Ed McBain: Kiss

She always smiled shyly when he said this, he was her favorite.

Aunt Dorothy had a ribald and bawdy sense of humor. She was always telling jokes Carella at first suspected, and later realized, were sexual in content. Every time she started to tell one, Grandma would warn, "I creaturi, i creaturi," scowling at her without a smile, gesturing with her head in the direction of the children.

Aunt Dorothy would wave aside Grandma's warnings and plunge right ahead with whatever joke she'd started. When Carella turned twelve, thirteen, whenever it was that he began seriously noticing girls and realizing what his aunt's jokes were all about, he would grin in knowledgeable embarrassment whenever she delivered a punch line, and she would wink at him in defiance of Grandma's disapproving scowl.

He never could understand how she'd learned about Margie Gannon. But she'd sensed unerringly- or perhaps his mother had tipped her to the fact-that he was enjoying what to him at the time was a wildly erotic relationship with the little Irish girl who lived across the street from him in Riverhead, and she teased him mercilessly about her, referring to her as Sweet Rosie O'Grady, God alone knew why.

The family would sit around the table, joking and laughing, drinking coffee and eating the pastries his father had baked. The cannoli and the sfogliatelli and the zeppoli and the strufoli and the Napolitani and the sfingi di San Giuseppe.

Aunt Josie was the one who always suggested, "Why don't we play a little poker?”

"Good idea," Uncle Freddie would say.

Uncle Freddie always won, even though they only played for pennies. Aunt Josie was a sore loser, Louise could never understand how her sister had developed such a temper. If she drew to an inside straight and failed to pull the card she was looking for, she'd throw her cards on the table and start swearing at whoever was dealing.

"Vergogna, vergogna," Grandma would scold, another of the few Italian expressions she had picked up from her mother, long dead.

Grandma herself was dead now. Grandpa, too.

Aunt Josie and Uncle Mike had moved to Florida, and they never came North anymore. Uncle Salvie died of cancer shortly after Carella joined the force. Aunt Dorothy remarried almost immediately afterward, and the family lost touch with her. Carella missed her and her dirty jokes.

At his father's funeral last July, there were no uncles or aunts who'd known Carella when he was small. There were a handful of cousins he hardly remembered, all of them expressing condolences over this terrible thing that had happened, one of them asking if Carella could fix a speeding ticket for him, the jackass. Behind their sad countenances, there lurked the unspoken thought that if such a thing could happen to a cop's father ...

On New Year's Day this year, there were no pastries baked by Tony Carella. Tony Carella had been gunned down in his shop on the night of July seventeenth, and never again would there be pastries baked by him. Carella's mother was still in mourning. Black dress, black stockings, black shoes, honoring a tradition virtually gone in the land from which it had come; except in the most remote sections of Italy, widows rarely wore black for very long. But Louise was a woman who still served cold lentils after midnight on New Year's Day.

This was not a joyous Tuesday. The weather, chill and bleak and gray, seemed to echo the - sense of loss that pervaded the house in which Carella and his sister had both grown up. A fierce and icy wind rattled the windows in the old house. There were cooking smells, yes, just as there had been on all the holidays Carella could remember, but there was no laughter, and even the children seemed oddly hushed. Only the immediate family-and not even all of it-was here today. The feast seemed somehow paltry; you did not celebrate when the funeral meats were not yet cold upon the table.

His mother was a blunt, plainspoken woman.

"I want to come to the trial," she said.

This was after the midday meal. Carella was due in the squadroom at a quarter to four; the Police Department had no respect for holidays. The family was sitting at the dining-room table under which he and Angela used to hide when they were children.

Long tablecloth hanging almost to the floor.

Giggling because they thought the grown-ups didn't know they were listening. I creaturi. The dishes had been cleared, they were drinking coffee. His mother dressed in black, her hands folded on the table, her slender gold wedding band tight on the ring finger of her left hand. Carella and his sister sitting side by side, both of them dark-haired and dark-eyed, the eyes slanting downward, their father's legacy. Teddy Carella sat beside her mother-in-law, raising her eyes from the knitting needles in her hands; she was knitting sweaters for the new twins in the family. Cynthia and Melinda, Angela's daughters, born on the twenty-eighth of July last year, eleven days after his father's murder; what the Lord taketh away, the Lord giveth back. Carella didn't much care for either name. He visualized one of them growing up as Cindy and the other as Mindy. He knew that his sister had unilaterally named them. His brother-in-law, Tommy, was conspicuously absent today. There were problems here, too.

Carella sometimes felt overwhelmed.

Louise was waiting for an answer. She saw her son's eyes click with her daughter's, brown against brown, in the secret communication she recognized from when they were children. Teddy was watching Carella's lips.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," he said.

"Why not?”

"Mom, there's going to be testimony ...”

"I want them to know he had a wife. I want the jury to know that.”

"They'll know that anyway, Mom.”

Teddy's eyes flashed from lips to lips, reading the words on them. Her world was a silent one.

She had been born deaf and had never uttered a word in her life. Teddy knew how to sign, but her mother-in-law tried it only occasionally, both she and Angela preferring to speak with exaggerated lip motions they hoped Teddy could decipher.

Except at times like now, when they were intent on the urgency of their own messages.

"Mom," Angela said, "Steve's ...”

"No, don't Mom me. ...”

"But he's right. There's going to be stuff you won't want to hear.”

"I want to hear it all. I want them to know I'm there listening to it all.”

"Mom ...”

"Especially that sfasciume who killed him.”

Carella automatically looked to see where the children were. He was never quite certain what the word sfasciume meant, but he suspected it was obscene and something i creaturi shouldn't hear coming from their grandmother's lips. His daughter was curled up with a book, reminding him of Angela at that age, and in fact resembling her somewhat.

His son was working intently on a model airplane that had been a Christmas gift.

Mark and April. Sensible names for twins, never mind Miffy and Muffy or whatever his sister's kids would grow up to be called. Angela's three-year-old, Tess, her brow furrowed in concentration, was working on a coloring book.

Bringing Teddy more completely into the conversation, signing as he spoke, Carella said, "Mom, this is a decision you have to make for yourself, but ...”

"I know it is. ...”

"... but I've testified in cases where the victim's spouse was present ...”

"The victim's spouse," Louise said, almost spitting the word.

"... and I can tell you it's not an easy thing to live through.”

"He's right, Mom," Angela said.

"They'll be showing pictures, Mom. ...”

"I saw what he looked like, the pictures can't be any worse.”

"Mom, that was a long time ago, you don't have to relive it all over again.”

“It was yesterday," Louise said.