When Elves Attack (6 page)

Chapter Six

THE NEXT MORNING

Birds chirped.

More accurately squawked. Green parrots. Flying over the light poles in the parking lot of the new Tampa Bay Mall.

The stores hadn't opened yet. Just janitors and power walkers with hand weights. Security bars began cranking up in front of the Cutlery Castle. Someone else turned on a stove at the Magic Wok.

A mall cop strolled along the second level, past one of the power walkers who got a little ambitious.

“No running!” said the security guard. A corridor approached. The guard walked past the restrooms and knocked on the last door. He stuck his head inside. “You wanted to see me?”

“Come in and have a seat,” said the assistant mall manager. Serious mouth. Holding a report in his hands.

Five minutes later. “Son of a bitch!”

“We can't have personnel yelling at children, and especially not mothers. They're our best customers.”

“What's her name?” The guard lunged from his chair with an outstretched arm. “Let me see that fucking complaint!”

The assistant manager yanked the complaint out of reach high over his head. “It's anonymous.”

The ex-mall cop stood. “I'm going to find out who reported me if it's the last thing I do!”

He flung the office door open. Someone was waiting in the hall; that person jumped out of the way as the fired guard stormed past.

The assistant mall manager slipped the complaint in the top drawer of his desk, then smiled and waved for the person waiting in the hall to enter the office. “Come in, come in, Mr. Beach. Corporate told me you'd be here.”

“Please call me Jensen,” said Jim Davenport.

“Okay, Jensen, pull up a chair.” The assistant manager took a seat behind his desk and leaned forward on elbows. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“I'm sure you know that retail is in a slump.”

The manager leaned back in his chair with fingers interlaced behind his head. “Yeah, everyone's a little off. Sausage World pulled out last month. But it all goes in cycles; everyone bounces back.”

“I'm happy to hear you see it that way.” Jim opened his briefcase on his lap. “That'll make this go a lot easier.”

“What do you mean by that? . . .”

Five minutes later:

“Motherfucker! You're firing
me
? Do you know anything at all about mall administration?”

“Not remotely.”

“So you have no real basis to fire me instead of one of the other assistant managers.”

“Not that I can think of.”

“What about Johnson? He hasn't been here half as long as me. It isn't fair!”

“You're right,” said Jim. “It's not.”

“Get out of my office.”

“Actually they said you had to leave . . .”

“I'm not going anywhere.”

“ . . . And if you said you weren't going anywhere, I was instructed to call mall security.”

“We've got one guy working today,” said the assistant manager. “And he isn't working here anymore—”

A cell phone rang. Jim held up a finger to wait a second. He recognized the numerical display as the number of his supervisor at Sunshine Solutions. “Hello? . . . Yes, actually I'm here right now . . . Another hiring job? . . . They're short-staffed? . . . But why do they need to fill the position so fast? . . . An urgent human resources problem has come up? . . . I'll get right on it.”

Jim closed the phone.

The manager was standing. “Now, are you going to leave by yourself, or will I have to kick your ass?”

“No, I'm going,” said Jim. He picked up his briefcase and left the office, looking to hire a security guard to remove the assistant manager from the building.

TRIGGERFISH LANE

The front curtains parted a slit.

Binoculars poked through. “Jim, come here,” said Martha.

Jim drilled a wall anchor to hang the newest Davenport family portrait taken at Just Portraits. “What is it?”

“They're back.”

Jim walked across the living room. “Martha, are you going to spend your whole life at the window?”

“They've got a bunch of stuff in the trunk.”

“That's a mystery. People moving in, having stuff.”

“Don't trivialize me.” She opened the curtains wider. “Those men are dangerous. I wonder what's in all those bags? . . .”

Across the street, Coleman hoisted a sack out of the trunk. “What's in all these bags?”

“Christmas!” said Serge, grabbing his own bag. “This is going to be the best ever!”

They headed for the front door.

Coleman set his bag down and leaned against the house. “I'm tired.”

Serge got out his keys. “You only walked from the driveway to the porch.”

“Maybe it's the marijuana.”

“Gee, you think?” They went inside and Serge dumped the bags' contents on the floor. Then five more trips to the car until the pile in the living room was a mountain.

“Why so much shit?” asked Coleman.

“Because I love Christmas! But usually I'm too busy with all my business travel and outstanding warrants. Not this year! My new motto: ‘I'm taking Christmas big!' ” Serge dropped to his knees and pawed through the mound on the floor. “Here's the plan: We do everything, all the traditions, and we do it grander than anyone ever dreamed! Here are the houselights, which will require extra generators so we don't smash the power grid, the holiday music CDs that will need weatherproof outdoor concert speakers, the train set with extra boxes of tracks to connect all the rooms of the house, the bicycle whose assembly on Christmas Eve will make us use profanity like Kid Rock, the toys where we forget the batteries, several gingerbread house kits we'll combine to form a mansion, DVDs of all the classic Christmas specials to run nonstop, mistletoe for all the doorways, the manger scene with a little Jesus that glows in the dark to emphasize the Holy Spirit third of the Trinity because he's the shy one who gets the least press, all the presents we'll wrap together and give each other as Secret Santas . . .”

Coleman popped a special holiday-edition Budweiser. “But if we wrap the presents together, I'll already know what you bought me.”

Serge untangled a strand of lights. “You won't remember.”

Coleman took a gulp from his beer. “I love surprises.”

Serge jumped up. “Let's get the tree! . . .”

Across the street: “Look at the size of that tree tied to the roof of their Chevelle,” said Martha. “It's almost as long as the car.”

“I don't think they'll be able to get it in the house,” said Jim.

Moments later: “Push!” yelled Serge.

“I'm pushing as hard as I can,” said Coleman. “The door's not big enough.”

“Then we'll figure something else out . . . Pull!”

“I'm pulling as hard as I can. I think it's stuck.”

“Let me get out there and help.” Serge crouched on his hands and knees and crawled through the front door under the tree. He stood up next to Coleman. “Get a good grip and pull as hard as you can on three . . . Three!”

Grunting and more grunting.

“It's stuck good,” said Coleman.

Serge let go. “Fuck it. Leave it there. Can't let this slow down the yuletide juggernaut.”

They crawled under the tree and into the house. Coleman grabbed another cold one. “Why was it so important to rent a house near Jim's place, anyway?”

“Because he's my hero.” Serge began nailing stockings to the wall. “The courage of holding down a family. I want to be just like him, and what better way than to live as close as possible and observe his secrets? We'll tap into their rhythms and mimic everything they do until it becomes natural.”

“What's the point?”

“I'm taking it to the next level!” Serge grabbed a nail from his teeth and resumed hammering. “Don't get me wrong. Fleeing all over the state from the cops, staying in crappy motels, and stealing shit has its place. But you need to raise a family to grow as a human. And what better time to start than Christmas?”

“But we're not a family,” said Coleman.

“But we are!” said Serge. He went to the dining table. “Just need to get some chicks in the mix, and the whole family dynamic will take care of itself.”

“Who are you thinking of?”

Serge just smiled.

Coleman took a step back. “You don't mean . . .”

“That's right. City and Country!”

Coleman took an extra-long guzzle from a bottle of Jack to steady his nerves. “Those are some badass babes. But they're still on the run for that murder.”

“Except they didn't do it. They're innocent.”

“Maybe they were innocent back then, but all the years on the lam. Who knows how many crimes?”

Serge began tapping on the laptop. “We're judging?”

“No. I wouldn't mind seeing them again. They're smokin' hot!” Coleman took a slug of whiskey and cracked open two beers. “But they're in deep hiding. How are you going to find them?”

“How all fugitives keep in touch. Facebook.” Serge typed a few more minutes. “There, found them. Now I'll just send our new address, then poke them and hit them with snowballs for good measure . . . They'll be here in no time.”

Serge closed the laptop and walked to the front window.

Coleman followed, snorting off the back of his hand.

“Is that cocaine?” asked Serge.

Coleman's eye sparkled. “White Christmas, dude!” He leaned in for another snort. “What do we do until the babes get here?”

“Study the Davenports' lifestyle so we'll know how to start a family. Of course we'll have to invade their privacy, but it's what everyone does in the suburbs. I didn't make the rules.” He raised a pair of binoculars and aimed them across the street, where he saw Martha staring back at him with her own binoculars.

Serge smiled and waved.

TAMPA BAY MALL

One of the assistant managers barricaded himself in his office, but nobody had noticed yet.

A mall cop arrived.

Not the new recruit Jim Davenport had just hired.

He pounded on the door. “Give me that anonymous complaint!”

“No!”

“I want it now!”

“Go away!”

“I'll kick the door in!”

“I've got a gun!”

“You do not!” The fired security guard began crashing into the door with his shoulder until it finally gave and splintered off the hinges.

The guard ran to the front of the desk. “Give me that complaint!”

The assistant manager took up a defensive position on the other side. “I don't have it!”

“It's in that top drawer, isn't it?”

“No.” The manager opened the drawer and grabbed it.

The guard faked left and right on the front of the desk. “Give it to me.”

The manager countered, right and left. “Stay away from me!”

“Then I'll chase you!”

“You can't catch me!”

“Right!” The guard took off around one end of the desk. The manager ran around the other. Circle after circle.

“Give it to me!”

“Can't have it!”

The guard closed in, right on the manager's heels. He reached and snatched. But missed the complaint.

“Hey! My toupee!”

“Give me the complaint!”

“Not a chance.”

“Fine.” The guard took out a cigarette lighter and set the hairpiece on fire. “See what you get?” He dropped the still-burning rug in the wastebasket.

The bald man used the opportunity to make a break for the door. He turned the knob and opened it a half foot before the guard caught him from behind and slammed it shut.

The manager crumpled the page into a ball.

“Give it to me!”

“Mmmm-mmmm!”

“You better not be sticking that in your mouth!”

“Mmmm-mmmm!”

The guard spun him around and punched him in the stomach.

“Ahhhh!”

A ball of paper flew across the room. The guard ran after it. The manager tackled him from behind and twisted his ankle. The guard kicked him in the face. The burning toupee set off the sprinkler system. “Let go of my leg!”

Another twist, another kick. “Ow! Ow!”

The guard dragged the manager until he finally reached the ball of paper.

The bald assistant manager let go and reached in the trash can. He held up something that looked like roadkill. Tears began to roll.

The guard sat up on the ground and uncrumpled the page. “Martha Davenport . . . But where's the address? Trigger-something. Shoot, it's smeared too much from the sprinklers . . . Hold everything. Davenport, Davenport.Where have I heard that name before?” The guard suddenly snapped his fingers. “I got it. Those elves! This Davenport woman got me fired
and
beat up. Well, I better destroy this report so nobody can trace it back to me after I exact my revenge—”

An ax came through the door. Then two firefighters. They looked down at an assistant mall manager crying and wearing a melted toupee, sitting cross-legged next to a mall cop with a bleeding ankle and a mouth full of paper.

One of the firefighters looked at the other. “Not again.”

Chapter Seven

TRIGGERFISH LANE

Serge spied out the front window with binoculars.

Coleman wiggled a pop-top off a beer can. “What's going on?”

Serge panned the house across the street. “Martha's staring at me with binoculars and Jim is decorating the tree. That's our cue.”

“For what?”

“Decorate our tree. We've got to copy exactly everything he does or the plan could fail.” Serge headed for the kitchen. “I'll get the popcorn going and grab the sewing kit.”

“Get some sewing stuff for me, too.”

The scene became industrious. Perry Como on TV.

Serge came through the dining room and glanced at the table. “Coleman, you already built the gingerbread house—I mean mansion.”

“I was motivated to accomplish something.”

“I can't process that sentence.”

“Dig!” said Coleman.

Serge squatted down with his chin on the edge of the table, admiring the handiwork. “How come all the windows are shuttered closed?”

“That's a surprise.”

More holiday preparation bustle.

Coleman ended up seated at the kitchen table with needle and thread. Serge dumped a brown bag on the table and took a chair on the other side.

Coleman hit a joint and resumed a rare spasm of work. “What's all that junk?”

Serge grabbed scissors and cut his own length of thread. “Any Christmas of mine must have a Florida theme. So I rounded up some ornamental fodder: matchbooks, bar coasters, ashtrays, pins, buttons, parking tickets, plastic cups from sporting events, swizzle sticks, cocktail umbrellas . . .” Serge squinted with one eye closed and threaded a needle through a piece of popcorn. “. . . rubber alligators and sharks from roadside attractions, souvenir butane lighters, keepsake bottle openers, Welcome-to-Florida matching penis and boobs salt-and-pepper shakers . . .”

Coleman squinted with his own thread. “What's going to be the angel for the top of the tree?”

“That's the best part!” Serge pulled something from another bag next to his chair. “Isn't it great?”

Coleman scratched his head. “It's just a little toy gorilla.”

“Bought it at Toy Town.”

“But what's that got to do with Florida?”

“They didn't have what I really wanted, so I had to settle for this and perform custom alterations.” Serge tapped the gorilla's chest.

Coleman edged closer. “You just wrapped masking tape a bunch of times around its chest and used a Magic Marker to write ‘Everglades Skunk Ape.' ”

Serge set the gorilla down and grabbed a piece of popcorn. “Bet I've got the only one.”

Twenty minutes later, they finished at the table. Serge jumped to his feet. “To the tree!”

More activity fastening things that weren't meant to be fastened to the tree's branches.

Coleman worked with a stapler.
Click-click, click-click.
“Serge? When are we going to put the tree where it's finally going to go?”

Serge used a crimping tool for heavy-gauge industrial wire.
Ker-chunk, ker-chunk.
“It's already in the final place.”

Coleman stapled theme-park tickets. “But it's still stuck in the door.”

“It's way too damn big to get inside. I don't know what I was thinking.” Serge hung a snow globe of dolphins on a teeter-totter. “So I figured we'd just leave it here and share the joy with our new neighbors.”

“It's sticking out horizontal. I've never seen a sideways Christmas tree before.”

“And neither has the neighborhood decorating committee. We might win a ribbon.” Serge grabbed a roll of duct tape. “Damn, my skunk ape keeps drooping over . . .”

“Nice popcorn garland,” said Coleman.

“Then stop eating it.”

“But I'm hungry.”

“I'm impressed by your garland, too,” said Serge. “Cool strands of beer-can pop-tops.”

“Thanks.”

Serge held one of the lengths. “What are these little clear plastic squares in between?”

“Crack-cocaine baggies I found in alleys.”

“Good Florida touch. And this ornament?”

“I made it with a nail file.”

“Candy-cane shiv? . . .”

A squeal of tires. Serge and Coleman looked up. A GTX with gold rims parked at the Davenports' curb. Necking.

Serge stood. “Hold down the Christmas fort. I need to take care of something.” He trotted toward the street.

The door of the Davenport residence opened. Martha came down the steps.

Serge reached the driver's side and knocked on the glass. The window rolled down halfway. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Snake, but if you'd like to hit it off with a girl's parents, it's usually better to go up and introduce yourself than to sit in the street molesting their fifteen-year-old in full view of the neighborhood. I'm just taking a wild stab at this.”

“Eat shit and die, old man.”

The GTX patched out. Serge was left standing in the middle of the road . . . staring at Martha, who'd just arrived on the other side before the car sped off.

Serge smiled awkwardly. “Do I look old?”

Martha gritted her teeth. “You!”

Serge placed a hand over his heart with innocent surprise. “Me?” Then pointed down the road with the other arm. “It's Mr. Snake who was tongue-wrestling your daughter. Not to mention whatever was going on below window level that we couldn't see. I remember when I was his age.” Serge chuckled to himself and shook his head. “They called it ‘necking.' No kidding. I just couldn't seem to keep my neck in my pants. Ah, fond memories . . .” He paused to study Martha's red-faced expression. “Why don't you like me?”

Her nostrils flared. “If you don't—!”

Crash
.

They both looked over at Serge's rental house, where a rusted-out Pinto had just slammed into the garbage cans down at the curb. Two women got out. Any man on the street who had heard the crash was now glued to his window staring at the twin sites: statuesque, hot, fatal, looking like they'd gotten dressed in the
Dukes of Hazzard
wardrobe trailer. The blonde had a bottle of Jim Beam by the neck, and the brunette threw the stub of a small Clint Eastwood cigar in the street.

Serge grinned at Martha and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Got to run. The chicks are here . . . Guess what? We're starting a family!” He took off running. “We're going to be just like you!”

Jim came down to the street and joined his wife at the curb. “I heard a crash. What's going on?”

“I'm going to kill him!”

“Who are those women?”

Martha just stared in simmering fury.

Across the street, the women headed up the walkway toward the house. Serge ran to meet them halfway. Coleman came down from the porch.

“City! Country!” said Serge. “Long time no see—”

The blonde spun and caught him in the jaw with a sledgehammer right cross, decking him soundly. The brunette twirled with a roundhouse kung fu kick that whipped Coleman in the back of the calves and knocked his legs out from under him.

Jim watched as two men moaned in pain, rolling on the lawn across the street. Two women passed a bottle of whiskey. “Martha, what's going on?”

“He said they're starting a family.”

MEANWHILE
 . . .

In a modest subdivision on Tampa's east side, a bald man sat inside his three-bedroom cookie-cutter ranch house with screened-in swimming pool.

He was on the phone. On hold. Melted toupee in the trash can.

A woman finally answered. The man sat up straight. “Hello, this is Phil Westwood from the Tampa Bay Mall, and I'd like to speak to one of your consultants, Jensen Beach . . . I see, unavailable . . . Would you have a cell number or personal mailing address? . . . No, I understand completely that you can't give out that kind of information. It's just that he recently performed some terrific work for the mall, and I'd like to give him a present to show our appreciation . . . Send it to your company? I'd sort of like it to be more personal . . . You can deliver a personal message to him at his desk right now? But I thought you said he was out . . . Oh, you said
unavailable
. . . Yes, in his line of work you have to protect him from kooks. Never know when one of those would call. Thanks for your time.”

He hung up. “Damn.”

Then he swiveled back to his computer and stared at the screen, where he had just looked up the phone number for Sunshine Solutions—and had no luck at all with a Mr. Jensen Beach. “Think! Think! . . .” He tapped fingers on top of his shiny dome, then back to the keyboard. “If I can't find that consultant, then I want to know who that woman is.” He glanced at the wastebasket. “Her stupid freaking complaint!”

His wife appeared in the den's doorway. “Honey, your dinner's getting cold.”

“I'm busy.”

“I feel so badly for you, but it might be good to get your mind off it.” She pursed her lips with genuine concern. “It's been two days now.”

“Get my mind off it? I was fired and beat up within twenty-four hours.” He continued typing on the keyboard. “Neither has happened in fifteen years, and one not since grade school.”

She went to say something, then stopped and left the room to put something back in the oven.

More typing. “Here we go, Facebook. Martha Davenport . . . Bingo! That's her all right. Wish I still had that stupid report. The address was right in my fingers . . . Wait, what's this family photo? Her husband looks familiar. But where have I seen . . . Oh my God. Jensen Beach is her husband, Jim. The Davenports are responsible for both my beating and my firing!” He quickly surfed back to the local phone directory and scribbled something on a pad. “Okay, calm down and take this slow. See where this asshole lives and get the lay of the land. Then figure out a plan.”

He snatched keys off the desk.

His wife was back in the doorway. She turned as he went by. “Are you going to eat at all tonight?”

“I don't know.” And out the front door.

The ex-assistant mall manager climbed in a brown Ford Focus station wagon and headed east, passing a convenience store with two Ram pickup trucks parked side by side. Both had parking stickers for a distribution warehouse in Lakeland. An arm came out one of the windows, passing a sheet of paper to someone in the other.

“Appreciate it, Jerry.”

“It's so unfair you were fired.”

The second man read the page. “So his real name's Jim Davenport, Triggerfish Lane.” He looked up. “How'd you get this?”

“You don't want to know. But can you do me a favor? Nothing too extreme.”

“Don't worry—”

“No, really. I can imagine how I'd react, and I don't want you to make me an accessory.”

They were about to pull out, when the lead pickup was cut off by a black Delta 88 with an ex-mall cop behind the wheel. On the passenger seat, a formerly soggy anonymous complaint was now flattened out and crisp from meticulous work with a hair dryer. Beside it, a map of Tampa and a handwritten list of possible address matches to the partial ID on the complaint.

The Delta 88 took a ramp for the Crosstown Expressway, hitting the tollbooth a minute between a Ford Focus and a Ram pickup.

TRIGGERFISH LANE

Serge stood up in the middle of the lawn, rubbing his jaw. “Have to admit, you still got it.”

“You son of a bitch!” yelled the blonde. “You did it to us again.”

Coleman stood up more slowly, and the brunette kicked him in the crotch. “You left us stranded on the side of the road. That's three times. And after all we put up with, living in all those douche-bag motels!”

Serge spread his arms. “This time will be different! I swear!”

“Bullshit!” said the blonde.

“No, really,” said Serge. “We now have an actual home in a nice neighborhood.”

“What's the scam this time?” asked the brunette.

“Why do you always think there's a scam with me?”

“Because there always is.”

“Except this time will be different from all the others. We're going to form a solid family unit, live the American Dream and greet census takers and everything.”

The women exchanged dubious looks.

Other neighbors tentatively wandered out into their yards to snoop.

The blonde turned back to Serge. “First, a family isn't made of two couples. Second, only one of us is a couple, and not even that. You and I just screw when we're horny.”

“Many relationships have been built on that,” said Serge. “Actually, I'm thinking most.”

The brunette pointed demonstratively at Coleman. “I am not fucking that man!”

Neighbors nonchalantly edged closer to their sidewalks.

“But, Serge,” said the blonde. “What gave you such a crackpot idea in the first place?”

Serge turned with fully outstretched arms. “We're going to be just like them!”

The women looked to see the Davenports staring back from the other side of the street, Martha giving them the stink eye.

The blonde took a step forward. “What are you looking at, bitch?”

“Bitch?” yelled Martha. “Why, you cunt!”

Jim shrieked and jumped in front of Martha. “Let's go back in the house . . .”

Serge grabbed the blonde around the waist from behind. “Easy there, girl. You can't give her a beat-down. The other neighbors won't invite you to tea.”

Martha snarled as Jim led her away.

The blonde glared back as Serge steered her toward the house. “Let's all go inside. I'll bet you're itching to see the new place!”

“I got some killer red bud,” said Coleman.

“I guess it wouldn't hurt to take a peek around,” said the blonde.