Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

Fred Heffner started small and easy, saying, “Mr. Jones, I want you to know I’m pleased and happy you’ve decided to come forward and tell your story like this. If I tend to go back over one or two details, I hope you won’t mind. It’s my job, you know, just to make sure everything’s crystal-clear for the jury. Okay?”

“Sure,” Ray said. He seemed easy and calm, half-smiling at the prosecutor, unworried. But was he truly the confident, well-prepared witness he appeared to be, or was he a lamb, gullible and trusting, led to slaughter?

Well, we’ll see, won’t we? Fred Heffner said, “Now, Mr. Jones, I noticed in your testimony a little earlier this morning, in referring to what happened to the late Belle Hardwick, you used the phrase”excess violence.” Do you recall using that phrase?”

“In connection with drinking, yeah.”

“In connection, I believe, with the death of Belle Hardwick. You considered her manner of death to be, in your words, “excess violence.” Isn’t that so?”

“I think we can all agree on that part,” Ray said with a little grin.

Fred Heffner didn’t grin back. Raising an eyebrow, he said, “Can we? What is your definition, Mr. Jones, of excess violence?”

Lifting himself wearily to his feet, as though he really was above this sort of foolishness, Warren said, “Objection, Your Honor. This is just some sort of semantic game. Everyone in this court knows what Ray Jones meant.”

“Well, I’m not sure we do,” Fred Heffner said. “That’s why I’d like Mr. Jones to tell us, in his own words, what he had in mind with that phrase.”

Judge Quigley, smiling upon the prosecutor, said, “I think that’s a legitimate question. The phrase was introduced by the defendant; he should certainly expect to have to answer as to what he meant by it.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, while Warren shook his head at the folly of humankind and resumed his seat. Fred Heffner turned back to Ray, saying, “Let me try to make it easier for you, Mr. Jones. I take it you were saying that some level of violence is acceptable, until it reaches a point you—”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Warren said, on his feet again. “The prosecuting attorney is putting words in the witness’s mouth that are clearly not anything he said or meant or implied.”

“Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, “all I’m asking the witness to do is define his terms.”

“Then I think,” the judge said, “we’ll let him do so.” Gazing down at Ray without love, she said, “Mr. Jones?”

Ray directed his answer straight to her. “Your Honor, I’m not in favor of violence at all. If I wanted to knock this prosecutor here down,” he said, still looking at the judge but pointing at Fred Heffner, who smirked, “that would be a bad thing to do; I’m not condoning it. If I hit him and he went down, that would be a bad thing, but it’s what I wanted to do and I did it. Now, if all I want to do is knock him down and I start hitting him with chairs and desks and microphones and all sorts of stuff, that’s excess . Anyway, that’s always what I thought the word meant. Whoever killed poor old Belle there, they killed her three or four times, according to what I read. If I call that excess, I don’t mean I think it would’ve been all right if he just killed her once. I’m against violence, all kinds of violence. I’m a musician, not a boxer.”

Bravo, thought Sara, taking sides for just a moment. You’re not just a musician; you’re a songwriter, and that was a good song. Well done.

Judge Quigley seemed to think so, too, reluctantly. “Thank you, Mr. Jones,” she said, and she looked over at Fred Heffner, who, during Ray’s answer, had gone back to the prosecution table and found a photograph, which he now held. “Mr. Heffner, are you satisfied?”

“Indeed I am. Your Honor,” Fred Heffner said, approaching the witness. “In fact, that was very eloquent, Mr. Jones. What you say about Belle Hardwick having been killed several times seems to me a pretty accurate description of what happened on the night of July the twelfth. This is a picture of the victim’s body after it had been taken from the water.”

“I’ve seen it,” Ray said, not taking the picture.

“Take another look at it,” Fred Heffner suggested. “Go ahead. Take it.”

Slowly, with evident revulsion, Ray took the photo and looked at it. From back here, Sara could see only that it was a glossy eight-by-ten, and in color. She felt that was probably all she wanted to know about that particular photograph.

“Are you looking at the picture, Mr. Jones?” the prosecutor asked.

“Yeah,” Ray said, his voice heavy, “I’m looking at it.”

Leaning toward Ray, lowering his voice but still clearly audible throughout the courtroom, Fred Heffner said, “Tell me, does she look like a pizza to you?”

As though he’d been hit by a cattle prod, Ray jumped in his seat, glared, and threw the photograph at the prosecutor. “You cocksucker!” he yelled. “That song doesn’t have a goddamn thing to do with it!”

Ray over there was the one who’d stumbled, but Warren was the one sitting at the little bare desk with his head in his hands. They and Jolie and Jim Chancellor and Cal, but nobody else, were crowded into the small office behind the courtroom set aside for the defense during breaks, where they were allegedly trying to figure out what to do next. Judge Quigley had just about broken her gavel pounding it into the stunned silence that had followed upon Ray’s outburst, then had shouted out an order for a thirty-minute recess “to permit the defendant to regain some measure of self-control, and to permit his extensive legal counsel, both attorneys from within Taney County and attorneys from somewhere outside the state of Missouri, to attempt to explain to the defendant something of the concept of decorum in a court of law.” All of which was said within the full hearing of the jury.

Fifteen minutes of the thirty had gone by, and except for some mumbled condolences toward Ray from Cal, nobody had said much of anything. Ray stood it as long as he could and then he said, “The son of a bitch blindsided me, that’s all.”

His head still within the bowl of his hands, his words muffled, Warren said, “Defeat from the jaws of victory.”

“It isn’t over yet, Warren,” Ray said.

Warren lowered his hands at last. His eyes were bloodshot. He used them to look at Ray. “It was over,” he said. “Now I don’t know.”

“That judge was pretty snotty to me in front of the jury, that’s what I thought.”

Jolie said, “I noticed that, too. Warren, could that be grounds for reversal?”

“Possibly,” Warren said, “though, given the provocation, I seriously doubt it.”

Ray said, “Whadaya mean, reversal? I’m not gonna get convicted .”

“You’re a good deal closer to that eventuality than you were when you got up this morning,” Warren told him.

“Because I said cocksucker ? That’s not a death-sentence offense.”

“It may be,” Warren said. “But to be honest with you, although I do regret that word having been placed into the record in that fashion, that’s not the word you used that really bothers me.”

Ray frowned at him. “Why? What else did I say? I didn’t say anything else. I was doing pretty good up till then.”

“I was proud of you, up till then,” Warren agreed.

“So what word didn’t you like?”

“The word song ,” Warren told him.

Ray shrugged, shook his head, scratched his elbow, pulled his ear. He looked like a base coach with three men on. He said, “I don’t get it. Song ? What’s wrong with that?”