Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Poll the jury!” demanded Warren, over the sudden hubbub in court, because sometimes a juror, when forced to make the individual statement in public, face-to-face with the defendant, will back off from that most draconian of verdicts.

  So they polled the jury, with Judge Quigley directing the jurors to look directly at the defendant when responding, and each and every one of them stared straight at Ray and announced, “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”

  Then Ray was led off by state troopers. There would be no bail from here on. The Ray Jones Country Theater was closed until further notice.

  46

  Jack was off masterminding Trend’s coverage of the court appearances of the Weekly Galaxy thirty-seven—not all the stringers and stray photographers had been gathered up in the dragnets of the law—so Sara did the packing for both of them. It would be a week or two before Ray Jones was sentenced, and she didn’t have to be here for that, or anything else in the interim. She had her story, even though there was something about it, just something about it, that didn’t satisfy.

  Oh, she could write it; that wasn’t the problem. She could find the social meaning, the undercurrents, the linkages with the great world of thee and me; she could do all that without even raising a sweat. No, it was just …

  Well, she didn’t know what it was just, except it was. Not entirely satisfying.

  There was a little clock radio in the room and she had it tuned to a local country-music station while she packed, still drinking in local atmosphere. And she was glad she had, too, when she heard the announcer say, “Well, you probably know old Ray Jones went down today. Murder one. Sentencing in a week or two. Well, it just yet again goes to prove the old saying, Don’t drink and drive. We’re sorry about what happened to Ray, and we expect you are, too. Here’s a tune of Ray’s we haven’t been playing of late, because it somehow seemed just a mite too rowdy, the way things were going.”

  Oh please, thought Sara, not “My Ideal.”

  Not to worry: “But it’s one of my personal faves,” the announcer went on, “and I happen to know it’s a favorite of Ray’s, too, so I think he won’t mind if I play it now. It’s the song he wrote some years back for his onetime wife. It’s called ‘L.A. Lady,’ and I’m sure you remember it.”

  On came the familiar guitars, drums, stringed instruments of half a dozen kinds, and then here was the familiar Ray Jones rasp, in an ironic ballad, an antilove song:

  L.A. Lady, stay in L.A.

  You knew you were right when you went away.

  Come back here, I’ll only spoil your day.

  So L.A. Lady, stay in L.A.

  L.A. Lady, don’t come back.

  The skies are gray, the hills are black.

  It’s dank and dark inside this shack.

  So L.A. Lady, don’t come back.

  L.A. Lady, stay right there.

  The views are fine, the skies are fair;

  There’s soft contentment everywhere.

  So L.A. Lady, stay right there.

  L.A. Lady, fare you well.

  If you need me, give a yell.

  But stay right there; you’re doin swell.

  L.A. Lady, go to hell.

  Oh my God, Sara thought, he didn’t do it!

  The musical instruments did something mock-lush on their own for a while and then Ray sang the song through again. Sara listened closely, even more closely than before, and when it was over, she reached out and switched off the radio, then sat on the edge of the bed to think about it.

  He didn’t do it. Ray Jones was innocent of murder, just as he’d said all along. Sara knew that as well as she knew anything. But she also knew she had no evidence, no proof, nothing that would persuade—well, persuade Jack, for instance.

  All right. Pretend you’re explaining it to Jack. Marshal your arguments; gather your thoughts. Ready? Go.

  Ray Jones had been married to Cherry. It was a difficult marriage and a nasty divorce, in which he also lost his daughters. What did he do? He wrote that song. He thumbed his nose at her.

  Belle Hardwick got to him deeper than his ex-wife, Cherry? Belle Hardwick? There was nothing that woman could have done, nothing, to make Ray Jones do anything more than laugh her to scorn.

  That’s why Sara’d had that dissatisfied feeling, that sense that something was wrong somewhere, out of place somewhere. Because it was.

  How had it happened? How had Ray Jones wound up in the dock for that crime and been found guilty, maybe even to be executed for a murder he couldn’t possibly have committed?

  Had somebody framed him? Cal? Was the best friend the actual murderer, working out years of silent envy and feelings of inferiority? In a mystery story, wouldn’t Cal be the least-obvious suspect?

  Well, he’s still the least obvious, Sara thought. There’s no way on earth that Cal would—

  The phone rang. She could just reach it from where she sat on the bed. Expecting to hear Jack’s voice, she picked it up and said, “Hello?”

  “Sara?” It was Cal Denny.

  “Cal!” Sara said. “I was just thinking about you!”

  “Sara, I found something here.” He sounded worried, maybe bewildered, like he was out of his depth all of a sudden. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “About what? Where?”

  “Over to Ray’s place. He asked me to get him some stuff—you know, he’s gotta stay over there now. Toothbrush, stuff. Sara, I found something here!”

  “What?”

  “I don’t wanna—Listen, could you come over here?”

  “To Ray’s house?”

  “I’ll call the gate, tell them to let you through. You remember where the house is, don’t you?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “What are you driving?”

  “A Buick Skylark.”

  “What’s the license?”

  “I don’t know; it’s a rental.”

  “What color is it?”

  “You know, that sort of brownish gray-blue. You know, it looks like a rental.”

  “Okay, I’ll call the gate now. Could you come over, Sara? Is it okay?”

  “Well—Isn’t this something you should show Warren? Or Jolie?”

  “They wouldn’t like this, Sara,” Cal said. “That Ray was holding out on them, like.”

  “I’ll be right over,” Sara said.

  47

  Cal was standing in the open doorway. Sara parked the rental Skylark behind Ray’s Jag, then walked over to Cal, who looked as worried in person as he’d sounded on the phone. “I sure appreciate this, Sara,” he said. “Come on in.”

  Sara entered, looking around, seeing the place unchanged, as Cal shut the door and said, “Lemme show you where I found it.”

  “Where you found what?”

  “I’ll show you,” he said, and led the way through the house, Sara following, Cal saying, “I was in the bedroom. Socks, shirts, he needs everything. He ties his socks up in pairs—you know, he’s always been neat, Ray—and I dropped a pair of socks on the floor and it rolled under the bureau.”

  They entered Ray’s bedroom. Sara saw a crumpled piece of duct tape all mixed up with Saran Wrap on the carpeted floor. Pointing at the wide dresser opposite the bed, Cal said, “I went down on my knees, you know, and reached under, and I hit something.”

  “Something duct-taped there.”

  “Right. I couldn’t figure it. So I lay down flat on the floor and looked, and it was a tape, a regular videotape in its box, stuck onto the bottom of the bureau.”

  “A tape,” Sara echoed.

  “I pulled it out,” Cal said, miming the gesture, pulling hard on a package duct-taped to a hard-to-get surface. “It was the kind of tape Ray always uses,” he said, “but it didn’t have nothing written on it, no date or nothing.”

  “You put it in the machine.”

  “I surely did,” Cal said, and started out of the bedroom again, saying over his shoulder, “Lemme show you.”

  “I can hardly wai
t,” Sara said. She was very aware of her shoulder bag bouncing against her hip as she followed Cal back through the house.

  “It’s one of Ray’s practice tapes all right,” Cal said, walking ahead of her. “For about an hour, it’s just him practicing the IRS song—you know that song.”

  “He sang it on the bus.”

  “Right.”

  They were back in the living room. The heavy Mexican doors were open to expose the VCR and monitor. Moving toward them, Cal said, “After about an hour, on the tape, there’s something happens I want you to see.”

  “I want to see it, too.”

  Turning on the machines, Cal said, “I backed it up to just before that so you could see what was going on.” He hit PLAY.

  Neither of them sat down. Standing side by side, near the monitor, they watched the instant of snow, then the sudden appearance of Ray, with acoustic guitar, one leg up on the chair, in the middle of “Singin for the IRS”: “—own these great-lookin threads. I’m bein—”

  Ray stopped and looked over his shoulder toward the door, in the background of the picture. His voice hushed, Cal said, “I figure he heard the car pull up.”

  “This is that night, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

  The front door, at the rear of the TV picture, burst open and a man half-ran, half-stumbled into the room, crying out incoherently. He was dressed in what looked like the filthy remnants of a tuxedo, white shirt ripped down the front, jacket and trousers mud-stained. The man and his clothing were wet, his hair plastered to his head, torn shirt stuck to his heaving chest.

  Sara had never seen him before in her life. “Who’s that?”

  “Bob Golker.”

  The other victim. The dead man pulled out of Lake Taneycomo in his car, and Ray charged with his murder.

  “Ray!” was the first understandable word shouted by Bob Golker as Ray slapped his guitar onto the chair and ran toward the man. “Ray, Jesus Christ, help me!”

  “What the hell happened to you?” Ray went past Bob Golker to shut the door, then came toward the man again, who stood weaving no more than three steps into the room, still in the semidark back there. “Christ’s sake, Bob, you’re all wet.”

  “I killed her, Ray.”

  The hair stood up on the back of Sara’s neck. Her throat was dry. This was not staged; this was real. She clutched her shoulder bag to her side like bagpipes.

  On the screen, Ray came forward to Bob Golker’s side, to stare in wonderment at the man’s profile. “What did you do?”

  “Oh, Jesus, Ray, I didn’t, I shouldn’ta done it!”

  Ray was clearly as agitated on screen as Sara was in person. “For fuck’s sake, Bob,” he yelled, “will you tell me what you did?”

  Bob Golker staggered a few steps forward, as though wanting to sit in the chair Ray had been using as a footstool. But he didn’t make it. His legs went out from under him and he fell into a lumpish sitting position on the floor, bent to the left, both hands splayed out on the floor on his left side to keep him from falling any farther. “Belle,” he mumbled. “Belle.”

  Ray crossed to the chair, put the guitar on the floor, carried the chair to Bob Golker’s side, and sat on it himself. Leaning down toward Bob, he said, “You’re drunk again, Bob, you know that.”

  “Not anymore,” Bob said. He lifted bleary eyes to Ray. In a shrill and ghastly whisper, he cried, “I killed Belle!”

  “Oh bullshit,” Ray said. “You had another fight, that’s all.”

  “I killed her, Ray,” Bob insisted. “Honest to God. I buried her in the lake.”

  Ray sat back, frowning, studying the man on the floor. “Are you shitting me?”

  “They’ll never find her, Ray,” Bob said. “The fuckin fish’ll eat her.”

  Exasperated and astonished, Ray spread his hands. “What do you wanna go kill Belle Hardwick for?”

  “She wouldn’t come with me. Fuckin bitch, she knew—She promised she’d come to California with me. She said—”

  “Belle doesn’t belong in California.”

  “She wouldn’t come with me.”

  “Then she has more sense than I thought.”

  “What am I gonna do, Ray? Shit, I used your car; it’s all fucked up—”

  “Oh thanks,” Ray said. “What’d you do to the car? You hit a tree with it?”

  “I didn’t hit nothin. Except Belle. Oh, Jesus, Raaaayy! There’s blood all over the car, Ray!”

  “Blood?” Again Ray reared back, this time considering Bob with more concern. “Did you really and truly do it, you simple shit? You fuckin killed Belle Hardwick?”

  “I’m sorry‚ I didn’t—I’m sorry!” Bob was weeping now, tears running down the face he held up toward Ray. Wailing, voice breaking, he cried, “What am I gonna, do Ray? I don’t wanna fry!”

  “You don’t fry in this state,” Ray told him, flat, still thinking.

  “I know I shouldn’ta done it, but Jesus. Oh shit! What the fuck am I gonna do?”

  “Turn yourself in.”

  “I don’t want to! I don’t want them to kill me, Ray. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail!”

  “Shit,” Ray said. He looked around, shook his head, said, “Then go to California.”

  Bob stared up at Ray, face wild with hope. He looked like a rabbit, Sara thought. He said, “Should I?”

  “Turn yourself in or get outta town,” Ray advised him. “Don’t stick around here.”

  “They’ll never find her, Ray,” Bob said, his voice suddenly a confidential murmur, making the two of them conspirators together. “I wedged her down in there, in the roots—”

  “I don’t wanna hear about it,” Ray said. “Do you mind? You’re some kinda crazy drunk asshole animal, you know that, Bob?”

  “I know. I know I know I know, oh, Jesus, Ray, I just got crazy out of my mind, I didn’t want to go anywhere without—” He rolled back onto his haunches, getting his balance, putting his hands to his face. “Why did I do it?” he wailed. “Why did I do it?”

  “Because you’re a dumb shit,” Ray told him, though with a heavy sympathy in his voice. “And so was Belle.”

  Bob lowered his hands from his face, rested them on his bent legs, palms up, fingers curled. He seemed calmer at last. “I can’t stay here,” he said.

  “That’s the truth.”

  “You always been a good friend to me, Ray.”

  “Better than you’ve been to me, Bob.”

  “Oh shit, I know I’m a fuckup. I’ve always been a—”

  “Bob, it’s late at night, you know? You wanna call the sheriff from here?”

  Wide-eyed again, Bob yelled, “No! I’m gonna take off, I swear to God I am. I’m goin to California.”

  “Fine,” Ray said.

  “Don’t tell on me, will you, Ray?”

  “I won’t tell on you, Bob.”

  “Swear you won’t. Swear it, Ray. Don’t ever tell anybody.”

  Ray got off the chair, went down on one knee beside Bob Golker, put his hands on Bob’s shoulders, stared him in the eye. “I swear,” he said solemnly. “All right? I swear I will never say a word to anybody at all anywhere about you and Belle Hardwick, no matter what. I swear. All right?”

  “God bless you, Ray, God bless—”

  “Yeah, good. Now get up, Bob, get on your feet.”

  With Ray’s considerable help, Bob struggled to his feet and stood there, swaying. Ray said, “Can you walk on out of here? Don’t take my car anymore, Bob.”

  “No.”

  “Where’s that heap of yours, out by Jjeepers!?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you get there?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay now, Ray. I’m okay.”

  “Sure you are. Bob? What you should do—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Go home tonight, get some sleep.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, Ray! Jesus, not after—I couldn’t sleep!”

  “Well, lay down, then.
Get some rest somehow. In the morning, decide what you want to do. The sheriff or California. Decide it then. All right?”

  “Okay, Ray.”

  “You got a bottle in your car?”

  “Sure. Yeah, sure.”

  “Don’t drink it. You hear me? Don’t drink it.”

  Solemn: “I won’t, Ray.”

  “Good. Get some rest. Decide in the morning.”

  “Thank you, Ray. God bless you, Ray.”

  “Yeah, that’s all right,” Ray told him, steering him toward the door. “That’s fine.”

  Bob kept mumbling his thanks and Ray kept consoling him with friendly words until they reached the door. Ray opened it, Bob stumbled into the darkness beyond, and Ray shut the door behind him.

  Ray took a step or two away from the door, shaking his head. He put the heels of both hands to his temples as though struck by a severe headache. “What a fuckin mess,” he muttered. Then he looked up, looked directly at the camera, and seemed for the first time to remember it was still running. “Oh shit‚” he said, and came purposefully forward, hand reaching out.

  Snow.

  48

  Cal ejected the tape without rewinding it, put it in its box, and turned to face Sara. “That’s it,” he said.

  “Why didn’t—” Sara was still stunned by the scene on the monitor. “Why didn’t Ray say something?”

  “He promised Bob; he swore to him—”

  “Come on, Cal! When he’s indicted for murder?”

  “Ray never took it serious,” Cal said. “I talked with him; I know that’s true. Right up to when he went on the stand, he never took it serious. That’s how he got himself in so deep, not being careful. He knew he didn’t do it, didn’t have any reason to do it; he couldn’t believe anything really bad would happen to him.”

  “After they found Bob Golker’s body,” Sara said. “Why didn’t he show everybody the tape then?”

  “I don’t know, Sara!” Cal said. “I didn’t talk to him yet. I can’t talk to him in where he is now; they got guards right there listening to every word you say. I didn’t talk to anybody but you.”