Cynthia Manson (ed) (50 page)

Frances grabbed my arm when I tried
to leave her. “It’s not much. I know that. But maybe you can use it all the
same.” She let me go, then put out a hand like she wanted to shake. I slipped
off my glove and took hold of her small, bone-chilled fingers. She passed me
two dimes. “Thanks, and happy Christmas.”

She looked awfully brave and awfully
heartsick, too. Most down-and-outers look like that, but people who eat
regularly and know where their next dollar will likely come from make the
mistake of thinking they’re stupid and confused, or maybe shiftless or crazy.

I tried to refuse the tip, but she
wouldn’t have any of that. Her eyes misted up again. So I went back out to the
street, where it was starting to snow.

The few hours I had left until the
evening darkness were not productive. Which is not to say there wasn’t enough
business for me. Anyone who thinks crooks are nabbed sooner or later by us
sharp-witted, hard-working cops probably also thinks there’s a tooth fairy.
Police files everywhere bulge with unfinished business. That’s because cops are
pretty much like everybody else in a world that’s not especially efficient.
Some days we’re inattentive or lazy or hungover—or in my case on Christmas Eve,
preoccupied with the thought that loneliness is all it’s cracked up to be.

For about an hour after leaving
Frances and the kids at the Martinique, I tailed a mope with a big canvas
laundry sack, which is the ideal equipment when you’re hauling off valuables
from a place where nobody happens to be home. I was practically to the Hudson
River before I realized the perp had made me a long time back and was just having
fun giving me a walk-around on a raw, snowy day. Perps can be cocky like that
sometimes. Even though I was ninety-nine percent sure he had a set of lock
picks on him, I didn’t have probable cause for a frisk.

I also wasted a couple of hours
shadowing a guy in a very uptown cashmere coat and silk muffler. He had a set
of California teeth and perfect sandy-blond hair. Most people in New York would
figure him for a nice simple TV anchorman or maybe a GQ model. I had him pegged
for a shoulder-bag bus dipper, which is a minor criminal art that can be
learned by anyone who isn’t moronic or crippled in a single afternoon. Most of
its practitioners seem to be guys who are too handsome. All you have to do is
hang around people waiting for buses or getting off buses, quietly reach into
their bags, and pick out wallets.

I read this one pretty easily when I
noticed how he passed up a half empty Madison Avenue bus opposite B. Altman’s
in favor of the next one, which was overloaded with chattering Lenox Hill
matrons who would never in a thousand years think such a nice young man with
nice hair and a dimple in his chin and so well dressed was a thief.

Back and forth I went with this
character, clear up to Fifty-ninth Street, then by foot over to Fifth Avenue
and back down into the low Forties. When I finally showed him my tin and spread
him against the base of one of the cement lions outside the New York Public
Library to pat him down, I only found cash on him. This dipper was brighter
than he looked. Somewhere along the line, he’d ditched the wallets and pocketed
only the bills and I never once saw the slide. I felt fairly brainless right
about then and the crowd of onlookers that cheered when I let him go didn’t
help me any.

So I hid out in the Burger King at
Fifth and Thirty-eighth for my dinner hour. There aren’t too many places that
could be more depressing for a holiday meal. The lighting was so oppressively
even that I felt I was inside an ice cube. There was a plastic Christmas tree
with plastic ornaments chained to a wall so nobody could steal it, with dummy
gifts beneath it. The gifts were strung together with vinyl cord and likewise
chained to the wall. I happened to be the only customer in the place, so a kid
with a bad complexion and a broom decided to sweep up around my table.

To square my pad for the night, I
figured I had to make some sort of bust, even a Mickey Mouse. So after my
festive meal (Whopper, fries, Sprite, and a toasted thing with something hot
and gummy inside it). I walked down to Thirty-third Street and collared a
working girl in a white fake-fox stole, fishnet hose, and a red-leather skirt.
She was all alone on stroll, a freelance, and looked like she could use a hot
meal and a nice dry cell. So I took her through the drill. The paperwork burned
up everything but the last thirty minutes of my tour.

When I left the station house on
West Thirty-fifth, the snow had become wet and heavy and most of midtown
Manhattan was lost in a quiet white haze. I heard the occasional swish of a car
going through a pothole puddle. Plumes of steam hissed here and there, like
geysers from the subterranean. Everybody seemed to have vanished and the lights
of the city had gone off, save for the gauzy red-and-green beacon at the top of
the Empire State Building. It was rounding toward nine o’clock and it was
Christmas Eve and New York seemed settled down for a long winter’s nap.

There was just one thing wrong with
the picture. And that was the sight of Whiteboy. I spotted him on Broadway
again, lumbering down the mostly blackened, empty street with a big bag on his
back like he was St. Nicholas himself.

I stayed out of sight and tailed him
slowly back a few blocks to where I’d lost him in the first place, to the
statue of Greeley. I had a clear view of him as he set down his bag on a bench
and talked to the same bunch of grey, shapeless winos who’d cut me off the
chase. Just as before, they passed a bottle. Only this time Whiteboy gave it to
them. After everyone had a nice jolt, they talked quickly for a couple of
minutes, like they had someplace important to go.

I hung back in the darkness under
some scaffolding. Snow fell between the cracks of planks above me and piled on
my shoulders as I stood there trying to figure out their act. It didn’t take me
long.

When they started moving from the
statue over to Thirty-second Street, every one of them with a bag slung over
his shoulder, I hung back a little. But my crisis of conscience didn’t last
long. I followed Whiteboy and his unlikely crew of elves—and wasn’t much
surprised to find the blond shoulder-bag dipper with the cashmere coat when we
got to where we were all going. Which was the Martinique. By now, the spindly
little spruce I’d felt sorry for that afternoon was full of bright lights and
tinsel and had a star on top. The same old coots I’d seen when I helped Frances
and her kids there were standing around playing with about a hundred more
hungry-looking kids.

Whiteboy and his helpers went up to
the tree and plopped down all the bags. The kids crowded around them. They were
quiet about it, though. These were kids who didn’t have much experience with
Norman Rockwell Christmases, so they didn’t know it was an occasion to whoop it
up.

Frances saw me standing in the dimly
lit doorway. I must have been a sight, covered in snow and tired from walking
my post most of eight hours. “Hock!” she called merrily.

And then Whiteboy spun around like
he had before and his jaw dropped open. He and the pretty guy stepped away from
the crowd of kids and mothers and the few broken-down men and walked quickly
over to me. The kids looked like they expected all along that their party would
be busted up. Frances knew she’d done something very wrong hailing me like she
had, but how could she know I was a cop?

“We’re having a little Christmas
party here. Hock. Anything illegal about that?” Whiteboy was a cool one. He’d
grown tougher and smarter in a year and talked to me like we’d just had a
lovely chat the other day. We’d have to make some sort of deal. Whiteboy and
me. and we both knew it.

“Who’s your partner?” I asked him. I
looked at the pretty guy in cashmere who wasn’t saying anything just yet.

“Call him Slick.”

“I like it,” I said. “Where’d you
and Slick get all the stuff in the bags?”

“Everything’s bought and paid for,
Hock. You got nothing to worry about.”

“When you’re cute, you’re
irritating. Whiteboy. You know I can’t turn around on this empty-handed.”

Then Slick spoke up. “What you got
on us, anyways? I’ve just about had my fill of police harassment today,
Officer. I was cooperative earlier, but I don’t intend to cooperate a second
time.”

I ignored him and addressed
Whiteboy. “Tell your friend Slick how we all appreciate discretion and good
manners on both sides of the game.”

Whiteboy smiled and Slick’s face
grew a little red.

“Let’s just say for the sake of
conversation,” Whiteboy suggested, “that Slick and me came by a whole lot of
money some way or other we’re unwilling to disclose since that would tend to
incriminate us. And then let’s say we used that money to buy a whole lot of
stuff for those kids back of us. And let’s say we got cash receipts for
everything in the bags. Where’s that leave us, Officer Hockaday?”

“It leaves you with one leg up,
temporarily. Which can be a very uncomfortable way of standing. Let’s just say
that I’m likely to be hard on your butts from now on.”

“Well, that’s about right. Just the
way I see it.” He lit a cigarette, a Dunhill. Then he turned back a cuff and
looked at his wristwatch, the kind of piece that cost him plenty of either
nerve or money. Whiteboy was moving up well for himself.

“You’re off duty now, aren’t you.
Hock? And wouldn’t you be just about out of overtime allowance for the year?”

“Whiteboy, you better start giving
me something besides lip. That is, unless you want forty-eight hours up at
Riker’s on suspicion. You better believe there isn’t a judge in this whole city
on straight time or overtime or any kind of time tonight or tomorrow to take
any bail application from you.”

Whiteboy smiled again. “Yeah, well,
I figure the least I owe you is to help you see this thing my way. Think of it
like a special tax, you know? Around this time of year, I figure the folks who
can spare something ought to be taxed. So maybe that’s what happened, see? Just
taxation.”

“Same scam as the one Robin Hood
ran?”

“Yeah, something like that. Only
Slick and me ain’t about to start living out of town in some forest.”

“You owe me something more,
Whiteboy.”

“What?”

“From now on. you and Slick are my
two newest snitches. And I’ll be expecting regular news.”

There is such a thing as honor among
thieves. This is every bit as true as the honor among Congressmen you read
about in the newspapers all the time. But when enlightened self-interest rears
its ugly head, it’s also true that rules of gallantry are off.

“Okay, Hock, why not?” Whiteboy
shook my hand. Slick did, too, and when he smiled his chin dimple spread flat.
Then the three of us went over to the Christmas tree and everybody there seemed
relieved.

We started pulling merchandise out
of the bags and handing things over to disbelieving kids and their parents.
Everything was the best that money could buy. too. Slick’s taste in things was
top-drawer. And just like Whiteboy said, there were sales slips for it all.
which meant that this would be a time when nobody could take anything away from
these people.

I came across a pair of ladies’
black-leather gloves from Lord & Taylor, with grey-rabbit-fur lining. These
I put aside until all the kids had something, then I gave them to Frances
before I went home for the night. She kissed me on the cheek and wished me a
happy Christmas again.

BUT ONCE A YEAR. . . THANK GOD! – Joyce Porter

Nobody, with one
glittering exception, ever enjoyed the Christmas party which the Totterbridge
& District Conservative & Unionist Club traditionally gave every year
for the children of its members. The ladies who organised and ran the party
naturally hated every minute of it, while the guests (all under the age of ten)
invariably professed themselves bored out of their tiny minds by the lousy tea,
the lousy entertainment, and the even lousier presents. Only the Honourable
Constance Morrison-Burke stood up to be counted when it came to asserting that
the kiddies’ Christmas party was a simply spiffing “do” and well worth all the
trouble and heartbreak.

The Honourable Constance’s
enthusiasm might ring strange in the ears of those aware of her intense dislike
of small children and her vehement objection to lavishing on them vast sums of
money which might be better spent on comforts for Britain’s impoverished aristocracy.
The explanation is, however, quite simple: it was only at the Conservative Club’s
Christmas party that the Honourable Constance got the chance to play Father
Christmas, all the Conservative menfolk having chickened out of this particular
privilege many years ago.

The Honourable Constance
(or the Hon. Con as she was generally known in the small provincial town in
which she lived) was famous for always wearing the trousers, literally and
figuratively, so that yet another breeches role was in itself no great
attraction for her. What did draw her irresistibly to the part were those bushy
white whiskers. To tell the truth, the Hon. Con rather fancied herself in a
moustache and full beard, claiming that it brought out the colour of her eyes,
and she spent the fortnight before the party swaggering around her house in
Upper Waxwing Drive arrayed in the complete get-up. Her ho-ho-hoing was so
exuberant that Miss Jones went down daily with one of her sick headaches. Miss
Jones, who also lived in the house in Upper Waxwing Drive, was the Hon. Con’s
dearest chum, confidante, dogsbody, doormat, better half, and who knows what
else besides. It was she who had extracted a solemn promise from the Hon. Con (“see
that wet, see that dry, cross my heart and hope to die”) that she wouldn’t wear
her Santa Claus whiskers out in the street, no matter how much breaking in they
required.