Santa Claus didn't trouble Benefit Street tonight. No corpulent figure haunted the rooftops. No bearded face pressed to windows, tapping gently, enticingly.
Remo walked to Prospect Park. Set on an embankment, it gave a commanding view of Benefit Street and the city of Providence. Remo sat on the parapet beside the statue of Roger Williams cut from granite. He stood with one broken-fingered hand lifted helplessly as if to ask, "Why my city?"
Remo wondered that as well, as his deep-set dark eyes picked through the snow. His face, the skin tight over high cheekbones, was tense. He rotated his thick wrists unconsciously.
Usually Remo did not concern himself with the why. Not on the small hits like this. He never asked the crack dealers whose necks he broke why they sold cocaine. The Mafia hoods never tried to explain themselves before he fractured their skulls like eggs. Remo wouldn't have listened. After twenty years in this game, it had come down to the same tired old story: new people committing old crimes. That was all.
But Santa owed him an explanaton. And just this once, Remo was going to ask why.
The moon was a fuzzy snowball as seen through the swirling snow. It shone down on the golden dome of the State House. It was a beautiful city, Remo realized. He could easily imagine himself back in the nineteenth century. He wondered what his ancestors did then. He wondered who they were. He had no idea. But he could recite from memory exactly what the emissaries of a certain Korean fishing village were doing at any time in the last century. They were, like him, Masters of Sinanju. But they were his spiritual ancestors.
The unusual quiet made it possible for his highly sensitive ears to pick out conversations emanating from the picturesque homes huddled below. He turned his head from side to side like some human radar dish. Instead of trying to listen, he let the snatches of conversation drift to him.
". . . Molly, come quick! The lost episode of Murphy's Law is on! . . ."
". . . Ward! Ward Phillips! If you don't answer me right now . . . "
". . . Santa! You're early." It was a little boy's voice. Instantly, another voice joined it. A pouty girlish voice. "What is it, Tommy? You woke me up. Bad boy."
"It's Santa. He's at the window."
Tiny feet scampered. "Oh, let me see. Let me see!" Remo forced himself to relax. Tensing up would constrict the blood flow to his brain and lower his sensitivity. His head made decreasingly smaller turns as he narrowed his focus.
He got a fix on the sound of a window being raised and a thick blubbery voice saying, "Ho ho ho!"
The sound made Remo's blood run cold. He had read the newspaper reports that Upstairs had supplied him. They had made him sick, then angry, and then burning with a rage that was as hot as the sun.
It was a thirty-foot drop from the parapet down to the tangle of underbrush that was clotted with leprous snow. It was the most direct way to the house.
Remo stood up. The snow fell around him like white spiders slipping down invisible webs. His breathing keyed down to its most minimal efficiency. He felt the falling snow, its rhythms, its inexorability. And when he was at one with the snowfall, he jumped into it.
Remo felt the flakes gravitate toward him. He felt each one individually. Not as a puffy bit of emphemeral frozen water, but as strong, structurally sound ice crystals. He sensed their inner strength, their uniqueness. They clung to him like brothers, not melting when they touched his face or bare arms. His skin was as cold as they were. Remo thought like a snowflake, and like a snowflake he became.
Remo floated to the ground at the exact speed of the falling snow. He was covered in snow when his feet touched the ground. This time he made footprints. Just two. He floated down the embankment without leaving any further sign.
Remo's eyes were on a brown house with a single lighted window. Then an oblate shape fell across the light like an evil eclipse.
Cursing under his breath, Remo moved for it. Tommy Atwells had to climb onto his windowsill to reach the latch. He stood there in his pumpkin-orange Dr. Denton pajamas. His little knees trembled. "Hurry, Tommy," his sister said. "Santa's cold."
"I'm trying." And on the other side of the snowsprinkled glass the wide smiling face grew eager. Tommy used both hands to push the latch clear. It sprang with a sharp sound.
"Okay, that's it," Tommy said, climbing down.
The window squeaked as it rolled up. Tommy stepped back into a corner, near the toy box, where his sister stood with wide eyes. He had heard about Santa Claus for years. But he had never seen him with his own eyes. He was very big.
After Santa has squeezed himself through the window, a question occurred to Tommy,
"How come ... how come you're early? Mommy says Christmas isn't till next week."
"Ho ho ho," was all Santa would say. He unslung his big sack and let it slump to the floor, a long red handle sticking out of it like a shard of ribbon candy. And then he was clumping toward the shivering children, his hands outstretched, his eyes very, very bright. His vast shadow covered Tommy and his sister.
The window was already closed when Remo reached it. It was a first-floor window. The glass was held in place by dry wood putty. Remo tested the pane with the flat of his hand. It gave slightly. He pushed harder, instinctively reading the points of maximum weakness in the putty. Repositioning his hand, Remo smacked the glass, firmly but with restraint. The putty gave like stale bread. Remo caught the glass in both hands and flung it back into a growing snowbank. He went in.
Remo found himself in a children's bedroom. Both beds were rumpled but empty. The room smelled of peppermint. A half-eaten candy cane lay on a toy box.
Remo glided to the open door, every sense alert. "Oooh, presents," a girl's voice was saying.
"Can we ... can we open them now, Santa?" A boy's voice this time.
"Ho ho ho," Santa said. His laugh was very quiet, and the sound of tearing and crinkling wrapping paper overtook its echoes.
Remo eased into the hallway. His shoes made no sound on the varnished floor. Weak light spilled from a room at the end of the hall. Fresh pine scent wafted from it, carried by hot air from a floor register.
Remo came up on the door. He peered around it. At first he saw only two children. A boy he took to be five and a girl who might have been a year younger. They were on their knees at the foot of a popcorn-andtinsel-decorated Christmas tree. They were opening presents eagerly, the way Remo never had. He always got new clothes. Never toys.
Remo brushed the wistful thought from his mind. For on the far wall, next to the shadow of the bedecked tree, was another shadow. Short, round, it was a blot of darkness that any child in America would have recognized from its shape.
Except for the upraised ax in its hands.
Remo flung himself into the room as the ax came back. The children didn't see Santa, for Santa stood behind them, his too-avid eyes fixed on the backs of their fresh-scrubbed necks.
"No!" Remo shouted, for once forgetting everything he had been taught about silent attack.
Santa started. The children's heads came about. They saw Remo. Their eyes widened in surprise. They didn't see the ax descending for their skulls.
They never saw the ax. Remo's hands intercepted the chipped blade as it came down. He pulled the weapon from Santa's two-handed grip.
"Run," Remo called to them.
"Mommy, Daddy, Mommy . ." Tommy yelled as he scampered from the room. "Some strange man is trying to hurt Santa."
Remo broke the ax in two, flung both pieces away. He took Santa Claus by his rabbit-fur collar and yanked his bearded face into his own.