Christmas Stalkings Read online

  People like Parker are born suspicious, but they are also born greedy and very conceited. They think they are smart. So the plan was designed to make Parker feel smart, which it did, and to make him some money, and when he saw the point, he was in.

  It was a lovely night, Christmas Eve. About ten o’clock the sky was black and clear with thousands of stars winking away. It must have been like that the night one of them started to move. I’d’ve followed it.

  Danny Boy had the car and we were to meet at my place. I drove after that We reached the street behind the Bush at ten-fifteen. Zero hour was ten-thirty. We figured four carols, about fifteen minutes, then the collection during one more, and out of there by eleven.

  They waited in the car while I slipped across to the pub and made sure Hooligan was in place. Didn’t I mention Hooligan? His real name was Halligan, and renaming him Hooligan tells you something about the level of wit in the Don Jail. He was our ace in the hole, the one Parker didn’t know about. Because of him we had to steal another cap, and this time I couldn’t get to one no how. Then Toothy remembered that a buddy of his had a dog that his kids had trained to catch Frisbees. It got very good at picking them out of the air, but the trouble was that when there were no Frisbees to chase, he filled in the time chasing kids and snatching their hats off He was harmless, but parents complained, and they had to keep him locked up. The kids could get him to snatch anyone’s hat by pointing to it and whispering. As I say, Herman never hurt anyone. He could take off your hat from behind clean as a whistle without touching you, just one leap. So we borrowed Herman one night and waited near the Salvation Army shelter and pretty soon out came an officer and set off down Sherbourne Street A few minutes later Herman lifted his hat. It fit Hooligan pretty good, too.

  I checked that Hooligan was in place, and in we went. Parker had arranged a little clear space by the door, though he pretended to be surprised when we walked in. I approached him, very formal-like, and asked his permission to play some carols and pass round the collection plate. He acted up a bit by shaking his head, then he seemed to change his mind. “All right,” he said. “Four carols.” I looked grateful and swung my arm the way conductors do, and off they went.

  A trumpet and a trombone wouldn’t amount to much, you would think, but these fellas made them seem just made for the job. Very simple, just the notes, no twiddly bits. They were good. And of course, there was Danny Boy. He was as good as another trumpet. He didn’t wait for a cue. Just started right in, head back, veins sticking out. He could be heard right in the back of the room, right in the corners. They started with “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” which Danny Boy gave a verse in Latin of, then “Good King Wenceslas” and “We Three Kings,” and finally, one of Danny’s shut-eyed ones, “O Holy Night.” By then we had them. Danny was terrible, of course, but he was very sincere and you could recognize the tunes. I wouldn’t say anyone was crying—this was the Old Bush, after all—but they were quiet. So now we went into “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” very soft, “piano” they call it, and Toothy and I began the rounds with the money bags.

  This was Parker’s signal. We was getting something from nearly everyone, a dollar here, two there, a five, then another. There’s a psychology to these things. As soon as someone puts in five dollars, that becomes standard, like the ante in a poker game. People stop fingering their change and open their wallets. After four tables, five was normal. Then Parker spoke. “Gents,” he said. “Gents, this is Christmas Eve.” He paused, looking sincere. “I want to announce that I will match all contributions made tonight toward this good cause.”

  “And a free beer all around,” someone shouted.

  One of the waiters moved to throw him out, but Parker only hesitated for a second. “Never mind the free beer tonight, of all nights,” he said, implying that free beer was standard on other nights at the Bush. “Tonight is for the others out there.” He waved at the door. “The ones with no beer,” he said.

  The arrangement was, of course, that Parker would get half, three-quarters, really, including his own money, but free beer could never be recovered.

  The next voice, though, nearly took him off balance, I reached a table where The Boozer had planted one of his cronies, and Boozer gave him a wink from the back of the room, and he jumps up and shouts, “Then here’s fifty dollars.”

  Parker looked a bit greasy for a minute, but he caught himself in time to shout, “Good for you.”

  Then the fever took hold. The biggest single contribution we got was a hundred dollars, but no one gave less than twenty, and every time I came to one of The Boozer’s cronies he would whip up the excitement with a fresh fifty. We went round the room with Danny Boy crooning away in the background, and when we were done we went back to the counter and emptied the bags onto the bar. Digger Ray and one of the bartenders counted it and Digger made the announcement “Two thousand three hundred and twenty-seven.” Someone shouted, “Your turn now, Parker.”

  Parker turned to the barman and held out his hand and received a wad of money which he handed over to Digger. Digger held it up to show it was a lot of money, no need to count it on Christmas Eve, and he swept all the money back into one of the bags and we were ready to go. There was still three minutes on my watch, so I made a little speech, and then, right on time, Hooligan made his entrance.

  He was got up like the rest of us—Salvation Army gear, and a little collection box.

  We’d rehearsed the next bit carefully.

  “Merry Christmas all, and God bless you,” Hooligan says, while the crowd started to look a bit puzzled.

  Parker looked at me in a panic. The smell of something fishy was now reaching into the farthest corners of the room and I would have given the patrons about ten more seconds. “Holy Jesus,” I said to Parker. “It’s a real one. What’ll we do now? There’ll be a riot if they find out.”

  The two musicians and Danny Boy slid out the door and one of the patrons said, “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Give him the money,” I said. “For God’s sake, give him the money.”

  Parker couldn’t speak, but he nodded, and I stepped forward.

  “Coals to Newcastle,” I said very loud and heartily. “Coals to Newcastle, sending two groups to the same place. But you’re just in time, Captain. Here.” I handed him the sack of money.

  Hooligan’s eyes rolled up in holy wonder. “Bless you, gentlemen,” he said. “Bless you.”

  I was praying he wouldn’t do anything silly like make the sign of the cross over the room, and I signaled to Toothy that we should be on our way. Then I heard a sound that made my blood run cold. Someone opened the door and “Joy to the World” came flooding through, played by all fifteen members of the Salvation Army’s silver band.

  Parker, of course, was not surprised. Hooligan was his surprise, and he assumed that the band was backup for him.

  Now there was just me and Toothy—Hooligan could look after himself—so I put my hand on Toothy’s shoulder in a brotherly way and we almost got through the door before we were stopped by Sister Anna herself. She looked at Hooligan, puzzled. Hooligan looked at me. Parker looked at us both, and I did the only thing I could. I took the money off Hooligan, put it in the sister’s hands, said, “Merry Christmas, Sister,” and took Toothy and Hooligan with me through the door.

  The car was gone, of course—the motto with us, if a job goes wrong, is “Pull the ladder up, Jack. I’m in.” But no one was chasing us, so we threw our caps away and hailed a cab.

  * * *

  We waited until after New Year’s, then we got an educated friend of Toothy’s to pretend to be a reporter for a news station doing a story on Christmas giving, and the Salvation Army commander told him what had happened. “Someone phoned us, here at the shelter,” the commander said. “They told us if we would come to the Old Bush and play a few carols, we would get a major contribution. We gathered it was some kind of surprise, arranged by the proprietor.”

  We never knew for a l
ong time who had done it; then, about six months after, The Boozer and I were stopped dead in Nathan Phillips Square by the sight of Danny Boy, eyes closed, head back, in the middle of “Abide With Me.” He was in full uniform. Behind him was the Salvation Army silver band.

  We waited for him to come round with the collecting box. We kept our heads down, and when he drew. level I looked up sharply. “Hello, Danny Boy,” I said. “How long you been with this mob?”

  He looked surprised, but not for long. “I saw the light last Christmas,” he said. “Brother.” And he moved away, shaking his box. The Salvation Army were just being charitable, of course, welcoming the backslider, never mind that his singing hadn’t improved a bit, not to sinners’ ears, anyway. You could say that what mattered was that he was in tune with God.

  The Boozer wanted to do him right then and there, but I held him off. As I pointed out, it had cost us nothing, but Parker was out a couple of thousand, and the boys in the Old Bush (to whom we’d slipped the story) were still laughing.

  Even on a good day, you can’t win every race.

  MICKEY FRIEDMAN - THE FABULOUS NICK

  Mickey Friedman’s “The Fabulous Nick” provides a new slant on a familiar Christmas figure who finds himself playing detective in Greenwich Village.

  Mickey says part of this story is pure wish fulfillment. The house where “The Fabulous Nick” takes place is a replica of the brown-stone in which she lives with her husband, a museum director. She has often fantasized that their fireplaces, all nonworking, would someday be repaired.

  Mickey Friedman grew up on the Gulf Coast in the Florida panhandle, has done college public relations in Ohio, been a reporter in San Francisco, and spent a year and a half writing in Paris. Always a fan, she’s been publishing mystery novels (six to date) since 1983. Mickey says she writes about the places she knows, and she’s certainly been in some interesting places. But chimneys?

  Nick gets a lot of mail, most of it predictable variations of “Gimme.” These requests come with the territory like the red suit and the twinkly image.

  Nick is not quite the bowlful of jelly the ads portray. Barrel-chested maybe, but solid. And he doesn’t find life as hilarious as the constant braying of his imitators would have you believe.

  This letter, for instance, addressed to Nick in a childish hand, is not funny. The kid gets right to the point: “I hate you! Stay away from us!” Signed Jason T. McGuire, with an address in New York City that Nick, having considerable knowledge of geography, recognizes as Greenwich Village.

  Hmm. Nick almost never gets “I hate you.” Certainly not the week before his big night, when everybody is crazy about him. There has been a screw-up somewhere along the line, which happens when you get so many, many conflicting needs. Nick is going to have to

  do something about it, busy season or no busy season.

  * * *

  Jason Thomas McGuire, age seven, is slumped in a chair in the principal’s office at his Greenwich Village elementary school. Jason is a wiry child whose big feet are dangling a couple of inches above the floor. He is brown-haired, freckled, and until recently, when he became an utter hellion, he was a great kid. The principal, an understanding woman who knows something about Jason’s problems, is talking to Jason’s mother on the telephone. Jason will be going home as soon as his mother can leave work and come to get him.

  Upstairs, in the corridor outside Jason’s classroom, a custodian, with rag and bucket of cleanser, scrubs at an obscene suggestion involving Santa Claus that Jason scrawled on the wall in red crayon. Jason’s teacher caught him in the act.

  The principal puts down the phone. She says, “Your mom’s on the way, Jason.”

  No answer. Jason slumps lower. On a table by the principal’s desk is a small decorated tree. Jason considers knocking the tree over and running out the door, but rejects the idea because it isn’t trees he hates.

  “Sorry you’ll miss the party this afternoon. We’ll see you after Christmas.”

  Jason shudders and turns his head away.

  “Let’s hope for better times in the new year, all right?”

  Jason shrugs. Who cares about the new year?

  The next morning, a cold, gray Saturday, Nick strolls down a quiet residential street in Greenwich Village. Dirt-encrusted piles of snow from an early flurry or two lie in shadowy corners between the brownstones.

  Some doors have wreaths on them, and every now and then a decorated tree is visible through tall parlor-floor windows. Pleasant. More the kind of neighborhood where kids request ecologically correct toys or the latest video games. What reason would a child in this neighborhood have for hating Nick?

  Nick is not in uniform today. Instead of his signature garb, he is wearing a knitted watch cap, a down vest over a flannel shirt in the Royal Stewart tartan, grubby jeans, work boots. He is carrying a large toolbox. He finds the address, an Italianate house with a fanlight and leaded glass panels beside the green door. He studies the four doorbells and leans on the one marked “McGuire.” Soon, a woman’s voice yells, “Who is it?” through the squawk box.

  “Chimney man!” bawls Nick.

  “What?”

  “Chimney man. Get the fireplaces working. Landlord sent me.”

  “The fireplaces in this building haven’t worked in years.” The woman’s voice is scratchy and distorted through the box.

  “Landlord sent me, lady.”

  “Just a minute.”

  While Nick is waiting, he extracts a dog-eared business card from the pocket of his down vest. When, through the leaded panel, he see a woman approaching, he presses the card against the glass so she can read it Without opening the door, she comes close and squints at the card. She reads aloud, “Santos, Angeles, and Evangelistas. Chimney and Flue Specialists.”

  Nick points at himself. “Nick Santos.”

  The woman looks at him skeptically. “You’ll have to wait while I check with the landlord.”

  “Okey-doke.” The woman disappears again, and Nick lounges against the wrought-iron fence and whistles “Here Comes Santa Claus” until she returns to let him in. If he couldn’t convince a New York landlord to rehabilitate a few fireplaces, he’d hardly be worthy of his job.

  Carol McGuire, a fair-haired woman in a green velour sweat suit, looks too worried and wasted to be pretty, but obviously she used to be. She stands with her arms folded watching Nick, who is lying on his back in the McGuire living room with his head in the fireplace, shining his flashlight up the chimney. “How long is this going to take?” she asks.

  “Hard to say. I’ve got to look at the other fireplaces in the building. Be good to have a working fireplace, won’t it?”

  “It makes no difference to me. We’re leaving as soon as we can find another apartment.”

  A little boy comes in. He is drawn and pale, his sweatshirt hanging on his thin body, his shoulders drooping.

  Nick twists around to look at him. “Hiya,” he says.

  “Hi.”

  Carol McGuire puts an arm around the boy. “Jason, this is Mr. Santos. He’s going to fix the fireplaces.”

  Nick chuckles. “Just in time for Santa to come down the chimney, huh, Jason?”

  Jason McGuire’s white face turns mottled red. Pulling away from his mother, he charges Nick, still stretched out on the floor, and kicks him viciously in the leg. He runs from the room, and his mother starts to cry.

  “You see, Jason’s father is in jail, and Jason blames Santa Claus,” says Carol McGuire. She and Nick are sitting at the dining table having a cup of tea, which Carol has insisted on preparing by way of apology to Nick. “It’s the most awful thing, Mr. Santos—”

  “Nick.”

  Carol wipes her nose with a paper napkin. There are dun-colored circles under her blue eyes. “The tabloids are calling it the Yuppie Slime case. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.”

  “I’ve been . . . out of the city.”

  “When they took my husband away, some idiots were
yelling,

  Yuppie slime, yuppie slime

  Robbed his neighbor at Christmastime—”

  Carol breaks down in fresh sobs. Nick sips his tea. “Bunch of jerks,” he says.

  When Carol McGuire gets her breath back, she tells Nick the story:

  Until six months ago, the McGuire family was doing fine. Matt McGuire made two hundred thousand dollars a year working on Wall Street; Carol sold real estate. Jason was a model boy, and in the gifted program at school. Then, like thousands of others before him, Matt McGuire was laid off. At roughly the same moment the real estate market dried up, and Carol’s income plummeted. Hard times set in.

  In exchange for a reduction in rent, Matt became superintendent of their building. Instead of analyzing data and making transatlantic phone calls, he spent his time replacing burned-out light bulbs, mopping the foyer, and throwing away the innumerable Chinese take-out menus shoved under the door daily.

  “He was a good super. A really good super, Nick,” Carol says. “His pride was involved. He was the best damn super this building ever had.”

  Times got tougher. Carol abandoned real estate and took a secretarial job. An un-merry Christmas approached, and that’s where Santa came in. An envelope arrived in the mail, addressed to “The McGuires” with no return address. The envelope contained, with no explanation, three tickets to the Christmas spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. On the back of one of the tickets was written, “Merry Christmas from Santa Claus.”

  “Matt figured somebody from his old firm sent the tickets, and didn’t want to embarrass him by signing his name,” Carol says. “Anyway, it seemed like the only Christmas cheer we were going to get. We told Jason Santa had sent us a treat in the mail. I mean—we didn’t think it was wrong to use the tickets. Do you, Nick?”

  “Of course not,” Nick says. He has a touch of heartburn. Carol’s story isn’t sitting well with him.

  On the appointed day, full of excitement and good cheer, the McGuire family took the subway up to Radio City. As they stood in line to go in, their attention was caught by another family of three— mother, father, and hysterical little girl. Eavesdropping, they gathered that the family had driven in from Long Island City to see the performance, only to discover they had left their tickets at home. In a burst of generosity,