When Fishel “Hambone” Gross, in socks and shorts, took two steps in with a pistol out chest-high, Sam grabbed his forearm and, with the butt of his service revolver, chopped Hambone’s weapon out of his hand. Then he twisted the big man’s left arm back to force him down, kicking the firearm into the wedge of the door. But Hambone’s nickname held for a reason. He was big and stubborn.
Tino flustered about the apartment, tugging on pants and a pullover and finding a different nose in his top drawer, while Sam had to perform maneuvers to put the Hambone down, not wanting a fired round to pierce a wall or floor. At last, he fought handcuffs on him, but only after rendering a side-kick to his knee. To Hambone’s whining and prone figure, Sam said, “Nana korobi, ya oki,” and in English, “Seven times down, eight times up” but then added, “my ass!”
He asked Tino, still by the closet, “What, you have him sleeping over? Bad luck for him. Is there a woman in there, too? Any other surprises?” Tino shook his head no. Sam made the two men go into the living room and motioned them to sit in chairs. Hambone had to shuffle-hop to get there, groaning all the while from pain in his knee. People noises came up through the floorboards. Someone else banged on a wall, the demand from neighbors to settle down.
A glance around the room brought Sam to a telephone. He shifted his firearm to his left hand and picked up the receiver, but he’d been distracted by the noise and took too long to dial, and in a flash Hambone’s cuffed arms noosed Sam’s arms to his side.
Pain yet forced out Hambone’s groans, but he managed to haul Sam back to the bedroom and the open window. Sam tried tripping him on the way, but the irony of Hambone’s knee displacement and subsequent footfalls worked against him.
Even through the action, Sam saw Tino rise from the chair, quietly open the door, look back, and exit.
Wearing Officer Sam Rabinowitz like a bib, the two-man act tumbled backward through the opening. When they hit the fire escape grating, Sam used the jolt to rotate and free his arms. The big man struggled to his feet, bringing Sam with him. Handcuffed as he was, he clenched his hands like a club. Sam used a sweeping circular motion to divert the blow, and in so doing he cartwheeled Hambone over the low rail. He heard a splat, soon followed by a spiraling yowl from cats mating and a far-off siren’s wail.
Officers found the second body on the other side of the building, where the stairway to the roof deck had been the conduit to convey a forlorn Tino Caruso to his inglorious end.
The arguments weren’t serious between Sally and Sam about whether Honora should come before Isadora, or Isadora before Honora. Sally won out, saying it would be Honora, after her mother: Honora Isadora Rabinowitz. And she told the nurse in the hospital the next one would surely be a boy, and his name could be Aaron Samuel or even Aaron Alfred Samuel Rabinowitz.
Buds on a bunch of * willows tied with pink ribbon were a gift from Detective Hirsch. The stems sat in a clear vase on the sill. Sun shafts hit the glass and marbleized the wall and ceiling. When the nurse came in for Sally’s meds and saw the satisfied looks on the couple’s faces after the naming situation was settled, she said, “You two look happy as cats in a creamery.” And so it was, and so it continued to be for fifty more playful, worrisome, down and up years.
N. J. AYRES earned an MWA Edgar Award nomination for a story in another of Mary Higgins Clark’s anthologies (The Night Awakens, 2000). She has published three forensics-based novels featuring former Las Vegas stripper Smokey Brandon, a book of poetry, and numerous short stories. For over twenty years, Ayres (Noreen) wrote and edited complex technical manuals for engineering companies in Alaska, California, Texas, and Washington. Learn more at NoreenAyres.com.
REDHEADED STEPCHILD
Margaret Maron
“Are they twins?”
The first time Abby heard that question, she and Elaine were eight years old and they were scrambling onto the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. It was July, and she still remembered how warm the smooth bronze mushroom had felt to her bare legs and how sunbeams glistened on Elaine’s long straight hair as she elbowed her way past Abby to get to the Cheshire Cat first.
“Don’t push your sister,” KiKi called up to them.
“She’s not my sister,” Elaine muttered.
“I’m sorry,” KiKi said, turning to the young woman whose toddler tugged at the Mad Hatter’s jacket. “Did you ask me something?”
“Your daughters,” said the toddler’s mom. “Are they twins?”
The woman hadn’t heard Elaine’s disavowal of sisterhood, but Abby lingered by Alice’s bronze shoe to hear KiKi’s answer.
“They do look alike, don’t they? The blonde one’s mine, but the redhead’s my fiancé’s daughter.”
Abby had cried when Dad first told her. “A stepmother? Like Cinderella?”