The Stupidest Angel (5 page)

Sweat was pouring down her face. She wiped her hair out of her eyes with the back of a chamois work glove, leaving a streak of dirt on her forehead. She shrugged off the flannel shirt she'd put on against the night chill and worked in a tight black tank top and olive drab cargo pants. With her red shovel in hand, she looked like some kind of Christmas commando there at the edge of the forest.

She sank the shovel into the pine straw about a foot from the trunk of the next tree she'd targeted and jumped on the blade, pogoing up and down until the blade was buried to the hilt. She was swinging on the handle, trying to lever up the forest floor, when a bright set of headlights swept across the edge of the forest and stopped with a stereo spotlight on Lena's truck.

There's nothing to worry about,
she thought.
I'm not going to hide, I'm not going to duck.
She wasn't doing anything wrong. Not really. Well, sure, technically, she was stealing, and breaking a couple of county ordinances about harvesting Monterey pines, but she wasn't really harvesting them, was she? She was just transplanting them. And . . . and she was giving to the poor. She was like Robin Hood. No one was going to mess with Robin Hood. Just the same she smiled at the headlamps and did a sort of "oh well, I guess I'm busted" shrug that she hoped was cute. She shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to squint into the headlights to see who was driving the truck. Yes, she was sure it was a truck.

The engine sputtered to a stop. A slight nausea rose in Lena's throat as she realized that it was a diesel truck. The truck's door opened, and when the light went on Lena caught a glimpse of someone in a red-and-white hat behind the wheel.

Huh?

Santa was coming out of the blinding light toward her. Santa with a flashlight, and what was that in his belt? Santa had a gun.

"Dammit, Lena, I should have known it was you," he said.

Josh Barker was in big trouble. Big trouble indeed. He was only seven, but he was pretty sure his life was ruined. He hurried along Church Street trying to figure out how he was going to explain to his mom. An hour and a half late. Home long after dark. And he hadn't called. And Christmas just a few days away. Forget explaining it to his mom, how was he going to explain it to Santa?

Santa might understand, though, since he knew toys. But Mom would never buy it. He'd been playing
Barbarian George's Big Crusade
on the PlayStation at his friend Sam's house, and they'd gotten into the infidel territory and killed thousands of the 'Rackies, but the game just didn't have any way to exit. It wasn't designed so you could ever get out of it, and before he knew it, it was dark outside and he'd forgotten, and Christmas was just going to be ruined. He wanted an Xbox 2, but there was no way Santa was going to bring it with a
home long after dark
AND a
didn't even bother to call
on his list.

Sam had summarized Josh's situation as he led him out the door and looked at the night sky: "Dude, you're hosed."

"I'm not hosed, you're hosed," said Josh.

"I'm not hosed," Sam said. "I'm Jewish. No Santa. We don't have Christmas."

"Well, you're really hosed, then."

"Shut up, I am not hosed." But as Sam said it he put his hands in his pockets and Josh could hear him clicking his dreidel against his asthma inhaler, and his friend did, indeed, appear to be hosed.

"Okay, you're not hosed," said Josh. "Sorry. I'd better go."

"Yeah," said Sam.

"Yeah," said Josh, realizing now how the longer it took him to get home the more hosed he was going to be. But as he hurried up Church Street toward home, he realized that perhaps he would receive an emergency reprieve on his hosing, for there, at the edge of the forest, was Santa himself. And although Santa did appear to be quite angry, his anger was directed at a woman who was standing knee-deep in a hole, holding a red shovel. Santa held one of those heavy black Maglite flashlights in one hand and was shining it in the woman's eyes as he yelled at her.

"These are my trees. Mine, dammit," said Santa.

Aha!
Josh thought.
Dammit
was not bad enough to get you on the naughty list, not if Santa himself said it. He'd told his mom that, but she'd insisted that
dammit
was a list item.

"I'm only taking a few," said the woman. "For people who can't afford a Christmas tree. You can't begrudge something that simple to a few poor families."

"The fuck I can't."

Well, Josh had been sure the F-word would get you on the list. He was shocked.

Santa pushed the flashlight in the woman's eyes. She brushed it aside.

"Look," she said, "I'll just take this last one and go."

"You will not." Santa shoved the flashlight in the woman's face again, but this time when she brushed it away, he flipped it around and bopped her on the head with it.

"Ouch!"

That had to hurt. Josh could feel the blow rattle the woman's teeth all the way across the street. Santa certainly felt strongly about his Christmas trees.

The woman used the shovel to brush the flashlight out of her face again. Santa bopped her again with the flashlight, harder this time, and the woman yowled and fell to her knees in the hole. Santa reached into his big black belt and pulled out a gun and pointed it at the woman. She came up swinging the shovel in a wide arc and the blade caught Santa hard in the side of the head with a dull metallic clank. Santa staggered and raised the pistol again. The woman crouched and covered her head, the shovel braced blade up under her arm. But as he aimed, Santa lost his balance, and fell forward onto the upraised blade of the shovel. The blade went up under his beard and suddenly his beard was as bright red as his suit. He dropped the gun and the flashlight, made a gurgling noise, and fell down to where Josh could no longer see him.

Josh could barely hear the woman crying as he ran home, the pulse in his ears ringing like sleigh bells. Santa was dead. Christmas was ruined. Josh was hosed.

Speaking of hosed: three blocks away, Tucker Case moped along Worchester Street, trying to exercise off his dinner of bad diner food with a brisk walk under the weight of a large measure of self-pity. He was pushing forty, trim, blond, and tan—the look of an aging surfer or a golf pro in his prime. Fifty feet above him, a giant fruit bat swooped through the treetops, his leathery wings silent against the night. So he could sneak up on peaches and stuff without being detected, Tuck thought.

"Roberto, do your business and let's get back to the hotel," Tuck called into the sky. The fruit bat barked and snagged an overhead limb as he passed, his momentum nearly sending him in a loop around it before he pendulumed and settled in upside-down attitude. The bat barked again, licked his little doggy chops, and folded his great wings around himself to ward off the coastal cold.

"Fine," Tuck said, "but you're not getting back into the room until you poop."

He'd inherited the bat from a Filipino navigator he'd met while flying a private jet for a doctor in Micronesia; a job he'd only taken because his U.S. pilot's license had been yanked for crashing the pink Mary Jean Cosmetic jet while initiating a young woman into the Mile-High Club. Drunk. After Micronesia he'd moved to the Caribbean with his fruit bat and his beautiful new island wife and started a charter business. Now, six years later, his beautiful island wife was running the charter business with a seven-foot Rastafarian and Tucker Case had nothing to his name but a fruit bat and temporary gig flying helicopters for the DEA, spotting marijuana patches in the Big Sur wilderness area. Which put him in Pine Cove, holed up in a cheap motel room, four days before Christmas, alone. Lonesome. Hosed.

Tuck had once been a ladies' man of the highest order—a Don Juan, a Casanova, a Kennedy sans cash— yet now he was in a town where he didn't know a soul and he hadn't even met a single woman to try to seduce.

A few years of marriage had almost ruined him. He'd become accustomed to affectionate female company without a great deal of manipulation, subterfuge, and guile. He missed it. He didn't want to spend Christmas alone, dammit. Yet here he was.

And there she was. A damsel in distress. A woman, alone, out here in the night, crying—and from what Tuck could tell by the headlights of a nearby pickup truck, she had a nice shape. Great hair. Beautiful high cheekbones, streaked with tears and mud, but you know, exotic-looking. Tuck checked to see that Roberto was still safely hanging above, then straightened his bomber jacket and made his way across the street.

"Hey there, are you okay?"

The woman jumped, screamed a bit, looked around frantically until she spotted him. "Oh my God," she said.

Tuck had had worse responses. He pressed on. "Are you okay?" he repeated. "You looked like you were having some trouble."

"I think he's dead," the woman said. "I think—I think I killed him."

Tuck looked at the red-and-white pile on the ground at his feet and realized for the first time what it really was: a dead Santa. A normal person might have freaked out, backed away, tried to quickly extract himself from the situation, but Tucker Case was a pilot, trained to function in life-and-death emergencies, practiced at grace under pressure, and besides, he was lonely and this woman was really hot.

"So, a dead Santa," said Tuck. "Do you live around here?"

"I didn't mean to kill him. He was coming at me with a gun. I just ducked, and when I looked up—" She waved toward the pile of dead Kringle. "I guess the shovel caught him in the throat." She seemed to be calming down a bit.

Tuck nodded thoughtfully. "So, Santa was coming at you with a gun?"

The woman pointed to the gun, lying in the dirt next to the Maglite. "I see," said Tuck. "Did you know this—"

"Yes. His name is Dale Pearson. He drank."

"I don't. Stopped years ago," Tuck said. "By the way, I'm Tucker Case. Are you married?" He extended his hand to her to shake. She seemed to see him for the first time.

"Lena Marquez. No, I'm divorced."

"Me, too," said Tuck. "Tough around the holidays, isn't it? Kids?"

"No. Mr., uh, Case, this man is my ex-husband and he's dead."

"Yep. I just gave my ex the house and my business, but this does seems cheaper," Tuck said.

"We had a fight yesterday at the grocery store in front of a dozen people. I had the motive, the opportunity, and the means—" She pointed to the shovel. "Everyone will think I killed him."

"Not to mention that you did kill him."

"And don't think the media won't latch onto that? It's my shovel sticking out of his neck."

"Maybe you should wipe off your prints and stuff. You didn't get any DNA on him, did you?"

She stretched the front of her shirt out and started dabbing at the shovel's handle. "DNA? Like what?"

"You know, hair, blood, semen? Nothing like that?"

"No." She was furiously buffing the handle of the shovel with the front of her tank top, being careful not to get too close to the end that was stuck in the dead guy. Strangely, Tuck found the process slightly erotic.

"I think you got the fingerprints, but I'm a little concerned about there where your name is spelled out in Magic Marker on the handle. That might give things away."