‘You shoot them at once,’ the Deaf Man said.
“Cause there’s alarm buttons on both desks.’
‘Under both desks, yes. Foot-activated. You say, “Merry Christmas, ladies,” and shoot them.’
‘This silencer’s gonna work, huh?’
‘It’s going to work, yes.’
‘‘Cause I never used a piece with a silencer on it.’
‘It’ll work, you have nothing to worry about.’
‘After I pack the money in the bag...’
‘Not only the money. Everything in the safe.’
‘Checks, everything, ‘cause there’s no time to do any sorting. I just throw everything in the bag.’
‘Correct.’
‘And then I leave by the employee’s entrance.’
‘Correct.’
‘And you’ll be waiting outside on the sidewalk.’
‘With “Silent Night” going.’
‘Yeah, “Silent Night,’” Charlie said, and smiled.
* * * *
Detective Richard Genero opened the top drawer of his desk and sneaked another peek at the invitation:
Scrawled on the flap of the card in the same handwriting was the message:
He had received the invitation two days ago. It had taken him a long while to figure out that Harriet was Harriet Byrnes, the lieutenant’s wife. He had asked Hal Willis a discreet question—‘Hey, who’s Harriet?’—and Hal Willis had winked and said, ‘Pete’s wife.’ Genero suspected that Hal Willis had been invited to the party, too, but he was sworn to secrecy and so he hadn’t said another word. He wondered now what the party was for. It seemed funny to him that Mrs. Byrnes hadn’t mentioned what the party was for. Also what should he call Mrs. Byrnes on the night of the party? She had signed the invitation ‘Harriet,’ hadn’t she? Should he call her Harriet? Should he call the lieutenant Pete? He had never in his life called him Pete.
Genero hated it when things got complicated.
For example, why had Mrs. Byrnes called him Richard? The only person in the entire world who called him Richard was his mother. Nobody on the squad called him Richard. Nobody on the squad called him Dick, either. Nobody in the world called him Dick. On the squad they called him Genero. Always his last name. Genero. They called Carella ‘Steve,’ and they called Hawes ‘Cotton,’ and Kling ‘Ben,’ but they always called him ‘Genero.’ His last name. Of course, they called Meyer ‘Meyer,’ but that was because his first name and his last name were exactly the same. His mother told him that was a sign of respect, people calling him by his last name. He told his mother they didn’t call him Mr. Genero, they just called him Genero. She insisted it was a sign of respect.
She also insisted that he should find out more about this party because maybe he was expected to bring a present. If he was expected to bring a present and he didn’t bring a present, this would make him look bad in the lieutenant’s eyes.
‘Il mondo è fatto a scale,’ his mother said. ‘Chi le scende e chi le sale.’
This meant: ‘The world is made of stairs, and there are those who go up and those who go down.’
This further meant: If Genero ever wanted to go any place in the police department, he’d better bring a present to the lieutenant’s party if a present was expected.
‘Ognuno cerca di portare l’acqua al suo Molino,’ his mother said.
Which meant: ‘Every man tries to bring water to his own mill.’
Which further meant: It was in Genero’s own interest to bring a present to the lieutenant’s party if he wanted to get anywhere in the police department.
But Harriet Byrnes had asked him to keep the party a secret.
So how was he supposed to ask anyone if a present was expected?
It was all very complicated.
Genero sighed and looked out the window to the parking lot behind the precinct.
Harry afternoon sunlight glinted off the white roofs of the patrol cars parked there.
* * * *
The forecasters were promising snow for Christmas, but you wouldn’t suspect it from today. There were days in this city when you wondered why anyone bothered moving to the Sun Belt. Cold, yes, the day was cold, you couldn’t deny that. But the cold merely quickened your step and made you feel more alive. And the sky was so blue you felt like hugging it. And the brilliant sunshine made everything seem like summertime, despite the cold.
The big stores had all taken out full-page ads in the newspapers, announcing that they would be open till six tonight, business as usual. It was a glorious day for shopping. The benevolent sun, the crisp cold air reminding you that this was indeed the day before Christmas, the streets alive with a sense of anticipation and expectation, the welcoming warmth of the stores with their glittering displays, even the shoppers more polite and courteous than they would have been if not sharing the knowledge that this was Christmas Eve.
On the sixth floor of Gruber’s uptown store, not far from the 87th Precinct station house, Santa Claus—or rather the man pretending to be Santa Claus—was amazed to see a line of kids still waiting to talk to him at five in the afternoon. He told all the little boys who climbed up onto his lap that they had to give him their toy orders real fast because he had to hurry on up to the North Pole to feed the reindeer and get ready for his long chilly ride tonight. The little boys were all in awe of Santa, and they reeled off their requests with the speed of tobacco auctioneers. The little girls took their good sweet time, perhaps because this would be the last shot they had at Santa till he came down that chimney tomorrow morning or perhaps because the man pretending to be Santa encouraged them to take all the time they needed. Actually the man pretending to be Santa was named Arthur Drits, and the closest he’d ever come to the North Pole was Castleview Prison upstate, where he’d spent a good many years for First-Degree Rape, a Class-B felony denned as:
Being a male, engaging in sexual intercourse with a female:
1. By forcible compulsion; or
2. Who is incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless; or
3. Who is less than eleven years old.
The personnel manager who’d hired Drits to portray Santa for Gruber’s uptown store did not know that he had a prison record or that he loved children quite so much as he claimed to love them—especially little girls under the age of eleven. The personnel manager saw only a jolly-looking fellow with a little potbelly and twinkly blue eyes, and he figured he would make a good Santa. Even after Drits started working for the store, the personnel manager never noticed that Santa gave most little boys pretty short shrift while he kept even ugly little girls on his lap for an inordinately long time.