DEAD PHONE

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Dead

PHONE

By R. Peterson

                I tripped over a tangled cord and yanked the phone off my desk. The plastic case broke. I think it was still working; the dial-tone sounded like a bumblebee, but after I cursed and kicked it against the wall with my steel-toe work-boot there was only silence and the whispering of the crippled neighbors in the apartment next door.

            Like most rage and anger, mine was directed at myself.   The Western Electric rotary-dial telephone was one of the few things I still trusted in the twenty-first century and I had destroyed it. The buttons on most phones were too small for my former-boxer fingers and the new touch-screens all butt-dialed someone I owed money to … or an obnoxious solicitor … each time I sat down.

            Rocco  (the bade) would be annoyed if even one lousy ten-dollar bet could not be placed because my phone was dead. And when Rocco was annoyed … people died.

 I was going to pick up beer and a pizza and I decided to swing by the Goodwill Thrift Store first. Estate sales sometimes donated old electronic items. With any luck, I could replace my precious life line and start taking calls.

-------2-------

Splintered shelves were piled high with toasters, waffle-irons and broken blenders. Just when I decided to visit Wal-Mart I spotted the handset to a Western Electric 102 hanging out of a shipping crate. It was about thirty years older than what I was looking for. The 1929 telephone was priced at ten dollars with a ringer-box and a digital plug attached to the woven-cloth cord. “Does this thing work?” I asked after blowing off the dust.

            “If it doesn’t … bring it back,” The clerk said.

-------3-------

            The Chicago Cubs were playing Kansas City and betting ends with the first pitch. I just got the phone plugged-in when the first call came. The gamblers used a four digit code to hide their identity and I wrote down the wagers. “This is four nine three six … fifty bucks says the Royals steam the Cubs!” The sound was distant with a slight rattle … but it was okay.

            Two hours later, I turned on the TV to watch the game. I was as amazed and shocked as anyone else …. The Cubs actually won! On impulse I picked up the phone and dialed a Royals fan, to rub it in. The phone rang three times before I remembered Joe Fresco had died of a heart attack a month before. I was about to hang up … when he answered! “Joe?” My mouth was as dry as an Arab’s flip flop.

            We talked for fifteen minutes and then I reminded myself that Joe was dead … I told him I had to go to the bathroom.

I stared at the phone for the next half hour before I called Rocco. I redialed his number and always got a recording. The operator sounded like a screen-door banging in a tornado. Every number I gave her was a no listing. Finally I gave her my mother’s number … she’d been dead for seven years.

“Hello mom?” I was half amazed and half freaked out. According to my mother she was fine. I didn’t tell her otherwise. After I hung up, I opened a bottle of Scotch … and tried to wake up.

-------4------

Someone was pounding on my door. My head pulsed like the air in a jack-hammer. Rocco stood in the doorway grinning. “Something wrong with your phone?” he asked. I gathered the sheets of paper with the bets.

“I can’t call out,” I pointed to the antique phone. He didn’t even look.

“Fix it … or I will,” he said.

He turned before he left, flashing a big smile this time. “I hear lefty Coogan is looking for a new anchor for his boat. The pay ain’t so good … but then there’s that endless overtime.”

I could hear him laughing all the way down the hall.

-------5-------

            I bought a desk phone from Costco along with an adapter so I could plug everything in. I spent the afternoon reading obituaries and making phone calls. Not everyone I called thought they were still living. A woman on the south side broke into tears when she said none of her seven cats had eaten since her funeral.

            The scratchy operator still sounded like a screen door coming off its hinges but she gave me the phone number for Jimmy Hoffa.

The missing Teamster leader told me he was buried under a concrete overpass support on Interstate 88 just west of DeKalp, Illinois along with lots of other secret things. I found out the overpass was being demolished … and called a reporter friend.

Information is money if you know the right people … and my list was growing. Rocco’s business partner had been missing for three years. I called Rocco and told him I knew where the man was buried and if anything at all happened to me, after he paid me my generous overtime, the Feds and the Chicago Tribune would both get the information.

The 2020 Corvette Sting Ray can really eat up a highway. My life as a bookie buying hookers and drinking cheap whiskey was a fading image in my rear-view mirrors. I had my foot on the gas and was headed for bigger and better things … I’ve always wanted to be a writer.

I plugged the Western Electric 102  telephone into a motel room in Wyoming. It was a nice place with a heated-pool … and a free continental breakfast.

I asked the scratchy operator for the number of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas Texas. Thirty seconds later I heard the dead man’s voice on the line. “Lee,” I told him. “You claimed you were a patsy … do you know who hired you to shoot President Kennedy?”

            “Yes.” … the man finally sounded ready to talk.

THE END ???