"Up On The Housetop (Bang, Bang, Bang!)"
(Context for Santa's Secret Weapon)
"Santa's Secret Weapon" was originally intended to be a short story for
Signals
from Noise, but took too long to unwind exactly as I wanted,
therefore it languished. The character of Boorman (or "the Rose", as he's
known to those who seek to capture him) was born during all the research I
was doing on the assassinations of the sixties. How his story became
intertwined with the background of a Christmas holiday in Columbus, Ohio
arrived from asking myself if these assassins I was studying ever felt
compelled to do something that might balance the scales after the
perpetration of their murders.
The story fell easily within the established parameters of the
collection: like it's fellows, SSW
treats a rarely wondered question beneath the greater implications of the
subject matter. Not "Who was behind the perpetration of the crime" but "Does
he struggle with guilt for perpetrating it and, if so, how does he handle
that guilt?"
SSW is about a contract
assassin who believes himself to be working in the employ of the CIA. In the
days before Christmas, he is summoned to Columbus, Ohio to kill a visiting
dignitary, but the job itself becomes the easiest part of his mission. More
complicated is his personal mandate to "level the scales" after (or during)
each and every job. This time, the opportunity presents itself in the form
of a single father trying to wrestle with gambling debts while raising two
daughters; the youngest of whom--Genevieve--is the only witness to "Santa's
Secret Weapon," if only in the sense that she's heard him, not seen him,
since no assassin can afford to be known, recognized, or otherwise observed.
To keep her from becoming a liability, she has only heard his voice,
pitched differently to simulate Christmas elves named "Mr. Smith" and "Mr.
Wesson."
In this excerpt, we arrive in the midst of the climax, after Boorman
learns that his "handler" intended to sell him out after this, his last job.
This revelation is no "spoiler" since we learn of the impending betrayal
early in the story. The more immediate question is how he's going to keep
this child's father from being thrown off a rooftop, while maintaining
virtual invisibility.
An Excerpt from:
Santa's Secret Weapon
"On second thought," he told Hudson, "get up.
You pack my stuff, so I can keep
an eye on you."
As Hudson set to his given task, Boorman returned to the window, arriving in
time to see someone on the street running toward the building from the east.
Once, the person slipped on the ice and went sprawling, but got up in
admirable time to continue without the slightest sense of caution. It could
be nothing, or it could be one of any number of assassins sent to box him
in.
By chance, his eyes fell briefly to the windowsill, where the toothpick
still rested over the thimble, one end up in the air and the other down.
Forget it,
he thought. There's no need, this
time. It was time to get out of here, to go home, pick up his own boy,
give him a kiss, throw him in the car and vanish into new lives.
He glanced back to see Hudson gathering various items and putting them into
the small bag they'd originally come from. There was just enough room in it
for the disguises of the priest and history professor, rolled tightly
enough. Sown into the lining of the latter disguise's jacket were his three
passports and forty grand in cash. He was still wearing the maintenance
coverall he'd grabbed and stuffed into the Santa suit before climbing out
the window at the Convention Center. He'd changed clothes inside the
Dumpster, set a quick bandage in place made of some paper towels he'd
grabbed from the same maintenance closet as the coverall, and then hauled
himself out of the trash (or lack thereof), limping away.
Now, down on the snowy street, a Cadillac was pulling up to the stop sign at
the intersection of an otherwise deserted street, and Boorman recognized it
immediately. From its backseat emerged two individuals, a man and a
woman--No, wait a minute: it was her. The older daughter of the guy they
were about to throw off the roof two floors above his own.
Boorman watched them both walk toward the corner. Apparently, the right
angle wasn't available from inside the car. Her escort wanted his companion
to see the show about to take place in her honor.
Boorman looked down at the Browning in his hand, feeling by the weight that
it was loaded; an effort by Hudson to reassure him until Coyle and his
tracker-conclave could move in.
You passed out,
Boorman reminded himself. That's how
they got you. "Are we good," he asked Hudson without turning from the
window.
"You're done. Your plane is waiting. I want to say I'm sorry we ended on a
down note, but--"
Boorman turned and shot him, but the mark was a little off and the bullet
only tore back Hudson's shoulder--fortunately the shoulder attached to the
arm of his own gun hand. The long-nosed .38 fell to the floor with a dull
thud and mercifully didn't discharge, even though Boorman never doubted the
safety was off.
Still standing, Hudson's
face went bleached-white with the realization that this wasn't going to end
the way he'd planned, with his enrichment via CIA cash. As Boorman proceeded
to limp away from the window, his ex-handler started to babble, "I was just
going ... I was just ... I didn't ...." Boorman put him out with the butt of
the Browning and brought the curtains down over Hudson, at least for the
time being.
Laying the gun on the table, he then set to looking for something warm to
wear. His coat was still at the Commerce building, but there was the
possibility of pulling off Hudson's, as long as he was willing to withstand
the pain it would require to kneel down and get it. As he made the attempt,
he felt two of his stitches open and groaned in pain. The silver lining was
the closer proximity of Hudson's .38, which he grabbed.
Fighting against the waning effects of the morphine, he stood and hustled to
the closet, where the rifle was stored. To the god of assassins, Boorman
offered a prayer of thanks for the fact that his hands worked just fine,
even if the legs couldn't say the same. Forced to build the rifle with only
one would've likely translated into one dead father and his teenage
daughter. That meant Genevieve, the little one, would end up in foster care.
To her advantage, it took him less time to put it together than it had on
the cold, snowy rooftop last night during unintentional rehearsals for his
role as the patsy.
Hitting the lights on the way back to the window, he plunged the room into
darkness and hoped he wasn't too late already. He wasn't, but he would need
to kneel again to line up the shot, and that act cost him two more sutures.
Biting his lip, Boorman actually drew blood, but didn't slow in his efforts
to lift the window. Eye to the scope and breath drawn in, Boorman focused on
the forehead of the goon holding the arm of (Name's) teenage daughter. She
was crying (and not as a result of the cold wind), both of them looking up
to the rooftop above him.
Good. That meant there was still time.
He let out half of the breath, finger tightening on the trigger, but stopped
short of pulling it. A noise ... somewhere behind him? He listened, trying
to keep his trigger finger from shaking in response to the fresh wound in
his back.
A voice? Not Hudson's; it was too soon. Was it his own breathing? "Figure it
out later," he suggested aloud, and then took another deep breath, again
letting out only half of it.
The sound of buckling tin from somewhere far distant serenaded his kill-shot
to the girl's captor, but when both of them went down, Boorman thought for
one icy second he might've gotten the girl instead. They'd both fallen
backwards and out of view behind the Caddy's front end.
Immediately, the driver's door flew open and the driver got out, running
around the front to see what had happened to his partner. Boorman's second
shot caught him in the back of the head, just as the girl was starting to
rise.
That just happened right in front of her,
Boorman thought, and sure enough, once the driver fell from his view, he
could see she was covered in his blood and screaming. But alive.
In the silence of the room, he stood, listening deeply and carefully for the
sound almost causing a tragic distraction. There was no buckling sound
inside the ductwork running along the ceiling, not anymore, but now he could
hear a voice, tinny and far away, but echoing through the ventilation duct
like haunting words mixed with sobs.
"Mis-er-esson ... missersmif ...
mistresson ... missawiff."
Mr. Wesson.
Mr. Smith. Nonsense only a child
would believe. Nevertheless, she was calling for him.
Boorman held onto the rifle and returned to the unconscious Hudson one final
time, bending to relieve the man of his cell phone. By the time he stood,
there were no more sutures left to keep the blood from flowing once again.
The Santa coat was laying on the table, the blood stains only visible
against the red material if you were standing close enough to observe them
under good light. Fortunately, the light in the corridor was terrible,
therefore it'd be practical to put it on before he went up to the rooftop,
in case anybody saw him along the way. The light in that hallway was so bad,
someone passing him might not even notice the blood, or his eyes, if the
hat's cuff of white fur was pulled down over the brows.
Hudson hadn't called Coyle yet, according to the sent-log in his phone,
probably because the handler wanted to hand over his valuable catch in some
other location, in order to maintain the secrecy of this safe-house
apartment.
Nearly tearing up from the pain, he pulled on the Santa coat, then the hat.
Unfortunately, he'd ditched the beard in ductwork while crawling through
when the wound was fresh and he was in rapid danger of losing consciousness.
"Mr. Smith! Mr. Wesson! The muggers
are gonna kill my daddy!"
Two units away to the east,
he realized, on his way out the door. Shouldering the rifle, he left the
apartment with no more than a glance in either direction. He could hear her
somewhere in the ductwork as he passed beneath one of the hallway
vent-grills. Stopping for one last listen, he could plainly hear crying now.
Putting the elf-like pitch into his voice, he called up to the grill, "Don't
worry, Genevieve! Santa sent his secret weapon all the way from the North
Pole to get rid of those muggers once and for all."
He was gone long before she could've scrambled to that specific vent-grill
in order to see Mr. Wesson, in the flesh; not that she would've ever been
foolish enough to try. She knew the rules. Like "Mr. Smith" had told her
yesterday from around the corner of one of those same ventilation tunnels,
"his kind" vanish whenever spotted by humans.
Keep the faith, little girl,
he thought, pulling open the stairwell door leading to the roof.
The last thing he heard as the door
whispered closed behind him ... was nothing--no vent-tunnel tin buckling
beneath the weight of a small child, no crying. It was the sound of nothing
but the hope of the innocent in the face of disaster, and it was all the
motivation he needed to get her gambling-degenerate father off that roof
alive.