Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

Grinning, Jack took a folded sheet of fax paper from an inner pocket and extended it, saying, “Don’t tell Sara I showed you this.”

Binx had no idea what this paper was going to be. He hated unexpected things, and so many things in life came under that category. With vague memories of nightclub hypnotists who put people under merely by handing them a card to read, Binx opened the slimy curly fax paper and, with increasing astonishment, read Sara’s projected lead. “Good golly. Miss Molly,” he said.

“That,” Jack said, “was after Sara experienced the Ray Jones show at the Ray Jones Theater once, in person.”

“There must be something in the water,” Binx suggested.

“I’ll be finding out,” Jack said. “I promised to go there tonight myself. They’re saving me the Elvis seat.”

Assuming that to be some sort of joke he wasn’t catching — so much of life, it seemed to Binx, was a joke he wasn’t catching — Binx said a neutral “Uh-huh” and returned the fax to Jack, who returned it to his pocket. “So that’s why you skyed M-O-ward.”

“Well, also,” Jack said, “Sara is my girlfriend. I like to see her from time to time.”

So would I, Binx thought, and many images crossed the mildew-stained movie screen of his mind. His wife, Marcie, appeared in one of the images, and he dispatched her with a bazooka. “You know. Jack,” he said, musingly, thoughtfully, maturely, “I’ve been thinking for some time about making some changes in my life. Get out of Florida, maybe move on to—”

“Full up,” Jack said.

“Oh, I wasn’t thinking about Trend in particular,” Binx lied, “just any opening you might know of up in the Apple that—”

“Nobody there calls it the Apple,” Jack said.

“Big Apple?”

“No.”

“New York, New York?”

“Only when drunk.”

“Well, what do you call it?”

“The city.”

Binx said, “How do you know which one you’re talking about?”

“What other one is there?”

“You used to be more down-to-earth, Jack,” Binx reproached him, and was interrupted by Bob Sangster, the most working-class looking of the Down Under Trio, whose manner was so laconic that passing doctors sometimes took his pulse just to be sure. “Say,” he said. Actually, being Australian, he said, “Sigh.”

“ Hel -lo, Bob,” Binx said, as though heartily.

“Right,” Bob said obscurely. “Ever heard of a shadow jury?”

“It has dogged my footsteps,” Binx said, “my entire life. You remember Jack Ingersoll, your former lord and master.”

“Oh, right,” Bob said, giving Jack the double O. “You went away to America or somewhere, didn’t you?”

“No, the city,” Jack said.

“Ah, New York, New York,” said Bob, who in fact was drunk. Turning back to Binx, he said, “About this shadow jury, the way it seems, what they do—”

“Uh, Bob,” Binx said. “Jack isn’t with us anymore.”

Smiling comfortably. Jack said, “I’m the enemy now.”

Binx said to Bob, “So we’ll talk later, won’t we?”

“What do I know?” Bob asked. “I’m a simple Aussie.” And he wandered away, into the milling, drinking, thronging scrum.

Looking after him, smiling faintly. Jack said, “You know, the Down Under Trio I almost do miss.”

“You were right, though, to make your move when you did.” Binx licked his lips. “I’ve been thinking—”

Jack shook his head. “Binx,” he said, “we’ve always leveled with one another.”

Alarmed, Binx said, “We have?”

“When necessary.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“So I’m going to level with you now,” Jack threatened.

“Jesus, Jack, I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“It’s for your own good,” Jack assured him, making things worse. Then he said it: “Marcie is your wife. The Galaxy is your job. You’re never gonna get away from either. Once you accept that, you’ll be happy.”

“Oh, Jack,” Binx said, also leveling with his old palsy-walsy, if that’s what we’re doing now, leveling now, “no, I won’t, Jack. No. I won’t.”

The song that got to Jack Ingersoll, perched on the Elvis seat for the 8:00 P.M. show in the Ray Jones Country Theater, was called “New York Sure Is a Great Big City,” and it went something like this:

“I kind of took it personally,” Jack told Sara afterward as they ate a late dinner — late for Branson — in the Copper Penny, one of the few joints in town that served stuff recognizable as food. Only a few local hipsters and musicians were scattered around the dimly lit place, so they had their corner booth and its neighborhood completely to themselves.

“It’s that solidarity thing again, you see?” said Sara. “They set up a tribe; they define who’s in and who’s out.”

“ I’m out,” Jack said.

“Sure you are. So am I. And they know it.”

Slicing steak. Jack said, “Sara, so what? Where’s the news in all this? Where’s our news in all this?”

“Ray Jones,” Sara said, “and his audience.”

Jack glumly chewed, hating to have to be a teacher again, knowing it brought out the worst and the snottiest in him. Swallowing, knocking back a bit of the not-bad red wine, he said, “Sara, do you really think there’s a point to be made that the great unwashed are bad judges of character, that they’ve got a shitty record when it comes to picking their heroes? Elvis was a drugged-out porker with more sexual hang-ups than a nine hundred number. The televangelists are too despicable to describe, J. Edgar Hoover was a fag-bashing faggot, and Ronald Reagan was brain-dead — they operated him from a Japanese microchip implanted after the fake assassination attempt.” Then he perked up, hearing his own words. “Say, that isn’t bad,” he admitted, and reached for pen and notepad.

Sara grinned at him. “I see. You can take the boy out of the Galaxy , but you can’t take the Galaxy out of the boy.” She watched him jot notes. “The microchip?”

“You bet.”

“That isn’t for Trend , Jack; that’s even less for Trend than Ray Jones’s fan dub.”

“Not for Trend ,” Jack agreed, putting pen and paper away. “For later, after Trend fires me.”

Sara stared at him. “They’re going to fire you?”

“Of course. They fire everybody, sooner or later.”

“No, Jack,” she said, “not your usual cynicism. Have you heard something, that you’re gonna be fired?”

“I don’t have to hear anything,” Jack said. “What most people don’t understand is, all jobs are temporary. You get fired, or the company folds, or the technology changes, or the customers move away, or there’s an earthquake and they don’t rebuild.”