The Twelve Gauge of Christmas Read online

  “Look, the guy is dressed in red, right? And he gave away free stuff to everyone. Everyone, you understand? Now, what would you call a guy like that? I’d call him a socialist, that’s what he was, some kind of commie. What would he be giving out next year? Free health care to everyone? Gimme a break. And I’ll tell you more: I have heard from a really good source that the guy was a German. I mean, he wasn’t even born in the ol’US of A. And then we’re supposed to feel indignation when some patriot takes up arms against the red menace?”

  I turned off the radio. Bunch of lunatics. But something he had said... Yeah the birther fixation about Santa not being US-born. Today, after all, was a day celebrating another non-US birth. A really important one. And I never really understood the business agreement between the parties, the man in red and the one from Nazareth. I wondered if there was something important there, for the case. Of course, disturbing the higher-ups was not a good idea, today or ever. Those things went to much more qualified channels, and Cardinal Mahoney was definitely not on my cell contacts list. But I remembered somebody who was on it. Somebody in the know, who perhaps could help.

  I hesitated, calling him today of all days, but then remembered that he was most likely not celebrating this Holiday. I checked theopedia.org, holding my cell up high to keep an eye on the traffic. Indeed his holiday had been quite early this year. I gave him a call.

  *

  Bookshelves filled every wall of the room that smelled of stale pipe-smoke and ink. Piles of volumes lay on the floor, and even on the one guest chair. Roger was typing away, his chin slightly raised, looking at a low angle through his horn-rimmed glasses. He waved two fingers intimating for me to sit down. I stood instead, couldn’t really move around in that place without stumbling into something, and waited patiently for his train of thought to stop at his workstation. Down below, through the wide corner windows one could guess at the blue of the ocean under the grey marine layer. It was hot up here, like it always was on top of the Santa Monicas, and I took off my jacket, looked around, then decided to just keep it draped over my arm.

  Roger Friedman, chair of the Department of Religious Science at UCLA, finished his sentence, hit save, grabbed a pipe, and finally turned towards me.

  “Thompson,” he said, opening his arms in a hug, entirely symbolic given the distance and the mounds of paper separating us, “what brings you up here?”

  I explained the situation, as briefly as I could. He looked mildly surprised. His daughters were away at college and no one ever turned on the TV. Roger used to be my favorite teacher, back when I went back to school hoping to make it into the CSI. I had kids on the way and needed to make a decent living. All this, of course, before the real estate craze exploded, and I dropped out of college to work weekends laying down new carpet and green rolls of turf.

  “Well you know, there are precedents,” he said, interrupting my reverie, “think about it, your whole Christian tradition is based on deicide. Of course, it’s still an amazingly rare act. And in this case we are dealing with an essential, yet minor figure in the Western Pantheon, a sacred part of our profane lives...”

  “Look, Roger, I have a case to solve. Why don’t we get to the point?”

  He fumbled around with his pipe. “The point is, I can’t imagine anyone able to actually kill the old guy. Some very steady hand was holding that shotgun. Or perhaps, it was somebody he knew.”

  “Who, a disgruntled laid-off elf?”

  “To the best of my knowledge, elves do not use shotguns,” he said, pointing to a series of dusty volumes right above his head, bound in green leather and engraved with unreadable runic characters, “on the other hand, I would not even expect bullets to be able to kill him.”

  “Well, apparently they did.”

  “So you say. Or you believe they did.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “I think the main problem here is one of belief. What do we believe in? Let’s face it, in this country we believe in violence as an acceptable form of conflict resolution. You believe that Santa has indeed been murdered. Perhaps your case is a projection of your belief. I heard from my daughter, and I understand that in Europe gift distribution was unhindered... That’s because they don’t believe he was murdered, or that something like that could even be possible. And we do.”

  “Time difference,” I mumbled, after thinking about it for a bit.

  “What?”

  “They are ahead of us, Christmas morning just arrives sooner. It’s the West Coast and the Pacific Islands that missed out. And they did because the old guy’s trail ended in a pool of his own blood in some repossessed shack in the Valley.”

  Later in the car I was still thinking about Roger’s words. What did we really believe in? The right to bear arms? Free enterprise? Every man for himself? Free stuff just because we deserve it? What did I deserve, then? And the young woman from the REO company, Corinna, what did she believe in? Keeping homeless people out of empty houses? Or was that just a façade? There was something about her that didn’t square. The whole situation, her matter-of-fact lack of compassion. It was just a little too perfect, like some act she had rehearsed a little too long. Why would she do that, anyway? Was that the part of the real estate agent handbook no one ever gave me to read? One thing I knew for sure, she was somewhere in the endless city below, driving around all alone on Christmas Day. Kinda like me. I stopped on the side of the canyon road, found my legal pad, and dialed her number.

  *

  A little later we were on opposite sides of a wooden table carved with the names of thousands of previous customers. A few cars went by on the Pacific Coast Highway, right in front of us. Surfers dried off or got in the water across the road from our restaurant. The place was almost deserted, the Greek motif of the paint job long faded, but the beer cooler as inviting as any other day of the year. Although the Olympian cult was enjoying a resurgence in Southern Europe, Poseidon never really made it big here in the new world, and no one had seen him for centuries on these shores. Still the seafood was nothing short of celestial. A couple of bikers in their fifties were eating fish and chips a few tables down. All we could hear was the crashing of the waves, and the light, cool wind that tasted like salt.

  Corinna shuffled her feet impatiently under the table.

  She had answered at the first ring, and then I realized I had not thought of what to say. So I had told her who I was. She didn’t say anything, I had heard her breath on the other side, expectantly.

  “Look, I’m close to your agency, I could come by, get your statement, save you a trip downtown. And I’ll even buy you lunch if you allow me.”

  “I’m not in the office, driving around, lots of things to check...”

  “Alright then,” I started, thinking, “nice try.”

  “Is there anything even open for lunch?”

  “Sure, lots of places. There’s this one on the PCH, Poseidon’s Cove. The fried fish is decent, the view is awesome, even on foggy days.”

  “I thought this was for official business.”

  Was she flirting back with me, I had wondered then.

  Now she seemed distant again, maybe she thought this hadn’t been a good idea, after all. I played it cool, offered her a beer. She went for a coke, I had a Negra Modelo.

  “Shrimp special looks pretty good,” I told her, pointed vaguely in the direction of the kitchen.

  A bored teenager waited at the cash register, called out numbers when sizzling plates arrived through the narrow, stainless steel framed window.

  She shook her head, took a sip of coke, “I’m really not that hungry.”

  “It must have been hard.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, finding the body and all, first thing in the morning.”

  “Yeah, it was scary. I saw who it was, and freaked out. Then, before I could even explain the situation to the dispatcher, I heard the sirens. I started to have this irrational fear, you know, that you’d find me there a
nd think I was somehow implicated.”

  “Sorry for earlier, I know I pushed you a little with my questioning.”

  “An officer and a gentleman,” she teased, and I only half smiled, “it’s ok, I know you were just doing your job.” She appeared more relaxed, now. Maybe I was doing something right.

  “You know, the reason I was so scared... Well, I have a little one waiting for me at home.”

  “Oh, I see. Are you...”

  “No, he’s gone. Long gone.”

  Somehow, I felt relieved. I took her statement, had her sign it, and sipped some more beer. We watched the seagulls fighting for picking rights around the dumpster in the parking lot, talking about nothing at all. It felt good to be there. So good, that time went too fast, and she was looking at her phone, and telling me she had to go. But she looked at me with clear blue eyes, mouthing a “thank you,” and she was on her way.

  *

  She took off in her Accord, pointing North. I started in the opposite direction, still thinking about how the problem between what people expect from life and what they actually get can be easily squared just by readjusting one’s perspective. I just had a beer, and hadn’t felt better in years. Yet there was something nagging at me. I hammered my fingers on the steering wheel, engine rumbling in the background. What was it? I replayed the conversation in my head.

  ...it was scary. I saw who it was, and freaked out...

  That’s what was bothering me. Sure, she might have thought how weirdly the dead guy was dressed. Finding a corpse in a Santa costume with two egg-sized holes burned in his back, well, it might have prompted some flights of fancy, but who would actually assume that he was the real thing?

  Maybe I was getting all riled up about nothing. I needed a third party opinion.

  The listed phone number for the REO agency was the one Corinna responded to. She was probably the owner and operator, working for some bank. But I did still have a couple of friends in the real estate business.

  “Never heard of that agency.”

  “Well, they are small, maybe it’s even a one-person operation.”

  “I’m telling you Thompson, I’m the outgoing president of the Realtor’s Association, and I would know. Never heard of this lady or her office.”

  “That’s not possible, Chris... I just talked to this Corinna... Let me spell you her name.”

  “Alright, spell away, I’m doing a search, you never know.”

  I did, and heard a few clicks on the other side, Chris mumbling something.

  “Ok, well, I have your Corinna, but she’s is not an agent. Maybe I did not understand you well, or maybe you didn’t.” I could hear the smirk in her voice. “She’s actually an owner, well, sorta. I found her as the foreclosed owner on record of a 205 Rovaniemi Circle, down in the Valley.”

  “Say what?”

  I braked hard, and swerved into a tight u-turn, and some guy in a mustang barely avoided me, leaning on the horn. I waved my badge in the air, pushed the pedal to the metal. My old Chevy waved across the lanes, then finally launched forward.

  She didn’t have more than a few minutes on me, and I knew exactly where she was going. I could try to catch her, or perhaps even get there sooner.

  *

  I spotted her Accord parked almost a block away, just inside another cul-de-sac. I drove by slowly; it was definitely empty, unless she was hiding in the trunk. This block seemed seriously under-populated as well, just a couple of rusty vans parked along the curb and not much else. I saw one of the gates on a backyard hanging open. It might not be anything, or... I checked the GPS map on my phone. This cul-de-sac was exactly opposite to Rovaniemi Circle. She must have found a way in from the back, perhaps through some other abandoned property. I sped away, circled around the block, stopped in front of the house. The place was deserted now. The neighbor’s U-Haul was gone, and so were the media. The house still had the official seals, and the property was pretty much wrapped in yellow plastic tape. I considered calling for support.

  There had been something, maybe the look in her eyes when she was telling me about her child, I wasn’t sure. In times like these I almost wish we were issued a weapon, rather than a phone and a multicultural prayer book. Still it’s better than in down the Gulf, where officers carry just a leather-bound Bible, which I understand can be of limited comfort when a gnarly zombie is gnawing away at your spleen. Of course hitting the perpetrator over the head with the Holy Book was not allowed; and in the case of zombies, not that useful anyway.

  I knocked on the front door, hard, then moved quickly around the house, staying low. I pushed the fence gate open, hoping it wouldn’t squeak, then kept crawling in the backyard, around the dining room, sat on the cracked concrete patio, behind what looked like a tool shed, just out of sight. The house was built on an odd sized lot, pie shaped, and where the two fences met at the apex of the triangle several board were missing. I figured she came in and left that way, circled around the pool, entered the house from some less-than-obvious secondary entrance. I peeked in from the patio door. Not a movement inside, nothing at all. Did she actually live in there? I doubted it. Utilities were still on, but there was no furniture or anything left in the house. The CSI people would have surely found something odd. I pushed the heavy glass door, and it was still unlocked, just like I left it that very morning. I slid against the bare wall of the living room. The house was silent, and no one had come to answer my knocking, of course. The bedrooms were totally empty, and I relaxed a little. All right, maybe there was a better explanation for all this. Sure, Corinna was the owner on record. Maybe that’s the reason why she feared being implicated. Or she was just ashamed to confess it. Her car was in the neighborhood, but maybe she had been squatting at some other house in the neighborhood, had her stuff stashed somewhere around here. Maybe.

  Then I heard a rustle and a creak. Rats, perhaps, up in the... The attic, why didn’t I think about it. I wondered if anyone even bothered to check it this morning. Almost let out a curse, then restrained myself. They might be listening, up there, today of all days.

  Took a second quick tour of the house, looking up, and easily found the trapdoor access in the middle of the corridor leading to the bedrooms. It was totally out of reach, and hadn’t seen a ladder in the house, but I noticed the small storage cabinet on the left wall. I smiled, opened it. Just like I thought, the cabinet’s shelves were just a few inches deep, and well reinforced, a built-in ladder. I had seen a few like this in homes from the 50s I had worked on. I carefully grabbed the first step and balanced. It seemed to hold my weight just fine.

  It took some pushing to get the trapdoor to move. It looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, the old paint from when they redid the ceilings acted as glue. That was actually good, there was a real chance this would all turn out to be nothing out of the ordinary. It finally popped up, and I climbed through, dreading that instant when my feet would be dangling in the void below. I hated that.

  It was dark, and there was an intense unpleasant smell, like locker room and foot powder. And it was darker than the darkest night. I found myself face to face with an aluminum box. That had to be the heating system; I read some faded numbers on it. It seemed to hold up some sort of cardboard barrier. I got one knee through, then the other. I stepped in, crawling on my hands and knees. The rafters were covered in insulating material, and lots of it had come loose through the years, making it look like the remains of a giant pillow fight. I moved carefully, trying to find solid support through the fiberglass at each step. I pushed aside the cardboard, and the smell just got stronger. It was hot, really hot and humid up here, climbing up from the house had felt like pushing through some oversized human orifice. There were square objects around, perhaps old furniture or boxes stashed up there. The middle of the attic was almost walkable, but most of the space had to be traversed on hands and knees. The roof slanted down on one side while the other had a wide square opening, plugged somehow with plywood, perhaps some leftover fro
m the many unfinished remodeling projects that seemed to plague the house. I could see the thin contour of light that marked the patch job. If I hadn’t lost my sense of direction, that corresponded with the unfinished sun deck that overlooked the pool. The middle of the attic was still too dark. There was a movement, in front of me, something small, and I tensed up. Lights shone all of a sudden, a naked lightbulb hanging low from the ceiling that blinded me like the morning sun. I covered my eyes instinctively, blinked through my fingers, and I saw him. A kid, a chubby toddler with curly blond hair and amazing blue eyes. He wasn’t wearing anything but a diaper. Not two yards from me, he leaned over the safety rail of his crib, holding out one hand to me, like he wanted to touch me. Or give me something.

  “Daddee?” He asked.

  Then I felt the ice coolness of twin barrels right above the nape of my neck. I raised my hands, very slowly. “Don’t do it,” I pleaded.

  “You force me to. You couldn’t let it be, could you?”

  “What is this?”

  “What does it look like?” Answered Corinna, her voice as icy as the first time I had heard it.

  “You know, it’s all right, you don’t have to do this. Come on, you are squatting in your house. Big deal. There’s probably a million families doing the same right now, all over the nation.”

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “But you would tell, and they’ll find out, eventually. They’ll lock me in, somewhere, take him away from me.”

  “You did it, right, you shot Santa last night.”

  “Yes, I shot the old bastard. Don’t turn.”

  I had just moved my head slightly.

  “We saw him right about once a year,” she continued, “and then he disappeared for good. And when he left, mom died, killed slowly by gin, until the day I found her floating face down in the pool. One day he came back. But he couldn’t save us, no one could.”