One Horse Open Slay, page 12
I saw right away that his legs were broken. They slapped with a mind of their own against the face of the cliff with every wind gust. A streak of blood dribbled from beneath his hat and froze instantly to his pale forehead.
I could see his pudgy fingers wriggling inside his mittens as he tried for a better grip. He looked up, pleading in his eyes.
It was against my better judgment. On top of everything else, the scumbag had shot me, which isn’t something that’s easily forgiven back in my neighborhood. On the other hand I was already up for the murder of just one elf. Jenkins would be overjoyed if he thought he could pin the murder of Santa Claus on me too, and it was a given he’d never listen when I tried to explain Quintz was an imposter.
“Hey, Quintz!” I yelled over the wind. “Try your best not to let go in the next two minutes. But if that’s good for you, don’t let me keep you.”
I crawled away from the edge of the cliff and fell to a sitting position in the snow.
First I checked the bullet wound. Not too bad. No broken bones and no exit hole. The bullet was still in there, lodged in soft tissue. I stuffed my handkerchief up around the trickle of blood and tried to forget about it, which is the best thing to do when you’ve been shot by Santa and the nearest doctor is some med school reject swimming in vodka in the hold of some Russkie icebreaker a thousand miles away.
I inched closer to the edge of the ice cliff, crawling on my belly, acutely aware that a single gust could lift me off the packed ice and drop me straight past the skunk who’d shot me and who I had no desire to save. I stretched out my arm.
“Give me your hand!”
“I can’t move!” Tears froze in the corners of his eyes. “Please! I’m just a mall Santa. I don’t wanna be here anymore. I wanna go back to Fresno!”
“Really? I think I’d rather fall. Don’t move.”
When I drew back my hand and crawled away from the edge I heard him screaming for me to come back. A moment later when I reappeared with a length of harness from the crash, he flashed a weak, gap-toothed grin.
“Thought you’d left me,” he called, and laughed manically. Bloody slush dribbled from the corner of his mouth into his beard.
The instant he laughed, the wind grabbed hold of him once more and for a horrible second in eternity we both thought he was done for. But the gust of wind blew off East and into the abrupt stillness Quintz yelled, “Half of everything, Banyon! Half the shop, the land. Hell, all of it. Screw the rabbit. You can have Christmas.”
“It ain’t yours to give, Quintz. Not to me, not to anyone. Hell, you’re not going anywhere. Let’s get this out of the way.” I plopped back onto my rear end on the ice. “It was stupid of me to not realize it at breakfast when you didn’t know what a sugar plum was. And your little inside joke about Santa needing his beauty sleep. You said ‘needed,’ past tense. So you killed Santa, didn’t you? You did it just after September third. That’s why that’s the last date recorded in his naughty-nice file. The bulk of the elves probably didn’t have much contact with him, but you laid off the ones that did. Yeah, Mannix told me about the layoffs. You couldn’t fool Runny, Santa’s faithful old butler though, could you? That’s why you cooked up the story about him going up for a dry run over Seattle. You couldn’t take the chance he’d rat you out. Your new butler’s a jerk, but he didn’t know Santa except from a distance, plus he’s got bum eyes. It didn’t take much for him to think you were the real Claus. You found the worst of the elves, the ones Santa kept on for scut work. They knew the truth about who you really are, but they kept the secret because they were all suddenly promoted. You took them from being the lowest rungs on the ladder and turned them into kings. The worker elves never knew about the Santa switcheroo. Except poor Teeny. He figured it out somehow, or at least knew something was wrong. He got down to me before you could stop him, but when you finally did catch up to him you got creative. You killed him and framed me for the murder. It was you who killed him, wasn’t it. No elf did that. Doc Minto said the candy cane was angled down. Somebody a lot taller than an elf did in Teeny.”
“You’re right…you’re right! But not about the elf--”
He slipped and for a moment I thought he’d fall, but he managed to grab onto a twisted piece of metal that his body had previously blocked. He seemed more stunned than relieved that a chunk of the sleigh’s runner had gotten lodged in a crevice in the side of the glacier. As he dangled out in the air, the curved metal began to slowly bend.
“Banyon!” Quintz screamed.
I don’t like being interrupted when I’m being smart. It doesn’t happen too often and I like to enjoy it when it does. I reluctantly lowered my makeshift safety line.
I’d looped the harness around the antlers of one of the dead reindeer. I figure the weight of the animal and the large part of the sleigh to which it was still attached would be enough to hold even a fat slob like Quintz. The dangling end of the line nearly reached him. He stretched an uncertain mitten for the harness.
The wind suddenly picked up. Snow swirled wildly around us both. My necktie whipped my face and through it all I saw Quintz stretch out one mittened hand and bat at the end of the harness like a kitten playing with a ball of yarn.
He almost had it. He pulled himself up one-handed and snatched at the harness as it bounced along the glacier’s face. I felt a tug on the line and I dug my heels in and gritted my teeth against the dead weight that was about to set my injured shoulder on fire.
I heard a loud burst of insane laughter over the wailing of the wind and the line went slack. I looked over the edge of the glacier just in time to see Quintz’s bloated corpse bouncing lifeless off the side of the glacier on its way into oblivion.
Stuck fast and dangling on the far end of the harness like a worm on the end of a fishing line was one fuzzy red mitten.
I fell back panting to the snow. My head hit something hard. I reached up with my good arm and pulled back a brightly wrapped chocolate egg. It was frozen solid.
“Damn rabbit,” I said, heaving the egg over the side of the cliff.
The eggs were proof that the North Pole shop could be turned over to Easter production and that the elves would fall in line for another holiday. But the scheme had failed. It was over now.
Almost.
I dragged myself to my feet and stumbled to the wreckage of the sleigh. The Plexiglas windshield was smashed but the dashboard was mostly intact. I didn’t know if Quintz would have had the deed on him when he fell.
Luckily he didn’t. I found an envelope in the glove compartment where he’d stashed his gun. I took it out, confirmed the paperwork on the Pole workshop, wadded it back up inside the shelter of the glove box and burned it.
As I watched the flames crinkle the paper and burn it all away to ash, I let one long, relieved white cloud slip slowly from between my lips. But before even half the air had left my lungs I abruptly froze.
You get a sixth sense in my business when you’re being watched. I suddenly got a shudder that had nothing to do with the cold or the wind or the perpetual night. Very slowly, very, very carefully, I turned around.
He was standing just a few yards away. Watching.
Six feet tall. Eight feet if you included the ears. Giant black eyes like malevolent manhole covers. A big powder blue ribbon tied around his neck.
The meeting spot had been closer than I figured. He must been waiting on a nearby plain and saw the sleigh come down. No human would have seen it through the storm, maybe because no human being ate as many carrots as he did.
The Easter Bunny twitched his nose and bared his fangs. The back legs tensed and I could see he was ready to hop the distance to me, eager to tear me to shreds.
The instant before he could launch himself like a fuzzy missile, something even larger than the rabbit dropped out of the sky like a falling satellite and landed soft as a snowflake to the glacier, directly in his path.
Comet reared up on his hind legs and brandished front hooves at the rabbit like a boxer itching to strike the first blow. The rabbit recoiled, reconsidered, and before the epic battle could even begin had turned on his furry legs and hopped off into the storm.
I staggered over to Comet and hauled myself up onto his back.
“I’d say we’re pretty much even, pal. Now if only you could do that for pink elephants, I got a bar I could rent you out to.”
I wrapped the reins tight around my hands and the reindeer took off like a shot into the wild arctic sky.
Chapter 15
I can find my way around pretty good on buses, taxis, trains and subways. If there’s a schedule I can read or a driver I can holler at and undertip, I’m golden. Stick me on the back of a flying reindeer in a blizzard at the top of the world and my sense of direction is for crap. It was a good thing Comet knew the way back to the barn or they would’ve had to leave me on the counter for a week to get me thawed out in time for New Year’s dinner.
She doesn’t want to see you.
I wished Quintz’s words didn’t mean what I knew they did.
Things had changed greatly in the stables since I’d left. When Comet appeared from out of the storm and landed on the ancient wood runway, a dozen elves were there to swarm us as we clomped down into the ramp. Between my injured shoulder and the fact that I could feel my hands about as well as Reba McEntire can feel her face these days, I figured Gummo’s crew would tear me to shreds.
“Mr. Crag!”
The cry came from inside one of the pens and before Comet had come to a stop, Mannix was bounding out to greet me.
The elves that had surrounded me struggled to close the door on the storm while small hands helped me down from the back of the reindeer. I saw now that these were not the lowlife elves that Solly Quintz had made his North Pole goon squad. These elves wore tidy red and green costumes and their ruddy faces were concerned, not hardened like Gummo’s and the rest of his crew.
“Here, come here! Come along!” Mannix said.
I stumbled along behind him until we were standing at the mouth of the stable from which he had appeared. The box from which I’d liberated Comet was still there. Inside sat a couple dozen of the most morose elves I’d ever seen. Their hands and feet were bound with heavy twine. At the front of the captive crowd was Gummo, bleeding and miserable and glaring hatred at Mannix and me.
The crate was surrounded by a contingent of elves armed with crowbars, wooden mallets, wrenches and any other weapons they’d managed to scrounge up.
Mannix filled me in on the events that had taken place during my absence. He had successfully caught up with and single-handedly taken prisoner the three elves that had escaped from the kitchen. Once they were in custody, he had alerted some of the former shift supervisors who had been demoted during Quintz’s reign of terror. The North Pole Revolution of December 23rd had taken all of twenty minutes. The naughty elves had all been apprehended and were going to be sent off for trial at some kind of elf version of The Hague deep in the Black Forest.
A dozen elves swarmed the crate and lifted the side back in place while still more went to work rapidly pounding in nails.
“You done good, kid,” I said.
I headed for the stairs but Mannix and the other elves grabbed me by the trench coat and dragged me over to a potbelly stove, forcing me to sit on a crate they hauled in front of it. As my hands warmed, one of the elves, an old codger with huge white mutton chop sideburns and age spots all over his forehead, checked the wound in my shoulder. He clucked his tongue unhappily and his huge eyes narrowed behind the bifocals that were perched on the end of his long nose. I saw him nod to the others but didn’t know what the signal meant until they’d pinned me down on the hay covered floor.
The old elf came at me with a pair of needle nose pliers.
At least he made short work of removing the bullet, and he gave it to me as a souvenir once he was finished carefully stitching up the wound.
“You’ve got a terrific bedside manner, doc,” I said as the elves helped me back up onto the crate in front of the stove.
“Oh, he’s not a doctor,” Mannix said. “He works in the factory that makes full season DVD sets of House, and before that he sewed arms on Homer Simpson dolls.”
I made a mental note to talk to Wasserbaum when I got back. I’d finally met another doctor he was qualified to go into business with.
I was warm enough and as patched up as I was going to get. I left Comet, Mannix and the rest of the elves and headed for the stairs.
I had a funny feeling my reception upstairs wouldn’t be quite as friendly.
# # #
She was shocked to see me again. She nearly choked on her cigarette and she quickly stubbed it out in the ashtray at her elbow on the bed.
“Don’t ever take up playing poker, baby,” I said as I stepped into Julie Claus’ bedroom. “You start strong, yeah, but you crack wide open by the final hand.”
“Crag. Oh. You’re back.”
She was lying on top of the bedcovers. She carefully closed the Entertainment Weekly she’d been reading and slipped her long legs over the side of the bed.
“I guess you couldn’t rent a brass band on such short notice,” I said.
“Of course I’m happy to see you.” I saw her eye draw slowly over the bloodstains on my trench coat. “Did you…I mean, is he…”
“Dead? That’s usually what happens when you take a nosedive from a flying sleigh with only a facefull of North Pole to break your fall.”
“Oh, thank God.”
Cue the waterworks. She ran over to me and threw her arms around my shoulders and buried her face in my chest. I gritted my teeth and hoped the stitches from my plush toy surgeon held. I backed out of her embrace and guided her a step back.
“Save the weeping widow act for the next chump who doesn’t know there’s a lump of coal where your heart should be, Julie. You’ve been playing me for an all-day sucker ever since I showed up here. I should have known the first time you walked through the door. Here’s a guy wanted for murder and you didn’t bat one pretty eyelash. No dame in her right mind welcomes the Winter Warlock into her parlor unless she knows he’s no threat to her. You knew from day one that I didn’t kill Teeny. You knew it, sister, because you’re the one who gave him a candy cane lobotomy.”
The tears dried, her eyes clouded and she took a few shocked steps back. “You can’t be serious. I-- I was here at the Pole when Teeny was killed. I have a dozen elves who’ll back me up.”
“Quintz’s insane elf posse won’t save your pretty ass. They’re all boxed up downstairs and ready to be UPSed back to Deutschland. Viva la revolucion, baby."
Her spine stiffened and I could see she was processing this new data.
“No,” she insisted. “They’re coming to get you for the elf’s murder. No one’s going to believe I had anything to do with it.”
“They will once I get through spinning them the whole sordid story. You were an events coordinator when Santa met you, is that right?”
“Why…why, yes. I told you that.”
“Fancy name for an old fashioned game. In my neighborhood we still just call them plain old hookers.” The color drained from her face. “Oh, yeah, I got all the skinny on you. Your naughty-nice file might be wiped clean, but you’ve still got a police record that’d choke Dasher, Dancer and Prancer put together. You were a no-good skirt headed for an ugly early end, like a million dames before you. But then Santa -- not that faker Quintz, the real Santa -- comes along and makes you legit. You’re a real-life Pretty Woman. But it’s not enough. Oh, you put up with it for a few years, making it look good. You’re the reformed, doting wife. Was it an act all the way from the start? How long were you plotting to bring that bum ex-husband of yours up here? The only thing he was ever good at was playing mall Santa. And he was good. Real good. Good enough to fool most of the elves. But first you had to get him to kill Santa. How’d he do it?”
A trace of ugliness brushed her beautiful face. She scowled. “Santa was a gullible old fool. I borrowed the sleigh on Labor Day weekend. I told him I was visiting some old high school girlfriends. I picked up Solly in Fresno and hid him out down in the abandoned ALF stuffed doll factory. A few days later I told the old idiot I was taking him on a surprise romantic weekend. I packed for the both of us. He never even looked in the burlap sack in the back of the sleigh. I’m sure he figured it was filled with toothbrushes and nighties. He never would have guessed my ex was hiding inside. Solly whacked him with some clackers on the back of the head somewhere over Alaska. We dumped the body in the ocean and flew back here. From then on, Solly was Santa.”
“It would have been perfect. You could have sold this place to the rabbit, closed up shop and no one would have been the wiser. The rabbit would have remade Christmas into a winter version of Easter, ‘cause that’s what he knows. Fewer toys, more chocolate eggs. Way less overhead. That’s why so many of the shops were being shut down and elves laid off. It would have all gone off without a hitch. But then Teeny escaped and ruined your perfect scheme. You were furious. So did you and Solly both fly down or was it just you? Did you plan to kill Teeny and pin it on me, or was that just my dumb luck?”
“All right, all right! So I killed him. He ruined everything.” Her eyes were filled with pure hatred. For me, for Teeny, for her life before Santa and for the life of dutiful wife he’d expected her to lead once he’d rescued her from the streets.
I took a seat on the edge of the bed. “You couldn’t just up and kill me when I showed up here. Another body so soon would complicate things just a little bit too much, what with the Easter deal about to break. Unless I was killed by another elf I was trying to murder. Quintz told me all about the frame-within-a-frame you planned for me. Your handiwork, I assume. Quintz was the kind of two-bit clod who’d need a search party to help him find his feet inside his own boots. But he was honest about one thing. You didn't want to see me, he said. He was telling the truth. Why would you need to see me to warn you what was going on? You knew it all because it was your scheme right from the start. So congratulations, princess. You played me for a real sap. I should have known you were full of it when I found out about the elf layoffs after you told me they stayed on forever. So what about the black eye? Was that a lie too?”
