“Well, it begs the question - um - Mr.?
“Quindlen… officer… Eugene.”
“Yes, Eugene it is, and a fine upstanding name for sure, but I was just a little curious, lad. How did you expect to get the tree home and where is that anyway?”
“I live in St. Bridget’s Parish.”
“Ah, I see, so that’s where our little tree was goin’. All the way to St. Bridget’s, how nice, I should have known. Did you plan to rent a truck then, Mr. Quindlen?
Perhaps you were going to call a taxi cab, or, judging by the stench of whiskey on your breath, you intended to fly home.”
Eugene stammered something unintelligible.
“You know, Eugene,” the cop went on in a sweet Irish brogue, “Santa Claus is comin’ to town tonight with his reindeer, perhaps you were plannin’ on hitchin’ a ride on his sleigh.”
No matter how much he had earned this spate of ridicule, Eugene could stand it no more. He humbly raised his arms with his palms turned up and let his heart do the talking for him. In torrents his story poured out of him like an open spigot, like a tempest-tossed barrage from a cyclone pummeling Chestnut Hill in a once in a lifetime two-minute explanation for the books.
The cop, Mike Thornton, had heard it all in his long law enforcement career. But he had never quite heard it this way, never with this much passion and this much conviction.
He had never heard it as the bells were ringing in the birth of the Christ child.
Eugene ended his discourse with this: “I’ve stolen. I am as guilty as Adam. Even more, since my wife tried to talk me out of doing this today or yesterday, in fact she pleaded with me not to go and do this at all.”
Mike Thornton shrugged his shoulders and looked up at the snow flurries suddenly descending on Germantown Avenue.
“Okay, Eugene, I think I finally get it. You were going to put this tree on your back and lug it all the way to the distant parish you call home. Somebody else did this once.
REGINA | 100