Mike Hammer greets the winter holidays, or "A Fist Full of Snow"

      Mike Hammer greets the winter holidays, "A Fist Full of Snow"


In the snow, traffic inched along the city street like a broken Bloomingdale’s escalator at Christmas. Mike Hammer clenched a stogie in his teeth & the steering wheel like a Chinese butcher with a cleaver working hard at lunch time. All the others were little Southern grannies new to the drifting dust, snow crystals glimmering in the evening headlights. Hands clasped behind his head, he gunned the car in neutral.




Against the cold wind, Finsterstein shuffled roughly through unshoveled sidewalk snows. He was in hurry to reach Hammer’s midtown office. The air bit his face like a yapping terrier. Woman & children with holiday gift packages keep appearing in his path like obstacles at a target range. His hand tightened on the gold pendant in his coat pocket. He had to have the answer, yesterday. Hammer would help he hoped.




He threw open the office door on the third floor, his cheeks flush from climbing the stairs. Hammer was there, feet up on the desk, the window open to the December snow and the Frigidaire air conditioner blowing. He snatched the gatt from the desk top, then spun the cylinder. Finsterstein dug his hands deeper in his wet trench coat. "Howya been, Mike? I see you still like it in the cooler."


 ;- )                                                   (c) 2010 J.B. Fletcher