Santa at the Roundtable

Santa at the Roundtable

               In his nearly fifty years of existence, Scott Lazlon had never been at a loss for words. He had been blessed with the gift of gab, the power of persuasion. His mother (as well as more than a few women he had taken to bed) always told him he had one hell of a “talented tongue”, that he could convince anyone the sky was black or that cats barked instead of meowed. He thought that was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. But as he sat at the conference table in the office that had been twenty years in the making, Scott Lazlon was completely, undeniably speechless.

               “Any thoughts on that, genius?”

               Scott stared up into the face of the wild-eyed, chubby Santa Claus. Or at least a man dressed as Santa Claus. The man in question was sporting the full get-up: polished black boots, red velvet suit, complete with a shiny brass belt buckle and a hat with a furry white ball on the end. Although the man’s beard, a thick, unkempt mess of white and gray that hung halfway down his whisky-barrel of a chest, was one-hundred percent authentic. Even the flecks of fresh, bright red blood spattered across it were real.

               Scott tried to speak, but all that came out was a weak croak. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I-I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

“Well clean out your ears, fuck-face, and listen up,” said the psycho Santa.

But Scott couldn’t listen. All his attention was focused on the open door of the conference room, and the waiting area beyond. Cassie Mills, an intern who was working on her Law degree at Penn State, lay face down on the carpet beside the secretary’s desk. Well, Scott thought sickly, not exactly face down; her face was gone, along with the rest of her head. The huge artificial tree that had been set up for the annual Christmas party towered over her, its lights flickering, casting blue and red and yellow shadows on the wall. Scott felt his stomach do a cartwheel as he noticed a chunk of pink brain matter sliding down the checkered wallpaper like an inching slug.

“Ladies and gentleman!” the psycho Santa announced. “I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve decided to interrupt your lavish office party on tonight of all nights, when I’m supposed to be out on my sleigh, delivering presents to all the good little boys and girls across the world.” The psycho Santa laughed, a deep, raspy bellow that sent chills down the nape of Scott’s neck. The Santa wiped a tear from the corner of an eye the icy color of pressed steel. There was no jolliness in those eyes, only a glazed-over lunatic insanity. Scott could smell the booze from across the room. The man reeked of it. “So I won’t keep you waiting.”

There was a pause as the psycho Santa strolled merrily across the front of the conference room to the computer that was connected to the projector screen, which was currently playing a slideshow of pictures commemorating the stellar year Brown & Lazlon had had. The current picture showed Scott shaking the gnarled hand of a smiling bald man in a wheelchair. Scott remembered that man. The jury had awarded him seven million dollars in a lawsuit against the nuclear company he had been fired from after fifteen years of dedicated service, with nothing more than prostate cancer as a severance package. Brown & Lazlon had raked in half of that payout. Three-and-a-half million dollars, the biggest lawsuit Scott had ever won. And so what the guy died three months later? His kids were set for life. More importantly, Scott had finally been able to buy that new Range Rover he had had his eye on.

The picture vanished from the screen as the psycho Santa took control of the computer. As he typed away on the keyboard, the military-style shotgun he had taken Cassie Mills’s head off with resting on his enormous gut, Mike Brown spoke up.

“If what you want is money,” Mike said, “that can be arranged. You can have more than you ever dreamed of.” Mike looked sidelong at Scott. His eyes were two full-moons behind the lenses of his expensive Gucci glasses. Mike had played linebacker at Syracuse University in the eighties. His class ring, a big gold band with silver diamonds and an orange “S” encrusted on top, chattered against the surface of the table. Fine beads of sweat trickled down his forehead.

The psycho Santa stopped typing abruptly, one hand hovering above the keyboard, the other wrapped around the stock of the shotgun. He turned his head slowly toward Mike, a sly grin on his lips. “It’s all about the money with you people, huh? That’s all you care about.” Suddenly he shot ramrod straight and marched to the back of the room where Jill Jacobs was sitting with her head bowed, her meticulously curled blonde hair hanging around her face. She saw the psycho Santa approaching and jumped back quick enough for her chair to slide across the tile floor. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard to Scott’s ears.

“Hey little lady!” the psycho Santa shouted. “Whaddya call a hundred lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?”

Jill, who had been an attorney at Brown & Lazlon for seven years, looked around the room with wide eyes that rattled in the sockets. She looked back at the psycho Santa. Her lower lip trembled when she spoke. “What? I-I’m not—“

“A good fuckin’ start!” the psycho Santa screamed, and smacked the table. He laughed, ho-ho-hoeing just like jolly old St. Nick himself. Jill shrieked and jumped in her seat, sliding the chair back another half-foot. Black mascara-tears began rolling down her cheeks.

“Please!” Jill cried. “I have a daughter! She’s only three!”

The psycho Santa took a step back, his face growing solemn. “Oh my. In that case, you can go.”

Everyone seated around the huge oval conference table-Pete Mayes, Albert Brockshire, Karen Howard, the secretary- stared at one another, perplexed. Jill looked most confused of all. “What?”

“Sure,” the psycho Santa agreed amicably. He held out his hand, inviting her to leave. “Go be with your daughter. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”

Jill took another quick glance around the room, then slowly, reluctantly, stood up. Her chair uttered another shrill squeak. Jill smoothed out her too-tight skirt and turned to the psycho Santa, sobbing and sniffling. “Thank you,” she said, and headed for the door that led to the waiting area.

Scott saw it coming before it happened, but he still could not believe his eyes.

As Jill approached the doorway, the psycho Santa raised the shotgun, took aim, and fired.

The spray of pellets hit the back of Jill’s head. Her skull exploded like a cantaloupe and she dropped face-first, where she lay in almost the exact same position as poor Cassie Mills.

“Hallelujah!” the psycho Santa praised, and danced a little jig. He pumped the shotgun. The discarded shell fell to the floor, tinkling as it rolled across the tile and underneath the table. “Anyone else wanna go home to the kiddos?”

There were shouts and sobs. Scott looked at Mike, seated to his right, and Scott could almost read his mind. They had been best friends since college, had started the firm together, and thus had the twin-like ability to know what the other was thinking. We have to act, that thought said. And soon.

Scott scanned the room, his brain kicking into overdrive. He looked around at all the terrified faces of his friends and coworkers, really the only people left in his life. His wife was down in Florida, probably getting barebacked by the new hubby. His son lived in Connecticut and rarely called, never visited. No, the people in this room were the closest thing to family he had, and he would not allow another one of them to be murdered by this deranged animal. Not if he could help it. He looked out across the table, the polished oak shining like fresh paint under the bright fluorescents, and his eye caught on the paperweight.

It was a golden replica of the famous sculpture, “The Thinker”, a man sitting hunched over, supposedly in deep thought, with his chin rested on his fist. Scott couldn’t remember where it had come from, or how long it had been sitting on the conference room table. It wasn’t very big, perhaps four or five inches tall, but it was heavy. And solid. Scott saw Mike notice it too, and another telepathic thought passed between the two of them.

When the time is right.

The psycho Santa had made his way back to the computer, and after a few brisk clicks of the keyboard, an image appeared on the projector screen. At once, Scott knew who this man dressed as Santa Claus was. The last time he had seen him, the man had been clean-shaven and at least thirty pounds lighter, so Scott hadn’t recognized him. Now he did. Boy, did he ever.

The image was a high-school graduation picture of a young man with a long, scrawny neck and an Alfalfa haircut.

“Anyone recognize this boy?” the psycho Santa asked the room.

Dead silence.

Scott knew the boy in the picture, of course. He had represented him in a criminal trial two years ago. The boy had been accused of raping and murdering a sixty year old woman. The boy (his name was Dusty, Scott now remembered) had been found three blocks from the old woman’s house at three o’clock in the morning after a neighbor had heard the commotion and phoned the police. They had taken him in for questioning, and the kid had fallen to pieces, the same way he had fallen to pieces when he took the stand to testify in trial, something Scott had vehemently objected. But the kid wanted to tell his side of the story, and the prosecution ate him alive. In the end, the kid had been found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Under the circumstances, Scott had viewed it as a win. The kid could have easily been found guilty of murder in the first, and Pennsylvania was a death-penalty state.

The psycho Santa looked at the room full of lawyers and waited. “No one?” he said, gesturing to the screen with the shotgun. “No one here recognizes this boy?” He aimed the shotgun directly at Scott. Scott flinched as if bitten by a poisonous snake. His heart began to thud against his ribcage. “Not even you, fuck-face?”

Scott saw the flash of blind rage in the psycho Santa’s gray eyes and had an idea. It was crazy, yes, possibly even suicidal, but it just might work.

It was how he made his living, after all.

The psycho Santa took a step toward Scott, still aiming the shotgun at him. “Twenty-thousand dollars. I gave you twenty. Thousand. Dollars. Had to cash in my 401k, you know that? You were supposed to be the best attorney in Pennsylvania. Guaranteed my boy would walk.” The psycho Santa took another small step toward Scott. His eyes welled with tears and he gripped the shotgun so tightly it shook in his hands.

Scott roused up as much courage as he could. He had never been known for his bravery. But he was known for his so-called “power of persuasion”. “Mr. Lockletter,” he said, the guy’s name popping in his head like magic. He struggled to keep his voice calm and even. “I did everything I could to help your son.”

“You never even believed him,” Lockletter, aka psycho Santa, growled. He took another step. Scott could now see the smooth metal running down the inside of the shotgun’s barrel. He was only a few feet away. Scott risked a quick glance at Mike. Their eyes met, and there was another telepathic thought: just a little closer.

“He killed himself,” Lockletter said matter-of-factly. Tears began to roll down his plump cheeks. “Hung himself in his cell."

Scott saw his opportunity and pounced. He shrugged his shoulders and said, nonchalantly, “Doesn’t surprise me.”

Lockletter’s eyes widened almost comically. “What did you just say?”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Scott repeated.

There was an audible gasp from Karen Howard across the table. “You’ve got some nerve,” Lockletter said in a voice just above a whisper. He was slowly inching ever closer. Scott had him right where he wanted him. It was now or never.

“Unlike your boy,” he said. “I had him set up to walk with no more than a slap on the wrist. There was virtually no evidence against him. His alibi was air-tight. But he just had to testify, no matter how much I tried to convince him. And he crumbled, of course, just like I knew he would.”

Scott saw Lockletter’s jaw muscle flex as he ground his teeth in anger. The business end of the shotgun was now in grabbing distance. More importantly, Lockletter’s back was now to Mike. Scott gave Mike the signal and went in for the final blow, staring the psycho Santa directly in his gray eyes.

“It doesn’t surprise me your son killed himself, Mr. Lockletter. He was a fucking pussy. Just like his old man.”

The barrel’s cold steel pressed against Scott’s forehead. At the same instant, Mike reached for the paperweight of “The Thinker”, jumped out of his seat, and swung it at Lockletter’s head like an MLB pitcher throwing a knuckleball. He did it all in one motion, so quick it was almost a blur. The paperweight connected with Lockletter’s skull, just above his right ear. Scott heard the skull beneath his Santa hat crunch. He grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and shoved upward as hard as he could. At the same time, Lockletter squeezed the trigger. One of the fluorescents above them exploded. Shards of glass rained down on Scott’s head. Mike dropped the paperweight and wrapped his arms around Lockletter’s waist. He took him to the ground as if his last day of football had been last week and not thirty years ago. Scott went down with them, still gripping the barrel of the shotgun.

“Call nine-one-one!” Mike shouted. Lockletter’s expression was one of a man utterly nonplussed. His eyes were as wide as dinner plates and his mouth hung open in a silent scream. Scott jerked the shotgun free and chucked it across the room. He grabbed hold of Lockletter’s chest in an attempt to help Mike subdue him, and felt something underneath the red-and-white Santa coat that made his balls clench.

No, he thought. No, it can’t be.

He ripped the Santa coat open….

Mike gasped, a sound like air rushing out of a pierced tire. “Everybody out!” he screamed. “Everybody out! Now!”

Scott did not move. If what he was looking at was real, it was already too late.

Underneath the Santa coat, Lockletter wore a tan safari-type vest. Strapped to the vest with strips of gray duct-tape were several silver squares that looked like packages of cream cheese. Scott had seen enough cop shows and war movies to know what they were. Enough plastic explosives to take out half of Pittsburgh, from the looks of it. And strapped directly to the center of the vest (this one with transparent packaging tape): an iPhone.

The screen was black…all expect for the bright green numbers ticking away…

8…7…6…5

Lockletter looked up at Scott, his mouth still hanging agape, a thin line of blood trickling into his ear.

“Merry Christmas, asshole. ”

The last thought Scott Lazlon had was, It can’t be real. Just a bluff for the cops.

Then the world went white.