Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

The county courthouse was a neat two-story building, modern, beige, with unnecessary horizontal gray stripes to show an architect had been around, the whole surrounded by trim lawn and plantings. The rear facade featured a tall oval-topped two-story window surmounted by a functioning clock, and the front facade consisted of some sort of Mayan arched entrance, plus a bit of grammatic confusion: Taney County Courthouse it said over the door, but in larger letters above that were the words TANEY COUNTY COURT HOUSE. So apparently, there were two factions in Taney County: those who thought courthouse was one word and those who thought court house were two words, and both factions, this being a democracy, had been satisfied.

Sara wandered for a while in the neat fluorescent interior of the building, unchallenged. It was almost empty, particularly upstairs, where the courtroom waited, untenanted and unlocked. Sara took a few pictures of the simple bare space with its fuzzy blue-seated wooden armchairs, long dark brown attorneys’ table, Missouri state seal like a huge bronze Roman coin over the judge’s bench, gaudier Taney County seal on the side wall, four rows of spectators’ pews in dark wood, and the drooped flags of both nation and state standing upright to flank the banc like a pair of colorful lances.

Downstairs again, Sara opened doors and asked questions of the few but friendly clerks she encountered until she reached the office suite of prosecutor Buford Delray, whose friendly secretary smiled with real regret as she said, “I’m sorry, but Mr. Delray’s awfully busy right now.”

“I realize, with the trial coming up,” Sara agreed, “but surely he can spare just a few minutes for the press.”

“As a matter of fact,” the secretary said, her smile now bubbling with excited pride, “Mr. Delray’s meeting right at this moment with a reporter from The Economist . That’s an English magazine, you know.”

“I know,” Sara said. It surprised her that The Economist would be here in Taney County this soon. What would be their angle on a story like this? “I could wait,” she offered.

“You could, I suppose,” the secretary said, sounding doubtful. “With jury selection tomorrow, you know, there are many demands on Mr. Delray’s time.”

“I’m sure there are.”

“It all depends, I suppose, how long the other gentleman is in there.”

How long could The Economist legman talk to a rural Missouri prosecutor?“ I’ll wait,” Sara decided, and sat in the only available chair.

“Up to you,” the secretary said. She showed Sara one last smile, then turned back to her typing, of which she had an unending supply.

Sara waited. She waited for thirty-five minutes, with increasing impatience and disbelief, and then at last the inner door opened and out walked Louis B. Urbiton.

Louis B. Urbiton! The oldest and drunkest of the Down Under Trio!

The Economist ! Louis B. Urbiton of The Economist ! Why, that snake in the grass! Waiting thirty-five minutes for Louis B. Urbiton and some Weekly Galaxy scheme! Steam curled from Sara’s ears. Her split ends resplit.

Behind Louis came a hearty butterball in his mid-forties, a round-bodied, roundheaded, well-packed man with a politician’s smile and big open politician gestures and shiny beads of politician perspiration on his gleaming high forehead. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fernit-Branca,” he was saying to Louis, patting the horrid man on his horrid shoulder. “Dew drop in anytime.”

“Than kew,” Louis responded, with a dignified nod. He gave the secretary an equally dignified but somehow more chummy nod, then laid upon Sara a blank, bland stare and departed.

Blow his cover? Blow that pompous ass — both of these pompous asses — right out of the water? “How would you like to know, Mr. Prosecuting Attorney, that you just spent the last hour with a famously drunken Australian — not even English, Mr. Prosecuting Attorney, as anyone with the slightest sophistication would have realized at once — famously false reporter for the Weekly Galaxy ?”

He wouldn’t like to know it. It would be bad for Louis B., of course, but it would also be bad for Buford Delray’s self-esteem, and that would be bad for the person who’d blown the whistle/cover/them out of the water. One of the first things every professional reporter learns is that killing the messenger is the rule in this life, not the exception.

So there was nothing to be done about Louis, at least not now and not directly. There would be nothing gained, unfortunately, were she to stand as tall as one can possibly stand in flats, point the forefinger admonitory, and cry out, “J’accuse!” No; to admit even knowing a Weekly Galaxy reporter would open a whole nother can of worms, wouldn’t it? It would.

Meanwhile, as Sara was confirming her impotence to herself, the faithless Urbiton had departed and the gulled Del-ray was giving Sara a politician’s appreciative leer, until the secretary said, “Buford, this is a lady from some New York magazine.”

Talk about the kiss of death. Buford Delray’s face closed up like a Parker House roll. The first name of all New Yorkers, as the whole world knows, is Smartass, as in, “Some Smartass New Yorker tried to put something over on me today, but us country boys ain’t as dumb as they think.” And meantime, an Australian from Florida was even now waltzing out of town with Buford Delray’s jock.

Frantic beneath, calm on the surface, Sara said, “I’m from Trend magazine, Mr. Delray, and I—”

She’d been moving forward, intending just naturally to ease on by him into his office, but he rolled like a beach ball into her path, a cold little pursy smile on the front of his Parker House roll. “I’m sorry, Miss, but I—”

“Sara Joslyn,” Sara said, and stuck her right hand out.

Which he did not take: “—have very little time for the press at this juncture, as I’m sure you can understand. Perhaps after the verdict.”

He was rolling slowly backward into his office, hand on the doorknob. Sara pursued, trying to look as though she weren’t in pursuit. “Sir,” she said, desperation getting the best of her, “ The Economist won’t print anything about the case, certainly not in this country, but Trend —”

“I’m looking forward to the series of stories The Economist plans to run. Miss,” Delray interrupted, with his smug smile. “And to The Economist ’s photographer, as well. If you’ll excuse me.” And he shut his office door in Sara’s face.

Louis was long gone, of course. Sara circled the courthouse like a cat girdling a chipmunk hole, but Louis B. Urbiton was nowhere to be found.

A photographer ! That’s what the scam was all about. If it were possible to put out a newspaper for the illiterate, the Weekly Galaxy would be it; nowhere on earth do pictures so literally take the place of thousands of words as in the supermarket tabloids, and none more so than in the Galaxy . While Louis B. Urbiton would spend the next week or so listening attentively, admiringly, even slavishly, at the feet of the dimwitted Delray, Weekly Galaxy photographers would be the only photographers permitted unlimited access to the courthouse (or court house), the murder scene, the witnesses, and anything else that struck their magpie interest, because, of course, the main point in Buford Delray’s tiny mind would be the appearance of Buford Delray’s words, not his fat face, in the pages of one of the world’s most distinguished news journals.

I’m gonna get em, Sara promised herself as she marched to her car for the angry ride back to Branson. I’m gonna nail em to the barn door, and Buford Delray is the barn door.