The Fat Man (15 page)

E
ven for an elf who’s helped load the sleigh on Christmas Eve, the amount of toys crammed into Charles “Candy” Cane’s mansion made my mouth drop open. Xanadu was a tall canyon of a joint, big enough to have a bus line. And almost every inch of it was taken up with toys. Games, dolls, balls, trucks and bikes were stacked floor to ceiling, three stories high. Stuffed animals of every breed clung to small cliffs on the toy mountain like avalanche survivors. A trail about three hairs wide trickled between the great walls of toys. It was dark and didn’t look safe, but from the other end we heard the wheeze of someone measuring his last breaths.

“You weren’t kidding, were you, Dingleberry,” I said. “Cane was hoarding toys. Now it all makes sense. Cane got me out of the way because as long as I was about naughty children, not as many toys got made. So when every kid in the world gets what they want, production has to ramp up. Cane starts to skim while Santa works himself to death. Suddenly, Santa’s too tired to take care of Christmas and Cane’s got a storehouse of toys. Like a white knight, he rides in, saves Christmas Day and, like Rudolph, goes down in history.”

“And to think I helped him do it!” Dingleberry cried. “Me and the other elves worked triple shifts to make more and more toys and didn’t notice Cane was taking them until it was too late. Santa is just as sick as he can be!”

At that, Rosebud and I looked at each other having the same awful thought. The wheezing we heard coming deep from the maze of toys was Santa’s. A second later, the three of us dove down the trail, trying to hear the hiss of a dying breath over the pounding thump of our heartbeats.

Santa couldn’t die. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t just a jolly old elf and toymaker. He was God’s own angel, sent here to show the spirit of Christmas to the poor souls too stubborn or stupid or scared to step into a church. Believing Santa could deliver gifts to the whole world in a single night made it possible to believe that on one quiet night, God gave the whole world the greatest gift. That notion would get in people’s craw and it would never go away. It might get quiet, the noise of the world might drown it out, but hearing Santa’s “Ho ho ho!” and seeing his rosy cheeks would make them remember. And when someone gave another person a gift, when they played Santa, and saw their friend’s eyes light up with surprise, their hearts might just get a little air under them. Then maybe, just maybe, they would learn and know and believe. Santa couldn’t stop and he couldn’t be replaced by Cane. Cane would poison it. Piling presents up on a kid made the presents and the kid worthless. The giving would no longer be a blessing. It had to remain special. It had to be something you believed in more than you could hold. A wish that would make you know you were special. Santa knew how to make that kind of gift because he put his good, beautiful and pure heart into it. I ran faster because Santa wasn’t going to die on my watch.

I finally rounded a corner and the walls opened up into a small, cluttered room. I saw a gray hooded figure standing over a man on his deathbed. It was the end of my world.

“Whose bottom do you have to butter to get a cup of tea around here, old chap?” the specter chirped. The question caught me up short and I stopped where I stood. Dingleberry and Rosebud plowed into me, but I didn’t feel a thing. I just stared at the faceless figure. Under the hood was a black hole, an inky, endless pit with nothing in it but a couple pins of orange light for eyes. “You would think in a palace of this sort, a bloke could find something for whistle wetting, but chaps in the Foreign Legion are more dewy than me, I’d wager,” said the voice coming from the faceless black hole.

“Are you talking to me?” I asked, trying to make some sense of everything.

“Well, I’m not talking to
him
,” the phantom said, pointing a long, spindly finger at the man in the bed gasping for breath. I followed the finger and saw that the dying man was not Santa. It was Cane! “What’s wrong with him?”

“Oh he’s dying, I’m afraid,” the phantom said with a shrug of the shoulders. “Buying the farm, expiring, his candle has a reservation in Snuff Town, so if you’ve come to say farewell, you’ve ankled in here just in the nick, believe me.”

“Are you the Angel of Death?” Dingleberry asked, his eyes wide with wonder.

“Oh no, ducky,” said the figure. “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Angel of Death needed a few days off. I can’t say that I blame him. Escorting chaps to the Finis Express can get dreary day in and day out. Even if a bloke is tossing the old mortal coil for an eternal romp behind the Pearlies, one must endure quite a spot of melancholy digging of the heels, gnashing of teeth, that sort of thing. It can be quite tiresome, so Death took a holiday and I am his able substitute. I say, that was rather good for speech extemporary—
Death took a holiday
. Must share that with the missus, ha!”

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come’s explanation of events aggravated Cane’s dying. His breath got raspier and hurried, and he fidgeted and thrashed in his bed. His eyes were wide with fear and he mumbled something, but I couldn’t catch what.

“He’s been carrying on like this since I arrived,” Ghost said. He turned to Cane and cooed, “Settle still, there, Master Cane. Think of tranquil waters and kittens or something. Try and spy the light, ducky. Spy the light.” Ghost then turned to us, lowered his voice and said, “Of course, in his case, I believe, for him,
the light
means the roaster is preheated and ready to begin never-ending poach, poor sot.”

“Maybe I can lower the temperature for him some,” I said and moved to Cane. Gone was the elf who was going to take over the world. Everything about Cane was gray: his hair, his skin and his eyes. He was trembling and searching for a sight or sound of comfort. “Cane,” I said in the friendliest voice I could muster, “it’s Gumdrop Coal. Do you remember me?”

Cane’s eyes told me that he knew who I was, but my presence wasn’t helping. He probably thought I was there to finish him off. “I’m going to offer you a chance for a little redemption, Candy,” I told him. “Now that I have witnesses, just tell me if you cooked up this plan, killing Raymond Hall and framing me, to take over Kringle Town and become Santa. Just give the nod and you’ll feel better for it.”

Cane nodded right away. But he nodded “no.”

“Pants on fire!” Ghost said. “Well, they’re about to be, quite literally.”

At first, I wanted to punch Cane, but my gut told me that someone with the bucket right in front of their boot would tell the truth. Even Cane wasn’t stupid enough to think he could lie his way out of this one. “Do you know who did do it?” I asked.

This time, Cane’s head went vertical. “Yes,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Yes.”

“Well, out with it already, poodle,” Ghost said, giving Cane a poke with his bony finger. “Don’t think a drawn-out deathbed confession is going to stretch your life taffy. I have a schedule to keep.”

I shot Ghost a look to stifle it, and turned back to Cane. “Did someone put you up to the frame-up? Who
was
it?”

Cane’s eyes half-closed and he took a long swallow. He lifted his hand like it was made of stone and pointed over my shoulder. “Rosebud,” he said.

My heart stopped. It had to because it broke right then and there.

Cane’s arm dropped back to his side and he looked at me, pleading for help. He was probably the saddest thing I had ever seen, but at that moment, I would have swapped places.

“He’s lying,” Rosebud said behind me. “Gumdrop, you know it’s not true.”

“Do I?”

“Why would I do such a thing?” she asked.

I turned around. Rosebud’s face was red, but her jaw was set in granite. She looked like she expected me to believe her or that she would smack me around until I did. “Why? Because it would make a good story, that’s why. You said it yourself; you want a big story. Candy shares his ambition and you smell front-page ink. But when you discover Cane doesn’t have the brainpower to pull off such a caper and make for good reading, you whisper a little sweet nothing that he needs to get me out of the way and help him along. Ukulele Who said a dame got to Lou Who. So, you get Ralphie’s rifle, give Raymond Hall the powder and type up that little poem on your typewriter, framing me for the murder or framing Cane for the framing. You’re fixed both ways. Then you give Lou Who just enough sugar to put him in a diabetic coma. To cover your bases, you lead me to the mistletoe forest, rescue me, get my trust. Plus all the while, your story gets bigger and bigger. My guess is that Tannenbomb was to pecan me out there. I bet you thought you’d be at a typewriter right now. Or you’ve already got it written and are waiting to put in the final adjectives. Yeah, it’s all making sense now. You’d say the nutcracker went nuts when I killed his master, Cane. It actually ties up pretty neat.”

“Rosebud,” Cane croaked again.

“Shut up, Candy!” Rosebud said. “He’s talking out of his head, Gumdrop, and so are you. Use that brain of yours. If I would have just left you for dead in the mistletoe forest, I could have written the story any old way I wanted. I wouldn’t need to go to all this trouble with Cane.”

“Except that Cane knew what you were up to,” I said. “And Dingleberry knew that Cane was stealing toys. Cane figured he might get caught and he was up to his neck. You knew he wouldn’t survive a third degree, so you wrote a different ending. A pretty splashy one, to boot. My hunch is that even though he’s a pompous twit, you knew Cane didn’t have the backbone to lie for you, so you went to work.”

“Rosebud!” Cane wheezed.

“This is all very ‘Colonel Horseradish in the library with the Balzac,’ but we’re wasting time,” Ghost said, clapping his hands like a nanny. “I’ve got to attend to the expiration of a grandma at the expense of a reindeer and some fatally poked cowpoke, so we really need Citizen Cane to start pushing the proverbial daisies with a little more gusto.”

“Gumdrop Coal, someone has rung your silver bell,” Rosebud said, madder than I had ever seen her. “Your thinking’s not so merry and bright. What would happen after that? I’d have to kill Dingleberry and he’s clearly been above ground.”

“Except that you led us both into a fight with a giant nutcracker,” I shot back. “Pretty sweet how Tannenbomb scooped you up to get you out of the way so you wouldn’t get hurt. You just didn’t count on us getting past him or Cane still being alive to stool on you.”

“Rosebud,” Cane said again. He was weak but desperate to get the word out. Rosebud shot forward and bent down in Cane’s face. “Why do you keep saying ‘Rosebud’? You know I had nothing to do with Hall’s murder or your plans. You’re doing this to get back at me for turning you down. If you can’t have me, then nobody else can, is that it? I’m sorry Cane, but you’re not my cup of cocoa. Sorry if I let you believe otherwise, and sorry you fell so hard. I can’t blame you. I let you believe that I was a present aching to be unwrapped, but you should have shook the box a couple of times. You’d have heard behind all the sweet talk there was nothing beneath my ribbon but a hard-boiled newspaper-woman who knows how you can’t use your brain when you have only one thing on your mind. It’s a heck of a thing to learn before you’re about to slip on the pine kimono, but if you want to die in peace, you’ll sit up right now and tell Gumdrop the truth. Do it now, or I’ll start playing a little chin music on that glass jaw of yours, and believe me, I feel a symphony coming on!”

The dame had quite a mouth on her. I loved her. Too bad she was trying to kill me. For his part, Cane looked like he wished Death would run a few red lights and get to him already. “Rosebud,” he said. He was starting to cry a little bit. Rosebud looked like she was about to slap his skull across the room, when Ghost chimed in with a news flash. “Hullo,” he said. “Could
this
be what the old boy is leaking about?”

We all turned and saw the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had pulled a sled from a nearby pile of toys. The rails were a shiny crimson and the board was a perfect plank of bleached maple. Across the middle, the word
Rosebud
was painted in red and gold. Cane lit up. He reached for the sleigh with weak, trembling hands when Ghost brought it over. He was happy, but I never felt worse in my life.

“Rosebud,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for doubting you, accusing you of all that rhubarb before. This whole thing has got me crazy. I don’t deserve it, but I hope you can forgive me.”

She didn’t seem to hear me, but whirled back on Cane. “A sled!” she screamed. “Are you kidding me? All that stupid ‘Ode to a Lovely Rosebud’ poetry you made me sit through night after night was really for a stinkin’ sled? You better be lying, Cane, or I’m gonna get a doctor to revive you so I can kill you myself!”

“Um, Rosebud,” I said and reached for her arm. She slapped me away and lit into Cane again.

“Your dying words better be that I was the best thing that ever happened to you and that you were stuck on me like spit to a stamp. I looked good for you, Cane. I wore hose! I made the effort to make you feel like the big, big elf! A girl doesn’t slap on the war paint to be second best to something pulled by
dogs
, so you better change your tune before I make it so you whistle it out of your—”