Warren Murphy: Shooting Schedule

"Mommy, Daddy!"

Santa opened his mouth to speak. Instead, as he looked past Remo's shoulder, his thick wet lips broke into a foolish grin, showing yellow teeth like old dice.

A new voice broke the stillness. "Stand where you are! I have a gun!"

"Don't shoot! Daddy, please don't shoot Santa."

Still holding on to the rabbit-fur collar, Remo whirled in place. Santa's black boots left the floor. When they touched down, Remo and the fat man had changed places. Remo now faced the hallway. Over Santa's redvelvet shoulder he saw a man in a terry-cloth bathrobe. He had a .45 automatic pointed in Remo's direction. The little boy clung to his leg. But the girl was still behind Remo, in the line of fire.

"Get away from my daughter," the man shouted. "Cathy, call the police."

"What is it?" a woman's twisted voice demanded. "Where's Susie?"

"Put the gun down, pal," Remo said. "This is between Santa and me. Isn't that right, Santa?" Remo shook the fat man angrily.

Santa only smiled slackly. It was a horrible, unbalanced smile.

"Susie, come here," the father prompted. "Walk around the men, honey."

"Do as he says, Susie," Remo said tightly, looking into Santa's eyes.

Susie stood unmoving, her thumb in her mouth.

"The police are coming, George," the mother's voice said. She appeared in the doorway, saw Remo and Santa Claus in a clutch, and let out a stricken scream. "Cathy! Will you get back!"

"George, for God's sake, put away that gun. You'll hit Susie!"

"Listen to her," Remo said. "I have this under control." To prove it, he lifted Santa Claus off his feet and bounced him up and down on his boots.

"See?" Remo said.

From his wide black belt, Santa pulled a switchblade. Remo sensed the knife coming up. It didn't concern him. He saw the father draw a shaky two-handed bead on the broad red back of the Santa suit and exert pressure on the trigger.

Remo pushed Santa aside. He ducked under the first wild shot. One open hand swept in and batted the muzzle up. A single shot pocked the ceiling.

Remo tripped the father. He went down. The gun ended up in Remo's hand. He yanked out the magazine and disarmed the weapon by pulling back the hammer with one strong thumb. The hammer broke off like a gingerbread man's leg.

Remo turned his attention back to Santa Claus. Santa was halfway out the door.

Remo started for the door, but felt a drag on his leg. He looked down. Little Tommy was clinging to his ankle, banging on it, hot tears streaming down his cheeks.

"Oh, you're bad. You made Santa go away."

Gently Remo bent down and pried Tommy's fingers from his pants fabric. He took the boy by his tiny shoulders and looked him in the eye.

"Take it easy," he said. "That wasn't Santa. That was the Boogey Man."

"There's no such thing as the Boogey Man. And you hit my daddy. I'll kill you! I will!"

The vehemence of the little boy's words shocked Remo. But he had no time to think about that. Outside, a car started up.

Remo released the boy. He went through the door like a cannonball. The sturdy panels flew apart.

Out on the pavement, a little foreign car spurted from the curb. Its tires slipped on the slick snow. The car was Christmas-ornament red.

The car turned the corner at high speed. Remo cut through a backyard to intercept it, but the car had already slid into the maze of College Hill when he reached the sidewalk.

Remo spotted it again at the top of Vertical Jenckes Street, so called because it was as steep as a San Francisco avenue.

The car went down slowly, brakes on. To release them would have invited disaster.

At the top of the hill, Remo put his feet together and pushed off.

Knees bent, arms at his sides, Remo went down Vertical Jenckes as if skiing from a steep slope. He caught up with the car and grabbed the bumper.

Hunched low so that he wouldn't be visible through the driver's rearview mirror, Remo locked every muscle and joint, and allowed himself to be towed. It brought back memories of his childhood in Newark, when he used to skip-hop the length of Broad Street. Back then, cars had big chrome bumpers that were easy to hold on to. The modern composition bumper afforded Remo no real purchase. So Remo's fingers dug into the plastic like claws and made his own. When he let go, there would be permanent holes.

The car weaved through College Hill with Remo attached it like a hunched-over human trailer. Snow collected at the tips of his shoes. When it got too thick, it fell away, only to start collecting all over again. Remo watched his shoes with interest. He had no idea where Santa Claus was taking him, but when the car came to a stop, the expression on Father Christmas' face was certain to be priceless. For the few seconds it would take before Remo started peeling the flesh from his skull.

Then Remo would get his answers. He might have to tear an arm off as well. Maybe he would rip off every limb and dump the bastard in a remote snowbank somewhere, where he could scream to his heart's content as he bled to death. It was a method that the man who

had trained him to kill would frown upon, but this was a special case. This was the Christmas season.

The car took Route 95 North, heading for the Massachusetts border. Remo recognized this only after the car drove past a pesticide company which displayed a huge papier-mache termite as an advertising gimmick. Remo had overheard this bug jokingly referred to as the Rhode Island state bird. He had laughed when he heard it. Now, hours later, with the snow falling like a shroud and a homicidal maniac towing him to an unknown destination, nothing seemed funny anymore.

The car turned off the highway in Taunton, Massachusetts. Remo didn't know that this was Taunton, and had he known, he would not have cared. His thoughts were red. Not Christmas-ornament red, but blood red.

The red car pulled into a blacktopped carport beside a row of snow-burdened evergreens.

Remo kept low. The car door clicked open and slammed shut. Clopping boots carried Santa Claus to the side door of a Cape Cod-style house. Remo heard a key tickle a door lock. The tumblers clicked so loudly that he heard them twenty feet away. A glass storm door clanged. Then there was only the hiss of the falling snow.

Remo got to his feet. He eased up to the door and received a shock. Staring back from the reflective glass of the storm door was an eerie sight.

It looked like a snowman. Not a jolly rotund snowman, but a lean sculptured one. There was no carrot nose, but it did have what looked like coal eyes. Remo peered closer. They were not coals, but the deathlike hollows of his own eye sockets.

Remo lifted his arms. They looked as if they had been rolled in powdered sugar. The snowman was himself. He realized that he had lowered his temperature so much that instead of melting, the snow clung to him. The reflection in the glass gave Remo an idea.

He knocked on the storm door. His knuckles left leprous patches on the glass.

A wide-eyed man's face appeared at the window. It was a round face, simple and without guile. Not the kind of face Remo expected. Not the face of a man who had chopped off the heads of seven children in the middle of the night and left their headless corpses under the trees for their parents to find.

"Who . . . who are you?" the guileless face asked. His voice had a weirdly distorted quality.

"Frosty the Snowman," Remo said seriously. "Really?"

Remo nodded. "Really. I'm canvassing the neighborhood on Santa's behalf. Here to find out if you've been naughty or nice."

The face broke into a frown.

"Santa Claus isn't real. Vincent told me so." Remo blinked.

"But Frosty is?"

The moon face puckered like a dried orange. "Vincent didn't say you weren't real. And you're here. But maybe I should ask him before I let you in. I'm not supposed to let strangers in the house, you know."