Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  This had not been a problem for the shadows at first. Riding over to Forsyth from Branson in the bus Tuesday afternoon, they’d still been cheerful, chatting, optimistic. Riding back Tuesday evening, after seeing and hearing “My Ideal” on the day’s videotape of the court proceedings, they had been as silent as, well, as the tomb.

  And Wednesday was worse. As several of them commented after watching the tape, they hadn’t thought much of Fred Heffner’s summation, they’d seen pretty clearly that he was blowing smoke, and though they’d found Warren’s arguments interesting, they weren’t really all that persuasive; sorry, Warren. No, what they all remembered, not happily, was Ray’s interjection in the middle of the sandwich: “If Belle Hardwick was a saint, I’m the Pope.”

  It just stuck in everybody’s craw. “I’m sorry Ray said that,” admitted Juggs, the retired postal worker, and several of the other jurors nodded agreement, more in sorrow than in anger, among them the fellow not really named Jock O’Shanley.

  Yes, the cuckoo bird from the Weekly Galaxy was still among the shadows. On balance, despite the shameful falsity of his presence here, he was pretty much giving good weight, doing a credible Jock O’Shanley imitation, commenting as that Irishman would, reacting as O’Shanley might be expected to react. It had finally seemed that to remove him would be more disruptive to the jury as a whole than to leave him in place and leave the rest of the jurors ignorant as to the truth about him, so that’s what had been done—for now.

  Warren led a brief discussion, briefer than usual because there was no more strategy to be considered. The war was over. All that was left was to choose which brow would get the laurel.

  So, after just a few minutes of chitchat, Warren said, “Let’s see if we can get a sense of where we are here. I want to do a first, very preliminary vote. Not a show of hands. I want this one to be anonymous, so you can make your decision without being asked to defend it. You’ve all got your pads and pencils. I’d like each of you to write one letter on a sheet of paper and fold it so the rest of us can’t see it. Then toss it into the middle of the table. If you were on the regular jury, across the street there, would you vote guilty or not guilty? Write G if you’d vote guilty; write N if you’d vote not guilty.”

  They did it. A few of them had to think it over first, but a depressingly large majority had no trouble at all deciding which letter to write. Then, when all fourteen folded pieces of paper were in the middle of the table, Jim Chancellor gathered them and opened them and tallied the vote.

  Five N. Nine G.

  NG: not good.

  44

  Meanwhile, the real jury had less than two hours to deliberate on day one before being gathered into their own bus and driven back to their own motel in Branson, all of which was exactly what the shadow jury was doing, except that the shadows were still fourteen, while the real jury had been weeded to twelve. The last thing the judge had done before charging the jury—in which she had been somewhat less proprosecution than expected, probably because she felt it wasn’t needed—was reach twice into a box containing all the jurors’ names on separate sheets of paper and draw out the names of the losers, called alternates. These two were necessary in case anything happened to an actual juror, but if nothing happened to an actual juror, which is usually the case, then there wasn’t a blessed thing for these two ex-jurors to do but keep their opinions to themselves.

  (The slightly raffish ex—Merchant Mariner the defense had particularly loved was now one of the alternates, while the born-again harridan in the flowered dresses that the defense had prayed would be an alternate was now firmly a juror. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.)

  The alternates, however, were still sequestered. And, since it is known that jurors who discover, at the end of a tense or otherwise deeply interesting trial, that they are mere alternates, that they will not even get to be in the room where the deliberation is going on, tend to become terribly depressed, even full of feelings of guilt and self-contempt, counselors stood ready to assist these two washed-out jurors in any way they could. Of course, being counselors employed by the state, they weren’t worth much, but it’s the thought that counts.

  As for the shadow jury, it was agreed they would stay together for one more night at the Mountain Greenery Motel in Branson, then come back tomorrow to join the defense team in awaiting the verdict. There were also more debriefings to be done on the morrow—in case worse came to worst and appeals had to be readied. Did any of the shadows feel improper manipulation had been practiced by the prosecutors? The judge? The prosecution’s witnesses? In the meantime, for tonight they could still eat and sleep at Ray Jones’s expense; enjoy.

  In his room at the Mountain Greenery, Bob Sangster, the false Jock O’Shanley, sequestered himself from his roommate by going into the bathroom, where he once again removed the cassette recorder from his side and extricated the tape, which now included the results of the first shadow-jury vote. Then he went out into the hall, where he did not make the expected rendezvous with Laverne Slagel.

  Hmmmmm. Bob roamed the portion of the motel set aside for the shadows, and when at last he saw another maid and asked her about Laverne, she merely said, “Laverne isn’t around.”

  “But she was here this morning”—when she’d given Bob the then-blank tape he wanted to pass back.

  “I think she got sick or something,” the maid said, and went back to her work.

  Unfortunate, Bob thought, but not critical. There was still plenty of space on this tape for whatever might happen tomorrow. So thinking, he went back to his room, hid the tape in his underwear drawer, put on a bathing suit, and went for a swim, followed by dinner, followed by cribbage with another juror, followed by a showing of Support Your Local Sheriff, followed by sleep, followed by a rude awakening at 4:30 in the morning by rough-handed Missouri state troopers here to make an arrest. They were delighted to find that Bob Sangster still had that tape in his possession.

  Ten minutes earlier, Boy Cartwright and his guest for the night, Erica Jacke, had been awakened just as rudely, at the former hospitality suite in the Palace Inn, by even more state troopers.

  “Who are they?” wailed Boy, pointing a flabby finger at the Trend photographers popping flashcubes in his face.

  “None of your business,” a trooper said, and jabbed Boy painfully in the side with a gloved knuckle. “You wanna get dressed, or you wanna come along like you are?”

  The residents of the 1000 block of Cherokee (nearly its only block, by the way) were not surprised to be awakened at 4:30 in the morning by many glaring lights and blaring sirens, and not at all surprised when the center of this sudden official attention turned out to be their new neighbors at 1023. A few of the good residents had already phoned their suspicions about those new people to the local police, with, as usual, not a damn thing being done, grumble, grumble. Their suspicions had generally involved Satanists, Arab terrorists planning to blow up Table Rock Dam, a coven of child abusers from out East, or possibly—though no motorcycles had as yet been seen—Hell’s Angels.

  Whatever the deviltry would turn out to be, it had been clear from the instant of the arrival of those people that they were up to no good. They took all the parking spaces on the block, for one thing, including right in front of your own house. And there were so many of them, and they looked so strange, not like normal people at all, who, as everybody knows, are fish-belly white, drastically overweight, clad in pastel polyester, and shyly smiling unless your back is turned. These people weren’t normal in any particular, weren’t like us, and therefore must be up to no good.

  As a result, the arrival of several platoons of state troopers at arrest hour—4:30 A.M.—was no surprise and no inconvenience to the neighborhood, but was, in fact, a source of gratification. Even more gratification was provided by those photographers, who, having been rousted from sleep under tables, chose to resist arrest for a while. It was a fine hullabaloo over there, well lit, intelligently cast, imaginatively costumed, with
good production values all around and the kind of minimal script that works best in an action flick of this sort. Afterward, a lot of residents could kick themselves that they hadn’t taped it.

  (And much afterward, there was a moment of bewilderment when it was learned by some of the residents that those people had, in fact, been employees of their favorite newspaper. Ah well, not everything is understandable in this life. Think about something else.)

  At 5:15 that same morning, the phone rang in a dark and pleasantly musky motel room. Jack awoke first and rolled over Sara (who then awoke) to answer the phone, saying, “Yuh?” Then he said, “Ah.” Then he said, “Oh ho.” Then he said, “Mmmm.” Then he said, “Right,” and hung up. Rolling back over Sara to his side of the bed, still in the dark, he said, “My story’s just about closed up. How’s yours?”

  “The jury’s still out,” Sara said, and went back to sleep.

  45

  The jury began its second day of deliberations Thursday morning at nine. Among the news items they were being protected from, there now could be added the tidbit of the excitement early this morning among their shadow compatriots and the rather astonishing number of Weekly Galaxy employees crowded this morning into the Branson jail. So while the real jury continued to wrestle with the question of the murder of Belle Hardwick, the thirteen remaining shadow jurors who had gathered around the conference table in Warren’s offices spent their morning in awed discussion of the spy recently in their midst.

  Actual juries sometimes have to deliberate twice in Missouri, if it’s a death-penalty crime. The first deliberation deals strictly with the question of guilt or innocence; if the jury decides the defendant is innocent, or is guilty of a lesser crime, that’s it, they can go home. But if they decide the defendant is guilty as charged, they have to stick around for part two of the trial, in which prosecution and defense can both produce witnesses all over again, this time to discuss the punishment to be meted out; that is, whether the defendant should be gassed to death or should do jail time instead.

  In this part two, the defense can bring forward witnesses it couldn’t use before, people to testify to the defendant’s miserable childhood or evil companions or weakened mental capacity or whatever else might sway the jury toward clemency. On the other hand, the prosecution is very likely to parade the most tearful of the victim’s relatives on and off the stand, interspersed with the most grisly available photographs. At the end of all this, the jury goes back into solitude for its second set of deliberations, which are likely to be much more hair-raising and scarring than the first. They will at last produce a recommendation, death or something less, which the judge may, but probably will not, override. Then the whole jury can go into therapy.

  Unfortunately for Ray Jones and his defense team, this scenario is never spelled out entirely to the jurors in advance, so most of them don’t realize the personal consequences involved in bringing in a verdict of guilty. At this point, the jury’s innocence becomes the defendant’s worst enemy.

  The Ray Jones defense team managed to keep hope alive until 10:30 that morning, when the jury sent out its first request to the judge. They asked for clarification of two terms: manslaughter and depraved indifference. In a court now cleared of everyone but herself and the jury, Judge Quigley discussed these terms until all jurors had claimed a satisfactory grasp of the concepts. Then she and they retired once again to their separate rooms.

  When the word came across the street to Warren, seated in his office with Ray and Jolie and Cal and Jim Chancellor (the shadow jury being in possession of the conference room), he took it stoically. “Well, we did our best,” he said.

  Ray, who’d been sitting sulkily in the corner, failing to distract himself by writing lyrics to a new song, looked up. “What’s that? They just wanted to know what some words meant, right?”

  “Ray,” Warren said, “they’ve decided you did it.”

  “Well shit. They’re wrong, you know.”

  “You don’t get to argue with a jury,” Warren said. “They’ve decided you’re the one killed Belle Hardwick, and now they’re grappling with the question of just which crime it was.”

  “Littering,” Ray said callously. “If I’d done it.”

  “You didn’t say that,” Warren advised him, and turned to Jim Chancellor. “Jim, time to put together our list of witnesses.”

  Ray said, “Warren?”

  Warren’s expression was neither warm nor comforting when he turned back to Ray. “Yes?”

  “I want you to know,” Ray said, “I know you did a hell of a job. You’re worth every penny. I screwed it up all by myself.”

  “Yes, you did,” Warren said.

  “So we can at least agree on that.”

  “Yes,” Warren said, and turned his back on Ray to continue his conversation with Jim Chancellor.

  That was 10:30, or just a little after. At 10:55, the girl called Julie, the file clerk who doubled as Warren’s press spokesperson, came into the office to say, “Excuse me. There’s some sort of federal man named Caccatorro who wants to see Mr. Jones.”

  “Leon the Prick,” Ray commented. “Trust him.”

  “I’ll deal with him,” Jolie said grimly, heaving herself to her feet.

  “He wants me to sign a little something,” Ray suggested.

  “I know he does, the bastard,” Jolie said. “I’ll send him on his way.”

  “Nah, bring him in,” Ray told her. “Let’s get my whole life settled, in one day.”

  Jolie said, “Ray, you’re in no condition to—”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not drunk; I’m not running around raving. You want me to wait until after those twelve assholes over there decide how much I killed old Belle? Bring him in, and then neither of us ever has to gaze upon his face again.”

  “I love the way you take legal advice,” Jolie said, and pounded out of the office, to pound back in again shortly afterward like a major low front, trailed by the measly little rain cloud of Leon Caccatorro, who held a manila envelope to his breast with both hands, like a girl carrying her schoolbooks home.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jones,” T P said, around the bulk of Jolie.

  “Good morning, Mr. Caccatorro,” Ray said. “I bet you got a little something for me to sign.”

  “As a matter of fact …”

  There was a refectory table near where Ray was seated. Warren had already made it clear with a silent but deafening lowering of the eyebrows that the taxman would not be welcome to use any part of his own personal desk, so Caccatorro veered over to the refectory table and there shook out the contents of the manila envelope, being five copies of a four-page document.

  “Have you a pen?” Caccatorro asked.

  “Yeah, but I’d rather use yours,” Ray told him.

  “Of course.” Smiling, Caccatorro produced his father’s pen from inside his father’s suit coat and extended it toward Ray.

  Jolie said, “Ray, none of us have had a chance to read that.”

  “You’ll have plenty of time to read it, Jolie,” Ray said, looking for the signature space on the last page.

  “I’ll read it now,” Jolie announced, yanking up one copy.

  “Be my guest.” Ray signed the first copy, then scanned its pages, nodded, and grinned at Caccatorro, saying, “Decided to go with the old stuff instead of the new, huh?”

  Caccatorro smiled and spread his hands. “My superiors in D.C. ….”

  “Sure. A bird in the hand is worth two in the gas chamber.”

  Caccatorro’s smile wrinkled. He turned away, blinking at Warren and Jim Chancellor as though he’d just awakened and had no idea how he’d come to be here. Then, regaining control over himself, he turned back and watched approvingly as Ray signed copies two and three and four.

  By that time, Jolie had finished reading copy number five. Grudgingly, she said, “It seems all right.”

  Ray said, “It’s the deal I offered them, right?”

  “In essence.�
��

  “I knew we could cut through the bullshit,” Ray said, and with a flourish, he signed copy number five.

  Jolie said, “Will I do as the witness?”

  “Of course,” said Caccatorro.

  Jolie preferred to use her own pen, so Ray returned Caccatorro’s, who put it back in his father’s suit. Then he put four of the. signed and witnessed copies into his manila envelope and handed the fifth to Jolie, saying, “There will be further documents, details.”

  “By correspondence,” Jolie said.

  “Yes, of course.” Caccatorro smiled around at them all. “I won’t be needed here anymore,” he said.

  Jolie said, “I hate long good-byes.”

  Caccatorro left.

  Lunchtime, and no verdict. “Maybe they’re hung,” Jim Chancellor said hopefully.

  “Sooner them than me,” Ray said.

  The shadow jury was sent to a nearby restaurant for lunch, but Ray and his lawyers and his best friend Cal ate sandwiches, as usual, in Warren’s office. There wasn’t much conversation.

  Ten minutes after three. The phone rang on Warren’s desk. He picked it up, said, “Thurbridge,” listened, said, “Thank you,” hung up, said, “They’re coming back.”

  State troopers escorted the Ray Jones group across the street and into the courthouse.

  Sara Joslyn, girl reporter, was in her usual place in the courtroom, looking worried but excited. Ray winked at her and she gave him a smile that was probably supposed to be encouraging but was too frightened to do the job. Cal and Jolie took their seats, the courtroom filled around and behind them, and then Judge Quigley entered. All rose. She banged her gavel. All sat down. She told the bailiff to lead in the jury and he did. The jurors looked solemn and exhausted, and none of them glanced over toward Ray—another bad sign.

  The ritual was remorseless and nerve-racking, but at last the foreman, who had been doubled in the shadow jury by Juggs, the retired postal worker, rose and read from a small sheet of paper in his trembling hand: “We the jury find the defendant, Raymond Jones, guilty of murder in the first degree.”