SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

Everything had gone wrong for me.

Have you ever had days like that, when the sheer cussedness of Fate seems to hamper your every movement? If you are a man, there’s that shoelace that snaps and you don’t have an extra pair, or your shirt is too starched to wear, or you can’t find a clean pair of socks that match. Should you be a girl, your hair just won’t stay put, the last pair of pantyhose or stockings has developed a run, you have just found a food stain on your prettiest dress.

It was that kind of day for me.

No need to go into all the details. They were horrible. And I had a date with the man I hoped (in the future) to marry, Mark Condon. To cap it all off, I couldn’t find a taxi.

So here I was, hotfooting it along East Eighty-seventh Street on my way to First Avenue, cursing under my breath and maintaining a stranglehold on my Gucci shoulder-bag If the Gucci had had a neck, I would have wrung it in utter disgust.

My name is Cherry Delight. Oh, my parents didn’t call me that, my real moniker is Cherise Delissio. It was the boys in N.Y.M.P.H.O.—the New York Mafia Prosecution and Harassment Organization—who did that. I am connected with that outfit, working out of its femmes fatales division, and I have been known to use my sex, along with my expertise in judo, karate, and other assorted bits of legal mayhem, to do what I could to annoy and destroy the Mafia crowd on my many different assignments.

I don’t often get the chance to have an evening out with my boyfriend. That is, for fun and games and that sort of thing. Usually we are both too busy working our asses off for N.Y.M.P.H.O. to get together in a social way.

But tonight we had a date and I was in a hurry. Mark ordinarily would have called for me but he was finishing up some paper work, and I had told him that I would meet him at his favorite French restaurant.

Then the roof fell in. My zipper got stuck, my necklace caught a strand of my hair, and sure, sure, there was a run in the nylons I’d been keeping in cold storage for just such an evening. And I tore my panties trying to hurry the bod in them. I felt like crying.

Oh, I got things organized after a while but I was going to be late, very late, unless I found a taxi fast.

This was why I was hurrying along, scanning the streets for sign of a cab. For some strange reason there weren’t too many people about. Maybe they were already where they were supposed to be, unlike me. And there wasn’t a hint of a taxi anywhere.

There was movement behind me.

Now I might not have paid any attention to this ordinarily. But I was keyed up, I was furious, and maybe my senses were sharpened as a result. Of course, my training as a N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent helped. They train you to have eyes in the back of your head, the N.Y.M.P.H.O. boys do.

Anyhow, there was someone behind me. He was coming fast but almost silently. Sneakers, I told myself.

I swung about just as he was hooking an arm for my throat. He was a little taller than I am, wearing a dirty pullover sweater and frayed jeans. He had long hair and a long face.

“Sweet doll,” I breathed, and reached for his arm.

I caught it, whirled so as to give him my hip, and employing the very effective major hip throw—known to aficionados as the O Goshi—I swung him up off his feet and through the air.

His shriek was a wail in the night as he went flying. I used a bit of karate at this point, pivoting on my left foot and kicking out with my right. I caught him in the solar plexus and he doubled up going into a jackknife dive just before he landed on the pavement.

I reached out and tangled my fingers in his long mop of hair. His head came up with my pull.

My knee went into his nose. Hard.

“The gods sent you, brother,” I told him, still hanging onto his hair and lifting him up for another whopper. “I’ve been hoping for something like this because Fate has been playing me dirty tricks all evening.”

I slammed him in the throat with the edge of my hand. He went back and sprawled on the sidewalk, just about out cold. I went over and lifted him up.

He was barely able to stand. His nose was bleeding, his eyes were sick with misery, and there was a gash on his head where he had hit the sidewalk from his jackknife fall. There was no fight left in him and I stopped the blow I had been aiming at the bridge of his bleeding nose.

“Let’s you and me go find a cop,” I said.

He stared at me dully, gave a wrench and broke free. I reached for him and missed. He turned and tried to run. I went after him, but not fast enough.

A car was moving past at the time, I caught a glimpse of it from the corner of my eye as I started to run.

The mugger was maybe ten feet in front of me, staggering along. I would overtake him in a half a dozen running steps.

Then the night erupted.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat.

The mugger spun around. I saw dust puffs leap from his sweater as he whirled off balance.

Jees! This was a Mafia killing!

Honest, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The car speeded up, swung around the corner so fast I couldn’t eyeball its license plate. It was a black car, maybe a Caddy, I knew that much. There was no sense in going after it. By the time I reached the corner it would be out of sight, ducking down another street.

Instead, I knelt over the mugger.

I knew he was dying but he wasn’t dead just yet. His eyes were open and he saw me, because the eyelids flickered. His lips twitched. I bent over him, closer to his mouth.

“In wallet . . . pawn ticket. Killed me on . . .on account of that. ...”

I reached a hand into his hip pocket. I brought out his wallet and went through it. There was a pawn ticket there. I slid it into my wallet, then pushed his wallet back into his hip pocket.

By this time, people were gathering around us.

“Somebody call a cop,” I said.

The poor slob was dead by the time a prowl car pulled along the curb. Not that the cops took a long time—they didn’t, they were there in five minutes. But there must have been a dozen slugs in that mugger and nobody could live very long with all that lead inside him.

I made my report, identifying the man as a mugger and showed my own I.D. card. I described what had happened and told the men in blue that I would be happy to sign an affidavit testifying to everything that had taken place.

“There’s just one thing,” I muttered.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“I have a date with my boyfriend, Mark Condon. He’s with N.Y.M.P.H.O. too. Is there any way I could get word to him?”

The cop grinned. “We’ll drive you there on the way to the police station.”

The Homicide men were there by then, draping a cloth over the mugger and lifting him to take him to the morgue. The prowl car boys were free to leave so they took me with them.

Mark Condon was standing on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, glancing at his wristwatch and very probably muttering naughty things under his breath. His eyes goggled at sight of me clambering out of the prowl car.

His curiosity caused him to forget his anger.

“What happened?” he rasped.

“I damn near got mugged, honey. Not only that but some Family buttons drove past and put a lot of lead in the mugger. Then they went off like a bat out of hell.”

He accompanied me to the precinct house where I signed the affidavit one of the cops typed out slowly and laboriously.

Mark muttered, “There goes our date. I was looking forward to it too.”

“You and me both. But I’ll make it up to you. How about coming back to my place for eggs Benedict?”

Mark said, “Love to but I’m really bushed. I was figuring on a great meal, some wine, a goodnight kiss and then my own bed. Alone. I’m really beat.”

“Maybe it’s just as well,” I agreed.

Mark gave me a funny look. It isn’t very often he opts out of a date, especially one that could end up in my queen-sized bed.

“You’re not mad?” he wondered.

We were sitting by ourselves in a corner of the station house. I leaned closer to his left ear and began whispering.

“Before he died the mugger told me to take a pawn ticket. He didn’t say very much but I got the impression that it was because of that pawn ticket the buttons gunned him down. Well, not the ticket itself, but what it represents.”

Mark drew a deep breath. “What do you think it is?”

“How should I know? But I mean to find out first thing tomorrow morning. You want to come along and see what it may be?”

He grinned. “I’m hooked. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Mark seemed to liven up after that and when I had affixed my signature to the affidavit and we were about to leave, he muttered, “I’m not as tired as I thought I was. Those eggs Benedict sound pretty good.”

“Uh-uh. You’re tired, I heard you say so. I want you fresh and eager tomorrow morning when we go to the pawnshop.”

He looked so woebegone that I laughed. “We’ll make it up. We always do, don’t we?”

“At least I can see you home.”

I glanced at him quizzically, these seeing-you-homes of Mark Condon can last well through the next day. He has the stamina of a stallion and the inventiveness of a starving fox outside a chicken-coop. I wouldn’t have minded Mark’s coming home with me but right now I was more intrigued by that pawn ticket than I was with Mark Condon’s amorousness.

“Okay. A kiss at the door and no more.”

He played the game, with a wry smile, holding me close just inside my apartment door. Well, I didn’t want him to hang onto me and kiss me out there in the hall, did I? So it was just a step inside the doorway and no more.

I had to actually push him out but I told myself it was for his own good. He was bleary-eyed and just being courteous to me.

“Get a good sleep, honey. And call me when you wake. I’ll be waiting for your call.”

He nodded, blew me an umpteenth kiss, then staggered off down the hall. I closed the door, picked up my Gucci bag, and carried it into the bedroom, turning off lights as I went.

I fished out the pawn ticket and put it on my bureau. What was its secret? What would Mark and I find tomorrow morning when we went to redeem it? I puzzled over these questions as I slithered out of the dress and pantyhose I had donned in such high hopes earlier in the evening.

I put on a pair of p.j.’s and studied the pawn ticket. It was for a shop downtown named The Last Hope. I returned the pawn ticket to my wallet and dropped the wallet into my bag.

Then I dropped myself into bed.

I woke late next morning, but with a reasonably clear conscience, since I felt I had been working on N.Y.M.P.H.O. business until the wee hours of the morning, or thereabouts. I slid myself into a slacks suit, checked my Gucci bag to make sure my Gold Cup Colt automatic was still there, double-checked the pawn ticket in my wallet, and locked my door behind me.

I would eat breakfast and then give Mark a buzz on the phone, telling him to meet me at The Last Hope. That was my plan. As it turned out—

It was while I was moving along an almost empty sidewalk between First and Second Avenues that I knew I was in for trouble. Don’t ask me how I knew. Over the years I have worked with N.Y.M.P.H.O. I have developed a kind of sixth sense in this regard.

Maybe it was the sight of the three men walking toward me. It might have been the footfalls of a fourth man who came after me. I saw the trio, I heard the footsteps. And the little hairs on the back of my neck stood up and shouted.

The three men were beefy, heavy-jowled, with thin lips and black eyes that watched my every move. Mafia hit men, a corner of my subconscious whispered.

I moved sideways toward a display window in which I could see my reflection. I tilted my chin and turned my face this way and that as though I were none too sure of my makeup. A girl has an advantage over a man this way. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the fourth man, the one who had been trailing me, stop some feet away to light a cigarette. I reached into my Gucci bag, as though for my compact, but actually my fingers wrapped themselves about the butt of my automatic.

I didn’t bring it all the way out, just put it where my hand could get it fast. Then I lifted out the compact and opened it.

The three men moved in on me, pretending to be intrigued by the display of art pieces in the window. The other guy, having lit his cigarette, came to stand on my other side.

One of the men said, “Don’t make a move, lady.”

I put the compact back in the Gucci bag. My fingers closed around the Gold Cup. I turned a surprised face to the man who had spoken.

“Don’t move? Why not?”

“Boss wants to see you.”

“And who’s your boss? Do I know him?”

“Cut the comedy. Let’s go.”

The fourth man moved in a little closer. He muttered, “We don’t want to get rough but we will. We got a car down the street. We’ll all walk toward it, nice and easy.”

They didn’t show any guns. Not yet. But their hands were in the pockets of their coats and I knew damn well they weren’t in there to keep warm.

I said brightly, “Sorry, boys. I’m late for breakfast as it is.”

A hand reached out to grab my arm. It was the signal I’d been waiting for. I moved back two steps and my Gold Cup came out into the open just as two of the boys were bringing out their own guns.

They only meant to frighten me, I am sure. But my Colt automatic and I meant business.

I fired right into the belly of one of the men with his gun half out of his pocket. His eyes got big as he slammed back into the display window and stood a moment before his knees buckled and he slid down onto the sidewalk.

I didn’t take the time to watch him, but moved the Colt to the side and caught the other guy whose gun was then completely out of his pocket. I tilted the automatic slightly upward and put a bullet through his open mouth. The top of his head blew off.

The other two buttons yelled and one of them lunged for me, hands out to grab. I ducked and laid the barrel of the Colt alongside his jaw. He reeled back.

I had laid open the side of his face so that blood showed when the other man grabbed me in a bear-hug.

“Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!” he kept panting.

I kicked back at his shin with my heel and made a perfect landing. He grunted but didn’t loosen his grip. So I did the next best thing.

I bent my wrist and shoved the muzzle of the Colt back into him and triggered it. Once. Twice. He let go, he staggered back away from me, eyes bulging. Then he gasped and fell.

The man whose face I had opened with the Colt barrel had his own gun out by this time. The gun was coming up right at me and looked as big as the Chrysler Building. He fired.

I guess the pain of his lacerated face made his hand unsteady, because the bullet screamed past my left ear, hit the display window and shattered it.

My bullet went into his chest, right about where his heart should have been, if he had one. He rocked back on his heals. I shot him again to make sure.

By this time, we had attracted a crowd. It was getting old hat, I thought, as I stood over the four dead bodies and began reloading the Colt. I would have to remain here until the police came, go with them to sign an affidavit, and then I would be free to eat breakfast and call Mark.

“Somebody call a cop,” I said to a man who goggled at me, then down at the four dead hit men, then back at me again.

The owner of the store with the shattered display window joined the crowd, screaming bloody murder. He was a nervous little man with a nervous twitch in his left eye. The twitch kept twitching, he was just about wringing his hands and weeping.

“I didn’t shoot out the window,” I told him. “He did it.”

I pointed at the dead body of the man who had missed me. “However, maybe Avery King will see to it that somebody pays for the window.”

I showed him my I.D. card. I also showed it to the cops in the prowl car who came in answer to the telephone call. It was the same two cops who had come last night when the mugger had been gunned down.

They took one look at me and closed their eyes.

One of them said, “Jeez, lady. Do you always carry on this way?”

I snapped, “Can I help it if I attract a certain class of people?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Go on, take a look at them. They all have cannons in their hands. Or all but one. Him I got before he could get his out.”

They saw the guns. They couldn’t help seeing them. One of the cops sighed and reached for a pad and pencil. “Go ahead, let’s have it.”

It took about an hour before I finally signed the affidavit and called Mark Condon from the station house. My call woke him up.

“You’re there again?” he howled.

“What was I supposed to do, go with the men the way they wanted me to? I’m alive and they’re dead. And something tells me we’ve stumbled onto something a lot bigger than we thought.”

“You may be right there.”

“Get dressed and come and get me. I haven’t had any breakfast yet. I’ll let you treat me.”

Over ham and eggs and coffee I told Mark all about it. He listened as he ate, grunting from time to time as I made a point. Mark isn’t much of a talker but he is a good listener.

“Don’t you agree with me?” I finished.

“That you’ve hit on some very important funny business? Oh, sure. Whoever sent those buttons to abduct you wanted you pretty badly. And the only reason they would want you is that they suspect you got the pawn ticket.”

“You think they know about the pawn ticket?”

“I think they know about whatever it is the pawn ticket represents. I also believe they managed to see the mugger’s personal effects—maybe they also sent somebody to search his pad—and that whatever it is they were looking for is lost. So they think you swiped it.”

I leaned across the table. “Let’s go find out what it is, Mark. I have the pawn ticket in my bag.”

Mark reached for the check, like the dear boy he is.

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