Judson Carmichael - The Scared Stiff

“She turns the phone off to send you a message?”

“I know, I know,” I said, “usually it’s the other way around. But not this time.”

“But what’s the message?”

“That she’s in some kind of trouble,” I said.

“So why not call? Call on the phone? Why turn it off?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” I paced some more. I stopped. I said, “What if somebody’s got her in a motel room?”

He looked at me.

“No,” I said, “not for fucking. To hold her there until the money comes in. Let’s think about this, hold on here. Somebody finds out what’s going on. They know the money’s coming in; they say, Give me half, or whatever. Or they’ll turn her in, she’ll go to jail.”

“Uh-huh,” he said.

“And they make her go move to a motel,” I said, “or someplace where you can’t make a long-distance call, so she can’t warn me or get me to help her. Or someplace where there’d be a record of the call if she did, and this person would see the call and turn her in.”

“Okay,” he said.

“But a call to your phone company business office,” I said, “isn’t charged. It doesn’t even show up on your bill or any records.”

“Jeez, man,” he said.

I said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth, hermano. I wasn’t gonna, but now I will. When I first heard them announcements on the phone, I figure that’s it, she found some other guy, and I guess I’m stuck with this one here, meaning you, hermano, until either Rafez puts you in jail or Manfredo and them from Tapitepe kill you. No offense, man.”

No offense? I didn’t have time to think about that. I said, “Lola didn’t leave me. Lola sent me a message. And that means there’s only one thing I can do.”

He looked interested. “Yeah? You got something you can do? What’s that?”

“Turn myself in,” I said.

Arturo said, “Are you crazy? Turn yourself in ?”

“ It’s the only way,” I said. “If Lola’s in trouble somehow, it’s only because of the money. If I say I’m alive, there won’t be any money, and she won’t be in trouble anymore.”

“And you don’t get the money.”

“But I get Lola,” I said. “She and me, once we’re together, we’ll figure something else out. There’s always a scheme somewhere.”

“Hold on, hermano,” he said. “If you say you’re alive, Lola goes to jail.”

“No, she doesn’t,” I assured him. “What I say is, it was a kind of a prank, the marriage wasn’t getting along, I wanted to start over, a whole new life, I did it all myself, Lola didn’t know a thing about it. She put in the claim because she thought I was really dead.”

He considered me. He considered the situation. He said, “All this because the phone got turned off.”

“The message,” I said.

He nodded. “Yeah. But what if it ain’t a message?”

“Come on, Arturo,” I said. “What else is it?”

“She found a guy, like we both thought,” he said, “and they took off, and she turned off the phone like it was, you know, automatic. Like make it neat, like people do. What if it’s that?”

“I still turn myself in,” I said, “and she still doesn’t get the money.”

“Only this time she goes to jail,” he said.

I shook my head. “Come on, Arturo, I love her, you know that, no matter what happens. I don’t want Lola in jail. My story’s the same, no matter what.”

He seemed dubious. He said, “What are you gonna do, go tell Rafez?”

“Not on your life,” I said. “He’d put me in jail just out of spite.”

“So what then?” he wanted to know. “How you gonna do this thing, when you’re down here?”

“Leon Kaplan,” I told him. “The insurance investigator. Did he leave a card here, a business card?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he said, looking vaguely this way and that way at the room. “It’s around someplace.”

“Could we find it, do you think?”

“I dunno. But, if you call him, and you tell him you ain’t dead, it’s you go to jail.”

“No, I don’t,” I said. “The second they don’t have to pay out the money, they lose interest. They’re not gonna pursue me all the way down here. I tried something and it didn’t work, and that’s the end of it.”

“That’s a risk, man,” he said.

“I’ve gotta take care of Lola, Arturo,” I told him. “Don’t you feel the same way?”

He sighed and got to his feet. All this time I’d been pacing, and he’d been sitting there watching me, like a slow-motion tennis match. Now he got up and said, “Lemme ask Mamá, maybe she knows where that card is.”

“Thank you, Arturo.”

He started toward the kitchen, then turned back to nod at me and say, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Lola married the right guy,” he said.

I grinned; I couldn’t help it. “You bet,” I said.

“That isn’t always so easy to see, you know,” he said, and went away to the kitchen.

I paced. I paced. I rehearsed the story I would tell Leon Kaplan. I even threw in some gestures, though I knew the effect would be lost over the telephone.

Arturo came back, holding a small white business card. “It was in Mamá’s missal,” he said.

“Well, because it answers our prayers,” I explained, and took the card, and looked at it. Blue letters on white. Mostly it was about the insurance company, their logo and their name and their corporate address, but in the lower right was Kaplan’s name and his business number.

I sat on the sofa next to the phone. I noticed, when I picked up the receiver, my hands were trembling slightly. That’s okay, we just go forward, we don’t worry about that little electrical storm of panic around the edges, we just do this and then it’s done.

I dialed the number. I waited forever, and then a female voice came on and rattled off the company name in such a robotic way I thought at first it was a machine. But it was a receptionist, to whom I said, “Leon Kaplan, please.”

“May I ask who is calling?”

“Barry Lee,” I said.

Across the living room, Arturo sat down heavily in an armchair and watched me.

“One moment,” she said.

It was actually three or four moments, and then she came back on the line to say, “Would you repeat that name, please?”

“Barry Lee,” I said. “Would you like me to spell it?”

“No, that’s all right. And where are you calling from, please?”

“Guerrera, in South America.”

“One moment, please.”

This time, it was one very short moment, and then Kaplan’s voice was there, rasping in my ear: “ Who is this?”

“Mr. Kaplan,” I said, “I owe you an apology. I was trying to get out of that marriage, I wanted to start over, a brand new life, I did that hoax, I faked my own death, my wife knew absolutely nothing about—”

“What the hell are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m Barry Lee and I’m not really dead,” I told him. “And I just found out my wife put in a claim on my life insurance. I forgot all about that insurance, and I don’t want anybody to think Lola’s trying to defraud anybody, she’s as—”

“Is this some kind of hoax?”

“ Yes ,” I said. “I’m telling you, I’m still alive.”

“Who is this?” he demanded.

“It’s Barry Lee, I’ve told—”

“Barry Lee is dead! ”

“He is not. I am not.”

“You damn well better be,” he snarled. “What do you think you’re trying to pull?”

I was bewildered. “Mr. Kaplan,” I said, “I thought you’d be pleased to know the company doesn’t—”