Deadly Debut

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  Mel Allan was muffled behind Joey’s back. I reached up, smacked Joey’s arm, and demanded my radio. He slammed the book I was holding. It wobbled and Benny snatched it. I stamped my foot.

  “Give me my book and my radio or I’ll tell your mothers.” A childish threat left over from some time around fifth grade.

  “Tell our mothers? What’re you? A baby?” His eyes swept from my knees to my shoulders and down again. “Hmmm. Some baby. Benny, let’s see the book.” Benny passed The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe over my head to Joey.

  “Bookworm. Bookworm.” Joey shook his head at me. “Bad enough you read his stories and poems. Can’t a guy have any privacy? You gotta read his letters, too?

  “Just because this old house is on our turf, don’t mean you gotta be reading everything about the guy.” He waved the book in my face. I reached and almost had it, but Joey took a step back and threw the book over my head to Benny. Unless I wanted to be “monkey in the middle” until their arms fell off, there was no point jumping for it.

  “What’d ya think, Benny? What’d ya think about a girl who reads Poe and roots for Maris?”

  Benny walked around from behind me and handed Joey the book. He draped one hand on Joey’s shoulder, rubbed the other across his own rust-colored flattop, and offered me an insolent grin. “You’d do a lot better with me and Joey, ’stead a mooning over those two guys. One’s dead. The other’s old.”

  Joey’s hips gyrated like Elvis Presley’s. “We could show you some real boss action.” He poked an elbow in Benny’s side while they slobbered like dogs eyeing a porterhouse steak.

  I was doing my best to hold back tears, when Nana Ellison came along, dragging her shopping cart from the Bohack on Jerome Avenue. She had a small hunch in her back, and pulling the cart seemed painful for her. She was ancient, with leathery skin and arthritic knuckles on deeply freckled hands. Nana lived on the first floor of our building, and was always ready to hand out cookies and lemonade. She stopped when she saw us.

  “Nice. Out in the sunshine. Nice. Joey, what book you got there?”

  “It’s mine.” I reached out both hands. Joey surrendered the book and the radio. I shut off the ball game and showed the book to Nana Ellison. “See, it’s Poe’s letters. I bet he wrote some of ’em when he lived right here.”

  Nana glanced at the cottage and nodded. “Nice. Good book to read.”

  “That’s what I told her.” Joey threw me a smirk. “Can me and Benny help you with the groceries?”

  We all walked home together, Joey pulling Nana’s cart. She put her arm around me and leaned heavily on my shoulders while telling us how lucky we were to have the house of a world-famous writer in our neighborhood. And, by the way, did we know that Jack Dempsey, the world famous boxer, used to live on the other side of 198th Street?

  At Nana’s front door, Joey and Benny dragged the shopping cart into her kitchen and hung around waiting for cookies and a tip.

  I quickly said my good-byes and walked up the stairs. I was just past the second floor, when I stopped and turned to look at the door of apartment 2D. Joey’s door. I put my book and radio on the fourth step and picked up an imaginary baseball bat. It was a long, sleek Hillerich and Bradsby. I pictured Joey opening his door, coming into the hallway, walking toward me. In my hands I had Roger Maris’s bat, and I swung it at Joey Naclerio’s head. Home run! Joey crumpled and sprawled on the dingy white tile, blood puddling around his head and spattering the door of apartment 2C. That’s all it took to get rid of Joey Naclerio. This was my fantasy, not some horror story written by Poe, so murdering Joey didn’t touch my conscience or cause me one bit of regret.

  I picked up my book and my radio and climbed the last flight of stairs.

  AND so my days went—school, chores, reading Edgar Allan Poe, rooting for Roger Maris, and avoiding Joey Naclerio.

  On the last Tuesday night in September, my family gathered around the television set. The season was close to over, with only a few games left. Roger Maris had fifty-nine home runs. He needed just one more to tie Babe Ruth’s record. In the first inning, we were jumping and squealing the instant Roger’s bat hit the ball. My brother threw his fielder’s glove up in the air. My father banged on the arm of his chair yelling, “Go! Go! Go!”

  It was only a single.

  The Yankee at-bat in the second inning wasn’t important to me; Maris wasn’t up. But he was number three in the lineup in the bottom of the third. The lead batter was Billy Gardner, an infielder the Yankees had picked up from the Twins a few months earlier. As soon as Gardner stepped into the batter’s box, my father and brother started yelling. “Close your strike zone. Close it! Crouch a little more.”

  My mother asked what they were shouting about. My father posed my brother in a batter’s stance with his strike zone, armpits to knees, small as he could make it and still have good balance for a power swing. Sure enough, Gardner struck out.

  The next batter was Tony Kubek, a shortstop who, just this summer, had made his third trip to the All Stars. Within a swing or two, Kubek popped to center. Out.

  There must have been twenty thousand fans in Yankee Stadium that nigh,t and every one of them went wild when Roger Maris stepped from the dugout. Then, silence. No one so much as cracked open a peanut shell. Maris swung. He connected. Whump! Roger Maris tied Babe Ruth’s record for sixty home runs in one season. That record was as old as my mother, and she was born in 1927.

  THE next day, my mother sent me to the hardware store for mousetraps. Most days the owner, Mr. Scagnelli, would ask about the family, especially Grandma Emma, who he’d known in the old country. This time all he said was, “So, you think Roger Maris’ll do it?”

  On my way home, I met Nana Ellison in our courtyard. She sat in a beach chair taking some sun.

  “Feels good on my arthritis. I was going to Poe Park, but my knees are so bad. This is better. Nice.” She patted the silver arm of her chair. “Did you hear what happened last night? Not nice. Somebody, must be kids, threw rocks at Poe Cottage. I ask you, who would do that? It’s the pride of the neighborhood, that cottage. Who would throw rocks? Break windows?”

  I knew who. If it wasn’t Joey and Benny, it was Joey and somebody. Too bad my daydream wasn’t real. I wished I had beat Joey to death with Roger Maris’s bat.

  I WENT to the library late on Saturday, just before closing at eight p.m., to pick up a book I’d reserved.

  On my way home, I walked through Poe Park, entering near the bandstand and crossing the large open space around it. On summer nights, musicians dragged their instruments up a makeshift ramp and into the bandstand. They played lots of music left over from the forties and fifties. Not much rock and roll. Still, it was free, and the whole neighborhood turned out to dance. Next summer I’d be sixteen, old enough to go to the dances. I wondered if a nice boy, a boy with good manners, would ask me to dance.

  I followed the pathway to the front gate of Poe Cottage, where I saw a small sheet of plywood tacked over the lower pane of a side window. There was a new announcement on the bulletin board. I could read well enough from the streetlight dappling through the thinning leaves of an old tree. A lecture—Poe’s Influence on the Modern Mystery—next Saturday at the Bronx Historical Society up on Bainbridge Avenue. I started home, wondering idly if my mother would let me travel that far by myself.

  I walked out of the park and crossed to the top of the Kingsbridge Road underpass. Joey Naclerio was sitting on the guard wall there, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He took a pull on the smoke and jumped off the wall. “Hey, Bookworm, walk you home?”

  Two younger kids on wide wooden scooters came tearing directly at me. I sidestepped. Joey took that as a yes and reached for my hand. I yanked it away. The scooter kids flew past us and disappeared into the park. I stepped back, but Joey moved with me.

  “Why would I walk with anyone who threw rocks at Poe Cottage?” I waggled my finger at him. “Do you think I don’t know what you did?”

  He gr
abbed my finger and pulled me closer. As I jerked away, he put one arm around my waist. I pushed at him with both hands, dropping the library book that was tucked under my arm. Joey picked it up.

  “Let’s just see what this is. Oh, Bookworm, I should’ve known. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. This fat book looks about a hun’red years old. Don’t tell me you’re gonna read all this crap. Look at the print. It’s tiny.” He pulled himself back up on the wall and held the book high over his head.

  “Give it here,” I fumed. “Be careful. That’s a library book. Don’t wreck it.” Those words sealed my fate and Joey’s too. He leaned out and held the book over the drop to Kingsbridge Road. It must have been ninety feet or more to the tunnel entrance below. I reached for the book and my right hip pressed against his leg.

  “Uh, huh, Bookworm, keep rubbing up against me like that and you’ll get your book back.” I jumped as if I’d leaned into burning coals.

  Joey laughed. He threw his cigarette butt down to the underpass and watched it fade from view. “Man, that sure is a long way down. Half the pages of this old book’ll be flying around like snowflakes way before the book hits the ground. C’mere. Lean against me again.”

  I stood mute. Joey grabbed my arm with his free hand, “Come on, or . . .” He stretched the arm holding the book just a little further over the drop. I moved in and let my hip brush the side of his leg.

  “Move over. Stand in front of me.”

  I slid a few inches to my right and he pulled me into him. His knees were firmly against my stomach and his shins pressed along my thighs. He hooked his ankles around my knees. “That’s a good girl.” His voice went all husky. “What else would you do for this book?”

  I knew I’d lost, but I tried again. Tears streaming down my face, I begged, “Joey, just give me the book.”

  “You want your book, you let me cop a feel.”

  I tried to step back, but his ankles were firmly locked behind my knees. I looked around. The street was deserted.

  “Come on. What’s the big deal? You let me touch you. I give you the book.”

  Crying harder now, I gave an almost imperceptible nod. He continued to dangle the book above the underpass with his right hand and reached under my sweater with his left. I arched back.

  “Put the book on the wall and you can touch them both, but only till I count to ten.”

  “Make it twenty and count slow.”

  “One . . . two . . .”

  His hands moved under my sweater and started pulling at my bra.

  I reached behind and unhooked it. He sighed, closed his eyes, and began to circle my breasts with his fingers while pressing his palms against them. When I felt his ankles relax, I picked up the book and whacked him in the head with all my strength and all eight hundred pages of Edgar Allan Poe. He lost his balance and he swayed. His hands were no longer under my sweater, but instead of grabbing the wall, he reached for my face, pulling me in for a disgusting kiss. I slid one hand across his crotch. He was as hard as the rocks he had thrown at Poe Cottage.

  That was it? He tormented me so he could feel like that?

  “No more,” I whispered.

  His slimy tongue grazed my lips.

  “No more being afraid.”

  I bit his tongue.

  His head jerked back. His eyes flew open.

  “No more being afraid to climb the staircase.” Now I was shouting.

  I spit in his face.

  His lips tightened and went white. He grabbed my shoulders with both hands. I could feel his fury, but it was no match for my own.

  At the top of my lungs, I screamed.

  “No more being afraid to climb the staircase to my own house.”

  I shoved The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe into the middle of Joey Naclerio’s strike zone, every ounce of my body weight pushing the book. Pushing him. He fell back, rolled off the wall, and spun down to the underpass. I hugged Poe to my chest and ran so fast that I was on the other side of the street before Joey screamed. Horns blared. Brakes squealed. A sickening thud.

  I might hear that scream and that thud in my head for weeks or months or even years, but I knew I would never hear Joey Naclerio’s tell-tale heart.

  I ran home, but I walked slowly up the stairs.

  THE next day the Journal-American carried the story of Joey Naclerio’s death with the Fordham Baldies angle. That same afternoon, in the very last game of the season, Roger Maris hit his sixty-first home run, shattering Babe Ruth’s record, and took a victory trot around the bases to a standing ovation from thousands of adoring fans. Roger Maris slammed into the history books, even as Joey Naclerio faded into yesterday’s news.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  PEGGY EHRHART is a former English professor who writes mysteries and plays blues guitar. She holds a doctorate in Medieval Literature, and her publications include a prize-winning book dealing with classical mythology in the Middle Ages. Her Maxx Maxwell mysteries, published by Five Star/Gale/Cengage, feature a blues-singer sleuth. Sweet Man Is Gone appeared in 2008 and Got No Friend Anyhow appeared in 2011. She is at work on a new series set in a charming New Jersey town. Peggy is president of the New York/ Tri-State chapter of Sisters in Crime and plays guitar with the Still Standing Band. Visit her at www.PeggyEhrhart.com.

  TERRIE FARLEY MORAN is the author of Well Read, Then Dead, the first cozy mystery in the Read ’Em and Eat series published by Berkley Prime Crime. Her short mystery fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and various anthologies, including the Mystery Writers of America anthology Crimes by Moonlight. Her work has been short-listed twice for Best American Mystery Stories. Terrie’s web-site is www.terriefarleymoran.com, and you can find her blogging amid the grand banter of an eclectic group of writers known as the Women of Mystery at www.womenofmystery.net.

  ANITA PAGE’s short stories have appeared in webzines and anthologies including Mysterical-e, Beat to a Pulp, Back Alley, and Word Riot; Fresh Slices and the upcoming Family Matters, which she edited, in the Murder New York Style series; as well as the Mystery Writers of America anthology, The Prosecution Rests (Little, Brown). She received a Derringer Award from the Short Mystery Fiction Society in 2010 for “’Twas the Night,” which appeared in The Gift of Murder. Her Catskill Mountain mystery, Damned If You Don’t, featuring community activist Hannah Fox, is available as an eBook from Glenmere Press. Anita can be found online at www.womenofmystery.net and www.anitapagewriter.blogspot.com.

  TRISS STEIN is a small-town girl from New York State’s dairy country, who has spent most of her adult life living and working in New York City. This gives her the double vision of a stranger and a resident, useful for writing mysteries about Brooklyn, her ever-fascinating, ever-changing, ever-challenging adopted home. Brooklyn Graves, from Poisoned Pen Press, is the second in the series, following Brooklyn Bones. “NYPD Daughter” is the first story she published in a Sisters in Crime anthology; her work is available in Fresh Slices and Deadly Debut, as well. Triss is active in both Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America.

  DEIRDRE VERNE likes to think of writing as her third career, after teaching and working in marketing. Prior to teaching, Deirdre held senior positions at Time Inc. where she handled business development for Fortune, Money, and Parenting magazines. Currently, she is the Curriculum Chair of the Marketing Program at Westchester Community College. When not in a classroom, Verne makes time for her new mystery series (Winter, 2015), featuring CeCe Prentice—an eco-friendly, dumpster-diving sleuth. Deirdre lives in lower Westchester with her husband and two boys.

  LINA ZELDOVICH grew up in a family of Russian scientists, listening to bedtime stories about volcanoes and black holes. Now she edits science features at the Nautilus magazine and writes about travel and adventure. She holds three Writer’s Digest awards, including first prize for her Soviet-era memoir story, “First They Broke My Back.” Her fiction has been published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Ma
gazine, in Akashic Noir’s online “Mondays Are Murder” series, and several short story collections. She holds a journalism degree from Columbia University and lives in New York City. She is currently working on a science thriller set in a dystopian future. Follow her on twitter @LinaZeldovich and www.linazeldovich.com.

  ELIZABETH ZELVIN is a New York City psychotherapist and author of the Bruce Kohler mystery series, which started with Death Will Get You Sober. Her historical novel, Voyage of Strangers, was published in 2014 by Amazon Publishing’s Lake Union imprint. Her short stories appear in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Liz is a three-time Agatha nominee and a Derringer Award nominee for Best Short Story. She has also authored two books of poetry and a book on gender and addictions, as well as an album of original songs, Outrageous Older Woman.

  AUTHOR COPYRIGHTS

  “Death Will Clean Your Closet,” Copyright © 2014 by Elizabeth Zelvin

  “The Lie,” Copyright © 2014 by Anita Page

  “Murder In The Aladdin’s Cave,” Copyright © 2014 by Lina Zeldovich

  “Family Matters,” Copyright © 2014 by Peggy Ehrhart

  “None of the Above,” Copyright © 2014 by Deirdre Verne

  “NYPD Daughter,” Copyright © 2014 by Triss Stein

  “Strike Zone,” Copyright © 2014 by Terrie Farley Moran

  More from These Authors

  MURDER NEW YORK STYLE

  Family Matters

  Also by the New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  Edited by Anita Page

  With Cynthia Benjamin, Fran Bannigan Cox, Lindsay A. Curcio, Eileen Dunbaugh, Lynne Lederman, Kate Lincoln, Catherine Maiorisi, Terrie Farley Moran, Dorothy Mortman, Leigh Neely, Anita Page, Ellen Quint, Roslyn Siegel, Triss Stein, Cathi Stoler, Anne-Marie Sutton, Clare Toohey, Deirdre Verne, Stephanie Wilson-Flaherty, and Elizabeth Zelvin