Ray, who’d been sitting sulkily in the corner, failing to distract himself by writing lyrics to a new song, looked up. “What’s that? They just wanted to know what some words meant, right?”
“Ray,” Warren said, “they’ve decided you did it.”
“Well shit. They’re wrong, you know.”
“You don’t get to argue with a jury,” Warren said. “They’ve decided you’re the one killed Belle Hardwick, and now they’re grappling with the question of just which crime it was.”
“Littering,” Ray said callously. “If I’d done it.”
“You didn’t say that,” Warren advised him, and turned to Jim Chancellor. “Jim, time to put together our list of witnesses.”
Ray said, “Warren?”
Warren’s expression was neither warm nor comforting when he turned back to Ray. “Yes?”
“I want you to know,” Ray said, “I know you did a hell of a job. You’re worth every penny. I screwed it up all by myself.”
“Yes, you did,” Warren said.
“So we can at least agree on that.”
“Yes,” Warren said, and turned his back on Ray to continue his conversation with Jim Chancellor.
That was 10:30, or just a little after. At 10:55, the girl called Julie, the file clerk who doubled as Warren’s press spokesperson, came into the office to say, “Excuse me. There’s some sort of federal man named Caccatorro who wants to see Mr. Jones.”
“Leon the Prick,” Ray commented. “Trust him.”
“I’ll deal with him,” Jolie said grimly, heaving herself to her feet.
“He wants me to sign a little something,” Ray suggested.
“I know he does, the bastard,” Jolie said. “I’ll send him on his way.”
“Nah, bring him in,” Ray told her. “Let’s get my whole life settled, in one day.”
Jolie said, “Ray, you’re in no condition to—”
“What are you talking about? I’m not drunk; I’m not running around raving. You want me to wait until after those twelve assholes over there decide how much I killed old Belle? Bring him in, and then neither of us ever has to gaze upon his face again.”
“I love the way you take legal advice,” Jolie said, and pounded out of the office, to pound back in again shortly afterward like a major low front, trailed by the measly little rain cloud of Leon Caccatorro, who held a manila envelope to his breast with both hands, like a girl carrying her schoolbooks home.
“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” T P said, around the bulk of Jolie.
“Good morning, Mr. Caccatorro,” Ray said. “I bet you got a little something for me to sign.”
“As a matter of fact...”
There was a refectory table near where Ray was seated. Warren had already made it clear with a silent but deafening lowering of the eyebrows that the taxman would not be welcome to use any part of his own personal desk, so Caccatorro veered over to the refectory table and there shook out the contents of the manila envelope, being five copies of a four-page document.
“Have you a pen?” Caccatorro asked.
“Yeah, but I’d rather use yours,” Ray told him.
“Of course.” Smiling, Caccatorro produced his father’s pen from inside his father’s suit coat and extended it toward Ray.
Jolie said, “Ray, none of us have had a chance to read that.”
“You’ll have plenty of time to read it, Jolie,” Ray said, looking for the signature space on the last page.
“I’ll read it now,” Jolie announced, yanking up one copy.
“Be my guest.” Ray signed the first copy, then scanned its pages, nodded, and grinned at Caccatorro, saying, “Decided to go with the old stuff instead of the new, huh?”
Caccatorro smiled and spread his hands. “My superiors in D.C...”
“Sure. A bird in the hand is worth two in the gas chamber.”
Caccatorro’s smile wrinkled. He turned away, blinking at Warren and Jim Chancellor as though he’d just awakened and had no idea how he’d come to be here. Then, regaining control over himself, he turned back and watched approvingly as Ray signed copies two and three and four.
By that time, Jolie had finished reading copy number five. Grudgingly, she said, “It seems all right.”
Ray said, “It’s the deal I offered them, right?”
“In essence.”
“I knew we could cut through the bullshit,” Ray said, and with a flourish, he signed copy number five.
Jolie said, “Will I do as the witness?”
“Of course,” said Caccatorro.
Jolie preferred to use her own pen, so Ray returned Caccatorro’s, who put it back in his father’s suit. Then he put four of the. signed and witnessed copies into his manila envelope and handed the fifth to Jolie, saying, “There will be further documents, details.”
“By correspondence,” Jolie said.
“Yes, of course.” Caccatorro smiled around at them all. “I won’t be needed here anymore,” he said.
Jolie said, “I hate long good-byes.”
Caccatorro left.
Lunchtime, and no verdict. “Maybe they’re hung,” Jim Chancellor said hopefully.
“Sooner them than me,” Ray said.
The shadow jury was sent to a nearby restaurant for lunch, but Ray and his lawyers and his best friend Cal ate sandwiches, as usual, in Warren’s office. There wasn’t much conversation.
Ten minutes after three. The phone rang on Warren’s desk. He picked it up, said, “Thurbridge,” listened, said, “Thank you,” hung up, said, “They’re coming back.”
State troopers escorted the Ray Jones group across the street and into the courthouse.
Sara Joslyn, girl reporter, was in her usual place in the courtroom, looking worried but excited. Ray winked at her and she gave him a smile that was probably supposed to be encouraging but was too frightened to do the job. Cal and Jolie took their seats, the courtroom filled around and behind them, and then Judge Quigley entered. All rose. She banged her gavel. All sat down. She told the bailiff to lead in the jury and he did. The jurors looked solemn and exhausted, and none of them glanced over toward Ray — another bad sign.
The ritual was remorseless and nerve-racking, but at last the foreman, who had been doubled in the shadow jury by Juggs, the retired postal worker, rose and read from a small sheet of paper in his trembling hand: “We the jury find the defendant, Raymond Jones, guilty of murder in the first degree.”
“Poll the jury!” demanded Warren, over the sudden hubbub in court, because sometimes a juror, when forced to make the individual statement in public, face-to-face with the defendant, will back off from that most draconian of verdicts.
So they polled the jury, with Judge Quigley directing the jurors to look directly at the defendant when responding, and each and every one of them stared straight at Ray and announced, “Guilty of murder in the first degree.”
Then Ray was led off by state troopers. There would be no bail from here on. The Ray Jones Country Theater was closed until further notice.
46
Jack was off masterminding Trend’s coverage of the court appearances of the Weekly Galaxy thirty-seven — not all the stringers and stray photographers had been gathered up in the dragnets of the law — so Sara did the packing for both of them. It would be a week or two before Ray Jones was sentenced, and she didn’t have to be here for that, or anything else in the interim. She had her story, even though there was something about it, just something about it, that didn’t satisfy.