Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

“Well, sure,” Laverne said, bighearted girl that she was. “But why don’t you just get it to him yourself?”

“Because they aren’t permitted to see anybody,” Erica explained, with what looked like patience. “The extra jury. They’re not allowed to talk to anybody, or watch TV, or read the papers, or anything.”

“Oh, that’s awful ! No TV?”

“I know,” Erica said. “It seems un-American.”

“It does !”

“But Jock came here from Ireland and he wants to be a good citizen, so he’s going to go through with it, going to do this extra jury thing, so all I want is to let him hear my voice while he’s stuck in there.”

“That’s nice .”

“Thank you. So would you give him this tape?”

“I’d be very happy to,” Laverne said, simple and sincere and pleased as punch to be a character in a love story.

“Thank you,” Erica said, and handed Laverne the cassette.

Laverne looked confused, turned the cassette over, and saw the twenty-dollar bill Scotch-taped to the bottom. “What’s this for?” she asked, wide-eyed again.

“Well, I know you get most of your money in tips,” Erica said.

Not hardly, not with the tourists of Branson, but Laverne was just barely smart enough to say not a word at this juncture, to smile and lift both eyebrows, and wait.

And Erica went on: “You’ll have to sneak that love letter of mine to Jock, so nobody sees you do it, and that ought to be worth something, shouldn’t it?”

“Well, thanks,” Laverne said. “Gee, thanks.”

“What time do you get off work?”

“Seven,” Laverne said. “Sometimes a little later.”

“I’ll be here at seven,” Erica suggested, “just in case Jock wants to send me a love letter back.”

“Oh, you think he might?” Laverne was thrilled. “And I could bring it to you!”

“You could!”

“Why,” Laverne said, “it’s, it’s like something in the movies!

“It is, isn’t it?” Erica agreed, as though noticing the similarity for the first time.

“ You know,” Laverne expanded, “the lovers are separated, and there’s this trusted person that carries their love letters back and forth and later helps them to escape.”

“Well, Jock won’t have to escape,” Erica said, returning them, if not to reality, at least to its vicinity. “We’ll just listen to each other’s love letters,” she said, “until he can come home to my arms.”

Laverne sighed, smiled, wiped away a tear, and slipped the cassette into her purse.

Friday evening, with another twenty bucks in her kick, this time from Jock O’Shanley, Laverne delivered his audio billet-doux to Erica in the parking lot. Erica thanked her and blessed her, then hurried away to the Weekly Galaxy nest on Cherokee, where Binx — still then an active coconspirator — and the rest of the team eagerly listened to the discussions among the shadow jurors and the defense team.

Monday morning, Erica was in the parking lot again, with another cassette for the faithful Laverne to carry to Erica’s love (and another crisp twenty-dollar bill for Laverne herself), and Monday evening, Laverne brought out to the parking lot and to Erica the lover’s reply. The only difference this time was that two photographers hired by Trend , “The Magazine For The Way We Live This Instant,” photographers whose usual assignments were in war-torn parts of the Third World, under fire and frequently missing presumed dead, were concealed hither and yon — one hither, the other yon — to record the entire transaction.

And later, having trailed their prey to the house on Cherokee, their telephoto lenses picked up Boy Cartwright, in for the now-missing Binx, in full hideous close-up as he gloated over this clear evidence of his wickedness.

They all talked it over Monday night, Ray and his defense team, after the shadow jury (and its ringer, damn the son of a bitch to hell) had been bused back to Branson, and it looked as though Ray was going to get what he wanted, after all. Warren put it this way: “The prosecution’s case was even worse than we thought. The car means nothing; we can demonstrate that half a dozen of Ray’s pals regularly borrowed that car to impress their bimbos.”

“Lady friends,” Ray said.

“Bimbos,” Warren repeated; he hated to be reversed. “There’s no direct evidence to connect Ray with the killing,” he went on, “and their circumstantial evidence is laughable. So all we have to do is be quiet and polite, and we’ll get our verdict, no problem.”

Jim Chancellor, the local lawyer who’d been helping out in the preparation of the case, said, “Warren, what about resting the defense? Right away, no witnesses at all. Just to point up how little prosecution case there is to rebut.”

“I would do that if I could, Jim,” Warren said, and nodded his heavy head in Ray’s direction, down at the end of the same conference table where late the shadow jury (and its cuckoo bird) had been in deliberation. “If Ray here would let me.”

“No way,” said Ray.

“As you see,” Warren said to Jim.

Ray said, “We’ve been over it and over it, Warren. I’m not disputing your smarts, you know that. All I’m saying is, if I don’t stand up there and look those people in the eye and tell them they’re full of shit, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

Jolie said, “Using slightly different language, I presume.”

“Come on, Jolie,” Ray said. “I know how to talk in public, you know that.”

Warren turned back to Jim, saying, “So we won’t do the sensible thing, I’m afraid. Our principal is determined to testify.”

“Mm mm,” said Jim, expressing the most profound of misgivings.

“Agreed. And yet, here he is.” Warren turned again in Ray’s direction. “You wanted to go first,” he said. “Okay, you’ve got what you want. Tomorrow, you’ll be our first witness.”

“By God, Warren, thank you,” Ray said, grinning from ear to ear. “I feel like a kid on Christmas Day.”

“You’re welcome, Ray,” Warren said with just a hint of irony.

Jim said, “First of how many witnesses, Warren?”

“That depends how badly Ray performs,” Warren said.

“And thank you , Warren,” Ray said.

Ignoring his client, Warren told Jim, “If Ray does reasonably well, we may stop right there, while we’re still ahead. If he makes a really true mess of things, I’m afraid we’ll just have to keep calling witnesses until the jury forgets. No matter how many months it takes.”

“It’s support like that,” Ray said, “that’s kept me going all these years.”

The tiny container of Mace that Sara kept in her shoulder bag was about the size and shape of a lipstick, which made it very convenient to carry but a little tricky to find in the dark in the middle of the night, with somebody coming through the motel door. On the other hand, this time it was just as well she came up with the wrong tube in her haste and panic, because she was already aiming the thing and pressing the top of it with a shaking thumb when Jack’s voice said, “Is that you? Are you awake?”

Sara lowered the fatal lipstick. “Jack? What are you doing here?”

“Okay if I turn on the light?”

“I think you’d better.”

Lights burst into existence, causing Sara to squint and to shield her eyes with the hand holding the lipstick. And there was Jack, with his suitcase and some sort of dumb grin, saying, “So that’s what you wear when I’m not with you. I like that shorty kind of stuff.”

“Do you.”