The Fat Man (10 page)

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Authors: Ken Harmon

BOOK: The Fat Man
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I
f Dingleberry’s comic score was the big news, then the papers had not yet learned of my outlaw ways. I imagine Rosebud was sharpening her poison pen, and a special edition was rolling off the presses, lots of ink and hard words telling of the awful thing I had done. But for the moment, I was still free. I had a chance to change how the story ended.
As soon as I heard that a BB to the eye is what put Raymond under the white sheet, I had a hunch that I was being framed. Someone from Kringle Town knew I had roughed up Raymond. They also knew that I would be the prime suspect if something happened to him. Even if Bert had heard the examiner say that someone had shot Raymond’s eye out, he and every other Kringle Town citizen would have said that I chose the whole BB angle as a cover.
So I ran.
I figured running was the only chance I had. It was the only way I could find out if Ralphie had his hands on the trigger of an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB Gun with a compass in the stock. It didn’t sound like something Ralphie would do. Ralphie was a good kid, a bit of a potty mouth, but a good kid. Either someone
made
Ralphie shoot Raymond, or Ralphie was another fall guy. Either way, I had to get to Ralphie before anyone else did and make sure he would tell the truth.
I ducked into the human world and hid in a tree outside the Hall house. When Bert arrived with Cane’s posse and saw me gone, they took off the way they came. They thought I doubled back on them and stampeded away to cut me off. I let them get good and gone while I watched the cops take Raymond’s body away. Raymond was a rotten kid and not much of a dad until the end, but I still didn’t want to see him dead. A prayer for Raymond hung in a lump in my throat for a while, not because I didn’t think he deserved one. I just wasn’t sure I deserved to pray it.
When it was safe, I jumped back into Kringle Town and headed for Ralphie. Though he was always going to be around eleven years old, more or less, Ralphie was wise beyond his years. Behind the big round glasses was a guy who knew something about the heartbreak of wanting something so bad you could taste it. He also knew that once you got it, the thing that you wanted wasn’t what was missing in the first place. That’s what Ralphie’s job was in Kringle Town, to remind us all to look beyond what we crave and take joy in what we have.
Still, Ralphie was a kid and I suppose that if someone made using Raymond Hall for target practice sound like an adventure, Ralphie might have gone along with the idea. There was only one way to find out, so I knocked on Ralphie’s door.
It was late and the dull glow of the leg lamp in the window didn’t do much to cut the gloom. The house was as dark as a bat’s gut. My knock was the only sound and nobody was stirring inside. Since Bert, Cane and the mob could be on me in a matter of minutes, I decided to forget my manners and let myself in. Actually, I just walked through the door. Elf magic comes in handy.
The place was a mess. Dishes with half-eaten meals covered most of the flat surfaces in the front room by the radio and the floor was a carpet of newspapers, clothes and crumbs. Propped up in the corner was Ralphie’s prized Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB Gun with a compass in the stock. Its dark barrel winked in the low light, which meant it had just been cleaned. I hoisted it up and was giving it the once-over, looking for any kind of clue, when Ralphie scampered down the stairs in a hurry. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me, went pale and threw his hands above his head.
“Relax, Ralphie,” I told him. “You’re not being robbed.” Though I must admit that I kept the Red Ryder aimed just above Ralphie’s head.
“Gumdrop,” the kid managed to get out between the thumping of his heart. “What are you doing here?”
“Just dropping in on an old pal,” I said. “You seem kind of surprised to see me, kid. Why is that?”
“I wasn’t expecting to run into someone pointing a gun at me,” he said. “What’s so strange about that?”
“Nothing, I guess. Why don’t you relax? I just need to ask you a couple of questions.”
Ralphie didn’t budge. His arms were still frozen above his head. “I can’t put my arms down,” he said. “I’m scared.”
Feeling ashamed, I lowered the gun. Even if Ralphie was guilty, I had no business pointing a rifle at a kid. “Easy, buddy,” I said. “I was just looking at your rifle. Sit down. Do you know why I’m here?”
Without taking his eyes off me, Ralphie found a chair. He sat quiet for a minute and then tears started to well up behind those big round glasses. “I heard on the radio that you did something bad, Gumdrop,” he blubbered. “You killed that man. You tricked me into giving you my BB gun and you killed him! And now you’re going to say it was me who did it and it wasn’t! It wasn’t me!”
The kid was out of control now. He was sobbing and shaking. Tears poured out of his eyes, and his nose was Niagara Falls. I had to get him calmed down before he started losing his dinner. I sat down beside him and gave him a hankie. I patted him on the back and tried to stay calm despite knowing that something was going on in Kringle Town and that I was in the middle of it.
“Calm down, kid,” I said. “Calm down. I know you didn’t do it and I’m not here to make you take the blame.” Ralphie eased off the sobbing throttle a bit, so I plowed on. “I didn’t kill Raymond Hall. I hurt him last week, but he was alive. Whoever killed him tonight wants it to look like I did it and I need your help to find out who it is. Do you think you can help me?”
My hankie would have been drier if it had come out of the ocean. After Ralphie got finished filling it with his sinuses, he seemed a little less unhinged. I needed to get answers out of him in a hurry, but I didn’t want to set him off again. “Let’s start at the beginning, kid,” I told him. “What makes you think I tricked you into giving me your BB gun?”
“You sent me a note saying that you wanted to borrow it,” he said. “You said that if I let you borrow it, you would give me what I really wanted.”
“What’s that?”
“To grow up.” Ralphie’s face started to melt into tears again. “I’m tired of being a kid! I want to grow up and do other things. I want to get tall and finally outgrow that stupid, dupid bunny suit! I want a red car. I want a mustache! You said you could make it happen if I let you borrow Red Ryder!”
Poor kid. I guess Ralphie’s mission in life was getting to him and he wasn’t happy with what he had. Most of us in Kringle Town are content to stay more or less the same, so you folks in the human world can have your holiday traditions. Oh sure, along about July, everybody gets a little itch to break out of the mold, but most of us are happy to do our jobs. Ralphie was having a hard time adjusting. He has to stay the same soap-eating, theme-writing, bunny-suit-wearing boy forever—and that was no picnic. “Ralphie, were the notes signed by me?” I asked.
Ralphie pinched up his face in hard thought and then shook his head. “No. After I heard the news tonight, I just thought the note was from you.” Ralphie fished a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to me.
Dear Ralphie,
I need your help to play a trick on someone. Cupid over in Valentine Town has challenged me to a target contest. He thinks he is going to win because he is so good with that bow and arrow. But here’s the thing: Cupid never said that I had to use a bow and arrow! Now everyone kows that the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Actio Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model BB Gun with a ompass in the stock turns anyone into a real arksman, so I was wondering if I cd borrow “Old Blue” to put that diaper-wearing matchmaker in his place? I’ll make it worth or while. I believe I can arrange for your secret wish to be granted. You will get to grow up! This must all be kept secret, hough, until after the contest. Peae help me, Ralphie. Please deliver Red Ryde to P.O. Box U-Who by Tuesday.
Sincerely,
A Friend
The note was written with a typewriter and could have come from anybody. The P.O. Box was an address in Whoville. “Did you see anybody when you delivered the gun?” I asked Ralphie.
“I didn’t go at first,” he said. “As much as I want to grow up, I didn’t want anyone to have my Red Ryder. I worked hard for it.”
“What changed your mind?”
Ralphie pulled out a second scrap of paper and handed it to me.
Dear Ralphie,
Since you failed to deliver the Red Ryder to me, I am forced to resort to baser tactics. Ralphie, deliver the Red Ryder to me tomorrow—-I DOUBLE DOG DARE YOU!
N
ow that was an offer Ralphie couldn’t refuse. “I took it this morning,” Ralphie said. “Someone left Red Ryder on the porch a few hours ago. I never saw who.”
I scrambled to try and put the millions of puzzle pieces in my mind together, but I couldn’t find a single match. The only thing I had to go on was that the Red Ryder was delivered to Whoville, a burg of Kringle Town that asks more questions than it answers, so folks don’t tend to go there unless they absolutely have to. Still, I had to find out who was behind all of this.
Or which Who.
I got all the details about Ralphie’s trip to Whoville and I slipped the notes in my pocket. “Now, Ralphie, remember this,” I said. “You never saw me; we never talked. Until I figure out a few things, you keep your trap shut and don’t tell anyone about someone borrowing Red Ryder.”
“But,” Ralphie said, looking scared. I imagine the kid didn’t want to have to lie anymore.
“No buts,” I said, cutting him off. “You can’t talk. I triple dog dare you.”
 
I
headed for Whoville in a hurry, though I was dreading it. I don’t like the town. They got their own way of running things and if you don’t play by their rules, you stick out in Whoville like I don’t know what. You’ll see. But I didn’t have a choice. My trail would stay cold a few minutes more, but then Bert, Cane and the mob would be hot on my trail quicker than a dime store Santa in a greased chimney.
CHAPTER 12
Seasick Crocodile
Every Who
Down in Whoville
Liked mysteries a lot
 
They liked Whodunits
With puzzles and riddles,
Cases with knots in the plot.
 
A Who brain could help me. Find who
borrowed the gun.
A Who’d study the clues, think it was fun.
It could be the killer’s head wasn’t
screwed on quite right.
It could be, perhaps, it just wasn’t my night.
I had to find for whom I was taking the fall.
Else, I’d get fitted for a noose, two sizes too small.
But,
Ukulele Who,
Known as U. Who,
Was an old friend and he’d know what to do.
He had eyes in the alleys, ears to the ground.
If crime stank just a little, he had the nose of a hound.
So I snuck to his door, gave it a rap,
Looking over my shoulder, hoping it wasn’t a trap.
 
“Gumdrop, you’ve got some nerve,” U. Who said.
“You’re hot as a pepper! Could get us all dead!”
“Then you know the lowdown on the rifle,” I begged.
“Tell me what you know, friend, then I promise I’ll leg.”
 
“Someone rented a Who mailbox.
They got Ralphie’s Red Ryder.
They’re spinning a web
And I want the spider!”
 
U. Who thought
Hard about what I asked.
Then he kicked the door. “Blast!”
He shouted and steamed. “Blast, blast, blast, blast!”
 
U. Who said, “Lou Who gave his box to
Some femme fatale.
Lou Who got to first base, but now don’t feel so well.
What she did to him, she should be ashamed!
Lou’s in a sugar coma from too much candy cane!”
 
I wanted to cry, but it wasn’t my style.
I felt worse than a seasick crocodile.
It was one thing for Cane to want me dead,
But was he getting help from the dame
named for a sled?
 
Then U. Who handed me a note.
A dilly of a note.
U. Who
Gave me a real dilly of a note.
 
“This paper got here just before you,
Like they knew you were coming. It smells of perfume.”
I could not believe the words that I read
But the quick little letter filled me with dread.
 
“Run your pucker to the Forest of Mistletoe!
Shut up! Now! Go! Put your lips together and blow!”
CHAPTER 13
Somebody Waits for You

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