Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

steel railing a few feet away swung around and grabbed both women by the arm. I glanced toward Jack just in time to see a man in a bomber jacket step into his path. The next moment the young man, taken completely by surprise, doubled over, and I knew he had taken a knife in the gut.

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and so that was the way I headed, vaulting over the steel railing outside the coffee shop and slip-sliding across the ice toward where Margaret and the woman named Alexandra were struggling with the man in the gray overcoat and the second man in the bomber jacket, who had come over to help. As I slid and staggered on the ice, with startled skaters swerving to avoid me, it occurred to me that these assassins, whether employed by BUHR or Lorminix, had probably been here all evening, mingling with the crowds, waiting and studying our routine while Veil, Sharon Stephens, and Margaret did their work for them, gathering in the lost flock, putting all this living evidence of the horrendous crimes that had been committed into one place where they could be more easily exterminated with a grenade or burst of fire from an automatic weapon. It was Alexandra who had been captured; when Veil had left with Sharon, Alexandra had been used as bait to draw out another guard, thinning our forces further; or, if Margaret hadn't gotten up to go over, it would have been Veil and Sharon who would have been ambushed, and I presumed they were probably being attacked now up on the promenade. And if I hadn't gone to the window to look out, I wouldn't even have known what was happening.

I was aware that it was probably a mistake for me to be scrambling across the ice, knew that my place was back in the coffee shop defending the greater number, but my reaction had been instinctive, and now I was committed to this course of action. Margaret Dutton was the most innocent of innocent bystanders, and she had shown great courage. She was my patient, in a manner of speaking, and if it hadn't been for Mama Spit and her faith in me I wouldn't have had a ticket to this dance in the first place. I couldn't turn my back on her when there was the likelihood she was about to be summarily executed along with the woman she had ventured out to rescue.

I was startled when the sounds of laughter and applause suddenly erupted all around me, and then I realized that the hundreds of spectators thought I was part of some special Christmas show, or a drunken dwarf who had seriously lost his way, or both. I kept pumping my arms, struggling to get across the ice to the women and the two men they were struggling with. Margaret was scratching at the eyes of the man in the gray overcoat, and he was drawing back his fist to punch her.

There was a flash of color and movement above them, and then I saw Veil vault over the wall of the promenade, plummet down through the air, and land with his feet on the backs of both men. At almost the same precise moment I felt a strong hand grab me by the seat of my pants and lift me in the air. There was more laughter and applause, but there were also scattered shouts and screams as it dawned on some of the brighter onlookers that this was no show, and that something was seriously amiss on the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.

Dangling rather ignominiously in the firm grip of the very unfriendly skater who held me, I thrashed and tried to get to my Beretta, but it seemed I was about to lose not only face and my free ride but also my race against death, for even as I wrapped my fingers around the stock of the Beretta I could feel the bore of my captor's gun pressing against my rib cage. I was about to take a bullet through the heart.

Then the man cursed, and the gun came away. I looked up and saw Santa, one arm resting behind his back, blithely skating right toward us. My captor cursed again and swerved to avoid the other figure, but Santa just swerved with him and kept coming directly at us. We collided-or, rather, Santa's forearm and my captor's mouth collided. There was the sound of breaking bone and teeth, and my skater and I were suddenly parted, with him going one way and me sliding over the ice on my stomach in the opposite direction.

My trip in that direction didn't last long. I felt like a hockey puck as once again a strong hand grabbed me, this time by the hood of my parka, swung me around, and began pulling me back the way I had come. I caught a flash of red suit and bushy white beard, and realized that now it was Santa who had me. Everything around me was a blur of motion, with panicked skaters racing in all directions. I felt as if I were spinning at the bottom of some old kaleidoscope filled with rapidly shifting images that made me feel dizzy and disoriented, somehow dreamily apart from everything that was going on around me. As Santa continued to slide me across the ice on my belly, I caught a glimpse of Veil across the way. He had knocked unconscious-or probably killed-both men he had jumped on, and they were draped over the steel railing. Now he was leading both Margaret and the woman named Alexandra back around the rink at the same time as he supported Jack, who was holding a hand to the wound in his stomach. We zipped merrily along, past the man whose teeth Santa had knocked out; there was another man, presumably a cop, standing over him and holding a gun to his head. There were other men with guns, but they were all dressed in civilian clothes, making it impossible to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

Sharon Stephens, her eyes wide and her mouth gaping open, was standing up on the promenade, her arm around a woman who was wearing a ragged green woolen cap.

Santa suddenly yanked on the hood of my parka, not quite breaking my neck, lifted me up a foot or so, and then hurled me ahead of him across the ice in the general direction of the coffee shop. I ended up sliding on my bottom until I came up hard against the railing. Santa was following after me at a leisurely pace, but then he abruptly skidded to a stop. His hand went into his suit, and when it came out he was holding a gun, which he proceeded to aim at my head-or a spot just above my head. People behind me screamed as Santa took careful aim and fired. I could actually hear the thwack of somebody standing at the railing directly above and behind me being hit by the bullet. There was a strangled groan, and then a man's body pitched over the railing and landed right beside me on his back, snow falling into his blank, unseeing eyes that stared up into the sky. The man, who was wearing boots, green slacks, and a heavy flannel shirt, was tall and gaunt. Even in death he kept a firm grip on the ice pick in his hand, which was embedded in the ice an inch or two from my right thigh; if not for Santa, that ice pick undoubtedly would now be buried in the back of my skull.

There were more screams as people who had been standing at the railing scrambled to get away. Seemingly unmindful of the pandemonium all around, Santa unhurriedly put the gun back into a pocket in his red suit, then picked up the lumpy laundry bag he had dropped on the ice and skated over to me. I found myself looking up over the beard and into a pair of soulful brown eyes that looked very familiar to me.

'Ho, ho, ho, little pilgrim,' Santa said. 'A Merry Christmas to you.

It was a drop-dead John Wayne imitation, and it meant that this particular Santa Claus was not pleased with me. 'GARTH?!'

Now my brother pulled off his stocking cap, which had covered his wheat-colored hair, stripped off his false white beard and bushy eyebrows. His eyes swam with feeling, both relief and anger, but his John Wayne imitation never faltered. 'That outlaw with the steel toothpick has been keeping an eye on you ever since you and your gang got here, Pilgrim. He must have figured you might have something he wanted.'

I tried to get up, slipped, and fell back on my rear, so I just sat there, continuing to stare up into the stern face of my brother, thoroughly astonished. 'Cut the John Wayne shit, Garth. What are you doing here?!'

It was still John Wayne who answered, which meant my brother was really angry with me. 'Let this be a lesson to you, Pilgrim, not to try to cut me out of something like this. You're real lucky you're not dead, you dumb little dogie. I should have let that ornery cowpoke Rogers put that frog-sticker in your skull; it might have improved your thinking. You think you're the Lone Ranger. Well, let me tell you something; I knew the Lone Ranger, and you're not him.'

'Garth, help me up, will you? You've made your point.'

His response was to abruptly drop his laundry bag into my lap, where it landed with rustling and clicking sounds as its contents shifted. 'Here's a little Christmas present for your friends, Pilgrim. Round 'em up and move 'em out. There's a string of ambulances waiting for you up at the curb on Fifth, and they'll take you all to the sawbones. I'm going to stay here and help Sheriff MacWhorter and his posse clean up this town.'

I started to say something else, but Garth abruptly wheeled around and skated back toward the center of the rink, which was still a scene of pandemonium and confusion. However, from what I could make out, the police seemed to have things under control, and they were handcuffing men. I sat on the ice next to Raymond Rogers feeling at once deliriously elated and eminently foolish. I opened the top of the laundry bag and peered down at its contents, what must have been upwards of a thousand large black-and-yellow capsules.

I glanced to my right, where Jack was being attended to by a team of paramedics. On the steps leading up to the promenade, Sharon Stephens and her lost flock were being escorted by Veil, Moira, and a half dozen uniformed police officers. I got to my feet, slung the laundry bag over my shoulder, and went after them.