vacation and exile?

  That’s what separates me from the Branson tourists more than anything else, Sara thought. They’re happy when they’re away from their lives, and I’m happy when I’m in my life. She turned that thought over, found it good, and decided not to share it with Jack.

  Binx returned, a troubled man—more troubled, in a different way. His nose-to-the-ground trailing of Sara was off for now; that was obvious. Looking sunny and innocent, Sara said, “Good news?”

  Binx drained his wineglass, reached into the bucket for the bottle, found it empty, and waved it energetically over his head at the waiter, who nodded calmly and retired. Then Binx plunked the bottle back into the ice and water, sighed deeply, and said, “They arrested Don and Chauncey.”

  Two of Binx’s reporters. “Who arrested them?”

  “The police. When it’s time to do an arrest, that’s who you get.”

  “Binx,” Sara said, “don’t make it tough on me. Just tell me what happened.”

  “We had Don and Chauncey outside Ray Jones’s house,” Binx said. “With gear, you know.”

  “Infrared cameras.”

  “Gear, yeah.”

  “Microphones.”

  “Gear, all right?”

  “And the police got them?” Sara shrugged that off as the waiter arrived with a new bottle.

  “Yes,” Binx said to Sara. “Yes,” he said, less patiently, to the waiter, who insisted on showing the label for approval rather than merely opening the damn thing so Binx could pour it all straight down his throat.

  “So what is that, after all?” Sara said carelessly. “Trespassing. The Galaxy’s used to trespassing.”

  “They got the gear.”

  “The Galaxy’s lost gear before.”

  “Well,” Binx said, “we weren’t broadcasting it, too tricky, you know. It was just on tape, right there.”

  “The police have the tape, you mean.”

  “They turned it over to Ray Jones.”

  “Pity,” Sara said.

  “There is no pity,” Binx said. He tasted the wine, at the waiter’s silent behest. “Yes,” he said again.

  Sara said, “So you lost one conversation and a few green-and-black pictures. You must have other things set up, other ears and eyes in place.”

  “Oh sure,” Binx said, watching greedily as the extremely slow waiter poured first Sara’s wine—as though she needed the stuff—and then at last his. He drank off half the glass before the waiter could put the new bottle in the bucket. Rolling his eyes slightly, the waiter carried away the empty bottle, and Binx said, “But this alerts them. And they’re keeping Don and Chauncey in jail overnight. And Florida is going to hate all this.”

  “They had Galaxy ID on them?”

  “Don’t remind me,” Binx said, and drank down the other half glass.

  As Binx poured for himself again, the neck of the bottle chattering against the rim of the glass, Sara said, “Still, you have other things going.”

  “Thank God.” Splunk, bottle away.

  “What kind of thing do you have?” Sara asked, as casual as a spring day.

  Binx drank deep. He put the glass down. He gazed upon Sara more in sorrow than in anger. “Oh, Sara,” he said. “You’re gonna do it, aren’t you?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shoot me down.”

  “Binx! What a thing to say.”

  “I know you are,” Binx said, as forlorn as a poodle in a rainstorm. “I can’t stop you, and maybe it doesn’t matter anyway, but at least I’m not gonna help you.”

  “Binx, these are awful things to say.”

  “At least I’m not gonna slit my own throat,” Binx said, and used that throat to down more wine. “And maybe it’s just as well, anyway,” he said.

  Sara looked at him carefully. “Maybe what’s just as well?”

  “Get thrown out of the old life entirely,” he explained. “Take the decision out of my hands. No more excuses, no choice, nothing. Like those army guys—what are they?—Rangers. Get dropped naked on a mountaintop—”

  “I don’t think they’re naked.”

  He ignored that. “Have to figure it out, start all over, don’t carry a thing from the old life.”

  “A naked person on a mountaintop,” Sara cautioned, “is most likely to just die.”

  Binx smiled wanly and spread his hands. “See? No downside.”

  25

  Friday was the first day of the actual trial, and Sara was there, but only through the intercession of Cal Denny. The court was being quite strict with the press, which by its very nature prefers the circus of celebrity to the bread of jurisprudence. Only three pool reporters were allowed in the courtroom itself, though the rest of the flock could preen and honk all it wanted in the hall outside and in the stairwell down to the main entrance. Remote-TV trucks now girdled the courthouse, as though they’d formed a circle there against an attack by the Atlanta Braves, but no media cameras were permitted anywhere in the building. Other cameras were present, however, small video cameras discreetly on black tripods by the side walls of the court, one placed there by the prosecution, the other by the defense.

  Sara was not seated with the press contingent, three shaggy reporters and three intense sketch artists jammed together in the rear row on the prosecution side, but with the defense partisans across the aisle and down front, between Cal Denny and Ray Jones’s “secretary,” Honey Franzen, a woman so laid-back and sure of herself, she probably didn’t even bother to have a pulse. Jolie Grubbe, on the aisle, had given Sara one brisk nod upon meeting but then grimly avoided her eye ever after; so whatever good fellowship had developed between them last time, Jolie still didn’t like the idea of a reporter, any reporter, hanging out inside the tent.

  Well, she was right, wasn’t she?

  The Ray Jones trial was a hot ticket, but the courtroom was small, with four benches on each side of the public area that you could maybe squeeze six people onto apiece, which meant fewer than fifty spectators could be accommodated, of whom six—rear row, left—were press and six—front row, right—were with Ray Jones. How the court had decided to allocate the rest of the seating, Sara didn’t know, but the benches were jammed with civilians of every sort—except children—all of them trying to look solemn and sober and mature, but all of them actually so agog, they looked mostly like those fish with both eyes on the same side of the head.

  Judge Quigley entered the court promptly at 9:30—swish, everybody rose; swish, everybody at the judge’s order became seated again—and in no time at all, reality set in. Intensity and expectation drained out of the room like crankcase oil; you could feel the deflation everywhere. And Sara’s own delight at being an insider didn’t last long; very soon, what she was mostly thinking about was how hard this bench was and how very long it still must be before lunch.

  This first day of the trial being on a Friday, there would be a long two-day hiatus before they all got rolling again on Monday, so the state had chosen not to lead off with anything particularly interesting or dramatic. Since the jury could reliably be counted on to forget by the end of the trial whatever happened here today, the state used this time to fill the record with all the necessary boring background stuff, the forensics: the medical examiner’s testimony; testimony of the police officers who first responded to the report of the dead woman in the lake; testimony of the old geezers who’d fou
nd the body; testimony of various experts on the condition of the body, the meaning of the water in the lungs, the length of time in the water, the approximate time of death, the casts of tire tracks taken at the murder scene, the analysis of the bloodstains found in Ray Jones’s Acura SNX sports car, and on and on and on. By the time Judge Quigley banged her gavel for lunch, Sara had begun to feel she was trapped forever in the world’s slowest mystery novel.

  Apparently, Cal felt the same way. They’d all trooped over to Warren’s offices to eat take-out sandwiches in the conference room, and Cal, after consulting with Warren and Jolie and Ray, came over to say, “They tell me this afternoon’s gonna be just like this morning.”

  “Goody.”

  “If you want to stay, you know, for your job and all—”

  Sara sat up straighter and looked up at Cal, standing beside her. “What’s the alternative?”

  Cal took the empty seat next to her, resting one bony elbow on the conference table now littered with little white paper bags and Saran Wrap and Styrofoam coffee cups and aluminum Diet Pepsi cans. (Product placement.) “I was talking to Ray,” he said, “and, you know, he’d like for you to get to know him and understand him, for that piece you’re gonna write in your magazine after the trial—”

  “I’ve had the feeling, to tell the truth,” Sara said, “that Ray’s been avoiding me.”

  “Well, yeah, he is,” Cal agreed.

  “He is?” She hadn’t expected that blunt an answer.

  “See, the thing is,” Cal explained, “Ray hopes, you know, he’ll come out a good guy in that piece of yours in the magazine. But if everybody sees like you and him are buddies all through this, nobody won’t care what you think. So you and me are pals, but Ray’s gonna keep his distance. You know, till after the trial.”

  “When he may be keeping his distance from everybody.”

  “We sure hope not,” Cal said.

  “I’m sorry, Cal, but I just don’t get the point.”

  “Ray says to me,” Cal told her, “ ‘Cal, you know what I’m like, who I really am. You tell that friend of yours, let her get to understand me without all this regular press stuff.’ You know what he means. You do an interview, photo op, all of that, you don’t get to know somebody that way.”

  “You don’t get to know them by staying away from them, either,” Sara pointed out.

  “You aren’t away,” Cal said. “You couldn’t get much closer, now, could you? It’s just, Ray’s got a lot on his mind these days. He don’t want to have to put on his publicity face just because you’re here, you see?”

  “I guess so,” Sara said dubiously.

  “So,” Cal said, “if you don’t want to be in the court there this afternoon, when Ray’s got to be there, you wanna go see his house?”

  Sara stared at him. “What?”

  “It’s that keep-your-distance thing again,” Cal said. “Ray wants you to know how he lives, but he can’t invite you to the house. That’s too close; that gives you—what do they call it?”

  “Conflict of interest?”

  “Maybe,” Cal said. “Anyway, I talked it over with Ray and it’s okay with him, so I could show you the house while he’s in court here. If you want to see it.”

  Sara considered, frowning at this big open friendly face, wondering just what the hell was going on here. This is the way, she thought, Binx felt with me last night. She said, “What are we gonna do there, Cal? Just the two of us, huh?”

  Cal blushed. Tomato red, looking like a really bad sunburn, the blush came up out of the open neck of his yellow shirt and suffused his face. “Oh no!” he said, and his big bony hand nervously lifted, then quickly pat-pat-patted the tabletop between them as though gentling a horse. “No no,” he said. “Uhh—I don’t even know how to say this.”

  “Just go ahead and say it,” Sara suggested.

  “Well, uh, you and me, I mean, I like you, and I think you like me, like friends, but, uh, I’m not the kind of guy you’re gonna go for. You’re a very pretty lady, and you’re a New York lady, and a reporter and all, and we can get along with each other, but, you know, not that way. I’d be embarrassed to even, even, uh … Nothing.”

  There was no way not to believe that protestation. Cal is who he seems to be, and if this whole situation is weird, so what? Most situations are weird, if you stop to look at them. “I apologize,” Sara said with absolute sincerity. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I just wasn’t sure.”

  “I imagine,” Cal said as the red sea receded from his face and he tried a tentative smile, “you get a lot of fellas expressing interest.”

  “Some,” Sara admitted. “I’d like to see Ray’s house this afternoon. Very much. Thank you.”

  26

  And what has Jack Ingersoll been up to all this time? Plenty. Plenty.

  For one thing, he’s been on the phone a lot with Hiram Farley, his boss at Trend back in New York, explaining that while everything is all right here and Sara Joslyn has not lost her marbles after all, nevertheless it seems to Jack that he ought to stay a little longer in Branson, just a little longer, to nail this story down here. Going to be an interesting story, maybe two stories.

  “What two stories?” Hiram, on the phone, sounded just as dour and unimpressed as he looked in person.

  “Time will tell, Hiram,” Jack said, breezy but serious nonetheless. “I think we may have a little something to say about our friends on the Weekly Galaxy. I don’t want to spoil it for you—”

  “Go ahead, I don’t mind.”

  “But I do, Hiram. I don’t want to promise what I can’t deliver. Just give me a couple days here to be sure I’ve got what I think I’ve got.”

  “We have a reporter on the scene.”

  “And she’s doing the job, she’s doing fine. Hiram, you’d be proud of her, she’s linked up with Ray Jones’s best friend, his actual real-life best friend, she’s on the inside, she’s going to bring us so much meat!”

  “Then leave her to it. I believe you have one or two things on your desk back here in New York.”

  “I’m taking care of all that, Hiram, I’m taking care of everything. I just need a couple more days here to—”

  “You and Sara have an extracurricular association, do you not?”

  “Hiram! What are you saying? Do you think I’d stay away from the office for nothing better than sack time? Hiram, we know each other!”

  “Oh, very well,” Hiram said, because, in fact, he did know Jack. “A couple more days.”

  “You’re going to be so happy, Hiram.”

  “Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.”

  “Okay. You won’t be unhappy. You won’t be too unhappy. You won’t be any more unhappy than you can stand, how’s that?”

  “See you next week, Jack. In New York.”

  So that was part of Jack’s adventures on the telephone. The rest of his phone surfing concerned his other projects for Trend, those items that were, as Hiram had so delicately mentioned, on his desk back in New York. With an encouraging call here, an apologetic call there, an explanatory call somewhere else, Jack managed to keep all his current Indian clubs in the air by long distance, and then he grabbed his cameras and went outside.

  To take pictures. Many pictures. Pictures, for instance, of Louis B. Urbiton at lunch in a Forsyth diner with the prosecution team of Buford Delray and Fred Heffner. Pictures of various scalawags entering and leaving the Galaxy nest on Cherokee. Pictures of Harry Razza, drunk with various other drunks, all of them members of the fourth estate, including pictures of Harry handing great wads of money to bartenders to keep the other drunks drunk.

  And this morning, pictures of a very disheveled Don Grove and Chauncey Chapperrell being transported in handcuffs from the holding cells in the back of the Branson police station and around to the Branson municipal court, where there was no problem of overcrowding in the spectator seats. And even, illegal though it might be, pictures (taken when nobody was looking) of Don
and Chauncey in court itself, being tongue-lashed by a judge while a black-suited Galaxy lawyer who looked remarkably like a ferret stood silently to one side, eyes darting this way and that, searching for rats.

  This sequence was followed by further pictures of Don and Chauncey looking abashed in the city hall parking lot with the ferret attorney, after that creature had paid their fine and agreed they would be out of the state of Missouri by the end of this calendar day. And these were followed by pictures of Don and Chauncey snickering together in that same parking lot, once the company ferret attorney had left. And the last in the series, just a split second before Jack went away from there to seek for greener pastures, was of Don staring openmouthed directly into the telephoto lens—lovely tonsil shot.

  Jack knew the Binx Radwell reporter team, or most of them. They’d been his own team, once upon a time, in those happily dead bygone days of yore when he himself had been a Weekly Galaxy editor. The few additional members of the team, added since his reign, had been easy for him to pick out and become familiar with. He was determined to get each and every Galaxian in Branson on film, to get each and every one of them doing something he or she shouldn’t.

  It was working, too. Still, as Jack drove away from the gaping-mouthed Don Grove, it occurred to him there was one member of the team he hadn’t seen for some little while. One-third of the Down Under Trio, the indomitable Aussies. Louis B. Urbiton and a photographer were hanging out with the prosecutors. Harry Razza was continuing to ply the world’s press with drinks.

  But where was the lanky, laconic Aussie with the big nose? Where was Bob Sangster?

  27

  The automobile that Sara and Cal shared, he driving, as he took her out to see Ray Jones’s house, was a maroon Jaguar town car with the steering wheel on the right instead of the left. So the car had been built for use in Britain and its Commonwealth, or maybe Japan or some other part of the world where traffic keeps to the left, and it had either originally been driven in that country or had been bought this way by Ray Jones to show off. Whichever the case, Sara found it unsettling to be in the driver’s seat, looking out through the windshield at the uneven and nerve-racking traffic of southern Missouri in tourist season, and have neither steering wheel nor foot controls for comfort. Her foot kept stabbing for the brake, her hands kept twitching in her lap, and it wasn’t until they were in Hollister, where everybody had to slow down a bit, that she could divert enough attention from the road to say, “This is a nice car. How come Ray happens to own it?”