Ed McBain - Ax

“What did I do?” Carella asked.

“I don’t know how to handle kids, huh?”

“Well…”

“You don’t know how to handle women,” Hawes said.

The woman’s name was Teddy Carella, and she was his wife, and he knew how to handle her.

The positive identification of the dead man had been made from photographs by 5:30 that afternoon, after which Carella and Hawes had further questioned Anthony Lasser about his father, and then gone back to the squadroom to sign out. They left the station house at 6:15, a half hour later than they should have, said goodbye on the precinct steps and headed off in opposite directions. Hawes had a date with a girl named Christine Maxwell. Carella had a date with his wife and two children.

His wife had black hair and brown eyes and a figure even the bearing of twins had failed to intimidate. Full-breasted, widehipped, long-legged, she greeted him in the foyer with a sound kiss and a hug that almost cracked his spine.

“Hey!” he said. “Wow! What’s going on?”

Teddy Carella watched his lips as he spoke, because she was deaf and could “hear” only by watching a person’s lips or hands. Then, because she was mute as well, she raised her right hand and rapidly told him in the universal language of deaf mutes that the twins had already been fed and that Fanny, their housekeeper, was at this moment putting them to bed. Carella watched her moving hand, missing a word every now and then, but understanding the sense and meaning, and then smiled as she went on to outline her plans for the evening, as if her plans needed outlining after the kiss she had given him at the front door.

“You can get arrested for using that kind of language,” Carella said, grinning. “It’s a good thing everybody can’t read it.”

Teddy glanced over her shoulder to make sure the door to the twins’ room was closed, and then put her arms around his neck again and moved as close to him as it was possible to get and kissed him once again, and he almost forgot that it was his custom to go in to say good night to the twins before he had his dinner.

“Well, I don’t know what brought this on,” he said, and he raised one eyebrow appreciatively, and Teddy moved the fingers on her right hand rapidly and told him never to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“You’re the nicest-looking gift horse I’ve seen all week,” he said. He kissed the tip of her nose and then went down the hall to the twins’ room, knocking on the door before he entered. Fanny looked up from Mark’s bed where she was tucking him in.

“Well, if it isn’t himself,” she said, “and knocking on doors in his own house.”

“My dear young lady…” Carella started.

“Young lady, is it? My but he’s in a good mood.”

“My, but he’s in a good mood,” April echoed from her bed.

“My dear young lady,” Carella said to Fanny, “if a person expects children to knock on his door before entering, he must set the proper example by knocking on their door before entering. Right, Mark?”

“Right, Pop,” Mark said,

“April?”

“Right, right,” April said, and giggled.

“Now don’t get them all excited before bedtime,” Fanny warned.

Fanny, who was in her fifties, red-haired and buxom, as Irish as Mrs. Flanagan’s underdrawers, turned from Mark’s bed with a mock scowl on her face, kissed April perfunctorily, and said, “I’ll leave you kiddies now to your horrid old man who will tell you tales of criminal deduction.”

“One day,” Carella said to the air, “Fanny will marry someone and leave us, and all the humor will go out of our lives, and our house will be gloomy and sad.”

“Fat chance,” Fanny said, and grinned and went out of the room. She poked her head back around the doorjamb immediately and said, “Dinner in five minutes. Make it snappy, Sherlock.”

“Who’s Sherlock?” Mark asked.

“A cop,” Carella answered.

“Better than you?” Mark asked.

April scrambled out of her bed, peeked at the open door to make sure Fanny wasn’t coming back again, and then crawled into Carella’s lap where he was sitting on the edge of Mark’s bed. “There’s no cop better than Daddy,” she told her brother. “Isn’t that right, Daddy?”

Carella, not wishing to destroy a father image, modestly said, “That’s right, honey. I’m the best cop in the world.”

“Sure he is,” April said.

“I didn’t say he wasn’t,” Mark answered. “She’s always twisting it, Pop.”

“Don’t call him Pop,” April said. “His name is Daddy.”

“His name is Steve, smarthead,” Mark said.

“If you two are going to argue,” Carella said, “I’ll just leave.”

“She busted two of my models today,” Mark said.

“Why’d you do that, April?” Carella asked.

“Because he said I was a smarthead wetpants.”

“She is.”

“I didn’t wet my pants all week,” April said.

“You wet them last night,” Mark corrected.

“I don’t think that’s any of your concern, Mark,” Carella said. “What your sister does…”

“Sure, Pop,” Mark said. “All I’m saying is she’s a smarthead wetpants.”

“And I don’t like that kind of language,” Carella said.

“What language?”

“Wetpants, he means,” April said.

“Why? What’s wrong with that, Pop?”

“He only calls you Pop because he thinks that’s tough,” April said. “He’s always trying to be a tough guy, Daddy.”

“I am not. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with being tough. Pop’s tough, isn’t he?”

“No,” April answered. “He’s very nice and sweet,” and she put her head against his chest and smiled. He looked down at her face, the dark black hair and brown eyes that were Teddy’s, the widow’s peak clearly defined even at the age of five, and then glanced at his son, amazed again by their absolute similarity and yet their total difference. There was no question that they were twins and therefore something more than simply brother and sister—their coloring was identical, the shapes of their faces, even the expressions they wore. But somehow April had managed to inherit—thank God—the beauty that was Teddy’s, and Mark had retained this beauty only as a subtle undercoating to a facade that was more closely patterned after his father’s.

“What’d you do today?” Mark asked, and Carella smiled and said, “Oh, the same old thing.”

“Tell us, Daddy,” April said.

“No, you tell me what you did instead.”

“I busted two of Mark’s models,” April said, and giggled.

“See, Pop? What’d I tell you?”

“Dinner!” Fanny called from the kitchen.

Carella rose with April in his arms and then swung her out to plop her onto her own bed. He pulled the blanket to her chin and said, “January night, sleep tight,” and kissed her on the forehead.

“What’s that, Daddy?” April said.

“What’s what, honey?”

“January night, sleep tight.”

“I just made it up,” Carella said.

He went to Mark’s bed, and Mark said, “Make up another one.”

“All’s warm, all’s dark,” Carella said. “Sleep tight, dear Mark.”

“That’s nice,” Mark said, smiling.

“You didn’t make one with my name in it,” April said.

“Because I couldn’t think of anything that rhymes with April,” Carella answered.

“You thought of something that could rhyme with Mark.”

“Well, Mark is easy, honey. April is very difficult to find a rhyme for.”

“Will you find one for it?”

“I’ll try, honey.”

“Will you promise?” April asked.

“Yes, I promise,” he said. He kissed Mark and pulled the blanket to his chin.