"I don't know," Valerie said. "This feels kind of high. I don't like the way this feels. Maybe I need to go back into the house." Valerie turned toward the window, and her foot slipped on the shingle roof. "Eeeeee," she shrieked, flailing out with her arms, grabbing me by my jacket. "Help! Help!"
She yanked me forward, and we both lost balance, slammed onto the roof, and rolled off the edge, clinging together. We crashed into Diesel, and the three of us went to the ground.
Diesel was flat on his back, I was on top of him, and Val was on top of me. The whole family came running out the back door and crowded around us.
"What's going on?" Grandma wanted to know. "Is this some new sex thing?"
"If she jumps on the pile, I'm out of here," Diesel said.
"Call 911!" my mother said. "Don't anybody move... your backs might be broken." She looked down at Valerie. "Can you wiggle your toes?"
"You didn't unlock the bathroom," my father said to Valerie. "Someone's gotta go back up and unlock the bathroom."
"Frank! I told you to call 911."
"We don't need 911," I said. "We just need for Valerie to get off me."
My mother pulled Valerie to her feet. "Is the baby okay? Did you hurt yourself? I can't believe you went out through the window."
"What about me?" I said. "I fell, too."
"You're always falling," my mother said. "You jumped off the garage roof when you were seven years old. And now people shoot at you." She shook her finger at me. "You're a bad influence on your sister. She never used to do things like this."
I was still lying on top of Diesel, and I was sort of enjoying it.
"I knew you'd come around," Diesel said to me.
I narrowed my eyes. "I have not come around."
My pager buzzed at my waist. I rolled off Diesel and checked the readout. It was Randy Briggs. I got to my feet and went into the house to use the phone while Diesel went upstairs to unlock the bathroom door.
My father followed Diesel to the bathroom. "Women," my father said. "There's gotta be a better way."
I was waiting at the door when Diesel came down. "Randy's got a job interview," I said. "He's on the road. I have the address."
"What about the shopping?" Valerie asked.
"You have to shop by yourself," I said. "I have to find Sandy Claws. And why aren't you working?"
"I don't want to see Albert. I don't know what to say to him."
"I'm lost," Diesel said. "What's Albert got to do with working?"
"He's Valerie's boss."
"This is like watching daytime television," Diesel said.
"Look at you," my mother said to me. "It's almost Christmas and you're not wearing anything red." She took a Christmas tree pin off her shirt and attached it to my jacket. "Have you bought your tree yet?" she asked.
"I haven't had time to get a tree."
"You have to make time," my mother said. "Before you know it your life will be over and you'll be dead and then what?"
"You have a tree," I said. "Why can't I use yours?"
"Boy, you don't know much," my grandmother said.
Diesel was standing back on his heels, hands in his pockets, smiling, again.
"Go to the car," I said to Diesel. "And stop smiling."
"It's Christmastime," Diesel said. "Everybody smiles at Christmastime."
"Wait right here," my mother said. "Let me pack you a bag for lunch."
"No time," I said to my mother. "I need to get moving."
"It'll only take a minute!" She was already in the kitchen, and I could hear the refrigerator open and close and drawers open and close. And my mother returned with a bag of food.
"Thanks," I said.
Diesel looked in the bag and extracted a cookie. "Chocolate chip. My favorite."
I had a feeling every cookie was Diesel's favorite.
When we were both in the car, I turned to Diesel. "I want to know about you."
"There isn't a lot to tell. If I hadn't gotten dropped into your kitchen we wouldn't be having this conversation. If you met me on the street you'd think I was just another guy."
"So you're strong and can open locks. Anything else you're especially good at?"
Diesel smiled at me.
"All men think that," I said.
Diesel pulled onto Hamilton Avenue and turned left. "What happens when you find Claws?"
"I hand him over to the police. Then my cousin Vinnie probably goes to the lockup and bails Claws out a second time."
"Why would Vinnie do that?"
"He gets paid more money. Claws has a local business, and he's signed his house over for security, so it's a good risk for Vinnie."
"And what if Claws doesn't want to be handed over to the police? Do you shoot him?"
"I hardly ever shoot people."
"This should be fun," Diesel said.
I cut my eyes to him. "Is there something you're not telling me?"
"Lots of things."
I put my finger to my lower lid.
"You have a problem?" he asked.
"Eye twitch."
"I bet that would go away if you got a Christmas tree."
"All right. Okay! I'll get a Christmas tree."
"When?"
"When I have time. And you're driving too slow. Where'd you learn how to drive, Florida?"
Diesel stopped the car in the middle of the road. "Take a deep breath."
"What are you doing? Are you nuts? You can't just stop in the middle of the road!"
"Take a deep breath. Count to ten."
I took a breath, and I counted to ten.
"Count slower," Diesel said.
The guy behind us honked his horn, and I cracked my knuckles. My eye was twitching like mad. "This isn't working," I said. "You're giving me heart palpitations. People in Jersey don't do slow down."
"We're sitting in traffic," Diesel said. "Notice that the car in front of us is less than a car length away and not moving. The only way to drive faster would be to drive on the sidewalk."
"What's your point?"
"I can't fit on the sidewalk."
"So do something supernatural," I said. "Can't you tip the car sideways or something? They do that in the movies all the time."
"Sorry, I flunked levitation."
My luck, I get a guy who flunked levitation.
Twenty minutes later, we parked across from a hole-in-the-wall storefront office. The makeshift sign in the window advertised IMMEDIATE OPENINGS FOR MASTER TOY MAKERS. I wanted to take a closer look, so we left the car and crossed the street.
We stood on the sidewalk and looked through the dusty plate-glass window. Inside, the place was wall-to-wall little people.
"Are they elves?" I asked Diesel. "I don't see any pointy ears."
"Hard to tell at this distance, and I heard somewhere that elves don't necessarily have pointy ears."
"So elves could be walking around in our midst, disguised as normal, everyday, vertically challenged citizens."
Diesel looked at me and grimaced. "You don't really believe in elves, do you?"
"Of course not," I said. But the truth was that I didn't know what I believed in anymore. I mean, what the hell was Diesel? And if I believed in Diesel... why not believe in elves? "Do you see Briggs?" I asked him.
"He's at the back, talking to a big guy with a clipboard. And I don't see Claws."
We watched for a moment longer and then retreated to the Jag and worked our way through my mother's food bag. After a while Randy Briggs came out, walked halfway down the block, and got into the passenger side of a waiting car. The car pulled away, and we followed. Before we'd gone two blocks my cell phone buzzed in my bag.
"Cripes, is that you behind me in the Jag?" Briggs asked. "You bounty hunters must do okay to be riding around in a Jag."
"Diesel isn't a bounty hunter. He's an alien or something."
"Yeah, whatever. Man, I've never seen so many little people in one place. It was like they came out of the woodwork. I tho
ught I knew everyone in the area, but I didn't know any of these guys."
"Did you get hired?"
"Yeah, but I'm not going to make toys. I got a job in the office, setting up a Web site."
"What about Claws?"
"Didn't see him. No one said anything to me about anyone named Claws. I start work tomorrow. Maybe I'll see him at the factory."
"Factory?"
"Yeah, that's what this is... a small toy factory. They're going to make handmade toys and advertise that they were made by elves. Pretty cool, hunh?"
"Do you suppose some of these little people today actually were elves?"
There was a pause where I could imagine Briggs staring open-mouthed at the phone. "What are you, nuts?" he finally said.
"So, where is this factory?" I asked Briggs.
"It's in a light industrial complex off Route 1. You aren't going to screw up this job for me, are you? This is a dream job. The pay is good and the guy who hired me said the toilets are all made for little people. I won't have to climb up on a stool to take a crap."
"I'm not going to screw it up for you. What's the address?"
"I'm not telling you. I don't want to lose the job." And he hung up.
I looked over at Diesel. "When the car in front of us stops and Briggs gets out, I want you to run over him."
"I'd really like to do that, but then he'd probably be dead and we couldn't follow him to work tomorrow."
I glanced at the almost empty bag of food sitting between my feet, and I had an idea.
"What does Elaine do with all her cookies?" I asked Diesel.
"Is this a trick question?"
"She said she bakes cookies every day. Lots of cookies, if yesterday's batch was any indicator. So what does she do with them? They don't have family in the area. Sandy wasn't at home. Does she eat them all herself?"
"Maybe she gives them away."
"Turn around," I said. "Go back to the employment place."
It took less than five minutes for us to get back to the storefront office. "Wait here," I said. "I'll only be a minute." I jumped out of the car, ran across the street and into the office. It was still wall-to-wall little people but now the little people were all wearing fake elf ears. I was about ten feet into the fake elves when I realized the room had gone dead silent.
"Hi," I said brightly. "I saw the sign in the window, and I'd like to apply for a job."
"You're too big," someone said behind me. "These jobs are for elves."
"That's not fair," I said. "I could report you for height discrimination." I wasn't sure exactly who was in charge of height discrimination, but it seemed like there should be some agency somewhere that would address the issue. I mean, where are the protections for the masses? Where are the protections for people who are average?
"We don't want your kind here," someone else said. "Get out."
"My kind?"
"Big and stupid."
"Hey! Listen to me, shorty—"
A cookie came flying through the air and hit me in the back of the head. I looked down at the cookie. Gingerbread!
"Where'd this cookie come from?" I asked. "Do you have any more? Did Sandy's sister, Elaine, make this cookie?"
"Get her!" someone yelled, and I was hit with a barrage of cookies. They were coming from everywhere. Gingerbread, peanut butter, chocolate macaroons. The elves were berserk, yelling and swarming around me. I was hit in the forehead with an iced butter cookie, and someone bit me in the back of the leg. I had elves hanging on me like ticks on a dog.
I felt Diesel come up hard to my back. He wrapped his arm around me, holding me tight against him, and he hauled me out of there with my feet two inches off the ground. He was kicking elves out of the way as he went, occasionally grabbing one by the shirt and throwing him across the room. He got to the sidewalk, rammed the office door closed, and did his magical locking thing, trapping the elves inside.
Contorted little elf faces smushed up against the large glass windows, glaring out at us, yelling elf threats, their pudgy little elf middle fingers extended. Inside, the room was a wreck. Tables and chairs were overturned, and cookies were smashed everywhere.
Diesel set me on my feet, took me by the hand, and yanked me to the car. "What the hell was that about?" he asked. "I've never seen anything like it. A whole room filled with pissed-off little people. It was fucking frightening."
"I think they were elves. Did you see their ears?"
"Their ears were fake," Diesel said.
I slid onto the passenger seat and a sigh escaped. "I know. I just don't want to have to tell anyone I was attacked by a horde of angry little people. A horde of angry elves sounds better, somehow."
A fake elf smashed through the plate-glass door with a fire ax, and Diesel took off.
"Did you see the cookies?" I asked him. "They looked just like Elaine's cookies."
"Honey, all cookies look alike."
"Yes, but they might have been Elaine's cookies."
My cell phone chirped. "I'm at the mall," Valerie said, "and I need help. I can't remember everything that was on Mary Alice's list. I got her the Barbie, the television, the game, and the ice skates. I have the train and the computer at home. Do you remember what else she wanted?"
"How are you going to pay for all that?"
"MasterCard."
"It'll take you five years to pay it off."
"I don't care. It's Christmas. You have to do these things at Christmas."
Oh yeah. I kept forgetting. "Mary Alice had about fifty things on that list. The only one I remember is the pony."
"Omigod," Valerie cried. "The pony! How could I forget the pony?"
"Val, you can't get her a pony. This isn't Little House on the Prairie. We live in Trenton. Kids in Trenton don't get ponies."
"But she wants one. She'll hate me if I don't get her a pony. It'll ruin her Christmas."
Boy, I was really glad I had a hamster. I was planning on giving Rex a raisin for Christmas.
I hung up on Valerie, and I turned to Diesel. "Do you have any kids?"
"No."
"How do you feel about kids?"
"The same way I feel about fake elves. I think they're cute from a distance."
"Suppose you wanted to have kids... could you reproduce?"
Diesel looked over at me. "Could I reproduce? Yeah, I guess I could." He gave his head a shake. "I have to tell you, I am never again going to let anyone pop me in on someone. It's too weird. Not that this was my idea in the first place." He reached across me, into the bag my mother gave us, and found a leftover brownie. "Usually women are asking me to buy them a beer. Not you. You're asking me if I can reproduce."
"Make a turn at Clinton," I told him. "I want to have another chat with Elaine."
It was midafternoon and unusually gloomy when Diesel drove down Grape Street. Dark clouds swirled in the sky, and an eerie green light streaked through them. The air felt heavy and ominously charged. Doomsday air.
Lights were on in houses, and Elaine had her roof lights blazing, blinking out her season's greetings. Diesel parked in front of the house, and we both got out. The wind had picked up, and I pulled my chin in and walked head down to Sandy Claws' front porch.
"I'm very busy," Elaine said when she answered the door.
Diesel brushed past her, into the house. "It smells like you're still baking cookies."
Elaine followed Diesel into the kitchen, half running to keep up with Diesel's stride. "Pecan shortbread for tomorrow," she said. "And big cookies with M&Ms in them."
"I'm curious," Diesel said. "Who eats all these cookies?"
"The elves, of course."
Diesel and I exchanged glances.
"They're not really elves," Elaine said. "Sandy just likes to call them that. His little elves. Sandy is so clever. He has a whole scheme worked out to sell toys. It's because of his name, Sandy Claws. Have you noticed how it sounds like Santa Claus?"
"How many elves are you feeding?" Diesel asked
Elaine.
"Goodness, I don't know, but there must be a lot of them. I make dozens of cookies every day."
"And they go where?"
"I don't know, exactly. Lester stops around and picks them up. Lester is Sandy's production manager."
"About five-foot-ten? Gray hair, slim, dark-rimmed glasses?" Diesel asked.
"Yes. That's him," Elaine said.
The guy who was interviewing elves.
"I don't mean to be rude," Elaine said, "but you're going to have to leave now. I have to finish my baking."
"You don't mind if I look around, do you?" Diesel asked.
Elaine nervously picked at her apron. "I don't see why you would want to do that. Sandy isn't here."
Diesel opened the door to a small downstairs powder room and looked inside. "Are you sure you don't know where Sandy is?"
"Stop that!" Elaine said. "Stop snooping in my house. I'm going to call the police."
"We have a legal right to search this house," Diesel said. "Isn't that right, Steph?"
"Yep. We received that right when your brother signed his bond agreement."
"This whole thing is so silly," Elaine said. "All over a couple power tools and some paint. And Sandy wouldn't have had to steal anything if the store had been open. You can't stop a whole production line just because you run out of Morning Glory paint. And everyone knows elves work at night. My goodness, Sandy has enough labor problems without having a whole crew sit out until the stores open at nine A.M."
"I thought they weren't actually elves."
"Real elves, fake elves... what's the difference? They all get time and a half after five o'clock."
Diesel leaned against the kitchen counter, arms crossed over his chest. "When was the last time you talked to Sandy?"
"He called me at lunchtime." Elaine pressed her lips together.
"Did you tell him I was looking for him?"
"Yes." Elaine glanced at me and then looked back at Diesel. "I've been trying to be discreet in front of Ms. Plum."
"Too late for that," Diesel said. "I was dropped into her kitchen."
Elaine looked horrified. "How did that happen?"
Diesel did a palms up and an I don't know shrug. "It would have to be a team effort. I'm not easy to move."
Elaine wiped her hands on her apron. "I'm sorry, but Sandy doesn't want to talk to you. He wants to be left alone."