Дональд Уэстлейк - Baby, Would I Lie?

“God bless you, Ray, God bless—”

“Yeah, good. Now get up, Bob, get on your feet.”

With Ray’s considerable help. Bob struggled to his feet and stood there, swaying. Ray said, “Can you walk on out of here? Don’t take my car anymore, Bob.”

“No.”

“Where’s that heap of yours, out by Jjeepers!?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you get there?”

“Yeah. I’m okay now, Ray. I’m okay.”

“Sure you are. Bob? What you should do—”

“Yeah?”

“Go home tonight, get some sleep.”

“I couldn’t sleep, Ray! Jesus, not after — I couldn’t sleep !

“Well, lay down, then. Get some rest somehow. In the morning, decide what you want to do. The sheriff or California. Decide it then. All right?”

“Okay, Ray.”

“You got a bottle in your car?”

“Sure. Yeah, sure.”

“Don’t drink it. You hear me? Don’t drink it.”

Solemn: “I won’t, Ray.”

“Good. Get some rest. Decide in the morning.”

“Thank you, Ray. God bless you, Ray.”

“Yeah, that’s all right,” Ray told him, steering him toward the door. “That’s fine.”

Bob kept mumbling his thanks and Ray kept consoling him with friendly words until they reached the door. Ray opened it. Bob stumbled into the darkness beyond, and Ray shut the door behind him.

Ray took a step or two away from the door, shaking his head. He put the heels of both hands to his temples as though struck by a severe headache. “What a fuckin mess,” he muttered. Then he looked up, looked directly at the camera, and seemed for the first time to remember it was still running. “Oh shit ,” he said, and came purposefully forward, hand reaching out.

Snow.

Cal ejected the tape without rewinding it, put it in its box, and turned to face Sara. “That’s it,” he said.

“Why didn’t—” Sara was still stunned by the scene on the monitor. “Why didn’t Ray say something?”

“He promised Bob; he swore to him—”

“Come on , Cal! When he’s indicted for murder?”

“Ray never took it serious,” Cal said. “I talked with him; I know that’s true. Right up to when he went on the stand, he never took it serious. That’s how he got himself in so deep, not being careful. He knew he didn’t do it, didn’t have any reason to do it; he couldn’t believe anything really bad would happen to him.”

“After they found Bob Golker’s body,” Sara said. “Why didn’t he show everybody the tape then?”

“I don’t know , Sara!” Cal said. “I didn’t talk to him yet. I can’t talk to him in where he is now; they got guards right there listening to every word you say. I didn’t talk to anybody but you.”

“Why me?”

“You’re a smart lady,” Cal said. “I know you and I like you, and I figure you’ll know what to do with this.” He held up the tape, almost but not quite offering it to her.

“Give it to the authorities,” Sara said. “Give it to Warren.”

“I don’t think so,” Cal said slowly and carefully. “That’s what I thought at first to do, but then I thought it over, and I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“They just got themselves a big murder conviction over there,” Cal reminded her. “Now, after it’s all over, Ray’s best friend shows up with this tape, they’ll say, ‘It’s a fake.’ They’ll say, ‘Where’s it been all this time?’ They won’t even look at it; they’ll throw it away.”

“Give it to Warren; let him give it to them.”

“Same thing. Even if Warren believes me, so what? The smartass out-of-town high-priced lawyer, and this is his latest cute stunt, you know that’s how they’ll think.”

“But they can’t ignore this.”

“Sure they can,” Cal said. “Law people ignore stuff all the time if it don’t fit what they want. Bigger evidence than this come around in cases sometimes, got ignored. That guy on death row on television? Years later, you see it on TV, how nobody paid any attention to this evidence, that evidence.”

“Not if it’s out in public,” Sara said. “Like the Rodney King tape.”

Cal looked hopeful. “So you think I oughta give it to a TV station?” Then he looked worried again. “They’ll say the same thing. Best friend, can’t trust him. Don’t wanna get in trouble with the prosecutors.”

Then Sara got it; all of it. “You want me to take the tape, don’t you?”

Cal lit up. “Would you? What could you do with it? You’re on a magazine, right?”

“But still, that’s the idea,” Sara said. “I should print something in Trend about this unknown tape, maybe get a copy of it to somebody at one of the networks. Then they’d have to pay attention to it, wouldn’t they?”

“Gee, Sara,” Cal said, blinking in all his redneck innocence. “Do you think you could do that?”

“I think I could,” Sara said. “I’m not sure I will.”

Cal’s blinking now was suddenly more real. “What? Why not?”

“Socks don’t roll on shag carpets,” Sara said.

He went right on being innocent, good old shitkicker Cal. “I don’t know whatcha mean,” he said.

“What we saw on the tape there, that’s real all right,” Sara allowed. “Ray figured Golker really would run away, didn’t plan on him drinking up that bottle in the car and kill himself.”

“Or accident himself,” Cal said. “That would be Bob, too.”

“Either way. Ray believed him, there on the tape, that the body wouldn’t ever be found. But the next day, when the police came around, looked in that car, started asking questions, Ray suddenly saw what an opportunity this was.”

Cal said, “I don’t getcha. Opportunity?”

“To solve his income-tax problem,” Sara said.

Cal gawked. “You ain’t serious!”

“It was golden, wasn’t it, Cal?” Sara grinned at him, on solid land at last. “He could let the IRS think there wasn’t gonna be much of Ray Jones to kick around anymore, and once he did it, he could pull the plug anytime with that tape.”

“Naw, Sara.”

“Yeah, Cal. Only Ray didn’t realize at first, I bet, what a lot it would take to convince the IRS to cave in. But that was the idea all right, from the very beginning.”

“Ray wouldn’t do nothing like that!”

“Of course, he would,” Sara said. “To save himself millions of dollars? Millions! There was no way for Warren to get Ray off, not before a settlement with the IRS. Warren thought he was running things, but Ray was, from the get-go. Warren could pull every slick lawyer stunt he knew, but every single time Ray would make sure to screw up just enough to keep himself on the hook. And meanwhile, Jolie’s supposed to get him a better deal from the tax people, because maybe he won’t be an earner any more. His only problem was, he couldn’t tell either of his lawyers what he was up to, because they wouldn’t have let him do it. Nobody could know about it but you .”

“Aw no, Sara.”

“Aw yeah . And when the feds still wouldn’t back off, he insisted on taking the witness stand, because he just knew Fred Heffner would give him a chance to accidentally blurt something out and buy that guilty verdict. Accidental! That ‘cocksucker’ line was deliberate. Ray’s a showman — I should have remembered that — and the witness chair was a stage, and Ray doesn’t do anything accidental onstage.”

“Sara,” Cal said, more in sorrow than in anger, “you don’t make any kind of sense at all.”

“And me ,” Sara said, starting to get mad. “That was the other part of it, find a patsy—”