VAN NUYS, Calif. — A stuntman who claims Robert Blake asked him to kill his wife told jurors Thursday that, although a cash figure was never discussed, Blake inquired about what it would cost to get the stuntman to pull the trigger.

"He asked me specifically what my services were going to run," testified Ronald "Duffy" Hambleton, a 68-year-old former "Baretta" stuntman and the star witness in the prosecution's case against Blake.

"I told him there'd be no reason for me to go into any price structure," Hambleton continued, "because it was not for sure I would be the one involved."

Hambleton, who finished two days of testimony Thursday, testified that Blake said he had begun to withdraw small amounts of cash from the bank, which the witness assumed was meant as payment for a hit man to kill his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley.

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"He told me that he would have gone to the Mafia [to have Bakley killed], that he had tight contacts," the witness testified. "But by doing so, they'd have a hold on him for the rest of his life, so he decided that wouldn't be a good idea."

Hambleton is one of three witnesses to testify this week that Blake separately engaged them in conversations about murdering his wife. Hambleton, however, is the only witness to say that Blake directly asked him to kill Bakley.

Prosecutors say that the 71-year-old actor hated his wife, that he married her to avoid a custody battle over their infant daughter, Rosie, and when he couldn't get anyone else to kill Bakley, he shot her himself on May 4, 2001 — about a week after she moved into the guest house of his Studio City home.

Blake sat quietly at the defense table, watching the witness and occasionally writing notes to his attorney as prosecutors wrapped up a seventh week of testimony.

Earlier Thursday, the actor told Courttv.com that he was holding up fine, despite appearing tired and pale. The defendant smiled and said that he'd really like to take "a long drive to the desert with a friend, someone who doesn't feel like talking. You can sing, recite poetry — those are good, but no talking."

Coming 'clean'

Stuntman Hambleton previously testified that he met with Blake in March 2001 because he thought the actor wanted to discuss a movie idea Hambleton proposed to him some 25 years ago.

But Blake wasn't interested in talking about screenplays, the witness said. Over three separate meetings, the actor allegedly suggested several ways the stuntman could help him "get rid of" his wife.

Hambleton said he continued to meet with Blake because he felt intimidated, but he had no intention of taking part in a murder conspiracy. During their third and final meeting, Hambleton said he finally told Blake he was not interested.

Blake's defense attorney, Gerald Schwartzbach, has suggested that the meetings were actually about a motorcycle-movie script and that a murder solicitation was never discussed.

During more than five hours of cross-examination over two days, Hambleton was questioned about his past drug use, his extensive reading of tabloid articles about Bakley's murder before his interviews with police, and the fact that he vehemently denied to detectives that Blake solicited him until November 2001 when he finally "came clean."

Despite Hambleton's insistence that he was not using methamphetamine around the time of his meetings with Blake, Schwartzbach was allowed to ask him pointed questions about an alleged meth lab on his property and paranoid behavior when he was under the influence of drugs.

"Isn't it true that a telephone repairman came to your house in 2001 and you thought they were trying to bug your phone?" the attorney asked.

"No," Hambleton replied.

"Did you, in 2000 or 2001, sit by your front door with a loaded shotgun because you thought people were coming after you?"

"No."

Schwartzbach also asked if he once believed a strange 4-foot-tall horned animal was after him. Hambleton continually denied and chuckled at the implications.

'Idiots' and a mole

Although Schwartzbach will not comment on who he plans to call during the defense case, he appeared to be setting up Hambleton for impeachment by future defense witnesses, men whom Hambleton occasionally helped out.

The stuntman told jurors that his Lucerne Valley home was at one point a kind of "halfway house" where he had allowed drug users and friends to stay, some of whom he referred to as "idiots."

One of those "idiots" was David Attwater, whom Hambleton believed to be a mole, planted in his residence by a member of the San Bernardino Sheriff's department after Hambleton got caught up in a bizarre 1999 weapons charge, according to his testimony.

Schwartzbach could not go into the particulars of the incident, but at that time, Hambleton called 911 to report that 20 armed men were invading his property.

When deputies arrived, they found the stuntman's home surrounded by a padlocked, chain-link fence, but no people except for Hambleton, who came out of his house waving a rifle at them.

"So, you thought [officers] planted a mole in your house to get information to help them prosecute you?" Schwartzbach asked.

"That could very well be, because it happened before," Hambleton replied.

The 1999 case was only recently resolved: Hambleton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor weapons charge and was sentenced to 90 days in jail, which he may begin serving on weekends in March.

Outside the courthouse Thursday Hambleton was asked by reporters if he thought Blake killed his wife.

"It would be hard for me to believe he wasn't directly involved," he said.

Hambleton also insisted that the reason he continued to meet with Blake was out of fear. He said he knew the actor carried a gun, and he believed that Blake wanted to be present during each of the murderous scenarios because the real plan was that Blake would shoot and kill the hitman after Bakley was murdered to eliminate a potential snitch.

"He figured I had one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel," Hambleton said.

Robert Blake is charged with one count of murder with the special circumstance of lying in wait and two counts of solicitation of murder. If convicted of murder, he faces life in prison without parole.