The Twelve Crimes of Christmas

by Martin H. Greenberg et al (Ed)

  “Waiting for the other shoe to drop,” I said, “When the bough breaks—”

  “Nathan, for Christ’s sake!” He glared, and I kicked myself.

  “Sorry.” I edged out the door, and the kids jumped up. I said to them, “There wasn’t anything in there at all. He just wanted a quiet place to yell at me for not taking you guys anywhere. So we’re going sledding, right now.”

  They scrambled for their coats. Los Angeles kids don’t get much chance for winter sports. Afterwards, I’d take them to my apartment for lunch, and call Roy from there.

  Howie grinned and said, “You gonna crash sleds with opened my mouth and Cartley said, “Sure he will.”

  Howie grinned and said, “you gonna crash sleds with me?”

  “Nathan will love that.” It was the closest to a grin Cartley had managed all morning.

  “Yeah,” I said, pulling on my stocking cap, “Nathan loves bruises.” We went.

  Incidentally, Nathan got creamed.

  The kids loved my apartment. I hadn’t put a thing away in weeks. All kinds of fragile, fascinating oddities were lying about within reach. I said. “Don’t break anything I haven’t already broken,” and went to the kitchen to heat soup and make sandwiches. While I was out there, I heard a giggling and the sound of a cat losing hold of the upholstery.

  Before I could get to the door, Amy came into the kitchen, hugging Marlowe and holding him up by his armpits. Marlowe was hanging limp, purring frantically. He raised his pleading eyes to me. His claws, bless his heart, were in.

  “Cats break, too, Amy.” I took Marlowe out of her arms, putting an arm under his back legs. He let his claws out just enough to show he was unhappy. “He looks like he wants to go out.” About as far out as Skylab. “Could you open the door?”

  She ran over and reached up to the knob. When the door opened four inches Marlowe streaked out. Good enough. I could go down and let him all the way out later.

  Paul peered around the kitchen door, then stepped in. “You done anything against the law yet, Nathan?”

  “I’m not telling. What’s in your hand?” He opened his fist. Clutched in it was a glass cat.

  I took it from him, held it up to the light and polished it, then put it back on his palm and played with the tail to make the cat dance. “That’s Marlowe’s girl friend. A friend gave her to me and said Marlowe needed a steady girl friend.”

  Paul examined the statue. “How come she’s clear?”

  “My friend said Marlowe’s girl friend should be hard to see, so his other girl friends wouldn’t get jealous.”

  In came Howie, then, glancing quickly around the kitchen for signs of iniquity His eyes lit triumphantly on the scotch bottle next to all the dirty dishes.

  “So that’s what you’ve been doing, Nathan.” He pointed to the bottle, then to me, like the world’s smallest prosecuting attorney. “You’ve been drinking alone!”

  Amy scurried to my defense—sort of. She stood on tiptoe, hanging onto the counter-top and peering over it. “No, he hasn’t,” she said primly.

  “How do you know, Blondie?” For a ten-year-old, Howie had a hell of a sneer. I quit being that tough at nine.

  She smiled triumphantly. “Anyone can tell, smarty. There are two dirty glasses by the bottle, and one of them has lipstick on it.”

  “Nathan’s got a gir-ul, Nathan’s got a gir-ul.” That was Paul. God, they were cute! Suddenly I wished Roy would hurry up.

  I picked up Amy and swung her over the counter. You want to have your soup,” I growled, “or shall I cook you up for the rest of us?”

  She screamed and laughed, and I put her down. “Soup’s ready,” I announced. They all ran to the table, which Howie, to my surprise, had set. That’s why he hadn’t been in the kitchen earlier, uncovering my sins.

  While I was in the kitchen making more sandwiches, there was a pounding on the door, and a deep, grim voice said deadpan, “Police.”

  Howie ran to the kitchen and looked at me wide-eyed; I said, “It’s no use. Let them in, and I’ll give myself up.” Howie opened the front door dubiously, and Lieutenant Pederson walked in, grinning, Roy a step behind him.

  After “Mr. Pederson” was re-introduced to the kids, and I’d served the sandwiches and the last of the soup, Pederson looked up and said innocently, “Things are kind of slow at the station. How would you like to tour it, and see the jail and the lab?”

  They had their coats on before he had even pushed back from the table.

  When Roy and I were alone I said, “Now that’s above and beyond the call of duty. What gives?”

  Roy looked much happier with life. “Jon didn’t feel the police investigation would turn anything up very fast, so he offered to baby-sit for a couple of hours while we check out some possibilities.”

  “Great. Do we have any?”

  “Possibilities? Not many. We can’t question Petlovich till someone finds out where he is. His parole officer hasn’t seen him in a while.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Sounds dubious. How long till we can get ahold of him?”

  “Maybe this afternoon. We’ll be seeing Gillis’s woman.”

  “Long-standing?”

  “Same one as when he helped us send up Petlovich. Her name’s Mary Jordan. Two shoplifting convictions and a bad-check charge, dropped later. Otherwise, she’s clean—not hard to be cleaner than the men she hangs around with. She might know where Petlovich is.”

  “Fat chance.” I said, pulling on my stocking cap. Cartley looked at me oddly.

  “You’re not going to shave?”

  I shrugged. “We need to look tough. I always cut myself.”

  He shrugged back. Out we went.

  Gillis’s apartment was on the east side of 35W, not too far south of downtown. Farther down, in the plusher residential areas, along Minnehaha Creek, there were sound fences on either side of the highway, painted a tasteful, unobtrusive green. Up here, they wouldn’t have put a fence up, and someone would have stolen the paint.

  Roy and I climbed up two flights of bowing, scarred stairs to a splintered door. The hallway had visible piles of dirt in the corners and along the baseboards. It looked like any other walk-up, only grimier. The baseboards had shrunk away from the linoleum, and I didn’t blame them.

  Roy pounded on the door. We both had enough sense to stand aside. Inside there was a scuffling, and the volume on TV chortled appreciation.

  Roy said with no patience, “Miss Jordan, we’re investigators, Cartley and Phillips. We worked with Gam a couple of years back—”

  The laughter was cut off and a couple of seconds later the door was jerked open. A black-rooted redhead with booze breath and smeared mascara looked at us. “Come on in. I’d make you some eggs, but I only got fresh ones.”

  Roy walked in, first looking through the crack between door and wall to see if anyone was waiting. I glanced out the window at the fire escape. Roy said, “I didn’t expect you to love us, but I didn’t expect you to be drunk in front of the TV today, either.” He was red-faced.

  As I came in, she walked over to the encrusted sink-and-stove in the room’s corner, picked up a half-empty flat pint bottle, and stared at it argumentatively.

  “Did you hear what he said?” she demanded of it, swaying. “He thinks I shouldn’t drink you.” Then she tipped it up and took a long pull. She giggled as she set it down. She had to be her own laugh-track now.

  Cartley looked irritated. He opened his mouth, but I winked at him and he shut up as I said, “Don’t listen to him, lady—drink up. Gillis wasn’t worth staying dry for—why waste an afternoon crying for a down-and-out stoolie with just enough brains to get killed?”

  I ducked, but shouldn’t have bothered. The glass went over me by three feet.

  “Wait a—” Roy said and stopped as another glass flew by me, low and to the right. Two more tries, and there was nothing within her reach but the bottle. She hefted it, glared at me frustratedly, then took another drink.

  R
oy sounded like sweet reason itself. “Young Nate, here, came along with his own ideas, ma’am. I came to see if I could track down who killed Gillis.”

  She looked at him, startled, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Petlovich.” If she had any doubts, they weren’t in her voice. “Nobody else would have killed him. Who would have wanted to?”

  “I would,” I offered, keeping in character. “You would have, too, if he hadn’t been your meal ticket.”

  She nearly did throw the bottle. “He ain’t given me a dime, you lying bastard. I paid for this place and our food and—hell, he ain’t even taken me out for dinner in two or three months.” She stopped, probably realizing that he wouldn’t, ever again.

  Roy said quickly, “All I want is Petlovich’s address, Mary. Nothing else. You want him to go up for it, don’t you?”

  She knotted her hands into spindly, white-knuckled fists. “You bet I do.” She pointed at me suddenly. “And I’d send him up, too, if I could!” She ran into the apartment’s tiny bathroom and slammed the door. It was loose in the frame; we could hear her weeping.

  Roy said quietly, “Maybe it’d be better from here if you waited outside, Nate. Thanks for priming her.”

  “You’re less than welcome.” I meant it. “I’m tired of playing the bad guy.”

  On my way out I stopped and looked at a pair of polyester trousers with pulled threads poking out of them, draped over a chair. I glanced toward the bathroom door, then checked the trousers pockets.

  No wallet—that had been on the body—but the right front pocket held his checkbook. I flipped idly but quickly through the stubs. For a man that lived off his woman, this guy had been living pretty high lately.

  He had written three checks to good restaurants, one to a department store and one for a couple of hundred, marked simply “cash”—all dated within the last three months. He had the deposits recorded in the back. They had been made, one for each check, barely in time and barely enough to cover the amount.

  I put the checkbook back. As I did, the bathroom doorknob turned. I gave a quick nod to Roy and edged out to the hall.

  Through the door, I could hear him mutter and her snuffle and spit. I shuffled from one foot to the other, idly trying to guess what color the walls had been twenty years ago. I felt like taking a bath.

  When Roy came out, he gave me an address in Saint Paul, and away we went. I told him about the checkbook.

  “Oho!” he said. “So she was lying about the money.”

  “Or else she didn’t know about it.”

  Roy looked dubious. “How much were those restaurant checks again?” I told him. “It’s an odd amount, so you can bet he wasn’t cashing a check. Could you eat your way through forty-five dollars and thirty-eight cents’ worth of food at any of those places? Never mind—you probably could.”

  “Yeah, but I wouldn’t—not alone. Or with a friend, either, unless I was in the money or thought I was going to be.”

  “I know.” He grabbed the armrest as I took a right turn. “She found that address pretty fast, too. Well, we’re headed to see Petlovich, aren’t we?” Roy was cheerful again. On the way to Saint Paul, he made three rotten jokes and yelled at my driving at every other turn. It wasn’t fair. I had signaled at most of those turns, or meant to.

  Saint Paul was a bust, a waste of time. We came up the stairs, we knocked from beside the door, we heard a scrambling in the room, we stood back. A slug ripped through the door; Roy let go of the knob, and we both flattened against the wall. After a minute of silence, Cartley threw the door open and we charged in, heads down and guns up.

  There was nothing much in the room—a battered suitcase, a sack of groceries, a newspaper and some mail. The window was open, and the shade, jerked down, roller and all, hung half in the window and half out. I looked out. Ten feet below the window were the deep tracks where he had hit, and the footprints of a man sprinting away.

  We turned back to the table. Cartley went for the mail and I checked the newspaper. He tossed the letters down in disgust. “Bills!”

  “No Christmas cards? Funny, I thought he was on my list.”

  “I haven’t gotten one from you either.” Cartley stared at the mail again. “If Petlovich has money, he isn’t paying off debts with it. I wonder why he waited so long to leave town. If the cops didn’t come for him, a collection agency would.”

  “I don’t know about his bills, but I know why he didn’t blow town till now.” I showed Roy the Minneapolis Star, afternoon edition. In the lower right-hand corner of the front page was a human-interest story about the body that had been found hung by the chimney in an unnamed Minneapolis home. The article said the police suspected one Willem Petlovich, former second-story man.

  Roy stared at it woodenly. “That shouldn’t have spooked him. He had to know he’d be a suspect.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But the paper ties him in explicitly. Maybe he figured he’d have a day or two before anyone knew where to look for him.”

  “He’s that dumb?”

  “He’s got caught once. By you, even.”

  “By you, too. All right, quit the kidding. He got caught because he was ratted on.” We holstered our guns and left.

  On the way back, I asked, “Want to report the shooting to Pederson?”

  “And catch hell for playing cops without badges or a warrant?” He sighed. “Guess we better. Jon won’t like this. He didn’t take care of the kids so we could go break laws.”

  “Yeah. Say, why don’t you drop me off at home? I ought to feed Marlowe, and—”

  “Sure. Right after we talk to Jon.” He considered. “No. I’ll wait for you while you feed him now. Nate, I’d really appreciate it if you’d sack out on the couch at my house tonight. Bring your gun.”

  It made sense. “Uh, yeah. Roy, while you talk to Jon, can I make a phone call?”

  He grinned then. “Okay, coward. But after you talk to that woman nobody’s supposed to know about, you can come in and catch hell like a man.”

  I ran a stop sign, unintentionally for once. “Damn it, is everyone on my private life? I suppose the kids told you while I was in the kitchen.”

  He leaned back and hitched at his belt. “If you can’t fool visitors, you couldn’t fool your partner.”

  “Yeah?” It wasn’t much of a crack, but it was all I had left.

  The next morning I opened my eyes and found a pair of cool blue eyes, framed by blond bangs, not more than six inches from my face. I closed my eyes and tried to think. Wasn’t the hair sandier?

  Then I remembered where I was and that only made it more confusing. I opened my eyes again and, after a few tries, focussed on the face around the eyes. I pulled the blanket up over my chest, feeling embarrassed and then silly about it.

  “Oh! H’lo, Amy.” She was standing beside the sofa. “Sleep well?” She nodded.

  I hadn’t. This house had more creaking boards and rattling windows than the House of Usher. “Had breakfast yet?” She shook her head. “What’s the matter, don’t you talk in the morning?”

  She straightened her flannel nightgown and folded her arms self-assuredly. “I’m waiting till the others get up,” she said.

  Great! I was guilty again. Ah, life as a hardened criminal! I went into the bathroom, brushed my teeth and changed my pajama bottoms for trousers.

  I was throwing cold water on my face when I heard a whoop from Howie and a shriek from Paul. I tottered out and collided with Cartley, striding out in his bathrobe to collect the evidence and punish the wicked. He was boiling mad. He looked like a walking bathrobe with a ham roast in it.

  In the living room, Amy was standing demurely by the front door while Paul tugged at it. She ran a hand over her blond hair to make sure she looked tidy and grown-up, then turned to Roy. “We caught Nathan. He’s trying to keep us shut in the house, isn’t he?”