“What are you talking about?” the young man protested.
Pinning the kid’s arm behind his back and immobilizing him against the wall, John reached under the padded bulk of the Santa coat for his shield. “Police,” he said, flashing the leather folder in front of the kid’s nose. “Where’s the wallet?”
“You don’t got any right—”
John almost didn’t hear the light tap of a wallet hitting the pavement by his feet. He wedged his toe under it and kicked it straight up, snatching it from the air with his free hand. Flipping it open, he read from the driver’s license inserted into one of the plastic sleeves. “You dropped this,” he said.
“I don’t know where that came from!”
“It says you’re sixty-eight years old,” John continued, flipping the wallet open with his thumb. “And this photo—it’s amazing. Somehow, the Motor Vehicle Bureau put that gentleman’s face on your license.” He angled his head toward the older gentleman, who stood watching John and the punk in bewilderment. “This kid picked your pocket, Mr. Rosenblatt,” John told him, reading his name off the driver’s license in the wallet.
“Oh, my God!” Mr. Rosenblatt shook his head and pressed a hand to his chest in dismay. “Thank you! I don’t know, I’m Jewish, but I think I’ll have to convert. To think Santa Claus saved me from a pick-pocket...”
John smiled faintly. Mahoney and Jesper ought to be in the vicinity—they were supposed to patrol the neighborhood all morning while John was undercover. Sure enough, he spotted their squad car down the block, cruising slowly toward him.
He waved them over, then shoved the pick-pocket into the back seat of the cruiser. “His partner ran,” he told the patrolmen after explaining the situation. “But maybe if you torture him, he’ll give his buddy up. Mirandize him first.”
“Got it,” Jesper said, winking. “First we read him his rights, and then we torture him. Sounds like a plan.”
John left Mr. Rosenblatt to give a statement to Jesper and Mahoney. After adjusting the plump cushion of his artificial belly beneath his bright red overcoat, he sauntered back to the corner of Newcombe, where Molly stood gawking at him. He hoped the strange glint in her eyes wasn’t a sign of hero worship. Some cops liked when pretty women idolized them, but John didn’t believe cops were inherently more heroic than a lot of other people. They had their moments, sure. But nailing a pick-pocket wasn’t worthy of a woman’s awe.
Nearing Molly, he realized that awe wasn’t her inclination. The color had drained from her cheeks, leaving them as pale as the winter sky. “Are you all right?” she asked in a whisper-thin voice.
“Sure.”
“And that man?”
“Which one?”
“Both.”
He grinned. “The perp is fine. The victim decided he believes in Santa.”
She swallowed and lowered her gaze to the pavement. “I guess it’s all in a day’s work to you. But...it frightened me.”
He shrugged, not sure what to say. Telling her not to be frightened wouldn’t necessarily reassure her. Besides, some of the stuff he did was scary. A cop never knew until after the dust settled and he could view the scene in hindsight whether it had merited fear. During the situation, a cop simply couldn’t permit fear to get anywhere close to him.
He took the bell from her, and she shrank back a step, still pale, still staring. “Do things like that happen often?”
“Pick-pocketing? Sure.”
“No, I mean—your chasing people down and throwing them around, and having to deal with...with that kind of thing.”
He wished he could put her mind at ease, but lying didn’t work for him. “That kind of thing happens often,” he said, gesturing behind him at the place where the incident had occurred. “As a detective, I don’t usually have to deal with it. I’m usually not impersonating Santa on a downtown corner.”
“I guess it was a good thing you were, today,” she said. “I’m sure that fellow is very happy you were impersonating a Santa on this very corner. But...”
He waited for her to go on. Her hair was so straight and soft that when she moved her head it slid back and forth like a silk fringe. She bit her lip and glanced up at him once more.
“But?” he prodded.
“I’d hate to think of how frightening your work must seem to Michael.”
He remained silent, wondering if she was going to find a connection between his handling of the street punk and Mike’s alleged aggression. These preschool teachers with their child-psychology backgrounds... They could probably make all sorts of connections, find fault, blame everything about Mike on his father. And maybe they’d be right.
“I should think,” she went on, “that most children would be terribly disillusioned to find out that Santa was really just a cop in disguise.”
“Just as disillusioned as if they found out Santa was their father,” he observed, still braced for criticism from her.
“Does Michael know what you do?”
“He knows I’m a cop. I don’t go into details.”
She nodded. “I don’t advocate dishonesty between parents and children. It’s just...he strikes me as emotionally fragile. I don’t know what’s going on with him, Mr. Russo—and it’s none of my business. But I have the feeling it wouldn’t take much to make him snap.”
Defensiveness rose inside John. He resisted it, forcing himself to consider what she was saying without letting his ego get in the way. The fact was, Mike was fragile. John ought to be pleased that his son’s teacher had noticed.
He hated discussing his private life with people, but if it enabled Molly and her staff to help Mike, he ought to fill her in. “Mike’s mother walked out,” he said, watching Molly closely, measuring her reaction, calculating the nuances of her expression. If he saw pity in her face, he’d pull Mike out of the school. He wouldn’t want to have his son educated by a woman who pitied him. “She left six months ago. It’s been hard on him.”
“You’re divorced?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” No pity. Actually, the glimmer in her eyes might have been comprehension. “Thank you for telling me. There are some other students at the school from broken families. It helps the staff to know these things.” A faint smile crossed her lips, just enough to perk up her cheeks. “Well. I guess I’d better do what I came downtown to do. Back at the school, they’re probably wondering what’s taking me so long.”
He nodded and turned his gaze to the bank. The ATM sat idle, the vestibule empty.
She pulled a deposit envelope from her purse and started toward the bank. Once she reached the door, she twisted to look back at him. “Be careful, John, okay? Don’t let anything happen to you.”
Before he could reply, she was inside. He took a moment to digest her words, her concern. He could have told her that being careful was what he did best, and that if it was in his power, he wouldn’t let anything happen to him. But he was too...what? Surprised? Flattered?
Touched. Touched that she’d called him John, touched that she wasn’t going to get into a hero-worship thing—or a disapproval thing—but rather that she was going to treat him as if he were a human being, someone whose well-being mattered to her. Someone she didn’t want anything happening to.
It had been a long time since a woman cared that way about him. A long, long time. He’d almost forgotten how nice it felt.
***
“MICHAEL NEEDS A TIME OUT,” Amy announced, nudging the sulking little boy into the front room.
Molly rose from her chair behind the desk and scrutinized the child. His hair was mussed, his lower lip curled in a profound pout. Tears had left glistening streaks on his skin. He glowered at her as if daring her—although what he was daring her to do, she couldn’t guess.
Despite their dampness, his eyes were his father’s, dark and defiant, seeing too much and revealing too little. Molly had spent the better part of the morning thinking about Michael’s father’s eyes, his low voice, his tentat
ive smile. His steel-hard control. The utter incongruity of a man like him playing Santa, and the equal incongruity of Santa chasing down a pick-pocket. The danger he’d put himself in. The courage he’d displayed. The way he’d referred to his divorce only in terms of his son’s well-being, not his own.
“He and Dana both wanted to play with the same toy airplane,” Amy reported. “Michael resorted to pushing and shoving. He grabbed the plane and swung at Dana with it. He missed, but...”
Molly gave Michael her sternest frown. “Is that true, Michael? You tried to hit Dana with the plane?”
Michael’s lower lip protruded even farther, but he wouldn’t apologize. “My plane,” he said in a wobbly voice. “I play with the plane.”
“School toys have to be shared,” Molly reminded him. “And you aren’t allowed to hit other children. You know that rule, Michael. Hitting isn’t allowed.”
“I play with the plane,” he repeated. “I had it first.”
“Go sit in the chair,” Molly ordered him in a firm but gentle voice. The chair she’d pointed to was an adult-size piece of furniture, upholstered in a tweed fabric to match her desk chair and positioned in the corner of the entry, within sight of the desk. Sometimes children had to be removed from the activity of the main room to compose themselves, to calm down and chill out. In this case, Molly hoped that a few minutes by himself in the chair would give Michael a chance to reflect on what he’d done wrong.
She watched as Michael plodded to the chair and climbed up into it. With a nod to Amy, who departed from the office, she settled herself back at her desk. She pretended to work, reviewing accounts in the computer. But the sorry truth was, she’d been pretending rather than working ever since she’d returned to the school from her bank errand. All morning and well into the afternoon, she’d been restless, distracted, lost in memories of her brief encounter with John Russo downtown. Calculating the school’s monthly accounts hadn’t been enough to contain her thoughts. They’d kept wandering to John, lingering on him, obsessing about him.
Now her thoughts journeyed from him to his son, dwarfed by the too-big chair. His legs stuck out straight and his shoulders reached only the middle of the seat back. His gaze locked onto her, still holding a challenge.
She resolutely swiveled her chair back to the computer and tapped at the keys. She could almost hear Michael’s respiration; she could almost feel it, even though he was eight feet away from her. She was acutely conscious of him moping, even though he didn’t squirm, didn’t speak, didn’t do anything to call attention to himself. His mere presence was enough to distract her, just the way thoughts of his father distracted her.
She entered a few more numbers onto the computer spread sheet, then yielded to Michael’s silent summons and lifted her gaze to him. He was still sitting, one sneakered foot jiggling slightly, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. Tears cascaded down his cheeks, twin rivers of sorrow.
Molly recognized the thin line between caring for her students and losing her objectivity. She might be about to cross that line, but she couldn’t just sit by while a little boy wept in silence.
“Do you need some lap time?” she asked.
He didn’t say a word. He also didn’t look away as she stood and circled the desk. The tears kept spilling down his face as she crossed the small room, eased his clenched fingers from the arms of the chair, lifted him and sat, pulling him down onto her lap. Only then did he let go, curling up against her and sobbing inconsolably.
This wasn’t about a toy airplane. This was about a young, vulnerable child whose mother had walked out on him, whose father did stressful, dangerous work. It was about a little boy who had to let out some of the pain.
She closed her arms around his trembling body and rocked in the chair, letting him weep, letting him soak her sweater with his tears. She wondered when he’d last cried this hard, whether he’d been held like this, by a woman who cooed, “Shh, shh, it’s all right,” the way Molly did. She wondered when the last time was that someone had actually convinced Michael Russo that it was all right—and whether, by claiming that it was, Molly was lying to him.
If she was, she hoped he would forgive her. Because right now, more than anything else, Michael needed to believe that it was all right, that when he ran out of tears his life would be a little bit better. If she could give him nothing else, she would give him her lap and her arms, her consoling murmurs and the hope he would need to keep going.
***
JOHN HOOKED HIS FINGER over the knot of his tie and tugged, loosening it enough so he wouldn’t choke. A quick glance in the mirror above the sink revealed the face his Santa whiskers had hidden for most of the day. It also revealed a bemused smile. He’d caught the ATM thief—or, more accurately, the thieves. Given their ages, he almost thought they’d respond better to interrogation if he kept the Santa suit on.
But it was hung neatly on a wire hanger on one of the wall hooks in the squad’s locker room. Interrogation or no, John was glad to be back in his civilian clothes, without that bulging pad strapped to his waist and without the fuzzy white wig itching his forehead. Maybe the kids would show a bit more contrition if they were questioned by someone dressed like a man.
He adjusted the straps of his holster on his shoulders, then left the locker room. Muriel, the squad’s administrative assistant, grinned up at him from her desk. “They’re in room two, with their father,” she told him. “Coffey says to handle this one delicately. You know who their father is, don’t you?”
John moved to his own desk and picked up his notepad. “Dennis Murphy?”
“The five-hundred-dollar-an-hour attorney.”
“If that’s what he pulls down, it’s funny his kids have turned into bank robbers.”
Muriel shook her head and laughed. “Go easy on them, Russo. They’re petrified. And their father’s a tough hombre.”
“Right.” He lifted his note pad and a pen and headed down the hall to the interrogation rooms. At room number two, he knocked on the door and then opened it.
Two pairs of worried hazel eyes peered up at him from two extremely worried seven-year-old faces, one male and one female. The Murphy twins were in deep doo-doo, and to their credit they knew it. John wasn’t so sure about the mastermind of the heist: their baby-sitter, the fifteen-year-old son of the woman whose account was being illegally emptied via the ATM.
The mastermind and his mother were in another interrogation room with Lieutenant Coffey. John had won the honors with the Murphy twins and their tough-hombre lawyer father. The kids looked cherubic, but John wasn’t fooled.
The hot-shot lawyer strode briskly around the table and gave John’s hand a bruising shake. “Dennis Murphy,” he introduced himself. He was tall and fit, with a full head of dark blond hair and a direct stare. His suit looked unobtrusively expensive, but his tie, like John’s, was loosened at the collar.
“Detective John Russo,” John said, nodding toward the children. “I’ve already met Sean and Erin.”
The twins shot each other a nervous look and then studied their hands intently.
“Would you care to fill me in?” Murphy asked. “I got a call at my office that the kids had been arrested.”
“Brought in for questioning,” John corrected him. “They’ve been accomplices in a series of ATM robberies.”
Murphy narrowed his gaze on John for a moment, then turned to his children. “Start talking,” he said.
“It was Todd’s idea,” Erin explained feebly.
Murphy frowned. “Todd?”
“The baby-sitter.”
John smiled privately. Maybe he wouldn’t have to interrogate the children; their father would do his job for him. “Todd who?” Murphy asked, making John wonder why a father wouldn’t know the name of his children’s after-school baby-sitter.
“He lives across the street from us,” Sean volunteered, punctuating his statement by exchanging another nervous glance with his sister. “Mom asked him to watch us.”
“And he talked you into robbing a bank?”
“We didn’t know that was what he was doing,” said Erin. “He was just giving me a shoulder ride, I thought.”
John leaned against the door and folded his arms across his chest. The twins were speaking the truth. He’d observed them during his Santa stake-out, two tykes, cute as all get out, walking down the street with a tall, indolent teenager in a lined denim jacket, baggy jeans, a spiky hairdo and a diamond-chip earring, the vision of adolescent chic. Just before entering the bank, the teenager—Todd—had swooped Erin up onto his shoulders. Then the threesome had entered, and Todd had positioned himself in the ATM vestibule so that Erin’s navy-blue jacket blocked the lens of the surveillance camera. Then Erin’s brother Sean had pushed the buttons on the ATM, removed the cash and handed it to Todd.
“He told me what buttons to push,” Sean said earnestly. “He said it was his money. I liked pushing the buttons. It was cool, Daddy, you know? Like on a space ship or something. All these buttons.”
“He wouldn’t let me push the buttons,” Erin complained.
“You got the shoulder ride,” Sean countered.
“Where the hell was your mother in all this?” Murphy asked, his voice a low growl.
“Out,” Erin said.
“With her boyfriend,” Sean added.
John took it all in without reacting. Murphy scowled and turned to John to explain. “My ex-wife has custody,” he told John. “ I had no idea this was going on. I mean—I know she’s got a social life. I just didn’t know she was leaving the kids in the care of a criminal punk.”
“Todd’s nice,” Sean argued. “He let me push the buttons.”
“Todd,” John clarified, “was robbing money from his parents. That wasn’t his money. It was theirs. He was withdrawing money from their account, with his mother’s ATM card.” The card was currently marked as evidence. John had recovered it when he’d arrested the threesome. “Do you know how Todd got his mother’s card?”
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