The Christmas Thief

by Mary Higgins Clark

I was feeling pretty good, Milo thought as he sipped a beer in the shabby parlor of a rundown farmhouse in Stowe, Vermont. I’d just read my narrative poem about a peach who falls in love with a fruit fly, and our workshop thought it was wonderful. They saw deep meaning and tenderness that never verged on sentimentality in my poem. I felt so good I decided to have a beer on the way home, and that’s when I met the twins.

  Milo took another sip of beer. I should have bought back my introduction to them, he thought glumly. Not that they weren’t good to me. They knew that I hadn’t had my big breakthrough as a poet and that I’d take any kind of job to keep a roof over my head. But this roof feels as though it could fall in on me. They’re up to something.

  Milo frowned. Forty-two years old, with shoulder-length hair and a wispy beard, he could have been an extra in a film about Woodstock ’69. His bony arms dangled from his long frame. His guileless gray eyes had a perpetually benevolent expression. His voice with its singsong pitch made his listeners think of adjectives like “kind” and “gentle.”

  Milo knew that a dozen years ago the Como Brothers had been obliged to skip town in a hurry because of their involvement with the Packy Noonan scam. He hadn’t heard from them in years. Then six months ago he had received a phone call from Jo-Jo. He wouldn’t say where he was, but he asked Milo if he would be interested in making a lot of money without any risk. All Milo had to do was find a farmhouse for rent in Stowe, Vermont. It had to have a large barn, at least ninety feet long. Until the first of the year Milo was to spend at least long weekends there. He was to get to know the locals, explain that he was a poet and, like J. D. Salinger and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, needed a retreat in New England where he could write in solitude.

  It had been clear to Milo that Jo-Jo was reading both names and that he had no idea who either Salinger or Solzhenitsyn was, but the offer had come at a perfect time. His part-time jobs were drying up. The lease on his attic apartment was expiring, and his landlady had flatly refused to renew it. She simply couldn’t understand why it was imperative for him to write late at night even though he explained that was when his thoughts transcended the everyday world and that rap music played loud gave wings to his poetry.

  He quickly found the farmhouse in Stowe and had been living in it full-time. Even though the regular deposits to his checking account had been a lifesaver, they were not enough to support another apartment in New York. The prices were astronomical there, and Milo rued the day he had told his landlady that he needed to keep the music blasting at night so it would drown out her snoring. In short, Milo was not happy. He was sick of the country life and longed for the bustle and activity of Greenwich Village. He liked people, and even though he regularly invited some of the Stowe locals to his poetry readings, after the first couple of evenings no one came back. Jo-Jo had promised that by the end of the year he would receive a $50,000 bonus. But Milo was beginning to suspect that the farmhouse and his presence in it had something to do with Packy Noonan getting out of prison.

  “I don’t want to get in trouble,” he warned Jo-Jo during one of his phone calls.

  “Trouble? What are you talking about?” Jo-Jo had asked sadly. “Would I get my good friend in trouble? What’d you do? Rent a farmhouse? That’s a crime?”

  A pounding on the farmhouse door interrupted Milo’s reverie. He rushed to open it and then stood frozen at the sight of his visitors—two short, portly men in ski outfits standing in front of a flatbed with a couple of straggly-looking evergreen trees on it. At first he didn’t recognize them, but then he bellowed, “Jo-Jo! Benny!” Even as he threw his arms around them he was aware of how much they had changed.

  Jo-Jo had always been hefty, but he had put on at least twenty pounds and looked like an overweight tomcat, with tanned skin and balding head. Benny was the same height, about five-six, but he’d always been so thin you could slip him under the door. He’d gained weight, too, and although he was only half the size of Jo-Jo, he was starting to look more like him.

  Jo-Jo did not waste time. “You got a padlock on the barn door, Milo. That was smart. Open it up.”

  “Right away, right away.” Milo loped into the kitchen where the key to the padlock was hanging on a nail. Jo-Jo had been so specific on the phone about the size of the barn that he had always suspected it was the main reason he had been hired. He hoped they wouldn’t mind that the barn had a lot of stalls in it. The owner of the farm had gone broke trying to raise a racehorse that would pay off. Instead, according to local gossip, when he went to claiming races, he invariably managed to select hopeless plugs, all of which ate to the bursting point and sat down at the starting gate.

  “Hurry up, Milo,” Benny was yelling even though Milo hadn’t taken more than half a minute to get the key. “We don’t want no local yokel to come to one of your poetry recitals and see the flatbed.”

  Why not? Milo wondered, but without taking the time to either grab a coat or answer his own question, he raced outside and down the field to undo the padlock and pull open the wide doors of the barn.

  The early evening was very cold, and he shivered. In the fading light Milo could see that there was another vehicle behind the flatbed, a van with a ski rack on the roof. They must have taken up skiing, he thought. Funny, he would never have considered them athletes.

  Benny helped him pull back the doors. Milo switched on the light and was able to see the dismay on Jo-Jo’s face.

  “What’s with all the stalls?” Jo-Jo demanded.

  “They used to raise horses here.” Milo did not know why he was suddenly nervous. I’ve done everything they want, he reasoned, so what’s with the angst? “It’s the right size barn,” he defended himself, his voice never wavering from its singsong gentleness, “and there aren’t many that big.”

  “Yeah, right. Get out of the way.” With an imperious sweep of his arm, Jo-Jo signaled to Benny to drive the flatbed into the barn.

  Benny inched the vehicle through the doors, and then a splintering crash confirmed the fact that he had sideswiped the first stall. The sound continued intermittently until the flatbed was fully inside the barn. The space was so tight that Benny could exit only by moving from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, opening the door just enough to squeeze out, and then flattening himself against the walls and gates of the stalls as he inched past them.

  His first words when he reached Milo and Jo-Jo at the door were “I need a beer. Maybe two or three beers. You got anything to eat, Milo?”

  For lack of something to do when he wasn’t writing a poem, Milo had taught himself to cook in his six months of babysitting the farm. Now he was glad that fresh spaghetti sauce was in the refrigerator. He remembered that the Como twins loved pasta.

  Fifteen minutes later they were sipping beer around the kitchen table while Milo heated his sauce and boiled water for the pasta. To Milo’s dread, listening to the brothers talk as he bustled around the kitchen, he heard the name “Packy” whispered and realized that the farmhouse indeed had something to do with Packy Noonan’s release.

  But what? And where did he fit in? He waited until he put the steaming dishes of pasta in front of the twins before he said point-blank: “If this has something to do with Packy Noonan, I’m out of here now.”

  Jo-Jo smiled. “Be reasonable, Milo. You rented a place for us when you knew we were on the lam. You’ve been getting money deposited in your bank account for six months. All you have to do is sit here and write poetry, and in a couple of days you get fifty thousand bucks in cash and you’re home free.”

  “In a couple of days ?” Milo asked, incredulous, his mind conjuring up the happiness that $50,000 could buy: A decent place to rent in the Village. No worry about part-time jobs for at least a couple of years. No one could make a buck last as long as he could.

  Jo-Jo was studying him. Now he nodded with satisfaction. “Like I said, all you need to do is sit here and write poetry. Write a nice poem about a tree.”

  “What tree?”

  “
We’re just as much in the dark as you are, but we’ll all find out real soon.”

  7

  I can’t believe I’m sitting here having dinner with not only Alvirah and Willy but Nora Regan Reilly, the famous writer, and her family, Opal thought. This morning after watching that miserable Packy Noonan on television, I felt like turning my face to the wall and never getting out of bed again. Shows how much everything can change.

  And they were all so nice to her. Over dinner they had told her about Luke being kidnapped and held hostage on a leaky houseboat in the Hudson River with his driver, who was a single mother with two little boys, and how they would have drowned if Alvirah and Regan hadn’t rescued them.

  “Alvirah and I make a good team,” Regan Reilly said. “I wish we could put our heads together and find your money for you, Opal. You do think that Packy Noonan has it hidden somewhere, don’t you?”

  “Sure he does,” Jack Reilly said emphatically. “That case was in the federal court, so we didn’t handle it, but my guess is that guy has a stash somewhere. When you add up what the feds knew Packy spent, there’s still between seventy and eighty million dollars missing. He probably has it in a numbered account in Switzerland or in a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

  Jack was sipping coffee. His left arm was around the back of Regan’s chair. The way he kept looking at her made Opal wish that somewhere along the way she had met a special guy. He’s so handsome, she thought, and Regan is so pretty. Jack had sandy hair that tended to curl, his hazel eyes were more green than brown, and his even features were enhanced by a strong jaw. When he and Regan walked into the dining room together, they were holding hands. Regan was tall, but Jack was considerably taller and had broad shoulders to match.

  Even though it was only the second week in November, an early heavy snowfall had meant there was real powder on the slopes and on the ground. Tomorrow the Reillys were going to downhill ski. It was funny that Jack’s name was Reilly too, Opal thought. She and Alvirah and Willy were going to take a walk in the woods and find Alvirah’s tree. Then in the afternoon they were going to take lessons in cross-country skiing. Alvirah told her that she and Willy had done cross-country skiing a couple of times, and it wasn’t that hard to keep your balance—and it was fun.

  Opal wasn’t sure how much fun it would be, but she was willing to give it a try. Years ago in school, she had always been a good athlete, and she almost always walked the mile back and forth to work to keep trim.

  “You have that blank look in your eyes that says you’re doing some deep thinking,” Luke observed to Nora.

  Nora was sipping a cappuccino. “I’m remembering how much I enjoyed the story of the Von Trapp family. I read Maria’s book long before I saw the film. It’s so interesting to be here now and realize that a tree she watched being planted has been chosen for Rockefeller Center this year. With all the worries in the world, it’s comforting to know that New York schoolchildren will welcome that tree. It makes it so special.”

  “Well, the tree is only down the road enjoying its last weekend in Vermont,” Luke said drily. “Monday morning before we leave, we can all go over, watch it being cut down, and kiss it good-bye.”

  “On the car radio I heard that they’ll take it off the barge in Manhattan on Wednesday morning,” Alvirah volunteered. “I think it would be exciting to be there when the tree arrives at Rockefeller Center. I know I’d like to see the choirs of schoolchildren and hear them sing.”

  But even as the words were coming from her mouth, Alvirah began to have a funny feeling that something would go wrong. She looked around the cozy dining room. People were lingering over dinner, smiling and chatting. Why did a cold certainty fill her that trouble was brewing and Opal would be caught up in it? I shouldn’t have asked her to come, Alvirah worried. For some reason she’s in danger here.

  8

  Packy’s first night in the halfway house known as The Castle was not much better, in his opinion, than a step up from the federal penitentiary. He was signed in, given a bed, and once again had the rules explained to him. He immediately reconfirmed his ability to leave The Castle on Sunday morning by piously explaining that as a good Catholic he never missed Mass. He threw in for good measure the fact that it was the anniversary of his mother’s death. Packy had long since forgotten exactly when his mother died, but the easy tear that rushed to his eye on cue and the roguish smile that accompanied his confession—“God bless her. She never gave up on me”—made the counselor on duty hasten to reassure him that on Sunday he could certainly attend Mass on his own.

  The next day and a half passed in a blur. He dutifully sat in on the lectures warning him that he could be sent back to prison to complete his sentence if he did not follow strictly the terms of his parole. He sat at meals visualizing the feasts that he would soon be eating at fine restaurants in Brazil, sporting his new face. On Friday and Saturday night he closed his eyes in the room he was sharing with two other recently released convicts and drifted into sleep, dreaming of Egyptian cotton sheets, silk pajamas, and finally getting his hands on his flask of diamonds.

  Sunday morning dawned crisp and clear. The first snowfall had occurred two weeks ago, much earlier than usual, and the forecast was that another one was on the way. It looked as if an old-fashioned winter was looming, and that was fine with Packy. He wasn’t planning to share it with his fellow Americans.

  Over the years of his incarceration he had managed to keep in contact with the Como twins by paying a number of carefully chosen visitors to other convicts to mail letters from him and then bring the Comos’ letters to him. Only last week Jo-Jo had confirmed the arrangement to meet behind Saint Patrick’s Cathedral by writing to urge him to attend the 10:15 Mass at the cathedral and then take a walk on Madison Avenue.

  So Benny and Jo-Jo would be there. Why wouldn’t they? Packy asked himself. At eight o’clock he closed the door of The Castle and stepped out onto the street. He had decided to walk the one hundred blocks, not because he wanted the exercise, but because he knew he would be followed and wanted his pursuer to have a good workout.

  He could hear the instructions received by the guy who had been assigned to tail him: “Don’t take your eyes off him. Sooner or later he’ll lead us to the money he’s hidden away.”

  No, I won’t, Packy thought as he walked rapidly down Broadway. Several times, when stopped by a red light, he looked around casually as though enchanted by the world he had been missing for so long. The second time he was able to pick out his pursuer, a beefy guy dressed like a jogger.

  Some jogger, Packy thought. He’ll be lucky if he hasn’t lost me before Saint Pat’s.

  On Sunday mornings the 10:15 Mass always drew the biggest crowds. That was when the full choir sang, and on many Sundays the Cardinal was the celebrant. Packy knew just where he was going to sit—on the right side, near the front. He would wait until Holy Communion was being given out and get on line with everyone else. Then, just before he received, he would cut across to the left of the altar to the corridor that led to the Madison Avenue townhouse that served as an office for the archdiocese. He remembered that when he was in high school, the kids in his class had assembled in the office and marched into the cathedral from there.

  Jo-Jo and Benny would be parked in the van at the Madison Avenue entrance of the townhouse, and before the beefy guy had a chance to follow, they would be gone.

  Packy got to the cathedral with time to spare and lit a candle in front of the statue of Saint Anthony. I know if I pray to you when I’ve lost something, you’ll help me find it, he reminded the saint, but the stuff I want is hidden, not lost. So I don’t need to pray for anything that I want to find. What I want from you is a little help in losing Fatso the Jogger.

  His hands were cupped in prayer, which enabled him to conceal a small mirror in his palms. With it he was able to keep track of the jogger who was kneeling in a nearby pew.

  At 10:15 Packy waited until the processional was about to start from the back of
the church. Then he scurried up the aisle and squeezed into an end seat six rows from the front. With the mirror he was able to ascertain that four rows behind him the jogger was unable to get an end seat and had to move past two old ladies before he found space.

  Love the old ladies, Packy thought. They always want to sit at the end. Afraid they’ll miss something if they move over and make room for someone else.

  But the problem was that there was lots of security in the cathedral. He hadn’t counted on that. Even a two-year-old could see that some of those guys in wine-colored jackets weren’t just ushers. Besides that, there were a few cops in uniform stationed inside. They would be all over him if he set foot on the altar.

  Worried for the first time and his confidence shaken, Packy surveyed the scene more carefully. Beads of perspiration dampened his forehead as he realized his options were few. The side door on the right was his best shot. The time to move was when the Gospel was read. Everybody would be standing, and he could slip out without the jogger noticing he was gone. Then he would turn left and run the half block to Madison Avenue and up Madison to the van. “Be there, Jo-Jo. Be there, Benny,” he whispered to himself. But if they were not and even if he was followed, it wasn’t a parole violation to leave church early.

  Packy began to feel better. With the help of the mirror he was able to ascertain that one more person had squeezed into the jogger’s pew. True to form, the old ladies had stepped into the aisle to let him in, and now the jogger was cheek by jowl with a muscular kid who would not be easy to push aside.

  “Let us reflect on our own lives, what we have done and what we have failed to do,” the celebrant, a monsignor, was saying.

  That was the last thing Packy wanted to reflect on. The epistle was read. Packy didn’t hear it. He was concentrating on making his escape.

  “Alleluia,” the choir sang.

  The congregation got to its feet. Before the last man was standing, Packy was at the side door of the cathedral that opened onto Fiftieth Street. Before the second alleluia was chanted, he was on Madison Avenue. Before the third prolonged al-le-lu-ia, he had spotted the van, opened the door, leaped into it, and it was gone.