Frank Hickey

Love Finds Max Royster at Christmas or Kissing in the Slush After Sixty Frank Hickey

Cold grips Manhattan.

The city throws a Unity Holiday Party, a dancing street fair to bring all together.

I, Max, 62, meet and flirt with a dark blonde beauty named Peg, a barmaid with no illusions left. Her looks and slangy streetwise talk hold me. At my age, she makes me smolder and feel 24 again.

No matter what it takes, I want her for mine.

But the plan smashes when a drunken Black man fights with a White rookie cop. The Black man dies and everyone hollers their own ideas about what really happened.

Seeing a chance to hit big on a settlement, I summon Nancy, a hooligan street-fighter with a lawyer's ticket. This kind of death means cash.

Peg is the only witness to the struggle between the drunken man and the cop. If I can run this, I can stop hustling forever.

Skip, another lawyer, Black, my nemesis-father figure, always scheming, hijacks Peg for his reward. His bodyguard, Joey, beats me in a fight.

The FBI and the radical group SAP -Stop Police Action- jump into this case. Trying to out-dance them, I go undercover in SAP and live like a radical.

Through freezing stakeout nights and bitter dawns, I must find Peg and love at Christmas