Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

Peering more closely at her, at her hand, he said, “You’re putting on lipstick in the dark?”

“I was trying to Mace you. From now on, call first.”

“Mace me with a lipstick?”

“Oh shut up,” she said, and turned to put the lipstick back in her bag; there was the damn Mace. And when he ran a hand up inside her shorty nightgown, she irritably slapped it away. “Don’t scare me in the middle of the night.”

“I thought you’d be pleased to see me.”

Then she was. All at once, she remembered how her last thought before falling asleep was how much she missed having Jack in the bed beside her.

Which didn’t mean she wasn’t still mad at him for scaring her. Forgiving, and not forgiving, she turned and said, “What are you doing here at this hour, anyway? What hour is it?”

“A little after one.”

“What are you— How can you get here this late?”

“This time,” Jack told her with an almost boyish eagerness, “we can get the Galaxy on a number of felonies , with people who would be very happy to prosecute. Hiram wanted me here to set it up. It was too late to make a connection to Springfield, so I drove down from St. Louis.”

“And didn’t pass a single telephone along the way.”

“I wanted to surprise you.”

“You succeeded. Leave Sunday morning, come back Monday night — that’s fairly surprising.” All at once, Sara wrinkled her mouth like a rejected page of copy and said, “Uk. What’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“That taste , it’s like — I don’t know what it’s like.”

He looked at her with real concern. “It just hit, just this second?”

“No, it’s—” She made a series of disgusting mouths, with sound effects; he looked away, not wanting to know this. She said, “It’s been building the last few days. I didn’t notice, really, but waking up just now it hit me; it’s” — smack-smack — “salty, nasty, kind of — not rancid, exactly...”

“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve been getting it, too. You know, you don’t pay attention, but you’re right.”

They both went smack-smack, tasting their mouths. Jack said, “Is it something in the water?”

“No, it’s... I almost remember; it’s—” She stopped, mouth and eyes wide open, and stared at Jack. “Bac-O Bits!”

“What?”

“Bac-O Bits! You know, that fake bacon stuff. You shake it out; it’s like coarse pepper, only it’s — what color is that? Cordovan!”

“Cordovan? And it’s a food ?”

“Kinda.”

“This,” Jack said, “is a part of Americana I don’t want to know.”

“Bac-O Bits,” Sara repeated, then nodded and tasted some more. “It’s the redneck’s garlic,” she said. “They put it on everything; we’ve been getting it in every meal. They put it on the eggs in the morning, on the sandwich at lunch, in the salad at dinner.”

Jack, belatedly wary, hunched his shoulders and said, “I had a Bloody Mary.”

“Bac-O Bits!”

“Does it build up in the body,” he asked,“like PCBs?”

“It builds up in the mouth ,” Sara said, and turned toward the bathroom, saying, “Excuse me while I brush.”

“Me second.”

In the bathroom doorway, she turned back to say, “What did Binx want?”

“Oh, it’s great,” Jack assured her, chortling. “Wait’ll you hear. Binx has pulled the greatest caper; he’s home and dry, you’ll be proud of him.”

“Tell.”

He studied her, eyes gleaming. “Just as soon as you brush your teeth and I brush my teeth, and just as soon as I complete my exhaustive study of that appealing garment you’re wearing, I’ll tell you all about it.”

Tuesday morning, while Jack was off tightening the noose around the collective Weekly Galaxy neck, Sara was in her usual seat in the courtroom over in Forsyth, Cal on one side of her and Honey Franzen on the other. There was more of an air of expectation in court today, a sense of everyone waiting to be thrilled in some way. As Cal had explained to Sara, Ray was going to testify in his own defense this morning, over the objections of his high-priced defense attorney. “Then why is he doing it?” Sara asked as they waited for Judge Quigley to enter and gavel the crowded courtroom into session.

“He’s got his reasons,” Cal said. “He wants to tell his side of it.”

Good drama, bad move, Sara thought as the judge did come sweeping into the room in her black robe and gavel everybody back into their seats and into silence.

Seated now at her high desk. Judge Quigley looked severely around for somebody to reprimand, found no one, and snapped, “Is the defense ready?”

Warren rose. “We are, Your Honor. The defense calls Ray Jones.”

A stir, and a murmur, and a muffled hubbub — all went through the room as Ray got up from the defense table and went over to the witness seat to be sworn. Judge Quigley rapped again with her gavel. “There will be no disturbances of any kind,” she announced, “or I will clear the court. Mr. Thurbridge?”

“Thank you. Your Honor,” Warren said, and looking only slightly like a man who believes himself to be on a fool’s errand, he approached the sworn-in Ray and the morning began.

Ray started well enough; but of course, it was his own lawyer asking the questions, and those were real easy ones he was tossing over the plate. With Warren’s gentle guidance, Ray at last got to tell his side of the story to a hushed and fascinated courtroom, including fourteen hushed and fascinated jurors. He wanted all present to know that he had never had any kind of sexual or emotional relationship with Belle Hardwick, who was merely another employee in his theater; that he hadn’t driven the red Acura SNX that night; that he’d been home from the theater, absolutely by himself, before 10:30 that night; that he’d been asleep in his bed by midnight; that he had not thrown away any clothing in the last month or so, nor burned any clothing, nor given away any clothing, nor lost any clothing; and that he had no idea who might have been angry enough at Belle to have done all that awful stuff to her. “Though,” he added, while Warren looked just a teensy bit nervous, “it seems to me, when you get into excess violence like that, more likely than not somebody’s been drinking.”

“Do you drink, Ray?” Warren asked. But of course, Sara realized, he had to ask that and not leave the subject to the prosecutor.

“Sometimes,” Ray answered. “Not when I’m working; it throws off my timing. But after a show sometimes, if there’s a little party goin on, a bunch of people kickin back, sure, I like a taste or two. But I’m not a solitary drinker, never was.”

As the testimony went serenely along like that, Sara could see Warren gradually becoming less tense. Ray wasn’t being defensive; he didn’t have a chip on his shoulder; he wasn’t caustic or mean. He was just a reasonable, normal person who happened to be innocent of the charges against him and who would like people to know and understand that.

Warren stretched it out, and Sara could see him doing it and she knew why, but once Ray had told his story two or three times, there really wasn’t much left to say, so there did have to come that moment, about an hour into day three of the trial, when Warren had to step away from his client, flash a nervous smile at the judge, and say, “No more questions. Your Honor.”

Now it was the prosecutor’s turn. Fred Heffner, the Lincolnesque gun from Springfield, was handling interrogation of witnesses, that being a task rather beyond the capacities of the local prosecutor, Buford Delray. (Sara was happy to see Louis B. Urbiton in a privileged seat directly behind Buford Delray. She was happy for Louis B. She wanted his impersonation of a reporter from The Economist to last and last, right up until the dramatic unveiling. Gotcha! Gotcha both , Buford.)