Runner-up 1

Blood wept from Hauser’s shoulder, staining his crisp white shirt like falling rose petals, running down his arm and onto his right hand, his fingers still wrapped around Baby Doll in a vise grip. As he steadied himself to shoot the lock off the Falcos’ living room door, it flew open. Evelyn Falco stood in her flowered sundress, the straps of her white slip and scarlet red bra sliding down her shoulders, her bare feet skidding to a halt in the doorway, the sawed-off shotgun hanging from her side.

Her large dark eyes misted as she sized up Hauser’s wound. Dropping the shotgun in a porcelain umbrella stand, she lifted her skirt to rip her silk slip into a long white strip, revealing her year-round tan legs inch by inch. “So what took you so long, sweetheart?” she asked, shoring up her voice.

“I stopped on the way over to pull some weeds,” Hauser winced, leaning back against the trunk of a date palm, cradling Baby Doll as Evelyn stepped closer to open his shirt and press her hanky-draped hand against the crimson blood seeping out of the hole in his shoulder. With her other hand, she wrapped the strips of white silk into a tourniquet.

“Promise me you will never, ever weed without me again.” Evelyn ran her fingers along Hauser’s belt loops. “I know all about weeds. They don’t deserve to live.” She brushed her lips against his blood-stained shoulder. “911?” she asked, pulling an iPhone from somewhere between her breasts.

“Done,” he said, pushing the phone back into its hiding place. “But first, shall we tidy up the mess in the kitchen?”

“Yes, you’re right, we do.” Evelyn nodded her head. “I’ve always hated messes in my kitchen. Shall we go inside and . . . clear the room?”

As Hauser led Evelyn back into her house, Evelyn picked up the shotgun. “Next time, check with management before you decide to take souvenirs.”

“Sorry,” she whispered. “Somehow it slipped into my purse.”

He put his finger to her lips as they approached the swinging door that led to Evelyn’s kitchen. As he kicked it open, he let Baby Doll lead the way, gun cocked and pointing right between Ernesto’s eyes. Ernesto still gripped Genie’s Beretta, pressing it firmly between her shoulder blades. Bonner’s gun was still locked on Falco. All eyes remained magnetized by the security monitor.

“Harry,” Tony Falco sputtered. “Where’d you learn how to play cop?”

“Cop School,” Hauser answered, eyes stuck on Ernesto’s shaking hands. “And I majored in target practice.”

Genie’s trembling lips broke into a slow smile. “Daddy!” She threw up her arms. As she spun a 180, her arms knocked the Beretta out of Ernesto’s hands and high into the air. It landed in a bowl of bananas, bruising the thick skin. Genie kneed Ernesto somewhere south of the equator and, as he folded in agony, cartwheeled with one hand toward the fruit bowl, lifting her Beretta between her pinkies.

“Doll Baby,” she gently wiped off the weapon.

“Genevieve,” Hauser said. “You have an uncanny knack for looking for lugs in all the wrong places. I’d ask you to give your old man a smoochie, but my hands are full.”

“What is this?” Bonner demanded, choking on fury. “Genie? You have a father? And he’s a cop? Since when? How come you never told me about your dad?”

“Wait!” Falco pointed to the monitors. “More company? Who’s next? My first wife?”

Susan Strauss is a literacy coach for the UCLA Writing Project “who can’t resist a good story.”