“Like on Dragnet?”
“Just like on Dragnet.”
“It might be cool to get hooked up to it.
They say if you’re smart enough, you can fake it out.”
I resisted the easy retort. I had to get him on my side. “I’ll even take your picture, if you want me to.”
“Hey!” he said. “That’d be cool, Dad!
Strapped up to a lie detector! The chicks’ll flip, man! They really will!”
A noise. In the closet.
Chip looked over. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
“That noise?”
“Oh, you must mean the mice.”
“Mice? How big are they?”
“They go down to the feed mill to fill themselves up, and then they come back here to sleep.”
“Man, they must really chow down.”
“You wouldn’t want to hear them eat, believe me. You can hear them smacking their lips for blocks.”
Chip sat in the chair and looked the lie detector over, his brain, such as it was, no doubt filled with images of himself looking just like John Garfield wired to the machine. He’d probably carry autographed glossies around and hand them out at the supermarket.
“You’ll really take my picture with this thing on?”
“Yeah.”
“Where’s your camera?” I showed him.
“That thing work?”
“You bet.”
“How old is it?”
“Not that old. Now c’mon. Let’s get you hooked up.”
I got the cuff on him and then sat down across from him. I’d spent a minute looking for my clipboard-a person never looks more serious and professional than when he’s got a clipboard -but I couldn’t find it so I had to settle for my notebook.
“Is that Captain Video?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that show. Everything looks fake.”
“Let’s get on with it, all right?”
“Especially the robot.”
“What?”
“Especially that robot, Tobor. Shit, I could build something better than that in my garage.”
“Did you know that Tobor is robot spelled backward?” I figured I ought to annoy him a little more, the way he was annoying me.
“I can’t believe you’ve got a Captain Video notebook. You don’t take that thing to court, do you?”
“Not so far. Now, how about getting to work?”
“I want a cigarette in my mouth, you know, when you take the picture.”
“Of course.”
I got the arm working. I said, “Here we go.”
“Your name?”
“You know my name.”
“It’s for the machine. So it’ll know when you’re telling the truth.”
“What a stupid machine.”
“Your name.”
He sighed. “Chip O’Donlon.”
“Age.”
“Twenty-one.”
And so on.
He sighed a lot, he shifted in his chair a lot, he scratched his head, his nose, his ass.
He smoked and he didn’t smoke. He glowered, he grimaced, he groused.
“When do we take my picture?”
“Just a few more questions.”
“This is a stupid machine.”
“Yes, I believe you’ve made that point several times.” Then I said, “Now, so far, you’ve told the truth.”
An arrogant smile only the Chip
O’Donlons of the world can offer us. “Or maybe I beat the machine.”
“I’m glad you said that.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. Because I think a guy of your intelligence-I think that’s just what you’ve done.
I think you answered falsely a couple of times.
But I don’t think the machine got it.”
He beamed, he preened.
“So I’m going to ask you just two more questions.”
The smirk. “I’m ready, Daddy-O. Any time you are.”
I looked at my notebook as if Moses himself had left a message for me to read. “The Harrison Auto Parts store robbery last March. You have anything to do with that?”
It stopped him, as I hoped it would. The eyes narrowed; the teeth lost some of their gleam; the jaw muscles started to bunch.
“How’d you know about that?”
“It’s just a question I made up is all.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know shit about it.”
I looked over at the arm of the detector.
“You’re good, O’Donlon. You’re very good.”
He looked down at the arm too. Looked up. The smirk was back. He was under the impression he’d beaten the machine again.
“All right, one final question.”
“When do we take my picture?”
“Right after this question.”
“I want time to comb my hair.”
“Don’t worry.”
He glared at the machine. “This thing’s a joke. A moron could beat this thing.”
Yes, I thought uncharitably, and a moron just has.
“All right. Here’s the big question. You ready?”
“God, you make it sound like The $64eajjj Question or something.”
I studied my notebook again and raised my eyes slowly. “Have you ever slept with Linda Granger?”
“What the hell kinda question is that?”
“It just popped into my mind. And you’ve been telling everybody you have. So I thought I’d just ask.”
“Of course I did. She came to me. Spent the whole night at my apartment.”
“Then you actually made love to her?”
“I actually made love to her. The same way I do to all the broads. What’s so special about her? She’s nobody, believe me. Nobody. And the jerk she goes with. What a loser!”
I half expected Jeff to come piling out of the closet, but there was silence.
And then the arm on the machine started to move. The fact that I nudged the machine with my knee may have had something to do with it.
“Look,” I said. He looked down.
The arm was still bouncing all over the page. The markings were violent, wild strokes.
“What the hell’s that mean?”
“It means you were lying and it caught you.”
“Bullshit I was lying.”
“It means you’ve been going all over town telling people you slept with her when you didn’t.”
“The hell if I didn’t sleep with her.”
“Well, the machine says otherwise.”
“The machine is stupid.”
Now I played outraged prosecutor. I jumped up and went over to him as he started to get up. I shoved him back into his chair.
“You’re lying, aren’t you?”
“What the hell are you gettin’ so hopped up about?” He looked intimidated. Pretty, he might be; tough, he wasn’t.
“Because you shouldn’t say things that aren’t the truth.”
“She’s nobody. Who gives a shit?”
I walked to the desk. Pointed to the phone.
“You know who I’m going to call?”
“Who?”
“Cliff Sykes.”
“The police chief?”
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“To tell him about the Harrison Auto Parts robbery.”
“Tell him what?”
“That you were the one who did it.”
“Bullshit I did it.”
“Bullshit you didn’t. Frankie Hayes told me all about it. He’s a client of mine and he tells me everything.”
“That little prick.”
“So you tell me the truth about Linda Granger or I call Cliffie and tell him what you and Frankie did.
Frankie’s underage. They’ll try him as a juvenile. But for you this could be real bad. First time you do a serious crime, and you screw it up and get caught.”
He slouched back insolently in his chair and sighed. “All right, so I didn’t screw her. So what?”
“But you’ve been telling people you screwed her.”
“So I exaggerated a little. Big deal. Every guy exaggerates.”
I sat on the edge of my desk, like Perry Mason does on Saturday night. “What happened that night?”
The deep sigh again. “Some bare tit. A little dry humping. And then she was crying and wailing about how much she missed Jeff and how she’d only come over to make him jealous. Then she puked all over my couch and I threw her in my bed so she could sleep it off. Bitch slept till practically eleven the next morning. She didn’t even help me clean up the couch. Said she was too hung over and in too much trouble with her folks.”
“Bare tit and a little dry humping and that was it?”
“That was it.” Then: “Frankie really told you about the Harrison job?”