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Joe was late to the team meeting at the warehouse, albeit only by numerical standards. For his own personal standards, a delay of at least fifteen minutes was to be expected – up to thirty, if you were especially unlucky. It wasn’t so much that he was busy or couldn’t keep a schedule, he simply liked to remind the people working for him that he was the one in charge, and that without him, they were all just a bunch of dumb, dumb sheep who didn’t know what the fuck they were doing. He wasn’t necessarily wrong about that, either, but Mr. White still found this to be one of his less endearing habits.
“Yes, I know, I know,” he announced loudly as he finally burst through the double doors, Eddie trailing behind him like a lap dog. “We all have better things to do on a Saturday evening than to listen to an old man ramble, so I’ll keep myself short.”
The heads of the six men seated on folding chairs in the middle of the hall like a particularly sad AA-meeting whipped around, following the old man as he made his way past them.
Mr. White shot the kid next to him an amused glance, if anything to reassure him that, yes, this was normal, and yes, it was fine to find it ridiculous. The kid, Mr. Orange, returned his look, the corner of his mouth curling into a sort of half-smile. He probably thought he looked real tough, but in reality, it looked more like he was having a stroke. White couldn’t help but chuckle at him, and of course, Joe noticed, building himself up right in front of him.
“Eyes front, Romeo,” he barked. “I’m not gonna repeat myself just because you guys can’t keep your eyes to yourself.”
White leaned back in his chair, grinning. He wasn’t scared of Joe, and Joe, in turn, knew better than to be too hard on him.
“I’m sorry I have eyes, Joe,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m gonna keep using them to appreciate the finer things in life.”
Joe shook his head and made a gesture as if he was going to smack White on the back of his head.
“Christ’s sake, go get a room if you’re that desperate,” a voice called from behind.
White turned to find Mr. Pink sitting backwards on his chair, glaring daggers at the front row.
“What?” Pink asked when he realized that the entire room was staring at him. “Joe’s right, I got better things to do tonight, so let’s get this show on the road.”
Joe exhaled sharply.
“I get the show on the road when I feel like it.” He paused for a moment, regaling every team member with a stern look, but seemingly couldn’t find a good reason to stall any longer after that. “Alright, let’s get this show on the road.”
He turned and flipped the large blackboard behind him over, revealing a detailed sketch of a city block that looked awfully familiar to Mr. White.
“You are all here for one reason and one reason only,” he continued and pointed at Mr. Brown, who had been uncharacteristically silent so far.
“Uh… because we’re the best at what we’re doing?” Brown suggested.
Joe gave a sharp laugh.
“Bullshit,” he said. “Guys like you are a dime a dozen. No. You’re here because you all…” He pointed at every single one of them in a swooping gesture. “Hate Christmas as much as I do.”
A murmur went through the group, glances were exchanged, awkward laughs floated through the room.
“I don’t hate Christmas, that’s ridiculous,” Pink said in the tone of a man who had been caught with his arm up to the elbow in a cookie jar. “And besides, what does that have to do with anything?”
“Just let the man talk,” Mr. Blue snubbed him.
Joe overheard them.
“Gentlemen…” He whipped out a pointer and smacked it against the black board. “You are in for a holiday treat. You are going to rob Santa’s sleigh when he stops by the Hardship House Orphanage on Christmas Eve.”
***
As always, the task of taking the youngest member of the team on stakeouts and showing him the ropes fell to Mr. White. Somehow, he always ended up being the rookie-sitter, and Orange clearly needed some sitting. Officially, he didn’t know that, of course – none of the guys on the team were local, and for all White knew, this could be all of their first rodeo, but Orange might as well be walking around with a “Hello, I’m new!” badge pinned to his leather jacket. There was just a certain underlying tension to all of his movements, a careful sort of calculation to each of his words. He was clearly putting on an act, and while White was certain that he was going to do a fine job and grow into his mask in due time, he still felt somewhat obligated to help him along as much as he could. A lesser man than him may have thought of it as a chore, but truth be told, he kind of enjoyed it. Back when he got started in the business he had no-one to rely on but his own wits, and if he could spare someone else that same unpleasant experience with a couple of well-placed pieces of advice, he was only too glad to take on that responsibility.
Orange had his hands clasped tightly around a paper cup when he got into White’s car, and his beanie pulled over both his ears. For a moment, White though he caught a whiff of peppermint scent, but Orange assured him that it was plain black coffee he was having, and for the time being, White felt that it wasn’t worth digging deeper into. Peppermint was necessarily a Christmas thing, after all, perhaps it was just the kid’s mouthwash.
He found his way to the Hardship Home Orphanage almost blindly, and parked the car in a side street, from where they could perfectly observe the building without drawing too much attention to themselves.
“That’s the place?” Orange asked and peered through the windshield, wrinkling his nose. "What a shithole.”
White bit back a snarky response. From the outside, the orphanage really didn’t look like much – a grey brick bunker with small windows and a wrought-iron fence around the perimeter as though it was built to contain a bunch of violent criminals rather than children – but as far as he was concerned, that didn’t make it a shithole.
“We’re not here to judge an architectural competition,” he said, his tone a little rougher than he originally intended. “Let’s go over the plan.”
Orange gave a him a surprised side glance, eyebrows drawn up almost all the way to the cuff of his beanie but apparently thought better of it than to ask any questions and just awkwardly cleared his throat.
“Sure. Where do you wanna start?”
“At the beginning. When do we arrive?”
Orange furrowed his brow in concentration as he tried to remember Joe’s presentation from the day before, his eyes still fixed on the orphanage gate.
“Santa starts his route in the Pacific, and then moves around the world west of the international dateline. First Asia, then Europe. Canada and North America are among his last stops, so he won’t show up before two, three in the morning.”
White nodded and motioned for him to continue while he fumbled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
“Brown’s gonna stop his car in the middle of the road and put on the hazard lights. Pink’s gonna lie on the street and play ‘possum. Blonde and Blue are gonna hide around the corner for backup. As a good and kind man, Santa’s hopefully gonna want to see what’s up and if he can help. It’s imperative he doesn’t park his sleigh on the street, not on the roof.”
“Good.” White wedged a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and began patting himself down for a lighter. “Where am I?”
“You’re in the back of the car, but you’re not gonna let your presence be known until Santa exits his sleight. You’ll be the one talking to him, no-one else is gonna say a word unless instructed otherwise.”
“And you?”
Orange closed his eyes in deep concentration.
“I’ll be taking care of the reindeer. One false move and they’re Sunday roast.”
“And…?”
Confused, Orange opened his eyes again and gave White a puzzled look.
“And what?”
“What’s the most important rule to remember when you’re pulling a job like this?”
Orange’s face went completely blank, giving the distinct impression of a kid that been caught off-guard by a pop quiz. He opened his mouth a couple of times, but nothing came out.
White couldn’t help a grin sneaking onto his lips.
“Remember that no plan ever survives its first contact with reality.”
A relieved laugh escaped Orange, and he sunk deeper into his seat, considerably more relaxed now that he had survived White’s cross-examination.
“Right,” he said, and then thought for a moment. “What if Santa won’t give us his sack?”
White took a long drag off his cigarette and then rolled down his window to ash out on the street.
“Santa’s an old man,” he said. “Old bones a brittle. A couple of well-placed punches and he’ll hand over the keys to his sleigh, his home, and Mrs. Clause’s chastity belt, no problem. What’s he gonna do, send his elves after us?”
He laughed, but Orange looked a little uneasy for a moment. Hastily, he took a sip of his coffee.
“What about the kids at the orphanage? Don’t you think some of them are gonna try and stay up, waiting for Santa? That’s a whole lot of potential eye-witnesses.”
Again, White shook his head.
“The dormitories are out the back,” he said. “Even if things get heated – which they won’t – they’re gonna have to sneak all the way to the other side of the building to see what’s going on.”
Orange furrowed his brow.
“How do you know the layout of the place so well?”
“I did my homework. Anything else?”
“Just one more thing, actually.”
For the first, time, White thought he could see Orange’s mask slip a little. Not enough to reveal the person underneath, but just enough to make him suspicious. Whatever he was going to ask, it wasn’t about the caper. It wasn’t something he needed to know to do his job, it was something he wanted to know for his own personal reasons.
“No names,” White said, although something already told him that this wasn’t what he was going to ask.
Orange shook his head.
“I wasn’t going to ask your name.”
“What do you wanna know then?”
Orange looked at him from the side again, more intently than before.
“Why do you hate Christmas?”
White hesitated. He knew he had every right to refuse the question, it had no bearing whatsoever on the job, and it was exactly the kind of personal information that Joe didn’t want them to share, but not giving an answer was risky, too. Not answering was suspicious, and the last thing he needed was some anxious kid blowing up the whole operation because he thought he was a snitch.
“If you have to know…” He stubbed out his cigarette and tossed the butt out his window. “I grew up in that orphanage over there, and the only thing I ever wanted for Christmas was a Raleigh Chopper bicycle. I wrote a letter to Santa asking for one every goddamn year until I was almost an adult. You think I ever got one?”
Orange didn’t reply.
“How about you?” Flipping the table on Orange felt good, made White feel in charge again.
“Oh. Err…” A hint of pink appeared on Orange’s cheeks. “Girlfriend of seven years left me on Christmas Eve. Two years ago.”
“Bullshit.”
“Who started with the bullshit?” Orange crossed his arms.
“You think I’m lying?”
“A Raleigh Chopper? Really?”
White began to laugh. The borderline offended expression on Orange’s face was just too comical.
“Alright, obviously you’re not a connoisseur of bicycles.”
“I don’t know, I guess I was hoping for something cooler.” Orange, too, chuckled a little, evidently relieved that White wasn’t actually mad at him.
“I assure you that, back then, Raleigh Choppers were very cool.”
“I’m gonna have to take your word for that,” Orange grinned. “You wanna go over the rest of the plan?”
***
The seven men – White, Orange, Pink, Brown, Blonde, Blue and Nice Guy Eddie – spent a majority of their Christmas Eve in an all night diner on the outskirts of town, waiting for Joe to give them the go-ahead. Eddie’s mobile phone sat in the middle of the round table like a religious icon, since all of them were paranoid that they would miss Joe’s call if they took their eyes off it even for a second. A generous tip had been enough to convince the poor waitress working that night to flip the TV above the counter to a channel showing Santa’s route across the world and sure enough, just when the little sleigh icon moved across the American border, the phone started ringing. God only knew where Joe was getting his info from (surely it had to be more accurate than whatever they were watching) but they all knew better than to question him, of course.
A cold December night greeted them when they stepped out on the street and crammed into Brown’s car – save for Eddie, who was going to make his way back to the warehouse and, at least that’s what White assumed, create a believable alibi for himself.
By the time Brown had parked the car on the street in front of the orphanage and everyone had taken their positions, it was half past two. White scanned the sky with his eyes, looking out for a suspicious twinkle amidst the clouds, but nothing happened.
“He’s not coming,” Brown muttered after a while. “I’m telling you, Joe sent us to the wrong place.”
“I should’ve known.” White’s brows were knitted tightly together, his mouth twisted in contempt. “Santa never stops by this orphanage. Never has, never will.”
“Of course he’s gonna come,” Orange, who was sharing the backseat with White, insisted. “It’s Santa, he visits every child in the world.”
“Oh yeah? And what about my-“
But before White could finish his sentence, Brown interrupted him, stabbing his finger against the windshield: “Over there!”
The three men watched a bright spot in the sky circle overhead, steadily growing bigger and bigger.
For a moment, it almost looked like Santa hadn’t noticed them, and was going to start his final descent on the orphanage roof, but in that moment, Pink thankfully had the presence of mind to spring into action.
“Down here!” he called, waving his arms in the air. “We need help!”
The giant sleigh veered off its course, circling the orphanage roof and then sailed down, across the road and came to stop right besides Brown’s car.
For a moment, White was almost intimidated by how big it was, but he had no time to waste on any feelings of inadequacy.
“Ho ho ho!” the man in the read suit thundered as he climbed down from his coach box. “Ho-ho-hope you have a good car insurance.”
White moved swiftly, stepping out the car and simultaneously drew his gun, aiming it at the old man’s head.
“Fancy seeing you here, old man,” he said, his voice cold and commanding.
Santa turned on his heels. When he found himself staring down the barrel of White’s gun, he slowly raised his hands up to his shoulders, though there was not an ounce of fear in his eyes – on the contrary.
“Little Larry Dimick,” he said, a jolly smile on his lips. “I must say, you have been a very naughty boy this-”
“Cut the theatrics,” White cut him off. “You know what we’re here for. This doesn’t have to get ugly, just hand over the sack and we’re done.”
Blonde and Blue had moved out of the shadows in the meantime, cutting off any of Santa’s potential escape routes and for the first time, his features began to tense a little.
“You know I can’t do that,” he said, still trying to sound jovial, but not quite able to hide the tremor in his voice. “They belong to the children.”
“Those children over there?” Blonde asked languidly, gesturing at the orphanage with his gun. “You think there’s gonna be any children left if you don’t start doing what we’re telling you?”
Before Blonde had even finished his sentence, White was suddenly, acutely aware that he had made a grave mistake. Something shifted in the atmosphere and when White turned for a moment to see what it was, he realized with a pang of dread in his stomach that they were surrounded. Dozens of six-foot-tall gingerbread men swarmed the streets, candy cane guns at the ready.
Bullets started flying and someone screamed as one of the reindeer tore itself lose from its reins. It darted down the street towards Mr. Blue and White could only watch in horror as both Blue and Orange emptied their entire magazines into the buck before it impaled Blue on its antlers.
For a moment, Orange stood stock and stiff in the middle of the street, his gun limp in his hands, mouth hanging wide open, as he found himself unable to stop the reindeer from running off into the night with Blue still stuck to its rack. Then, suddenly, he sank to his knees, a fountain of red erupting from the front of his pristine white shirt.
White whipped his head around to find a gingerbread soldier standing mere feet away from Orange, candy cane still smoking. Without even thinking, he aimed at the living cookie and began firing. Bits of dough and splinters of icing sprayed across the street and within seconds, the gingerbread man was reduced down to a pile of crumbles.
White took no time to congratulate himself, though, and sprinted over to where Orange was still lying. The front of his shirt was already soaked with blood, but he was still breathing.
“Mr. White!” a voice cut through the chaos.
He looked up to find Mr. Brown and Mr. Pink standing atop of Santa’s sleigh, hectically motioning for him to hurry.
“Come on.” White grabbed Orange by the collar and dragged him towards the sleigh, head still down to provide as little of a target for their attackers as possible. “Let’s get you out of here.”
***
By the time they made it back to the warehouse, Orange was barely alive. It took two of them – White and Brown – to hoist him out of the sleigh and into the warehouse, where they had no other choice than to drop him on the cold concrete floor. Mr. Pink closed the door behind them and began pacing up and down the room while White did his best to make the situation as comfortable as possible for Orange.
“Santa was wrong,” Orange breathed, his voice barely more than a whisper.
White shushed him. “It’s okay.”
But Orange shook his head, grabbing onto White’s collar, pulling him closer.
“No… I’m serious. Santa was wrong. You don’t belong on the naughty list.”
For a moment, White was dumbstruck, but quickly caught himself.
“Shut up. Quit acting like you’re about to die.”
“What are we gonna do with the sleigh?” Pink interrupted their heart-to-heart, peering out of one of the dust-caked windows. “We need to get rid of the sleigh.”
“What, are you insane?” Brown’s head snapped up. “That’s the best thing we got out of this job, I’m keeping it.”
“What do you mean, you’re keeping it?” Pink looked at him like he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “Where are you even gonna put it? That’s a smoking gun right there, standing outside our hideout. We need to ditch it, stat.”
“Oh yeah, that’s easy for you to say. Your car didn’t just get wrecked by Rudolph the fucking reindeer."
Pink took a deep breath, nervously flexing his fingers before he spoke, but when he did, his voice was still shaking with suppressed tension:
“Listen. We got the loot. I’m sure Joe’s gonna get you a new car when we—”
“I don’t want a new car, I want Santa’s fucking sleigh!”
Exasperated, Pink turned on the spot, towards where White was still bent over Orange on the ground.
“Are you hearing this? What do you say, what do we do about the—”
“I don’t give a shit about the sleigh, what are we gonna do about him?” He jerked his head over at Orange who had passed out in the meantime.
For a moment, neither Brown nor Pink knew what to say. They had been so wrapped up in their argument they had almost forgotten about Orange’s plight.
“Well,” Pink shrugged after a while. “I suppose we can always drop him off in front of the hospital.”
“And send him straight to jail?”
Again, Pink breathed deeply to calm himself, but this time, it did nothing to stop his professional façade from crumbling.
“Well what do you suggest we do, then?!”
Before White could answer, the door was kicked open once more, and to everyone’s surprise, Mr. Blonde stuck his head through.
“Surprise!”
“Oh God.” Pink smacked his palm against his forehead. “How the hell did you make it out?”
“Not happy to see me, huh?” Blonde asked with a shit-eating grin.
“After you threatened to kill a bunch of orphans to Santa’s face and got him to send his goons after us?”
“He was the one making things difficult, not me,” Blonde said, still weirdly halt-in, half-out of the warehouse.
“Fuck off.”
“Tell you what.” Blonde’s grin grew even wider. “Papa’s got a big fucking present for you all to make up for it.”
He ducked outside again for a second to grab hold of something, dragging it slowly through the double doors – a large red and white bundle that left a snail-trail of blood on the dusty warehouse floor as he pulled it inside.
When they realized what it was, Pink, Brown and White all instinctively took a step back. Pink, naturally, was the first of them to find his voice again:
“Santa!”
The bundle stirred weakly, apparently still alive, but hanging on by a thread.
This finally caused Mr. White to step away from Orange, albeit only for a moment.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You kidnapped Santa Clause?”
Blonde knelt down next to Santa, inspecting his work. He had done a number on the old man, beating him within an inch of his life. His face was swollen beyond recognition and his beard crusted with dried blood.
“Figured he might have some useful information for us. Where he dropped off the biggest packages this year, directions to his workshop,…”
Brown shook his head in disbelief.
“You’re crossing a line there, man.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Still, Blonde wouldn’t stop grinning, though at this point it looked more like he was baring his teeth.
“He’s right.” White stepped forward. “Stealing presents from orphans is one thing, they’re just gonna get the same crap next year, but kidnapping Santa… That’s gonna ruin Christmas forever!”
Blonde scoffed and got up.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize this was an office Christmas party now,” he said, brushing the dust off his pants. Then, out of nowhere, he drew his gun and aimed at Santa. “But if you don’t like my present I can always get rid of it.”
“No!” Pink instinctively raised his hands, but before Blonde even had a chance to fire, a shot rang through the warehouse and he tumbled over, dead.
They all turned on the spot, only to find Orange, pale as a ghost, clinging onto consciousness for dear life, smoking gun still in his shaking hand.
“Shit,” Pink hissed while White rushed over to Orange to steady him.
“Fuck that guy,” he said, trying to get Orange to lie back down. “He’s lucky Orange got to him first because I wouldn’t have made it as quick. You can’t just kill Santa, that’s a line you don’t step over.”
“No…” Orange vainly tried to push him off. “You don’t understand.”
“The hell are you talking about?”
“I…” Orange collected whatever strength he had left, grabbed the top his beanie and pulled it off his head, revealing two pointy ears. “I’m an elf. I’m sorry.”
“You?!” Pink’s jaw dropped. “You ratted us out to Santa?”
Orange hectically shook his head.
“No, it’s nothing like that. He already knew what you were about to do, he sent me to try and stop you, make you all feel the spirit of the season…”
“And a fine job you did of that,” Santa suddenly bellowed from where he was still lying.
“I’m sorry!” Orange collapsed in on himself, clutching both arms around his wound. “I tried, I really did.”
Mr. White looked down on him, Orange, the traitor, secretly working for Santa. If he had known who he really was, he would have just left him out on the street to die. Or… would he? Orange’s words about him not belonging on the naughty list just wouldn’t leave his head.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said loudly, over Pink who was muttering something about every wrong decision he had made in his life that had led him to this point. “Elf or not, we can’t leave him to die.” He turned to Santa. “A little Christmas magic should fix him, right?”
Santa laughed bitterly as he climbed back to his legs.
“Christmas magic? I think you and your friends successfully eliminated that from the world tonight.” He wiped a gloved hand across his face, which did little to remove the dried bloodstains under his nose and on his cheeks. “I’m out of here. Adios, assholes.”
And with that, he clacked the heels of his black boots together and vanished in a poof of smoke, leaving only a fine flurry of fairy dust behind.
Mr. Brown was the first to find his voice again: “The fuck was that about?”
Mr. Pink looked back and forth between him and Mr. White.
“You really want to help that piece of shit?” he asked, addressing the latter.
“It’s not his fault his boss is an asshole.”
“I mean, to be fair, we did rob him,” Brown said.
“Well.” Pink made a sweeping gesture at the warehouse door. “If you want Christmas magic, I suppose we’re gonna have to finish his route for him. If we just drop off a couple of presents at each stop there should still be enough left for us.”
White considered this for a moment, then he turned to Brown.
“Do you think you can fly that sled a second time?”
Brown, somewhat fittingly, began to grin like a little boy on Christmas morning.
“Is Elvis the king of rock’n’roll?”
***
By the time they had finished Santa’s route, Orange looked almost alive again.
Brown steered the giant sleigh like a boat, landing it gracefully on the front lawn in front of Joe’s mansion, while Mr. Pink checked the remaining contents of the large burlap sack in the back.
“It’s still almost half full,” he said before passing it onto Mr. White. “I don’t think Joe’s gonna notice.”
Before White could take a look for himself, though, the front door flew open and Eddie stepped out.
“Thank God you’re here,” he said, looking thoroughly rattled. “Daddy’s gone crazy.”
“What do you mean, crazy?” White climbed down from the sleigh and lent Orange a hand as well, before hoisting the sack of presents down with Mr. Pink’s help.
“I don’t know, he was visited by three ghosts tonight or something.” Eddie ran both hands through his hair, trying to collect himself. “He’s giving away all of his money. He won’t stop buying turkeys, I don’t know what to do with him.”
Almost as if on cue, the door opened a second time, and this time, it was Joe who came out.
“There you are, boys,” he said, sounding like his usual grumpy self.
“Joe, we got the loot,” Pink said, pointing at the sack in White’s hands.
“Atta boy.” Joe patted him on the cheek. “You keep it. I need to go and pick up my turkeys.”
“Wha…” Pink began, but before he could finish his sentence, Joe had stuffed a large wad of cash into the breast pocket of his suit and marched towards his garage.
“Buy yourself something nice.”
“Hey, Joe!” Brown called after him. “Can I keep the sleigh, too?”
“Sure, boy,” Joe said without turning around. “But only if you take the Persian rug in the foyer as well. Come Eddie, we gotta go give out turkeys to the poor.”
Eddie shot the remaining team a pleading look, but when neither of them intervened, he had no other choice than to follow Joe to his car. The two took off, knocking over the Cabots’ mailbox as they did.
After a short moment of silence, Pink shook his head.
“I can’t believe he let you keep the sleigh.”
Brown grinned. “Need a lift?”
Pink hesitated, but only briefly.
“Sure, what the hell.”
He climbed up onto the coachbox, next to Brown, and together they flew off into the rising sun, leaving only White and Orange behind.
“Did you really mean what you said earlier?” White asked quietly. “That I don’t belong on the naughty list?”
Orange (who did not die) glanced at the mistletoe hanging over Joe’s front door, right above Mr. White’s head. A sly smile crept onto the elf’s face.
“Oh, I’m sure you’re naughty,” he said. “But in the best way possible.”