called “Life After Santa” on the little television set. When he told her about the presents from Impound she said, “Thank God.” He didn’t tell her what had just happened with the kids. Maybe one of these days he’d be able to sit down and give them the straight scoop, how there really had been this nice guy called Santa Claus who went around in a sleigh pulled by reindeer giving kids presents because he loved them, so. of course, we had to shoot him.
He turned on the kettle to make himself a cup of instant coffee and sat down beside his wife. On the screen a celebrated economist was saying, “Of course, we’ll have to find an alternate energy source. Our entire industrial base has always depended on Santa’s sticks and lumps of coal.”
“But what a golden opportunity to end our kids’ dependence on free toys,” observed a former National Security advisor. “That’s always smelled like socialism to me. Kids have to learn there’s no free lunch. We should hand the Toy Works over to private enterprise. I hear Von Clausewitz Industries are interested in getting into toys.”
“What about distribution?” asked someone else.
“Maybe we could talk the department stores into selling toys for a week or two before Christmas.”
“Selling toys?” asked someone in disbelief.
The National Security advisor smiled. “We can hardly expect the Von Clausewitz people to pick up the tab. No, the toys’ll have to be sold. But the play of the marketplace will hold prices—”
Field heard a sound. Someone had raised an upstairs window. Footsteps headed down the hall toward the children’s rooms. He took the stairs two at a time, reaching the top with his service revolver drawn. Someone was standing in the dark corner by Charlotte s door. Crouching, pistol at the ready, Field snapped on the hall light. “Freeze!” he shouted.
The woman turned and gave him a questioning look. She had immense rose-gossamer wings of a swallow-tail cut sprouting from her shoulder-blades and a gown like white enamel shimmering with jewels. He didn’t recognize who it was behind the surgical mask until she tugged at the wrists of her latex gloves, took a shiny quarter from the coin dispenser at her waist and stepped into Charlotte’s room.
Field came out of his crouch slowly. Returning his weapon to its holster he went back down to the kitchen. He turned off the kettle, found the whiskey bottle in the cupboard and poured himself a drink with a trembling hand. “Lois,” he said, “I almost shot the Tooth Fairy.”
“Oh. Roy,” she scolded in a tired voice.
On the television screen someone said. “Of course, we’ll need a fund to provide toys for the children of the deserving poor.”
“Don’t you mean ‘the deserving children of the poor’?” someone asked.
“Deserving children of the deserving poor,“ suggested another.
Lois shook her head. “Store-bought toys. Roy?” she asked. “We’ve got mortgage payments, car payments, Lesley’s orthodontist, and saving for the kids’ college. How can we afford store-bought toys?”
It’d been a hard day. He didn’t want to talk about next year’s toys. “Lois, please—” he started to say a bit snappishly. But here the program broke for a commercial and a voice said, “Hey, Mom, hey, kids, is Dad getting a little short? (And we don’t mean abrupt). Why not send him along to see the folks at Tannenbaum Savings and Loan. All our offices have been tastefully decorated for the season. And there’s one near you. So remember—” here a choir chimed in “—Owe Tannenbaum, Owe Tannenbaum, how beautiful their branches!”
I SAW MOMMY KILLING SANTA CLAUS – George Baxt
We buried my mother yesterday, so I feel free to tell the truth. She lived to be ninety-three because, like the sainted, loyal son I chose to be, I didn’t blab to the cops. I’m Oscar Leigh and my mother was Desiree Leigh. That’s right—Desiree Leigh, inventor of the Desiree face cream that promised eternal youth to the young and rejuvenation to the aged. It was one of the great con games in the cosmetics industry. I suppose once this is published, it’ll be the end of the Desiree cosmetics empire, but frankly, my dears, I don’t give a damn. Desiree Cosmetics was bought by a Japanese combine four years ago, and my share (more than two billion) is safely salted away. I suppose I inherit Mom’s billions, too. but what in heaven’s name will I do with it all? Count it, I guess.
Desiree Leigh wasn’t her real name. She was born Daisy Ray Letch, and who could go through life with a surname like Letch? For the past fourteen years she’s been entertaining Alzheimer’s and that was when I began to take an interest in her past. She was always very mysterious about her origins and equally arcane about the identity of my father. She said he was killed in North Africa back in 1943 and that his name was Clarence Kolb. I spent a lot of money tracing Clarence, until one night, in bed watching an old movie, the closing credits rolled and one of the character actors was named Clarence Kolb. I mentioned this to Mother the next morning at breakfast, but she said it was a coincidence and she and my father used to laugh about it.
She had no photos of my father, which I thought was strange. When they married a few months before the war, they settled in Brooklyn, in Coney Island. Surely they must have had their picture taken in one of the Coney Island fun galleries? But no, insisted Mother, they avoided the boardwalk and the amusement parks—they were too poor for such frivolities. How did Father make his living? He was a milkman, she said—his route was in Sheepshead Bay. She said he worked for the Borden Company. Well, let me tell you this: there is no record of a Clarence Kolb ever having been employed by the Borden Milk Company. It cost an ugly penny tracking that down.
Did Mom work, too, perhaps? “Oh, yes,” she told me one night in Cannes where our yacht was berthed for a few days, “I worked right up until the day before you were born.”
“What did you do?” We were on deck playing honeymoon bridge in the blazing sunlight so Mom could keep an eye on the first mate, with whom she was either having an affair or planning to have one.
“I worked in a laboratory.” She said it so matter of factly while collecting a trick she shouldn’t have collected that I didn’t believe her. “You don’t believe me.” (She not only conned, stole, and lied, she was a mind-reader.)
“Sure I believe you.” I sounded as convincing as an East Berlin commissar assuring would-be emigres they’d have their visas to freedom before sundown.[i]
“It was a privately owned laboratory,” she said, sneaking a look at the first mate, who was sneaking a look at the second mate. “It was a couple of blocks from our apartment.”
“What kind of a laboratory was it?” I asked, mindful that the second mate was sneaking a look at me.
“It was owned by a man named Desmond Tester. He fooled around with all kinds of formulas.”
“Some sort of mad scientist?”
She chuckled as she cheated another trick in her favor. “I guess he was kind of mad in a way. He had a very brilliant mind. I learned a great deal from him.”
“Is that where you originated the Desiree creams and lotions?”
“The seed was planted there.”
“How long were you with this—”
“Desmond Tester. Let me see now. Your daddy went into the Army in February of ‘42. I didn’t know I was pregnant then or he’d never have gone. On the other hand, I suppose if I
“I don’t see anything wrong in delivering milk.”
“There’s nothing heroic about it, either. Where was I?”
“Taking my king of hearts, which you shouldn’t be.”
She ignored me and favored the first mate with a seductive smile, and I blushed when the second mate winked at me. “Anyway, I took time off to give birth to you and then I went right back to work for Professor Tester. A nice lady in the neighborhood looked after you. Let me think, what was her name? Oh, yes—Blanche Yurka.”
“Isn’t that the name of the actress who played Ma Barker in a gangster movie we saw on the late show?”
“I don’t know, is it? That’s my ten of clubs you’re taking,” she said sharply.
“I’ve captured it fair and square with the queen of clubs,” I told her. “How come you never married again?”
“I guess I was too busy being a career woman. I was assisting Professor Tester in marketing some of his
