Steven Womack - By Blood Written

An elderly, thin man, gaunt and balding, wearing a pair of dirty khakis and a large sweatshirt, stepped out onto his porch. Kelly looked up and noticed the man’s right sleeve was empty, folded in the middle and pinned at the shoulder.

His left hand held a cane that looked carved from a thick tree limb.

“Can I help you?” the man said suspiciously. Well-dressed strangers standing on the sidewalk were not common in this part of town.

Kelly looked at the man, then decided to take a chance.

He strode over to the sidewalk and smiled at the man. “Yes sir, maybe you can. Have you lived here a long time?”

The man looked at him for a moment before answering.

“About thirty years,” he said.

“So you’ve known the Schiftmanns for a while.”

The man scowled. “Who are you?”

Kelly smiled. “I’m sorry. Forgot my manners.” He pulled out his badge case and ID and held it out to the man. “I’m Special Agent Kelly, FBI. I’m doing a routine background check and I’m trying to get some information on a Michael Schiftmann. Could I ask you a few questions?”

The old man nodded toward the Schiftmann house. “She help you?”

Kelly smiled. “Little. Not much.”

The man snorted. “I’m not surprised. She’s as crazy as he is.”

“Crazy?” Kelly asked.

“Kid was the craziest little psycho bastard I ever seen.

Good thing he moved away. I’d have probably had to shoot him, one way or another.”

Kelly smiled even more broadly. “Would it be okay if I came in and we talked a bit?”

The old man shrugged, then pivoted on one foot and turned for the door, leaning heavily on the cane with his one good arm.

“Sure,” he said. “C’mon in.”

Saturday afternoon, Manhattan

The flight from Bonaire to JFK was so uneventful as to be tedious. The sky was gray, overcast, threatening a late winter snow as Taylor and Michael emerged from the plane and walked down the Jetway in a kind of shock. Six hours earlier they’d been in paradise; now they were back in the city.

That said it all.

The two were quiet during the long taxi ride to Taylor’s loft on Grande Street. They dragged their suitcases and mesh bags full of scuba equipment upstairs, began unpacking, and then found themselves once more in bed. They made love yet again, perhaps a bit more subdued now that they were out of paradise and a bit more tired, then fell into a deep, silent sleep that went on for hours.

Taylor felt herself coming to and rolled over. The glowing orange numerals of the alarm clock read 8:47. She moaned, unable to believe that they’d been asleep nearly four hours.

She shook herself awake and sat up on the side of the bed.

Next to her, Michael was breathing deeply and rhythmically, still sound asleep.

She picked up her underwear off the floor and slipped into it, then quietly lifted her sweatshirt from the chair next to her bed. She crept out of the bedroom into the hallway and down the stairs to the main floor of her loft. The cavernous room, as high as two stories, was cold and drafty this time of year. Taylor shivered as she pulled the sweatshirt on, the rough material scraping her nipples. She crossed her arms across her chest, rubbing herself, as she walked into the kitchen.

She hadn’t bothered to look at the stack of mail she’d brought up after digging it out of her jammed mailbox. And she noticed the message light on her answering machine was blinking madly. Not completely awake yet, she pushed the mail stack aside and opened the refrigerator. She pulled out a container of orange juice and poured a glass, then casually hit the button on the answering machine.

The computerized voice came on and announced that she had sixteen messages. Taylor shook her head wearily and reached for a pad of paper and one of the pencils from a jammed coffee mug full of pens, pencils, markers, and anything else she could cram in.

The first message was from Brett Silverman, delivered in her usual upbeat, high-energy, in-your-face fashion: “Hey girl! So you’re off to the Caribe, eh? You gotta drink some of those frou-frou drinks with the paper umbrellas for me, and for Chrissakes, have lots of sex!”

“God,” Taylor whispered, “if you only knew.”

The second message was a frantic one from Joan Delaney, something about a lost contract. The third, fourth, and fifth messages were from Joan as well, the last one announcing that the contracts had been located and she could ignore the other messages. There was the usual depressing message from her mother, followed by one from her floor leader on the co-op board about the next monthly meeting, and a few other dreary, routine business messages. Taylor made notes of any message that actually required something of her, and either mentally filed away or dumped the others.

Then the next-to-last message, time-stamped Friday morning at nine-thirty, was Brett Silverman again. “I hear you’re going to be in Saturday afternoon. You get your ass out of that apartment and buy the Sunday Times the second it hits the newsstand!”

Taylor perked up. There was nothing else to the message but a moment of silence followed by a beep, then another time stamp for Friday morning, nine thirty-four, and Joan’s voice again:

“We did it!” she screamed. “He’s number one! And the other four are all on the paperback list at the same time!”

Taylor’s heart leaped into her throat. Could it be? She dropped the pencil on the counter, grinning broadly, then ran out of the kitchen, her bare feet pounding on the hardwood floors, then breathlessly up the stairs. She flung open the bedroom door and swiped the wall to hit the light switch.

“Wake up!” she yelled.

Michael shot up out of bed like a tiger who’d just taken the first bullet. He was halfway on his feet, furious, something dark, almost murderous in his face. He raised a fist, a wild look in his eye, and took a step toward her.

“Wait!” Taylor barked, startled. “It’s me! It’s me, baby, just me.”

He stood there a moment, stunned, staring at her as if she were a stranger. Taylor looked into his face and saw something she’d never seen before, something that frightened her terribly. She took a step backward, into the doorframe.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said softly.

Michael stood there at the edge of the bed for a moment, his nude body tight and tense as if poised to leap. Then he seemed to relax, the breath rushing out of his chest, and dropped onto the mattress still sitting up, stunned.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I was sound asleep.”

Taylor rushed over to the edge of the bed and dropped to her knees in front of him. She put her arms around his waist.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that. I was just excited.”

He ran his hands through her hair and pulled her to him, his torso bending down over her head. He was still breathing hard. Against his chest, Taylor felt his heart beating like a hammer. Michael hugged her to him.

“I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to look like a crazy person.”

She pulled away from him and looked up into his eyes, smiling once again. “My father always told me to never wake a sleeping dog.”

Michael laughed, reached down, and pulled her up off her knees, then fell back on the bed, pulling her on top of him.

She leaned down and kissed him softly, as he held her there.

She felt him getting hard once again and found herself rubbing against him, feeling him through the silk of her underwear. She moaned softly.

“Oh, wait,” she said suddenly. “I almost forgot.”

“What?”

“Brett Silverman and Joan both left frantic messages yesterday morning. We’ve got to go pick up the Sunday Times .”