Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 124, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 757 & 758, September/October 2004

Just Kidding by David Bart

A resident of Albuquerque, New Mexico, David Bart has placed nine stories with our sister magazine, AHMM, and two additional tales with the series of anthologies put out under the aegis of the Mystery Writers of America (see the volumes edited by Jeffery Deaver and Stuart M. Kaminsky). His first work for EQMM features a practical joker whose sense of humor takes a dangerous turn.

Arturo Zuniga — San Antonio, Texas.

Caller ID on Jack Hafner’s machine showed the same name, city, and a phone number recorded a bunch of times over the past three days when he and Leah’d been out of town. Separate trips, of course. He’d been in Vegas and who in hell knew where she’d gone.

Jack grinned — guy’s initials spanned the alphabet A to Z; how trite. Didn’t know anybody by that name; in fact, he didn’t know a soul in San Antonio or the whole damn state of Texas. Could be some old classmate from prep school or college had ended up in the Lone Star State, but Jack wasn’t a keeping-in-touch kind of a guy.

This Arturo Zuniga must have a wrong number. That had to be it. Yeah, the guy gets nobody when he calls, just an electronic voice telling him to leave a message, which he ignores; nobody to tell him he’d somehow scribbled down the wrong number, so Arturo just keeps on punching in the same number every night. God must love morons. He sure made a lot of them.

Eight o’clock now, if his Rolex can be believed — For eight grand it better damn well be right — and this Zuniga guy had called each of the last three nights, each night the first call coming in between eight-thirteen and eight-nineteen. No reason to think he wouldn’t call tonight somewhere in there.

“You better just leave it alone, Jack,” his wife Leah whined, peering through her blue-tinted contacts, watching him, confident he was hatching some kind of plan, some kind of joke. Well, for once she was right.

Leah. Maiden name Leah Burke, of the humorless, no-imagination Burkes; father and mother had no sense of humor, either. Country-club ice tinklers, mean-spirited gossips, hoarding their Old Money like it was — money. They couldn’t understand Jack’s love of the practical joke. “What’s practical about it?” her father often demanded, frowning hard enough to sink an oil tanker, black mood spreading like insidious crude through his family’s life. Morbid old bastard.

Leah is Mrs. Jack Hafner now, over three years. But still no sense of humor; ’course, his first two wives hadn’t had any sense of humor, either. Maybe it was just women, a gender thing. Or maybe wives.

“I know it’s just a wrong number, Leah, like to have some fun with it is all — sue me.” Emphasizing the remark with both hands, palms up, allowing his lower lip to droop, gestures he knew irritated her.

Thinking: My God, woman, a person’s gotta have a sense of humor, gotta laugh once in a while or you get depressed; life’s enough of a disappointment, not seeing the funny edge on things makes it even worse.

His wife was ranting. “You need to work, dammit — just ’cause we have money doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be doing something productive.” Glaring at him like he was on a street corner with his hand out, for Christ’s sake.

“Oh yeah, Miz Pro Bono — help the needy and the smelly,” he said, the retort punctuated with an enduring chuckle.

—and there she goes, flouncing out of the room like a spoiled debutante after some guy at her coming-out ball has just spilled a drink on her, galactically pissed that things weren’t going her way. Spoiled rotten. Short blond hair bouncing impatiently as she walked out of the room — slitted black skirt with a crimson blouse, probably those barely-there black bikini panties she favored, though he hadn’t seen her dressing. Stair-stepper calves, an indoor tan. And high heels?

He leaned to his left to see past the couch, get a glimpse of her retreating feet. Yup. Stilettos. Bloody-murder red.

Jack collapsed into the deep couch, air whooshing from the cushion, stared at the silent phone, running scenarios, trying out dialogue — editing, parsing, changing a word here and there and then starting over again. He did this for five minutes, polishing his act. With a wide grin he decided he’d definitely get some fun out of this little game. Arturo Zuniga might not think so, but who would give a rat’s ass? Probably not even Mrs. Zuniga, if there is one.

Practicing aloud: “Yeah, hey, saw you called, what’s up, amigo?” Saying this to the empty room.

Shook his head, not satisfied. Better to act as if he knew what the guy was calling about, but friendly, like they were lifelong pals. Again, “Hey, buddy, where you been?”

Yeah, he’d play this guy like a cello when the call came in, pretend they were old buds, take it as far as—

His wife’s BMW roared to life, revving again and again, the racket coming from just outside in the driveway, then a low rumble — headlight glare pierced the gauzy fabric languidly swaying in front of the floor-to-ceiling window — then the whining, chattering sound of a car backing away too fast in reverse, headlights swinging in an angry arc, sustained screeching of tires, and the little Bavarian set of wheels was on its way out of the upscale Denver suburb, probably plastering late-night joggers against trees or knocking strollers into hedges.

Jack glanced down at his Rolex: Eight-eighteen.

Arturo Zuniga looked at his black Seiko.

Eight-twenty. But the damn thing ran fast so it was time to make the call. He should have gotten a Rolex by now, money he was making, but his mother had given him this watch twenty years ago and it was still running. Dependable, except for the tendency to get ahead of itself.

He thought of Murphy. Where had that little shit been the last three days? Supposed to be at the number three nights ago, between eight and eight-twenty.

Zuniga picked up the phone and punched in a one, area code of three-zero-three, and — checked his note again — then punched in the number Murphy had given him; the loquacious redhead had said he lived just a block and a half from Mile High Stadium, probably a lie. Going off on his neighborhood having a lot of big trees, telling Arturo about indigenous foliage, like he’d be interested. Murphy was a motor-mouth gofer, but he was connected.

Son of a bitch had better be there tonight, though, or he’d wish he’d never screwed this up. Arturo had ways to make a guy’s life miserable and beyond miserable, all the way to downright excruciating. He could put a major hurt on the Irish twit.

First ring.

Pick up, you pea-brained little—

Second ring.

Damn him to hell.

Zuniga closed his eyes; inside his mind he began visualizing the long drive northwest to Colorado, the vast shimmering plateau surrounding him — wait, modify that, erase the sunlit scene, replace it with total black; the landscape would be invisible in the darkness as Arturo sped along the interstate, absence of light matching his black mood — driving up there to pay back a wannabe player for not doing what he—

“That you, Arty?” the voice at the other end blurted.

Arty? What the hell was that — nobody called him that.

“Murphy?” he demanded.

“Uh... yeah — what’s up, pard’?”

“Where the hell you been the last three days?” Arturo demanded.

Pause. Clearing of throat. “I, uh, had a gas leak, they wouldn’t let me in — afraid of an explosion or something, I guess.” His voice sounded hoarse. From a cold or something. Maybe too much grass.

Arturo sighed. “I guess you heard the man’s history — why didn’t you call?”

The voice said, “Well, like I mentioned, they wouldn’t, uh, well... didn’t have your number.” Voice less hoarse, but more tentative. Maybe scared.

He was right, though. Zuniga hadn’t given him his number or, for that matter, even his location. Far as Murphy knew, Arturo was calling from New York City. The less clients or their operatives knew, the better — ah hell, Caller ID; Murphy probably had it, so he did have this number.

“You got my money?” Arturo blurted angrily.

He had a cash-only policy and it suited his clients perfectly ’cause they didn’t want ties to him, either. No such thing as too many precautions in his line of work.

When there was no answer, he asked, “Murphy — you got my money?”

“Yeah... I got your — yeah, I got it,” the voice replied, the tremulous hesitation putting Arturo on guard.

Something was wrong. Almost sounded like the dumb-ass didn’t know what they were talking about. Or maybe he was stalling or on a fishing expedition — oh shit, had this idiot been flipped by somebody? Was the call being monitored?

“You sound spaced, Irish,” Arturo said, letting scepticism and moderate disdain flow freely through his tone.

“Just, uh, just a little nervous, Arty.”

Arty again. Goddamn. Was this jerk flying on something?

“But you do have my money?” Arturo asked. “All of it?”

Another damn pause. “Yeah, I got it.” It was obvious that Murphy was thinking of something else. Bothered by something.

Arturo asked, “Got all of it, right?” Thinking: Don’t trust anybody — if Murphy isn’t playing him, he’ll reiterate the amount. Unless something else is wrong.

“How much is ‘all of it,’ Irish?” Arturo asked, focusing, listening closely for some kind of tell — some flicker in speech or ill-timed clearing of the throat. Anything.

No answer.

“You hear me, Murphy?”

“Look, I got your money but I gotta run now — I’ll be back—”

“Gotta run?” Arturo shouted, sure now that he was being messed with, being screwed over or something. “What the hell you mean, you gotta run?”

Click. Dead line.

Jack dropped the remote handset on the couch, the plastic device bouncing once on the cushion and then tumbling off onto the living-room carpet — Jesus, sweet Jesus. “...the man’s history,” this Zuniga guy had said. And he wanted money. Thinks he’s talking to some guy named Murphy. Jesus.

The phone lay on the champagne-colored “just have to have that shade” carpet his wife had picked out with her decorator — or Lifestyle Coordinator, as he liked to be called; slick black-haired dude with a goatee, liked to touch his female clients when he talked to them, and in a lingering fashion — speaking of black: The black phone seemed somehow sinister, deadly, lying there on the silky beige floor covering.

Don’t be stupid, Hafner. He fought the obvious conclusion the conversation evoked and tried to think of alternatives. Couldn’t it have been fairly innocent? Hell, car salesmen talked worse than that about customers — “taking their heads off,” “tearing out their throats,” “making a killing.” Could be something like that, something that only sounded like—

Call the cops! A strident voice inside his head urged him.

Jack leaned forward over the handset and then stopped himself. Frowned. Peered at his own reaching hand, saw the trembling, felt his whole body shaking. My God, I’m really frightened.

All he’d been doing was having some fun, messing with some idiot couldn’t get the right number and now he was in the middle of... what?

His mind shied back to the path he’d been on; he shook his head, thinking, If I call the cops, what then? Tell them what? Even if he quoted Arturo, there wasn’t anything they could check on, especially since Zuniga lived over in the middle of Texas. Who was gonna check out some call from way over there?

He sighed heavily and shook his head some more. Started chewing on his lower lip, trying to come up with an explanation that didn’t scare him so damn much — something other than what he really feared. He hurried over to the side bar and poured himself a good six fingers of bourbon, no ice. Goddamn frozen water takes up too much room in the glass, you don’t drink it fast the ice melts and waters down the booze.

Gulping it now, a molten sensation as the liquor hotly drizzles down his insides... He feels the sharp raised facets of the cut-glass tumbler under his fingers, hand trembling as he drinks, liquor dribbling down his chin, oddly cool on his skin while hot inside his throat, and now noticing more cool sensations from beaded sweat evaporating off his forehead.

Another belt can’t hurt, pouring, nodding at the satisfying clink of the bottle neck against the glass tumbler. He swigged it down, eyes darting around the room as though he expected Arturo to materialize in the living room and start blazing away with a pair of forty-fives.

“The man’s history.”

Jack sighed, not wanting to accept the obvious. But... ah hell, you can’t con a con man, even if it’s yourself — Zuniga was a hit man all right, no question about it; no use trying to kid himself, go into some kind of denial or something. And the guy wanted his money. Might be on his way here right now, coming up from that dry-ass San Antonio to lush, green Denver — Oh yeah, that’s helpful, a goddamn climate commentary — when Zuniga got here and found out he wasn’t Murphy he wouldn’t settle for just getting his money, he’d have to kill the imposter to cover his murdering Italian ass.

A frown on his face, not knowing why... then Jack realized that a question had arisen inside his head unbidden: Is Zuniga an Italian name? Or Spanish?

Yeah. Important distinction, Hafner. Like the climate.

A sustained sigh. He needed to gather his wandering speculations, forcibly herd his stray thoughts into some kind of coherent structure. If Zuniga was a hit man, then who had he killed? Somebody on the news? Senator or somebody? Probably a crooked office-holder, somebody got too close to the fire.

Jack tried to evoke his sense of humor: Hope it was a Democrat, some bleeding-heart liberal bastard maybe, one of those help-the-poor types, like his wife. Can’t be a crime to kill a Democrat.

A shudder played upward along his spine. Why couldn’t he see this as funny? It oughta be funny. Goddamn me anyway, always with the practical jokes. Old man Burke was right — they’ll be the death of me.

He picked up the TV remote and pressed the sliding-panel button and the wall parted, exposing the screen, already lighting up. Jack surfed until he got CNN and some talking head wearing glasses and a supercilious expression, telling about the tragic accident of a political activist, some guy with strong Washington connections. Small plane down in the mountains near Telluride, witnesses hiking the summertime ski slope reported a flash of light and some smoke while it was still in the air.

Oh Christ — guy who put the bomb on board now has his phone number, matter of time before he has the address. Jack tossed back another shot of bourbon just as the phone rang.

The chirping dark chunk of plastic seemed to mock him from the champagne carpet, loudly chortling like some kind of demented mechanical crow.

The phone rang four times before the answering machine switched on: same metallic voice as when Arturo had called before over the last three days.

“...at the sound of the tone.”

He said, “I know you’re there, asshole, pick up the damn phone.”

Faint sound of electronic pulses, barely audible white noise.

He punched in the numbers again and got the same response. And again...

Set the phone down and headed for the bathroom, blood rising under his skin all over his body. Hurrying now, near bursting — when he got angry he always had to go, couldn’t handle a full bladder and a chest flooded with molten anger.

Cocoa-colored ceramic walls flashed by as he headed across the gleaming swirls of brown, gold, and beige making up the Spanish-tile floor. Mirrors everywhere, the heavy flawless type with beveled edges, kind they sell you by the square inch.

Finished, Arturo quickly spritzed his hands under the gold faucet and dried on a thick beige towel. Maybe a wrong number. But the guy had known about the job, about the big shot being history, and about the money. Had to be Murphy.

An hour later, having called a friend at Qwest, he had an address to go with the number Murphy had given him. A place on Live Oak Boulevard in Littleton, Colorado, suburb south of Denver. The town had been on the news a couple of years back but Arturo couldn’t remember why.

He headed his Lexus four-wheeler north out of San Antonio toward Austin; he needed to get to Denver quickly but he wouldn’t take a plane. No way. If it’d been intended for him to fly, he’d have feathers on his butt. His stomach roiled at the mere thought of boarding a plane.

The next evening the doorbell chimed and Jack peered out the window.

A cop shuffled in place under the portico’s hanging light, apparently nervous about calling on a member of the upper class, Jack frowning through a gap in the music-room drapes.

Leah was out again, for the evening. Silver high heels and a slinky black dress, red bikini panties he’d seen just before she’d shimmied into the tight dress. Jack felt his marriage slipping away but didn’t have it in him to care; she was probably bonking the decorator. A guy who shows you swatches, for Christ’s sake.

“Don’t drive so goddamn fast in the neighborhood,” he’d yelled after her.

She’d flipped him the bird — Teach you that at Vassar? — not looking back, door from the house to the garage swinging closed... roar of her Beemer as she tore out of the driveway and down the street.

And now he’d got this cop here.

He swung the front door open. “Yes?” Glancing up and down the quiet street, scanning for skulkers and would-be assassins.

“Could I step inside, Mr. Hafner?” the cop asked quietly, respectfully.

Jack frowned. What the hell is this? He hadn’t called them about the phone call with the hit man. This cop serving an order to vacate? Well, it was her house.

Oh Christ! A setup.

Jack stepped back quickly, swinging the door to close it, sure this was Arturo from San Antonio impersonating a cop. Goddamn gun on his hip.

The cop reached out and stopped the door, stepped forward with his black boot in the way. “Sir, I need to talk with you... it’s about your wife.”

Jack frowned. “Tell me from out there,” he whispered, not believing the guy.

After a couple of beats of hem-hawing, the cop said, “She was involved in a traffic accident, sir — I’m afraid she was killed.”

Arturo Zuniga watched the cop at the door talking to the blond-haired man. The police officer had his arm outstretched, holding the door open, the man having tried to close it.

The cop spoke.

The man took a staggering step backward and then swayed for a moment, almost out of sight from the street. He seemed to ask something and the cop nodded. They talked for just a minute longer and the man nodded, closed the door, and the cop turned and headed back to his cruiser, parked half-in, half-out of a pool of glowing orange from the sodium-vapor streetlight, old-growth trees towering into darkness and marching away in a long queue down the center of the grassy boulevard bisecting the street.

Zuniga frowned, shaking his head.

The man in the house wasn’t Murphy. The man was a complication.

“He killed her... as a warning or something,” Jack said aloud to the empty foyer. His voice echoed down the tiled hall, seemingly bouncing off distant surfaces, the intensity of his voice diminishing as it got farther off, fading completely away.

He headed for the side bar and poured a glass tumbler full of bourbon. Drank it down. Poured another.

A clock ticked impossibly loudly from off somewhere... He could hear the faint murmur of a breeze passing under the roof of the portico, muffled sounds of crickets from outside.

Jack frowned. The son of a bitch must have run Leah off the road, making her crash into the bridge abutment. Instant death, the cop had said. Air bag useless at that speed, he’d said. Merciful, at least. He’d said.

Arturo popped the plastic interior-light cover and unscrewed the bulb, got out of the Lexus, and walked up the street toward the wide stone walk leading to the man’s front door, the man who wasn’t Murphy the go-between. He had to cross a side street and walk another block before coming to the end of the sloping walkway, standing there, gazing at the huge house: twenty-foot-high portico, six fluted columns, widow’s walk railing at the roof line, huge black shutters at the tall windows. Big bucks.

He stretched, tight from tension after the long drive. Hefted his briefcase, feeling the weight of the thick dossier; background of the man he’d been hired to deal with, a man who himself was now history as far as his employer was concerned. In fact, to the client, the man had never existed.

Now, he needed to get paid.

The doorbell rang and Jack drunkenly padded on stocking feet down the hall and into the foyer. Had to be the cop coming back with details about where to get the body and such. Christ, couldn’t they wait on that stuff?

Looked out through the curtain gap. Not the cop. Who the —

Christ! Guy in a brown Western suit with an alligator-hide briefcase, cowboy hat. Boots. Longish black hair showing below the hat. Hatchet face with the look of a —

Arturo Zuniga.

— hurriedly, nearly slipping and falling, Jack ran toward his study, pushed open the heavy carved wooden door, and crossed to his marble-topped desk. Set the glass down and jerked open a drawer, reached in and pulled out the Glock nine-millimeter. Racked the slide and the semiautomatic weapon was cocked.

Oh God, oh God, oh — silently, unsteadily, making his way back to the door, pausing to take a deep breath, then another, the gun clunking against the door from his lack of control, quickly lifting it up and away, pulling the door open.

The man under the outside light looked at the Glock pointing at his chest and frowned. “I’m the guy on the phone.”

Jack shot him three times in a tight grouping at the sternum, kept firing in his general direction as the man fell backward off the large raised stoop onto the sidewalk, the briefcase springing open and papers spilling out over the night-blackened grass beside the walk, photo of a balding man in a tennis shirt. Beady eyes.

Off in the distance a dog started barking... then a couple of others joined in, closer by, lights coming on in a downstairs room in the huge brick house across the street.

The detective shook his head sadly. A thin, gangly man wearing a black suit. Oily dark-red hair, nearly maroon; looked like he should be dealing blackjack in Vegas. “That’s some story, Mr. Hafner, but I’m afraid your imagination got the best of you — and since Zuniga wasn’t armed or threatening you...”

And went on to explain how Zuniga had been what was referred to as a “hatchet man” in corporate circles. Hired by wealthy business owners to negotiate severance packages with contracted employees they wanted to get rid of; work out something that both parties could live with but that, of course, favored the employer. Zuniga had been hired by a Francis Murphy to negotiate with one of the lesser vice presidents of a Denver manufacturing firm — get him to leave without the golden parachute and to forgo stock options for a one-time release payment of six months’ salary.

The cop saying, “He accomplished this with nude photos and an Internet-use record showing the vice president had been on child-porn sites — gets paid by cash because the execs don’t want a paper trail from him to them, worried about reputations, I guess.”

“The man’s history.”

Fired from his job, was all Zuniga had meant. Not killed, just fired.

And Leah’s car wreck had been an accident. Witnessed. Anyway, Zuniga hadn’t hit town yet when she’d crashed into the bridge abutment. She’d been drinking, giddy after an evening discussing Feng Shui or something, probably horizontally, heading home with the pedal to the metal in defiance of her husband’s admonitions regarding fast driving.

Jack thought back to when he’d first scrolled through the Caller ID record, how he’d begun instantly to think of some way to jack the caller around, screw with his head... just to glean a little fun out of an otherwise harmless mistake. A little innocent kidding.

The cop leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers over his chest. Stared.

“Arturo Zuniga wasn’t a nice man, I’ll admit, but he hadn’t broken the law,” the cop said, a wry set to his mouth. With a gentle nod of his head he added, “But, Mr. Hafner, I’m afraid you have.”