"What are we doing over here?"

The Reptile took a quick survey of their surroundings. High wooden fence to their left, quiet subdivision homes beyond it. Nicholas Road about a hundred yards straight ahead. And running along on their right, the back wall of the Shepherd of the Hills Methodist Church.

The Reptile walked to the nearest window.

"What do you think we're doing?" he said, peering in at an empty cla.s.sroom. The tables and chairs were uniformly tiny, and toys and thin-spined books were stacked on low shelves. A banner on the wall said "JESUS LOVES THE LITTLE CHILDREN." A shudder ran through the Reptile's slender body, the chill coming either from the brisk winter air or the ghostly tickle of Sunday school lessons long forgotten. "We're looking for another way in."

The window could be opened outward, swiveling on hinges like a miniature door. But it was sealed tight with a latch on the inside. The rest of the cla.s.sroom windows were the same.

The Reptile moved on.

"Dude . . . dude, it's cold," Diesel whined as he clomped along after him, his boots seeming to seek out and land on only the twigs with the loudest snap potential.

"Hey, how about a little more stealth back there, Rambo?" the Reptile said. He looked in at the next room-a teen center, to judge by the foosball table, bean bag chairs and posters of pretty young men and women sporting the faux-scruffy look favored by whitebread Christian rockers. Again, the windows were sealed tight.

The Reptile invoked the name of the man whose birth they'd been celebrating in church-invoked it with blasphemous bitterness. After suffering through the Christmas service, he desperately needed a Kool. h.e.l.l, he could've smoked two just then, jamming them between his lips at the same time and sucking them down to their b.u.t.ts in seconds. But he knew better than to fire up his lighter within sight of the road. So he pressed on. When they were done, he'd light up a whole pack with a fifty dollar bill.

"We're getting pretty close to Nicholas Road, dude," Diesel said as the Reptile went striding past window after window, lock after lock. "Someone's gonna see us."

"Only if we're outside. That's why we gotta find . . . yes!"

A way in. At last.

They'd reached the end of the building, turned the corner. And the very first window they came to was open.

The Reptile peered through the gla.s.s at the room beyond. A shaft of light from a half-open door beamed in on a stack of dark, oversized folders and a row of golden robes hanging in a closet.

The window was only open about four inches, not enough to let in a person, just some fresh air. Scattered on the ground outside was an elephant's graveyard of cigarette b.u.t.ts. Apparently, somebody in the choir liked to warm up their lungs with a pre-service smoke.

"Finally. It's our window of opportunity, D!" The Reptile took hold of the edges and pulled. The window didn't budge. "Help me loosen this up."

The Reptile gave the window another tug . . . alone. When he turned to see why he wasn't getting any help, he found himself staring into an electric blue wall. Diesel's back.

"D? The window's over here, my man. Behind you. Attached to the building. D?"

"Geez, man . . . it's like she's looking right at me."

"She? Who? d.a.m.n!"

The Reptile jumped around Diesel, ready to keep jumping all the way back to his Reliant. There was a good forty yards of lawn between them and Nicholas Road, and the nearest street light was even further away than that, yet still he expected to see a car slowing to a stop, the driver gawking at them slack-jawed.

And there were indeed cars out there. But they were all zipping right along.

Diesel wasn't looking at them, anyway. He was staring across the road, across the ditch on the other side, across the long stretch of gra.s.s beyond it, at Shepherd of the Hills's compet.i.tion: Bethlehem United Church of Christ. Sitting in front of it was what could have been a henhouse surrounded by floodlights. Fuzzy figures huddled in and around the ramshackle wooden structure. From a distance, it looked like they were all draped in bathrobes.

"Her," Diesel said. "In the naivete scene."

"Who in the what?"

The Reptile squinted hard at the chicken shack. His eyesight might have been fading, but it didn't take strong eyes to figure out what was across the road. All that was required was a functioning brain.

"It's 'nativity scene,' D. And it's plastic. Or plaster, I don't know. Anyway, n.o.body's looking at you."

"But I feel like she is, you know?" Diesel said, his tone pleading, begging for his friend's understanding. "Mary. I feel like she sees me. And she seems . . . disappointed."

The Reptile blinked at Diesel as if he'd just sprouted wings and fired up a neon halo.

"d.a.m.n, D. I shouldn't have let you blast that roach when we left the house. Cuz I swear, you sound like you've got The Fear."

"It's not the pot. It's just that I've been thinking-"

"Well, there's your problem right there," the Reptile cut in. "You listen to all that preachy church c.r.a.p and start thinking, you'll get so spun-around dizzy you can't see straight."

"No, dude. I was thinking before we even went into the church. Like, when we were watching the cartoon tonight? And Linus starts talking about the little baby in swallowed-up clothes and the heavenly hostess singing the good news and peace on earth, good will to men? You know. Like, a second a chance for everybody? That's what Christmas is all about." Diesel nodded at the window the Reptile had been clawing at. "Not this."

The Reptile shook his head and waved his hands like a man trying to shoo away a fly intent on buzzing its way into his ear.

"No, no, no. Forget Linus. Lucy, D. Lucy's the smart one."

Now it was Diesel's turn to shake his head.

"She's smart, dude, but that doesn't make her right. What she's talking about, the rackets and all . . . that's what we're supposed to save ourselves from."

"What are you, a wise man all of a sudden?" the Reptile snapped. "Listen to me, Kenneth. You're just as dumb now as you were when you woke up this morning. So don't start thinking you can think. Leave that to the Reptile. Now get your big a.s.s over here and yank this G.o.d d.a.m.n window open."

The Reptile spun around, marched back to the window and started tugging at it again. He'd never gotten nasty with Diesel before. It had never been necessary. What the Reptile said, Diesel did. It pained him to be so harsh with D now, but what choice did he have? They had a job to do, and they had to do it quick. Mary and the other a.s.sembly-line saints across the road didn't bother him. But real flesh-and-blood people driving past in real steel-and-chrome cars-those were a worry.

"I don't like this," Diesel said.

"There's a little crank thingy for opening the window," the Reptile replied without really replying. "If we just get a little more of a gap here, I think I can get my arm in and reach it."

"I mean, I feel bad, dude."

"Well, you know what they say, D." The Reptile leaned back, pulling on the window with all of his weight. For the first time, he thought he felt it budge. "No pain, no gain."

"'No pain, no gain'?" Diesel said. "Alright. I can live with that."

The Reptile didn't hear him. He was grunting and growling with effort, convinced the window was finally starting to move. He leaned back further, still gripping the window like a mountain climber clutching a rocky ledge. Something snapped.

The window tilted upward. The Reptile sprawled downward. The ground stayed just where it was-which is why the Reptile smacked into it so hard.

He lay there a moment, flat on his back, breathless with both exertion and surprise. Far above him, luminous white clouds, backlit brilliantly by a hidden moon, blotted out all but a small black pond of night-time sky. A single star shimmered in the circle of darkness, its twinkling beams reaching out like tendrils straining to touch the earth.

Gazing up at its lonely beauty, the Reptile felt something inside himself shift, itch, grow. It started as an observation, turned into a doubt, then transformed into a question that shook his very soul.

Where the h.e.l.l is Diesel?

He sat up and looked around. His literal partner in crime was gone.

"You idiot!" the Reptile wanted to scream. "I've got the keys to the car! You're going to have a merry G.o.d d.a.m.n Christmas walking all the way home tonight! Do you hear me, you moron? You stupid freak!"

He couldn't scream all that, of course. Not without drawing an unwanted audience. So he took out his frustration on the ground, kicking and pounding at the frozen sod. It wasn't very satisfying. The terra was far too firma. The Reptile's fists and heels were aching after the very first blows, and it was quickly clear that he was hurting himself more than the innocent earth beneath him. He ended his tantrum and dragged himself to his feet.

The window he'd been working on, he now saw, was hanging from a single hinge. He'd managed to bend and snap the other one. The gla.s.s pane was dangling, loose. All he had to do was push it aside, hoist himself up, and he'd be in.

A miracle. Hallelujah.

And he was the only one there to see it. The only one with pockets to stuff full of money. All because Diesel let himself get spooked by some baby Jesus-talk and a factory-made Mary.

The Reptile turned and shot a spiteful glare at the nativity scene across the road.

"Thanks a lot, lady," he snarled. He couldn't tell if the hazy Madonna he was squinting at so furiously was plaster or plastic or Play-Doh. He just knew she was fake-in every way-and she'd come between him and his only friend.

A woman, he thought. Ain't that always the way?

He tried to think of a suitable blasphemy to throw in her fuzzy face. After a moment's thought, he settled on "'Virgin' my a.s.s." Then he whirled around, walked to the window and started climbing.

Just as he set a toe in the promised land, inside the church, he heard footsteps behind him.

"There he is!" a woman barked.

When the Reptile looked back over his shoulder, he was blinded by twin lights-flashlight beams aimed right at his face.

"Oh, yeah," a man said. "We got us a back-door Santa alright."

"This isn't what it looks like, officers."

The Reptile put up his hands. He didn't have to see the people coming toward him to know they were cops.

"Oh?" the male one said.

The Reptile felt a sudden pressure on his forearm, a jerk that wrenched his shoulder, and then he was on the ground again. Face down this time, his hands behind his back.

"Well, these aren't handcuffs, either," the male cop said. He snapped something hard and cold on the Reptile's wrists. "They just look like them."

They felt like them, too.

The cops hauled the Reptile to his feet and began steering him back toward the parking lot. The woman was reminding him of his right to remain silent, but that was the last right the Reptile wanted to exercise just then.

"It was him, wasn't it?" he ranted. "D! I can't believe it. I can't believe it! He ratted me out! After all we've been through together, he narcs on me! On Christmas Eve!"

The cops fell silent for a moment. Then the male cop spoke, sounding amused in a way the Reptile couldn't understand.

"And who would 'Dee' be?"

"Dean," the Reptile corrected incorrectly, struggling to regain the cold-blooded calm he thought of (also incorrectly) as his defining trait. "Just a guy I know. So he didn't send you guys over here, huh?"

The cops went quiet again. Then the female cop picked up where she'd left off, reminding the Reptile of his right to have an attorney present during questioning. And the funny thing was, she sounded amused, too.

They were sharing a joke, those two. And the joke was on him. Only he still didn't know what it was.

The punch line came ten minutes later. The cops had prodded him about "Dean" a few more times, brought the minister over to gape at him, let him freeze his a.s.s off in the back of their patrol car while they slurped hot coffee fetched by a choir member still in her golden robes. Then they climbed in and hauled him off to be booked.

The cops were relaxed, even jovial. Definitely not worried about any other "back-door Santas" still on the prowl. That meant the minister hadn't noticed he and Diesel were together, the Reptile figured. And whoever'd called the police hadn't seen both of them creeping around outside the church. So D might end up alright, as long as the Reptile didn't drag him into it.

And he didn't plan to. Diesel got lucky because all of a sudden he started caring that something seemed "wrong." The Reptile could forgive him for that.

After all, it was Christmas, right? Like D said-the time for second chances. You just had to be smart enough to take your chance when it was handed to you. Diesel could still redeem himself. The Reptile would be needing money for a lawyer, and New Year's Eve was on its way. The easiest day of the year to roll drunks.

As the police cruiser pulled out onto Nicholas Road, the Reptile scanned the darkness beyond the reach of its headlights, straining for a sight he knew his eyes were too weak to see. He imagined Diesel peeking out around a tree or cowering behind a car, his borrowed blue pantsuit turning him into a wall of shadow. Or maybe he was hiding in plain sight, the fourth wise man in the "naivete" scene. The Reptile smiled grimly as the patrol car pa.s.sed Bethlehem United Church of Christ and the phony little manger with its phony little savior.

And suddenly the Reptile, who'd always fancied himself cold-blooded, knew what it felt like when your veins really do turn to ice.

Up close, he could see that the manger wasn't small at all. It was nearly life-size. Which was appropriate, since the figures milling about around it were alive.

The shepherds, the wise men, Joseph, Mary-everyone but the baby Jesus. They were real people in costume. Teenagers, by the look of them. A youth group bringing the nativity to life on Christmas Eve.

Only they weren't in character any more. They were standing around in clumps of two and three, chattering, watching the cop car, pointing. The only one still in position was Mary, who remained hunched over the straw-stuffed trough that served as crib for their pudgy Cabbage Patch Christ. Her mouth was moving, though she clearly wasn't speaking to anyone the Reptile could see.

She was talking into her cell phone.

SPECIAL DELIVERY.

Me and Santa Claus, we got a thing or two in common. Not in the looks department, obviously. I look more like a shriveled old elf than your cla.s.sic jolly fat man. But the way I see it, Santa's a trucker, just like I was for thirty-something years.

Now, obviously, he ain't a trucker in your literal, Biblical sense. The man don't drive a rig and he ain't a Teamster-at least, far as I know. But he's the fella who gets the goods from point A to point B. The elves, they're the manufacturers. And the kids, they're the customers. And Santa's the man who brings 'em together. Just like a trucker.

You know, I even pulled a Santa one year. Worked a real Christmas miracle for the children of River City. Well, for a toy store in River City, really. And for myself. But it's a whopper of a Christmas tale all the same. They oughta make one of them cartoon shows about it, like the ones they show on TV every year. Fetch me over a plate of them nachos and another beer, and maybe I'll tell it to you.

Thanks.

So now let's say you and me climb in my magical time machine and go waaaaaaaaay back to that ancient year nineteen and eighty three. I had it pretty sweet in them days. My wife Bootsie, G.o.d bless her, she pulled in good money at the Lawn Devil plant. That was before they packed it all up and shipped it to Mexico, you understand. Back then, Lawn Devil brought good money into River City-and into our house. I owned my own rig, didn't work for n.o.body but myself, could do a job or not do a job as I pleased, more or less. Not many truckers have things that cushy. This was years before Bootsie got sick.

We were all set for our usual Christmas Eve. Bootsie's momma was gonna come over with a ham, we would give each other presents, the boys would get in a fight about who got what record alb.u.m and who got what poster and who got what T-shirt and what all. Then Bootsie and her momma and me would sip on some Fuzzy Navels and sing along with Johnny Mathis and Elvis while the boys sneaked out back to go kill a six pack with their friends behind the garage.

It don't sound like much, does it? But, boy, I miss it.

I missed it this year I'm talking about, too. Because the day before Christmas I get a call from Ivor Boraborinski. He and his brother Basil, they used to run a small transport company down around Evansville. Still do, now that I think of it. They're a bit on the seedy side, but not what you'd call outright shady.

Now whenever I got a call from a Boraborinski, I knew it was gonna be something interesting, because them two boys never stuck their noses into anything that wasn't. Every job with them was a double-rush long-haul ask-us-no-questions-we'll-tell-you-no-lies kind of deal, and it always ended up being a story. You listen real good to this one, maybe I'll tell you about the time they had me drop off a whole herd of reindeer at a danged mall!