St. Nick Read online

  “Where did our guy go from here?” asked Forster.

  “I tracked him to the bus stop,” the guard said. “Since he wasn’t going after that woman, I stopped following him.”

  Nick let out a long sigh. Forster was more diplomatic. “I’d appreciate getting printouts of him from the best video footage you have.”

  The guard nodded, and the two men left the surveillance room and returned to Forster’s office. “I’d like to say it’s been fun,” said Nick, “but I’d feel a little funny lying while wearing a Santa suit. Anyway, it’s all yours.”

  “Not so fast,” said Forster. He handed Nick a piece of paper. “This guy really wants you to call him back.”

  Nick looked at the name and number on the paper, and didn’t recognize either one. “I never heard of him.”

  “He said you might say that, and told me to tell you that he’s one of the other Santas. The actor, he said.”

  Nick started to crumple up the paper, but Forster raised his hands. “Hey. I took the call. This guy said it was really important, like emergency important.”

  “In that case, I really don’t want to call him back.”

  “He made me promise that you’d get back to him.” Forster pointed to his phone.

  With a sigh, Nick sat down. He uncrumpled the paper, and then punched in the numbers. Bret answered on the first ring.

  “I really, really need a favor,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m friends with an intern at Los Niños Hospital. A few weeks ago I told him about my Christmas job as Santa and that got him to talking about how they needed a Santa to come to his ward. So we arranged that tonight would be the night. But my car’s broken down in L.A. and they’re not going to be able to fix it in time for me to get back.”

  “So call your friend and tell him you’ll be there tomorrow night.”

  “It’s too late. He can’t pull the plug now. Santa’s visit is all the kids have been talking about. The staff’s even collected presents.”

  “Then get someone on the staff to do it.”

  “I’ve got the spare uniform. I know I shouldn’t have taken it, but I did. And besides, they need an outsider. The kids would know if one of the staff dressed up as Santa.”

  Los Niños. The English translation was “The Children.” The very thought of that hospital brought Nick all sorts of bad memories. “I really don’t want to do it.”

  “I was going to get paid two hundred bucks. The money’s yours.”

  “I don’t want the money,” Nick said. “It’s just …”

  What was it? It was what had happened. It was when his life had gone down the toilet. And he was tired. He had put in his promised two days as Santa. That was enough.

  “I didn’t tell you one thing,” Bret said. “There’s a reason this is so important. The kids I’m scheduled to see are sick. Some are real sick; the kind of sick where very few things excite them, but my friend said they’re all happy Santa’s coming to see them.”

  Nick didn’t want to hear that. It roiled his insides. He knew too much about hurt kids. Today had been a bad day that had gotten progressively worse, but this made everything that had come before seem like a cakewalk. He was being asked to walk into a room full of sick kids and make jolly. That wasn’t something he could do. He was sick himself, sick in spirit, sick in thoughts. His reservoir was tapped out, not a drop left.

  “There’s got to be someone else.”

  “There isn’t. I’ll really, really owe you. I’ll wash your car, I’ll mow your lawn, do anything you say.”

  Nick wanted to hang up the phone. He wasn’t supposed to have been Santa at all. He was supposed to have been catching muggers. That was the kind of work he was good at.

  “What time you supposed to be there?”

  “Six forty-five,” said Bret. “You are a lifesaver, Nick. I will not forget this. I will never forget this.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you. Thank you. Thank …”

  Nick hung up. There were no visions of sugarplums dancing through his head, only visions of sick kids. His stomach hurt. He didn’t want to go back there, to the hospital, to what had happened, to the worst day of his life. But that’s what he had agreed to do.

  “Bad news?” asked Forster.

  “Yeah.”

  Episode Two

  Chapter 7

  What Child Is This?

  When Nick took off his Santa padding in the locker room after his meeting with Forster, he could see why he’d been scratching all day. There was a rash over most of his chest. It was another lousy thing in a lousy day. He remembered how he had sprayed the padding with deodorant that morning. The dampness, spray, and sweat had left him with a red trail of welts, and exposure to the air only made the itching that much worse.

  It was already quarter to five. He could run to the cleaners and have a one-hour cleaning done on the Santa suit, and then look for a drugstore with some kind of itching cream. He found a battered cardboard box in the locker room and stuffed the Santa suit and batting inside. I have promises to keep, Nick thought. It was a line Forster had always used when they worked late night patrol together. Forster had said it was from some poem. What was the next line?

  “‘And miles to go before I sleep,’” he said. Wasn’t that the truth.

  He added the beard, wig, and accessories to the box. It would make sense to go directly from the cleaners to the hospital. He tucked everything away, making sure it wasn’t visible.

  Naturally, the dry-cleaning shop was at the opposite end of the mall. The Asian man working the counter accepted the Santa suit without changing his expression or commenting.

  “I need it as soon as possible,” Nick said.

  “One hour?”

  He wasn’t sure if the man was asking him or telling him. “No more than an hour. Okay?”

  He got a nod.

  Nick put the padding on the counter. “And can you do something about this? Dry it out, or make it smell better, or whatever?”

  The man wrinkled his nose at the soggy mass. He peered at it, and then tentatively touched it like he might the carcass of a dead animal. Mouth closed, he made a universal guttural sound that translated to “not good.”

  “An hour?” he asked.

  It was the same question, but this time it sounded different, as if he was saying a lifetime wouldn’t be long enough.

  “Yeah,” said Nick, “an hour.”

  He went in search of the drugstore, but couldn’t find one. The closest thing was a body and lotion store in the lower-rent district away from the department stores. Most of their stuff was bath beads, and spritzers, and fragrance gels, but there were some salves and creams. They weren’t the kind of ointments that advertised “rash relief,” but he found one that said it was “cool and soothing,” and “promoted healing.” The way he was itching, he was willing to try anything.

  “Jingle Bells” was playing throughout the mall’s loudspeakers. But Nick wasn’t laughing all the way; he was itching all the way. He ran down to the locker room, threw off his clothes, and applied the ointment all over. For ten minutes he just sat in his boxers and scratched. The combination of his scratching and the lotion made him feel better, almost normal. The greatest pleasures in life were usually associated with getting over something just so you could feel like your old self again, he thought. Nick wished he could do the same with the rest of his life.

  He put his clothes on. His itching didn’t start up again, so he took that as a good sign. He looked at his watch. The Santa suit would be ready in half an hour. Nick tried not to dwell on going to that hospital again—Los Niños—but it was impossible. The sick kids weighed on him, made him restless. That annoyed him. He wanted to be miserable on his own terms.

  Now that he wasn’t scratching, he realized how thirsty he was. He walked over to the mall’s Food Pavilion and ordered two extra large ice teas. Nick gulped down the first and took the other one with him. He stopped
to do his sipping while leaning on the second-level railing overlooking the North Pole.

  It was a good vantage point to look out for his suspects. Nick studied the mall environs, trying to see as a criminal might. There weren’t any visible guards on patrol, and the mall’s energy savings meant that lighting was patchy in some areas. Shadows were just what you wanted if you were a bad guy. Forster had once told him that mall management spent seven times more on landscaping than they did on security. Unfortunately, that was evident. And now that he’d put in his two days, it was no longer his problem.

  With the clock ticking down, he walked over to the dry cleaners. He expected to be told that the items weren’t done, but he discovered the opposite problem. The Santa Claus suit was clean and ready—and hanging all too visibly on the carousel. It was covered in a plastic wrapping, and anyone could see what was under the transparent covering.

  “I need the suit covered up,” Nick told the counter guy.

  “Covered up?”

  “Yeah.” Nick pantomimed, waving his hands around the Santa suit. “I need you to wrap it up so little kids don’t see it.”

  The man made a sound similar to the one he uttered an hour earlier. Nick took it to mean part displeasure and part contemplation.

  “Okay,” he said. “We wrap.”

  He shouted to the back in a foreign language, and a woman answered him. The conversation went back and forth until an Asian woman came to the front of the shop. She was small, thin, and frowning. First she looked at the uniform, then she looked at Nick, then she disappeared, but not before saying something to the man. Nick was glad he didn’t understand what was being said.

  The woman returned with some brown wrapping paper. She tore off three sheets, taping them to hide the Santa suit.

  “Okay?” she asked Nick.

  Nick thanked her, and got a curt nod back. He had an hour before he was due at the hospital. Putting on the batting and his uniform would take a few minutes, but that would still leave him with plenty of time to get there and get ready.

  He heard the crying just as he was exiting from the cleaners, heard it well before he saw the upset little girl. She was standing in front of a camera store and had already drawn several concerned bystanders. Punctuating her screams were two syllables she repeated over and over: “Ma—maaaa!”

  She was young, maybe five, and looked like the Morton’s Salt girl in her yellow dress and yellow shoes. But it wasn’t salt that was raining. It was the girl’s tears, and she wasn’t about to be consoled by anyone but “Ma—maaa!” People were trying to calm her, were doing their best to learn her name, but when she opened her mouth it was only to scream her pain.

  Nick wasn’t good around screaming kids. The sounds seemed to somehow shut off his brain circuitry. But this time he had an idea of how to stop the screaming. He needed a phone booth, the kind Ma Bell used to provide, the kind Superman had always changed in. That was the vision that he had—of Clark Kent going into a phone booth and coming out as Superman.

  He ran back to the dry cleaners. “I need to change.”

  “You need change?”

  “Not change money, change clothes.”

  The man shook his head. Either he didn’t understand, or there was no changing room. The girl’s screams were even louder. Nick had heard sirens with less volume.

  “I need to change my clothes. I’ll do it over there.” Nick pointed to behind the carousel. The clothes would block him from the public’s view, or at least mostly. The man was still shaking his head, but Nick walked behind the counter anyway. The man shouted back to his wife. Her reply sounded incredulous. By the time she came into view Nick already had his shirt and pants off. She started spewing words. The language was unknown to him, but the meaning wasn’t.

  He threw on the padding, then the coat, then the pants, and cinched them with the belt. The wig and beard and cap got tossed on. And still the little girl’s crying went on unabated. As did the woman’s speech.

  Nick decided to forego the boot covers and gloves. And there wasn’t time to apply the white eyebrow stick. He was only a half-dressed Santa, but he hoped it would pass a child’s muster. The entire mall had to be hearing the girl’s screams, even if they had somehow escaped the attention of her mother.

  He hurried out of the store, the Asian woman shouting behind him, the little girl screaming in the distance. It was no contest. Nick ran up to the little girl, and in his jolliest voice yelled, “Now who’s that crying?”

  He made big with his footsteps, exaggerated them to almost a swagger, and at his approach all the hovering adults said, “Look, it’s Santa Claus.”

  Every head turned, even the girl’s. And her mouth, opened wide to scream, opened just a little more, but her crying stopped. The hovering adults were only too happy to step aside, to relinquish all responsibility. They were counting on Santa to make everything perfect.

  “Your mommy told me to come get you,” Nick said, “but she said that first we could stop and get an ice cream cone. Does that sound good?”

  The little girl’s upper lip, quivering and covered with snot, raised itself, and in a very little voice she said, “Yes.”

  Nick offered his hand, and she took it.

  Chapter 8

  Silent Night

  Nick and the little girl, Erin, were halfway through their ice cream cones when her mother showed up, accompanied by Henry. The woman’s face was flushed, and her eyes were red and teary. With a glad cry she scooped Erin up and held her tight. The daughter, now a picture of calm, took her mother’s emotional outburst in stride.

  “I was just with Santa Claus, Mama,” she said, as if that should have explained everything.

  The mother turned to Nick. With her panic subsiding, she was rapidly returning to being the picture of a well-heeled professional, one that didn’t want to be mistaken for a negligent mother. “As I was telling this gentleman,” she said, nodding to Henry, “Erin was right beside me. I was looking at some dresses, and when I turned around she was gone. We were on the first floor. I don’t have any idea how she got up here.”

  She put Erin down, placed her head at her daughter’s eye level, and in a stern voice asked: “How did you get up here?”

  “I don’t know,” said Erin. The little girl had the decency to appear contrite until she went back to licking her chocolate chip cone.

  “I think we need to have a talk, young lady. You better not ever, ever, ever walk away from me again.”

  She took Erin very firmly by the hand. “Thank you,” she said to Nick. “I am so grateful that you looked out for her. Can I at least pay for the ice cream?”

  “No,” said Nick, “Santa’s treat.”

  If Nick hadn’t been in a Santa suit, he might have told Erin’s mother his own story of the time he’d turned his back on George for just a moment. They’d been in one of those home improvement stores, and Nick had been checking out some plumbing fixtures when his Georgie-Porgie had vanished. At the time Georgie was only two. Nick had looked right, and then left, and was just about to start yelling when he heard grunting coming from above. To this day Nick didn’t know how his youngster had climbed up the shelves. He was sitting atop a toilet display, and his strained face told Nick more than he wanted to know. Nick had scooped up his son and raced out of the store. At the time he’d been mortified. But as Georgie grew up, it became the most repeated story of his childhood. Maybe in years to come Erin would hear about her ice cream with Santa.

  Erin’s mother thanked him again, and then took her daughter in tow. With Erin’s one free hand she waved to Nick, and called out, “Good-bye Santa Claus.”

  Nick waved to her until she was out of sight.

  “You the hero,” said Henry.

  “I’ll gladly share the glory if you’ll do me a big favor.”

  At least I was smart enough to order vanilla ice cream, thought Nick. He dabbed at his beard with a wet napkin, trying to get the spots out.

  He looked at his watc
h and saw that it was almost five forty-five. He debated whether to change out of his Santa suit and then change into it again at the hospital. He’d be cutting the time close enough as it was, so he decided to leave the uniform on. He knew the mall well enough now to go through the mall tunnels and avoid onlookers.

  Besides, it was possible he wouldn’t have any choice in the matter. Henry hadn’t yet returned with his clothes. Maybe they were being held hostage. He’d sent Henry as his goodwill emissary to try and retrieve the clothing he’d left at the dry cleaners.

  It had been Santa to the rescue, Nick thought. Part of him was still surprised at what he’d done. It wasn’t like him. It was out of character.

  Henry walked into the locker room laughing. “You really gots ’em mad,” he said. “Security was up at the cleaners, and they was telling them how this crazy man took off his clothes in the middle of their place.”

  Nick tried to retain a little dignity: “I undressed behind the carousel.”

  “That lady,” said Henry, laughing all the more. “All she kept saying was, ‘That Santa Craus a bad man.’”

  “You straightened her out?”

  “Wouldn’t go so far as to say that.” Henry grinned. “‘Bout the best I could do was get your things back. I’d think about finding a new cleaners if I was you.”

  He handed Nick two bags, then tried to imitate the outraged woman’s voice again: “That Santa Craus a bad man.”

  Nick took the bags and listened to Henry’s chuckles echoing through the locker room as he made his exit.

  There was a knock at the door followed by Angie’s voice: “Nick?”

  He was tempted not to answer, but finally said, “Yeah?”

  “Do you think I could have a few minutes of your time?”

  Nick sighed. “I got an appointment at six forty-five.”

  “This will only take a few minutes.

  “I’m busy. Can I ignore you another time?”