The Fat Man_ A Tale of North Pole Noir - Ken Harmon [17]
Christmas Eve was still a few weeks away, so I had plenty of time. If Santa was going to deliver gifts to every kid, they were going to be good kids—their parents would make sure of it. The more I thought of the idea, the more I liked it, though I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. Dingleberry would worry himself sick, Santa wouldn’t approve and Cane would hang me like a stocking for such an idea, so I was going to keep my sweet little notion to myself.
I didn’t need to look at the Naughty List to know which parent was going to get a house call first. He had been a lousy kid and, as a father, he wasn’t giving his son a chance to be better. The coal warning I had delivered last year to the little squirt was forgotten by Groundhog Day when Raymond Junior celebrated the holiday by setting an actual groundhog loose during a ballet recital, turning Swan Lake into an ugly duckling quicker than you could say tutu. And Raymond Senior didn’t even say a word to his son.
It was time to deck the Halls.
CHAPTER 7
Deck the Halls
THE MARSHMALLOW WORLD GAZETTE
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Gossip with Butternut Snitch
This issue, our Scuttlebutt Stocking is stuffed with rumors, hearsay and tales told out of school. First, something fishy is going on with a famous Myrrh-Maid. It seems the Myrrh maven is musing a scheme to turn myrrh into a new perfume! It sounds like someone’s created Frankincensestein! Next, nosy nightlife spies said a certain reindeer was really kicking up her hoofs recently at the Hustle & Bustle club. Witnesses say the little vixen staggered home, mumbling, “I’ll never do that for two bucks again!” Finally, word has it that a BIG ELF ON CAMPUS has a bad case of puppy love for one of my fellow newshounds. Little snowbirds tell me that the lucky frail is covered in rosebuds, trinkets and candy canes because the chap thinks the she-porter is asking him all those questions for a personal purpose. Stay tuned!
After everything I had been through with Little Raymond, Raymond Hall Senior was the obvious choice for a visit. Big Ray was not going to win any parenting awards, because he had been such a rotten kid himself. When he was little, Raymond broke a bat on Johnny’s head; somebody snitched on him. He hid a frog in his sister’s bed; somebody snitched on him. With each sin, somebody stooled on Raymond, and, every Christmas morning, Raymond had more coal in his stocking than a West Virginia miner. But Raymond didn’t learn. As he got older, his crimes went beyond putting tacks in the teacher’s chair and tying knots in Susie’s hair. Raymond got into cheating on exams, putting sawdust in the gas tanks of enemies and slipping Mickeys into a coed’s beer. Raymond’s sins continued when he became a titan of industry, pioneering the on-hold messaging business. Not only did he send up the blood pressure of anyone who had ever been put on hold and had to listen to some canned ad of baloney instead of a live person, Raymond ran Don’t Hang Up with the scruples of a raccoon. Profits were high, wages were low and dames in the office had more fingerprints than the glass on a candy case.
Raymond married Cynthia, a college sweetheart who didn’t focus on Raymond’s shortcomings because the monkey on her back kept her eyes blurry. Together, they birthed Little Ray. Raymond’s interest in his son ended at the first dirty diaper, causing the poor kid to grow into a completely charmless cherub who deserved to be beaten every day like a rabid piñata. If I did my job right, Raymond would wake up and put on his papa pants. Even a hard-boiled elf like me can see if a kid has potential and, if his father gave half a damn, Little Ray had a chance of being a decent person. That was the plan.
At the Don’t Hang Up headquarters, Raymond surrounded himself with a bunch of toothy cronies, grinning yes-men who knew