The Man Who Shot Santa Claus
Once I was a skinny reporter-in-training. I smoked cigarettes. I wore smudged glasses. I got my breakfast from a street cart. When I wasn’t in the newsroom, I was either drunk at the Film Center Café on Ninth Avenue or asleep in a $90-per-month apartment in Union City, New Jersey. Now, 20 years later, I’m a veteran magazine writer. I’m 15 pounds overweight — O.K., 40 — and I own a studio apartment on upper Broadway. Sometimes I think back on the hundreds of articles I’ve written, and it’s a blur, even to me. A nice piece here and there, but all of them forgettable. Somehow the time has gone by.
My father, on the other hand, was a substantial reporter, a bona fide newspaperman. He got his start, in 1953, after a year’s duty in Korea, at the New York Journal-American. From there he moved to The New York Herald Tribune. The bosses must have been grooming him: they had him covering the courts, City Hall, Wall Street. My dad wasn’t just some news wonk, however. He was a skilled enough prose stylist to hold his own, between stints on the various news beats, at the features desk, where he was friendly with Jimmy Breslin, Charles Portis, and Tom Wolfe. He was named city editor in 1961 — but soon made his escape. He went back to reporting and found himself sinking his claws into then congressman John Lindsay.
The glamorous Lindsay fascinated and repulsed my father. It was, in other words, a match made in journalism heaven. After the Trib folded, Dad kept tabs on him from a columnist’s seat at the Daily News. I remember the two of them going at it late one night, practically nose to nose, in the alley beside the first-floor apartment on West End Avenue where I was raised. If that display was just Lindsay’s attempt to scare off my father, it didn’t work. Dad went on to write an entire book about the man, the only one he would ever publish — a 373-page chronicle of Lindsay’s successful bid to win a second term as mayor of New York. It’s called The Campaign, and it went out of print in 1977, but it’s a thing of beauty. That probably sounds biased, coming from me, but I’m not its only fan. A number of other readers — journalists especially — loved The Campaign and remember it still. Murray Kempton, Ron Rosenbaum, and Howell Raines all championed it. Even Breslin grunted his approval at some point.
Dad bounced around in the 1980s before sliding into semi-retirement at The New York Observer, a city weekly where I started out as an intern under Graydon Carter, who would go on to be the editor of Vanity Fair. I got the internship thanks to my father’s introduction and Graydon’s fondness for The Campaign.
Along with a former Times-man, John Hess, Dad was one of the old-timers who used to shuffle into the East 64th Street town house every Monday morning. He had trembling hands and a medicinal smell. At each visit he would spend a long time — too long, really — in conversation with the receptionists and the hard-news guys. From a satchel he would remove three sheets of neatly typewritten copy and hand them to our inputter, a French woman who smoked Gitanes at her desk.
Graydon always managed to find space inside the paper for these stories, which centered on obscure injustices resulting from developers’ schemes. He would also take a moment to chat with my dad. I tried not to watch too closely. The end of a career is not a pretty sight.
***
Dad outlived his byline by some three years. I won’t go into the epilogue — the dementia, the Depends, the nursing-home nightmare — because this story stems mainly from an article he wrote for the Trib in 1965.
It was a lovely and economical piece that didn’t make much noise in its day, despite its “sensational” subject matter. This same story, five years ago, I picked it up and carried it forward. I haven’t written a word about it until now, probably because I’m not exactly proud of my role in the affair.
Before I venture into any Christmas territory, I’d like you to know I plan to steer clear of the Santa debate. Every year around this time it’s the same. The subject is trotted out on Slate and Twitter. Certain writers do the wistful thing, while others make a show of their wit; still others do a big conspiracy number. We know how it goes. So let’s leave that aside while agreeing on the salient facts: on Christmas Eve, 1955, in Bloomfield, New Jersey, a man who identified himself as “Santa Claus” (and whom the police called “John Doe”) was murdered. The cause of death was a single gunshot to the head. A jury eventually concluded that the man responsible was Walter Keegan, a drifter born in Yellowknife, Canada.
Throughout the trial, which took place in Newark, New Jersey, the notorious Keegan sold more papers than boxing or baseball. My father scored his share of front-page stories while covering it. And he was savvy enough, curious enough, ambitious enough, to use his position to make a connection with the killer. After Keegan was put away, letters traveled back and forth between Rahway State Prison and West End Avenue.
Dad endured nine years before he got anything out of the relationship. And what he got turned out to be not so much. He learned the hard way that murderers can fade from the public mind as completely as teen idols. A fascinating personage morphs into someone to be shunned. So my father’s exclusive appeared, at roughly 850 words, on page 38. The dateline was November 12, 1965. The headline was plain, as if protecting the Trib’s editors from the embarrassment of deigning to bring up an issue their readers considered dead and buried: “Jailhouse Interview With the Man Who Shot ‘Santa Claus.’”
***
Walter Keegan exited Rahway on July 23, 2006. I was there. After more than 51 years on the inside, at the age of 82, he was free. His hair was white, thick, and curly. He wore a fluffy mustache and beard. His belly was big and round. Perched on his nose was a pair of small eyeglasses with gold-wire rims. His resemblance to the man he had killed half a century earlier chilled me. I’m surprised the warden allowed him to go around like that, whatever his feelings may have been on the subject of Santa.
“Here you are,” Keegan said. “I thought you’d be younger.”
He stuck out a hand. I gave it a perfunctory shake. He followed me into the parking lot. It was one of those unbearably hot days. The pavement seemed to have a pulse.
“What is this rig — Japanese model?”
“It’s a Toyota. Get in.”
My father had continued writing back and forth with Keegan even after the Trib ran the jailhouse-interview story. I took up the correspondence myself after Dad’s death. I admit it. I was hoping I would eventually get something for my trouble. The criminal who had been out of vogue in 1965 might be just the man to hold down a 21st-century true-crime best-seller with an appealing mid-century bent.
Keegan took hold of my iPod, which was attached to the car radio.
“They use these things in cars?”
“It’s an iPod. Digital music player.”
“I know what it is, I’ve seen lots of ’em.”
“I’d like to start the interview process as soon as we can.”
“I might need a day or two. Clear my head.”
“Couple days might be pushing it. How about tomorrow morning?”
“That’ll be all right, I guess. I’ll tell you the whole thing. Least I can do. Your dad was kind enough to get me the dental work in ’85.”
“Yeah, you’ve told me.”
“Nothing’s worse than a toothache. Nothing! Especially when all you got is thinking, and you can’t think no more, because of the goddamn pain. Your dad got them to listen. I wish I could have gone to his funeral. That’s one regret.”
“What about Bloomfield? Thing that happened in Bloomfield? You regret that?”
I felt his stare on me. I looked away from the Turnpike traffic to meet his glance.
“That man was not doing the job,” he said. “That man could not hack it no more. I only wish I done it sooner.”
What I could see of Keegan’s face had gone crimson.
***
I needed 30 hours of good stuff on tape. I needed details. I needed to track down every shitty little thought that had run through Keegan’s murderous brain.
It was so hot on the day I picked him up that I found myself pulling the car keys, wallet, and cell phone from my front pocket the moment we entered my Broadway apartment. All that stuff was sticking to me. As I dropped my effects to the kitchen table, Keegan made an audible sniff — and then he spat on the tiled floor. It was a hocked-up wad. A bubbling oyster of mucus.
“What the hell was that?”
He stared at me a second, as if not getting my meaning, then looked to the floor.
“Oh, Christ — I’m sorry! I wasn’t thinking — I’m a big asshole! Let me clean that up.”
“I got it, I got it.”
I grabbed a paper napkin and bent down. Even separated from my fingertips by the two-ply material, Keegan’s spit felt hot to the touch, and the thought occurred to me that he might be a minor demon.
“Small place you got here,” he said.
“This is actually considered a big apartment.”
“No shit.” He placed himself at the sooty window. “Would you look at all those people? It’s like a swarm.”
“You get used to it.”
“Things haven’t changed that much. I see that now. You got any hummus?”
“Hummus? No, I don’t really think — ”
“We had hummus every Saturday. Without fail. Last five, six years.”
My phone buzzed on the table. I checked the number — it was this guy I know, Freeman. Before I could even say hello, he went right into it: “Where the hell are you? The game’s in 10 minutes! No way I’m working the plate again in this heat!”
“Take it easy, I’ll be right down.”
I had been umpiring Little League ball games on the weekends. I told myself it was for pocket money, but, to be honest, it had become my main source of income, now that the story assignments were drying up for me. The book, though. The Keegan book. If I did it right, I would be in the thick of it. Discussed and reviewed. Asked to give readings and talks. Paid.
“I have to be somewhere. We’re gonna have to get you your lunch later on.”
“But I’m hungry now! I’m used to things being on a schedule.”
“Well, it’s — listen — I have to get changed. This is work. I’m an umpire. Little League. We can get you a hot dog in the park.”
“A hot dog? I won’t eat that crap! That’s an unclean animal.”
“Are you a Muslim?”
“You don’t have to be a Muslim to stay away from pig.”
“They’ve got beef franks, you know.”
“So they say. So they claim.”
“Listen, you have to take it easy. I’ll ump this game, then we’ll take care of your stomach. I mean, look, you’re free. No more prison. That’s a good thing right there.”
“Whoop-de-fucking-do,” said Keegan. “I got places to be, I got plans! I’m behind schedule.”
I wanted to get out the tape recorder and find out what those plans were. At the same time I had to go to the field and make some money.
“Let’s talk about all this when we start the interview process, O.K.?”
“Whatever you say, chief. All I know is, I got a bad case of the hungries.”
I flagged down a cab on Broadway. We rode to the 102nd Street entrance of Riverside Park. Both of us were sweating profusely in the puffs of lukewarm air that emerged from the air-conditioning vents. When I paid the fare, Keegan laughed out loud and said, “Six-fifty for a lousy two-minute car ride! What the hell do you need me for? You must be made of money!” I tried to hurry him down the steep stairway that connected Riverside Drive to the park below, but it was no use. His age and obstinacy were a potent combination.
By the time we reached the benches next to the ball field, my fellow umpire, Freeman, looked ready to explode with anger, even as he took sips from a tiny juice box. He tossed me the wire face mask and puffy chest protector, and I suited up while telling Keegan: “You stay right here. On this bench. Watch the game.”
“Look at you,” he said. “The man in black. You’re the big boss now.”
During the long game — a chaos of errors and walks in the severe heat — I blew a few calls, given that I kept checking on Keegan. Afterward, as he and I trudged up the stairs, he was humming, “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
“Little early in the year for that kind of song, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Hey, they must got hummus somewhere around here.”
“There’s a place at 110th. You’ll get your hummus.”
A small black terrier at the end of a red leash gave Keegan’s shoes a sniff. He looked at the dog and then at its owner — a balding white guy, mid-30s.
“Call off your dog,” Keegan said.
“What?” the guy said.
Keegan delivered a sharp kick to the terrier’s belly. The animal yelped.
The owner said, “What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you to call off your dog, mister.”
I grabbed Keegan by the arm and tried to pull him away from there, but he just shook me off, saying, in an even tone, “I stand my ground.”
***
At the Lebanese place, once his big belly was full of hummus and pita, he sat back.
“I appreciate all you done for me. Lunch. Cigarette cartons you sent me. You’re a credit to your old man.” His irises were blue and twinkly. His body and mind had suddenly relaxed, it seemed, and he said, “So. Tell me what you need to know.”
“Mainly, how it went in Bloomfield. What happened that day. Step by step.”
“That was a serious thing. I didn’t do it lightly.”
He looked away, into some vague middle distance.
“I’m interested in everything else, too,” I added, fearing I had lost him by venturing so early into the heart of the matter. “What you were like as a kid. Things like that.”
“As a kid? Jesus! Who wants to hear about that? You ever seen a — a — a shack! Up where it’s ice cold? My old man, you never saw a sorrier guy in your life. A real shitheel. Beat the hell out of me.” All of a sudden he took on a confidential tone: “Say, you think they got a john in this place?”
“Behind the counter. But if you’re going, I’m going with you.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I don’t mean any offense, but I can’t let you out of my sight.”
“You can hold my hand while I go, for all I care. Hell, you can aim it for me!”
“After that we’ll go home. Back to my place, I mean. I’d like to record this.”
“However you want to do it. You’re the professional.”
I checked the restaurant’s bathroom. It was the size of a small closet. The window was a foot wide. I stood outside the door and listened to the sound of his making bubbles in the toilet water. Then I heard him say, “Sorry, friend, I’m gonna be a minute. Train comin’ through.” He grunted once or twice. After three or four minutes of my standing at the door, the Lebanese guys in the kitchen started shooting me funny looks.
I knocked. “Keegan? You all right?”
No answer. I turned the knob. Locked. By the time I had persuaded the man at the register to use the key, probably two more minutes had passed. When we looked inside, the bathroom was empty, and the tiny window was open.
There was no way a man of his size could have fit through it. And yet Keegan was gone. As was my story. My book. My chance.
***
I wish I could say I flew out of the Lebanese place; jumped a fence; ran down an alleyway; knocked over a trash can; saw Keegan’s backside as he attempted to squeeze his octogenarian’s body through narrowly spaced bars; grabbed him by the neck; took him back to my place; and, through either force or cunning, got him to tell me every last thing. That would be hypnotic stuff. But I’ve been tripped up by depression for a long time. Almost every forward step requires more energy and concentration than I can muster.
This entire scheme — years of correspondence with Keegan; driving my poor old Toyota deep into New Jersey to fetch him from the prison; keeping an eye on him; buttering him up; feeding him; drawing him out — all of it had depleted my reserves to a significant degree. And so, on that searing-hot July afternoon, I was pretty much sleepwalking down the Broadway sidewalk in my pursuit of him. I checked the gaps between the summertime Columbia students and the professors in their hiking shorts and, not seeing my man, I simply gave up.
I pretended to believe Keegan would be seated in my kitchen, waiting for me with the jolly grin of a prankster plastered across his face. Once I was home, I entertained the idea of calling his parole officer or the cops, but I felt I should keep him on my good side. Turning him in might have been the right thing to do from a societal standpoint; but I needed his goodwill, so that, when the time came for him to spill his guts, I would be the one for him to turn to.
The rest of that summer… and into the fall… I had very few assignments. Not coincidentally, I umpired a shitload of ball games. I also took long walks, always with an eye out for Keegan. When I could summon up my reporter’s mojo, I called homeless shelters and laid out my absurd description: an old white man with a big white beard and a big round belly. A whole year slid by. Time was a joke. Each day seemed like it was over the moment I lifted my head out of another 10-hour sleep. It wasn’t until the fall of 2007 that I had not only decided on what seemed like a sensible, even inspired, course of action but had also summoned the energy necessary to pull it off.
I paid more than $600 to get the Toyota fixed up. Oil change, the whole thing. Then I embarked on a more than 3,000-mile drive. You take 80 all the way to Chicago. Then you hang a right. Go northwest until you hit the blankness of the McKenzie Highway. Stick with it until you’ve reached Yellowknife, the cold, lonesome capital of the Northwest Territories. The land overwhelms you. I had a solid hunch that Keegan had made his return to this place. It suited him, just like New York suited me.
In my long and not-so-illustrious career, I had never resorted to paying for information. In Yellowknife, however, the people I spoke with clammed up whenever I described my journalistic prey. Were they afraid of Keegan? Suspicious of me? Cash cut through the hesitation. A waitress gave me the motel where, it turned out, Keegan had been living for five or six months.
The motel manager was a careful man with neatly parted silver hair and big eyeglasses. He seemed especially unwilling to talk, but it took just $20 for him to clinch it for me. Following his directions, I drove nine miles down the Ingraham Trail Highway through the snow and the terrible early-afternoon dimness. The farther away from town I got, the more the emptiness was weighing on me. My heart clenched. I was out of my element. The next road I drove upon was a scar of dirt through great pines. The Toyota rocked in its swells. I hit the brakes and switched to walking.
I took in a strong animal odor. And the smell of cracked wood. And smoke. I saw a clearing in the pines, which proved to be a corral, I guess you would call it. There were a dozen reindeer inside, large and impressive, with antlers like branches.
I kept walking. A compound of five structures came into my sight: two buildings made of metal; two of cinder block; and a single cottage, off by itself, made of wood, with smoke rising out of its stone-stack chimney.
My city shoes crunched through old snow as needle-like snowflakes hit my face.
A passing shadow — and the butt of a rifle thumped against my chest bones.
I found myself looking into the face of a native Canadian. He appeared to be 45 or 50 years old. “Don’t move,” he said. He flashed a smile. I saw a lot of space between his teeth.
I raised my hands above my head in surrender. In a moment I was surrounded by seven or eight more Indians. They spoke excitedly to one another in a language alien to my ears. They wedged aggressive-sounding laughter between utterances that sounded like threats. They herded me toward the cottage. At the front door, they shouted instead of knocking. Someone gave me a hard shove. The wooden door, pointed at the top, in fairy-tale style, came open. There stood Keegan. His white beard looked so lush. His ice-blue irises were large and radiant.
“Ho ho! It’s you! Come in, sit down, get the chill off those bones.” Addressing the native men, he added, “Thank you, boys, that’ll be all. Back to work now! Supper soon.”
***
He led me into the main room. He had me sit in the large chair facing the fireplace. All my traveler’s weariness hit me just then. I sat heavily down. I basked in the warmth emanating from the orange flames. A cat leaped onto my lap, frightening me briefly, I am ashamed to admit. Keegan laid a heavy blanket across my thighs. An old woman emerged from the shadowy corner. She wore a homespun dress and a knitted shawl. Much of her gray hair sat in a bun on top of her head. A wooden knitting needle seemed to hold it in place.
“Who’s this fine-looking fellow?” she asked.
“This is a man from New York. Bring him a mug of hot chocolate, my dear.”
“That’s all right, Keegan,” I said. “No need to go to any trouble. I’m just — ”
“It’s no trouble at all. And, please, call me Mr. Claus. Or, if you prefer, just plain Santa.”
Once I had the mug of cocoa in my grip, Keegan excused himself, saying, “I’d like to continue the talk we were having in the hummus restaurant — but, as you can see, you got me at my busiest time of year. You’re gonna have to make do with my wife. But I couldn’t imagine any better company than Mrs. Claus!”
“Oh, Santa!” she said. And there she was, in the wooden rocker, knitting, her paper white hands moving a mile a minute.
A very short man — not quite a dwarf — shuffled into the room just then. In a thin, reedy voice that sounded like a put-on, he cried out, “The sleigh’s just about ready, Santa!” His voice sounded so stagy that I looked around, half expecting to see a hidden audience.
“Fine, oh, that’s fine, wonderful news!” Keegan replied in an exaggeratedly “jolly” baritone. He followed the short man out of the house and into the snowy afternoon.
I took a sip. To my surprise and disappointment, it was a watery brew, with only a hint of chocolate flavor. Not only was this a powdered instant drink, but it was made with half a packet, at best! And it struck me that my disappointment was a sign of something like insanity: a man who expected this mug to contain “authentic” or “homemade” hot chocolate was a man who believed Keegan had a right to call himself Santa.
I needed to wake up.
I stared into the flames. I petted the cat and listened to the pleasant sound of the knitting needles’ clacking together.
Dinner that night was tasteless and chewy — some sort of gruel with what must have been venison mixed into it. I had my New York wits about me by then. I was not surprised by how bad the food was, as I sat there, inside one of the compound’s cavernous metal buildings, at a long, rickety table. Keegan sat at the head, “Mrs. Claus” at the foot. Sharing the meal with us were the tough-guy native Canadians who had greeted me, as well as their wives and children. The short man with the reedy voice occupied the metal folding chair at Keegan’s right hand. In addition to him, there were a dozen other men of small stature, a few of whom were, indeed, dwarves.
After the meal, Keegan led me on a tour of the grounds. Although it was 8:30 at night, the compound was jumping. In one of the stone structures, the Indian children, between the ages of 5 and 12, sat on the cement floor, hammering blocks of wood. Looking more closely, I could see that these things were meant to be toys; but they were the crudest pieces of craft-work I had ever seen, each one a miniature carpentry failure.
A red-headed dwarf, carrying a shotgun, urged the kids to work faster.
“Wonderful!” cried Keegan. “Keep it up, little ones!”
Then he ordered them to sing while they worked. They came through with a decent, if lackluster, rendition of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”
In the next structure was the sleigh, which was really nothing more than a big horse cart with wide wooden “wings” attached to it. The whole thing was painted red and green. Behind this unlikely vehicle was my Toyota.
“Hey — that’s my car.”
“I meant to thank you for it. You mind handing over the keys? My men need to pop the hood.”
“I don’t want you touching the engine, if that’s what you’re — ”
“We need parts, to be honest. For the sleigh. Don’t worry, you’ll be compensated fairly.”
“I don’t think so. I need that car to get back home.”
“All right, that’s fine. No problem. I thought there was no harm in asking.”
The women of Keegan’s compound were knitting and sewing in the next building, under the supervision of the man who had greeted me with the rifle butt to the chest. Newly made blankets, in beautiful colors, lined the walls.
“These ladies fund our humble village,” Keegan said out of the corner of his mouth. “We sell their wares in town. And now, well, there’s one more thing I’d like to show you.”
“Then maybe we can talk. Do the whole interview.”
“Maybe. Maybe so.”
We entered another stone building. Here, the short white men, the dwarves among them, and the native men were hammering and sawing. The things they had made looked plausible enough. Wooden trucks. Wooden animals. Toy shotguns. Checkerboards with rough chess and checker pieces.
“Come, come!” Keegan said. “This way.” He led me to a chair at a table covered in rusted tools and chunks of splintery wood. He slid the chair back and said, “Sit.”
A goon sidled up to him, holding a shotgun.
“You want me to sit?”
“We could use your help.”
“Why do these people work for you? Why do they even listen?”
“Everybody’s got to work for somebody, I suppose,” Keegan replied. Then he whispered: “People are just like dogs. Except for a few of us.” He winked and said, in his usual voice, “Now I’m curious to see if you could make a toy soldier. A wooden man. I’ll see to it that it finds a home with a boy in New York City. A good boy, of course!”
“You’re out of your mind, Keegan. This is bullshit.”
“Didn’t I ask you to call me Mr. Claus? Or just plain Santa, if you prefer.”
Now the shotgun was pressed against my throat. I heard the telltale click. I nodded slightly in a show of obedience.
“Let’s get those keys from his pocket,” Keegan said. “Car keys. Phone, too. Hell, take his damn wallet!”
With that, the henchman stripped me of everything that connected me to my real life.
That night I sawed and whittled. By midnight I had created a bumpy, rough-edged creature. Then I lay in a cot upstairs. The other men drank and wrestled in the narrow hallway, shouting in their language. Once things were quiet, I fell easily asleep… only to be startled awake when somebody dumped a bucket of snow on my head. The men laughed and pounded the walls.
At five a.m. a horn blasted. It started all over again. And became routine. I almost got used to it. Two meals a day. Tasteless meaty gruel. Shotguns. The men on patrol. The smell of reindeer and wood. The hours of monotonous labor and ceaseless worry. Splinters. The dull ache of hunger.
***
On December 24, Keegan, all dressed in red, and filling the chill air with histrionic ho-ho-ho’s, pulled away from the compound in the cockeyed sleigh, which was loaded down with the useless junk we had made. The 12 reindeer, not quite tame, pulled that Canadian jalopy willy-nilly down the snowy lane and onto the windswept Ingraham Trail. It was a crazy sight. As tired and beaten down as I was, I couldn’t help giving in to laughter.
From what I heard later on, the vehicle made it all the way to Yellowknife, where it was greeted by amazed children, grateful parents, and a news crew hungry for heartwarming material.
Around midnight, with my usual minders having dropped their guards in their Christmas elation, or maybe it was just relief, I stole away from Keegan’s compound on foot. Deep in the woods I felt dizzy. But I pushed on. I was determined to make it out of there. I saw lights up ahead. Civilization. The next night a Mountie discovered my nearly frozen body in an icy rut beside an unnamed road.
I spent three nights in the hospital. Then they locked me in a basement jail. I tried to tell them what had happened, the criminal activities I had witnessed, but they told me they knew all about jolly old Santa Claus. He was a local character. He was a good guy. And my take on his operation seemed, to them, like the sort of schizoid interpretation typical of the nasty vagrant mind. I had to call in a number of favors to get myself out of that place and back to my apartment on the Upper West Side.
Before I started writing this, despite my not having gotten my 30 hours of Keegan on tape, I believed I had the makings of a book. Once I got to work in earnest, I realized I had nothing more than just another piece. This time, however, I hoped I would come through with something memorable, a story that might carve out a small space for me among readers, as did my dad’s book on Lindsay all those years ago.
