Hard-Boiled Christmas Stories by John Wooley & John McMahan

Author:John Wooley & John McMahan [Wooley, John & McMahan, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reverse Karma Press
Published: 2015-10-22T11:00:00+00:00

and his two hirelings had her firmly in hand, the roscoe plucked from her mitt. Behind her stood Sally Sunshine, waving a baseball bat, threatening to whack the Armstrong cupcake again.

I grinned, “Say, little miss, you pack quite a wallop.”

“We have a box out at Gilmore Field,” she said, still eying the half-conscious bim she’d bopped. “I like to root for the Hollywood Stars.”

“And here I thought there was a doll in that box Santa gave you.”

“Nope,” she said proudly. “Baseball stuff. I’m gonna learn to hit like Babe Herman.”

I looked at her Ma standing beside her. “I like the cut of her jib, lady.” Then, to the moppet, “If you’re still around Tinsletown in a few years, look me up, huh? I’d like to show you the town.”

She winked like a gal twice her age before we were suddenly interrupted by a squawking from the Paravox buggy. So Solly and Tex were trying to untie Bernie Ballantyne, A couple of drops of hemoglobin from the grazing had wandered down his forehead, and he was screaming bloody murder. Maybe it was because of the noise, but down at my feet, the Snaith character was coming to with a groan. I bent over, plucked my purloined rod from his limp mitt.

“You’ll live, Bernie,” I muttered out of the side of my yap. “So will this gink.”

AFEW SHAKES later, Dave was snapping nippers on the fins of Ronnie and Snaith, neither of whom seemed fully conscious. The kids and grownups were gathered around, all yakking at once, and Vultura was clucking about what a wonderful tale all of this was going to make, what with Sally Sunshine’s heroics and all. You couldn’t have made So Solly Wise any happier if you’d told him the war was over.

“One thing, though,” Dave said. “How’d you glom onto the notion it was Snaith behind those whiskers?”

“It was just before the lights went out,” I told him. “I was watching old Saint Nick distribute the booty, and I knew something was wrong. It took me a minute, but then I figured it. He was reaching for the gifts and handing them out with his right hand – and Bernie Ballantyne is left-handed.”

AFTER the blowoff. Dave and I stopped off at a little bistro on Sunset for a couple of Yuletide jolts, and then we wished each other Happy Holidays and said sayonara. When I crossed the threshold of my hogan, the season’s music was still playing low and soft on the radio I’d forgotten to turn off.

Uncorking the Vat 69, I decanted myself three fingers and settled in. There was a nice check in my pocket, I had a fifth of skee at my side, and I was somehow taking comfort from the thought of there being one less partridge in Bernie’s pear tree.

The clock on the mantel bonged twelve, Christmas Eve was over for another year, and, in the Turner household, there was peace on earth, and good will toward every damned gazabo on the planet.

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