by John Farrow
Mathers beamed back at him. “I figured it had to be something like that,” he answered in French.
They entered, each officer clutching a pistol concealed in his coat pocket, in pursuit of Santa Claus.
Okinder Boyle’s nightmare began as a low murmured howl, indecipherable from the wind’s roar at the tunnel’s entrance. Occasional colored lights made grimy by diesel fumes and generations of mountain dirt lit his way. Scant help. He walked on and pounded his feet against the ties to keep himself a trifle warmer.
This time the complaint was sustained and Boyle stopped and listened and waited and soon knew what was wrong. Bearing down upon him from the opposite direction now—a train. He had to quell an immediate panic. He sucked a breath and drew it in deeply. The freezing air stung his lungs. Ahead glowed the wee aperture of a dim red light, and he jogged toward it. At the light he looked around. No evidence of shelter was apparent. He shouted once, “God!” Then spun, not knowing which way to go. And spun again. He cried out, a noise. Boyle whispered aloud, “Okay. Calm down.” The train was still far off. One train, parallel tracks. No need to panic. To be sure he was okay he checked behind him again and this time spotted the light of another oncoming locomotive.
Now—panic.
Boyle carried no memory of an alcove or bay in the rock behind him. Best to forge ahead. He jogged along the wall toward the next light. Beyond it shone a bright white lamp. He dragged one hand along the wall to detect any opening, any break in the concrete perimeter, and kept his eyes high in hopes of discerning a shelf. Nothing. He ran on, the train ruckus louder now, ferocious. Again at the next red light protected by a wire cage no safe cubbyhole presented itself, no ledge. A safe zone had to exist somewhere. He scrambled toward the lamp. The train bellowed now. The track curved slightly. He was dazed by the bright lights of the nearer locomotive, and paralysis set in. Plastering himself against the side wall probably would save him, but he deplored the risk, the very notion of odds. He could stand on one track and hope to hell the first train passed before the second bore down, jump from one track to the other, but he didn’t want to rely on dumb luck.
Controlling his panic, he jogged on in desperation into the lead engine’s gaining light, but it was the light from the locomotive behind him that revealed a safe ledge. He might not make it, he might not reach that destination, and if he fell—what if I fall! God! He saw stairs in the train’s blazing light—three iron steps that led to a narrow gangway. He jumped to the first step and ascended to the gangway and in his relief lay down and pressed himself against the wall. The first train was not yet upon him. He had overestimated its speed, its nearness. He’d had more time than he’d guessed. Boyle groped the wall, his face against the stone. He lay straight and held his hands and toes, knees, hips, chest and face squeezed against the cold wall while the trains came on. The huge sound and then the crush of wind eclipsed his breath and staggered his heart. He gasped and exhaled with fear as both trains exploded past him and the very wall against which he had sought refuge shook and groaned. He believed the trains would never end, that the night had come undone, that he could not endure their violent passage. War’s like this, he thought as the locomotive on the near track charged by him, and the lights of the passenger cars flashed upon him. The trains escaped into the darkness as quickly as they had emerged and Boyle was abandoned on his iron trellis, his body conjoined to rock.
Pushing himself to his knees, he listened keenly to the trains. They had thundered a moment ago and now were gone from view. Soon they’d be silent. That frightened him, made him wary. How quickly they came up, then vanished. He would have to move more rapidly through the tunnel and stay alert.
Boyle crossed along the catwalk to where the white light shone brightly enough that he could read his train schedule and double-check his watch. The outbound had been the ten-forty, the last in either direction for the night. A mercy. He stepped down a ladder to the tracks and walked deeper into the mountain. The men at the mouth of the cave had directed him into its core. He’d find his best story there, they promised. That’s where the hermit lived, the man known to them as the Banker. Boyle did not go far before spotting a flickering fire, which had to be his destination. He approached warily, mindful of his inner coldness, as though his fright had claimed the remnants of a residual warmth. Close, he called out, “Hello, there! Hello, the Banker!”
Shadow moved. Out of the campfire a flaming piece of lumber was lifted and upraised as a sword, and a phantom man wielded the weapon and lurched to his feet. Flames swung through the air in haphazard design, then the torch was aimed at the interloper, the flames dancing wildly.
“Are you the one they call the Banker?” the journalist called out.
“Who goes there?” a voice shouted back. “Friend or foe?” The torch swished.
Boyle had to restrain his laughter. He half-expected to discover that he had slipped through a whorl in time, that he was engaged now in a medieval joust. “Friend,” he answered.
“Fat chance!” the fire-wielding dungeon dweller yelled back.
“Listen, I write for the papers. My name is Okinder Boyle. Some of the boys at the entrance to the tunnel said I should come down here and talk to you. Do you have a story to tell? Or were they just shooting the breeze, playing a trick on me?”
Unsure of his answer, so it seemed to Boyle, the man chose to wave his stick of lumber around. “What do you mean, a story?” he asked in a moment.
“You know, how you came to be living here.”
“I don’t live here. Only a damn fool would live here. I only sleep here and pass the time, you nut.”
“That’s what I mean. I can use that sort of detail. I’d like to know your story. Starting with, if I might ask, why they call you the Banker.”
“Long story.”
“That’s why I’m here. To listen. Can I come up there?”
“Well,” the Banker stated, then he fell silent.
“What do you say?” Okinder Boyle pressed him.
“Maybe you should come up here,” the Banker suggested, as though the idea had originated with him.
“I’m climbing up there,” Boyle informed him. He placed his gloved hands upon a cement ledge, heaved himself up, and scrambled onto the catwalk to join the older man by the fire. The Banker had squatted down again, both palms faced toward the flames as he warmed his hands through his mitts. He had returned his torch to the fire. Boyle hunkered down across from him on a board, the small smoky campfire between them.
“So who’re you?” the Banker asked him.
Boyle studied his hermit. A full round face, he wasn’t underfed by all appearances. A scruffy two- or three-day beard. Impressive eyebrows and smallish eyes. Under one a scar glowed in the firelight, odd-shaped in that it was almost square, as though a patch of skin had surgically been removed from his cheek. He wore a heavy black wool cap.
“My name’s Okinder Boyle,” the young man answered. “I’m a journalist.”
“Yeah,” the Banker reminded him, “I heard all that. But who are you?”
Boyle was momentarily disadvantaged. “That’s not important,” he said finally.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” the Banker mused, his voice level now, he was sounding sane, “but that’s the part I want to hear. Humor me. You do the talking, son. I’ll listen in.”
The two detectives moved with stealth, attuned to the sound of their ascent. On each floor the hallways were dimly lit, the stairways between them worn and narrow. Student rooms emitted the muffled beat of the music channel, or the laugh tracks of sitcoms, a quieter night than was common with many residents gone home for the holidays. The men moved upstairs in search of Santa Claus, to the second floor, then the third, Mathers in the lead, Cinq-Mars a stride behind. They were looking for Room 37, found it easily, and listened at the door. No sounds came from within.
Cinq-Mars stood to one side and rapped gently, a friendly knock.
No answer.
He waited.
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No sound.
He knocked harder. Then gestured with his chin.
“What?” Mathers whispered back.
“Try the knob.”
It turned.
Cinq-Mars arched an eyebrow.
Mathers opened the door and peered through the crack. Then he gave the door an easy shove and let it swing open, both men concealed behind the casework on either side, weapons drawn. Mathers gave the room a quick glance, pulling his head back in a wink both to entice fire, if it was forthcoming, and to avoid it. Cinq-Mars did the same, to get a mental snapshot of the room. He put a finger to his lips to indicate they’d move in without first shouting a warning, then flashed his thumb for his junior partner to go first.
Mathers swung low, his pistol held in both hands in front of him as he stood in the doorway. Not much to see. The room was empty of people, pretty much empty altogether. A tall, pine wardrobe, a table with Santa’s bag of toys on it, and that was all. Mathers crept forward, his eyes taking in the room, and headed for the kitchen. That long, narrow space proved barren as well, save for the remnant of a cardboard box. He turned, and Cinq-Mars gestured to maintain silence.
A small alcove was built into one end of the main room on the right, and a door led off it. Cinq-Mars listened first, then proceeded. Bent at the knees, he flung open the door, his pistol upraised. Straightening, he reached inside and flicked on the light switch. The john was empty. Even the curtain on the shower stall was missing.
“Back way out?” Cinq-Mars asked.
“Kitchen door,” Mathers told him.
They entered the kitchen together. They had a choice between two doors. The one ajar led into a small pantry. Empty. The other was locked. Mathers flicked the light switch beside it and peered through the keyhole. “Stairwell, looks like,” he commented.
“Santa’s chimney,” Cinq-Mars muttered.
“Break it down?”
“Why bother? If Santa wanted to lose us, he’s lost us.”
“So this was a wild gooser?”
“With all the trimmings. Why, though? What’s up?”
Mathers holstered his pistol. He walked back into the main room, and his steps echoed off the hardwood floors and bare walls. “Somebody cleared this place out.”
“Not quite,” Cinq-Mars noted. He leaned against the kitchen jamb. Motioned with his chin. Mathers simultaneously opened both doors to the wardrobe. Then just stood there, gaping.
“Bill?”
“Jesus!”
Cinq-Mars came around. Inside the hutch, Santa Claus hung from a rod. His head was tilted askew, as though the neck had snapped, and his bloated, pale face was largely concealed by the phony Santa’s beard and by the extravagant white tufts of Santa Claus hair. His slack mouth was open in an oval. Around his neck, across his red Santa’s uniform, a cardboard message had been slung on a string, a few words of greeting, which Sergeant-Detective Émile Cinq-Mars recognized as being addressed to him.
The victim’s eyes indicated that Santa Claus would not be riding his sleigh tonight. The eyes and the limp body confirmed that he had no pulse. Cinq-Mars checked anyway. The body was cold to his touch.
On top of the mountain that night, on a floodlit frozen pond away from the city’s noise, a young woman was skating to the drone of Christmas Muzak. Aware of a man’s careful scrutiny, she knew that she was being recruited. Roughly twice her age, the man shivered by the edge of the oval and regarded her as he stomped his boots on the hard-packed snow to keep his blood circulating. Equally cold, the skater turned her head from the breeze and hunched her shoulders to keep her collar high. Her name was Julia Murdick. She glided one more time around the ice before returning to his side.
“Now I understand your walk,” he said, his breath a bright cloud in the snapping cold and under the lights.
“My walk?” She sound offended. Flattered by his attentions, curious about the nature of his enterprise, Julia believed that she could resist his advances. She was willing to let him try. She wanted to experience mental combat with a pillaging male and, having tested herself, triumph over the intricacies of seduction. Julia recognized her weakness here, the vulnerable points that he exploited, but most of all she was keen to know what he wanted her to do, and why she’d been chosen.
The man kicked one stinging foot against the other. Over his suit he wore a mauve scarf and a taupe woolen topcoat. A jaunty sable cap decked his head. “That was the second thing I noticed about you, Jul, your springy step, the way you push off with your back foot. You walk as you skate, young lady, and you skate beautifully.”
“My walk’s dorky. That’s what you’re really trying to tell me. Don’t sweat it, Selwyn. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
The man’s name was Norris—Selwyn Emerson Norris—and the young woman had not known him long. He had lovely eyes in her estimation and a decent manner and an intriguing air about him. Always impeccably groomed, he was so damned handsome. He had old-fashioned manners, always seemed interested in what she had to say, and loved conversation. She had little more to go on than that and no sound reason to be keeping his company.
“There’s a name for it, you know,” she said.
“For what?”
“My walk.”
“Really?”
“But I’m not telling! It’s way too demeaning. Wild horses! My walk is physiological so don’t try changing it. It’s not in your domain. Yikes, I’m stiff. I’m so cold.” She bobbed at the knees to keep herself in motion.
Norris placed her boots on the ice as she stooped to untie the laces on her high-top skates. Unable to manage while wearing mittens, Julia pulled them off between her teeth and attacked the knots with fingers numb from the cold. Supporting her weight against him, one hand in his, mitts in her mouth, she kicked a skate loose and tucked her foot into the frigid boot.
“Sel!” Her shout was muffled. Extracting the mittens from between her teeth, Julia put them on again. “Why’s it so freezing out? This has got to be the coldest Christmastime ever ever ever.”
“How does a bowl of hot soup sound to you?”
“Like the sound of one hand clapping, I guess.” She pried the second skate off and pulled on her boot.
“Snoop—”
“You don’t mean here. You can’t mean here.” Julia abhorred the public chalet where children retreated for poutine and warmth and the familiar comfort of their own racket.
“I think not.”
Which had to be considered also—the drive in the Infiniti, the food of fine restaurants—although she did not dwell on such ancillary offerings for long.
“Let’s run,” she said.
“You go. I’ll catch up.”
Hugging herself, Julia Murdick ran, disappearing along the path through the woods. Selwyn Norris next saw her in the parking lot jumping in place by his car. He walked across the hardened snow, and the crunch of his boots was clear and sharp in the night air. He unlocked the doors of the Q45 from a distance. Julia heard the gay electronic blip! of the locks releasing, opened her door, and bounced in. She watched Norris carry her skates around to the trunk and deposit them there, then come back and slide in behind the wheel.
“Start her up, Selwyn. It’s so cold!”
She got a kick out of saying his name. The oddity of it spoke of a class distinction, of a cultural epoch not her own, of a boundary she was being invited to cross. Each time she spoke his name she wondered if it was for real, or fabricated, and if his true identity would ever be disclosed.
“You’re the one who wanted to skate, Snoop.”
“So press charges.”
He fastened the seat belt.
Charmed by the self-mockery of her youthful conceit, he smiled. The quality endeared her to him always and Norris mulled over how the attribute could be used to advantage and under what circumstances the virtue might prove a liability. He started the car, and the engine purred confidently in the cold.
“What was the first thing you noticed
about me?” she asked.
“Good work, Jul! Well done. Nicely underplayed. Always delay the question. Allow time, enough for the person with the answer to choose to want to talk. Diminish the tenor of your interest. Make it sound as though you’re engaged in idle conversation, nothing more. You carried that off exceptionally well.”
“Bugger off, Selwyn.”
“You’re right. We’ll discuss this another time. A cup of hot soup,” he said. “Coming up.”
The Infiniti tagged on to the end of a short line of cars traversing the mountain. The road turned and cut through a blasted trench of rock, and soon the vast eastern expanse of the city was revealed on their right. Norris turned into the overlook alongside lovers in their cars. Before them lay the great glacial plateau of the city, lights twinkling, chimneys smoking.
“Consider,” he said, as though he was offering her all that she surveyed, “the world.”
“Okay,” she consented, “let’s.”
“The former Soviet Union has been ground to dust. Republics mutate and subdivide quicker than anyone can redraw the map.”
“The place is a shambles, Selwyn,” Julia agreed, and shivered even as she was warming up. “What’s your point?”
“A superpower has re-created itself as a crime state. Dweeb bureaucrats make tens of millions of dollars. Bankers are billionaires, and fifty a year die gruesome deaths. It’s astonishing. For so many criminals to flourish, extraordinary organization has been necessary, with a plan that includes intimate and ever-expanding contacts with the West. The roots and tentacles of crime are growing together to span the globe.”
Julia listened, skeptically, as she surveyed the city from the precipice. “Come on, Sel,” she argued, “we’ve always had crime.” She was irritated by his condescending, smug air, as if he had all the answers while she still struggled to ask the right questions.
“Out there,” he said, and nodded to the city lights, “the Hell’s Angels and the Rock Machine are in a fight to the finish. Bombings. Murders. They use chain saws as weapons. Now imagine this, Snoop. These bikers are fighting to side with foreign gangs operated by displaced members of the KGB. It boggles the mind. The illicit enterprises still flourish, but now the opportunity has emerged to broker the world’s merchandise. Never mind drugs, although drugs remain big. But CDs. Jeans. Condoms. Cars. High fashion. Gasoline. There’s a market opening up more huge than the USA. Russia wants it all and needs it all at bargain basement prices. It’s made crime the true growth industry of the next century and, for what it’s worth, crime fighting the most beleaguered profession.”