Infinitely Better Christmas Dinner

     Infinitely Better Christmas Dinner

    ***by Frank Hickey***

 

      It's a snowy Christmas night when dangerous New York suffers 1905 murders that year.  This breaks the record. 

  My baby sister invites the whole family for a loving Christmas family dinner.

  We bask in the warmth of good talk and food.

 "Franko, we're running out of paper towels," she says. "Could you get some at the corner store?"

   Like a good brother, I oblige.                   Outside the corner store, a woman sprawls against a concrete plant tub that stands four feet high. A kneeling man has his hands near her throat.

  "Police officer!" I snap. "Don't move."

   He turns.

   I'm wearing my new Christmas clothes, a fringed buckskin jacket with pink lumex trim, black snap-button shirt and a suede cowboy hat.

  Cowboy clothes keep me warm in winter.

  "Where's your badge?" he snaps, scanning my clothes.

   I feel dumb. He's white, wearing a suit and Santa Claus tie, over fifty years of age. If profiles there be, they are not he.

   My gold shield gleams in the streetlight.

  The woman wakes up, speaking French and drooling.

  "'Lie still,' I tell her in French. "We'll get you an ambulance."

   The Korean store owners see us and dash outside. I know them.

   "Police," I repeat with my in-case-of-emergency-break-glass Korean. "Telephone 911."

  They obey.

   "Let me see that badge, cowboy," the man says.

  "You saw it, champ," I answer like John Wayne.  "Just maintain."

   Maybe I'm breaking the law, flying blind.

    "You speak French and Chinese but you're really a cop?" he asks.

  "Renaissance man," I grunt. "What happened here?"

   "She fell," he says. "I was trying to help her."

   A sports car skids up and stops. The plates read 'MD 2764' in Massachusetts print.

  The woman driving calls out to my man.

    "Richard, what happened?" she asks.

    "Nothing," he answers. "I'm leaving."

   "No, you're not, my Massachusetts doctor," I say. "Not til the ambulance stabilizes her. She could expire after you touched her. Law says ya gotta stay. I gotcha plate, doc."

   Winging it is a way of life in these risky days.

   "I'm going to complain about you," he promised.

   That scares me. My boss is a strict

former Marine. Tomorrow, he might be melting my shield.

   "And I opine," I say, "that you are of unsavory  parentage."

     "I'm just a facial surgeon," he insists.

      "You're still a doctor," I snap. "No more petty details, please."

    The ambulance arrives with flashing lights.

   At the Christmas dinner, my sister wonders what is taking me so long. She moves gracefully to her window and looks out.

   All she can see is the ambulance light bleeding red near the store. A ballet dancer for 30 years, she knows how not to panic the audience. Saying nothing, she returns to the family table, frightened for me.

  On the snowy sidewalk, the woman revives, looking at the paramedics.

  "I fell," she says in frail English. "Are you doctors?"

  One paramedic is a large aging hippie with a huge walrus moustache and long hair.

  "No, ma'am," he bellows, enjoying himself. "We are infinitely better. We are paramedics."

 "Infinitely better," I echo, looking at the doctor. "You may leave now, my Massachusetts doctor Mass-hole. Merry Christmas."

***Frank Hickey 

Frank was a cop. He writes the Dancing Max Royster crime novels about the world's only ballroom dancing detective.