Why Me? by Donald E Westlake

Author:Donald E Westlake
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: det_irony
Published: 2011-02-10T03:40:59.062000+00:00

24

Dortmunder awoke to the distant sound of a ringing phone and found his left hand in his mouth. "Ptak!" he said, expelling it, then sat up, made a face around his bad-tasting mouth, and listened to the murmur of May's voice in the living room. After a minute the lady herself appeared in the doorway, saying, "Andy Kelp on the phone."

"As if I didn't have trouble enough," Dortmunder said. But he got out of bed and plodded into the living room in his underwear and spoke into the phone: "Yeah?"

"Listen, John," Kelp said, "I got good news."

"Tell me quick."

"I'm not using the answering machine any more."

"Oh, yeah? How come?"

"Well…" An uncharacteristic hesitancy came into Kelp's voice. "The fact of the matter is, I was burgled."

"You were?"

"You remember, my message on the machine said I wasn't home. What I figure, somebody called and heard me say I wasn't home, so he came right over and boosted some things."

Dortmunder tried not to smile. "That's too bad," he said.

"Including the answering machine," Kelp said.

Dortmunder closed his eyes. He put his hand very tight over his mouth, and practically no sound at all came through.

"I could get another one," Kelp went on, "you know, from my access, like I got the first one, but I figure—"

Another voice, high-pitched and very loud, suddenly yelled, "Your father's a fairy! Your father's a fairy!"

Dortmunder jerked away from the screaming phone, no longer distracted at all by the desire to laugh. Cautiously nearing the instrument again, he heard what seemed now to be three or four shrill childish voices, giving out with some sort of nursery rhyme or something, with words that sounded like, "Hasn't got a lump fish. Didn't do his dump dish. Make her get her plump wish—" Through which Kelp's voice could be heard yelling, "You kids get off that phone! You get away from there or I'll come up and getcha!"

The nursery rhyme ended in giggles and cackles, stopping abruptly with a loud click. Dortmunder, enured by now, said into the phone, "You're gone, right?"

"No, no, John!" Kelp sounded out of breath. "Don't hang up, I'm still here."

"I don't really want to know what that was," Dortmunder said, "but I guess you'll tell me."

"It's my roof phone," Kelp said.

"Your roof phone? You live in an apartment house!"

"Yeah, well, I like to go up on the roof," Kelp said, "when the sun's shining, catch a few rays on the bod. And I don't want to—"

"Miss any calls," Dortmunder said.

"That's right. So I ran a line up, a jack, I got a phone I can bring up there and plug it in. But I guess I musta forgot to bring it back down last night."

"I guess you—"

Click: "You've got stinky un-derwear, ding-gles in your pu-bic hair—"

"Enough," said Dortmunder, and hung up and went away to the bathroom to brush the taste of his hand out of his mouth. And he was finishing breakfast half an hour later when the front doorbell rang, May answered, and Andy Kelp himself came into the kitchen, a wiry, bright-eyed, sharp-nosed fellow carrying a telephone.

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