Polterheist: An Esther Diamond Novel (18 page)

“Esther? Are you listening to me?”

“Uh-huh,” I said absently.

With luck, maybe Nelli could
smell
the Evil emanating from those two elves. Or something.

“In fact,” Lopez was saying, “until we know how widespread the problem is, maybe you should just avoid touching
anything
connected to the electrical system here. Light switches. The coffee machine or microwave in the break room. Elevator buttons.”

“
Elevator,
” I repeated, meeting his gaze when I heard him say that.

The elevator, the mechanical tree, the singing bear . . . Electricity was the common denominator in the incidents we knew about for certain. Maybe that was how we could narrow our search and locate the—the—whatever was here at Fenster’s with us, unseen but present. Could the entity be inhabiting the store’s electrical power system?

Lopez said, “Your friend Satsy’s reality was more than a little altered by the high-quality grass he’d been smoking before he got into the freight elevator, but that doesn’t mean the elevator didn’t really malfunction.”

“How do you know about that?” I asked, startled.

He gave me a funny look. “I was standing right there when Drag Queen Santa said the elevator had . . . Oh.” He realized what I meant. “It’s my job to be better at noticing things than the guys on the loading docks are at hiding them. Of
course
I know about the weed.”

“Oh. Right.” I nodded. I should have expected that—especially given that activity on the docks comprised part of his investigation. “Never mind.”

“Luckily for those guys,” he said, “I don’t care about it. I’m looking for a criminal conspiracy to commit armed robbery, not a few tokers.”

His cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, glanced at the screen, and said, “I’ve got to take this. Excuse me.”

I liked that he did that when he took a call. So many people just interrupted me without pause to start yammering into their phones, as if I were chopped liver. Having seen Lopez with his father, I could guess where he’d learned his good manners. (And having seen him with his mother, it was easy to guess how he had learned to exercise his patience.)

“Lopez,” he said into the phone. After a moment, he frowned. “
Now?
I thought—Oh. Yeah, okay. So how’s it going?” He smiled as he glanced at me. “Well, elves can be feisty, you know. Uh-huh. Yeah, I know who you mean. No, I don’t think so, either.” He listened for a few more moments, then said, “Right. Okay. Let me know.”

As he ended the call, I said with a touch of resentment, “Is there
another
trouble-making elf in the store today?

“Not exactly.” He took a breath and informed me, “NYPD has just started executing a search warrant of employee areas throughout the store. And the Russian elf . . .”

“Nutcracker,” I supplied.

“Well,
that
name sure fits,” he muttered. “Nutcracker was in the ladies’ locker room on the fourth floor when the cops entered and started their search. I gather she got a little hostile.”

“I have absolutely no trouble picturing that,” I said.

“But they’re gonna let it pass.”

I was annoyed. “Why am
I
the only elf that people want to lock up?”

“I am not touching that with a ten foot pole,” he said.

I realized what he’d just told me. “The cops are searching the locker room? The one
I
use?”

“Yes. Well,
all
the locker rooms. And all the break rooms.”

“You really think elves and reindeer are involved in the hijackings?”

“I’m more inclined to suspect Santas,” he admitted. “But that’s a personal prejudice.”

I gasped as I realized, “This means NYPD will be looking through my things!”

“The warrant’s very specific, Esther,” he said reassuringly. “You can’t get in trouble for anything they find that doesn’t connect you to this case.”

“Oh, thank you very much for your confidence in me,
Connor
,” I said irritably. “I’m not worried about them finding something illegal. I’m worried about total strangers pawing through my personal belongings! It makes me feel violated.”

“Do you want me to do it?” he asked.

“No,” I snapped. “Having
you
paw through my belongings—”

“I don’t
paw.”

“—would just be . . .
weird.”

“It would be a little weird for me, too,” he said. “So let’s leave them to it. Okay?”

“Hmph.” After a moment, I asked, “You really think one of us is involved?”

“I think it seems like someone has access to more information about Fenster’s procedures and shipments than is likely to be available to a short-term seasonal employee. And getting the inside person in position
just
in time to start pulling these heists seems too clumsy to match the skill level that’s behind this operation. Which is why I’m more interested in the permanent staff. But I could be wrong.” He shrugged. “So we’re running background checks on everyone. Which is a big job, given the size of the staff, especially at this time of year. It’s taking a while.”

“Background checks?” I repeated anxiously. “Um . . . that time I got arrested in Harlem won’t show up, will it?”

“No, there’s no record of that.” He kept his expression carefully blank. “I made sure of it.”

“Good.” In one of those little misunderstandings that can so easily arise when you’re confronting Evil, one night in summer the cops of the 25th Precinct had taken me for a prostitute who was disturbing the peace and assaulting people on Lexington Avenue. Although he had broken up with me several months earlier, Lopez answered my middle-of-the-night cry for help and ran the gauntlet of laughing cops to get me out of that mess. I added, “Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He looked over his shoulder to frown at Karaoke Bear as he said, “And now, on top of everything else, I think I’d better get a city inspector in here to check out the electrical system before someone gets seriously hurt.” He glanced at his watch and added, “First thing tomorrow. I won’t find anyone now.” When he caught my concerned frown, he prodded, “What?”

“Nothing,” I lied.

If something mystical was in the system, would it attack an intrusive presence—such as an inspector poking around?

“And we need to get Maintenance here right now to disconnect the bear and shut down this display,” Lopez added.

“That’s a good idea,” I agreed.

After he finished that call (and complained to me about how casual Fenster’s management was being about a prominent main-floor display short-circuiting and nearly injuring people), he said, “Stay here, okay? Keep people away from the whole karaoke setup, just in case there’s a dangerous current.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

He squared his shoulders. “I’m going to get rid of my parents.”

I was all in favor of that plan, but I refrained from saying so. I smiled as I watched Mr. Lopez’s little
perrito
walk purposefully across the store, his black hair gleaming under the fluorescent lights.

And that’s when a Christmas tree spoke to me.

14

“P
sst.
Esther!”

“Urngh!” I nearly jumped out of my skin and started coughing on the surprised shriek I swallowed.

“Whoa, are you okay, kid?”

I looked around for the source of that familiar voice.

“Over here,” said a tree at the center of the display. “No, don’t
look.
Act casual!”

“Lucky?” I said hoarsely, gaping at the tree. “What are you doing?”

“Hiding from your boyfriend.”

I looked over at Lopez, whose back was to us as he approached his parents. “Oh! Right.” I said to the tree, “Good thinking.”

“Jesus, look at something
else,
would you? Do you want him and his folks to see you talking to a tree? What are they gonna think?”

“Nothing they haven’t thought already,” I said wanly. I turned so that my back was to the Lopez family and pretended to be examining my costume for wear and tear. “I guess Jeff told you where to find me?”

“Yeah. I come to report our findings,” said Lucky, keeping his voice low. “I got here just in time to see the cop’s mom telling the guards to put you in stir. She’s a beauty, ain’t she? Got a temper on her, though.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lucky continued, “Wish I’d been here in time to see you drop-kick his dad. That musta been something.”

“Yes, if only someone had thought to take pictures,” I said. “Then I could share the moment with you.”

“Yeah, I been avoiding the elves with cameras,” said Lucky.

He was referring to the photo duty elves, whose job it was to capture the joy of Christmas moments in Solsticeland. (I had been permanently eliminated from photo duty after just half a shift; predictably, since I am not good with gadgets, I had mostly captured blurry images of feet or elbows.) The photos were uploaded to computer monitors on the fourth floor, where shoppers could order copies of their fun-filled moments for a “nominal” fee.

The old hit man added, “I don’t think anyone would recognize my picture in this beard, but it don’t pay to be careless.”

“Good thinking,” I said.

“So the bear went polter-scary on you?”

“Yes.” I realized Lucky had eavesdropped on my whole conversation with Lopez. I tried to remember whether we’d said anything embarrassingly personal.

“His old man calls him ‘puppy,’ huh?” said Lucky.

Okay, I tried to remember whether
I
had said anything embarrassingly personal.

Lucky added, “It’s nice that they’re still close.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the cops are searching the whole place now?”

I replied to the tree, “No, just the—”

“Don’t
look
at me!”

“Sorry.” I turned my back to him and gazed absently at the passing crowd—some of whom seemed to wonder why I was speaking into thin air as I said, “Just the employee areas, I think. For tonight, anyhow.”

“Hmph.”

I suddenly realized whose belongings were being pawed through besides mine right now, and I gasped in alarm. A nearby shopper gave me a surprised look.

I turned slightly toward the Christmas trees and said, “Lucky, please tell me the cops aren’t going to find anything, uh, awkward in your locker.”

“What am I, an idiot? I’m gonna bring my piece into a store that I know is crawling with cops who are investigating armed robberies that they’re blaming on the Gambellos?” He sounded offended.

“Just checking,” I said. “What about ID?”

A random patrolman might overlook the name of Alberto Battistuzzi if he checked Lucky’s wallet when searching the locker I had unofficially allocated to him today; but if any OCCB detectives saw that name, they’d immediately realize a high-ranking Gambello was in the store and masquerading as a Fenster’s employee. Lucky was famous in his world even when OCCB
wasn’t
quite so intensely focused on the Gambello family.

“You think I’d bring my
real
ID to a place infested with cops?” he demanded.

“Okay, never mind.” And, fortunately, it was very unlikely that anyone but Lopez, who was down here rather than searching the fourth floor locker rooms, would recognize Max’s name if his ID was in his locker. Which reminded me . . . “Where is Max?”

“Nelli needed to go outside for a few minutes. The doc asked me to check in with you while he’s walking her.” Lucky asked, “So what happened with the bear? It looks like it set itself on fire from inside.”

He was right. That was exactly how it looked.

I warned a curious kid who was approaching the platform, “Don’t go near Karaoke Bear. He’s having electrical problems.”

The boy’s father took his hand and pulled him away, giving me a nod of acknowledgment. I positioned myself closer to the platform so no one could touch it before I stopped them.

Then, not wanting passersby to hear this next bit and report me to a psychiatric ward, I turned toward Lucky’s tree and bent over, pretending to adjust my stockings and fiddle with my boot buckles as I described Karaoke Bear’s terrifying transformation.

But when I told Lucky my theory about electronic objects—or possibly Fenster’s whole electrical system—being targeted by the mystical activity, he said, “No, that won’t wash, kid. We had a very
non
-electrical experience up on the fourth floor a little while ago.”

“What happened?”

“You know Chérie the Chef? That nice doll on display near the menorah?”

“
Nice?
You think that doll is . . . Never mind. Yes, I know it.”

“I like her little kitchen,” he said. “I was looking at Chérie, thinking she’d be a good gift for a granddaughter.”

Sure. A Madonna-whore complex in a kitchen-porn apron.
Perfect
present for a little girl. Maybe we could throw in a pair of mink handcuffs, too.

Lucky continued, “Well, a nice gift for a grandchild if, you know, my daughter and that schmuck she married would get on the ball and start a family already. I’m beginning to think I’ll be in my grave before—”

“I just know there’s a point to this,” I said, in no mood to hear more complaints about my generation’s failure to produce grandchildren soon enough to satisfy our parents’ generation.

“Oh. Right. So I’m standin’ there, thinkin’ what a nice gift she’d make for a kid . . . and Chérie all of a sudden tries to turn me into veal piccata.”

“What?” I whirled around in surprise.

“Don’t look this way!”

I turned back. “Lucky! What happened?”

“Huh?” said a shopper.

“Nothing.” I waited until that person had moved on, then prodded, “Well?”

“All of sudden, from one second to the next, Chérie’s eyes start glowing red, and she grows these sharp pointed teeth that are dripping with her drool—and, Jesus, the
smell
coming from her.”

“A foul smell! Yes, I noticed the same thing!”

“
What
smell?” asked a shopper, looking ready to take offense.

“Merry Christmas!” I said. “Be sure to visit Solsticeland while you’re here!”

“Hmph.”

Lucky said, “‘Foul’ don’t begin to describe it. I’m tellin’ you, kid, I’ve relocated decomposing corpses that didn’t smell that bad.”

“Moving quickly past that point,” I said, “what happened next?”

“She picked up a little knife from her kitchen, and it got all glowy.”

“Glowy?”

“Glowy. And then it grew about five inches—big enough to send me down for the dirt nap, believe me.”

I believed him. He had more practical experience with lethal weapons than anyone of my acquaintance—except possibly Max. I looked across the store at Lopez, wondering how to explain to him that inanimate objects were arming themselves with deadly intent at Fenster & Co.

Lucky continued, “Then the doll—glowing red eyes, dripping fangs, big knife, and all—gives this sort of cackling screech and leaps through the air at me.”

“My
God,
what did you do?” I cried.

“Huh?” said a startled shopper.

“Nothing! Go away.” I turned and looked at the tree. “What did you do?”

“Whaddya think? I turned and ran.”

“What did the doll do?” I asked the tree.

“She ran after me,” Lucky said grimly. “Laughing and screeching and drooling—and trying her best to stab me with that knife.”

“Did people see this?”

“Nah. We were near the menorah. Who goes
there?
Not meaning to hurt your feelings or anything, Esther, but no one comes to Holidayland to see a menorah.”

“So there was no one around?” I asked.

“Nope,” he replied. “Things happened so fast. The doll turns into a monster and leaps at me. I jump and run. It chases. I run past that Viking mural and that big log, and I take a sharp turn toward Solstice Castle—where I bump into a whole buncha people, all standing in my way.”

“And?”

“And I turn around to fight the doll . . . But it’s lying face down on the floor now, looking normal again . . . except that Chérie’s hair is smoldering and her tiny little knife has melted.”

“Whoa,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said.

While I pondered this horrifying story, a child’s voice floated to me from the other side of the trees. “Mommy, there’s an elf hiding in there!”

“Oh? Uh, hello, Mr. Elf,” said a doubtful-sounding parent.

“Buzz off,” said Sugarplum, in a tone that prohibited discussion.

I thought of the little blond boy who’d been so frightened yesterday. “So Jonathan saw exactly what he thought he saw, didn’t he?” I mused. “Something with glowing eyes and claws and dripping fangs.”

“Yeah, I’d say that little kid gave you the straight dope on that.”

“I wonder if that grimacing gnome came to life?” I said. “Became animated. Got possessed. Whatever.”

“Well, we know from what happened with Chef Chérie that once they’re possessed—or whatever—these things are mobile. Mighta been the gnome. Mighta been a Santa dummy from the North Pole that chased the kid
into
the Enchanted Forest.”

“That poor little boy!” A shudder passed through me. “No wonder he was hysterical when we found him.”

“No kidding. I hope his mother leaves the lights on at night for him for a while,” Lucky said with feeling. “I’ve faced down some pretty scary things in my life, Esther, including three different guys who pointed a gun at me and pulled the trigger. But I swear, I don’t think I ever seen anything as scary as poltergeist Chérie. I’m a little amazed that I don’t need to change my elf shorts now, if you know what I mean.”

“So we know this entity, whatever it is, is messing with mechanical toys, regular toys, elevators, displays . . . Oh, and I think it might also be messing with people!” I told him my theory (half-baked, admittedly) about Naughty and Nice.

“Well, if they’re evil, then Nelli ain’t noticed it,” he said. “Those girls was upstairs earlier today, helping keep the fathers under control in the line to see Santa. Me and Max was casing that whole section of Gloomyland with Nelli at the time, trying to pick up a vibe. Our favorite familiar walked right up to those two elves without acting any different at all. One of the blondes is kinda scared of big dogs and the other one giggles a lot, but that was as weird as it got.”

“Hmm.” All right, if they weren’t possessed by something, perhaps they were the
source
of the trouble. “Maybe they’re causing the activity. Could they be the instigators, either consciously or unwittingly?”

“That sounds like a question for the doc.”

“I mean, those two bimbos seem like disturbed personalities to
me.
So if a poltergeist attaches itself to—”

“We’ll ask Max what he thinks.”

“Even if Nelli didn’t pick up on anything,
I
find it easy to believe those women are—”

“We’ll ask the doc,” Lucky repeated tersely.

“Huh? Oh. All right.”

“In fact, he should be here any minute.”

“What?” I glanced anxiously across the store at Lopez, who was still talking with his parents. I was relieved to see that they looked relatively calm now. His mother was straightening the collar of his coat, and he was nodding while listening to his father say something to him. “We don’t want Lopez to see Max here!”

“No kidding,” Lucky replied. “But when the doc and I decided to meet you at the karaoke bar—”

“It’s a bear, not a bar.”

“—we didn’t know you’d be busy entertaining New York’s finest. By the way, I thought you two broke up?”

“We did.”

“He don’t
act
like a guy who’s broken up.”

“More to the point,” I said, “he don’t act like a guy who’ll be happy to see Belsnickel here at Fenster’s. So we should take steps to prevent their meeting now.”

“Well, we can’t call Max and tell him not to show up. He don’t have a cell. And I can’t head him off, because I got no idea which direction he’s coming from,” he said. “So you’ll have to get the cop out of here right away.”

“How do I do
that?”

“I don’t know,” Lucky said irritably. “Show some ignition!”

“I think you mean initiative,” I said. “All right, I’ll see what I can do. Then you and Max and I should meet later.”

“How about meeting by the menorah?” he suggested. “It’s pretty private there, compared to the rest of Gloomyland.”

“No, I’ll probably be stuck in the throne room. With Karaoke Bear deceased now, I think Miles will want me to go back to helping Santa for the rest of the shift.”

“We’ll look for you there later, then,” said Lucky. “I’m gonna wait here for Max and Nelli, and then we’ll keep a low profile until the cops are done with their search.”

“All right.” I looked across the store again. Lopez was saying something to his mother, then he kissed his father’s cheek. That made me smile—until I realized he was saying goodbye to them. “Watch out, Sugarplum. Lopez is coming back this way.”

“Someone called for maintenance?”

I jumped at the sound of a voice right behind me and turned to find myself facing a guy in tan coveralls that had a Fenster’s logo on the shoulder.

“Uh, yes,” I said.

“The message I got was a little garbled,” said the maintenance man. “A bear fainted?”

“No, he short-circuited, and we’re concerned this whole karaoke apparatus may be dangerous.”