Baby, Would I Lie?

by Donald E. Westlake

  “Everything you’ve said in that office,” Sara told him, “is now on a Weekly Galaxy tape.”

  “My God.”

  To Jolie, Sara said, “Aren’t you glad now you let me come along?”

  Warren didn’t have time for good fellowship. He said, “Which one? We have to get rid of—”

  “No no no, not that fast,” Sara said. “Jack Ingersoll, my boss at Trend, it happens he’s working on a Weekly Galaxy exposé right now. I want to call him, see how he wants to handle this.”

  Outraged, Warren said, “How he wants to handle it?”

  “You wouldn’t know a thing if it weren’t for me,” Sara pointed out.

  “If what you say is true,” Jolie said. “If you aren’t just trying to scare us for some reason of your own.”

  Sara looked at her. “You want me to walk away?”

  Warren said, “Miss Joslyn, Sara, tell us who the ringer is.”

  “Right after I find a pay phone and call Jack,” Sara told him. She turned away, then turned back. “And I suggest, if you don’t mind, that you find a pay phone and call a debugger.”

  33

  Branson is an early town. That was a real jolt for some of the performers, who were used to the pace and timing of the road, where your two shows would usually begin at eight and eleven, or Vegas, where some of the shows on the Strip started at nine and midnight. In Branson, where the families and the retirees bed down early and rise early—PANCAKES! ALL YOU CAN EAT!—the shows begin at 3:00 and 8:00 P.M. Some of the performers have trouble for a while, getting up to speed in the middle of the afternoon and then being required to turn off in the middle of the evening. But eventually, even the most night owl of the show folk adapt to the slower rhythm, and even come to enjoy it.

  Ray Jones was one who had the hardest time shifting gears. In the old days, he’d toured 250 to 300 days a year, sleeping by day in the moving bus, rising like a vampire as the sun went down to perform into the night for the people out front, then partying back till it was time for Cal and the boys to pour him back onto the bus; occasionally stopping a town or two away to eject a lady friend who hadn’t realized the party was over.

  The last few years, in Branson, he’d grown used to sleeping in a bed that wasn’t traveling at sixty miles an hour, he’d grown used to the concept of being up and about in direct sunlight, and he’d even grown used to performing the three o’clock matinee—pretending, on the rougher days, that it was a rehearsal or a record date. But the hardest mental shift had been the idea that by 9:30 in the evening, the day was over—no more shows, no more people out front, and even the members of the band yawning and scratching themselves and looking bleary-eyed. By midnight, even Honey Franzen would have gone home to her little ranch style on Mockingbird Lane, north of the Strip, toward Roark Creek.

  That’s why he’d set up his little videotape operation out at the house: to give him something to do on those long nights when there weren’t any shows to perform, there weren’t any people, and there wasn’t even any bus. (In fact, there was a bus, stashed at the farthest corner of the parking lot out behind the theater, and sometimes, in the deepest winter, when the Branson tourist business at last dried up, Ray still did a southern tour or two, mostly out of nostalgia, his as well as the customers. But it would be six months at least before he rode that bus again—or maybe, if things went wrong with this Belle Hardwick thing, a lot longer than six months.)

  The Belle Hardwick thing had been a disruption in a number of ways, but now that the trial had started, the disruption was even more complete. Because he had to be in court all day long, showing his honest citizen’s face to the honest citizens of the jury, he couldn’t do a 3:00 P.M. show, only the 8:00 P.M. That had now become the first show, and his mind and body just craved a second show three hours later, just when everybody else in his world had gone to sleep.

  God, it was tough. He was raring to go, ready to let performance soothe his shattered nerves and battered psyche, ready to let those hours under the lights on the stage clean out all the bad thoughts and bad vibes, fears and apprehensions, but the world was shut down. Meantime, with the trial going on and all, the pressure from the fans who wanted to see that one and only show per day was extreme. Flouting the fire laws, his people had put a row of folding chairs in front of the first row of regular seating and two more folding chairs at the top end of the aisles. They’d even dropped the Elvis gag so they could sell the Elvis seat; the girl reporter and her editor wouldn’t be able to get in at all these nights.

  With all those people out front, laughing and applauding and approving and adoring, it was hard to stop. The shows got longer and longer. Songs he’d decided for reasons of personal image not to perform until the Belle Hardwick thing was over, he had begun to sing again. (Not all of them; “My Ideal,” for instance, he still wouldn’t touch, maybe never would again.)

  But the fact of the matter is, the fans wanted Ray to be a rogue, if a lovable rogue. He was one of their outlaws, like Willie Nelson and David Allan Coe, and they wanted that whiff of brimstone they knew he could if he chose deliver. So that was why (in addition to the fact that he didn’t want to get off the damn stage) he was bringing back into the repertory songs like “L. A. Lady” and “The Dog Come Back.” The people who knew “L.A. Lady” was about his ex-wife, Cherry, liked that one, but just about everybody liked “The Dog Come Back”:

  Oh, things seemed pretty bad, but now they’re not so black.

  It’s true my wife has left me, but the dog come back.

  I’ve been drinkin pretty heavy since I lost my job,

  Been lookin for an easy 7-Eleven to rob.

  But now I’m not so broke up that I got the sack.

  The missus may have walked out, but the dog come back.

  The girls down at the pool hall never meet my eye.

  I just can’t find me a woman, however hard I try.

  But I don’t mind the silence in my solitary shack.

  The little woman’s run off, but the dog come back.

  The pickup’s got an oil leak, and the rifle’s choked with rust.

  Instead of boomin right along, I go from bust to bust.

  Still I keep it in my memory, when things get out of whack,

  The battleship has sailed off, but the dog come back.

  Oh, a man can face a lot of woe, and not get thrown off track,

  If his wife will only leave him, and the dog come back.

  Oh, if that could only be the whole of life. To get up here and sing the songs, backed by the good old pals and terrific musicians of the band, with the cheering fans out front, everybody happy, everybody simple and clean, the good music flowing out, the good times happening, these are the good old days.

  If only.

  34

  For Bob Sangster, the big-nosed Aussie from the Weekly Galaxy, permanent member of the Down Under Trio, life as a shadow juror was one long vacation. All he had to do was laze around the motel all day: in and out of the swimming pool; in and out of the special dining room set aside for the jurors and stocked at all times with a working buffet; in and out of the common room full of magazines and board games and VCR movies, where he flirted dispassionately with three of the five female jurors—shadowettes, he called them—the other two being just too ridiculous. Then, late in the day, all fourteen shadows would get into the bus and be driven from Branson over to Forsyth to look at the video of that day in court, or, that is, as much of that day in court as the real jury had seen, which tended to be not very much.

  Bob was known to his fellow shadows as Jock O’Shanley, a naturalized American citizen originally from Galway Bay, brrrrightest jew-wel aff the Umerald Aysle. The actual Jock O’Shanley, a night cook at Skaggs Community Hospital, a divorced loner living in an amazingly filthy cottage down by Ozark Beach, and a dedicated alcoholic, was at the moment having his own vacation, at Weekly Galaxy expense, in San Diego, where most of the alcoholics are seamen and therefore expected to stagger a little on la
nd.

  Jock O’Shanley wasn’t the sort of amiable Irish drunk who made friends easily, or at all, so it was unlikely any old pal of good old Jock’s would suddenly pop up and say, “You ain’t Jock O’Shanley, bugger me eyes!” Nor were Jock’s employers at the hospital surprised when he’d called to say he was taking a couple weeks away from the job; well, actually, they were surprised he’d called. Physically, Bob Sangster and Jock were alike enough, both being rangy gnarly guys consisting mostly of bone and gristle marinated for a good long time in booze, and in Taney County an Australian accent can pass for an Irish accent with no trouble at all.

  For the two days of the trial so far, Friday and Monday, Bob was conscientious enough in his simulation of Jock O’Shanley the shadow juror. Over in Forsyth each day, after the fourteen of them had watched the videotape of that day in court, Warren Thurbridge and his assistants would ask questions and solicit opinions, and Bob, not wanting to invalidate the process by his presence any more than was absolutely necessary, did his best to give responses a Jock O’Shanley might give. In the second part of each afternoon’s exercise, when the lawyers discussed with their shadow jurors various strategies and ploys that might be put into play on the morrow, Bob again let his knowledge of the beliefs and prejudices and ignorances and knowledges of such a fellow as Jock O’Shanley guide his tongue, and all was well.

  His actual work, though, the work he did for the Weekly Galaxy, came at the end of the day, when the jurors were bused back to the motel in Branson. There, in the semiprivacy of his room—two jurors per room, each juror with a king-size bed, Bob’s roommate being a retired upholsterer from Cleveland named Hacker—Bob would remove the cassette recorder taped to his side—ouch—take out the cassette, and pass it to the maid named Laverne. In the morning, she would bring him the blank to take the used one’s place, which he would install in the machine and tape the machine again to his side.

  And that was that.

  The maid named Laverne had been suborned on Friday morning, the first day of the trial, by a fierce young Weekly Galaxy reporter named Erica Jacke, whose flaming red hair and hard aerobics body distracted attention from her gaunt-cheeked face and icy hazel eyes. As Erica approached Laverne in the parking lot that first morning, it was hard to believe both belonged to the same species, Laverne being soft and round and sweet and sloppy and kinda dumb. “Hi,” Erica said, with what might have been good fellowship.

  “Hi,” questioned Laverne.

  “You work here, don’t you?”

  “Yes’m, I do.” Laverne looked at her Goofy the Dawg watch. “And I’m gonna be on time for once, too.”

  “That’s great,” Erica said. Then she said, “You know about the people sequestered in there?”

  “The what?”

  “Well, you do know about the Ray Jones trial.”

  “Oh, sure!” Laverne said, and grinned widely and leaned forward to half-whisper with bubbling excitement, “Do you think he did it?”

  “Men,” Erica said. “What do you think?”

  “I just bet you’re right,” Laverne said.

  “You’re going to find out, when you go to work in there,” Erica told the girl, “there’re people in there that are off in their own section, can’t see anybody else or anything—”

  Wide-eyed, suddenly afraid of her place of employment, Laverne said, “What did they do? Is it a jail?”

  “No no no, they’re helping with the trial; they’re the extra jury.”

  “Extra jury? There’s an extra jury?”

  “Oh, they always do that,” Erica said. “In important cases, they do. So if something goes wrong with the first jury, they always have an extra jury that can step right in.”

  “I never knew that,” Laverne said, smiling broadly again, happy at the accumulation of knowledge.

  “The thing is,” Erica said, “my boyfriend’s one of those people on the jury, and they’re not allowed to see anybody‚ and I miss him already.”

  Now, this was a palpable lie, Erica Jacke being as far as you could imagine from girlfriend material, but there are natural romantics in this world, most of them overweight, and Laverne was one. Her heart softened even more at this image of lovers wrenched apart by the inexorable processes of the law. “Gee, that’s awful,” Laverne said.

  “And I know he misses me, too,” Erica said. “We’ve never been away from each other before.”

  “Gosh,” Laverne said.

  Here it came. Out of her shoulder bag, Erica drew the tape cassette. “I just did a letter on tape,” she explained, “because I just know Jock would like to at least hear my voice.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “Jock O’Shanley.”

  “That’s a pretty name!”

  “I love it,” Erica admitted, trying to look like a person melting in love, but failing miserably. “What’s your name?”

  “Laverne. Laverne Slagel.”

  “That’s a pretty name, too! I’m Erica Peterson,” Erica Jacke lied.

  “Erica?” Laverne’s eyes lit up. “Like on ‘All My Children’?”

  “I was named for her!”

  “Really? Has she been around that long?”

  “Oh sure,” Erica said, blithely maligning a fine actress named Susan Lucci. “My mother told me, in the early days, that show was actually in black and white.”

  “I never knew that!”

  “Anyway,” Erica said, calling attention to the cassette by waggling it in front of Laverne, “I did this letter on tape, and I so much want Jock to hear it, and I know he has his Walkman in there so he can listen to his Merle Haggard records, so I was wondering if you could give him my letter for me.”

  “Well, sure,” Laverne said, bighearted girl that she was. “But why don’t you just give 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.

  35

  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.