He followed them out to the sleigh and helped them both into the front seat.

"I have to azk you," he said once Santa had the reins in hand. "At the North Pole, do you have . . . how you zay? Political azylum?"

"A xylowhat?" Santa asked.

Mrs. Claus smiled. "Get in." She waited until the tall Russian was settled into the back seat, then swiveled around to face him. "So tell me, young man. What can you do?"

The secret agent shrugged. "I have been a zpy for zo many years. All I know iz thiz Cold Var."

"You don't have any skills?"

"Vell . . . I do know one hundred and forty vays to kill a man."

"Oh." Mrs. Claus stroked her chin for a moment. "Well, maybe Rumpity-Tump could use some help in the stable."

"Ho ho ho!" said Santa.

The reindeer knew what to do when they heard that. So they did it.

NAIVETe.

"Look, Charlie, let's face it," said the little girl with the raven hair and the cold, unblinking eyes. "We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket."

The Reptile, a.k.a. Alvin Joseph Erie of River City, Indiana, snorted so hard Chivas Regal came out his nose. Which wasn't just undignified and uncomfortable, it was a sad waste of fine whiskey. But there was plenty more where that came from (and plenty already in the Reptile's stomach), so his mood wasn't dampened even though the front of his vintage AC/DC T-shirt was.

"You go, girl!" the Reptile croaked, voice phlegmy, puffy eyes watering, nostrils burning like he'd just snorted a line of Comet. "Testify!"

On the television screen, Lucy Van Pelt dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know," she told Charlie Brown.

"Right on!" the Reptile cheered, losing even more of his drink as he raised the "World's Greatest Dad" mug in his hand in a sloppy, scotch-sloshing salute. He turned to Diesel, who'd draped his ma.s.sive body over the living room's other La-Z-Boy recliner, and jerked a thumb at the TV. "See, D? What'd I tell you? You're not gonna get straight talk like that from no snowman."

Diesel (a.k.a. Kenneth Patrick McIntyre) kept his gaze glued to the TV, answering only with a "whatever" grunt that stirred some extra foam into the bottle of Bud Lite perched atop the round mound of his belly. There'd been three DVDs to choose from that evening-A Charlie Brown Christmas, Frosty the Snowman and (excavated from its hiding place at the bottom of a drawer of socks) Girls Gone Wild: Dormroom Fantasies Volume 2. They'd already watched the Girls Gone Wild DVD. Twice. After that, Diesel had voted for Frosty. But the Reptile cast his vote for Charlie Brown, which meant Frosty lost by a landslide. In the tiny, two-man democracy Diesel and the Reptile had founded six years before, "one man, one vote" was not the law of the land.

Necessity had first bonded the men together. They met in the Knox County Jail: Diesel a fumble-fingered would-be beer thief, the Reptile a pot dealer so far down on the drug cartel totem pole he wasn't really on the pole at all but merely part of the dirt on which it stood. They were the pettiest of petty criminals, together in a holding cell the very night the River City Police Department took down the town's biggest crack house and the crew of swaggering g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers who ran it. This being Indiana, these were Hoosier g.a.n.g.b.a.n.gers, and therefore lacking the serious street cred of their New York or Los Angeles counterparts. Which only meant they had something to prove. And there'd be no better way to prove it than grinding a couple crackers into crumbs.

The Reptile managed to keep himself and his new-found friend from the bottom of their cellmates' Reeboks by orchestrating a brilliant campaign of bl.u.s.ter and bravado (for the super-sized Diesel) and b.u.t.t-kissing and bootlicking (for himself). Ever since then, Diesel had let the Reptile call all the shots.

Many of which had been misfires. Though he aspired to be a Napoleon of Crime, the Reptile was, in sad reality, closer to a Custer. But despite a long parade of bad ideas and worse luck-the foiled highjacking of an ice cream truck, the successful (though ultimately unprofitable) highjacking of an Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, the oh-so-critical typo on the counterfeit "Ben Jovi" T-shirts they tried to unload at a concert in Indianapolis-the Reptile somehow managed to keep them alive and out of jail. Which had kept Diesel loyal. Up to now.

And now was looking pretty good. It was Christmas Eve, and they were enjoying a quiet night at home.

Not that it was their home. It actually belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Hettle, whose eldest son Arlo was one of the Reptile's most reliable (and, being perpetually baked, easy to short-change) clients. The day before, Arlo had dropped by the Reptile's dark, dank bas.e.m.e.nt-apartment lair to purchase an especially large bag of weed.

"I'm gonna be stuck at my grandma's in Jasper for four days with, like, my entire family," the stoner moaned, his droopy eyelids, wispy kid mustache and predilection for mouth-breathing making him look, as always, like a sleepy catfish. "Bro, if I run out of ganja down there I'm gonna, like, totally lose my mind."

"Don't worry, my man. The Reptile won't let you down," the Reptile replied, offering his customer an encouraging wink. "So . . . when do you leave, anyway?"

And Arlo told him, thus ensuring that his home would soon receive a late-night holiday visitation that involved not reindeer on the rooftop and a shimmy down the chimney but a spluttering Plymouth Reliant parked around the corner and a back-door jimmied with a crowbar.

"Oh, Lucy Lucy Lucy," the Reptile sighed, sinking back into the La-Z-Boy's marshmallow embrace. "Now that's the Reptile's kinda woman." A box of cigarettes rested in his lap, and he shook out and lit up his fifteenth Kool of the day. "Saucy little wench."

"Do you think Peppermint Patty's a d.y.k.e?" Diesel mumbled, still unable to tear his eyes from the screen. Anything he saw on television other than static and C-SPAN utterly mesmerized him, and only hunger, thirst and their related urges could pry him away when a TV was on. In fact, just a few weeks before he'd botched the Reptile's scheme for a s.n.a.t.c.h-and-grab jewelry heist at Target because he forgot to provide the pre-planned distraction-a bogus vet-off-his-meds freakout in Housewares-after he became hypnotized by a demonstration video for the George Foreman Grill.

The Reptile shot him a venomous (and completely unnoticed) glare. "Peppermint Patty's not in this one," he snapped. "And anyway, you're missing the point. That Lucy-she tells it like it is. That's why I love this d.a.m.n cartoon. Christmas is a racket. The stores, the guys who make the toys and cards and all that garbage, the b.u.ms they round up to play Santa. They all make money off it. They may as well call it . . . ." The Reptile racked his brain for something clever, but after a few seconds he decided that Diesel wasn't worth the effort. "Oh, I don't know. Cashmas. Cuz that's what it's all about, D. Everybody's just making a buck."

Diesel squirmed, looking uneasy in his easy chair, as if some weight deep in his gut had suddenly shifted. A concrete burrito. A chocolate brick. A soul.

"Not everybody," he said. "I mean, it means something to some folks, right? You got people giving gifts, giving money to the Salivation Army, going to church-"

"Oh, my man! You are so naive!" The Reptile sucked in a deep lungful of hot carcinogenic goodness, then blew the smoke out in a cloud that drifted between Diesel and the TV screen he was still staring at. "Churches are the worst of all. Tonight's the night they bankroll their whole year. They get people coming in on Christmas Eve all full of that 'season of giving' c.r.a.p, throwing big ol' wads of money on the donation plate to make up for the fact that they haven't been to church the last 364 days. It's just oil for the gears, D." The Reptile nodded and took a sip of Chivas Regal, pleased with his metaphor though he would've been hard-pressed to explain it. "Oil for the G.o.d d.a.m.n gears."

"Well," Diesel grunted. The word just floated there for nearly a minute, a bridge to nowhere. "Well," he finally said again. "You don't see me making any money off Christmas."

The Reptile misinterpreted this as a criticism of his leadership abilities.

"Hey, you got nothing to complain about. Free beer, free food, free Girls Gone Wild. We'll take the DVD player, the TV, the stereo-whatever we can fit in the car. We'll make out alright."

Diesel just shook his head, seemingly unconvinced. Independent thinking wasn't something the Reptile witnessed in his friend very often, and it threw him. He thought about his plan for the night, the Napoleon in him clamoring atop a tall steed to survey the field of battle. And he had to admit it. It didn't look very impressive.

They'd never had much luck with hot goods. The most valuable item they'd ever had their hands on (aside from the Weinermobile) was a mint-condition copy of Amazing Spider-Man #5, which was supposedly worth nearly $3,000. When they took it to the owner of a local comic book shop, he told them he knew exactly where they'd stolen it from and he wouldn't call the cops if they sold the comic to him for twenty bucks . . . in store credit. Their track record with electronics wasn't much better, and there was a very real chance that they wouldn't make enough from the loot in Arlo's house to order a decent pizza.

Diesel was right, the Reptile thought. Stealing stuff was hardly worth the trouble. They needed to give themselves the gift that keeps on giving.

Cash.

It was Christmas Eve, and a Sat.u.r.day night to boot. There'd be piles of money just lying around till the banks opened Monday morning. All they had to do was find one of those piles and rake it into a bag.

It was almost ten. What would still be open? Who wouldn't have guards and alarms? Where could they find lambs ready for the slaughter-preferably a whole flock?

And then, like a star going super-nova, a bright idea blazed to life in the Reptile's mind, and a not-so-heavenly choir belted out the Hallelujah Chorus.

When the Peanuts gang began "too-loo-loo"-ing their way through "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," signaling the impending ending of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Diesel finally glanced over at the Reptile, who'd been unnaturally quiet the last ten minutes. What he saw popped his eyes as wide as anything he'd ever seen on TV.

The Reptile was staring off into s.p.a.ce, the stubby b.u.t.t of a long-dead cigarette still in his mouth, his lips stretching toward his ears in a grin so intense it seemed to curl in on itself in pinwheeling spirals.

"Jeez, dude," Diesel said. "You look like the Grinch."

The Reptile hopped to his feet as fast as a man can from a La-Z-Boy at full recline. "Come on, D." Impossibly, his grin grew even bigger. "We're going to church."

The Reptile explained his plan as they raided closets in search of appropriate worship-wear. (The Reptile's AC/DC T and frayed jeans would surely raise eyebrows in even the most liberal church, while Diesel's camo gear and combat boots made him look like Sasquatch trick-or-treating as a Latin American death squad comandante.) Arlo's father apparently shared the Reptile's scrawny build and questionable taste, and a white linen suit from the Don Johnson/Miami Vice school of fashion was quickly drafted into service. Outfitting Diesel proved to be more of a challenge until the Reptile caught sight of a family portrait. Arlo's mother, it turned out, was what the marketing department at Lane Bryant calls "a real woman." Very, very real. Which is how her closet could produce a black "bigshirt" and an electric blue pantsuit large enough to contain almost all of Diesel's heft. The pant legs came to an end a full half-foot above the ground, but other than that the Reptile considered the ensemble a complete success.

"I don't know," Diesel said as he examined himself unhappily in a full-length mirror. "I guess it looks alright. But, dude . . . I'm wearing ladies clothes. It makes me feel weird."

"Don't worry. Long as you're not wearing a girdle you're still one hundred percent man." The Reptile tossed Diesel a tie emblazoned with the faces of the Three Stooges, no doubt a Father's Day gift from Arlo or one of his siblings. "Put this on. It oughta make you feel more manly."

Diesel did as he was told, but the tie didn't seem to rea.s.sure him. He was subdued bordering on glum as they left the house. The Reptile tried to buck him up by giving him a spliff the size and shape of a kosher dill. But after firing it up and toking it down, Diesel wasn't just glum, he was downright morose. That hardly struck the Reptile as strange, though, since morose seemed like an entirely appropriate att.i.tude for anyone going to church.

Just which one they were going to remained undecided. They'd seen two churches as they turned into Arlo's subdivision, a Methodist and a United Church of Christ that stared at each other across Nicholas Road like the Sharks and the Jets daring each other to step across a crack in the pavement. The Reptile didn't prefer one over the other. As far as he knew, Methodists and whatever the United Church of Christ people called themselves (United Church of Christians?) were equally blessed, socio-economically. So ultimately it was location and timing that determined which house of worship they were going to invade: They came to the Shepherd of the Hills Methodist Church first, and its ten o'clock service was beginning just as they arrived.

Diesel and the Reptile sauntered in, picked up hymnals and lifted their voices up to G.o.d.

Their singing was something of a burnt offering in the Reptile's case, as his voice had been so ravaged by Kools his attempts at harmonizing sounded more like gargling. Diesel, on the other hand, belted out the first hymn of the evening ("O Come, All Ye Faithful") with such a rich, pitch-perfect baritone the little old lady standing beside him turned to ask why he wasn't in the choir.

"I don't know," Diesel said with a shrug as the organ's last bombastic blasts faded and the congregation sat back down. "n.o.body ever asked me."

A moment later, the Reptile leaned over and pretended to point to something in the program he'd been handed as they strolled into the chapel.

"Hey, Sinatra-knock off the crooning," he whispered. "We don't want to be noticed, right?"

Diesel glanced down at the wardrobe the Reptile had picked out for him. Larry, Moe and Curly stared back up at him.

"Right," he said.

A black-robed, gray-haired white guy stepped up to the microphone in the pulpit.

"Friends . . . welcome," he intoned, giving the greeting an impressively Charlton Heston-ish gravitas.

For all the Reptile knew, the guy was Charlton Heston. All he saw was a multicolored blur with exceptionally good posture. The Reptile's vision wasn't what it used to be-ironic, perhaps, given that he made his living selling a folk remedy for glaucoma. He was in no hurry to have his eyes checked, however, since he had the same health care plan as most men in his profession, which is to say none.

"Let us pray," the Heston-blur said.

"G.o.d," the Reptile sighed, settling back and rolling his eyes heavenward. "Here we go."

The service that followed lasted approximately two weeks. Or so it seemed to the Reptile. He was a Lutheran by upbringing, if not inclination or practice, and he was disappointed (though not terribly surprised) to learn that Methodists don't s.e.x up their services any more than the church he'd stopped attending at the age of fifteen, when his weary mother finally started letting him sleep off his Sat.u.r.day night buzz in peace.

The Methodists sang the same songs he remembered. They did droning, call-and-response zombie chants just like he remembered. They did the irritating down-up-down sit-stand-sit low-impact aerobics he remembered. And they furnished their chapel with the same b.u.t.t-numbing, back-gouging pews he remembered, which were designed not for comfort, he theorized, but for torture. After all, the church elders wouldn't want anyone napping when the collection plate came around, would they?

For the Reptile, no such torture was necessary. Waiting for the offertory was the only thing keeping him awake. His battle plan was this: See where the deacons take the money, slip into the john or a closet or an empty meeting room, chill for a while, sneak back out, grab the cash, then return to Arlo's house to toast their success with Chivas Regal and Bud Lite. It was a scheme so simple, so foolproof, it made the Reptile truly sad that Christmas comes but once a year.

Before he could really put that scheme into action, however, he had to survive the service with his sanity intact. The hymns, the Bible readings, "The Lesson" (which is how the program euphemistically referred to the brief-but-not-brief-enough sermon)-all of it pa.s.sed by the Reptile unheard, unseen. His focus was turned inward, to the Girls Gone Wild highlight reel playing in his mind.

But eventually a sight appeared before him that was even more enticing than coeds with large b.r.e.a.s.t.s and low self-esteem: offering plates piled high with money. The Reptile had positioned himself and Diesel in the last row, the better to avoid notice, so by the time the deacons reached them the offerings had built up to quite a heap. And the heap kept growing larger as the plate for the Reptile's row was pa.s.sed from hand to hand toward him. He was taken aback at first when Diesel reached into his pantsuit, pulled out a crumpled ten and dropped it in, but by the time the plate was in his own hands he was admiring his friend's rare display of strategic thinking.

A deacon was hovering in the aisle, just to the Reptile's right-G.o.d's bagman waiting for the night's haul. The man might remember a pair of unfamiliar tightwads who wouldn't cough up a gift during the Boss's kid's birthday bash. And any "offering" Diesel and the Reptile made now was really to themselves anyway, since they'd get the money back soon enough, with interest. So when the deacon left with the offering plate, the Reptile's last twenty was perched atop the mound of cash he carried, the cherry on a plump, flaky green pie.

It wouldn't be long now before Diesel and the Reptile got their slice-the whole thing. The deacons gathered at the back of the chapel, then marched up the aisle together and piled their swag on the altar. There was a little more up-down-sing-sit-blah blah blah after that, but this time the Reptile didn't zone out with visions of topless college girls dancing in his head. His gaze was locked on the loot. It wasn't just going to ascend to heaven on a moonbeam or disappear in a puff of smoke. Sooner or later, someone was going to move it. And when they did, the Reptile would be watching-and preparing to act.

What he wasn't prepared for was what came next. He and Diesel had been handed small, white candles when they walked into the chapel an hour or so before, but the Reptile had no idea what they were for. He'd never seen anything like them in the services he'd attended as a kid. Maybe the church had faulty wiring or didn't pay its utility bills on time. The lights could wink out at any second. But later, he noticed a line in the program that read "CANDLE LIGHTING/RECESSIONAL," which was half obvious, at least. They'd be lighting up their candles at the end of the service. The RECESSIONAL part reminded him of "recess" from his grade school days, but he didn't think the congregation was going to divide itself into teams for a rousing game of dodgeball or Red Rover. Whatever it was, it was the big climax to the service, and he was anxious for it to come so he could move along to the business at hand.

As it turned out, however, moving along was the business at hand. The deacons lit a few of the little candles, and slowly the tiny twinkling flames spread throughout the chapel, pa.s.sed from person to person one flickering wick at a time. When every candle was lit, the minister said something about "spreading the light" or "spending the night" or "Lite-Brites"-the Reptile wasn't paying much attention to the words-before heading up the center aisle with the confident, purposeful stride of a prophet. The organist tore into "Joy to the World" with such gusto and volume it was clear she truly wanted the whole world to hear it, and people started to leave.

But it wasn't the rag-tag ma.s.s exodus the Reptile had been expecting, with some folks bolting for the doors while others just stood there chatting or waiting for the circulation to return to their lower extremities before attempting to walk. If that had been the case, it would have been easy for Diesel and the Reptile to linger, pretending to review a favorite Psalm while keeping a watchful eye on the offerings.

No, these Methodists were an orderly bunch, and they were filing out one row at a time-starting at the back. The families that had filled the pew across from Diesel and the Reptile's marched toward the exit with military precision, bright pearls of flame still glittering atop their candles. When the last of them was in the aisle, the Reptile found himself in exactly the position he'd hoped to avoid that night: the center of attention. The entire congregation seemed to be staring at him expectantly, even impatiently. He knew what they wanted, and he didn't want to give it to them. His mind was still racing, furiously searching for an out, when he felt the shove from behind.

"Jeez, go," Diesel whispered, sounding angry or perhaps even embarra.s.sed.

The Reptile went.

An ambush was waiting for him in the hallway outside the chapel.

The deacons were there, collecting snuffed candles in boxes and wishing everyone a merry Christmas. One of them locked eyes on the Reptile, obliterating his chance to duck out unseen and find a quiet corner to hide in. By the time he'd given the deacon his candle (along with the least sincere "Merry Christmas" the man would hear that year), the Reptile was just a few steps from the exit-which was blocked by the minister, who was giving each person pa.s.sing him a hearty handshake. Before the Reptile could dart away, the reverend's big, bony hand was reaching out for his.

"Hi," the Reptile said, giving the man's hand a shake as limp and quivery as a Jell-O crucifix. "Uhhh . . . good show tonight."

The minister froze for a few seconds, then chuckled. "Thank you. This was your first time at Shepherd of the Hills?"

"Yeah. I'm a Lutheran, really, but . . . you know. You gotta shake it up every now and then, right?"

The minister nodded slowly, a blank look on his face, as if politeness dictated that he show agreement with something that had just been said in Korean.

"Well, I hope you'll be back."

The Reptile smiled. "You can count on it, Reverend."

And then he was free at last. He drifted toward the parking lot slowly, expecting Diesel to appear at his side any moment. After half a minute had pa.s.sed with no D, however, he turned around to look for his friend.

Diesel was standing in the doorway talking earnestly to the minister and the little old lady who'd been seated beside them during the service. Behind him, the hallway outside the chapel grew more and more clogged with parishioners. The log-jam finally broke when Diesel shook the minister's hand, received a hug from the old lady and headed toward the Reptile.

"What the h.e.l.l was that all about?" the Reptile asked as Diesel shuffled up.

Diesel shrugged. "We were just talking."

"About what?"

"I don't know. Christmas. Church stuff." Diesel stared down at his combat boots. When he brought his gaze up again, he had an uncertain, almost shy smile on his face. "They asked me to join the choir."

The Reptile gaped at him-then nodded, his thin lips stretching into a grin.

"Good thinking, D. Now you got a reason to come back and scout the place out for us." He eyed the throng of church-goers still pouring from the chapel, most of them obviously anxious to become church-leavers as soon as possible. "We still want to hit 'em now, though. This is their jackpot night. I bet they usually don't rake in as much money in a whole month. Come on."

The Reptile headed quickly into the parking lot, moving along the line of cars closest to the church. Diesel followed, the polyester straining to contain his thick thighs shush-shush-shush-ing as he hurried to keep up.

"We can't go back in through the front door-not without giving a hundred people a close-up look at us," the Reptile said. "And who knows how long that old preacher guy'll be hanging around. So we gotta improvise."

When he reached the last of the cars, the Reptile shot a quick look over his shoulder. Only a handful of people had made it past the minister into the parking lot and none of them were looking his way. The Reptile pivoted sharply, veering right, and darted toward the bushes and shadows that lined the side of the church. It only took a few seconds of running to put him around the corner, out of sight of anyone coming out of the building or heading to their car. Diesel chugged after him, nearly invisible as he plunged into the darkness beside the Reptile.

"My man, you oughta keep that lady-suit when we're done with all this," the Reptile said. "It's better camo than your camo. I can barely see you."