Father Christmas (8 page)

“
This one’s safe,” he
assured her, then felt the mustache and beard scratch against his
skin as he smiled. “I’m here.”

She eyed the bank warily, then pivoted back
to him. “Well, I guess—”

“
Hang on a second.” A
familiar choreography down the street caught his eye. An elderly
man, a young man bumping into him and stopping to apologize,
another young man coming up behind him. John had seen the moves
before; despite their subtlety, he knew immediately what was going
down.

He touched Molly’s arm, maybe to keep her
from speaking, maybe to reassure her...maybe just because she was
close to him, and he was about to abandon her, and he didn’t want
her to think she’d done anything wrong. He handed her his bell and
strode past her down the sidewalk, his gaze riveted to the second
young man. As he closed the distance between himself and the punk,
he accelerated his gait, not quite running but walking faster,
faster—until with a sudden burst of speed he lunged at the kid,
slinging his arm around the kid’s shoulder and hurling him against
the brick wall of the nearest building. “Where’s the wallet?” he
asked quietly.

“
What are you talking
about?” the young man protested.

Pinning the kid’s arm behind his back and
immobilizing him against the wall, John reached under the padded
bulk of the Santa coat for his shield. “Police,” he said, flashing
the leather folder in front of the kid’s nose. “Where’s the
wallet?”

“
You don’t got any
right—”

John almost didn’t hear the light tap of a
wallet hitting the pavement by his feet. He wedged his toe under it
and kicked it straight up, snatching it from the air with his free
hand. Flipping it open, he read from the driver’s license inserted
into one of the plastic sleeves. “You dropped this,” he said.

“
I don’t know where that
came from!”

“
It says you’re
sixty-eight years old,” John continued, flipping the wallet open
with his thumb. “And this photo—it’s amazing. Somehow, the Motor
Vehicle Bureau put that gentleman’s face on your license.” He
angled his head toward the older gentleman, who stood watching John
and the punk in bewilderment. “This kid picked your pocket, Mr.
Rosenblatt,” John told him, reading his name off the driver’s
license in the wallet.

“
Oh, my God!” Mr.
Rosenblatt shook his head and pressed a hand to his chest in
dismay. “Thank you! I don’t know, I’m Jewish, but I think I’ll have
to convert. To think Santa Claus saved me from a
pick-pocket...”

John smiled faintly. Mahoney and Jesper
ought to be in the vicinity—they were supposed to patrol the
neighborhood all morning while John was undercover. Sure enough, he
spotted their squad car down the block, cruising slowly toward
him.

He waved them over, then shoved the
pick-pocket into the back seat of the cruiser. “His partner ran,”
he told the patrolmen after explaining the situation. “But maybe if
you torture him, he’ll give his buddy up. Mirandize him first.”

“
Got it,” Jesper said,
winking. “First we read him his rights, and then we torture him.
Sounds like a plan.”

John left Mr. Rosenblatt to give a statement
to Jesper and Mahoney. After adjusting the plump cushion of his
artificial belly beneath his bright red overcoat, he sauntered back
to the corner of Newcombe, where Molly stood gawking at him. He
hoped the strange glint in her eyes wasn’t a sign of hero worship.
Some cops liked when pretty women idolized them, but John didn’t
believe cops were inherently more heroic than a lot of other
people. They had their moments, sure. But nailing a pick-pocket
wasn’t worthy of a woman’s awe.

Nearing Molly, he realized that awe wasn’t
her inclination. The color had drained from her cheeks, leaving
them as pale as the winter sky. “Are you all right?” she asked in a
whisper-thin voice.

“
Sure.”

“
And that man?”

“
Which one?”

“
Both.”

He grinned. “The perp is fine. The victim
decided he believes in Santa.”

She swallowed and lowered her gaze to the
pavement. “I guess it’s all in a day’s work to you. But...it
frightened me.”

He shrugged, not sure what
to say. Telling her not to be frightened wouldn’t necessarily
reassure her. Besides, some of the stuff he did
was
scary. A cop never knew until after the dust
settled and he could view the scene in hindsight whether it had
merited fear. During the situation, a cop simply couldn’t permit
fear to get anywhere close to him.

He took the bell from her, and she shrank
back a step, still pale, still staring. “Do things like that happen
often?”

“
Pick-pocketing?
Sure.”

“
No, I mean—your chasing
people down and throwing them around, and having to deal
with...with that kind of thing.”

He wished he could put her mind at ease, but
lying didn’t work for him. “That kind of thing happens often,” he
said, gesturing behind him at the place where the incident had
occurred. “As a detective, I don’t usually have to deal with it.
I’m usually not impersonating Santa on a downtown corner.”

“
I guess it was a good
thing you were, today,” she said. “I’m sure that fellow is very
happy you were impersonating a Santa on this very corner.
But...”

He waited for her to go on. Her hair was so
straight and soft that when she moved her head it slid back and
forth like a silk fringe. She bit her lip and glanced up at him
once more.

“
But?” he
prodded.

“
I’d hate to think of how
frightening your work must seem to Michael.”

He remained silent, wondering if she was
going to find a connection between his handling of the street punk
and Mike’s alleged aggression. These preschool teachers with their
child-psychology backgrounds... They could probably make all sorts
of connections, find fault, blame everything about Mike on his
father. And maybe they’d be right.

“
I should think,” she went
on, “that most children would be terribly disillusioned to find out
that Santa was really just a cop in disguise.”

“
Just as disillusioned as
if they found out Santa was their father,” he observed, still
braced for criticism from her.

“
Does Michael know what
you do?”

“
He knows I’m a cop. I
don’t go into details.”

She nodded. “I don’t advocate dishonesty
between parents and children. It’s just...he strikes me as
emotionally fragile. I don’t know what’s going on with him, Mr.
Russo—and it’s none of my business. But I have the feeling it
wouldn’t take much to make him snap.”

Defensiveness rose inside
John. He resisted it, forcing himself to consider what she was
saying without letting his ego get in the way. The fact was,
Mike
was
fragile. John ought to
be pleased that his son’s teacher had noticed.

He hated discussing his private life with
people, but if it enabled Molly and her staff to help Mike, he
ought to fill her in. “Mike’s mother walked out,” he said, watching
Molly closely, measuring her reaction, calculating the nuances of
her expression. If he saw pity in her face, he’d pull Mike out of
the school. He wouldn’t want to have his son educated by a woman
who pitied him. “She left six months ago. It’s been hard on
him.”

“
You’re
divorced?”

“
Yes.”

“
I see.” No pity.
Actually, the glimmer in her eyes might have been comprehension.
“Thank you for telling me. There are some other students at the
school from broken families. It helps the staff to know these
things.” A faint smile crossed her lips, just enough to perk up her
cheeks. “Well. I guess I’d better do what I came downtown to do.
Back at the school, they’re probably wondering what’s taking me so
long.”

He nodded and turned his gaze to the bank.
The ATM sat idle, the vestibule empty.

She pulled a deposit envelope from her purse
and started toward the bank. Once she reached the door, she twisted
to look back at him. “Be careful, John, okay? Don’t let anything
happen to you.”

Before he could reply, she was inside. He
took a moment to digest her words, her concern. He could have told
her that being careful was what he did best, and that if it was in
his power, he wouldn’t let anything happen to him. But he was
too...what? Surprised? Flattered?

Touched. Touched that she’d called him John,
touched that she wasn’t going to get into a hero-worship thing—or a
disapproval thing—but rather that she was going to treat him as if
he were a human being, someone whose well-being mattered to her.
Someone she didn’t want anything happening to.

It had been a long time since a woman cared
that way about him. A long, long time. He’d almost forgotten how
nice it felt.

***

“
MICHAEL NEEDS A TIME
OUT,” Amy announced, nudging the sulking little boy into the front
room.

Molly rose from her chair behind the desk
and scrutinized the child. His hair was mussed, his lower lip
curled in a profound pout. Tears had left glistening streaks on his
skin. He glowered at her as if daring her—although what he was
daring her to do, she couldn’t guess.

Despite their dampness, his eyes were his
father’s, dark and defiant, seeing too much and revealing too
little. Molly had spent the better part of the morning thinking
about Michael’s father’s eyes, his low voice, his tentative smile.
His steel-hard control. The utter incongruity of a man like him
playing Santa, and the equal incongruity of Santa chasing down a
pick-pocket. The danger he’d put himself in. The courage he’d
displayed. The way he’d referred to his divorce only in terms of
his son’s well-being, not his own.

“
He and Dana both wanted
to play with the same toy airplane,” Amy reported. “Michael
resorted to pushing and shoving. He grabbed the plane and swung at
Dana with it. He missed, but...”

Molly gave Michael her sternest frown. “Is
that true, Michael? You tried to hit Dana with the plane?”

Michael’s lower lip protruded even farther,
but he wouldn’t apologize. “My plane,” he said in a wobbly voice.
“I play with the plane.”

“
School toys have to be
shared,” Molly reminded him. “And you aren’t allowed to hit other
children. You know that rule, Michael. Hitting isn’t
allowed.”

“
I play with the plane,”
he repeated. “I had it first.”

“
Go sit in the chair,”
Molly ordered him in a firm but gentle voice. The chair she’d
pointed to was an adult-size piece of furniture, upholstered in a
tweed fabric to match her desk chair and positioned in the corner
of the entry, within sight of the desk. Sometimes children had to
be removed from the activity of the main room to compose
themselves, to calm down and chill out. In this case, Molly hoped
that a few minutes by himself in the chair would give Michael a
chance to reflect on what he’d done wrong.

She watched as Michael plodded to the chair
and climbed up into it. With a nod to Amy, who departed from the
office, she settled herself back at her desk. She pretended to
work, reviewing accounts in the computer. But the sorry truth was,
she’d been pretending rather than working ever since she’d returned
to the school from her bank errand. All morning and well into the
afternoon, she’d been restless, distracted, lost in memories of her
brief encounter with John Russo downtown. Calculating the school’s
monthly accounts hadn’t been enough to contain her thoughts. They’d
kept wandering to John, lingering on him, obsessing about him.

Now her thoughts journeyed from him to his
son, dwarfed by the too-big chair. His legs stuck out straight and
his shoulders reached only the middle of the seat back. His gaze
locked onto her, still holding a challenge.

She resolutely swiveled her chair back to
the computer and tapped at the keys. She could almost hear
Michael’s respiration; she could almost feel it, even though he was
eight feet away from her. She was acutely conscious of him moping,
even though he didn’t squirm, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything to
call attention to himself. His mere presence was enough to distract
her, just the way thoughts of his father distracted her.

She entered a few more numbers onto the
computer spread sheet, then yielded to Michael’s silent summons and
lifted her gaze to him. He was still sitting, one sneakered foot
jiggling slightly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. Tears
cascaded down his cheeks, twin rivers of sorrow.

Molly recognized the thin line between
caring for her students and losing her objectivity. She might be
about to cross that line, but she couldn’t just sit by while a
little boy wept in silence.

“
Do you need some lap
time?” she asked.

He didn’t say a word. He also didn’t look
away as she stood and circled the desk. The tears kept spilling
down his face as she crossed the small room, eased his clenched
fingers from the arms of the chair, lifted him and sat, pulling him
down onto her lap. Only then did he let go, curling up against her
and sobbing inconsolably.

This wasn’t about a toy airplane. This was
about a young, vulnerable child whose mother had walked out on him,
whose father did stressful, dangerous work. It was about a little
boy who had to let out some of the pain.

She closed her arms around his trembling
body and rocked in the chair, letting him weep, letting him soak
her sweater with his tears. She wondered when he’d last cried this
hard, whether he’d been held like this, by a woman who cooed, “Shh,
shh, it’s all right,” the way Molly did. She wondered when the last
time was that someone had actually convinced Michael Russo that it
was all right—and whether, by claiming that it was, Molly was lying
to him.