The Twelve Crimes of Christmas (30 page)

“The restaurant bills. The man who kept a woman
in that slum didn’t show her three good nights on the town.”

He grunted, and we went on. A little later he
said, “You know, Phillips, I wish you could have done without me. My badge is
sticky; it doesn’t pull off just because a friend’s involved.”

How do you answer that? “I know. I’m hoping we’ll
get there before anything too bad happens.” He sped up then. I hadn’t thought it
possible.

We pulled in across the street from the
building. Roy’s car was nowhere in sight, but maybe he’d stowed it. Pederson
headed for the front door, but I pulled at his arm and pointed. We ran to the
fire escape and started climbing.

We hung back from the window at first. It was
three inches open; we couldn’t hear anything in the apartment. Finally, we looked
in. Roy wasn’t there. The only person there was Mary Jordan, a .44 held against
her right leg, sitting in a chair and staring at the door.

All three of us tensed; we heard, dimly,
footsteps in the hall. I had my gun out again. This time it might do me some
good. The woman locked her fingers on her gun and raised it. I steadied my .38
on my left arm. This had to be perfect.

Pederson clamped onto my wrist. I pointed with
the gun barrel towards the door, and he understood. He nodded, raised his gun
and aimed faster than I could when I was already set, then fired. My own shot
was barely behind his.

The shots were a foot apart, three inches from
the top of the door. Mine was too far to the side; Pederson’s must have gone
right over Roy’s head, if Roy was in front of the door. He was—we heard him
drop to the floor; a second later Mary’s gun jumped in her hand, nearly
knocking her chair over backwards. The bullet went through the center of the
door.

Then we dropped below the sill while she
turned, spitting fury, and fired four shots out the window at us. One bullet
hit the window frame; it ripped the board loose and powdered an already
crumbling brick. Then the door burst open and the spitting sound got louder.

Pederson shoved up the broken window and
vaulted over the sill, a virile fifty-odd. I hobbled after him, a doddering old
gent of thirty-one. Cartley had her around the waist with one arm and had
pinned her arms to her body with the other.

He had lifted her off the floor, turning his
hip between her legs to spread them and keep her from kicking backwards.
Pederson reached for the handcuffs. I reached for a chair, and sat in it,
emptying her handbag on the table.

Inside were matchbooks, still unused, from all
the restaurants Gillis had written checks to, plus a receipt—dated two days
back—from the store where he had done his previous buying. I looked up.

“Playing detective, Mary? Did you find out who
she was?”

She clammed up, then. Pederson looked at her
with interest. “Aren’t you even waiting to shut up till I read your rights? You
are
an amateur.” That stung, but she stayed quiet.

Roy was looking back and forth. He tossed his
gun on the table and said, looking tired, “All right, what is it I don’t know?”

I gestured at Mary. “Only what she finally
knew. I’m not the only one with an invisible lady friend.”

“Lady friend?” Pederson stared at me.
“You?
You never even shave—” He shut his mouth as
Roy began chuckling.

“I’ve had a busy day—I put off shaving.” I
turned to Mary. “One thing I can’t put off, Mary—what’s the name of the girl
that aced you out?” I wanted her to make a scene and keep Pederson occupied.

“If I’d ’a known,” Mary said, “the cops’d know
by now.”

Roy looked back at me helplessly, then suddenly
understood. “The bills?”

I nodded. “If you hadn’t been so worried, you’d
have seen it, too. Gam must have been a real bastard, borrowing from Mary to
take out some other woman. Mary found out, convinced him to break into your
house—probably by saying you had evidence against him—” I glanced at her, but
she wasn’t reacting, so I went on— “and stabbed him after backing him up to the
fireplace with her gun.

“He did the breaking in. That’s why that was
professional, but everything else—the bomb, the bolted doors, the red herring
to Petlovich—was amateur. Deadly amateur, but amateur.” Still no
reaction—Pederson was looking at me strangely.

I tried my last shot. “He really wiped the
floor with her before she got him, though. What a rotten, low-life—”

She tried to swing at me, ignoring Pederson,
Roy and her own cuffed wrists. “You wouldn’t dare talk that way if he was here!”
she snapped.

Pederson grabbed her. I sidled over quietly,
picked Roy’s gun off the table and said politely to him, “Roy, I’d like to
shake your hand. We made it.”

Roy still had one hand in his coat. He looked
at me narrowly, then grinned and stuck out his empty hand. His pocket hung limp.
“Thanks for trying, Nate, but the other gun’s in the glove compartment. I
cooled down on the way over here. One of the kids tipped you off?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling silly. “That Howie is
growing up fast; he and Amy make a hell of a team. She’s sharper than he is,
but he’s trying to turn pro.”

Roy glanced at Mary Jordon. She was sobbing in
frustration as Pederson edged her towards the door. “Tell
him
not to try too hard, will you?”

THE PROBLEM OF THE
CHRISTMAS STEEPLE

by Edward D. Hoch

A full-time writer since 1968,
Ed Hoch is certainly one of the two or three most prolific fiction writers in
the United States, with some six hundred stories in the mystery genre. He is
best known for four series detectives: Rand, a British cipher expert; Nick
Velvet, a most original thief; Simon Ark, a mystical detective; and Captain
Leopold, perhaps the best-known of his creations. Mr. Hoch is a winner of the
Mystery Writers of America’s highest award, the Edgar.

“Like I was sayin’ last time,” Dr. Sam
Hawthorne began, getting down the brandy from the top shelf, “the year 1925 was
a bad one for murder and other violent crimes. And just about the worst one o’
them all came on Christmas Day, when the year was almost over. Here, let me
pour you a small—ah—libation before I start…”

It had been a quiet fall in Northmont since the
kidnapping and recovery of little Tommy Belmont. In fact, about the biggest
news around town was that the new Ford dealer over in Middle Creek would soon
be selling dark green and maroon cars along with the traditional black ones.

“You see, Dr. Sam,” my nurse April said, “pretty
soon you won’t be the only one round these parts with a bright yellow car.”

“Dark green and maroon are a long way from
yellow,” I reminded her. Kidding me about my 1921 Pierce-Arrow Runabout was one
of her favorite sports. My first winter in Northmont I’d put the Runabout up on
blocks and driven a horse and buggy on my calls, but now I was gettin’ a bit
more venturesome. As long as the roads were clear I drove the car.

This day, which was just two weeks before
Christmas, April and I were drivin’ out to visit a small gypsy encampment at
the edge of town. The traditionally cold New England winter hadn’t yet settled
in, and except for the bareness of the tree limbs it might have been a pleasant
September afternoon.

The gypsies were another matter, and there wasn’t
much pleasant about their encampment. They’d arrived a month earlier, drivin’ a
half-dozen horse-drawn wagons, and pitched their tents on some unused
meadowland at the old Haskins farm. Minnie Haskins, widowed and into her
seventies, had given them permission to stay there, but that didn’t make
Sheriff Lens and the townsfolks any happier about it. On the few occasions when
gypsies had appeared at the general store to buy provisions, they’d been
treated in a right unfriendly manner.

I’d gone out to the encampment once before to
examine a sick child, and I decided this day it was time for a return visit. I
knew there wasn’t much chance of gettin’ paid, unless I was willin’ to settle
for a gypsy woman tellin’ April’s fortune, but still it was somethin’ I felt
bound to do.

“Look, Dr. Sam!” April said as the gypsy wagons
came into view. “Isn’t that Parson Wigger’s buggy?”

“Sure looks like it.” I wasn’t really surprised
to find Parson Wigger visiting the gypsies. Ever since coming to town last
spring as pastor of the First New England Church he’d been a controversial
figure. He’d started by reopening the old Baptist church in the center of town
and announcin’ regular services there. He seemed like a good man who led a
simple life and looked for simple solutions—which was why so many people
disliked him. New Englanders, contrary to some opinions, are not a simple folk.

“Mornin’, Dr. Sam,” he called out as he saw us
drive up. He was s tan din’ by one of the gypsy wagons, talkin’ to a couple of
dark-haired children. “Mornin’, April. What brings you two out here?”

“I treated a sick boy a while back. Thought I’d
see how he’s coming along.” I took my bag from the car and started over.
Already I recognized my patient, Tene, as one of the boys with the parson. “Hello,
Tene, how you feeling?”

He was around eleven or twelve, and shy with
non-gypsy
gadjo
like myself. “I’m okay,” he said finally.

“This the boy was sick?” Parson Wigger asked.

I nodded. “A throat infection, but he seems to
be over it.”

At that moment Tene’s father appeared around
the side of the wagon. He was a dark brooding man with a black mustache and
hair that touched the top of his ears, leaving small gold earrings exposed.
Though Parson Wigger was the same size and both men looked to be in their mid-thirties,
they could hardly have been more different. Except for an old arm injury which
had left him with a weak right hand, Carranza Lowara was the picture of
strength and virility. By contrast Wigger gave the impression of physical
weakness. The parson’s hair was already thinning in front, and he wore thick
eyeglasses to correct his faulty vision.

“You are back, Doctor?” Tene’s father asked.

“Yes, Carranza, I am back.”

He nodded, then glanced at April. “This is your
wife?”

“No, my nurse. April, I want you to meet
Carranza Lowara. He is the leader of this gypsy band.”

April took a step forward, wide-eyed, and shook
his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

“I’m trying to help these people get settled
for the winter,” Parson Wigger explained. “These wagons are hardly good shelter
for twenty people. And the two tents are not much better.”

“We have lived through the winters before,”
Carranza Lowara said. He spoke English well, but with an accent I hadn’t been
able to place. I supposed it must be middle European.

“But not in New England.” The parson turned to
me and explained. “They came up from the south, as do most gypsies. I’ve
encountered them before in my travels. Spain deported gypsies to Latin America
hundreds of years ago, and they’ve been working their way north ever since.”

“Is that true?” I asked Lowara. “Do you come
from Latin America?”

“Long, long ago,” he replied.

I happened to glance back at my car and saw a
gypsy woman in a long spangled skirt and bare feet. She was examining my car
intently. I’d seen her on my previous visit, and suspected she was Lowara’s
wife or woman. “Is she of your family?” I asked.

“Come here, Volga.” The woman came over
promptly, and I saw that she was younger than I’d first supposed. Not a child,
certainly, but still in her twenties. She was handsomer than most gypsy women,
with high cheekbones and slightly slanted eyes that hinted at a mixture of
Oriental blood. I introduced her to April, and they went off together to visit
the other wagons.

“She is my wife,” Lowara explained.

“Tene’s mother?”

“Yes.”

“She seems so young.”

“Gypsy women often marry young. It is a custom.
You should come to a gypsy wedding sometime and see the groom carry off the
bride by force. It is not like your Christian weddings, Parson.”