Father Christmas (33 page)

“
Do you have to?” She
sounded plaintive, practically begging. She didn’t want him to
break up Andy’s party. Neighbor relations were a delicate thing.
She’d never had a problem with Andy or his parents before, and she
wanted to keep it that way. “Maybe someone else has already called
the police. You don’t have to go over there.”

“
I do. It’s my job.”
Another bottle flew through the window, followed by gales of
obstreperous laughter. The bottle failed to reach the street, but
landed in the snow with a dull thud. “Go inside and close the
door,” he commanded. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Fear nibbled at her. Why
did she have to go inside and close the door? Was it so dangerous
to break up a teenage party that she needed to be shut behind a
protective wall, locked in behind a door? “Maybe I could go with
you,” she suggested, wishing she didn’t feel so frantic—or at least
wishing she knew
why
she was
feeling frantic. “I know Andy. I could talk to him.”

“
Go in the house and stay
there.” The words were terse and blunt.

“
What are you going to
do?” she whispered.

“
I’m going to my car to
get my gun, and then I’m going to talk to your good neighbor
Andy.”

His gun? He had a gun in his car? He’d
driven her home in a car with a gun in it?

Her heart pounded. Her mind spun. She
recalled the first time she’d seen him, when he’d worn a gun in a
shoulder holster under his jacket. She recalled telling him she
didn’t like guns.

He was a cop, and cops used guns. It didn’t
matter that she loved him. All that mattered was that he had a gun
in his car and he was going to use it.

Before she could say something—before she
could even find the right words to say—he had nudged her across the
threshold into her house and closed her door, leaving her alone and
filled with dread.

SHE STOOD AT THE WINDOW, unable to drag her
gaze from the disaster unfolding outside. She watched John walk
down past the row of parked cars until she could no longer see him,
and she watched him come back into view, sauntering down the
sidewalk until he stood in front of her townhouse, his back to her
as he scrutinized the noisy townhouse across the street. He looked
no different to Molly, but she knew he had changed. He had his gun
now, somewhere: under his jacket, tucked into the waistband of his
jeans, up his sleeve, in his hand. All she could see was the back
of his head, his dark, shaggy hair, the smooth surface of his
leather jacket and his long legs. But she knew the gun was with
him.

When he didn’t immediately cross the street
and raid Andy’s party, she experienced a glimmer of hope that he’d
changed his mind. That hope was dashed within a few minutes, when a
police cruiser rolled to a silent stop in front of him.
Double-parking alongside one of the cars, the driver climbed out.
So did the officer in the passenger seat.

Three cops. Three of them, probably all
carrying guns, were going to bust Andy’s party. It was more than
overkill. It was hubris—a trio of arrogant policemen squashing a
lively gathering of kids. Yes, the kids were too loud. Yes, some of
them were evidently drinking, which was against the law. But for
heaven’s sake, it was Christmas and people liked to celebrate. Even
people a few years younger than the legal drinking age. Did such a
situation really require three cops? With guns?

After a brief conference, John broke from
the other two and strode up the steps to Andy’s front door. They
waited for him at the bottom of the porch steps, alert and
apparently ready to spring.

John must have rung the bell or knocked,
because the door opened. He went inside.

Her heart pounded. She was scared for him,
scared for the revelers—mostly scared that something was going to
happen, something ugly, something that would change the way she
felt about the man who had given her a foam pit, a charm bracelet,
a night of slow, deep lovemaking that she had been convinced was
love.

The door was left ajar, but no one emerged.
The two uniformed cops climbed the stairs and entered. And then a
thin, wiry young man crawled headfirst through the window’s narrow
opening.

One of the cops emerged from the house,
charged down the steps and tackled the skinny kid as he pulled
himself to his feet. The cop had to weigh at least sixty pounds
more than the kid, who wasn’t wearing a jacket. Molly wo ndered why
they were tussling. Couldn’t the cop just escort him to the police
car?

More kids streamed out of the house, along
with John and the third cop. Through her window she heard muffled
shouts. Some kids tried to run, but the snow slowed them, and John
and the other policeman easily snagged them and hauled them back to
the front of the house. The kids were lined up and told to press
their hands against the clapboard edifice.

None of them had on a jacket. Molly saw
puffs of vapor emerge from their mouths as they breathed. The cops
patted them down, one at a time, and Molly shook her head. What on
earth did John think these young folks had on them? Weapons? Drugs?
Why was he treating them like common criminals?

One of the youths suddenly reared away from
the wall and lunged at the cop who’d been frisking him. The cop
tumbled backward into the snow, and then John dove toward the
youth, grabbing him, slamming him into the snow and straddling him.
In John’s hand was a revolver. She could see it more clearly than
the faces of the kids, more clearly than John’s face. She saw John
fist his hand around the back of the kid’s neck and twist his head
until he could see the gun, just inches from his face.

The entire scene seemed to shift into slow
motion. The party guests turned, dazed and stiff. The cop who’d
been knocked down stood slowly, awkwardly. He handed John a pair of
handcuffs that had been hooked to his belt, and John manacled the
wrists of the kid under him.

Molly closed her eyes. She couldn’t turn
away, but she couldn’t bear to watch, either. She couldn’t bear to
see the man she loved brutalizing a drunk teenager. She felt tears
slide damp down her cheeks, but she couldn’t even move to wipe them
away. She simply let them fall.

She heard an echo of Gail’s warnings about
cops, about how they abused their power and bullied people, how
they waved their guns around to make people submit to them. John
wasn’t doing to the snow-soaked kid what another cop had done to
Gail ten years ago, but he was bullying him, waving his gun around,
making the kid submit. He was being nasty and cruel.

Where was the man who was so concerned about
doing right by his son? The man who had created a toy-size foam pit
for her? The man who had kissed her in the real foam pit, and
kissed her again in his bed, and made love to her with such
tenderness that she wanted to weep with pleasure?

Not here. She was weeping, but that man was
not here.

An eternity seemed to pass before another
squad car arrived. The rowdiest of the youngsters were crammed into
the two police cars and the more sober of them were sent to their
own cars. Glancing at her watch, Molly was astonished to find that
only twenty minutes had passed from the moment John had left her
front porch to this moment when he stood on it, ringing her
bell.

She didn’t want to let him in when she was
so upset. But the intricate gold links of the bracelet weighed on
her wrist, her own romantic handcuffs, shackling her heart. She
opened the door, stepped back, and let him enter.

He brought the biting cold of the night in
with him. Even after he closed the door, Molly couldn’t stop
shivering. Tapping her courage, she lifted her gaze to his face.
The iciness in his eyes made her shiver even more.

He said nothing. She should have expected
that. John never said anything unless he was forced to.

“
Why did you do that?” she
asked, her voice taut with rage and sorrow.

“
They were drinking.
Things were out of control.”

“
So? You think college-age
kids should be banned from having a few beers on Christmas
day?”

“
It doesn’t matter what I
think. If someone breaks the law, I go in.”

“
You didn’t have to go in!
For God’s sake, John! You could have just telephoned from here and
told Andy to send everyone home!”

“
Some of those kids were
too drunk to drive. I couldn’t let them get behind the
wheel.”

“
Then why didn’t you leave
it to the other cops?” Her voice rose; she was raging. She stormed
in a circle around the living room, trying to burn off some of her
anger so she could speak more normally. “Why did it have to be
you?”

“
I was there.”

“
But it’s your day off.
You’re not working today, John. Why couldn’t you have let those
other cops handle it?”

He opened his mouth and closed it. She felt
his eyes on her as she paced the room. He seemed to be waiting for
her to stand still before he spoke. She wasn’t sure she wanted to
hear what he had to say, but she came to a halt near the sofa and
glared at him.

“
A cop is always working,”
he said quietly, measuring each word. “It doesn’t matter if you’re
off-duty. You’re always a cop.”

She filled her lungs and emptied him. She
knew what he was telling her: not just that he was a cop, but that
he would never stop being a cop. Not on his day off. Not on
Christmas. Not when he was being a father to Michael or a lover to
her. He was always, always a cop.

All right. Maybe she could accept that. But
why did he have to be a violent cop? Why did he have to intimidate
unruly youngsters with a gun?

“
You terrorized that boy,”
she murmured.

He didn’t retreat. He held her gaze, looking
neither defiant nor contrite but stony and sure. “He posed a threat
to one of the uniforms.”

“
What?”

“
One of the other cops. He
threatened him, he hurt him, so I took him down.”

Rage bubbled up inside her again. Unable to
stand still, she crossed to the fireplace and back to the sofa,
praying for her heartbeat to slow down and her mind to speed up.
“How—” her throat tensed, and she swallowed to free her voice “—how
could that drunk kid threaten anyone?”

Again John checked himself before answering.
He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “Does it matter?”

“
Of course it matters! You
were shoving your gun in his face!”

“
He impeded the officer.
He hurt him. He said things I’d rather not repeat. There was a
dangerous situation, so I took him down.” He paused, frowning. “You
saw me take down that pick-pocket on Dudley.”

“
Yes, but—” She shuddered,
remembering the visceral fear she’d felt when John had slammed the
pick-pocket into a brick wall. She remembered the fear, and the
thrill that tripped along her nerves as she recognized John’s
strength and speed, his sheer male power.

“
The pick-pocket was just
some stranger,” she argued. “This was my neighbor’s
guest.”

“
That punk on Dudley was
someone’s neighbor, too, Molly. When kids are doing something
wrong, you stop them before anyone gets hurt.”

“
No one was going to get
hurt here.”

“
Someone did. The uniform
got hurt. And that kid
didn’t
get
hurt. All I did was subdue him.”

“
`With your gun. You
subdued him by waving your gun around like—like—”

“
Like what,
Molly?”

Like the cop who had waved his gun at her
sister. Like any man who got a firearm in his hand and believed
that made him a god. Like the sort of thug from whom John was
supposed to be protecting the citizens of Arlington. If someone
waved a gun at her, she’d be subdued, all right. Subdued and full
of hatred.

“
When a cop is threatened,
other cops defend him,” he explained. “It’s a code we live by. The
kid threatened a cop, so the kid went down. He’s lucky it wasn’t
worse.”

Maybe the kid was lucky,
but Molly couldn’t imagine anything worse than this. John Russo had
transformed right before her eyes. He had gone from being a kind,
thoughtful man to a robot with limited responses:
a cop is a cop. When one cop is threatened, all
cops defend him
.

Where was the humanity in him? Where was the
kindness, the thoughtfulness, the gentle humor, the fierce
passion?

Not here, not in this tall stranger with
dark hair and darker eyes and a gun tucked into the waistband of
his jeans.

“
Please go,” she
whispered, steering her gaze away from his gun to the window.
Through her ghostly reflection on the glass she saw Andy’s
townhouse. Despite the lights glowing inside, the house appeared
vacant. The party was over.

John hesitated for a moment, then pivoted
and stalked to the door. He wasn’t going to argue with her, or try
to persuade her that, beneath his gun-toting automaton image he was
still the man she adored. He knew who he was, and now she knew,
too.

She waited to hear the click as the door
closed behind him. Then she sank onto the sofa and let her tears
come. Around her wrist jangled the bracelet, a gift from a man she
loved, a man who seemed to have vanished like a dream.

***

HE SHOULD HAVE expected
it. He
did
expect it. But when it
actually happened...it hurt. Bad.