Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“There were a couple of things,” I replied. “For one, when I recovered the swamp cooler from the wreck site, both the reservoir and the wick filter were bone dry. Sure, ice melts and water evaporates rapidly in the high desert, but not that fast. There should have been some residual moisture left in that cooler if it had been loaded with frozen water. But dry ice evaporates away into nothing.”

The doc digested the idea. “All right, fine. But here’s the question, quiz kid. What made you suspicious of Rupe’s swamp cooler in the first place?”

“It was Mrs. Kelton,” I replied. “She bitched her own play. She may have read about dry ice somewhere, but she’d obviously never handled any of it before. Like I said, that stuff is seriously cold! Remember those funny-looking burns you treated on her hand?”

“Yeah?”

“They weren’t burns. Since you’ve done all of your docing out here, it’s not surprising you wouldn’t recognize them for what they were. But I did. I spent a winter on the line in Korea and, man, I got real familiar with it.

“I had to wonder, just how in the heck does anybody pick up a case of frostbite in the middle of the Mojave Desert?”

Comeback by Ed Gorman

Ed Gorman’s March 1996 EQMM story “Out There in the Darkness” was later expanded by the author into a novel entitled The Poker Club, and will soon be released as a motion picture under the same title. Also coming out soon is a new Gorman novel, The Midnight Room. The following story will appear, at around the same time this issue goes on sale, in an anthology celebrating the work of author and screen writer Richard Matheson entitled He Is Legend.

* * *

The morning of the birthday bash this dude with hair plugs and a black camel’s hair coat and the imperious air only a big-time businessman exudes walks into Guitar City and starts looking around at all the instruments and amps.

A tourist. Most places you see a guy who looks like this you automatically think this is the ideal customer. But in the business of selling high-end guitars and amps you don’t want somebody who looks like he just drove over from the brokerage house in his Mercedes but will only spend a few hundred on his kid.

Some of my best sales have gone to guys who look like street trash. They know music.

I wandered over to him. I assumed he didn’t know what he was holding. The Gibson Custom Shop ’59 Les Paul cost a few thousand more than I make a month — and I do all right.

When he glanced up and saw me, he said, “Hey, you’re the guy I saw on the news this morning.”

I smiled. “My fifteen minutes finally arrived.”

“Well, you’re going to the big party and everything. Sounds like you’ll have some night. Nice that you all still get along.”

John Temple had returned to Chicago on the occasion of his thirtieth birthday. This was at the end of his worldwide tour and his latest CD going double platinum. Some of the friends he’d met while on tour were flying in for the occasion. Names people around the world would recognize. “Too bad you had that falling-out with Temple, you and — What’s the other guy’s name?”

“McMurtin.”

“Right. Temple, McMurtin, and you. You’re Rafferty, right?”

“Right.”

“And you and McMurtin — went off on your own.”

He was polite enough not to finish the rest. The well-known tale of how John Temple decided four years ago that it was time he took his wounded voice out for a test run all by itself. Two double-platinum CDs later, Temple was returning home for a press orgy of adulation.

I was working here at Guitar City. Pete McMurtin was one of the ghosts you saw standing on the sidewalk outside rehab houses shakily smoking his cigarette.

Even though he’d brought up an unpleasant subject, he redeemed himself by saying, “My son’s graduating from Northwestern. He’s very serious about his little band. I was hoping he’d grow out of it by now, but no such luck. He’s coming into the firm but he also plans to keep playing on weekends. So I want something really special.”

“Well, this is really special.”

“Oh? What is it?”

I told him.

“So this is really upscale, huh?”

I smiled at his word. “Very upscale.”

“And he’ll need an amp. A good one.”

“A good one or a great one?”

“What’s a great one?”

“Well, you’ve got a great guitar so I’d go with a great amp — a Marshall. The Jimi Hendrix Reissue. Stack.”

He grinned. “This could all very well be bullshit.”

I grinned back. I knew he was going to go for it. “It could very well be. But it isn’t.”

“Well, I guess you know what you’re talking about. This is your fifteen minutes, after all.” He meant well but it was still painful. “So my son will know what this is and he’ll like it?”