The Fat Man_ A Tale of North Pole Noir - Ken Harmon [16]
“None taken,” I said, smiling and trying to calm Dingleberry down. “Did you talk to Santa?”
“I can’t get a minute alone with him,” Dingleberry said. “There have been threats, so Santa’s surrounded by some of Cane’s bodyguards. Plus, Santa’s either creating new toys, building prototypes or recalculating his flight plans. He’s too busy to talk to me.”
“How’s he look?”
Dingleberry was going to tear up again, so he turned away and didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
“Tell me something, Dingleberry, be honest,” I said. “Do you think giving the naughty boys and girls toys makes them good little boys and girls? Makes everybody even?”
“I don’t know, Gumdrop,” he said. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“Another way to look at it is that it brings everybody down,” I said. “There’s no reward for good behavior. Anything goes. The kids who listened and did their homework are treated just the same as those who were throwing rocks at little old ladies. I don’t think that’s fair.”
“There are a lot of things that aren’t fair,” Dingleberry said.
“Like you getting lumped in with me,” I said.
Dingleberry shook his head. “No, that’s different. Cane is doing that. He’s being a bully. But I can’t get fired, Gumdrop! I can’t. If I don’t get to give out toys I don’t know what I’d do.”
Dingleberry would curl up into a ball and roll away is what he’d do. I wasn’t going to let him take the fall for me. “You’re not going to get fired because you and I are no longer friends.”
“Gumdrop!”
“We’re no longer friends in Cane’s eyes,” I said. “Tomorrow night, you and I are going to have a big fight at the Blue Christmas. You’ll give me the gate, but it will all be just for show, Ding, just for show. I will still love you like nobody else, but this spat will be our little secret, OK?”
The famous Dingleberry smile returned. “You mean like a game? Just like in By George and the Adventure of the Tattoo Statue Switcheroo! George let the Cannonball Cabal think they had stolen the famous, powerful statue Bisboo to give to the evil Potter, but George switched it!”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just like that. And we’ll play the game until everything calms down. Meanwhile, I want to see if I can find out how Cane’s going to deal with naughty kids.”
“Please be careful, Gumdrop,” Dingleberry said. “I am not your father, so I can’t tell you what to do, but please let Candy Cane deal with naughty kids. Cause trouble for Cane and other elves, but leave kids alone. Just stay away from the kids.”
“Say that again!” Dingleberry did, word for word.
Bam! Dingleberry just delivered my Christmas present early, and it was exactly the right size. “Dingleberry, thank you. You have just given me a wonderful idea!”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh yes! And don’t worry. I’m not going to mess with the kids.”
Maybe it was how I should have been approaching things all along. On most of the Naughty List, the kids weren’t the problem, the parents were. Dingleberry and Santa were right when they said that most kids couldn’t help being bad. That’s because Mom and Pop didn’t know how to keep a kid in line or simply didn’t care. Yeah, maybe they were just doing the same thing their parents did to them, but son of a blitzen, they were old enough to know better now. And if they still didn’t know, well, I decided I was going to change that.
The naughty kids who grew up to be naughty adults and raise more naughty kids were about to get a crash course in responsibility from the new, secret Coal Patrol.
I didn’t need any help. I had elf superpowers, top-shelf Zwarte Pieten training and the freedom of not giving a damn. It was the only way I could save Santa from wearing himself out. It was the only way to preserve Christmas present justice. I figured it would stop any harebrained idea