EQMM 1998-01 by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

Author:Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Where Do The Balloons Go?

by William Link

© 1997 by William Link

Speaking of William Link’s longtime collaboration with Rickard Levinson in the creation of TV mysteries, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa says: “More than any other writers in the medium, [they] were committed to the classical aspects of the mystery story: the clues and the solutions.” But in his solo work for EQMM, Mr. Link mostly departs from the classical clued mystery to create fascinating psychological studies.

Mickey Matrano was a gambler. Mickey gambled on anything and everything: Indiana-Orlando basketball, the dog races in Miami, whether the next person coming in a restaurant would be a man or a woman. Nick the Greek had told him that everything in life was six to five against, but that didn’t stop Mickey from being an incorrigible optimist where gambling was concerned.

Even in the case of Craig Detweiler.

Poker was the game and Craig was down to him for eleven K. Or eleven large as some of the other incorrigibles liked to say. Mickey figured that if Craig (an only child) didn’t have it, at least Mom did. Mom was eighty-two, a Locust Valley real estate heiress, and the word on the street was she was suffering from inoperable and terminal cancer of the pancreas.

So Mickey decided to pay a call on young Craig, who had a nice showy bachelor’s pad on upper Park Avenue. Zebra-striped cushions like the old El Morocco, leather-padded bar, Erté prints in black-lacquer frames, daunting wraparound views of the metropolis. Sometimes, mysteriously, furniture and prints were conspicuously missing, like articles removed from a showroom, and the apartment had an echoing funereal air while multiple white phones rang endlessly and Craig sucked joints and pretended everything was hunky-dory.

Today everything seemed normal, no blank spaces in the decor. Craig was wearing one of his Cuban bolero shirts, which hung over his white linen trousers. He was a big blond guy with old eyes in a baby face framed by a Scandinavian beard.

He greeted Mickey with a crushing handshake, leaving his fingers tingling. “Welcome, amigo. How ’bout a taste?”

Mickey was still sweating from the summer heat, wearing his usual suit and tie. He removed his straw hat with the flowered band and palmed sweat from his bald spot. He was sixty-seven and starting to feel a certain slowness, the deacceleration that came with the years. “A Chivas and short-water would be fine.” Craig went behind the bar. “What’s this ‘short-water’? Some kinda hip new expression?”

Mickey laughed. “Old as the hills. Thing we heard in South Philly growing up. It’s how the swells ordered — just a classy way of saying a chaser.”

Craig had lost interest; it was as if everything in his world was just another channel on his inner remote. He made Mickey his drink and then produced an extra-fat joint from his shirt pocket, torching it up with a new gold lighter. When he handed Mickey the scotch he noticed there was plenty of vibrato (as the jazzmen say) on his hand. Craig was one nervous fella this morning.

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