Baby, Would I Lie?

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.

“Bimbos,” Warren repeated; he hated to be reversed. “There’s no direct evidence to connect Ray with the killing,” he went on, “and their circumstantial evidence is laughable. So all we have to do is be quiet and polite, and we’ll get our verdict, no problem.”

Jim Chancellor, the local lawyer who’d been helping out in the preparation of the case, said, “Warren, what about resting the defense? Right away, no witnesses at all. Just to point up how little prosecution case there is to rebut.”

“I would do that if I could, Jim,” Warren said, and nodded his heavy head in Ray’s direction, down at the end of the same conference table where late the shadow jury (and its cuckoo bird) had been in deliberation. “If Ray here would let me.”

“No way,” said Ray.

“As you see,” Warren said to Jim.

Ray said, “We’ve been over it and over it, Warren. I’m not disputing your smarts, you know that. All I’m saying is, if I don’t stand up there and look those people in the eye and tell them they’re full of shit, I’ll never be able to live with myself.”

Jolie said, “Using slightly different language, I presume.”

“Come on, Jolie,” Ray said. “I know how to talk in public, you know that.”

Warren turned back to Jim, saying, “So we won’t do the sensible thing, I’m afraid. Our principal is determined to testify.”

“Mm mm,” said Jim, expressing the most profound of misgivings.

“Agreed. And yet, here he is.” Warren turned again in Ray’s direction. “You wanted to go first,” he said. “Okay, you’ve got what you want. Tomorrow, you’ll be our first witness.”

“By God, Warren, thank you,” Ray said, grinning from ear to ear. “I feel like a kid on Christmas Day.”

“You’re welcome, Ray,” Warren said with just a hint of irony.

Jim said, “First of how many witnesses, Warren?”

“That depends how badly Ray performs,” Warren said.

“And thank you, Warren,” Ray said.

Ignoring his client, Warren told Jim, “If Ray does reasonably well, we may stop right there, while we’re still ahead. If he makes a really true mess of things, I’m afraid we’ll just have to keep calling witnesses until the jury forgets. No matter how many months it takes.”

“It’s support like that,” Ray said, “that’s kept me going all these years.”