Baby, Would I Lie?

38

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?”

“You may have noticed,” Warren explained, “when the prosecution had its innings, they tried from time to time to include lyrics by you into the record and into the jury’s ears, and in every instance we beat them back.”

“Sure,” Ray agreed. “We don’t want me tried on my attitudes, but on what I did or didn’t do.”

“Very good. You’ll be a professor of tort one of these days, the way you’re going. But, Ray,” Warren said, elbows on the table, hands spread wide, body bent forward, face pleading for comprehension, “when you mentioned song, you gave the prosecution the opening it wanted. When we go back in there, Fred Heffner is going to ask you, innocent as pie, just what song you were referring to. I happen to know the song in question, Ray. I did my homework on your repertoire, and I must say, of all your compositions, those lyrics are the ones I would least like the jury listening to.”

“I haven’t sung that song in years,” Ray said. “It’s out of my repertory, for the very reason that it’s a kind of a male chauvinist thing.”

“I’ll have to go along with that, Ray,” Warren said.

“Well shit,” Ray said. “I don’t want to testify anymore. I told my story, now the hell with it.”

Warren sighed. He could be seen to grapple with the concept of excess violence in re Ray Jones. He said, “Ray, it doesn’t work like that. You go up there and tell your story, and that means the prosecution gets to ask you questions for as long as they like. They can’t call you; they can’t make you testify against yourself. But once you agree to be sworn in and testify at all, you have to answer their questions, as well. And once you claim that a certain song of yours is not germane to the case, they have every right to question you about that song.”

“Shit,” Ray decided.

Jolie said, “Warren? Can we limit it to just that one song?”

“Possibly,” Warren said. “I’m not that hopeful, but possibly. But my heaven, Jolie, after — Ray? What’s it called?”

“ ‘My Ideal,’ ” muttered Ray.

“Charming.” Turning back to Jolie, Warren said, “After listening to ‘My Ideal,’ I really doubt the jury could be swayed much further, in any direction at all, by any other song of Ray’s, or all his songs together in a medley.”

“Well, I guess I stepped on my dick this time,” Ray admitted.

Warren looked at him. “If only,” he said, “it were possible to execute your mouth and leave the rest of you alive.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Ray said. “I need my mouth.”

“I don’t,” Warren told him without sympathy, and the bailiff arrived to say it was time to go back to court.