“Landscape is an important component in the work of Gwen Moffat,” said the authors of By a Woman’s Hand. This is no less true in her short stories than in the 20 crime novels she has penned, many featuring Miss Pink, a heroine as formidable as the narrator of this story. Ms. Moffat lives in the English Lake District and travels in the western U.S.

Whether or not you believe in original sin, Darren Jones never stood a chance. It didn’t seem that way at the time. For nearly a year he appeared to hold the whip hand because, terrified of retaliation, Mrs. Tilney didn’t dare protest. It became so bad you started to wonder what she would do if driven beyond endurance.

Thirza Tilney had her hostages to fortune: her cherished cat, and the cabin from which she watched the seabirds that nested on the cliffs below the coast-guard station. She was old, turned seventy, small and frail, and she’d depended on her husband for everything: from changing a light bulb to paying the bills, and for emotional support. Darren had his father for protection, a lumbering bear of a man, who drank. Thirza had had her husband and she’d clung to him like ivy to a wall.

Charles Tilney was a solicitor, and although not an unkind man, he couldn’t always conceal his impatience with his wife. We have our share of eccentrics in this remote corner of Wales: dog breeders, horsey women, lone retirees who’ve been in positions of authority. Charles met a number of these in his practice and Thirza, more a shadow of himself than an individual in her own right, would make a poor showing in contrast.

Charles died: a heart attack in the cabin while he was watching his beloved birds — for it was Charles who was the ornithologist; Thirza maintained she was only a bird-watcher. She went to the cabin because he did, although on the one occasion I was there with the two of them he ignored her — not pointedly, it was just that he was more interested in the birds. But he was alone when he died. Thirza felt guilty about that. Afterwards she continued to go to the cabin. “It’s a comfort,” she told me. “I feel him all around me there.”

I was the only person she confided in, but then I’m a good listener. A hospital matron has to be. I knew my nurses called me a Rottweiler behind my back, but I’ve mellowed in retirement. There’s no longer any need to assert my authority except on rare occasions with impertinent tradesmen or small boys. I never had any trouble with Darren Jones. Thirza, looking for a substitute, would have become as dependent on me as she’d been on Charles, if I’d allowed it, so I was careful. I saw to it that she came to my cottage only on invitation and I didn’t go to the cabin on the cliff at all. I preferred to watch birds from the old coast-guard lookout. In any event, it was bright and airy; I found the cabin claustrophobic.

Charles had built his retreat on a point above a cove, and the structure faced the cliffs below the coast-guard station. The lookout, sited on the opposite point, gave the reciprocal view: the cliffs below the cabin. The cabin was little more than a hide really, with slit openings which were closed by shutters when no one was in occupation. My feeling of claustrophobia started the very first time I went there. Charles was alive then and Thirza had been with us. It was a blustery day with an offshore wind, and the cabin moved alarmingly, straining against the cables that secured it to the bedrock. Charles closed the door when we entered, but after we’d been observing the ranks of auks for a few minutes, through the noise of wind and birds I heard a soft clack! from the direction of the door. I turned.

“Only the drop bar,” Charles said carelessly. “It’s fallen into the holder.”

“It’s how we keep the door shut when we leave,” Thirza explained. “How do we get out?”

“Ah!” She was coy. “Shall we tell her, Charles?”

He was concentrating on a colony of razorbills and he didn’t lower the binoculars. “Of course, you tell her! How’s she going to get out if it happens when she’s in here on her own?”

“I didn’t think of that.” She reached up to the ledge above the door and produced a rusty table knife. Inserting it in the crack between door and jamb, she prised up the bar and the door opened. She replaced the knife and the door closed again under pressure from the east wind. A moment later a gust shook the cabin and I heard the bar drop.

“I’ll never come here on my own,” I said flatly. “Suppose a tourist — or some child — came in and took the knife?”

“No one ever comes here except us,” Charles was quite casual about it.

“You ought to carry your own knife,” Thirza said. “I do.” She saw my surprise. “Charles insists on it,” she explained. “So useful. You can cut the sheep free, for instance; they’re always getting hung up in the brambles.” And she pulled a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of her parka. I was amused. Thirza Tilney armed with a lethal weapon!

After Charles’s death we rallied round her, particularly the elderly among us, and no doubt she thought that, with so many men on hand, they would go some way towards filling the gap, at least where material assistance was concerned. She hadn’t made friends of her own, these were Charles’s associates, but even intimates would have tried to persuade her to stand on her own feet eventually, once the period of grieving was over.

She hadn’t a clue about the most mundane matters; she needed help with her income-tax returns, with insurance forms, with selling the car. That was another problem: She couldn’t drive, and she wouldn’t ride a bicycle because she was terrified of tractors in our narrow lanes. If she didn’t catch the bus she depended on other people to take her to town. As for the cabin, which was over a mile from the village, she walked there. It was a pleasant enough walk, across little fields with flowery banks in spring. The fields stopped before the sea cliffs, and the cabin was approached across a stretch of moor, the haunt of curlews and other ground-nesting birds.

The months that followed Charles’s death saw a deterioration in Thirza. She started to let herself go. She still went out to the cliffs and fussed about the garden but I felt that she kept up these interests because of their association with Charles. In her person she became — well, slovenly. She didn’t keep her house clean, and as for her clothes: her cuffs and collars were frayed, her boots caked with mud, and I don’t think there was a pocket in her parka that didn’t have holes. She was always shedding things through the holes.

As Charles’s friends dropped away, she was forced to employ handymen to do the jobs around the place that Charles had done as a matter of course. There was the tendency to attach herself to me, which I discouraged, trying to chivvy her gently into pulling herself together, to take up the reins again, live sensibly like other solitary women. Naturally I was careful not to imply that if I could do it, so could she, but in any case I had no success.

She continued to frequent the cliffs so at least she was involved with the natural world. From the coast-guard station I would look down on the cabin and see the shutters were open, so I’d know she was inside. Occasionally, walking back to the village, she would overtake me — I am a little short-winded and she was a fast walker. I took to returning home by a different path. I found her something of a trial — and now she was becoming paranoid about the children.

Charles had been a keen gardener: flowers, fruit, vegetables. There were drystone walls between his garden and the pasture at the back. The children climbed the wall, she said, and picked all the strawberries. Eventually they broke the wall down and sheep came through the gap. Drystone walling is expensive so she had the gap fenced, and every time she looked out of a back window she was reminded of the children’s depredations. She said they were led by Darren Jones, which was highly likely. He was ten years old at the time and would serve as a role model for younger boys. If a gate were opened and cows got in a garden, trampling lawns, eating the flowers, Darren was the chosen suspect, but no one voiced his suspicions. It was holiday cottages belonging to English people that were targeted, and Darren’s dad was vehemently opposed to rich incomers. In our part of Wales you stay on the right side of men like Hughie Jones. Arson is their favoured weapon.

Darren was a beautiful child. There was no other word to describe him. Not “engaging” or “enchanting,” because the wide blue eyes could go cold as a goat’s. But the cherubic features were there: the corn-blond hair, the chiselled lips — he had his looks from his mother, who resembled a Botticelli madonna when she wasn’t bruised by her husband’s fists. However, if Darren were crossed, something moved behind those bleak eyes that made even me catch my breath.

Charles Tilney died in the spring. As the year progressed his widow became obsessed with Darren. I visited her out of a sense of duty, but not often; a house is too intimate, a place where things are confided that should stay secret. Alas, a car can be intimate too, but there was no way I could pass the bus stop when people were waiting there to go to town. If there was more than one it was all right, but if it happened that Thirza was alone I felt as if I had the Ancient Mariner sitting beside me, except that Thirza’s albatross was very much alive.

Darren had trampled Charles’s delphiniums. He had thrown dirt at her bedsheets on the line. In the autumn he stole her apples; with the first fall of snow he threw a snowball at her kitchen window and there must have been a stone inside it because he broke a pane.

“You wouldn’t consider having a word with his father?” I suggested after this last offence. Immediately she retracted, asserting that she could have been mistaken, that it might not have been Darren every time, perhaps any time; her eyes weren’t so good any longer. (She could distinguish a razorbill from a guillemot on the other side of the cove.) No way would she approach Hughie Jones. In the circumstances, I wouldn’t either, not because I was frightened of the fellow but simply because any complaint made on her behalf would exacerbate matters. Darren would understand that she was terrified and be inspired to greater mischief.

Matters came to a head nearly a year after Charles died. I was watering my houseplants when Thirza crept past my window, her head averted, one hand to her face. It was my day for Avril, the girl who cleans for me. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Tilney?” I asked at our midmorning break, “Toothache? She looked odd going by.”

“Oh, don’t take no notice.” Avril was dismissive. “He never meant no harm. She imagines things.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. Well, you know that young Darren — but he’s a good boy, Miss Roberts; she just fell down, he never touched her.” She stopped. I waited. “And the radio!” she resumed fiercely. “Just fiddling with it, wasn’t he? Didn’t know the old lady were in the house. He wanted to hear the football on the radio, you know what boys are.”

“He went to her house to steal her radio?”

“Never! Not steal. He’s a good boy.”

“And she caught him in the act — and he knocked her down?”

“He panicked. He thought she’d gone out and forgot to lock up. Time was when we didn’t lock our doors. Things have changed, what with the summer visitors and all. He went in — you do when you’re calling, don’t you? And he looked around...”

“And spotted the radio.”

Avril pursed her lips. “You don’t want to believe everything that one tells you,” she said tightly, meaning I shouldn’t believe anything Thirza told me. “What happened was she was upstairs having a lie-down and she come down and she were between him and the door so he panicked and pushed past her and he forgot he still had a hold of the radio, and he dropped it, and she hit her head against the sideboard.”

Her nose was broken. As I discovered when I made it my business to visit the health centre later that day. Thirza had attended for treatment, but she was adamant that she had fallen, and she never mentioned that a thief had been in her house. I did. It was a good idea to warn people that he was now using violence; it could be worse next time, as it gets worse with battered wives. Now we had children battering old-age pensioners. Never mind that she could have fallen because he pushed past her; that was as bad, and it could be the thin end of the wedge. Thirza wasn’t so paranoid after all.

I called on her when I came back from town. She didn’t like my visiting at that moment. I didn’t think she was embarrassed at my seeing her with a dressing on her nose, I thought she was terrified. Several times she glanced towards her cat, a red marmalade tom that she treated like family.

“Shall I open the door?” I asked. “Cooper wants to go out.”

“I’m keeping him in,” she said quickly. “He’s off-colour. I don’t want him wandering.”

I stared at her. She wouldn’t meet my eye. “Did Darren make threats?” I asked. It’s a popular taunt among naughty boys: “You’ve got a cat, haven’t you?” Said with an evil smirk.

Thirza was shaking her head miserably. “Let me speak to his mother,” I urged. “Or his teacher.”

“No, no, please. It’ll only make things worse.”

She was right, of course. And she wouldn’t bring charges of assault, and nothing was done. The neighbours rationalised, convincing themselves that since she wouldn’t do anything, then she had indeed fallen down. It was all her fault, startling the boy, creeping downstairs unexpectedly so that he panicked and knocked the radio over. He was only visiting, after all.

He came visiting again. Someone talked, probably someone at the health centre. The story came back to the village that I’d said Darren had been caught in the act of stealing Mrs. Tilney’s radio and he’d hit her. No one dared approach me, but Thirza’s cat disappeared.

Thirza was stony-faced, obdurate. She said it was no use looking for Cooper, she’d never find him. I guessed she didn’t want to find him, didn’t want to know what had happened to him. I was raging, and coming down the street from her house, I saw Darren outside my cottage, eyeing it thoughtfully. I lost all sense of caution.

“No good,” I snapped. “I don’t have a cat, or a dog. And hospital matrons know more ways of killing without being found out than you could think up in a month of Sundays.”

His head jerked. He wanted to say he didn’t believe me but I saw his doubt. I glared at him and switched my attention to his hands. No scratches. Perhaps he’d used some kind of club. I hated that boy. I wondered how Thirza could be so stoical. Perhaps she felt that she had nothing else to lose now. She adored that cat.

I didn’t see her for two days and then she sought me out. An old shirt soaked in petrol had been put through her letter box. That was all, it hadn’t been followed by a match. But Darren had just stopped her in the street and said wasn’t it shocking that now school was out for the Easter holidays those children were setting the moors afire. Wicked children, he said, bored they were, with nothing to do: kids looking around for mischief. Next thing we knew they’d be putting rags soaked in petrol through folks’ letter boxes in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep, and following it up with a match. Someone was going to get hurt. “But,” Thirza said bleakly, “he said I had nothing to fear, he’d take care of me. He knew where I lived.”

I shuddered at the phrase: culled from television, used in earnest. “You have to go to the police,” I told her. “I’ll come with you.”

I don’t think she heard me; she was following her own trail. “I just hope he doesn’t set fire to the moor on top of the cliffs,” she said. “All those nests: wheatears, larks, curlews. And the cabin’s not insured.”

“He’d never dare!” But I knew he would, as soon as he thought of it. It was becoming a seasonal pastime among young children: setting fire to moorland during the Easter break. But still Thirza wouldn’t go to the police, perhaps thinking that if she did, the rag pushed through her letter box would be followed by a match, like he said.

Easter Monday was cool and misty, the cloud so low that you thought you had an eye problem until you realised the intermittent specks were gulls appearing and disappearing above your head. The light was good for bird-watching, however: no glare, and there was only the faintest onshore breeze. I walked out to the coast-guard station.

I watched the birds for a while, ate a sandwich, went for a walk, looked for seals. It was a curiously soft day and I lost myself in a world of water, air, and rock. There were rafts of auks on the sea, and cormorants beating fast across the surface. “Wee black devils,” Charles had called them. I remembered that he had died on Easter Monday. I guessed Thirza would come out to the cabin today.

I strolled back to the coast-guard station and into mist. It seemed to be a combination of sea fog and low cloud, and eerie beyond words there on top of the cliffs. Acoustics were distorted and I seemed to be surrounded by noise. There was no swell running and yet surf smashed randomly on rock far below, while through the crooning from a thousand feathered throats came piercing cries: gulls mostly, sometimes screaming. The screams made the hair rise on the back of my neck, what with the fog and the absence of wind and me all alone up there in the old coastguard station.

In fact, there was a slight breeze. A window appeared in the mist, allowing me a glimpse of wrinkled water, the stream of the current marked by trails of foam. Birds were scurrying back and forth through a flare of sunlight. Somewhere a breaker burst with a muffled thud. The cabin was still obscured. I doubted that Thirza was there. Perhaps she’d been and gone, intimidated by the lack of visibility and those screams. The gulls must be bothered about something. I wondered if there were a peregrine falcon about. I’d never known a peregrine on these cliffs and I felt a twinge of excitement, waiting for the cloud to lift again so that I might discover what was bothering the birds. Curiously, it was only the gulls that were alarmed, and after a while they settled down and then there was only the busy chorus of the auks. I smelled heather smoke. The children were at it again.

The breeze strengthened. Seaward, the cloud melted suddenly and the sun came blazing through. There was a band of cumulus above the Irish mountains. The islands where the puffins breed looked close enough to touch — and across the cove the cabin was on fire.

My first thought was that at least the birds were safe, the cliffs wouldn’t be touched, and as for the moor, which was also alight, the ground-nesters would escape and their eggs were not yet hatched. More would be laid.

The cabin must have been burning for some time; flames were streaming back before the onshore breeze and even as I watched, the roof fell in. The fire in the heather was less dramatic, in fact — I stared in amazement: there was an untouched section between the cabin and the smoking moor. Two fires had been set.

The mist still lingered inland so I could see no sign of children; they’d be well away by now, probably on mountain bikes. There was nothing I could do except get home as fast as possible, call the fire department, and hope they’d save some of the moor. The cabin was gone; it was roofed with some kind of tarred sheeting and was burning like an oil blaze.

I heard the fire siren before I reached the village. I shunned the task of telling Thirza and sneaked past her cottage like a criminal, hoping she was in the kitchen at the back. Once in my own place, I poured myself a stiff whisky to try to subdue the rage I felt against fire-raisers — or was it just one? I remembered Darren’s threat to Thirza: “I know where you live.” I wondered if she could be persuaded to move house.

The police came to me that evening. Someone had seen me return from the direction of the cliffs. The body of a child had been found in the ruins of the cabin. There was a bike outside in the heather. His father identified it as Darren’s. Darren himself couldn’t be identified until they had his dental records.

The little I could tell them only confirmed their theory. Darren had set two fires, had taken a petrol can inside the cabin, and the door had blown shut and the bar dropped. Thirza had told the police about the old kitchen knife but Darren wouldn’t have known about that. They did find the partially melted remains of a Swiss Army knife, so he could have had the right idea, but the blades were closed; he hadn’t had time to use it to open the door. And the viewing slots were too narrow for even a small boy to escape that way.

The police were surprised that I hadn’t heard anything. “I could have,” I said, “but the gulls were making such a racket, screaming—” And then I realised it wasn’t the gulls that had been screaming.

Hughie Jones said his son didn’t own a Swiss Army knife. “He would say that,” Thirza said. “Mine disappeared the day he broke my nose.”

She didn’t rebuild the cabin. She sold her cottage to an English family for some inflated sum and moved into a luxury apartment in town. I visited her when she was settled and found her much improved. She was a different woman, far more outgoing in this light and airy flat above the harbour: neatly dressed, and she’d even had her hair styled. A red marmalade cat dozed on the window sill.

“Why, you’ve found a cat just like Cooper,” I exclaimed.

“That is Cooper, dear.”

“I thought — didn’t you think—”

“I put him in a cattery when Darren told me what could happen to a cat that strayed.”

“But you could never have him back while Darren — while he lived in the same village.”

“While he lived,” she amended. “He was a good boy,” she added, raising an eyebrow as a gull screamed close by, startling Cooper. Her tone mimicked the local accent.

“He was evil,” I said firmly. “A kind of justice was done out there on the cliffs. No way do I go along with the coroner and his verdict of accidental death — although I agree with his rider about the dangers of children playing with fire.”

“Justice?” she repeated.

“The door would slam shut only in an offshore wind,” I said. “And it was the cabin shaking in a gust that made the bar drop. There was only a light breeze that day, and it was onshore.”

After a while she said, “He wouldn’t have burned to death. He’d have been unconscious before the flames reached him.”

“Smoke inhalation?”

“Something like that.” She smiled. “I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

She could have been speaking the truth to the best of her knowledge. She may have left him unconscious, and she’d been too far away to hear his screams when he recovered. How had she done it? Lured him out there by dropping well-placed hints that the cabin wasn’t insured, known he was following her, waited inside with a raised weapon (something wooden, something that would burn), spilled the petrol, struck the match? She’d made a mistake, dropping the Swiss Army knife through a ragged pocket. She’d remedied the mistake superbly. Darren had stolen it.

She came in with the tea tray.

“How did Darren carry a petrol can in broad daylight without being seen?” I asked.

“He didn’t. It was already there. He must have taken it there in the dark.”

“So why wouldn’t he set fire to the cabin then?”

“He wanted me inside, dear. He thought he had his chance. Stupid boy. But then all criminals are stupid, aren’t they?”

“No. Just the ones who get caught.”

Our eyes locked. That we had the same thought was obvious from her next words. “There’s no proof, and you won’t talk. Suppose you did? A senile old woman suggested a fantasy about turning the tables on a naughty boy. That’s all.”

She was right. She had changed out of all recognition — but of course it was Darren who had changed her: uttering his threats, looking at her cat with his cold goat’s eyes, never realising that he was being measured for size by a tigress.

Seymour Shubin is an author whose works stay in a reader’s mind. As if we needed proof of that, he’s just informed EQMM that his first novel, Anyone’s My Name, first published in 1953 and a New York Times bestseller, is about to be published again in the United States. It has already come out for a second time in France.

Bette and I had just moved into our apartment that day and were in the process of putting things away when we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. We looked at each other, frowning, and walked out of the kitchen to the long staircase that led up to our apartment from the street. A bearded man was standing halfway up, smiling at us, drunkenly.

“Name’s Al. Live next door. Your door was open — shouldn’t keep your door open — and I thought I’d come in to welcome you an’ see if I can be of any help.”

“Thank you,” Bette said weakly, “but we—”

He continued to walk up, holding onto the railing against the wall to steady himself. He was a rather good-looking guy, maybe fifty-three, with drink-heavy blue eyes and a wide smile within a Van Gogh-ish beard.

“Ver-ry nice,” he said, standing at the top of the stairs and looking toward the kitchen and then the living room. Apparently he’d never been here before. “Well, welcome,” he said, and stuck out his hand.

I shook it.

“Very nice,” he said again.

No, I said when he asked, we didn’t need any help. But thanks.

“Wife’s name’s Hetta,” he said. He waved vaguely in front of his face. “You need anything, any time you need...” Then he turned heavily and made his way down the steps. I followed right behind him in case he fell. And this time I made sure to lock the door.

“God, he gave me a scare,” Bette said as I walked up.

“What’s the matter,” I kidded her, “you don’t like friendly?”

“Friendly. He scared the hell out of me.” Then, “What a shame, what a pity. Basically, he seems so nice.”

“That’s right. And he did mean well.”

She shook her head sadly. “It’s, what now, almost two? And he could barely hold himself up.”

Our apartment was on the second floor of a converted brown-stone, above a real estate office, the only apartment in the building. Al and Hetta lived in the entire brownstone to our left. He was, we learned later, a draftsman who worked, when he did work, out of the house. And she was a former schoolteacher whom we were rarely to see out of the house — a “former” teacher, apparently, because she was as alcoholic as he was. And, like him, beneath the puffiness of face there were the strong traces of handsomeness.

They had no children, but they did have cats. Lots of cats.

We moved in there in the summer. It was a great apartment, especially for a young couple just starting out. There was something bohemian about it, but with the comfort of central air conditioning. Which brings me to the first problem we had with them.

Although our two buildings adjoined each other in the front, a narrow courtyard separated them at the rear. Their bedroom — which we knew was a bedroom because it was always a question if they’d be sober enough to close the curtains — faced ours across the yard. And from one of the windows jutted a rusting, slanty-angled air conditioner. That clanged and banged throughout our apartment.

I was a freelance magazine writer who worked out of the apartment, and was attempting a book. And there was no way I could shut out the noise. Then one day, seeing him walking toward me on the street, the urge to approach him about it became suddenly overwhelming.

“Al, how you doing?”

“Here and there,” he said with a smile. He looked sober, but the stiffness of his body said it was taking effort to stand straight.

“Al, I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about this, but your bedroom air conditioner? I hate to be a bad neighbor, I’m really not a complainer, but are you aware it makes... you know, a lot of noise? I mean, a lot more than the ordinary noise. Do you think there’s anything you can do about it? I mean, maybe it needs oil?”

Oh, he was sorry about that. Hadn’t realized.

“Glad you told me,” he said. “Really glad.”

He sounded so sincere that it took Bette to make me realize that he probably wouldn’t give it another thought, or maybe even remember it. And nothing did change. But then about two weeks after that, Bette and I were in the living room when we heard a tremendous crash. When we rushed to a window, we saw that the air conditioner had fallen to the yard. And now Al and Hetta were out.there, standing looking dazedly at the wreckage. Then he whirled on her.

“Why?” he yelled. “Shoulda told me!”

“Shoulda told you what?”

“You were gonna dust it, wipe it!”

“I didn’t touch it.”

“You did somethin’, you had to do somethin’! It don’t just fall!”

“I didn’t do anything! And don’ yell at me!”

“You don’ yell at me!”

He pushed her and she pushed back and he swung, missing, and she ran screaming into the building.

“Tod, call the police,” Bette pleaded.

I started to, then stopped as I saw her come into the bedroom. She sat down on the bed. He started to come in, then stopped, waved his hands, spun around, and left.

“It’s terrible,” Bette said.

But now that things had calmed down, I could only think what a miracle, that maybe now they’d get an air conditioner that didn’t make all that noise. But they didn’t replace it. Instead they opened the windows. And for the first time we became aware that they played music. All day. Good music — symphonies, concertos, sonatas. The best. The greatest. But all day. And loud. Loud.

On the third day I called them. “Al. This is Tod next door.”

“Tod, how you doing?”

“Al, will you do me a favor? A big favor? Would you lower your record player a little?”

“We don’t have a record player, we’ve got a radio.”

“Would you lower it for me? I’m trying to work.”

“Sure. Why didn’t you tell me? Sure.”

Almost instantly our apartment went silent. But two or three days later the music came on as loud as ever. And stayed on. The only thing louder was their fights.

“They’re like animals,” Bette said. “And the thing is, they’re intelligent people. And nice, if it weren’t for the drinking. I still think of the day he came over to help us.”

“Look,” I said, “I’m going to call ’em again.”

This time Hetta answered. Her first word came out “ ’Low?”

I said, “Hetta, this is next door. Tod. I hate to bother you, but would you please lower the radio for me?”

“You don’ like music?” There was a little giggle in her voice.

“I love music. But don’t you think it’s blasting?”

Al came on. “Who’s this?”

“This is Tod again. I really hate to be a pain, but I’d appreciate it if you would lower it.”

“Sure.” Then without hanging up, he began yelling at her, blaming her, and then she began yelling at him. Then the phone went dead. I was sure he’d forget about the radio, but he didn’t. For a few moments I couldn’t believe the sudden silence. It was as though something pulsating and noxious had been drained out of the air.

But that same night Bette and I were wakened by the blasting of the radio.

“I don’t believe this,” I heard myself saying. “I don’t believe this.”

I looked over at the clock on the night table. It was almost three-thirty.

“Those bastards, those bastards!”

I grabbed the phone and punched out their number. It was almost five minutes before he came on. Sleepily. “Hullo.”

“Al, this is next door. I’m sorry to wake you, but could you please—”

“Jee-zus,” he cried out, “why don’t you people go to sleep?”

What? I wanted to reach my hands through the phone for his throat. “What do you think we’re trying to do?” I yelled. “What do you think’s keeping us up? What do you—”

He hung up. And the music kept on. I ran into the living room, grabbed a small radio, found rock music, turned it up loud. I was going to put it against the wall or open the window—

I turned it off. And for the first time I thought of murder. Not seriously, mind you, but still it was the first time I can remember where I really wanted someone dead.

The music was still playing loud the next morning. I called the police, then watched from my front window as a patrol car pulled up and an officer got out and went to their door. Soon the music stopped. But a couple of days later, it was the same thing. I called the police again.

I never told the police who I was, but of course Al and Hetta knew. In fact, he made a big thing out of smiling at me as we passed on the street one day.

“Look,” Bette said when the second cop’s visit didn’t work for more than two days, “we’re just going to have to move.”

“Move. Those sons of bitches aren’t going to make us move!”

We’d started playing our own TV and CD player loud, to drown out their music. But theirs always seemed a little higher. Then one afternoon, a Saturday, I called Bette to come to the window. We would do everything we could to avoid looking into their bedroom, but there they were, sprawled out on separate beds, fully dressed and asleep while the radio was blasting.

“They’re not even listening,” she said. “They’re dead drunk, they’re in a stupor—”

“And we have to listen, we have to hear it!”

I swept up the phone and stabbed out their number. And I kept calling them for maybe fifteen minutes without them waking up. Then I ran to their house and rang the doorbell. I kept my finger on it for minutes at a time. I could hear it ringing through the house. Then I knocked hard on the door, then again — and the second time I did, it gave. It creaked open.

There was a door to the left that opened to the first floor. But in front of me was the stairway to the second floor. It seemed to climb up into darkness, though the day was bright with sun. And even before I took a step toward the stairs, I was hit by the stench of cat urine.

I called up there, “Hello!”

Nothing. Just the music. Beethoven, I remember, though I don’t remember what.

“Al!”

I pictured them in their beds.

Maybe, I thought, they’re dead.

It was with a feeling of both hope and dread of what I might find that I took the first step up.

“Al!”

Still only silence. I took another slow step up, then another. Something brushed against my ankle but I didn’t have time to be startled because I saw instantly that it was a cat. It ran up the steps and stared down at me. Three or four others joined it. One of them meowed and came down toward me.

I continued walking up through the stench.

I was on the second floor now, in a hallway strewn with clothes and newspapers, staring through the din of music into their bedroom. They lay in the same fixed way, he on his back, mouth open, she on her right side. I came closer, heart beating fast, unable to tell if they were alive. And then I saw the rise and fall of their breathing.

The radio was on a night table between their beds. I went over and looked at it carefully, to be sure I knew how to turn it off, aware that a greater blasting — or even the jolt of total silence — might wake them. But they didn’t move in the room’s sudden hush. I walked quietly out of the room and down the steps, closing the door.

Bette was waiting for me at the top of our stairs. I said, “Honey, you’ll never believe what I did.”

“Believe? I saw you. Oh God, he had the legal right to kill you. You shouldn’t have done that. That was crazy.”

“Well, they drove me crazy.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Oh stop it. It’s funny. It’s something we’ll be telling our kids.”

“You took a terrible chance.”

It was maybe an hour later when we heard them fighting.

“You did!”

“No, you did!”

“Don’t tell me that! I know what I did! You did!”

“I didn’t touch that goddamn radio!” she screamed.

“You’re saying I did? Are you telling me I did? Don’t tell me I did, you low-life bitch! I know what I did! Don’t tell me!”

Bette said, “Oh Jesus. Let’s get out of here. I want some fresh air.”

“This is funny,” I said. “I’m sorry, but it is funny.”

“Let’s get out of here. Let’s take a walk, something.”

We walked over to a small park several blocks away. Then we stopped at a luncheonette and had lunch. When we headed back and turned the comer at our street, we were jolted by the sight of several police cars parked up the block along our curb, and a crowd of people staring on from across the street.

“What...” But Bette, a hand starting to rise to her mouth, couldn’t finish, and we both began walking faster.

Something made us hesitate going over to the police. Instead we went across the street and asked what happened. Two people answered at the same time. They were dead, the couple who lived there. Apparently he’d stabbed her — repeatedly — and then hanged himself.

Bette and I stared at each other. Her face was drained of blood. She looked sick. And I felt not only horrified and guilty but afraid. Of the stories that might come out about what I’d done. Even about my fingerprints on the radio.

But most of all, I knew that this was a time that could change our lives together. Where we would somehow either become closer — or grow irretrievably apart.

The most popular of Edward D. Hoch’s series characters, the irrepressible Nick Velvet has once again captured the imagination of important producers and writers for television. Mr. Hock tells us that the character is now under option to writer/producer Frank Lupo, the creator of suck TV kits as The A-Team and Hunter. We hope to see Nick on television soon!

Driving through the slushy streets of Greenwich Village on a brisk December afternoon, Nick Velvet saw a clerk standing in front of a flower shop smoking a cigarette. In the old days, when he was growing up in the Village, that man would have been a lookout, ready to sound the alarm if any cops appeared to break up the high-stakes gambling in the back room. But times had changed, and now it was just a guy who wasn’t allowed to smoke on the job.

Nick had driven down from Westchester, something he hated to do during the Christmas shopping season. An old school chum, Charles O’Neill, had phoned him that morning on an urgent matter, promising to pay double Nick’s usual twenty-five-thousand fee for a rush job. That was enough to get him into the car, despite Gloria’s complaint that he’d promised to go shopping with her. And that was enough to have him squeezing into a parking space on Hudson Street near the White Horse Tavern.

O’Neill was a few years younger than Nick but they’d played baseball together in high school and been casual friends ever since. His classy Greek Revival house was a few blocks back, past the flower shop, and Nick nodded to the smoker as he went by. This was not his first visit to the O’Neill place. Charles owned a sports catering service that had brought him into contact with certain mob elements in the past. He was a good family man with a pretty wife and a couple of cute kids. But his troubles with the mob wouldn’t go away. His brother-in-law Bob Temple had been killed at home a year earlier, and no one really believed the knife had been wielded by a crack addict breaking into houses at random. Charles feared the mob had sent a warning that he should sell the business and go into some other line of work.

“Good to see you again, Nick,” Charles O’Neill greeted him at the front door. “Merry Christmas.”

“You’re five days early, but I’ll take a drink anyway if you’re offering one. What’s up? More trouble with the mob?”

O’Neill led him into the big living room with its polished hardwood floor and oversized mirrors reflecting the myriad ferns and flowering plants with which his wife Ida had decorated the place. “I have no mob contacts, Nick. You should know that.” He picked up a decanter from the sideboard. “Too early in the day for bourbon?”

“A bit. A cold beer would be fine if you have one.”

Charles O’Neill chuckled. “The first time we ever met you were drinking a beer.” He opened a small refrigerator below the sideboard and took out a bottle. “I think you were eighteen at the time.”

Nick declined a glass and took a sip. Even on a chilly day it tasted good. “How are Ida and the kids?”

“Fine. They’re out seeing Santa Claus with my sister.”

Nick took another sip of beer. “Now what’s your problem?”

“Are you familiar with The Mysterious Bookshop on West Fifty-sixth Street?”

“I’ve passed it. Down the street from Carnegie Hall’s stage door.”

“That’s the place. A man named Otto Penzler owns it, and in addition to selling new books he buys and sells used mysteries, especially valuable first editions. Buys them from all over the world.”

Nick glanced at the single bookcase with its collection of bookclub titles. “Are you a collector?”

“I’m barely a reader. Those are Ida’s books. My brother-in-law Bob was the mystery fan. Did you know him?”

“Bob Temple? Never met him, but I saw your sister once.”

“His death was a terrible blow to Marci. And then there were all the rumors of a mob killing. No truth to it, of course. He was probably stabbed by some drug addict looking for money.” O’Neill laughed sadly. “The house was full of books, not money.”

“Where does The Mysterious Bookshop figure in all this?”

“My sister Marci has been wanting to clear out Bob’s things ever since he was killed. She thinks it’s morbid to keep them, and I agree. But she just can’t bring herself to go through everything. Just after Thanksgiving she and Ida spent a week at a beauty spa on Long Island. While they were gone I packed up all Bob’s mysteries and sold them to Otto Penzler. He paid a pretty good price for them, and best of all, it got them out of the house — about four hundred books in ten boxes.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I sold something I shouldn’t have. Now I need to get it back. I need you to steal it for me.”

“Valuable books are like cash or jewels. You know I don’t touch anything of value.”

“This isn’t a book. It’s a bookmark in one of the mysteries I sold.”

“Go in and tell Penzler about it.”

“I can’t do that. He’d probably want a fortune for it.”

“Nowhere near the fortune you’re offering me to steal it.”

O’Neill looked pained. “I know you’ll keep your mouth shut.”

“All right,” Nick said with a sigh. “What does it look like and what book is it in?”

“It’s a thin strip of copper with some rust on it — a combination bookmark and letter opener, really. But I don’t know just where it is.”

“How many books are there?”

“He bought them all — over four hundred, all hardcover. I took them to the store in my van and helped carry them up to his private study. It’s a big room on the second floor with his personal library in it. He said he’d have to store the books there until he could price them after Christmas. This is their busy season at the store. So that gives us a few days, at least.”

“I’ll need time to flip through four hundred books. That means breaking in at night.”

Charles O’Neill shook his head. “The store has a good alarm system, and Penzler lives right upstairs. You wouldn’t have time to find it before you were discovered.”

“Then I’ll go in while the store is open.”

“I can tell you Penzler and his assistant are in and out of that study all the time. There are several other employees too, and they make sure no one goes in there.”

“I’ll find a way.”

“It has to be before Christmas, and that’s Monday. The store will probably be closed on Sunday too. So you’ve only got till Saturday.”

He was interrupted by the opening of the front door and the voices of women and children. Ida O’Neill, a dark-haired, pale-skinned beauty, entered with her two young daughters and Charles’s sister Marci. Nick put down his empty bottle and said hello to them all.

“We saw Santa, Daddy!” the youngest girl hurried to tell her father. The older one, at an age to know better, simply smirked.

Ida O’Neill turned to Nick. “It’s good to see you again. You know Charles’s sister, don’t you?”

“I believe we met once years ago,” Nick said. Marci Temple was one of those almost-pretty women who relied on cosmetics to complete the job nature had left undone. She was a bit younger than her brother and Ida, and seeing her now, Nick couldn’t help but remember how her husband had died. He and Marci had been awakened around three A.M. by an intruder. Bob had gone to investigate and Marci had heard a tussle and a scream from her husband. She found him dying from a throat wound and immediately phoned the police. He was dead when they arrived a few minutes later. The knife-wielding slasher had escaped.

“I remember you,” Marci Temple said, shaking Nick’s hand. “It was when we were both a lot younger.”

“What brings you into town today?” Ida asked, shucking the winter coats from her daughters. “Christmas shopping?”

“I suppose you could call it that,” Nick said. He glanced at his watch and told Charles O’Neill, “I really must be getting back. Gloria will wonder what’s happened to me.”

“I’ll be hearing from you?”

“Before the end of the week,” Nick promised. When Charles walked him to the door, he noticed the man was still smoking in front of the flower shop. “That guy must really be hooked on cigarettes.”

O’Neill chuckled. “No, they run a crap game in the back of the flower shop and he’s the lookout for the cops. It’s just like the old days.”

“Yeah,” Nick said and walked to his car.

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.

Mickey took his glasses over to the glass slab of a coffee table and eased himself down on the zebra-striped sofa. He slowly sipped his scotch, letting the silence settle in, biding his time, watching Craig nervously take another toke on his economy-sized joint. The gunmetal gray Venetian blinds were slanted against the hot metallic light outside and the sound of multiple sirens suddenly corkscrewed up from the street — police or emergency vehicles.

Craig came around the coffee table, slow as a water buffalo, as if the grass had already put him in a state of hyponoia. He sat down heavily across from Mickey, breathing deeply like an emphysemic. He extended the joint over the table. “Wanna hit?”

“No, thanks,” Mickey said. “I don’t mix medications.”

Craig shrugged. “Forgot.” Closer, he looked dissipated, gray, a night creature caught in the hard headlights of noon.

“Eleven K,” Mickey said, friendly. He didn’t like the young man’s pallor; maybe he should be in the hospital like Mom. “When do I get it?”

“I’m a little short these days.” A laugh. “Like your water, amigo.”

Mickey purposefully didn’t smile. He sipped his drink.

“Wanna refill?” Craig asked. He was making a serious effort to keep things light, congenial.

Mickey nodded and Craig went back to the bar, returning with the bottle of Chivas. He poured Mickey a healthy portion and set the bottle on the coffee table between them. He took another soul-satisfying toke.

“Getting stoned isn’t going to help,” Mickey warned.

“I can handle it.”

There were more sirens in the street, harsh scissors cutting into the fabric of their silence.

Craig made a face. “I hate that sound. There was a fire in my neighborhood when I was a kid. One of those hook-and-ladder trucks ran over my dog.”

“When?” Mickey asked after a pause.

“When? Mid sixties, I must’ve been five or six.”

“I meant, when am I getting my money.”

Craig tried a smile. “Oh. That.”

Mickey let him chew on it. He knew the marijuana was tamping down the fear, slowly smothering it with a safe layer of euphoria. Craig had set the joint carefully on the edge of the table. Mickey reached over, picked it up, and dropped it into his glass of water.

Craig’s reaction was on tape-delay. “Hey,” he said finally. “You drowned my roach. Why did you do that?”

“This is a business conversation, amigo. We’re not just two old friends sitting around killing time shooting the breeze.”

Craig was staring at Mickey’s straw hat, which was sitting on the cushion next to him. “What is that thing?” Craig laughed. “Circa nineteen thirty? It dates you, Mickey. My grandfather used to wear a hat like that. Christ, that band with the cockamamy flowers looks like a sarong or something.”

“Next time I’ll wear a baseball cap with the bill turned around backwards. Isn’t that how the street punks wear them?”

Craig looked mournfully at the roach floating like a small dead gardenia in the glass. “Next you’ll be saying you’re going to wear it to my funeral.”

“Who said anything about a funeral?” He realized that he had miscalculated Craig’s state of intoxication: This was a guy who started on the grass when the alarm went off in the morning.

“You’re a very deceptive dude,” Craig said, the not very friendly smile back in his beard. “You come shuffling up here with your straw hat and tie, nice as pie, like you’re the whole world’s grandpa. But if I don’t settle up you go talk to one of your ‘collectors.’ And if I don’t pay them — I come out of a disco some night and somebody puts a Glock to the back of my haircut.”

There were more sirens, adding to the commotion thirty stories down in the chasm of the street.

“Isn’t that how it works?” Craig asked. “All over a stinking measly eleven K.”

He had unconsciously raised his voice over the growing cacophony outside, to which was now added the deep bass admonitions of a bullhorn.

“How’s your mom?” Mickey asked.

“Not good. They don’t think she’ll last the month.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, she’s had a pretty good life, all things considered. I mean, on good days, when she’s up to it, she’s getting takeout from Le Bernadin. If you’re gonna live in style I guess you gotta die the same way.”

Mickey smiled sympathetically, not sure whether there were any species of sincerity in Craig’s comment. He decided not to ask the obvious question, preferring to let the son bring it up himself.

“Of course, once she assumes room temperature I’ll be coming into a pile of money.” He grinned conspiratorially as if Mickey were in the will too.

Mickey finished the scotch. “Estates take a long time to clear up.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be getting advances from the bank.”

“So you’re asking me to wait.”

The decibel level had gotten higher. Annoyed, Craig jumped up and went over to the window. With a surprisingly quick movement he lashed up on the blinds — instantly revealing a startling scene across the way. Interested, Mickey got up and joined him at the window.

A young woman was standing on the ledge of an office building directly opposite their condominium. Even at this distance she looked fairly well dressed, a secretary or assistant from one of the offices, a dark-haired, dark-complected woman, probably a Latina.

“Jumper,” Craig muttered. They both looked down simultaneously at the burgeoning crowds of pedestrians and emergency vehicles far below on the street. Across from them police were hanging out of a window trying to talk to or distract the woman, but to no avail. She was pressed against the stone face of the building, arms outstretched, staring down, seemingly fascinated by the crowds and activity that she herself had created.

“This city’s got some kinda record for crazies,” Craig said. “Let ’er jump if that’s what she wants.”

“Where’s your compassion?” Mickey asked, digging him.

“At Lennox Hill Hospital. I got a dying mother, remember?” He seemed mesmerized by the woman on the ledge; a cop started to climb out of the window and the woman frantically waved him back.

Craig started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

Craig turned from the window. There were bright stars of merriment in his grass-dulled eyes. “Wanna make a bet?” he asked Mickey.

Nothing amazed Mickey anymore. “What do you mean? Bet on—?”

“The jumper.” He was back watching the scene on the ledge. Now the cops had opened another window nearer the young woman and a man in plainclothes was leaning out. The man’s heavy-rimmed glasses flashed like a heliograph in the sun.

“Come on, Mickey,” he teased. “You’re the dude who’s famous for betting on anything.”

He had him there, the old man conceded to himself. He had even bet an L.A. chum how many houseflies he could kill in an hour — calculating his odds on the fact that California flies were slower than their Big Apple counterparts. Almost without thinking he said, “She won’t jump.”

Craig was suddenly, literally, in his face, so close Mickey could count the premature gray hairs in his Nordic blond beard. “Eleven K. If she jumps we’re even-steven.”

Mickey’s foot was asleep; he had been standing too still too long. “You’re on,” he said and immediately felt like a goddamn fool. Why was he taking on this stupid bet — trying to maintain his reputation as an indiscriminating gambling idiot?

The man with the glasses was talking to the woman, who was silent, rigid, keeping her own counsel.

“He’s gotta be one of those police shrinks,” Craig said. “Suicide-prevention guy.”

“They know what buttons to press.”

“Yeah, but she ain’t buying. The only button she’s gonna press is the one going down.”

He went quickly back behind the bar and broke open a bottle of tequila.

“I thought you potheads didn’t juice,” Mickey said, rubbing the pins and needles from his leg.

Craig sloshed liquor into his glass. “It’s like Sinatra said — booze, broads, cigarettes — whatever gets you through the night.”

“Or the afternoon,” Mickey said, still weighed down with misgivings. “She could be up there for hours.”

“Somehow I think you’ll stick around,” Craig said. “If you came all the way over here to put the squeeze on me for eleven K, I really think you’ll wait around to lose it.”

“Who says I’m going to lose it?” The old competitive spark was back.

“That shrink’s batting zip. I’d like to see his track record. You wanna bet he’s lost more than he’s won?”

The portable phone rang on the bar. Craig ignored it and it rang and rang, a torturous finger in their ears.

“Will you answer your goddamn phone?” Mickey said.

“It’s a bookie. But he’s got all the patience of a fruit fly. Two more rings and he’ll fold.”

It took three and the phone finally stopped. Craig was at the window again, pointing, laughing. “Lookit the pigeons—”

Mickey replenished his glass from the Chivas bottle. On an empty stomach he began to feel the effects of the alcohol, a slowly numbing drowsiness.

A little convoy of pigeons was calmly walking around the woman, searching for nonexistent food on the ledge. She barely noticed them, still intent on the activity below.

“Wanna increase the bet?” Craig asked later.

“No.”

“Getting a little nervous?”

“They’ll talk her in.”

Craig had gone into the kitchen. He came out with a lime for his tequila and a knife. “Anything new?” he asked, not even glancing at the window.

“They got a TV camera now.”

A T-shirted technician was aiming a mini-cam from the far window. The woman seemed oblivious that she was being shot, and if she noticed she didn’t seem to care.

Craig was busy hunting around for the remote. He finally found it between two cushions on the sofa. “It’s gotta be on one of the local stations,” he said. “Those vultures are always downwind of a good story.” He was clicking through the channels.

The phone began ringing again.

“If you’re not going to answer it,” Mickey said, “why don’t you take the damn thing off the hook?”

Craig grinned. He had found nothing on the television and was now slicing wedges of lime on the bar. “I just wanna see how persistent this guy is.”

“How many guys are you in to?”

“Few. Don’t let it eat you up.”

“Why don’t you give them the inheritance story like you gave me?”

“You think it’s all bull, a con job? My mom’s not dying?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m just saying it might get some of these guys off your back, buy you some time.”

Craig lifted the bolero shirt, was scratching his hairless white belly. “You hungry? I’m getting these hunger pangs.”

“It’s the grass, amigo. Gets you ravenous.”

Craig was genuinely puzzled. “But I didn’t smoke that much — thanks to you.”

Now it was Mickey’s turn to jibe back: “Maybe it’s the fear kicking in because they’re going to talk her down.”

“No way.” He glanced out the window, where the woman was edging farther away from the window with the guy in the glasses. Even from a distance they could see the lines of frustration etched deeply on his face.

“You feel like some pizza?” Craig asked.

“Why not.”

Craig picked up the phone. “Pepperoni? Anchovies?”

“No anchovies.”

Craig called a neighborhood pizzeria and placed the order. “They deliver pretty fast,” he said after he hung up. “Unless they’re all outside watching the jumper.”

Time dragged on while they watched the woman on the ledge and waited for the delivery. The sun had shifted in the hot sky, no longer flashing on the shrink’s glasses. The woman was a still-frame in the windless afternoon, a frozen enigma, new flocks of pigeons sauntering by her on their eternal scavenger hunt for food.

“Kids’ balloons,” Craig said after a long period of silence. He was stretched out on the barcalounger, hands laced behind his head, the glass of tequila squeezed in the V of his crotch.

Mickey sat on the window ledge, eyes fixed on the jumper, seeing her but not seeing her, a pinprick of headache puncturing the base of his skull. Why had he allowed himself to get trapped into this? Why hadn’t he given the kid an ultimatum and split? He could have been right now at that poker game on Park Avenue with that old Broadway composer who was born a loser. Craig’s words reverberated behind his headache: “Kids’ balloons?” he repeated.

“Yeah,” Craig said. “You always see these little kids with their mothers walking around with these balloons on a string. But they lose them and they float away.”

“So?” Maybe he should have let Craig keep his joint. He was beginning to sound dopey on his tequila high.

“What I’m asking,” Craig continued, “is where these balloons go. They go up but they never come down. Where have you ever seen a busted balloon on the ground? Condoms yes, balloons no.”

Mickey strained to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “You know, I never really thought about that — where do the balloons go?”

“Up, up, and away,” Craig said dreamily. “I once thought of calling the science editor of the Times. Maybe he would know.” The phone was ringing again.

The man with the glasses was replaced by a balding, middle-aged guy in what looked like a blue-striped summer suit. He called something out to the woman, who jerked out of her immobility, startled by the new voice and its volume.

The phone stopped just as the doorbell rang. It was the pizza delivery, a curly-haired kid in a baseball cap with the bill turned around.

Craig checked out the pizza while the kid stared out the window at the spectacle across the way. Craig said, “Carlo — you think she’s gonna jump?”

Carlo shrugged his thin shoulders. “Dunno.”

Craig was smelling the hot pie. “We’ll bet. You put up the pizza.”

Carlo’s mouth twisted into a painful smile; he was wearing braces. “No, man. I don’t bet with you.”

Craig winked at Mickey. “But you know she won’t jump, Carlo. My friend Mickey doesn’t think so either.”

“Leave the kid alone,” Mickey said.

The kid held out a receipt and a rollerball pen. “No bets.”

Craig laughed, hugged him, digging a bill from his pocket. “Here. You’re getting smart, Carlo. Buy la tua amica some pizza.”

He signed the receipt. Carlo started for the door, then turned back, hesitantly. “There was two men downstairs, Mr. Detweiler. They ask for you.”

Craig’s glances ricocheted off Mickey back to the delivery boy. “What did they want?”

“Want to come up. The doorman, Eddie — he say you was out.”

“Good. That’s what I told him to say.” His expression tightened. “Did they see you with the pizza?”

“I say it was for Mrs. Gramiak in two-eight-two-nine.” He looked at Craig expectantly, batting his dark sensuous eyes, and Mickey doubted if he had a tua amica.

Craig palmed him another bill. “Very good, Carlo. I told you were getting smart.”

After he let the boy out Craig clapped his hands, energized, bounced back to his shot of tequila.

“Who were the men, Craig? Why were they looking for you?”

“IRS. They’ve been giving me a lot of grief. Living in digs like this and next to no reported income. You never had trouble from them?”

“Now and then. But you can’t keep putting them off. Sooner or later they’ll nail you and it’ll be even worse.”

“By then I’ll be rich,” Craig laughed.

“Sure thing, right? Mom’s going to buy the farm.”

“Well, I won’t go as far as pulling out the plug on her life-support system, if that’s what you mean.” His mood shifted, serious again. “We both know — don’t we? — there’s no such thing as a sure thing.”

Their eyes drifted back to the window. Status quo on the ledge. Now there were people hanging out other windows, probably the woman’s office coworkers, trying to persuade her not to jump. The sky had darkened; everything seemed wrapped in a muggy haze. Even a few early lights had been turned on in the office building.

“Might rain,” Craig observed. He was pulling off slices from the wheel of pizza, dumping them on plates from the kitchen cabinet. Mickey sat uncomfortably on a bar stool. The booze had become a co-conspirator with his headache, putting a damper on his appetite, and he regarded the gummy pizza with a growing distaste.

“If it does rain,” Craig ruminated, “and she slips and falls—”

“I’m ahead of you.”

“Like in the insurance policies — an act of God. I win.”

As if to underline his words, a long peal of thunder shook the sky, rattling the windows. Heat lightning flared like a giant flashbulb. The woman, for the first time, looked up as if the massed density of clouds presented some impossible salvation for her.

“You’re not eating,” Craig observed, surprised.

“Lost my appetite.”

Craig smiled maliciously. “Something I said?”

Mickey slid off the stool and went to the window. The telephone was ringing again, its stridency subsumed by another threatening roll of thunder.

He stared out across the abyss, across the sickening drop of space, as raindrops stung the window. Almost at that exact moment the young woman stared back at him, their eyes meeting with an inaudible click like a key going into a lock. The phone was still making its assaultive din — and Mickey saw the whole thing clearly, like a lightning flash, revealed for the first time. The jumper, the men asking for Craig, the inexorable ringing of the phone...

Before Craig could move from behind the bar, Mickey had reached out a long arm, snatched up the receiver—

A gruff male voice said, “Is this Mr. Detweiler, Craig Detweiler? We’ve been trying to contact you—”

Craig’s hand hammered down, breaking the connection. Mickey could read the suppressed fear just behind the violence in his eyes. Craig had the presence of mind to take the receiver off the hook so they couldn’t call back.

“You know that woman over there,” Mickey said. “The way I see it, she was probably one of your girlfriends. You dumped her and she got suicidal. Does she work in that building right across from here? — that’s how you met her, in one of the lunch places in the nabe, or even at your pizzeria?”

Craig was silent. A few more raindrops splattered the window as Mickey looked out again. It was eerie: It looked now as if the young woman was watching both of them.

“That wasn’t your bookie calling all the time — that was the cops trying to reach her boyfriend because she or one of her coworkers told them you were the problem and maybe the only one who could save her. Am I right?”

Craig turned abruptly from the window, preferring to face Mickey’s accusatory eyes, not the woman’s.

“You bastard,” Mickey said, no longer hiding his disgust. “You made a bet — and by not answering the phone, not talking to her, you practically insured that sooner or later she’d jump. The eleven K meant more to you than that poor broad’s life.”

He angrily slammed the receiver back on its hook, and Craig lunged for him, but he fought the young man away, silently, both breathing heavily.

“They came over here before and now they’ll come back,” Mickey panted, pushing Craig away, “because I answered the phone and they know somebody’s here. For God’s sake, Craig, talk to her, get her off that ledge!”

Craig sank down on the sofa, still breathing like a miler. He looked near tears. “My mother,” he said in a choked voice, “the old bag, she cut me out of the will — she’s sick to death of the gambling, the drugs—”

The phone began to ring.

“Answer it, Craig!”

His voice broke. “I–I owe ev’rybody — not just you. It’s a freaking nightmare. I’m at the end of my rope, Mickey—!”

“Get on the phone and save her goddamn life!”

Craig’s hand circled the phone, still hesitating...

Mickey sighed, the headache pounding him, looking one last time at the solitary figure of the young abandoned woman on the ledge. “Forget the eleven K,” he said wearily. “You don’t owe me.”

Craig’s startled eyes looked at him, saw him nod affirmatively, and then he snatched up the phone.

As Mickey let himself out of the apartment, slumping, suddenly dead beat, he heard Craig’s low voice on the phone. But a few seconds later, as he walked to the elevator, he was beginning to maybe catch his second wind. He wondered if he wasn’t too late to get over to that composer’s place on Park Avenue; maybe if the guy was as big a loser as they said he could make up the eleven K...

Mr. Keating says of the series to which this story belongs: “While it provides a reasonably accurate picture of today’s India — a picture conditioned, I admit, by the fact that for the first 10 years I wrote about Ghote I had not actually visited his country — I like to think it puts a recognizable human being into... situations likely to happen to any of us.”

“It is someone urgent-urgent wanting you. Some angrezi it is sounding like.”

Inspector Ghote was not sorry his wife calling out had cut short his morning shower. In December in Bombay the water has a distinct chill to it. He wrapped a towel round his middle and hurried to the telephone, feeling the cool stone of the floor on his bare feet.

An Englishman wanting him? But who?

And urgently...?

“Ghote speaking.”

“Ah. Ah, thank God, it’s you. Henry Reymond here.”

Mr. Henry Reymond? The name was somehow half-familiar. Who the devil...?

“Inspector? Inspector? Are you there? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes. I am hearing. Why not?”

“Well... Indian telephones.”

“Our system is one hundred percent first-class.”

Ghote had let himself voice some resentment. Who was this Westerner to decide that if something was Indian it must be inefficient, however much Bombay phones had once been a nightmare of crossed lines and sudden cutoffs?

And then some recollection of that half-concealed frigid disapproval told him who this Reymond Henry, Henry Reymond, was.

Yes. Years ago he had met the man. A noted British author, or so the papers had called him. In Bombay on some sort of exchange visit with an Indian author. And... And there had been a murder next-door to the flat the fellow had been lent. The Shivaji Park case. And all those years ago he himself had been landed with no more than the task of keeping this Henry Reymond, who wrote, yes, crime stories, out of the way. The fellow had been being one damn nuisance. And he had gone on plaguing him all the time with his high-and-mighty questions-this and questions-that about every awkward aspect of Bombay life.

“Mr. Reymond,” he brought himself to say — Indian hospitality must never be less than wholehearted — “you are altogether welcome here. You are in Bombay itself, yes?”

“No, no. I’m in Delhi. Er — New Delhi. I’m here on a tour for the British Council. Three of us poets.”

“Poets? Were you saying you are poet? But I am thinking it is crime books you are writing. Some hero who is collecting something. Yes, shells. You are writing books wherein this shells-wallah is all the time solving very-very fantastic mysteries.”

“Mr. Peduncle. My detective.”

Now it was the Englishman’s turn to sound offended.

“Yes, yes. I was once going through one of those books. Mr. Peduncle Caught in the Meshes. Very good.”

“Ah yes. Well, thank you.” The noted author seemed less hurt. “Well, you see, it’s like this. A couple of years ago, finding the Peduncle books were bringing me in a rather decent income, I decided to try a bit of an experiment. I wrote a crime novel in verse. A long poem really. Set in India, actually. In the days of the Raj. And, well, because of it the British Council asked me to come on this tour.”

“And you would be visiting Bombay also, yes?”

“Well, yes. Yes, eventually. Only... Well, this is what I’m ringing about actually. You see, I’ve been arrested.”

“Arrested? But what for are they arresting?”

“It— It’s— Well, the thing is, they think I’ve committed a murder.”

“But why are they thinking such? And what for are you telling me this per telephone?”

“That’s it. That’s it exactly. You see, no one here would listen to me. Or to the chaps from the High Commission either. And then I remembered you. You’re the only Indian police officer who’s ever paid any real attention to anything I said.”

Ghote remembered in his turn. How — warm Indian hospitality being day by day more and more worn away — he had battled and battled to find answers to those on-and-on damned questions.

“So that’s why,” the now familiar British voice went on, “I’d like you to get on to the Head of Crime Branch here and tell him that he’s being utterly ridiculous.”

The words, in that bang-bang voice, had entered Ghote’s ear. But it took several seconds, it seemed, before such an outrageous request entered his mind.

For him, for a simple inspector from Bombay, to telephone the Head of Crime Branch at the Centre and to tell him — To tell him what he was doing was utterly ridiculous. It — It — It would be like telling Bombay’s number one film star he was incapable of acting, or, worse, of dancing.

“But, Mr. Reymond — But, sir... Sir, what you are asking is a marathon impossible thing. Hundred percent.”

There was a long silence at the other end of the line.

And then the voice that came trickling into his ear was very different from the one he had heard up to then.

“Inspector... Inspector, please. Please, I didn’t do it. Inspector, you know me. We knew each other well back then in Bombay. We were friends, weren’t we? You know I’m not someone who could ever kill anybody.”

Ghote thought.

What his bugbear of long ago had said was certainly true. Insofar as he could ever state that any human being was incapable of murder, he would have said it about the big, flabby, cucumber-cool, unexcitable Englishman he was recollecting more and more clearly with every passing minute.

So — the thoughts went click-clicking through his mind — if Mr. Henry Reymond, who was now, it seemed, a distinguished poet, had been arrested on suspicion of committing a murder which it was almost impossibly unlikely he had committed, then whoever was responsible in faraway Delhi was on the point of causing an international incident. The British newspapers would kick up one worldwide tamasha.

So... So, if there was anything he himself could do to get the business quietly forgotten, then it was up to him to do it. No one else in the whole of India probably knew more about Mr. Henry Reymond than he did.

And he thought that, just perhaps, there was something he could do. If he went to his own boss, Assistant Commissioner Pradhan, and explained to him what the situation was, then just possibly Mr. Pradhan might phone his opposite number at the Centre and convince him he ought to go much, much, much more carefully.

“Mr. Reymond,” he said, “I will to my level best do what I can. Kindly await development.”

Raymond Steiber is as mysterious as his writings. When we asked him for some biographical notes he wrote: “I think ideally the author shouldn’t even exist for the reader — the story should just happen as if it came out of nowhere.” So we cannot tell you anything about him except that he also writes novels. (Interested? Try St. Martin s Press).

It was snowing when Sue Corwin turned out of the parking lot of the Grand Union and she felt her rear wheels break loose. A brief loss of traction — nothing more than that — but she tightened up anyway. Slick roads did that to her now. Slick roads summoned up the image of Ted’s Bronco, the front and side smashed in, the windshield gone, the steering wheel a twisted oval.

The snow came down harder. The wiper blades swept back and forth, barely able to keep up. She switched on her headlights, more to be seen than to see. It was going to be a big one, she decided. The first big snow of the winter. She’d always looked forward to the first snow. You threw an extra log in the woodstove. You brewed a cup of herbal tea. You snuggled up on the sofa with a good book, glancing up now and then to watch the progress of the storm. Winter was her quiet time. In the real-estate business you made your money in the spring, summer, and early fall. Then winter came and everything slowed to a crawl and you discovered other pleasures — rather guilty pleasures in this age. Tending the house, trying out new recipes on Ted, loafing. There was a lot to be said for loafing. It was the nifty little secret the housewives of the earlier part of the century had kept from their husbands.

But now — now winter felt different. It felt bleak and lonely, and as she turned into her driveway, the old frame house looked cheerless in the failing light.

She got the groceries out of the backseat and carried them up to the house. I ought to have a dog, she thought. Something warm and nonjudgmental to greet me when I open the door. But the spaniel had been with Ted that day and shared his fate. A state trooper had found her bloody and wimpering in the snow Reside the wreck. And the trooper had put her out of her misery, risking a dressing-down from his superior for drawing and firing his weapon.

She turned on the lights. Lights in the living room, lights in the kitchen. It didn’t help much. The basic fact was that she was alone.

She put on the tea kettle, then stood in front of the window while she waited for it to heat. The house wasn’t on the lake. It stood on a rise well back from it. But you could see the lake and the mountains beyond, too. Not just now, though. The swirling snow had made them do a disappearing act.

The phone rang, jolting her. It was the office phone, not the one in the living room. She went on through and picked it up without bothering to turn on the lights.

“Hi,” a voice said.

“Who is this?” But she already knew who it was. She knew from the reaction in her chest.

“It’s Ben. Ben Marciano. I had some business up in Albany and I thought I’d swing by and see you.”

She glanced out the window. “It’s not the best weather for it, Ben.”

“Don’t run me off now, I’m halfway there. We could have a meal at that place by the lake — Eddie’s. It’s not exactly the Four Seasons, but then I’ve never been in the Four Seasons.”

She hadn’t seen him since late in the fall. There’d been a snow that day, too, but then the sun had come out again and by late afternoon it was gone.

“Do you think you can make it in that car of yours?”

“It’s light. It rides right up over the snow. And it’s got frontwheel drive. And what the hell, if I end up in a ditch, I can always walk.”

She surprised herself by laughing. “We’d need a blowtorch to thaw you out.”

“Just stick me by the fire till a warm puddle forms. So is it all right to stop by?”

She hesitated a moment. She wasn’t going to say no, but she was like everybody else, she had to play the game.

“Well, I guess,” she said.

And wasn’t that well done — just the right amount of disinterest. She wondered at her guile. And she hadn’t had any practice in years. Maybe it came with the chromosomes.

“I figure six-thirty, seven o’clock,” he said.

She thought about Ted. She thought about the fatal slide. “Don’t force it, Ben.”

“Don’t worry. I’m indestructible. Don’t you know that?”

She put down the phone. Out in the kitchen the water was boiling briskly. She made her tea. Then she went upstairs and did something that made her blush in spite of her thirty-five years. She changed the sheets on the bed.

This new story by Bill Pronzini also appears in a collection featuring his “Nameless” detective. (See Spadework; Crippen & Landru Publishers / P.O. Box 9315, Norfolk, VA 23505.) It is a mark of the author’s extraordinary talent that he has been able to develop his character in 25 years’ worth of stories and novels without ever giving him a name.

The little girl in the polka-dot playsuit was a holy terror. So was her mother. In fact, the kid wasn’t all that bad — just spoiled and rambunctious — compared to the mom-thing that had spawned her.

The whole sorry business was the mother’s fault. You couldn’t lay any blame on the child; she hadn’t been taught any better. You could lay a little of the blame on me, I suppose, but not much when you looked at it all in perspective. No, by God, the mother was the villain of the piece. An even nastier villain in some ways than the pudgy guy in the leather jacket.

It started with the little girl. She kept finding me out of all the other shoppers crowding the Safeway aisles, like some sort of pint-sized heat-seeking missile. First she charged out from behind a bin full of corn in the produce section, accidentally banged my shin with one of her cute red pumps, and then charged off without so much as an upward or backward glance. Next she showed up in the meat department, standing directly behind me when I turned with a package of ground round in my hand; I had to do a nifty juking sidestep to avoid tripping over her, but it wasn’t as nifty as it might have been because I dropped the package and the cellophane wrapping split and the right leg of my trousers took on the sudden appearance of clothing in a splatter movie. And finally there was the collision in the cat- and dog-food aisle.

I was pushing my cart near the end of the aisle, minding my own business, looking down unhappily at the hamburger-stained pant-leg when she came flying around the corner with her arms outflung at her sides — playing airplane or some damn thing. Neither of us saw each other in time; she banged into the cart with a startled yelp. Just as this happened, the mother — an attractive doe-eyed blonde in her twenties — pushed her cart around the corner. She let out a yelp of her own when the kid bounced off and flopped down on a chubby little backside. She wasn’t hurt; her face scrunched up but she didn’t cry or even whimper. But the way the mother reacted, you’d have thought her daughter had been mortally wounded. She rushed over, picked the child up, brushed her off, examined her with a probing eye, clutched her possessively, and then glared at me as if I were something she’d just found caked on the bottom of her shoe.

“What’s the matter with you?” she said accusingly. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going?”

Under ordinary circumstances I would have diffused the situation by smiling, muttering a polite comment, and sidling off to continue my shopping. But the circumstances tonight were not ordinary. There was my sore shin, and my bloody pantleg, and the facts that I’d had a long, tiring day and Kerry was working late and it was my turn to do both the shopping and the cooking of dinner, and the additional fact that I have zero tolerance for parents who allow their children to run wild in supermarkets, department stores, and other public places. I managed the smile all right, a tight little one, but not the polite comment or the sidling off.

“And why don’t you curb your kid,” I said, “before she really gets hurt?”

“What?” It came out more like a squawk than a word.

“Just what I said, lady. This is the third time your daughter’s run into me—”

“How dare you!”

“How dare I what?”

“Talk to me that way. Accuse Amy of attacking you.”

I wasn’t smiling anymore. “I didn’t say she attacked me—”

“Of all the insane things. A six-year-old child and an old brute like you.”

“Old brute?” I said. “Listen—”

“You practically run Amy down with your cart and then you...” Words failed her. She sputtered and said, “Oh!” and then realized that we’d drawn a small group of onlookers. This spurred her on; she was the type that would always play to a crowd. “Did any of you see it?” she asked the gawkers. “He almost ran my little girl down with his cart.”

Nobody admitted to having seen anything, but there were angry mumbles and a couple of hostile looks thrown my way.

“She lets the kid run loose,” I said, “play games in the aisles—”

“I never runned loose!” cute little Amy said. “I never did!”

Some guy came up and poked me on the shoulder. “Why don’t you pick on somebody your own size?”

“I wasn’t picking on anybody.”

“Nice family like this,” a henna-rinsed woman said. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

The nice family stood hating me with their bright doe eyes. The baby holy terror stuck her tongue out at me. The finger-poker did his annoying thing again. “Apologize to them, why don’t you?”

“Apologize? I’m the one who—”

I stopped because nobody was listening; I didn’t have a sympathetic ear in the bunch. Tiny warning bells went off in my head. A no-win situation if I’d ever found myself in one. Let it go on much longer and it would turn ugly and escalate into an incident. So? So I bit my tongue. I took a tight grip on my offended pride. And I lied and dissembled like a coward.

“Okay,” I said, “it was all my fault. The child’s not hurt. Suppose we just forget the whole thing.”

That satisfied the gawkers. Within ten seconds they were gone, though not without a few parting glances of dislike in my direction. The mother set the little girl down — as soon as Amy’s feet touched the floor she was off again like a Piper Cub taking wing — and turned back to her cart. She tried to jockey it past mine at the same time I tried to jockey past hers. This produced a mutter on my part, an exasperated sigh and another angry glare on hers. We finally managed to clear each other without clashing, and she went her way and I went mine — but not until we’d traded a couple more barbs, trite but heartfelt.

Hers: “The stupid jerks you run into.”

Mine: “No truer words, Mommie Dearest.”

I finished loading my cart in a dark funk, wheeled it to the checkout stands and into the shortest line. I had just transferred the last item onto the conveyor thing they have when something banged hard into the backs of my legs. I swung around.

The blonde with her cart, naturally. “Oh,” she said in a voice like maple syrup over arsenic, lying through her teeth, “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to bump you like that.”

I swallowed eight or nine choice words. Sweet young Amy was clutching Mommy’s skirt; she showed me her tongue again. I resisted an impulse to answer in kind, reminding myself that I was above such childish behavior, I really was. I put my back to the nice family and kept it there the entire time my purchases were being rung up and paid for. I didn’t look their way as I left the store, either, for fear that I wasn’t as far above childish behavior as I cared to believe.

It was a cold, foggy night outside, but the air tasted good and it had a soothing effect on my abused feelings. The parking lot at the Diamond Heights Safeway is almost always full in the evening, and tonight was no exception; I’d had to park toward the back of the lot, near the exit onto Diamond Heights Boulevard. All I could see over that way, through the swirls and eddies of fog, were vague shapes and outlines.

I spotted the pudgy guy in the leather jacket at about the same time I located my car. He was wandering around in the general vicinity, about three cars north of mine. He stopped when he saw me, turned his head partway as I neared with my rattling cart. When I was close enough for him to get a good look at me, his head turned again and he moved away. Not far, though, just over to a backed-in Ford Econoline van new enough to still be wearing dealer plates. He bent and peered at the van’s front end, as if something about it had snagged his attention.

There was a furtiveness about him that I didn’t like. I kept watching him while I put the groceries away in the trunk. He straightened after about ten seconds, went around on the far side of the van without looking my way again. I shut the trunk and approached the driver’s door. The van was bulky enough and the fog thick enough so that I couldn’t tell where the pudgy guy had gone. He might have continued on toward the far north end of the lot, or he might still be lurking somewhere near the Ford.

I got into the car. The fog had laid thick films of wetness over the windows; I couldn’t see through them. I scooted over on the passenger side, rolled the window down about two inches. The van was visible again through the narrow opening, as was the empty asphalt lane in front of it. There was still no sign of the pudgy guy.

Nothing happened for about three minutes. I was still trying to make up my mind what to do when somebody materialized out of the fog over that way.

It was the blond woman pushing her grocery cart, little Amy skipping along beside her.

And where they went was straight to the Ford van.

The thing had four doors; the woman unlocked the rear one and began shoving sacks inside while the baby holy terror ran back and forth in front. It’s all right, I told myself, nothing’s going down. But I had my hand on the door handle, my shoulder butted up against the door itself.

The woman finished loading her groceries, slammed the rear door. As she unlocked the driver’s I heard her call, “Amy, you come here this instant. I’ve had enough of your—”

That was as far as she got. The pudgy guy appeared around the front of the van, something dark and pointy in one hand that could only be a gun, moving with such suddenness that Amy shrieked and ran to her mother. He got there at the same time she did, yanked the keys out of the woman’s hand, and then slugged her hard enough to pitch her backward into the grocery cart.

I was out of the car by then, running. The guy was half inside the van when he saw me; he tried to squirm back out instead of going all the way in and locking the door, and that was his mistake. I hit the half-open door with my shoulder before he could slide clear of it, knocked him back against the side of the van. He struggled to get the gun up on me, but I pinned his arm with my left hand, slammed him in the belly with my right, and brought my knee driving upward at the same time. He made a thin squealing noise that blended right in with the screaming of the woman and the shrieking of the child. I smacked him in the belly again, twisted the gun out of his fingers, then punched him on the jaw as he was starting to sag. It was a good, solid, satisfying punch: He went all the way down and lay twitching at my feet.

Things stayed somewhat chaotic for the next couple of minutes. Some people came running up out of the fog, three or four of them asking alarmed questions. The woman had quit yowling and was on her feet again, tending to Amy, who was still going off in up-and-down riffs like a busted fire siren. I stuffed the gun into my coat pocket, started to lean down to make sure the pudgy guy wasn’t going to give me any more trouble, and somebody pushed in close enough to jostle me.

It was the finger-poker from inside. Glowering, he said, “What’s going on here? What’d you do this time—”

I gave him back his glower and told him to shut up.

“What?” he said. “What?”

“You heard me. Shut up and go call the police.”

“The police? What—”

It was my turn to do the poking, hard under his sternum. It gave me almost as much satisfaction as the punch to the pudgy guy’s jaw. “The police. Now.”

He spluttered some, but he went.

I glanced at the blond woman, who was clutching her daughter and staring at me with one eye as round as a half dollar; the other, where the guy had slugged her, was already puffy and half closed. Then I returned my attention to her attacker. He was lying on his side, moaning a little now, his legs drawn up and both hands clutched between them; there was a smear of blood on his jaw and his pain was evident. I felt mildly sorry for the woman. I didn’t feel a bit sorry for him.

Carjackers are something else I have zero tolerance for.