Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Bimbos,” Warren repeated; he hated to be reversed. “There’s no direct evidence to connect Ray with the killing,” he went on, “and their circumstantial evidence is laughable. So all we have to do is be quiet and polite, and we’ll get our verdict, no problem.”

  Jim Chancellor, the local lawyer who’d been helping out in the preparation of the case, said, “Warren, what about resting the defense? Right away, no witnesses at all. Just to point up how little prosecution case there is to rebut.”

  “I would do that if I could, Jim,” Warren said, and nodded his heavy head in Ray’s direction, down at the end of the same conference table where late the shadow jury (and its cuckoo bird) had been in deliberation. “If Ray here would let me.”

  “No way,” said Ray.

  “As you see,” Warren said to Jim.

  Ray said, “We’ve been over it and over it, Warren. I’m not disputing your smarts, you know that. All I’m saying is, if I don’t stand up there and look those people in the eye and tell them they’re full of shit, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

  Jolie said, “Using slightly different language, I presume.”

  “Come on, Jolie,” Ray said. “I know how to talk in public, you know that.”

  Warren turned back to Jim, saying, “So we won’t do the sensible thing, I’m afraid. Our principal is determined to testify.”

  “Mm mm,” said Jim, expressing the most profound of misgivings.

  “Agreed. And yet, here he is.” Warren turned again in Ray’s direction. “You wanted to go first,” he said. “Okay, you’ve got what you want. Tomorrow, you’ll be our first witness.”

  “By God, Warren, thank you,” Ray said, grinning from ear to ear. “I feel like a kid on Christmas Day.”

  “You’re welcome, Ray,” Warren said with just a hint of irony.

  Jim said, “First of how many witnesses, Warren?”

  “That depends how badly Ray performs,” Warren said.

  “And thank you, Warren,” Ray said.

  Ignoring his client, Warren told Jim, “If Ray does reasonably well, we may stop right there, while we’re still ahead. If he makes a really true mess of things, I’m afraid we’ll just have to keep calling witnesses until the jury forgets. No matter how many months it takes.”

  “It’s support like that,” Ray said, “that’s kept me going all these years.”

  36

  The tiny container of Mace that Sara kept in her shoulder bag was about the size and shape of a lipstick, which made it very convenient to carry but a little tricky to find in the dark in the middle of the night, with somebody coming through the motel door. On the other hand, this time it was just as well she came up with the wrong tube in her haste and panic, because she was already aiming the thing and pressing the top of it with a shaking thumb when Jack’s voice said, “Is that you? Are you awake?”

  Sara lowered the fatal lipstick. “Jack? What are you doing here?”

  “Okay if I turn on the light?”

  “I think you’d better.”

  Lights burst into existence, causing Sara to squint and to shield her eyes with the hand holding the lipstick. And there was Jack, with his suitcase and some sort of dumb grin, saying, “So that’s what you wear when I’m not with you. I like that shorty kind of stuff.”

  “Do you.”

  Peering more closely at her, at her hand, he said, “You’re putting on lipstick in the dark?”

  “I was trying to Mace you. From now on, call first.”

  “Mace me with a lipstick?”

  “Oh shut up,” she said, and turned to put the lipstick back in her bag; there was the damn Mace. And when he ran a hand up inside her shorty nightgown, she irritably slapped it away. “Don’t scare me in the middle of the night.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

  Then she was. All at once, she remembered how her last thought before falling asleep was how much she missed having Jack in the bed beside her.

  Which didn’t mean she wasn’t still mad at him for scaring her. Forgiving, and not forgiving, she turned and said, “What are you doing here at this hour, anyway? What hour is it?”

  “A little after one.”

  “What are you—How can you get here this late?”

  “This time,” Jack told her with an almost boyish eagerness, “we can get the Galaxy on a number of felonies, with people who would be very happy to prosecute. Hiram wanted me here to set it up. It was too late to make a connection to Springfield, so I drove down from St. Louis.”

  “And didn’t pass a single telephone along the way.”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You succeeded. Leave Sunday morning, come back Monday night—that’s fairly surprising.” All at once, Sara wrinkled her mouth like a rejected page of copy and said, “Uk. What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “That taste, it’s like—I don’t know what it’s like.”

  He looked at her with real concern. “It just hit, just this second?”

  “No, it’s—” She made a series of disgusting mouths, with sound effects; he looked away, not wanting to know this. She said, “It’s been building the last few days. I didn’t notice, really, but waking up just now it hit me; it’s”—smack-smack—“salty, nasty, kind of—not rancid, exactly …”

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve been getting it, too. You know, you don’t pay attention, but you’re right.”

  They both went smack-smack, tasting their mouths. Jack said, “Is it something in the water?”

  “No, it’s … I almost remember; it’s—” She stopped, mouth and eyes wide open, and stared at Jack. “Bac-O Bits!”

  “What?”

  “Bac-O Bits! You know, that fake bacon stuff. You shake it out; it’s like coarse pepper, only it’s—what color is that? Cordovan!”

  “Cordovan? And it’s a food?”

  “Kinda.”

  “This,” Jack said, “is a part of Americana I don’t want to know.”

  “Bac-O Bits,” Sara repeated, then nodded and tasted some more. “It’s the redneck’s garlic,” she said. “They put it on everything; we’ve been getting it in every meal. They put it on the eggs in the morning, on the sandwich at lunch, in the salad at dinner.”

  Jack, belatedly wary, hunched his shoulders and said, “I had a Bloody Mary.”

  “Bac-O Bits!”

  “Does it build up in the body,” he asked, “like PCBs?”

  “It builds up in the mouth,” Sara said, and turned toward the bathroom, saying, “Excuse me while I brush.”

  “Me second.”

  In the bathroom doorway, she turned back to say, “What did Binx want?”

  “Oh, it’s great,” Jack assured her, chortling. “Wait’ll you hear. Binx has pulled the greatest caper; he’s home and dry, you’ll be proud of him.”

  “Tell.”

  He studied her, eyes gleaming. “Just as soon as you brush your teeth and I brush my teeth, and just as soon as I complete my exhaustive study of that appealing garment you’re wearing, I’ll tell you all about it.”

  37

  Tuesday morning, while Jack was off tightening the noose around the collective Weekly Galaxy neck, Sara was in her usual seat in the courtroom over in Forsyth, Cal on one side of her and Honey Franzen on the other. There was more of an air of expectation in court today, a sense of everyone waiting to be thrilled in some way. As Cal had explained to Sara, Ray was going to testify in his own defense this morning, over the objections of his high-priced defense attorney. “Then why is he doing it?” Sara asked as they waited for Judge Quigley to enter and gavel the crowded courtroom into session.

  “He’s got his reasons,” Cal said. “He wants to tell his side of it.”

  Good drama, bad move, Sara thought as the judge did come sweeping into the room in her black robe and gavel everybody back into their seats and into silence.

  Seated now at her high desk, Judge Quigley looked s
everely around for somebody to reprimand, found no one, and snapped, “Is the defense ready?”

  Warren rose. “We are, Your Honor. The defense calls Ray Jones.”

  A stir, and a murmur, and a muffled hubbub—all went through the room as Ray got up from the defense table and went over to the witness seat to be sworn. Judge Quigley rapped again with her gavel. “There will be no disturbances of any kind,” she announced, “or I will clear the court. Mr. Thurbridge?”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Warren said, and looking only slightly like a man who believes himself to be on a fool’s errand, he approached the sworn-in Ray and the morning began.

  Ray started well enough; but of course, it was his own lawyer asking the questions, and those were real easy ones he was tossing over the plate. With Warren’s gentle guidance, Ray at last got to tell his side of the story to a hushed and fascinated courtroom, including fourteen hushed and fascinated jurors. He wanted all present to know that he had never had any kind of sexual or emotional relationship with Belle Hardwick, who was merely another employee in his theater; that he hadn’t driven the red Acura SNX that night; that he’d been home from the theater, absolutely by himself, before 10:30 that night; that he’d been asleep in his bed by midnight; that he had not thrown away any clothing in the last month or so, nor burned any clothing, nor given away any clothing, nor lost any clothing; and that he had no idea who might have been angry enough at Belle to have done all that awful stuff to her. “Though,” he added, while Warren looked just a teensy bit nervous, “it seems to me, when you get into excess violence like that, more likely than not somebody’s been drinking.”

  “Do you drink, Ray?” Warren asked. But of course, Sara realized, he had to ask that and not leave the subject to the prosecutor.

  “Sometimes,” Ray answered. “Not when I’m working; it throws off my timing. But after a show sometimes, if there’s a little party goin on, a bunch of people kickin back, sure, I like a taste or two. But I’m not a solitary drinker, never was.”

  As the testimony went serenely along like that, Sara could see Warren gradually becoming less tense. Ray wasn’t being defensive; he didn’t have a chip on his shoulder; he wasn’t caustic or mean. He was just a reasonable, normal person who happened to be innocent of the charges against him and who would like people to know and understand that.

  Warren stretched it out, and Sara could see him doing it and she knew why, but once Ray had told his story two or three times, there really wasn’t much left to say, so there did have to come that moment, about an hour into day three of the trial, when Warren had to step away from his client, flash a nervous smile at the judge, and say, “No more questions, Your Honor.”

  Now it was the prosecutor’s turn. Fred Heffner, the Lincolnesque gun from Springfield, was handling interrogation of witnesses, that being a task rather beyond the capacities of the local prosecutor, Buford Delray. (Sara was happy to see Louis B. Urbiton in a privileged seat directly behind Buford Delray. She was happy for Louis B. She wanted his impersonation of a reporter from The Economist to last and last, right up until the dramatic unveiling. Gotcha! Gotcha both, Buford.)

  Fred Heffner started small and easy, saying, “Mr. Jones, I want you to know I’m pleased and happy you’ve decided to come forward and tell your story like this. If I tend to go back over one or two details, I hope you won’t mind. It’s my job, you know, just to make sure everything’s crystal-clear for the jury. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Ray said. He seemed easy and calm, half-smiling at the prosecutor, unworried. But was he truly the confident, well-prepared witness he appeared to be, or was he a lamb, gullible and trusting, led to slaughter?

  Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Fred Heffner said, “Now, Mr. Jones, I noticed in your testimony a little earlier this morning, in referring to what happened to the late Belle Hardwick, you used the phrase “excess violence.” Do you recall using that phrase?”

  “In connection with drinking, yeah.”

  “In connection, I believe, with the death of Belle Hardwick. You considered her manner of death to be, in your words, “excess violence.” Isn’t that so?”

  “I think we can all agree on that part,” Ray said with a little grin.

  Fred Heffner didn’t grin back. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Can we? What is your definition, Mr. Jones, of excess violence?”

  Lifting himself wearily to his feet, as though he really was above this sort of foolishness, Warren said, “Objection, Your Honor. This is just some sort of semantic game. Everyone in this court knows what Ray Jones meant.”

  “Well, I’m not sure we do,” Fred Heffner said. “That’s why I’d like Mr. Jones to tell us, in his own words, what he had in mind with that phrase.”

  Judge Quigley, smiling upon the prosecutor, said, “I think that’s a legitimate question. The phrase was introduced by the defendant; he should certainly expect to have to answer as to what he meant by it.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, while Warren shook his head at the folly of humankind and resumed his seat. Fred Heffner turned back to Ray, saying, “Let me try to make it easier for you, Mr. Jones. I take it you were saying that some level of violence is acceptable, until it reaches a point you—”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Warren said, on his feet again. “The prosecuting attorney is putting words in the witness’s mouth that are clearly not anything he said or meant or implied.”

  “Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, “all I’m asking the witness to do is define his terms.”

  “Then I think,” the judge said, “we’ll let him do so.” Gazing down at Ray without love, she said, “Mr. Jones?”

  Ray directed his answer straight to her. “Your Honor, I’m not in favor of violence at all. If I wanted to knock this prosecutor here down,” he said, still looking at the judge but pointing at Fred Heffner, who smirked, “that would be a bad thing to do; I’m not condoning it. If I hit him and he went down, that would be a bad thing, but it’s what I wanted to do and I did it. Now, if all I want to do is knock him down and I start hitting him with chairs and desks and microphones and all sorts of stuff, that’s excess. Anyway, that’s always what I thought the word meant. Whoever killed poor old Belle there, they killed her three or four times, according to what I read. If I call that excess, I don’t mean I think it would’ve been all right if he just killed her once. I’m against violence, all kinds of violence. I’m a musician, not a boxer.”

  Bravo, thought Sara, taking sides for just a moment. You’re not just a musician; you’re a songwriter, and that was a good song. Well done.

  Judge Quigley seemed to think so, too, reluctantly. “Thank you, Mr. Jones,” she said, and she looked over at Fred Heffner, who, during Ray’s answer, had gone back to the prosecution table and found a photograph, which he now held. “Mr. Heffner, are you satisfied?”

  “Indeed I am, Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, approaching the witness. “In fact, that was very eloquent, Mr. Jones. What you say about Belle Hardwick having been killed several times seems to me a pretty accurate description of what happened on the night of July the twelfth. This is a picture of the victim’s body after it had been taken from the water.”

  “I’ve seen it,” Ray said, not taking the picture.

  “Take another look at it,” Fred Heffner suggested. “Go ahead. Take it.”

  Slowly, with evident revulsion, Ray took the photo and looked at it. From back here, Sara could see only that it was a glossy eight-by-ten, and in color. She felt that was probably all she wanted to know about that particular photograph.

  “Are you looking at the picture, Mr. Jones?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yeah,” Ray said, his voice heavy, “I’m looking at it.”

  Leaning toward Ray, lowering his voice but still clearly audible throughout the courtroom, Fred Heffner said, “Tell me, does she look like a pizza to you?”

  As though he’d been hit by a cattle prod, Ray jumped in his seat, glared, and threw the phot
ograph at the prosecutor. “You cocksucker!” he yelled. “That song doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it!”

  38

  Ray over there was the one who’d stumbled, but Warren was the one sitting at the little bare desk with his head in his hands. They and Jolie and Jim Chancellor and Cal, but nobody else, were crowded into the small office behind the courtroom set aside for the defense during breaks, where they were allegedly trying to figure out what to do next. Judge Quigley had just about broken her gavel pounding it into the stunned silence that had followed upon Ray’s outburst, then had shouted out an order for a thirty-minute recess “to permit the defendant to regain some measure of self-control, and to permit his extensive legal counsel, both attorneys from within Taney County and attorneys from somewhere outside the state of Missouri, to attempt to explain to the defendant something of the concept of decorum in a court of law.” All of which was said within the full hearing of the jury.

  Fifteen minutes of the thirty had gone by, and except for some mumbled condolences toward Ray from Cal, nobody had said much of anything. Ray stood it as long as he could and then he said, “The son of a bitch blindsided me, that’s all.”

  His head still within the bowl of his hands, his words muffled, Warren said, “Defeat from the jaws of victory.”

  “It isn’t over yet, Warren,” Ray said.

  Warren lowered his hands at last. His eyes were bloodshot. He used them to look at Ray. “It was over,” he said. “Now I don’t know.”

  “That judge was pretty snotty to me in front of the jury, that’s what I thought.”

  Jolie said, “I noticed that, too. Warren, could that be grounds for reversal?”

  “Possibly,” Warren said, “though, given the provocation, I seriously doubt it.”

  Ray said, “Whadaya mean, reversal? I’m not gonna get convicted.”

  “You’re a good deal closer to that eventuality than you were when you got up this morning,” Warren told him.

  “Because I said cocksucker? That’s not a death-sentence offense.”