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"Did you try to have me picked up in Lauderdale?"
"Sure did."
"And Deputy Hazzard found out yesterday in the late afternoon that I would be
at the hotel this morning?"
"He got the tip last night and phoned me at home."
"Did he have any objections to the way you set it up to take me?"
"Well... he did say maybe if I stationed him across there, like on the roof of
the service station with a carbine, it would be good insurance if you smelled
something and decided not to go into the hotel at all." He shook his head.
"Freddy is a good boy. It doesn't fit the way you want me to think it fits."
"I'm not trying to sell you anything."
In twenty minutes Tom brought her in. She stopped abruptly just inside the
door and gave me a single glassy blue look and looked away. She wore a
paint-spattered man's T-shirt hanging outside her bulging jeans, and
apparently nothing under the T-shirt.
"Move over near Tom and let her set in that chair," he said to me. She sat and
stared at Burgoon, her face so vapid she looked dimwitted.
"Now then, Arlie," said Burgoon, "we had a nice talk day before yesterday and
you helped us a lot and we appreciate it. Now, don't you be nervous. There's
another part of it you've got to do. Do you know that man setting over there
by Tom."
"... Yes sir."
"What's his name, Arlie?"
"The one I told you about. Mr. MeGee."
"Now, you turn and look at him and be sure and if you, are sure it's the man
you saw dropping that engine onto Mr. Bannon, you point your finger at him and
you say, 'That's the same man.' "
She turned and she looked at the wall about a foot over my head and stabbed a
finger at me and said, "That's the same man."
"You had a clear view of him on the morning of December seventeenth? No chance
of a mistake?"
"No Sir!"
'Now, don't be nervous. You're doing just fine. We've got another little
problem you can help us with. It turns out Mr. McGee was way down in Fort
Lauderdale that same identical morning at the same time you think you saw him,
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and he was on a boat with some very important people. A federal judge and a
state senator and a famous surgeon, and they say he. was right there at that
same time. Now, Arlie, just how in the wide world are we going to get around
that?"
She stared fixedly at him, her mouth sagging open. "Arlie, are those big
people lying and are you the one telling the truth, so help you God?"
"I saw what I saw."
"Who told you to make up these lies, Arlie?"
"I told you what I saw."
"Now, Arlie, you recall what I said before, about you having the right to be
represented by a lawyer and so on?"
"So?"
"I'm telling you again, girl. You don't have to answer any questions. Because
I think I'm going to hold you and book you."
She shrugged plump shoulders. "Do what you feel like."
Crickety little Burgoon glanced over at Tom and then looked at the fat girl
again. "Girl, I don't think you rightly know just how much trouble you're
asking for. You see, I know you're lying."
Tom, responding to his signal, came in on cue. "Bunny, why in God's name you
being so kindly to this fat dumb slut? Let me run her on out to the stockade
and turn her over to Miss Mary. Leave her out there three or four days and
Miss Mary would purely enjoy sweatin' off fifteen pounds of slop and teaching
her some manners. She'd have a nice attitude when you have her brought back
in."
Arlene Denn turned and stared at Tom. She bit her lip and swallowed and looked
back at Burgoon, who said, "Now, if we have to come to that, Tom, we'll come
to that. But this isn't any ninety-day county case. And this isn't any one to
five up to the state women's prison. What the law of the State of Florida says
is that giving false testimony in a capital case, or withholding evidence in a
capital case is punishable by a maximum sentence of imprisonment for the rest
of her natural life."
She stiffened as much as her figure permitted, sat up straight and said,
"You've got to be kidding, Sheriff!"
"You know how to read, girl?"
"Of course I know how to read!"
He dug a battered manual out of a desk drawer, licked his thumb and found the
right page. He handed it across to her. "Second paragraph down. That there is
sort of a short form of everything against the law. It's what new deputies
have to study up on and pass a test."
She read it and handed the manual back. She looked over at me. The look of
vacuous stupidity was gone, and I realized it was the mask she wore for the
world she was in.
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