Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

In Yuki’s opinion, Len didn’t owe her a thing. It was the other way around. She’d learned so much from him, and she liked him, too.

It had been at least a year since she and Brady had had a social evening with Len and friends, and she was thinking ahead to what she knew would be a memorable event.

Brady was lacing up his shoes when his phone vibrated. Yuki had tried instituting a no-phone-after-eight-p.m. rule, but it hadn’t lasted for even a day. She got calls. He got calls. Drowning “those dang things” in the sink was a fun idea but definitely impractical.

Brady grabbed his phone off the dresser, and Yuki listened to his end of the conversation.

He said, “Tell me everything, Boxer. But y’all are okay? I need the name of the FBI agent. Okay. Got it. You need to get all of those tenants off the sixth floor and into the lobby. I agree. Wait for the ME. I’ll call the mayor. Absolutely. Twenty minutes, traffic permitting.”

Yuki knew what was coming next. She sighed.

He ended the call, speed-dialed the mayor, and left an urgent message.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Yuki. “Our investigation just turned into a shootout with two fatalities. I’ve got people on the scene, more on the way, and a lotta displaced tenants needing a place to bunk.”

Yuki was disappointed, but she didn’t say so. Dinner was dinner. This was life and death. Brady had been talking with Lindsay, and that meant that her friend had been in danger. Yuki tuned back in to what her husband was saying.

“I have to go. Yuki, tell Red Dog I’m sorry.”

“He’ll understand,” she said. “Be safe. I love you.”

Chapter 12

After living through the terrifying shootout at the Anthony, I was weak-kneed, shaky, and ready for sleep, a shower, hugs, and dinner, not necessarily in that order.

I took the elevator to our apartment and had stabbed my key at the front-door lock several times when the door opened. Joe said, “Hey, just wondering what happened…oh, man, look at you, Blondie.”

“That good, huh?”

I got my hug. I held on to Joe, thinking once again that my love for my job could cost me everything. Any day. Any time.

I told Joe that I loved him, my voice cracking in the middle. He said, “Hey, hey, you’re home now. Take a look at what Sugarpuss and I have been up to.”

Sugarpuss, a.k.a. Julie Anne Molinari, screamed, “Mom-meee,” and ran into the foyer. Joe grabbed her up so I could get out of my jacket and lock my weapon in the antique gun safe high above Julie’s curly-haired head.

Martha woofed and waddled in and got her paws up on my knees. We all headed into the big living-eating-relaxing room with its tan leather furniture and big TV.

And there, standing between two tall windows looking out onto Lake Street, was a beautiful Christmas tree, winkin’ and blinkin’, intensely decorated on the branches that Julie could reach. The star for the pinnacle was sitting on the windowsill, and a pile of wrapped presents filled the seat of Joe’s big daddy chair.

“Oh, my God,” I said. “You two did all of this?”

“ I did, Mommy!” said Julie.

I didn’t know I still had an ear-to-ear grin left in me. I picked Julie up and she gave me a tour of the tree: the snowflakes and icicles, the globes with little scenes inside, and the now-traditional silver star from my sister, Catherine, engraved with First Christmas on one side and Julie on the other.

After the tour and Joe’s promise to place the star on the top of the tree in the morning, we put our little girl to bed. We doused the light, blew some kisses, and closed the door. As we tiptoed back to the living room, Joe said, “If I were you…”

“Hmmmm?”

“If I were you, I’d have a bowl of mushroom beef barley soup. Then a shower. Then ice cream.”

“We have that soup?”

I must have been staring at him with stray-dog eyes, because Joe laughed long and hard. “You think I would offer soup and not have any?”

“You made it from scratch?” I said.

“Mrs. Rose did that.”

Mrs. Rose, Julie’s part-time nanny, was an amazing cook.

“I’m reheating it,” said Joe. “That counts.”

“It certainly does.”

He sat me down and turned a flame up under the soup. When I was tucking into a bowl with a spoon in one hand and half of a buttered baguette in the other, I told my husband about my day.

I started with Christmas shopping for Cindy, then the chase along Grant Avenue, the capture of Julian Lambert, and our Q and A with him back at the Hall.

“He asked for a deal,” I told my husband. “A walk-in exchange for info on an upcoming ‘heist of the decade.’ He said the mastermind was called Low-man.”

“Humph.”

“Or Loman.”

“Like Willy Loman? Lead character in Death of a Salesman ?”

“Hmm. Maybe. Julian didn’t know how to spell it. What he did know was that a professional hitter by the name of Chris Dietz was one of the crew. Dietz was renting in the Anthony Hotel.”

“I get a rash just thinking about that place,” Joe said.

I nodded and said, “Tell me about it. We cornered Dietz, we thought, but then he pulled a switcheroo. Decided to have SWAT mow him down.”

Joe asked questions. I told him what I could, and we continued talking as I took a hot shower. When I was dry and dressed in pj’s, sure enough, there was a bowl of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream waiting for me. Joe, Martha, and I went over to the tree, and I watched Joe write out gift labels, most of them from Santa. He shook a small, flat box. “From Aunt Cat,” he said. “Bet it’s Julie’s annual Christmas star.”

Would I see the next one? I was thinking again about the Job versus Life. Everyone I knew, certainly my closest friends, was trying to balance this conflict every day.

Joe read me. “You’re thinking about the shootout?”

“I was feeling bad that I missed the J-Bug hanging balls on the tree.”

“There will be other Christmas trees,” he said.

“I know.” I said it again for emphasis and maybe for luck. “I know.”

But what I was thinking was God willing.

Part Two December 22

Chapter 13

Cindy Thomas was in her office at the Chronicle, laptop open and coffee cooling as she dug into the assignment that had just arrived in her inbox.

The paper’s publisher and editor in chief, Henry Tyler, had asked her to do a piece for the Living section about how undocumented immigrants in San Francisco celebrated the Christmas holidays. Undocumented immigrants were tangential to her usual crime beat, but Cindy was charged up by the story idea. For once she wouldn’t be reporting on bombings or mass murderers or parents who’d locked their babies in hot cars.

Cindy created a new folder and shut out the sounds around her—the coffee-cart lady’s bell, her coworkers laughing and chatting as they passed her office, and the traffic noise coming from the street below.

She would begin her research with the Christmas traditions of people from Mexico and Central America, focusing on a central question: Was it possible to keep cultural tradition alive when you were living under a shadow? Sometimes that shadow was decades long.

Cindy began reading about Las Posadas—“the Inns”—a nine-day Mexican Christmas tradition celebrating Mary and Joseph’s journey to find a safe place to stay while awaiting the birth of their child. How had she never heard of this festival? It sounded so joyful. It started every year on December 16 with a costume parade down a main street, after which friends, families, and neighbors would take turns acting as “innkeepers,” one home hosting a posada each night through December 24. As tradition had it, once the crowd had gathered inside a home, there were prayers and a Bible reading before the good times rolled. Cindy found photos of the piñatas, the hot drinks and yummy food, and the take-home bags of candies for the celebrants.