The Usual Santas

by Peter Lovesey

  “What are you . . . ? Tho? Tho?”

  He reached the body and could see that half of his friend’s face was gone, hit by flying debris from the explosion. Tho Id Dte was on his way to meet the seventy-two virgins. It would be his first taste of romance.

  Martin

  by Ed Lin

  Ed Lin is a journalist by training and an all-around stand-up kinda guy. He’s the author of several books: two crime novels set in Taipei, Taiwan, Ghost Month and Incensed; Waylaid, his literary debut; and his Robert Chow crime series, set in 1970s Manhattan Chinatown: This Is a Bust, Snakes Can’t Run, and One Red Bastard. Lin, who is of Taiwanese and Chinese descent, is the first author to win three Asian American Literary Awards. Lin lives in New York with his wife, actress Cindy Cheung.

  We were heading to Martin’s because he was in bad shape. He and his fiancée, Diana, had split up for what he said was for good. What an awful time for something like that, during the shit week between Christmas and New Year’s.

  I almost ate it by stepping in a giant pool of ice water on a corner. New York City was turning into a giant melting slushy with all the flavor sucked out. But I had to push on. The guys were depending on me.

  I finally made it to the apartment and found that Sesh and Dougie had beaten me. Martin was sitting on the floor inside a curled-up blanket at the base of the floor lamp. Chipotle wrappers and Red Bull cans lined the nest, which cradled all the remote controls and phone accessories.

  “I brought the headsets,” I panted with pride, holding up my never-used gym bag. Considering the weather, I believed that my accomplishment was worth at least a pat on the back or equivalent form of appreciation. The guys left me hanging, though.

  The four of us had grown up together in Jersey, but the other three seemed to forget about me unless they needed something. In this case, they wanted my Bluetooth headsets to play Call of Duty on Martin’s Christmas present, a PlayStation 4.

  Martin held out his hand to me and shook his head. “I’m so sorry, man,” he said. “Someone should have gotten word to you that the PlayStation is gone.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. I put the bag on the floor and hid it behind my legs. I was sweaty from running over and I looked for a place to sit and catch my breath a little. I’m a big guy, the biggest one in the group. Even so, there would have been plenty of room for me on the couch if Sesh and Dougie slid over, but they didn’t. I dropped into the reclining chair. It made a fart sound and Sesh laughed like a mean dog.

  “Nice one,” he said. Sesh was never trying to hurt your feelings, but he didn’t care if he did. He was a Wall Street guy. I guess you could say he was the most successful among us.

  Dougie was definitely the smartest. He was in a PhD program at NYU for the human interface in computing. His housing was free, but he never had any money.

  Martin was on the management track at the Apple Store and had also been on track to be the first of us to marry. He and Diana had met in college. She was so beautiful I could never understand why they had arguments. I would’ve given in to her every time no matter what. I always gave in.

  I lived in an apartment that my parents owned on the Upper East Side. They now lived in China for tax-related reasons and were providing me a monthly allowance until I figured out what I really wanted to do. My father said maybe my weight would have to come down. For Christmas they had mailed me a juicer, straight from the Chinese factory.

  I could begin my diet tonight. A large pizza with all the toppings was sitting on the coffee table. That meant two slices per guy. I knew I had the discipline to eat just one. I worked my way off the reclining chair and slid my first and last slice onto a doubled paper plate.

  It was only after my third bite, after half the slice was gone, that I thought to ask, “Martin, where’s your PS4? Was it stolen?”

  Martin said, “Diana took it because she paid for it.”

  Dougie spoke up. “It was your present!” His voice hadn’t changed since he was fifteen. “It should have protected status as a gift, even during a breakup.”

  “Oh, well,” said Martin, “She’s coming back for the flatscreen, the K-cup machine and the lamp, and I need all those more than the PS4.”

  Sesh surveyed the room. “Let’s break all her shit,” he said.

  “No,” said Martin.

  Dougie reached in for his second slice and shut the box. A small card fluttered to the ground.

  Sesh grabbed it. “What the hell is this?” he asked. “It says, ‘What was the worst thing you ever did?’”

  Martin took the card. “It’s from a game called ‘Sharing’ that our couples therapist gave us. Was supposed to help us ‘share’ more of our lives together.”

  “What was the worst thing you ever did?” Sesh asked.

  Martin sighed and stood up. He ambled to the open kitchen counter, washed his hands with dish soap and shouted over the splashing water. “When I was a kid, I wanted one of those California license plates for my bike. I liked how blue they were. We kept eating this one cereal to try to pull a California plate. Then I saw that the girl across the street had one, so I stole it off her bike.” Martin shut off the faucet and shook his hands three times over the sink. “I saw her crying when she found out it was gone. I felt so bad I left her anonymous Christmas presents for years until she moved away.” Martin returned to his nest, sat down and slapped his knees with a sense of finality.

  Dougie fixed his glasses and said, “That’s actually very touching.”

  “Sesh,” Martin called, “what was the worst thing you ever did?”

  “Jesus,” he said. “So little to choose from. Well, actually, something I did in college.” Sesh leaned back in his seat, folded one leg over the other and happily bounced his foot. “I was nominated to join this honor society because my grades were so good. One of the requirements for eligibility was that I had to do a community project. I chose to raise two hundred bucks for a local food bank. I stood outside the student dining hall every day for a week like a chump, trying to get people to donate. I only collected about fifty bucks.” Sesh grabbed his foot to still it. “I couldn’t stand the thought of groveling for another few weeks to scrape up the money, so I went to the ATM, took out a hundred and fifty bucks from what I had saved from my campus job, and put that into the pot.”

  Sesh put his foot down, leaned over and grabbed his second slice of pizza.

  “Wait, I don’t get it,” said Martin. “That was your own money that you put in?”

  “Yeah,” said Sesh.

  “What’s so wrong about that?”

  “I shouldn’t have raised money for that food bank in the first place! If you give someone something for free, they don’t learn how to work for it.”

  “A lot of the people who use food banks have lost their jobs or homes,” said Dougie. “They have kids to feed.”

  “Let ’em starve a little! Look at good old jolly Saint Nick right here,” he said, pointing at me. “Sorry, don’t mean to single you out, but if you went hungry for a few days, I don’t think too many people would say that that was a bad thing.”

  My face went hot and I licked my lips. You’ll see tonight, Sesh, I thought. You’ll see me skip my second slice.

  “Let hungry people starve?” said Dougie. “That’s so charitable of you this time of year, Sesh.”

  “I won’t be swayed by plastic holiday nostalgia,” said Sesh. “The truth is, when you try to comfort people in distress, you make ’em weaker. Let ’em find their own way. They’ll be better off in the long run.”

  Dougie’s knees danced excitedly. “Well, if that’s the case, then why are we here comforting Martin?”

  Sesh clutched his pizza slice and narrowed his eyes. “Martin is our friend,” he said evenly. “He’s not some jackass statistic in the street. What’s wrong with you?”

  I felt moved to speak up.
Maybe I could say something to make them pity me, or at least recognize the pain I’d suffered. “The worst thing I ever did was kill a bunch of tropical fish,” I blurted out. “In the saltwater tank at the dry cleaner’s.”

  Martin tilted his head. “I thought they got rid of that tank because it was too expensive.”

  “Uh-uh, no,” I said. “The power cord was paired up with the TV cable. I climbed onto the dumpster one Mischief Night and cut it with garden shears. Everything in the tank died.”

  “That’s sick,” said Martin.

  “But I—I felt terrible about it,” I stammered. “I knew what I’d done was so wrong. I couldn’t go to the aquarium after that. I still have trouble eating fish.” I had already lost everybody, though.

  Martin said, “Wasn’t the dry cleaner run by those hairy people?”

  Sesh was done with his second slice and sucked his fingers. “Yeah, it was!” he declared. “Daughter was hot, though. She was in my gym class. I asked her once if she was adopted. She got all offended and I was like, ‘I’m paying you a compliment and you’re giving me attitude?’“

  Martin laughed for the first time that night and pulled out his second slice. He left the box open, and the last slice, which would have been my second, sat there, pointing at me, accusing me of being unable to resist it. But I would. I would.

  Dougie broke his silence by saying, “Guys, I think I killed someone. No. I know I did.”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” said Sesh.

  “For real,” said Dougie.

  “What happened?” asked Martin.

  “You know that pedestrian bridge over Wyckoff Road?”

  “Yeah, we used to drop rocks on cars from it.”

  Dougie sprung from the couch and seemed torn about which way to pace. “Well, one night I couldn’t sleep. I went out there. It must have been two in the morning, but some cars were still going by. I picked up this rock.” He held up an imaginary M&M between his thumb and index finger. “I swear it was the smallest one in the world. It was just a pebble. I saw a pair of headlights and I didn’t even throw it. I just kinda flicked it. I heard the windshield shatter. I saw the camper swerve and hit a tree. It sounded like a can being crushed.”

  Sesh snapped his fingers and pointed at Dougie. “I remember that accident. A piece of the bridge fell and broke the windshield. It wasn’t a rock.”

  “It was me,” said Dougie. “I killed that guy. I’ve never told anybody. I’ve never even really thought about it.” His mouth trembled as his eyes opened wide with revelation. “I have to call the cops and confess.”

  “Hold on a sec, dumbass!” called Sesh. “It’s all over. Statute of limitations has run out.”

  “Actually,” said Martin, “there is no statute on murder.”

  Dougie burst into tears upon hearing the word and grabbed his phone.

  “I’m calling the cops on myself right now,” he said. Sesh grabbed the phone and threw it to the floor. He and Martin pulled Dougie down to the couch as he continued to wail. I saw how worried they were for him, how much they cared about him, how badly they felt for him.

  I stood up and picked up the entire pizza box. I began to eat my second slice. I wasn’t hungry. I just needed something to fill the emptiness.

  The other guys only called me when they needed something, and sometimes they forgot I was there.

  Dougie had forgotten that I was with him that night on the bridge. It was true, he had picked up the smallest rock in the world. But I had picked up a chunk of stone that had broken off the bridge. I heaved it down at the exact second he threw his pebble, aiming right for the driver’s face.

  As I chewed through the cold, sad toppings and congealed cheese, I looked over at the three of them, a trio of best friends. I thought about what Dougie had said, and I wished so badly that I could feel as awful about killing someone and have my best friends hold me.

  Queen of the Hill

  by Stuart Neville

  Stuart Neville is the author of seven novels: So Say the Fallen; Ratlines, shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller; Collusion, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Stolen Souls, which The Guardian said “confirms him as the king of Belfast noir”; The Final Silence, nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel; Those We Left Behind, a New York Times and Boston Globe Best Crime Novel of the Year; and The Ghosts of Belfast, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and a finalist for the Macavity Award, the Barry Award, and the Anthony Award for Best First Novel. He lives in Belfast.

  Cam the Hun set off from his flat on Victoria Street with fear in his heart and heat in his loins. He pulled his coat tight around him. There’d be no snow for Christmas, but it might manage a frost.

  Not that he cared much about Christmas this year. If he did this awful thing, if he could actually go through with it, he intended on drinking every last drop of alcohol in the flat. He’d drink until he passed out, and drink some more when he woke up. With any luck he’d stay under right through to Boxing Day.

  Davy Pollock told Cam the Hun he could come back to Orangefield. The banishment would be lifted, he could return and see his mother, so long as he did as Davy asked. But Cam the Hun knew he wouldn’t be able to face her if he did the job, not on Christmas, no matter how badly he wanted to spend the day at her bedside. He’d been put out of the estate seven years ago for “running with the taigs,” as Davy put it. Still and all, Davy didn’t mind coming to Cam the Hun when he needed supplies from the other side. When Es and blow were thin on the ground in Armagh, just like any other town, the unbridgeable divide between Loyalist and Republican narrowed pretty quickly. Cam the Hun had his uses. He had that much to be grateful for.

  He crossed towards Barrack Street, the Mall on his right, the old prison on his left. Christmas lights sprawled across the front of the gaol, ridiculous baubles on such a grim, desperate building. The Church of Ireland cathedral loomed up ahead, glowing at the top of the hill, lit up like a stage set. He couldn’t see the Queen’s house from here, but it stood just beneath the cathedral. It was an old Georgian place, three storeys, and would’ve cost a fortune before the property crash.

  She didn’t pay a penny for it. The Queen of the Hill won her palace in a game of cards.

  Anne Mahon and her then-boyfriend had rented a flat on the top floor from Paddy Dolan, a lawyer who laundered cash for the IRA through property investment. She was pregnant, ready to pop at any moment, when Dolan and the boyfriend started a drunken game of poker. When the boyfriend was down to his last ten-pound note, he boasted of Anne’s skill, said she could beat any man in the country. Dolan challenged her to a game. She refused, but Dolan wouldn’t let it be. He said if she didn’t play him, he’d put her and her fuckwit boyfriend out on the street that very night, pregnant or not.

  Her water broke just as she laid out the hand that won the house, and Paddy Dolan’s shoes were ruined. Not that it mattered in the end. The cops found him at the bottom of Newry Canal, tied to the driver’s seat of his 5-Series BMW, nine days after he handed over the deeds. The boyfriend lasted a week longer. A bullet in the gut did for him, but the ’Ra let Anne keep the house. They said they wouldn’t evict a young woman with newborn twins. The talk around town was a Sinn Féin councillor was sweet on her and smoothed things over with the balaclava boys.

  Anne Mahon knew how to use men in that way. That’s what made her Queen of the Hill. Once she got her claws into you, that was that. You were clean fucked.

  Like Cam the Hun.

  He kept his head down as he passed the shaven-headed men smoking outside the pub on Barrack Street. They knew who he was, knew he ran with the other sort, and glared as he walked by. One of them wore a Santa hat with a Red Hand of Ulster badge pinned to the brim.

  As Cam the Hun began the climb up Scotch Street, the warmth in his groin grew with the terror in his stomach. The two se
nsations butted against each other somewhere beneath his navel. It was almost a year since he’d last seen her. That long night had left him drained and walking like John Wayne. She’d made him earn it, though. Two likely lads had been dealing right on her doorstep, and he’d sorted them out for her.

  Back then he’d have done anything for a taste of the Queen, but as she took the last of him, his fingers tangled in her dyed crimson hair, he noticed the blood congealing on his swollen knuckles. The image of the two boys’ broken faces swamped his mind, and he swore right then he’d never touch her again. She was poison. Like the goods she distributed from her fortress on the hill, too much would kill you, but there was no such thing as enough.

  He walked to the far side of the library on Market Street. Metal fencing portioned off a path up the steep slope. The council was wasting more money renovating the town centre, leaving the area between the library and the closed-down cinema covered in rubble. Christmas Eve revellers puffed on cigarettes outside the theatre, girls draped with tinsel, young men shivering in their shirtsleeves. The sight of them caused dark thoughts to pass behind Cam the Hun’s eyes. He seized on the resentment, brought it close to his heart. He’d need all the anger and hate he could muster.

  He’d phoned the Queen that afternoon and told her it had been too long. He needed her.

  “Tonight,” she’d said. “Christmas party at my place.”

  The house came into view as Cam the Hun climbed the slope past the library. Last house on the terrace to his left, facing the theatre across the square, the cathedral towering over it all. Her palace, her fortress. The fear slammed into his belly, and he stopped dead.

  Could he do it? He’d done worse things in his life. She was a cancer in Armagh, feeding off the misery she sowed with her powders and potions. The world would be no poorer without her. She’d offloaded her twin sons on their grandmother and rarely saw them. No one depended on her but the dealers she owned, and they’d have Davy Pollock to turn to when she was gone. No, the air in this town could only be sweeter for her passing. The logic of it was insurmountable. Cam the Hun could and would do this thing.