The Fat Man by Ken Harmon Read Free Book Online Page A

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.”
     
    M aybe 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 Candy Cane had and keep Dingleberry in the clover. If I couldn’t teach the kids a lesson, I’d teach it to their no-good parents and make sure the lesson got passed on. That’s the way it should have been in the first place.
    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