A Visit From…
Face pulled his lock pick out of the keyhole and put it back in his pocket. Then he slowly turned the doorknob so there was no sound as the bolt slid back into the door momentarily. He inched the door open and said a silent prayer the hinges had been oiled recently. Miraculously, there was no squeak or creak as the door opened up. The room inside was dark, almost pitch dark. He took out a small penlight and quickly flashed it through the room so he could tell where everything was and where to and not to walk. Cautiously, he took a couple of steps into the living room, hoping against all hope that the floorboards under him also stayed quiet. So far, so good.
He turned back towards the door and shone his light on Murdock who was standing in the doorway. Using his free hand, Face raised a finger to his lips and shushed Murdock without making a single sound, Murdock returned the gesture with an equally quiet 'shhh', then showed himself in, with a large bag in hand. He didn't let the added weight against one arm slow him down as he tiptoed in, waving his arms frantically through the air like a deranged sugar plum fairy dancer performing in The Nutcracker. Face shook his head and rolled his eyes and just hoped the pilot managed to do his job without causing a loud crash and waking up the whole building.
The apartment was cold, if he had to guess, he'd say about 63 degrees. He knew that the heat hadn't been turned off, that was likely what got the four of them into this mess in the first place. But it also stood to reason that the heat was probably being kept down as low as possible to ensure that the next month's electric bill would be affordable as well.
Face tiptoed across the living room and over to where three doors stood: one bathroom and two bedrooms, all small in size, accommodating appropriately for this shack called an apartment. Both doors were slightly ajar, Face stuck his penlight in one for a brief look in, and he saw the woman who was renting the apartment in bed. He pulled back, then shone his light into the other room and saw two children, a boy and a girl, neither one probably older than 10, sleeping on a large, old, ratty bed, curled up against one another to keep warm. He tiptoed away from the bedrooms and back to the living room and saw that Murdock wasn't there. He turned and headed for the kitchen just in time for Murdock to walk into him as he exited the small room. There still were no words exchanged but even in the dark Face was sure Murdock could see the raging gleam in his eyes for that.
He went into the kitchen to make sure Murdock had done what he was supposed to. Linoleum wasn't much quieter than wood boards, it made his shoes clack like he was wearing taps. He crept over to the icebox and pulled the door open and was immediately blinded by the bright light. Over the glare he was able to see a turkey breast big enough for three people taking up most of the top shelf alongside a gallon of milk, a pound of butter, and a few pounds' worth of potatoes taking up the crispers. Using the light from the fridge he was also able to see on the kitchen counter by the sink was a loaf of bread, a box of pancake mix, two boxes of stuffing mix, a 5-pound bag of apples and an 8-pound bag of oranges. Well, it ought to keep them in food until further notice anyway.
He sneaked back out to the living room and with the help of his penlight, was able to see that Murdock had laid a few brightly wrapped presents out on the coffee table, the presents had been so jumbled during wrapping but he distinctly remembered among these were two very top-of-the-line laser guns, a walkie-talkie set, a harmonica for him and a set of roller skates for her, along with a couple of prepared Christmas stockings full of candy.
"That everything?" Face mouthed for the pilot to see.
Murdock merely nodded and gave the OK signal. Face nodded his head towards the door and shut off his light. He waited until Murdock had tiptoed past him before reaching into his jacket and taking out a small envelope addressed simply: To Mrs. Worley, and inside of it was $2,500. He set it down on the coffee table beside the presents; that ought to keep the heat on until Los Angeles snapped out of the cold front it was currently experiencing. And while they were at it, it ought to keep the fridge full and pay for a new bed for those two kids in the other room, or maybe better to go in on a set of twin beds instead. He followed Murdock out into the hall and as quietly as they crept in, pulled the door shut behind him and closed it carefully.
Another stop, another lock to pick, another apartment to sneak into and leave in slightly better condition than they found it. This one had four children, the two youngest ones, one less than a year old and the other less than two, slept in the mother's bedroom in two large drawers pulled out from the dresser. This time, while Murdock was busy wheeling in a red wagon, a tricycle, and a Radio Flyer spring horse through the front door, Face went into the kitchen and surveyed the fridge and the cupboards.
But when she got there, the cupboard was bare, not even a bottle was there, Face thought to himself as he shone his light into the cupboards and shook his head in disgust. Toothpicks, spices, plenty of bottles but no formula, and no food for the baby. It took great restraint for Face to keep to himself the comments that were already under his breath and threatened to break loose about government run charity organizations and their rules and regulations that favored the people who didn't need the charity and left the ones who did to their own devices to starve and insofar to let their children starve as well. He gnashed his teeth together as he took two cans of formula out of the bag he'd brought in and stuffed them in the cupboard along with a box of rice cereal, and just for good measure incase this turned out to be a picky eater, a few jars of strained this or that, though why any baby would eat that was beyond him.
And now for the rest. He went over to the fridge and looked in it, and drew back grimacing. Grim. Half a dozen eggs, a pack of sliced cheese and a couple cans of soda, and that was supposed to feed four kids and one double-shift, half-salary single mother until next payday? He felt his finely capped teeth gnashing again as he reached into the bag and pulled out two pounds of half frozen bacon, a pack of large breakfast sausages, two gallons of milk, a spiral honey ham, two loaves of sandwich bread, a bag of oranges, three pounds of bananas, one carton of strawberries, and for good measure, half a gallon of peppermint ice cream for the freezer, and a frozen Christmas cake that should be nice and edible come morning when the kids got up. He took another envelope out of his jacket, this one addressed: To Mrs. Evans, and left it on the kitchen table, this one with a tidy sum of $5,000 inside. To the best of his deducting abilities with what he had to work with, he figured that should pay up lights, phone, utilities, and grocery bills, and also keep the revolving door of ever-growing children in clothes for a couple of months at least, especially since they knew that Ms. Patricia Evans, officially Mrs. still to maintain some feeling of protection in the assumption there was still a man around somewhere, was never and had never been acquainted with the finer things in life and resorted to second-hand for almost everything, even now with her children.
Out in the living room, Murdock had brought in the horse, the tricycle, the wagon, and also a remote controlled tank, a remote control fighter jet, two just-my-size dolls, half a dozen large stuffed animals ranging from bear to tiger to tyrannosaurus Rex, a set of large building blocks, a toy telephone, and two large toy jeeps, one black and one pink and red, something for everybody, and possibly the first time that any and all of the kids had something brand new to play with. Face hated to admit it but he was starting to enjoy himself, and he signaled that they better get out of there before either of them made any unintentional noises from the fun they were having doing this. One more stop crossed off their list, and the next one was going to be a bit different.
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the city of Los Angeles, plenty of people were stirring, and so were many alley rats. Anybody who had never been out west likely believed the stereotype that California was always warm and sunny, not true. Los Angeles had plenty of cold, just never any snow, there was something to be said for small favors after all. Another small favor would be if Hannibal could get in and out of the next apartment without the inhabitants inside waking up, but even if something should go wrong, he came prepared. Prepared for the children waking up anyway, he wasn't sure how understanding the parents would be of finding Santa Claus in their living room. Then again, how could you ever have a bad response to finding someone who breaks into your house to give you things, instead of taking them? That was the real question.
He'd had Face pick the lock, using his professional touch, and he'd had Face slide the door open quietly, and he took it from there, carefully stepping in with a large sack at his side since swinging it down from his back would make too much noise. Ideally speaking, this should've been B.A.'s job, he was the fondest of kids and was a very giving person where they were concerned. But they all knew that the Sergeant simply could not do this job tonight because for one thing, those clodhopper boots he wore would rattle the whole apartment as he walked in, and secondly, his gold would rattle too much and wake everybody in the building up. So instead, he bided his time as lookout on the ground floor, and should the occasion call for it, he would throw the main circuit breaker in the building so they could make their getaway under the cover of darkness. Hannibal shook his head, B.A. and that gold, he didn't get it, the man was worse than a little kid with a teddy bear, you'd never be able to part the two for anything.
This one was more difficult because the lights had been left on in hopes of lighting the way for St. Nicholas to his final destination in this home. It was a better apartment than most they'd been to tonight, there was a puny Christmas tree decked out in tiny little colored balls and a glass topper, but a long string of lights hung up along the wall to illuminate the living room. And herein was also the problem because with the lights on he was able to see the three children sleeping in the living room, apparently having failed to wait up for the arrival of Santa Claus. Two boys, 7 and 10, and a girl, 8, all jumbled together in a pretzel on the couch under a tangle of blankets. Whew, he certainly knew what he was doing when he'd picked this family to visit tonight. He tiptoed over to the tree and reached into his sack and took out wrapped packages containing a Walkman, a stuffed panda bear, a new Battleship game, a fancy and realistic looking cap pistol, a porcelain doll in harlequin jester getup, and a new basketball under the table the tree was set on. Now for the kitchen.
Of course not everyone liked turkey or ham, that was understandable, and when that was the case, there was absolutely nothing wrong with an 8-pound whole fryer. Boy, chickens were certainly coming in bigger sizes than when he was a boy. And chickens were not now nor had they been on sale at the local supermarket for the past three weeks, so the second most natural choice of dinner meat had suddenly become a luxury. That, with some potatoes, and some beans, and vegetables, and this family ought to be eating well tomorrow night. They were well off enough that nobody would be going hungry for breakfast, but the refrigerator was still plenty bare, especially when it was going to come to dinner. Well, not anymore. Oh, and one more finishing touch. Hannibal reached into the sack again and took out a large container of fresh Christmas cookies, and another container, of chocolate fudge, both obtained from one of the local bakeries earlier in the day, and set them out on the table.
Once done in that apartment, Hannibal was dying for a smoke, but since Santa only smoked pipes, he'd come prepared for the occasion, it wasn't a bad second but it wasn't his cigars. He stood by the building's fire escape just an open window away, and puffed furiously on his pipe as some thoughts came swirling around in his head.
Hannibal Smith was not by any stretch of the imagination a particularly literary person, he'd always been more a man of action, but he did recall many years ago at Christmastime, reading A Christmas Carol, and if he really tried, he would swear he could quote verbatim the speech of the Ghost of Christmas Present when Scrooge inquired why he would seek to cramp the poor's enjoyment and chance to eat on the Seventh day.
"I! There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
Yes, that sounded very true right about now. Blessed were the people well off enough that they never had to know this way of life. Not the rich, certainly not, where they were, they more often than not did not get there by their own merit and their own money, usually somebody else's, more usually a lot of somebodies else's money. Swindled away and eaten up from extraordinary taxes, fines and fees, from exuberant court costs stemming from months or years talking to a mouth piece just to lose everything in the end anyway. Also from anybody who would charge astronomical interest rates for their services or their money, certainly loan sharks but also banks, anymore who could tell the difference? And themselves? That depended on the definition of the word.
Another quote came to him, "Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
Charity, that was a hard one to figure out anymore. Who could tell who was legitimate, and who was only using it as a front to line their own pockets? These days it wasn't uncommon or unreasonable to suspect everybody. He remembered a discussion he'd had with Face earlier in the week.
"Don't get me started on some of those bell ringers, oh, I'm sure the groups they say they're representing have done a lot of good over the last hundred and some odd years, but come on, these days some of them come up in the junkiest cars, they wear the rattiest clothes so you buy that they're non-profit and trying to help the lesser fortunate, but then, if you follow some of these people to their own homes and beyond, suddenly they're driving around in new Cadillacs and wearing $80 coats and $200 pair of shoes. Where do you think that money's coming from?"
"So how does that make you any different from them, Face?" Murdock inquired jokingly.
Without missing a beat, Face had answered, "I dress better than that."
"No, Face is right," Hannibal had said, "When he cons money out of people, it's never from the poor hard working ones who need to hold onto it, and any time we've promised to put clothes on someone's back and food in kids' mouths, we actually do it. There's a big difference in the two."
For a conman to carry on about the cons being committed in the name of charity was a sure sign when you knew things were bad. But, such was life. Any organization that claimed aid to those in need, be it money or food or anything, there was so much red tape and so many loopholes, that you could count on those truly in need being cheated out of their shares and those who already had more than they knew what to do with, getting permission to clean out the inventory stock. These people for example, all these families they'd visited tonight. They had at least one thing in common. Some of them may be receiving some kind of aid to help them along, but all the same they were all being cheated out of what was theirs. These single parents with kids to feed and empty iceboxes, shared the common factor that they had all been disqualified from receiving any further assistance or even food stamps, on the grounds that they made too much money as it currently was, to even qualify. In theory and on paper that all might've been well and good, but in real life it held no water when you had no food for groceries for your three kids once you paid the rent and utilities. And there were more families like them every single year.
"What is the use of living, if it not be to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?"
That was Churchill, and even now almost 80 years later, it was still true. Noble causes, making the world a better place, it all rang very familiar to Hannibal. Like it or not, that could also describe their own lives, more accurately whether the government liked it or not.
The night wasn't over yet, they still had several more stops to make. Huffing in a grunting sigh, Hannibal dumped the contents of his pipe out the window, and climbed out on the fire escape to join the others.
This next one was a very tall order. Getting out of the apartment complexes, they had Face work his magic on the deadbolt of the front door of a quaint little two-story house out in the suburbs. In this house were Mr. and Mrs. Velez, who had five children, the youngest one, a little girl named Maria, only 5 years old, and just home from the hospital after several months; well on her way back to being a typical 5-year-old again, but her outstanding medical bills had cleaned the family out and would keep them 'out' for the better part of the next five years at least. The family's financial situation was so bad that they'd been forced to make the difficult decision of skipping Christmas.
There was a small light on somewhere in the house when Hannibal stepped in. He couldn't tell where it was coming from but it gave him a little glimpse into the house and he was able to see that the family had done the best to the ability of their efforts to make the house festive for Maria's return. The house had been decorated, most of it with a familiar handmade touch; it appeared that Mrs. Velez kept the children busy building paper chains and cutting up paper snowflakes to keep them from finding out how bad the situation was. He turned and looked to the next wall, and stopped, ah, well here was ingenuity for you; since the family couldn't afford a Christmas tree, Mrs. Velez had gotten her hands on a long roll of newsprint paper and let the kids draw one to stick on the wall. Even for five kids it probably kept them busy for a better part of the month because the drawing ran from the ceiling to the floor and as far as he could see in the dark, they'd drawn decorations on it from top to bottom, complete with a star on top, and even colored in the green. Anything in a pinch. Well, he scratched his head, it was going to be a new experience trying to put any presents under this thing, but he'd worry about that in a minute. He sneaked to the kitchen and scrutinized the contents of the fridge, the shelves were about as bare as they came, but Hannibal was relieved to see that it looked like the top shelf would just hold a 25 pound turkey. Speaking of which, he quickly tiptoed back to the front door to let Murdock in.
Murdock had been holding onto the turkey awaiting Hannibal's return, and the Captain was about doubled over from the strain of it, and even in the dark Hannibal could see a distinct purple tinge filling the pilot's cheeks. Quietly, he relieved Murdock of the bird and told him to bring the presents in instead, Hannibal decided to show the turkey the presidential suite in the icebox himself. Then he went to the backdoor, unlocked it, opened it up and quietly called out to B.A. to come in. This was a tall order and this one was going to take all four of them to get everything inside in a timely fashion before anyone woke up.
B.A. came in hauling a 50-pound bag of potatoes in one hand, a 25-pound bag of flour over one shoulder, a 25-pound bag of sugar over the other shoulder, a frozen 20-pound butcher wrapped piece of brisket and an equally large and equally frozen slab of ribs under his arm. Hannibal chuckled to himself and worried he might actually give them away, as one by one he took the items from B.A. and either put them in the fridge or on the floor by the table. At this rate, the Velez family was going to be eating high on the hog until Groundhog's Day.
B.A. went out the back door and returned a few seconds later hauling a large grapefruit crate that was not filled with grapefruit but in fact contained a variety of sweet potatoes, celery hearts, large onions, Brussels sprouts, eggplants, and several pounds' worth of big fat fresh green asparagus. Hannibal took everything out and sorted through it as B.A. went to bring in the next crate. It had been very easy to find out what the Velez family's preferential foods were, it had been easy to find out what every family they'd visited tonight preferred to eat, nobody was going to suspect a borderline elderly priest popping into a food bank and inquiring about the people who didn't qualify for the aid but needed it nonetheless. It was very easy, all you had to do was figure out how to pinpoint when somebody would come in only to be turned away because for whatever reason, they weren't deemed worthy of receiving the aid, they came around more often than you'd think. Then once they left, you could strike up a conversation with somebody else and find out about that person and what their story was, and from there it was all a snowball downhill.
At that time, B.A. popped back in with another grapefruit crate, this one full of Christmas cakes, cookies, fudge, chocolate cherries, chocolate clusters, and yes, even a fruitcake. This was not the typical rubber bouncing brick variety of fruitcake you gave the mailman to ironically let him know you liked him at Christmastime; it was a specialty of the bakery they'd gotten it from along with everything else, and paid dearly for. So far, so good, nobody had come down to investigate any strange sounds yet. This was one reason Hannibal preferred houses to apartments, it was a lot harder for the constantly jangling of the chains around B.A.'s neck to wake up the people sleeping up on the second floor, than it would be for the occupants of 1-2 bedrooms in a 3-room apartment.
Hannibal whispered to B.A., "Get the rest of the stuff in and put it away, I'm going to go see how Face and Murdock are coming along in the living room."
"Right, Hannibal," B.A. whispered in return.
Hannibal took out his lighter and flicked it to life, casting a small flame for which to see his men by briefly. Murdock and Face had been equally busy during this time, they'd brought in several stacks of wrapped presents that were as tall as all of them, the contents of which varied between toys for the kids, new clothes for the whole family, as well as a couple new pairs of shoes for each family member. Then that just left the matter of the big presents for the kids, which included five new bicycles of varying sizes. It had taken every ounce of Murdock's self restraint to not test out the toy drum and toy horns he stacked around the other presents. He also set a large wind-up toy monkey down beside them, and added to the pile, a big jack-in-the-box, a little train set that was only made up of three cars and went around a figure-8 track when a lever in the center was pushed down, a large plastic dump truck, a larger fire engine, a remote control biplane, a giant stuffed giraffe, tiger, and teddy bear that were all bigger than most of the kids, a pogo stick, and a little toy piano for Maria.
When Hannibal knew they had everything brought in, he ordered the other three out, now for the pièce de résistance. He pulled his beard down momentarily so he wasn't muffled as he called up the stairs, "Ho-ho-ho! Mer-ry Christ-mas!", then snapped the beard back into place and hotfooted it into the living room and waited for nature to take its course.
It didn't take long for him to hear seven sets of footsteps rushing down the stairs. Hannibal turned on the lights and a few seconds later saw Mr. and Mrs. Velez and their five children come to a skidding halt in the dining room, all in their pajamas and half awake, and none of them knew what to make of the sight before them, though right now the only sight immediately before them was a white bearded man in a red suit in their living room. The children from youngest to oldest were 5, 7, 10, 11, and the oldest girl was 12, and she kept a grip on Maria's arm and held her back, as though he might be a threat to them. The children let out half audible murmurs to themselves as they tried to figure out what was going on. Before anybody could recover from their shock to say anything, he went over to them and said, "I hope you'll forgive the commotion, but I couldn't be on my way for the night without seeing Maria now that she's home from the hospital."
The little five-year-old's eyes were wide as they came, but she kept her gaze down towards the floor and nervously picked at her nails and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Hannibal knelt down and picked the little girl up so she had to look at him.
"Merry Christmas, Maria," he said.
She only looked at him through one eye and still kept the other to the floor as she replied, "Merry Christmas, Santa Claus."
Hannibal chuckled and told her, "I know you've been good all year, and good little children deserve lots of presents," and with that he put her down and stepped aside for everyone to see the towering piles of gifts in the living room. The four other children shrieked in surprise and joy and they all ran in to start tearing into the presents; an age old sport that Hannibal knew very well.
He stepped into the dining room and picked up a large wrapped gift from the table and held it out to the parents and said, "I know the general consensus is that Santa only delivers presents to good little children, but sometimes grownups need a friendly reminder from Ol' Saint Nick as well."
Mr. Velez took the box suspiciously, set it back on the table when the full weight hit him, and pulled the lid off the box, and he and his wife both about fainted. The box was filled to the brim with bundles of cash.
"For a nice round amount," Hannibal told them, "$50,000 ought to pay off the hospital and restore your savings account with a little interest to top it off."
Mrs. Velez looked at the money, then up at him and was dumbstruck. Her husband finally managed to get his mouth to function and asked him, "Who are you?"
"My friends in Germany call me Kris Kringle," he said simply, "And now if you'll excuse me, my reindeer are double parked and I must be on my way to Holland and I must change my suit before landing. So," he slapped Mr. Velez on the shoulder and concluded, "Merry Christmas to your family," and with that he zipped out the door, leaving a very confused and very joyous family in his dust.
Four o' clock in the morning on Christmas morning and all was well, or at least as good as could be anticipated. By now, everybody was back at Hannibal's apartment and ready to call it a night. They'd been to 30 different homes in the Los Angeles area over the course of four hours, and everybody was exhausted.
One might wonder why a group of wanted fugitives would only accept jobs at the opening price of $100,000 or so, depending on the clients. Hannibal always said it was to determine just how badly their would-be clients actually needed the help of the A-Team and how genuine and sincere they were, instead of just an MP trap or somebody who would be a waste of their time. And it was true, once you deducted expenses, restitutions to damages, restock supply inventory, pay off bills for immediate medical care when and where needed, to say nothing of leaving something for the four of them to live comfortably on between jobs, there was still plenty leftover usually. There was also the fact to consider that most clients could not afford $100,000, or even $10,000, or in some cases even $1,000, so their large jobs that paid off were security against all the charity cases they would take in between.
Leave it to Face to keep records to determine if theirs had been a good fiscal year. Of course, every year was different, every job was different, but the Lieutenant had estimated that in one year, they accepted and succeeded on 20 charity cases, 15 lower-to-medium pay cases, and only 3 or 5 high paying cases, the last ones of which ranged between $100,000 and $500,000 in profits when the jobs were over. Even with all expenses tended to, that still left the question what could four fugitives do with all of that money?
This was one time, he had told Face, they weren't going to scam anything from anyone, anything that they needed they were going to buy, paid for in full, and in cash. Once again, who would ever suspect a little old priest? Who would suspect a man of the cloth who came in and ordered 15 of the grocery store's biggest turkeys for a charitable dinner for the less fortunate? And who would suspect a clergyman of coming into a bakery and clearing out hundreds of dollars' worth of Christmas baked goods, for a Christmas party thrown for the orphans and poor children? His disguise to keep their identities safe had not taken anything away from the truthfulness of what he'd told the storeowners the merchandise was for, ergo, it wasn't a scam, they were just mistaken about who had bought all the food, that was all.
Hannibal considered himself good with kids though he was sorely out of practice with them, but since he'd taken it upon himself to get all the food ordered, he'd let Murdock have the job of buying all the toys, and the Captain hadn't disappointed on his picks from the toy store. Murdock had inquired beforehand though if it was sacrilegious to impersonate a man of the cloth even if it was for a good cause, so to satisfy the Captain, Hannibal had let him wear something more civilian and explain to the cashier at the register that he was a 'plainclothes' priest picking up some presents for the children at his orphanage. It had worked, put a clergyman into any situation and all questions stopped. 30 more families, with a combined total of about 65 children, were going to have a far merrier Christmas now than they would've if things had just been left to the current officially recognized charity and relief aid organizations. It was all very simple. About the only real problem they were faced with was how and where to stockpile everything in the days leading up to Christmas Eve? The toys were easy, that's what rented storage units were for, as for the food…well, that's why turkeys and hams were purchased frozen only a couple days before, so long as you put your order in reserve with plenty of time, getting them at the last minute wasn't a problem, because by the actual time of delivery, they were more or less thawed out for the big meal the next day.
What was the point of having half a million dollars if you couldn't put it to some good in the world? If anybody would ever find a trail for the money the A-Team obtained from their work over the years, that person would also have a very unusual surprise finding in discovering how many of the millions that had been accumulated over the years had just as suddenly disappeared into thin air: into anonymous mystery donations to food banks and soup kitchens, for orphanages and children's hospitals, (and at Murdock's assistance, to animal shelters and animal rescue/adoption programs), into the mail slots of poverty-stricken people faced with eviction or starvation or both, and directly into the hands and collection hats of countless unfortunates already out on the streets, and all of it with no questions asked. And also sent overseas to friends and previous clients in foreign countries who they knew could distribute it among the needy in their own lands.
To a poor one most, because it needs it most. That was Dickens again, would the voices ever get out of his head?
Face had fallen asleep almost as fast as he collapsed in the chair in Hannibal's living room, B.A. was likewise out cold on the couch and snoring like a grizzly bear. Hannibal finished shedding the last of his Santa Claus outfit and whispered to Murdock, "Looks like we're bunking for the night, Captain, that alright with you?"
Murdock nodded tiredly, his eyes unable to even stay open anymore, "Thas' jus' fine, Colonel."
The sun would be up in a little over three hours, but the four of them would sleep till who knew when. After all Christmas was supposed to be a day of leisure and even Santa Claus went home to bed at the end of his deliveries. Hannibal climbed in on the left side of his bed and felt Murdock burrow in on the right side under the covers. They were all dog tired, but it was a good tired, and Hannibal had a good idea that the bunch of them were going to sleep like the dead now. Sleep like somebody with a clear conscience, he wondered how many other people could say the same? Although Hannibal wasn't particularly concerned with why good works were done so long as they were, he'd pointed out to his men that it was an entirely different matter altogether when you couldn't declare a tax write-off on the money you donated and distributed to the poor and knowing that, went on full speed ahead with it anyway.
"Goodnight, Hannibal," Murdock tiredly murmured from the other side of the bed.
"Goodnight, Murdock," he returned as he closed his eyes, "Merry Christmas."
"Merry Christmas, Colonel," Murdock replied.
Everything was quiet for a short while, then Hannibal heard something that made his eyes snap open in confusion. Murdock was humming something in his sleep on the other side of the bed. Hannibal closed his eyes again and knocked his head back against the pillow. A couple weeks ago when the time had come to break Murdock out of the V.A. again, Hannibal had taken it upon himself to do it that time. He'd gone to the hospital at night when everyone was asleep, everyone else anyway; Murdock was wide awake and watching Christmas cartoons on the little TV in his room. Not only that, he was singing along with the television set. Hannibal had never figured out what the cartoon was Murdock was watching at the time but he could still hear the lyrics in his head, the lyrics to the same song the pilot was humming now.
"Miracles happen most every day, to people like you and me, but don't expect a miracle, unless you help to make it be. So, you hope, and I'll hurry, you pray, and I'll plan, we'll do what's necessary, 'cause even a miracle needs a hand."
"And God help us everyone," Hannibal grunted as he fell asleep.
A/N: The lyrics at the end are from the song "Even a Miracle Needs a Hand" from the 1974 cartoon "'Twas the Night Before Christmas".