Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  Standing, yawning, stretching, Ray said, “Showtime.”

  “Kill, tiger,” Jolie suggested.

  Ray was the first one off the bus. Cops were holding the gawkers back, but their noise was terrific. Another uniformed trooper, this one older and with spaghetti on his hat to show he was of more importance around here, stepped forward, very formal, and said, “Raymond Vernon Jones?”

  “I’ll say yes to that,” Ray told him, and started on by, but the trooper held up a hand to stop him, saying, “Raymond Vernon Jones, I have a warrant for your arrest. You have the right—”

  “I already been arrested, pal,” Ray told him. “We went through this part of the act a long time ago.”

  “This is a new warrant,” the trooper said.

  Jolie was out of the bus now and standing beside Ray like a tough blimp. She said, “What’s it a warrant for, Officer?”

  “Murder,” said the trooper.

  Ray wanted this shit over with. “You’re on the wrong page, my friend,” he said. “All this is done and over. We’re here for the trial.”

  “I have a warrant for your arrest, Raymond Vernon Jones,” the goddamn trooper said, refusing to be sidetracked, “for the murder of one Robert Wayne Golker. You have the right to remain silent …”

  Ray did.

  16

  The worst possible situation for a reporter is to be at the back of the bus when the interesting event is happening at the front of the bus. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” Sara mantra’d as she pushed her way down the aisle, making good use of elbows and knees and her heavy shoulder bag, caroming musicians and their instruments back into their seats along the way, single-mindedly plowing her furrow forward.

  Still, by the time she got to the bus door, whatever had been happening was already over with and done. While tourists and journalists went nova with excitement all around the periphery, Ray Jones was being escorted in the middle of a swarm of brown-uniformed policemen toward the courthouse, and Ray Jones was in handcuffs.

  Sara didn’t want to leave the bus. To leave the bus would be to lose her advantage, her insiderness, to be dropped at once into that maelstrom of shouting, camera-waving former humans beyond the pale and below the salt. Standing on the bottom step, clutching to the vertical chrome rail as an earnest of her determination not to be cast into the outer sunshine, Sara looked around desperately for an explanation, an ally, something, and her eye fell on the fat woman who’d been seated beside Ray Jones on the trip and who now stood down there in sunlight just outside the bus. Who was she? Not his wife, though one never knew. A secretary, maybe, or his sister. Whoever she might be, at this moment she was standing with arms akimbo, fists pressed to where her waist would be if she had one, glaring all around herself like an enraged mother bear. Catching the woman’s eye, Sara said, “What happened?”

  “An outrage!” the woman declared. She had the kind of rich contralto that goes with such a barrel shape, plus the gravelly hoarseness of someone who’s spent too much time shouting for more beer in smoke-filled rooms. “It’s a public-relations outrage!” she tromboned on. “A cheap publicity stunt!”

  Meantime, Ray Jones and his escort had squeezed themselves through the double doorway into the courthouse, and the mob had become a tidal wave, breaking against the front of the building. And the brassy blonde who’d been seated behind the driver now came pushing past Sara (who clutched harder to the chrome pipe), saying to the fat woman, “I’ll get Warren.” Having done her homework, Sara knew that Warren would be Warren Thurbridge, Ray Jones’s attorney.

  The fat woman eyed the mob. “If you can get through.”

  The blonde was lighting a cigarette, puffing on it madly without inhaling, then taking it out of her mouth to give a critical eye to the large burning red coal at its end. “I’ll get through,” she said, and hopped off the bus to wade into the crowd, branding those who were too sluggish in getting out of her way.

  Sara watched, admiring the technique, filing it for future reference, and then Cal Denny appeared at her elbow, saying, “Jolie, what’s goin on there?”

  Jolie was the fat woman. She said, “They arrested him. On the courthouse steps,” which was more dramatic than accurate. “They came up and arrested him.”

  “What for?”

  Jolie shook her big head. “The goddamnedest thing I ever heard,” she said. “They say he killed Bob Golker.”

  A gasp, a quick intake of breath so harsh that it was almost like a death rattle, made Sara turn her head and study Cal Denny’s profile, right next to her. He was ashen; his lined face looking like tracks on a snowy field, his eyes wide with astonishment and shock. “Bob’s dead? That’s …” He faltered, and swallowed noisily, Adam’s apple bobbing. “That’s crazy!”

  “I know that, and so do you,” Jolie said, and glared again at the courthouse. “And so do they, the bastards.”

  Cal became aware of Sara staring at him and gave her an anxious look and a scared smile. “A little more excitement than we thought,” he said.

  “I guess,” Sara said, and risked a question: “Who’s Bob Golker?”

  “He went to California,” Cal said. He seemed utterly bewildered. “He told everybody he got a studio job out there.”

  Jolie, her deep raspy voice full of warning, said, “Cal, we don’t have to talk to the press just this minute.” She looked at Sara, probably the first time their eyes had met directly, and Sara was astonished at how cold and intelligent the eyes were in that fat face. “The bus ride’s over,” she said.

  I’m gonna get thrown out, Sara thought, scrambling for some way to stay inside, stay aboard. But who was this woman Jolie? What authority did she have? “I’m not with a newspaper,” Sara said, talking fast. “I won’t be printing anything until the trial’s all over, and anyway, I agree with you, the way they handled this, it was an outrage, and maybe, from my perspective, I could—”

  Cal said, “It’s okay, Jolie. I talked with Ray about this lady; it’s okay with him.”

  In the middle of Jolie’s large round face, the large round nose wrinkled. “What Ray thinks he’s doing, I’ll never know,” she said, and made shooing motions for Sara to back up into the bus. Cal went first, on up the aisle toward his seat, then Sara stepped backward but stayed near the front of the bus, and Jolie followed, grunting and wheezing as she laboriously pulled her cotton-bale body up the steps, clutching to the vertical chrome poles, which Sara half-expected to bend in the middle.

  But they didn’t, and Jolie, once successfully aboard, said to the driver, “Take us around to the law office.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He shut the door, and Sara said hesitantly, “Okay if I take Mr. Jones’s seat?”

  Jolie glowered at her, repelled. “God, you’re pushy. A New York reporter, all right.” She waggled her fat hand at the vacant window seat. “Get in, then.” The bus jerked backward, almost knocking them both off their feet, and Jolie said, “And be quick.”

  Sara was quick, darting to the seat, Jolie turning and dropping into place next to her as the bus moved slowly backward, the courthouse receding beyond the big windshield, the driver looking in every direction at once in his efforts not to drive over any curious onlookers, of whom there seemed to be several million, including a few in front of the bus, walking forward as it backed up, staring in through the windshield at Sara and Jolie, some of them mouthing questions or statements, some of them jumping up and down to try to see deeper into the bus.

  See what deeper in the bus? Putting these goofs out of her mind, Sara said, “I’m Sara Joslyn. I’m with Trend. I’m sorry, I’m not sure who you are.”

  Reluctantly, grudgingly, the fat woman said, “Jolie Grubbe. I’m Ray’s attorney, not as though he pays any attention to me.”

  The bus having backed far enough away from the curb, the driver now tried to move it forward, blaring his horn at the people in front, who seemed to think this was television rather than life and that they could just stay in one spot and watch
the world swirl around them without actually being dragged beneath the giant wheels of a great big bus. Through this cacophony, Sara said, “His attorney? I thought Warren Thurbridge was Mr. Jones’s attorney.”

  Jolie gave her a sour look. “Are you calling him Mr. Jones so you won’t seem like the impudent boorish pushy New Yorker you really are?”

  “Yes,” said Sara. “I thought his attorney was Warren Thurbridge.”

  “And single-minded.” Jolie sneered slightly. “Warren is Ray’s trial lawyer, the one who gets all the publicity and most of the money. I’m his attorney for everything else, including why we shouldn’t have press on this bus.”

  “Are you handling his income-tax problem?”

  Jolie reared back, as much as her poundage would permit. “I may throw you off the bus myself!”

  Sara garbed herself in the attributes of offended innocence. “Ms. Grubbe,” she said, “it’s Ms. Grubbe, is it? Ms. Grubbe, he was singing about it on this very bus; it’s hardly a secret.”

  The bus was now rolling down the block, trailed by only a few of the goofs, the majority still believing the main action would be at the courthouse. Jolie Grubbe said, “The first thing you’re gonna do when we get to the office is sign a release.”

  Sara laughed. “Even before I turn water into wine?”

  “You are not here as a friend,” Jolie insisted. “You are here as a journalist, and everything you hear and see is privileged. It’s our decision what and whether you can publish.”

  “You’re speaking in the plural,” Sara said. “Who besides Ray Jones makes the decisions?”

  Looking very mulish, Jolie said, “Don’t get tough with me, girl, that’s my advice.”

  “I’m not your enemy,” Sara said. “The people who decided to make a publicity stunt out of a second arrest, they’re your enemy. Why would anybody think Mr. Jones would kill John Golker? He was a musician, was he?”

  “His name was Bob Golker,” Jolie said, which Sara had well known (get them into the habit of giving you information, that’s the idea), “and there’s no reason at all.”

  “He was a backup musician in the show?”

  “And a drunk. And a skirt-chaser. And I didn’t say any of that.”

  The bus stopped and Jolie struggled to her feet, giving Sara a grim smile. “You can’t use anything,” she said. “Not without our permission.”

  Nevertheless, Sara got off the bus with the group and walked among them into the former furniture store that was now Warren Thurbridge’s headquarters and where a whole lot of people were noisily going out of their minds. As Sara stared around at everything, recording and remembering every detail, Jolie grabbed a handy clerk. “Where’s Warren?”

  “With the judge!” the clerk cried. “Thats’s all we know!”

  Jolie released the clerk, who scurried off like the white rabbit. Giving Sara her most sour look, Jolie said, “Now we’ll see if Warren is worth all the money he gets.”

  17

  “This is so prejudicial, Your Honor,” Warren Thurbridge said, the strong vibrato of his rich voice barely under control, “I’m going to ask for a mistrial right now.”

  Judge Berenice Quigley looked both irritated and baffled. “Counselor, the trial hasn’t begun. You can’t have a mistrial before the trial.”

  “The police action this morning,” Warren said, “has poisoned the entire jury pool.”

  Buford Delray snorted. “I would think, sir,” he said, his fat-boy envy of Warren Thurbridge’s accomplishments rising around him like heat waves, “I would think your own client’s activities have done all the poisoning around here. Though poison does seem one of the few methods he does not favor.” And Delray beamed fatuously upon his hanger-on, the British reporter, who beamed fatuously back.

  They were in judge’s chambers, all seated, though Warren managed to sit in such a fashion as to look as though he were pacing, probably waving his arms, even possibly pushing distracted fingers through his hair. Across from this kinetic Warren, Judge Berenice Quigley, a heavyset, stern-looking woman in her mid-forties who was well known to have gubernatorial cravings in her future, sat at attention behind her large polished desk, trying to look evenhanded, though she was possibly the most prosecution-favoring occupant of the entire Missouri bench.

  To Warren’s right sat prosecutor Buford Delray, looking like a butterball turkey that has just been basted, and beyond Delray, on a sofa off to the side, sat the British reporter, whose presence here Warren didn’t understand and certainly didn’t approve. He switched to that sore point, letting the original sore point rest a moment, saying, “Your Honor, I don’t see how we can have this conversation with a reporter in the room.”

  “Mr. Fernit-Branca is not a reporter,” Delray said, voice dripping with condescension. “He’s a writer with The Economist, a respected London publication.”

  “I know The Economist,” Warren growled, and glared at the Englishman. “Fernit-Branca,” he mused. “I know that name.”

  “I suppose you’ve seen my byline,” the fellow said, and smiled fondly at Warren.

  Judge Quigley said, “Mr. Delray asked that this one representative of the press be present. As he’s not a daily journalist, not an American, not taking notes, and not intending to print anything until the trial is completed, I saw no reason to refuse the request. There are precedents for such things.”

  “In those precedents,” Warren pointed out, “the defense has been consulted in advance and has agreed.”

  Judge Quigley’s face could become very cold. “I didn’t feel that was necessary,” she said.

  “Evidently.”

  “Now,” she went on, “as to this new charge.”

  “Another thing I don’t understand,” Warren told her.

  “It’s very simple,” Delray said, so smug you just wanted to slap his face. “Last night, a body was found in a car in Lake Taneycomo. It had been driven off a cliff on the south side of the river, east of Hollister. The body was identified as one Robert Wayne Golker, who had disappeared just after the murder of Belle Hardwick. Golker was a musician in your client’s employ. After his disappearance, Jones put it about that Golker had left to take a job in California.”

  “Golker himself told people that,” Warren objected, “for weeks before he went.”

  “If you have witnesses to substantiate that,” Delray said, smiling in mock pity, “I’m sure you’ll bring them forward. In any event, Golker had been drinking heavily, or perhaps had had a great quantity of alcohol forced on him. He was then hit on the head, placed in the car, and the car pushed off the cliff into the lake.”

  “Drunk, he drove over the cliff,” Warren said, “and hit his head when the car hit the water.”

  “If you have forensic witnesses to offer that theory,” Delray said, “I’m sure you’ll hire them to testify. In any event, Golker died within twenty-four hours of the death of Miss Hardwick. Golker and Miss Hardwick knew one another.”

  “They worked in the same theater,” Warren said.

  “Of course. And both knew Mr. Jones. It is the state’s contention that Mr. Golker learned of Mr. Jones’s murder of Miss Hardwick, either through something Mr. Jones said or some error he made, and that Mr. Jones then murdered Mr. Golker to protect his secret, attempting to make it look like a drunken accident.”

  “It was a drunken accident.”

  “If you have witnesses you can pay to suggest that possibility, I’m sure you’ll parade them before the court.”

  Judge Quigley tapped her palm on her desk blotter, in lieu of a gavel. “All of that will be decided at trial,” she said. “There’s no need to discuss it here.”

  “The discussion,” Warren said, “should be about the state’s methods this morning. A public arrest, grandstanding—”

  Delray interrupted to say, “We take murder seriously in Taney County, Mr. Thurbridge.”

  “They take grandstanding seriously in the Bar Association,” Warren told him.

  J
udge Quigley said, “Mr. Thurbridge, it was not Mr. Delray’s decision to arrest Mr. Jones; that was a police decision. If you have a complaint regarding the state police of Missouri, this is not the forum for that complaint.”

  Warren looked thoughtful. “Will the Missouri Bar Association believe the state police would take such an action without prior consultation with the public prosecutor? Be interesting to see.”

  “The point, Mr. Thurbridge,” Judge Quigley insisted, “is the current matter before the court, which is the capital case against Mr. Jones in the death of Miss Hardwick.”

  “I don’t see how we can proceed,” Warren said, “not after this morning’s circus.”

  “We can, of course, postpone, if you wish,” Judge Quigley told him. “You may request a change of venue, if you wish. If we postpone, and if the state requests that the matter of Mr. Golker’s death be added to the matter of Miss Hardwick’s death, I would probably be in favor.”

  “Never!” Warren snapped. “If the Golker situation is so much as mentioned in front of the jury during the trial, you may count on it, I will be before the appellate court that day.”

  “You will have your say, of course,” the judge agreed. “On another matter, if we decide to postpone, I’m sure the state will request that we revoke the bail under which Mr. Jones is currently free, and I would—”

  Warren almost did leap to his feet at that point. “You wouldn’t revoke bail!”

  “Given the fact that there are now two serious and savage murder accusations against Mr. Jones, were we to have a delay of several weeks during which he could decide to flee the country—I believe Mr. Jones is a fairly wealthy man—I would be very much inclined to revoke bail, yes.”

  Warren considered, keeping himself calm. “You want to go forward, as though nothing had happened.”