Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 12/01/10 by Dell Magazines

Author:Dell Magazines
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Dell Magazines
Published: 2010-12-01T08:00:00+00:00

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Fiction

THE MAN WITH ONE EYE

by Stephen Ross

This new Stephen Ross story will top off an excellent year for the New Zealand author, being his sixth story to see print in 2010. The talented Mr. Ross also composes music, a skill that will come into play in the YouTube trailer he’s creating for this story. (Check it out; it should be posted by the time you get this issue!)

The year’s other Ross stories appeared in EQMM, AHMM, the British literary magazine Prole, and science fiction’s Cosmos.

1.

The small boy made his way up the sweep of steps to the apartment building. He was alone. He wore glasses. It was three hours past his bedtime and twelve blocks past his mother’s idea of a safe place to be. He wore slippers and a buttoned-up brown overcoat—dark blue pajamas with a cowboys-and-Indians motif peeked out from underneath. It was a cold night, and his breath crystallized in the air.

The interior of the apartment building was decrepit. The elderly night-desk man was asleep in his newspaper. His coffee had gone cold and his cigarette smoldered. The boy padded past him and located the elevator.

He rode it to five. He knew the man he needed to see lived there. He had it straight: fifth floor, apartment 26, the old gray building on the corner next to the drugstore.

The elevator opened onto a narrow hallway lit by dim bulbs. There was a stale smell in the air. A man and a woman argued behind a closed door. The sound of a television came from behind another.

The boy walked along the hall, checking off the door numbers. He adjusted his glasses—they were circular and silver-framed. The door numbers were dirty bronze. At the end of the hallway, he found 26. He tapped his knuckles on the door. He waited a moment, then knocked again. Harder.

Henry heard the second knock. He was seated at an old upright piano. He had been staring. Standing on top of the piano were two framed photos. One was of a girl. The photo had faded over the years, but the girl’s beauty hadn’t. She was permanently seventeen, and you could tell from her smile she had the whole world waiting.

The other photo was an old snapshot of Henry. He had had a pencil-thin moustache back in the old days and he knew how to wear a tailored suit. He looked like a movie star, like Ronald Colman or John Gilbert. He looked like the kind of guy the adjective dashing could be applied to with reasonable success.

Standing next to Henry in the snapshot was the girl—five years old and her hair in a bob. Henry could still remember the day the snapshot was taken. It was the day Lindbergh flew to Paris.

There was a third knock.

Henry parked his cigarette in the ashtray at the end of the keyboard and picked up his gun. “Who is it?”

There was a muted reply from the other side of the door. Henry got up. It sounded to him like a child’s voice—asking for him by name.

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