BURBANK, Calif. — In a testy second day on the stand in his civil trial, Robert Blake admitted venting to friends about wanting to throw his wife out a window, but denied ever plotting her murder.

"Isn't it true that you had discussions with people about killing her while she was pregnant?" civil attorney Eric Dubin asked.

"False," Blake said.

"OK," Dubin said. "Let's start with William Welch."

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Welch, a private investigator and former Los Angeles police detective, was one of four witnesses at Blake's criminal trial who said the actor asked for his help to murder Bonny Lee Bakley after she tricked him into getting her pregnant.

Welch also testified in the civil trial, now in its fifth week.

Welch said that Blake was so panicked about Bakley's pregnancy that he told Welch he had a plan: He would abduct her and hire a doctor to abort the baby, and if that didn't work, he would "whack" her.

Blake called his former friend a liar who spent too much time buddying up with detectives on the golf course and at weekly card games.

"He was a member of robbery homicide for 19 years and he mysteriously retired one year before his pension and nobody has ever found out why," Blake said. "I have only one or two facts that make me believe he may be in the cops' pockets."

"This is the first time you ever said this," Dubin said.

"There's a whole gang of stuff that I never said to you, boss, a whole gang of stuff," the actor said.

Bakley, 44, was shot twice in May 2001 by an unidentified gunman as she sat alone in Blake's sports car near an Italian restaurant where the couple shared their last meal together.

Prosecutors alleged that Blake, 72, killed Bakley to gain sole custody of their daughter, Rose Lenore Sophia Blake.

Blake was acquitted of murder charges in March and is now being sued by Bakley's four children for her wrongful death. They are asking for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and turned down a pretrial settlement offer of $250,000.

Although Blake initially wanted nothing to do with the child, he grew to love baby Rosie and claims he married Bakley in November 2000 to oversee Rosie's care.

Blake did not testify in his criminal trial and his time on the stand has been trying for attorneys and the judge. While he appeared more subdued Monday than in his gregarious appearance Thursday, he repeatedly apologized for speaking out of turn, he admonished his own attorney for not objecting to questions, and he shouted "Liar" or "That's a lie!" to several of Dubin's questions.

Dubin provoked the "Baretta" star when he suggested Blake was trying to convince jurors that cops paid Welch to lie under oath about the alleged plot to "whack" Bakley.

"Paid him?" Blake boomed, leaning into the microphone. "Don't put words in my mouth, junior."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Judge David Schacter said. "Look at me, Mr. Blake."

The judge, who asked Blake to put his "foot on the brake," indicated earlier that whenever he gave Blake a sideways glance that would be his cue to calm down and wait for the next question.

"Thank you, your honor," Blake replied.

Faking cancer

Blake met Bakley, a mail-order porn entrepreneur, at a jazz club in 1998 and their casual sexual relationship heated up after Bakley took fertility drugs but told Blake she taking birth-control pills.

Blake admitted Monday that he tried every trick in the book — cash, threats, even faking his own terminal illness — to get her to have an abortion.

"You faked getting cancer, didn't you?" Dubin asked.

At first, the actor denied it. But then Dubin read to him from a transcript of a phone conversation Bakley had recorded, in which Blake told her, "I have colon and prostate cancer they're trying to shrink it ... the treatments are a mother f---er."

"I could easily have said that," Blake conceded.

"Did you tell Bonny Lee Bakley that you had Alzheimer's?" Dubin asked.

"I don't know," Blake said.

"That's an interesting answer," the judge remarked, eliciting chuckles from jurors and Blake.

Blake conceded that he offered Bakley up to $250,000 to have an abortion, but she refused. He said he also called on his good friend, actor Marlon Brando — whose son Christian also had an affair with Bakley — and asked for Brando's help in convincing Bakley to have an abortion.

Blake denied, however, that he ever did anything illegal to get Bakley out of his life.

"Do you recall on several occasions telling William Welch to plant cocaine in Bonny Lee Bakley's hotel room and have him use his LAPD. connections to get her arrested?" Dubin asked.

"It's not possible to recall something that absolutely did not transpire," Blake said in a measured tone.

Robert Blake calling, and not calling

Blake was also asked about his phone friendship with mobster-turned-preacher Frank Minucci.

Minucci testified in the criminal trial that Blake asked him to come to Los Angeles to "do something really heavy" — namely, to kill his pregnant girlfriend.

Blake denied the accusation.

Minucci also said that Blake hired him to harass girlfriend Collette Duvall into changing her phone number, so the actor wouldn't be able to call her anymore.

"Collette Duvall is a woman, a friend of mine, that I met when I was about 50 years old, and for the next 15, 16 years we were on-and-off lovers and always friends," Blake said.

Duvall told Courttv.com in a Web chat earlier this year that Minucci terrorized her repeatedly over the phone with rape and violence but that she never learned if Blake was the one who set him on her.

"Is it true you contacted Frank Minucci about convincing her to change her phone number?" Dubin asked.

"No, that's not true," Blake said.

Blake also addressed lingering doubts about his own personal phone habits.

The actor previously told police that when he returned to his car to find Bakley shot, he knocked on several doors until he found someone at home who called 911.

But Blake knew that Bakley always carried her cellphone with her, and Dubin asked why he didn't use one of Bakley's phones to call 911.

"I know that she always had two, three cellphones in her purse, but I didn't check to see what she had that night," Blake said.

Blake has also stated that that he didn't know how to use a cellphone. Dubin reminded him of a recorded phone conversation with Bakley in the months before she was killed, in which he told her he was going to take a cellphone, get in his purple van, hit the road, and just roam until the Christmas holidays were over.

"I was lying if I told her I was going to take a cellphone," Blake said. "I probably wanted her to feel secure that she could probably get in touch with me, but I was lying."

Robert Blake's direct testimony will continue Wednesday when court resumes.