Manhattan Mayhem (31 page)

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 pussy 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
.

“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?”

“Don’t be silly, Abby,” he’d said. “She’s certainly not going to make you scrub floors or sit in ashes. You’ll love KiKi, and she’s ready to love you. Besides, you already know Elaine from school. A new mother
and
a new sister. It’ll be fun.”

Fun? She barely knew Elaine. Even though she was only three months younger, Abby’s October birthday had kept her from starting kindergarten till she was almost six, so Elaine was a year ahead of her at the Clymer School for Girls.

“Please,” she begged Aunt Jess, her dad’s older sister and the woman who had cared for her after the mother she could not remember died. She felt her whole world was turning upside down. A stepmother. A stepsister. A new apartment. “Let me stay with you.”

“I wish I could, darling, but your dad wants to make a new home for both of you. Besides, you’re only moving across the park to the East Side, not Easter Island. We’ll still see each other whenever you like.”

Later that evening, though, lying sleepless and miserable, Abby heard Aunt Jess say, “You’d better not let KiKi treat her like a red-headed stepchild.”

Dad laughed. “Hard to promise that, Jess. Abby
is
a redhead, and she
is
going to be KiKi’s stepchild.”

“You know what I mean, Daniel. You get so tied up with your work, you sometimes forget you even have a daughter.”

“Which is why it’ll be good for her to have KiKi. She likes being a stay-at-home mother.”

“Except that she didn’t stay home, did she? Where were her daughter and her husband when you two were having your intimate little
evenings together?”

“I won’t dignify that with an answer, Jessica, and if you want to keep seeing Abby, I expect you to keep your opinions of KiKi to yourself.”

“Are they twins?” asked the bridal consultant when KiKi arrived at her first appointment with Elaine and Abby. Her divorce was now final, and the late-summer wedding was to be small and intimate, with the two girls as her only attendants.

“They
do
look like twins, don’t they?” KiKi said, but her indulgent smile was for Elaine, who had immediately zeroed in on a purple organza. Even at eight, Abby could see that the color fought with her own thick curls, which were more carrot than strawberry. “I hope you don’t mind, sweetie? Sisters have to learn to compromise.”

Except that compromise always seemed to require less from Elaine and more from Abby.

KiKi gently explained why Abby and her dad needed to move from their comfortably shabby apartment in the West Eighties to a more modern building on the East Side. “It wouldn’t be fair to you and Dad to move into my tiny apartment, just as it wouldn’t be fair to Elaine and me to move in with you and your aunt. Too many old memories for all of us. Much better to make new memories together, don’t you think?”