Even from his place way down the road, Mister Montrose heard the Armeniwhoos, Armenios, whatever the fuck they were.
O-la-la! Like it was hilarious the hundredth time.
They came up to Olalla from shitass Los Angeles and some shitass place before that to purchase the neighboring land, cash in hand – for what?
To grow Christmas trees.
Mister Montrose’s dimpled ass, to grow Christmas trees!
Yeah, they grew Christmas trees, but those bastards drove Bentleys. Douglases and Frasers and Scots don’t buy Bentleys.
No, there was something else, and Mister Montrose would sniff it out.
Were they even Christians?
The Armenianas only came north to watch the chopping. Bend down to plant seeds, climb a ladder to prune? Mister Montrose just knew these guys were those guys. Supervisors, and always from their shish kabob barbeque, judging by the binocs.
He didn’t need his badge to clock that.
The chopping done, they’d pile into their fancy cars and lead the twelve hour trip back to L.A.
Well, sir, they were gonna have a tag along this year.
Mister Montrose waited in his Ford, gassed to the gills, until the convoy passed his mailbox. There was no one at home for him to kiss goodbye, so he stomped the pedal, kicked gravel, and shot off.
The commute caused no concern, smooth down the 5. The jerkoffs never noticed him, always on their phones or being rude to gas station clerks and waitresses with their guttural talk.
It was midnight when they pulled into town, GLENDALE said the sign. Their tree-bearing fleet piled into a huge parking lot as Mister Montrose reversed into a corridor across the street under a church’s shadow. A great white tent ate the blacktop, a blow-up Santa crowning its flaps, and this reminded Mister Montrose of better Christmases, his parents taking him to the circus, him doing the same for his little ones.
Mister Montrose sprang out of the Ford and hoofed it over to the trucks and Bentleys, his boots clicking too much like stilettos. He chewed his nicotine mustache and headed behind the tent, past the hustling laborers, where shapes of men played in the orange arclights.
The Beretta tucked into his Dungarees wanted to come out.
Mister Montrose turned the corner and beside the rolled-up trees and dark-eyed guys he saw bales and bales of white. Decades on the force and pure instinct told him all he needed to know. Actually, check that, confirmed what he already knew.
Christmas and cocaine don’t mix.
Mister Montrose hated America at that moment, hated what she’d become, and figured he’d help her out.
“Hands up, assholes!”
The gun tore loose, sure and true, trained on the Armeniwhoos.
He heard them bark some shit like ara wuddahell then everything slowed, as it did each time Mister Montrose pulled his trigger.
One of them went down hollering while other shots went wild, slamming into the plastic drug bundles and whiting out the world. The cocaine exploded airborne and Mister Montrose couldn’t help himself.
“O-la-la!” he crowed, and stuck out his tongue.
Like catching snow!
“That’s flock, anasoon!” came a wounded voice from somewhere inside that blind haze.
“The fuck is flock–”
A couple of hard cracks punctured Mister Montrose’s chest and pushed him staggering like an idiot drunk. White shards of fake snow – flock-not-cocaine – turned red on his shirt as he stepped into something, some machine, and suddenly Mister Montrose was being throttled by God or the Devil or maybe even Dad back from death. His vision jumped and jived as that relentless tree shaker spat drops of Mister Montrose all over a world he barely recognized, a varmint trapped in the wolf’s jaw.
Mister Montrose realized he wouldn’t be home for Christmas, har har, but what’s a home with no one to celebrate, divorced and daughterless, each of his women in the arms of others. No, Mister Montrose would mark the birth of Christ in Glendale with the… the Armenians, that’s it. Gold crosses dangled from their Armenian necks.
And anyway, Christmas in Olalla was for suckers.
All the trees were right here.
