Karp looked at Murrow. "Okay, sweetie, spill the beans, and I can only hope that you kept the felonies to a minimum."
Murrow grinned sheepishly at Karp. "Uh, my part was to see if I could track down Captain Carney's property in Florida. Fortunately, he's either not as clever as Ewen or just figures that he doesn't have to be as careful because of the distance. He's got a real nice beachfront condominium in Key West. Again, a call to a real estate agent revealed that I could get a similar condominium in that building on the same floor for a cool 1.5 million."
"Must have shook down a lot of hookers when he was walking the beat," Guma said, to general laughter.
Karp could feel the wine wearing off and the beginnings of the headache he knew he'd be battling while the twins were ripping open their presents and screaming with Christmas greed. He looked at Newbury, who was scribbling notes on a napkin. "Well, V.T., looks like you may have your smoking gun."
Newbury looked up and grinned. "You'd burn your hand if you grabbed the barrel. When I can think clearly again, we can strategize who to put the screws to in that lot and blow the lid off this baby."
Marlene hurried off to the kitchen and returned with a magnum of champagne. "I was saving this to get my own sweetie good and liquored up for New Year's Eve," she said. "But I think this calls for a celebration."
Karp winced. The champagne would force the headache to retreat for a little while, but it would be back with a vengeance. But he raised his glass to toast with the others. "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."
"Hey, what does a girl hafta do to get a little drinky around here?"
Crystal Vase stood wobbling in the hallway. She teetered like a tree about to fall in the forest, and then went over. She hit the ground with a dull thud and didn't move.
Hairsmith-Dupont was the first to reach her. She knelt beside the young woman and felt her neck. "She's got a pulse," she announced.
"That's all Guma needs," Stupenagel said. "Poor girl."
"Very funny," Guma replied, pulling Crystal into a sitting position and then, with the help of the other men, lifting her to her feet. She woke up again as they were putting her in a chair.
"Ray," she mumbled so low that he had to lean forward to hear her. "Ray, take me home." She then threw up on him.
"Okay, show's over," Marlene said. "Ray, shall I call you a cab?"
22
Saturday, December 25
Karp woke up with what felt like all of Santa's reindeer stampeding around in his cerebellum. Marlene, on the other hand, cheerfully jumped out of bed to make sure Santa hadn't messed up after the guests left the night before.
The wrapped presents had needed name tags, and faux Santa, feeling no pain from the champagne, was sure to have messed up at least a few. The unwrapped presents-those that the real Santa had hand-delivered straight from the North Pole, even those clearly stamped Made in China-needed to be sorted into clearly recognizable piles that demonstrated Santa did indeed know that the boys had been equally good. As much good as could be expected of Zak, anyway.
Returning from her inspection tour, Marlene didn't appear to be suffering from any ill effects of alcohol. In fact, she was humming a Christmas carol and making loud sighing noises to encourage him to get up. When that didn't work, she invited the boys-who were bouncing off the walls in their bedroom waiting for him to rise so that the yearly greed fest could begin-to instead bounce on the bed.
"AAAHHH," he'd cried. "I'm getting up. I'm getting up. Please, I think my brain is hemorrhaging."
The twins stopped, concerned looks on their faces. "Don't worry, guys, Daddy's just a little hungover," said Marlene, demonstrating none of the Christmas spirit she professed to have in spades. "Giancarlo, find his slippers and bathrobe. Zak, go wake up Lucy and Ned…but don't go in their room, on pain of death, just knock."
Zak ran out. A moment later, there was a shriek, then Lucy's outraged voice. "Get out of here you little brat! MOTHER!" Marlene trotted out of the room to carry out the threatened sentence on Zak, who apparently dodged the axe and ran back into the bedroom to jump on the bed. "They're naked, you know," he said, peering down at his father, who groaned and rolled over to plant his face in the pillow.
When Karp finally shuffled into the living room, Marlene handed him a cup of hot herbal tea-"chamomile and peppermint with some ground-up Tylenol, perfect for a hangover"-and then forced him to drink when he growled that he didn't want it. Jojola smiled and lifted a cup. "It's good, even without the Tylenol. Merry Christmas and belated Happy Hanukkah."
Karp just stared at him until Jojola decided to join the boys, who were salivating next to the piles of unwrapped presents, waiting for the starting gun from their mother. Lucy got her revenge on Zak by taking extra time "to fix my hair" before emerging from the bedroom with Ned, who got the evil eye from her father.
Not that he would have admitted it to Marlene, but Karp felt better after a half hour or so of sipping the tea while sitting on the couch, laughing at the twins, who were practically hyperventilating with avarice. The boys shredded expensive wrapping paper without a second glance and fell upon their presents like lions on a gazelle. Over by the door, Gilgamesh happily gnawed on his Christmas present: a big soup bone from the kosher deli that had moved in on the ground floor, replacing a Chinese restaurant-supply store.
Meanwhile, Lucy carefully pried open the tape and unfolded the paper on her presents as if she intended it to be used again. One of her gifts was a lacy, red negligee from Victoria's Secret, with a matching red thong. Instead of the embarrassment such a present might have caused her in the past, she held it up against her body and asked Ned what he thought.
"I think I might die when I see that on you, but what a way to go," he replied with enthusiasm until he glanced over at Karp, which put an immediate end to any further comments.
"It's from your father and me," Marlene said.
"I had nothing to do with it," Karp insisted.
Marlene next brought out a large box for Ned, which he accepted shyly, complaining that he'd didn't need "anything more than what you've already given me." Inside the box was a two-thousand-dollar Neiman-Marcus version of the Marlboro Man's fleece-lined coat.
"It's made of buffalo hide," she said.
The young man sat stunned, stroking the baby-soft skin. "I don't know what to say. It's the most beautiful thing-outside of my horse and Lucy-that I've ever seen in my life." He stood and retrieved a box from beneath the tree and handed it to Marlene, who sat down next to Karp to open it.
"It ain't much," he said. "But there's a story to it."
Marlene opened the wrapping and then the box. Inside was a crucifix with Jesus on the cross that had been carved out of a single, gnarled piece of light-colored wood.
"Tell her where you got the wood," Lucy said.
"It's from that old pinon tree that you were hung up on over the gorge," he said, referring to the tree that had prevented her and Lucy from plunging seven hundred feet into the Rio Grande Gorge that summer. "There wasn't much left of it-most went to the bottom with your truck-but enough for this here carving."
"The idiot climbed down that cliff to get it," Lucy added.
"I had a rope on me, tied to my horse."
"Good idea," Lucy teased. "What if the horse decided to take off before you were ready, or maybe came to see what you were doing…"
"She's too smart for that," Ned said in defense of his horse.
"But it's what I get for falling in love with a cowboy," she concluded. "They can't ever do anything the easy way. It's like they're always in a movie."