Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

“The government is patient,” T P said.

“I know it is,” Ray said. “And I know I’m not, but that’s why I hire a whole passel of people that are patient by profession. People like Jolie here. So here’s my proposition. You people all talk about money from the past and money from the future, right?”

“Essentially,” T P agreed.

“So here’s my offer,” Ray said, “and it’s a onetime deal, the last offer you’re gonna get that isn’t bullshit string-’em-along stuff. You can have fifty percent of one or the other.”

Jolie looked as though she’d just been shot in the forehead. T P floundered, then said, “I’m not certain I know what you mean.”

“Fifty percent of money that comes from the past,” Ray said, “or fifty percent of money that comes from the future. You pick.”

“By future,” T P said, “you mean any new song you might write, anything that is not as of this date copyrighted?”

“Right.”

“Plus future income from the theater and record sales?”

“But only on those future songs,” Ray said. “Royalties on old copyrights, that’s the other kind of money.”

“But a new album, containing a mix of old and new songs, would generate new money, would it not?”

“Sure, throw that in, too. If that’s what you want the fifty percent of, fine.”

“Ray!”

“Shut up, Jolie.” To T P, Ray said, “Or you could go the other way. Money that comes in for anything I did before a certain time, before... well, pick a date. I tell you what. July twelfth. The day Belle Hardwick went down. If that’s the way you decide to go, then any money at all that comes in on stuff I did before the twelfth of July this year, you get half of it. Simple, clear, something a country boy like me can understand.”

T P had a canary feather stuck in the corner of his mouth. He licked it away and said, “I’ll have to check with D.C. on Monday, of course, but if that’s the proposal that you and your advisers agree on—”

“It’s the proposal I agree on,” Ray said grimly. Beside him, Jolie had turned into a mountain of marble awaiting a sculptor, but that was okay. Ray had his own agenda here, and it was all going according to plan.

“Then I don’t see why,” T P said, smirk now in plain sight, “sometime in this coming week we can’t come to an agreement.”

“Good. Get this thing out of the way.”

“Choose the one,” T P said, and giggled a little, “or choose the other.”

“Just let me know which,” Ray said. “But remember, I’m serious about this. This is the last shot. We come to an agreement on this now or I’ll stonewall you forever. I’ll cost the government millions just to hire file clerks to pack all the paper away; my grandchildren will stonewall your grandchildren. It’s now or never, and I mean it.”

“I don’t see any problem at all with your proposal,” T P said.

“We’re gonna have a deal? Guaranteed?”

“I still must check with D.C.,” T P said, “but I think I can guarantee, within the parameters you’ve just given, we will definitely have a deal.”

“When?”

“I should think by the middle of the week,” T P said, “we could be generating the paperwork.”

“Just tell me where to sign,” Ray said, and got to his feet. T P also rose, wiping his right palm on his father’s pants, but Ray didn’t offer to shake hands. “I won’t take up any more of your valuable time,” he said, deadpan, and turned to say, “Jolie? You ready?”

Jolie struggled into consciousness from a coma. She stared numbly at Ray, then at the preening T P, then at last heaved herself to her feet and silently followed Ray from the conference room and from the building.

It was as they were approaching the Jag, parked in bright sunlight amid the tourists’ campers, that Jolie found her voice. “Do you know,” she demanded, “Ray, do you have any idea , what you just did in there?”

“I cut through the bullshit.”

“You gave away the store!”

“I gave away half the store,” Ray corrected. “No, half of half. I can live with that. Whichever way he picks.”

“Whichever way ? The one thing we’ve been trying to do, for months now, more than anything else, is keep the feds away from future earnings, and you just handed them future earnings! On a silver platter! Months of negotiation down the drain!”

“Well, we’ll see,” Ray said. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch. Or are you dieting again?”

“What’s going to happen to Binx?” Sara asked.

Jack looked at her in surprise. “Binx? Why should anything happen to Binx?”

It was Saturday night and Sara and Jack were having dinner at the Candlestick Inn, where she’d been Thursday with Binx, so that hapless fellow had been intruding into her thoughts the entire meal. She said, “Well, he’s the one we’re going to exposé, isn’t he? Him and his team?”

Jack snapped a bread stick as though it were Binx’s neck. “So?”

“So what if they fire him?”

“They fire everybody,” Jack said. “Sooner or later, they fire everybody.”

“I know, I know,” Sara said, tired of that excuse, “but when they fire everybody else, I’m not responsible.”

Jack put down the halves of his bread stick. “You’re responsible for Binx Radwell? Responsible for his life? Responsible for his decisions?”

“No, of course not,” Sara said, frustrated and helpless. It didn’t help to be told her guilt feelings were irrational. All guilt feelings are irrational, in that with sufficient sophistry all actual guilt can be reasoned away, but so what? Sara didn’t want to bury her sense of shame toward Binx; she wanted to wallow in it, and she wanted Jack to wallow in it, too, and the bastard just wouldn’t cooperate. “The only thing is,” she said, still hoping to explain herself somehow, break through his leather skin somehow, make him feel had somehow, “we all used to be friends, in the old days, Binx and us.”

“That’s the way you remember it, eh?” Jack smiled at her. “That’s nice.”

“All right, we had friendly competition,” Sara said, and Jack laughed out loud, and Sara hated him, but had to grin and duck her head and say, “Oh, all right.”

She pretended to eat for a couple of minutes, aware of Jack’s eyes on her but determined to say not another word on that or any other subject, and then Jack said, “Two things.”

She looked up at him, expectant. Two things was two things more than she’d anticipated. “Yes?”

“The story is two stories,” Jack told her. “I was on the phone with Hiram again this afternoon, and we’ve agreed on that. The Weekly Galaxy is one story and the Ray Jones murder trial is a different story.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means I’m going to do the Weekly Galaxy story,” Jack said, “so if any rain falls out of that cloud onto Binx’s head, it’s my fault and not yours, okay?”

“That helps,” she admitted. “Not a lot, but some.”

“So that means,” Jack said, “you’re doing the Ray Jones trial story as the Ray Jones trial story — country celebrity on trial in a country setting.”

“Good,” she said. “I can do that, no problem.”

“Just go a little light on the salt-of-the-earth stuff, okay?”

“I won’t mention gingham once,” she promised.

“Glad to hear it.”

“You said two things,” she reminded him. “Was that both of them?”

“No. The other thing, I didn’t know when exactly to tell you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Not that bad,” he said, and grinned at her. “We’re still the dynamic duo.”