Naughty: Nine Tales of Christmas Crime Page 11

  As he unspooled his deductions, Bucket was overcome by a growing sense of triumph that flew past smugness all the way to ecstasy. Not only did his forefinger tingle with a barely contained elation, his entire body seemed to throb with pleasure. The feeling grew so powerful, in fact, that the detective found it difficult to continue speaking.

  "But something went wrong . . . didn't it, Mr. Scratchit? I don't know how you madministered the yummyop . . . administered the opium, but it didn't effect Mr. Plan as you'd scrooged. Mr. Spoon as you'd praged. Memar Scroo ash oo glanged."

  Bucket put his free hand to his forehead and took a deep breath. Three separate sensations were trying to crowd their way into his brain all at once, and the only way he could accommodate them was to have them form a line and enter one at a time.

  The first came by way of his ears, which sent word that a sound not unlike giggling was escaping from his own lips.

  The second had been sent by his nose, which wished to inform him that an overpowering odor of opium smoke had been detected very close nearby.

  The third came from his eyes.

  "Master Bucket," they were trying to tell him. "Please note that Mr. Cratchit is grinning again—and a most malevolent grin it is."

  By the time this last report reached his consciousness, however, Bucket found that Cratchit had disappeared entirely, replaced somehow by a remarkably large and malicious-looking gingerbread man.

  "You're right, Inspector," the menacing pastry said. "I'd assumed the opium would render Scrooge unconscious, or at least malleable. Instead, he became agitated, convinced ghosts were tormenting him, and he ran babbling out of the office. With the old man causing a commotion out front, I could hardly take the time to sit here altering the books as I pleased. So I slipped away, planning to return the next work day and act as though nothing had happened. You can imagine my surprise—if not sorrow—when you showed up to inform me that Scrooge had gotten himself killed. Fortunately, you graced me with enough coin to pay for a quick cab back here so I could finish my work tonight."

  As he spoke, the gingerbread man turned black around the edges, as if left in the oven too long. The scorched dough grew fuzzy, then became fur, and Cratchit was again transformed, this time into a deer. But no ordinary deer—a reindeer with blood-stained antlers and a nose that blazed as red as the unholy fires of Hell.

  "As for the how of it, you hold the answer in your hand," the reindeer said. "Candles with opium suffused into the wick and wax, placed on Scrooge's desk. I got the idea from an Edgar Allan Poe story—'The Imp of the Perverse.' I was actually rather surprised to find that it worked. How fortunate for me that a moment ago you should pick up and light one of my spares."

  The deer rose from his seat and started around the desk. The walls behind him writhed and shifted, coalescing into a sinister tableau of glowering, green-haired ogres with termites in their smiles, and the detective barely even noticed the object—long, shiny and sharp—clutched somehow in the reindeer's hooves.

  "Quite effective up close, isn't it?" the reindeer said. "And quite pleasurable, if you give yourself over to it. Which I do frequently, being an opium-eater myself. That's how I originally fell into Scrooge's debt—and his servitude. I've been the man's slave for four years. I begged him to release me from my debt, or at least pay me a fair wage so I could have some hope of paying the debt down. I even filled his ears with heart-breaking tales of a desperate wife, a starving family, a crippled son. All rubbish, by the way. My wife ran off years ago, and I've never been cursed with a brat that can prove its right to call me 'father.' But even if Scrooge believed my lies—and I've no idea if he did or didn't—it wouldn't have mattered to him. As long as he owned my debt, he owned me."

  The deer drew ever closer, but Bucket was finding it harder and harder to glean meaning from the animal's words.

  "The only way for me to free myself was to free some of Scrooge's other victims . . . for a fee," the reindeer said. "I had to flu-fluba my life back. And now that I've tartinka gardinka death on my head, I have no reason not to bells bailey drummer-boy petals. I'm sorry, Inspector. I find I must bing bumble zuzu dentist. Dolly Madison? Mommy's little piggy."

  The reindeer said more, but the words weren't even sounds to Bucket any longer. They were globules of mulled cider, dark and steaming hot, that hovered in the air before Bucket's eyes. Bucket giggled again and brought his forefinger up to touch one of the quivering brown spheres.

  "Curious," the forefinger said. "There's nothing there."

  The reindeer came to a stop before Bucket and raised one of its hooves—the one holding the shiny object.

  A candy cane shimmering with sugar.

  No, a beautiful crystalline icicle.

  "No, no!" Bucket's forefinger screamed. "That's a letter opener! Sharp! Pointy! Bloody hell!"

  As the rest of the detective was still far too woozy to react, the finger had to take matters in hand itself.

  It shot out and jabbed the reindeer in the eye.

  "Argh! Kissed by a dog!" the reindeer yelped (or seemed to in Bucket's still-scrambled mind). Except it wasn't a reindeer anymore. It had turned back into Cratchit, and he was bringing up the letter opener again with a roar of rage, ready to plunge the sharp metal into the detective's throat.

  Even with a brain broiled in opium, Bucket knew a poke in the eye wouldn't be enough to save him now. So he used the only weapon he had: the candle he still clutched in his left hand.

  He rammed it as hard as he could into Cratchit's face. He was in no condition to aim his thrust, so it was pure accident that most of the candle ended up in the clerk's mouth.

  Bucket couldn't be sure if he actually heard the sizzling of hot wax at the back of Cratchit's throat or if the sound was merely another product of his overstoked imagination. The man's scream, on the other hand, was indisputably real. Cratchit flailed out with the letter opener, catching Bucket on the side of the head with more fist than metal, and ran gurgling from the room.

  One of the few benefits of being dosed with opium without one's knowledge is the pleasant glow it can impart to the unpleasant consequences. Which is why, when Bucket toppled to the floor, he flattened his nose with a smile, for he dreamed he was being gathered into the warm folds of Mrs. Bucket's ample bosom.

  When he awoke a short time later, he was disappointed to find himself not nestled between pillows of soft flesh but staring into the bearded face of a bitterly scowling man.

  "What is my name?" the man snapped.

  "You . . . are . . . Dr. Charhart," Bucket answered, the words coming with difficulty. "Have you forgotten?"

  "Just checking to see if the blow you took knocked any sense into you. It didn't."

  The doctor stood and stalked away, and it slowly dawned on Bucket where he was: flat on his back outside the offices of Scrooge & Marley.

  "Don't mind him. He got dragged out of his bed this time, and he ain't happy about it." The large, lumpy form of Constable Thicke loomed over Bucket. "Need a hand up, sir?"

  "Yes, that would . . . gad!" Bucket sat bolt upright—and grew so dizzy he nearly passed out again. "Cratchit! He's gotten away!"

  Thicke steadied the inspector with a hand on his shoulder. "Not to worry, sir. If you mean the gent with the candle in his mouth, we got him. Went tearing down the street just as we arrived, and I didn't have to be a detective like yourself to figure out we should give chase. Fast on his feet, he was, and I reckon he would've gotten away if he hadn't gone all queer all of sudden. Stopped dead in his tracks in front of a snowman and started screaming that the thing was alive. Had on a magic hat, he said. Or at least that's what it sounded like. It's hard to understand him. His mouth's still all waxy-like." Thicke shook his head in weary wonderment. "You do see some interesting things when you put on the blue, don't you, sir? Anyway, we found you inside looking 'bout ready to give up the ghost, so I sent one of the lads off to fetch Dr. Charhart, and there you have it."

  "Well, as you can see I have my gh
ost fully in check, Police Constable Thicke." Bucket drew in a deep lungful of air. It was cold and rank with the smells of the city, but it swept through his brain like a broom clearing out cobwebs. "Not that I believe in ghosts, of course."

  "His eyes!" a hoarse, tortured voice shrieked.

  Bucket and Thicke turned to see Constable Dimm and another officer dragging Cratchit to the police ambulance.

  "His horrible, horrible eyes!" Cratchit sobbed, struggling feebly as the constables shoved him in the back and padlocked the door. "Eyes made out of coal!"

  "I must admit," Thicke said to Bucket, "I'm looking forward to reading your report."

  "I daresay it will make even the works of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe seem positively mundane." Bucket slowly drew himself to his feet and began dusting himself off. "But it's a story you'll have to wait for, as will everyone at E Division. Only the good Mrs. Bucket will be graced with my tale tonight. She won't let me sleep till it's all told—and what's more, she's earned the right to hear it first. They can hold Mr. Cratchit for assaulting an officer for now. I'll write up the rest tomorrow." The detective popped his top hat onto his head. "I'm going home."

  "Are you sure you're up for that, sir?"

  "I'll be fine."

  Bucket turned toward the ambulance. Dimm was watching him sullenly, awaiting the fate he knew he couldn't escape.

  "Police Constable Dimm won't mind making a little side trip to Bloomsbury on his way to headquarters. Isn't that right, Police Constable Dimm?"

  Dimm didn't say whether he minded or not (though his growl might have been considered an answer by some).

  Once again, Bucket rode up top with the constable. He found the frigid slap of the wind against his face refreshing, and the opium fog that had nearly smothered his mind dispersed more with each passing gaslight. His head ached, his nose was tender and bruised, his forefinger throbbed from overuse, and he'd been subjected to fantastical, horrific visions that might scar the psyche of another man.

  And Bucket was cheerful.

  He knew his head would clear, his nose would heal, his forefinger would be rested and ready for the chase soon enough. He put no stock in phantasms, and the disturbing visions he'd seen held no power over him now.

  His good spirits came from what he knew to be real: a bottle of sherry, a bowl of nuts, a pipe, a most excellent partner, all waiting just for him. He would stay up enjoying them until the clock struck twelve. And beyond.

  NAUGHTY

  If you think about it, Santa Claus is a little like Batman. He's a vigilante. He decides who's good and who's bad and he does something about it on his own terms. Goody-goody kids get toys. Brats get squat—or lumps of coal, though I think that got dropped in, like, the 1950s.

  When I was a little girl, I'd start worrying about whether I'd been good enough that year sometime around Thanksgiving, and for the next month I was a little angel. It was scary to think I might not get any toys . . . but it was sort of reassuring, too. If Santa was really out there rewarding the nice and punishing the naughty, it meant things were fair. There was some kind of justice in the universe.

  Well, that didn't last long. I mean, you try to get through elementary school believing life's fair. It can't be done. I stayed nice, though. Maybe it was just a habit by then.

  I finally broke the habit this December. Life just pushed me too far, and I decided I was done with nice. Nice sucked. Santa wasn't watching, so what was the point?

  It was time to give naughty a try.

  I graduated from IU in the spring, so this was supposed to be my first Christmas as a bona fide, official, independent adult. A year ago, I would've pictured myself flying home for the holidays from New York or Chicago or wherever it was I'd have my cool gig and my funky bachelorette pad. But when the holidays rolled around, I didn't have to fly back to Indiana—I was still there. I hadn't found a gig, cool or uncool, and my mom's apartment hardly counts as a "funky bachelorette pad," even if she is a bachelorette again thanks to That Man.

  "That Man" is what my mom calls my dad. He was spending Christmas in his new house in Atlanta with "That Woman," a.k.a. "That Girl," a.k.a. "That Blonde Slut," a.k.a. "That Little Bitch." I got a Christmas card from That Man with a check for fifty bucks in it. Mom didn't get a card or a check, which was typical. That Man owed my mom a lot of checks, which is why she'd gone from living in a big house on Knob Hill to a not-so-big house in town to a dinky apartment building between an auto parts store and a porn shop.

  I was in that dinky apartment building with her because New York and Chicago aren't exactly clamoring for recently graduated liberal arts majors. In fact, nobody's clamoring for recently graduated liberal arts majors. When I was at IU, I thought I'd end up in publishing, communications or journalism, but it didn't take long in "the real world" to figure out that my only prospects were in food service, retail or prostitution. I told my mom once that I'd pick that last option over the first two in a heartbeat, and she just gave me this sad look that said, "Oh, honey—all those years, all that money . . . for an English degree?"

  Fortunately for us, one of our old neighbors, Dr. Roth, had taken mercy on Mom and given her a job as a receptionist. That covered the rent. Barely. So there was big-time pressure for me to "pull my own weight." I kept hoping to see an ad in the classifieds that suited me. You know. "Over-Educated Smart-Ass Wanted to Talk About Books and Movies and Stuff." But of course that never happened.

  So half a year after graduating from college, I gave up and took a job I knew I'd hate. I gave myself a built-in out, though: The job would only last one month. After four brutal, mind-numbing weeks wrapping Christmas presents at Fendler's department store, I'd escape minimum wage Hell and return to the relative bliss of unemployment.

  I knew it would be bad, but I had no idea how bad. I'd been a wrapper at J.C. Penney a few Christmases before, so I was prepared for the tedium. But it wasn't boredom that tortured me. It was embarrassment.

  At least twice a day, I saw someone I knew—a kid from my high school, somebody's mom or dad, a teacher, people like that. Sometimes I even had to wrap their presents, which was when things got really painful. The chitchat was always like, "Courtney gets back from San Francisco tomorrow. You know she moved there after finishing up at Princeton, don't you? She's an assistant editor at Chronicle Books, and she just loves it. So . . . ummmm . . . what have you been doing? Oh, and could you wrap the bathrobe and the slippers in the same box?"

  Did I mention that I was Dreiser High valedictorian?

  In the afternoon, another wrapper came in to help me—a chatty old woman named Mavis who highjacked every conversation within earshot with anecdotes about her son's adopted Guatemalan children. I had to hear about how little Tomás wet his pants on a mall Santa's knee about a thousand times a day. But that was fine so long as it switched the topic to something other than me.

  Before Mavis came in, though, there was no buffer. I was all alone at my little "gift wrap station" near the jewelry department. So of course that's when he came up.

  He was good looking, in a middle-aged TV anchorman kind of way. Tall, full-bodied but not fat, with a jutting jaw and perfect white teeth and thick hair that was just starting to go gray. He was a slick dresser, too, wearing a fleece-lined suede jacket over a black turtleneck and snug black jeans. My mom would've thought he was a total hottie.

  It wasn't his looks that caught my attention, though. It was how familiar he seemed. And the way he was looking at me.

  "Hi," he said in that creepy, "Hel-lo, beautiful" voice some men use when they think they're being suave.

  "Hi."

  It was the same word he'd used, but it sounded a lot different coming from me. His "hi" had been two syllables, two notes: hiii-eee. Mine was like the sound a dictionary makes when you drop it on a desk: thud. I gazed at him with the blank, unseeing eyes of a dead-souled retail zombie.

  He either didn't get the message or took it as a challenge.

  "Looks like you could use some excite
ment," he said with a smile. He swung a Fendler's bag up onto the counter between us. "I guess I arrived just in the nick of time."

  "Uh-huh. Receipt, please."

  That's the drill. No receipt, no gift wrap. Fendler's makes you drop at least fifty bucks on merchandise before they'll favor you with twenty two cents worth of "complimentary" wrapping paper. Otherwise it costs four bucks a box.

  "It's in the bag," the guy said, still smiling.

  I pulled out the slip of paper and gave it a quick glance to make sure Don Juan had spent enough money. That quick glance immediately turned into a pop-eyed stare.

  Mr. Smoothie had obviously been waiting for just that reaction.

  "My credit card's still smoking," he joked.

  The guy had blown three thousand dollars in the store that morning. And everything he'd bought fit into one not-particularly large paper bag.

  "It's all for the ball and chain," he said. "I have a lot to make up for." His grin grew wider, and he waggled his bushy eyebrows at me. "I've been a naaaaauuuughty boy this year."

  "Yeah, well, I guess so," I mumbled, unsure what kind of response he was looking for. I mean, I know a thing or two about come-ons. I've been fending them off since I put on my first training bra. But this was one of the weirdest ones yet . . . if it even was a come-on.

  His smirky leer answered my question.

  "How about you?" he asked. "Have you been naughty this year?"

  It was a toss-up for a second there: Should I slap his handsome face or spit in his twinkling eye? But then I remembered that I actually needed this stinking job, and I smiled instead. Not a friendly smile, mind you. A tight, prim, "I'll just ignore that remark" smile.

  "It's going to take a few minutes to wrap your gifts," I said.

  "Fine. Can I watch?"

  I fought back a shiver. I was beginning to wonder if this guy was capable of saying anything that didn't sound like a creepy innuendo. Maybe it was a rare medical condition and he just couldn't help himself, like Tourette's but sexual. Pervmo Syndrome.