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

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.”

Procedure by Adrian Magson

England’s Adrian Magson writes for various mainstream magazines in the U.K. and overseas, and is a columnist for Writers’ News/Writing Magazine. We welcome him not only to EQMM but to the world of crime fiction this month — his previous fiction credits have been with women’s magazines, under the pseudonym Ellen Cleary. Mr. Magson’s first crime novel No Peace for the Wicked (Crème de la Crime) is due out in late 2004.

* * *

They smash through my front door at three in the morning. Two of them, dressed in black. The first — Patrick — is carrying a council curbstone he probably found lying around somewhere, and which he uses to tap the lock out of the frame. He uses his other hand to turn on the lights and throw a small side table along the hall. He does things like that to show how big and strong he is. People rarely argue with him.