Santa's helper needs help to find if this kid's been naughty or nice.
An Elf in Kansas
Harry huddled against the sleeting rain as he tried to light a cigarette through the runoff coming from his fedora. His thin trench coat offering little protection from the chill. The few miserable passersby took little notice of him, mostly overwhelmed by their own holiday concerns. No holiday choir in their right mind would be on the corner today, blasting holiday cheer to the oblivious passersby tonight, that much was clear.
This was not the Overland Park he’d been expecting. He hoped his contact wouldn’t just flake on him. Would be just like Joe, though, to arrange a meeting, notice the horrible weather, and decide it would be funny to leave Harry out in it. This was no way to get information on a kid, he far preferred direct surveillance, but he’d not been able to lay eyes on the target after having been here a week. He wondered if this was all a wild goose chase.
“Mister Pickerton?” purred a soft female voice in his ear. “Joe sends his regrets, but he thought you’d want to see this.”
Harry turned to see a dame in a large brimmed hat, with big blue eyes and, despite the weather, legs for days exposed below a short trench coat. “Thanks miss. You sure Joe sent you? I’m surprised he’s able to afford help, since he’s always pleading poverty about paying his bills.” She handed him a large manila envelope which he reached for just before a giant ball of pain exploded in the skull behind his right ear.
Harry came to in a dark room, tied to his chair, and cursed himself for failing to keep aware of his surroundings, once the dame entered the picture. It had been years since he’d been sapped, and he found the experience didn’t improve with age. The stale cigarette smoke and unmistakable fragrance of Drakkar Noir which always failed to fully mask his body odor announced the arrival of his old buddy Joe.
“Harry, I need you to know, whatever your business is with this kid, you’d better knock it off, or you’re going to only end up closer and closer to hospitals and morgues.” Joe informed him, “and sorry for the rough stuff, but I had to make sure I had your attention.”
Harry glared up at him, his headache nowhere close to having faded from memory, “Joe, if you had something to say, you didn’t have to go all this trouble. You know the business I’m in now, working for Nick, and it’s never before come to violence like this between us.” Harry casually reached for the .38 in his boot, and found it missing.
“Looking for this?” Joe inquired, casually pulling the snub nosed revolver from a nearby drawer, while towering over Harry. He was easily twice Harry’s size, which wasn’t unusual when you were comparing elves and humans. “Couldn’t leave it with you, just in case you found a way to sneak it out and plug me full of lead.” The sound of the rainstorm still pounded on the ceiling of the ramshackle warehouse, which, as near as Harry could figure from his recent experience with Kansas weather meant he’d been here less than a week, but probably only a couple hours.
“Just steer clear of little Jimmy, and we’ll have no need for any further…unpleasantness,” continued Joe.
“What’s up with the dame?” Harry asked, “you were always so cash strapped before, when it came time to pay my services, and she looks like she probably belongs to some blonde union.”
“Mr. Massimino is paying handsomely for protecting his family from prying eyes, and besides, what better way to distract an old letch, like yourself than a toothsome blonde? Do we have an understanding, Harry?”
Cautiously, Harry replied, “I’m neither hard of hearing nor lacking in comprehension of what you’re asking.”
“Good,” replied Joe, just before everything in Harry’s world became stars again, fading to black, with the ironic thought that he’d just been pistol-whipped with his own gun.
When he came to again, he could hear the continuing sound of rain on metal, and smelled the stench of rotting food. Slowly opening his eyes, he found he’d been deposited in a dumpster. At least Joe had shown the decency to close the lid after dumping him inside. He found he’d even returned the gun to its little holster, just inside his boot. He pondered his next course of action. He’d never returned an incomplete or inconclusive report before to the big guy in the red suit, and he really didn’t want to do so now.
He pulled his inadequate, but reliable, trench coat around him before trying to lift the lid to the dumpster and happily finding it unlocked.
The rain quickly had him soaked again as he extracted himself from the dumpster and tried to get his bearings. Apparently, he’d been dumped (quite literally) out near Metcalf Avenue, near the mall. He walked there, and on the way spotted a Christmas display, but where instead of 12 little reindeer, the sleigh was hitched instead to 12 pink lawn flamingoes, with Rudolph replaced by a flamingo in gaudy makeup, and glowing red beak. Sighing, he moved on.
Harry’s first order of business, after getting out of the rain, was to head to the nearest pharmacy to try to get something for his splitting headache, and see if his skull needed bandaging after the punishment it’d been through in the past few hours. In the restroom, with a mirror he’d plucked from the cosmetics section, he checked his recent injuries to see if they needed stitches. He found, despite two huge lumps, no evident sign of blood. Next time they met, he’d have to commend Joe for the professional courtesy.
Returning the mirror to the sales rack, he spent the next few minutes trying to talk the pharmacist into giving him something stronger than the over the counter medications, to no avail. It never helped in such situations to be just over 40 inches tall. People almost instinctively treat you like a kid, which was a bias he’d had to cope with ever since he’d abandoned his life in the toy factory for this gumshoe gig. He found it handy when needing to squeeze into small spaces for effective surveillance, he knew. He’d gotten a lot of dirt on cheating spouses that way, when he wasn’t working for Nick.
Downing 800 mg of ibuprofen with a quick mouthful of water from the fountain, he pondered how to pursue his latest job. The family mostly stayed holed up in a gated mansion complete with alarms, dogs, and security staff. When the kid did go to school, he was ushered from the SUV with dark tinted windows straight to the school door by a pair of bodyguards who never let anyone on the street close to the kid. Harry had begun to wonder if the protection was just a symptom of overly cautious parents before his little run-in with Joe. Now he knew, even if this protective duty had been in place long before Harry ever came to Kansas, he’d been on their radar. This job was just getting better and better.
He paused for a moment to wipe his glasses clear of his own dripping sarcasm, and decided, if he couldn’t yet get to the kid, maybe he’d be able to gather some dirt from his classmates. From what he could tell, Jimmy never had guests, but sometimes he didn’t come straight home from school. Perhaps the friend could shed some light, and give him a new angle.
Sometimes, Harry thought, there are advantages to being small. Trying to fit in with a bunch of 8 year olds is easier when you’re an elf. You’re all at the same eye level, more or less. So, when he met with Kevin at the mall, and struck up a conversation about Jimmy, it all seemed perfectly innocent to most of the passersby. Harry learned that Jimmy was indeed on Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, just not under his own name.
Later, as Harry looked up Jimmy, he was disappointed that he still wasn’t coming up with a lot of information that would be of use to Nick. Apparently, his father had trained him well about not leaving a trail of evidence, even under a pseudonym. Fortunately, he still had exchanged numbers with Kevin, mostly under the guise of helping him with his math homework. Third grade math fortunately posed no issues for Harry.
Over the next few days, Harry occasionally caught sight of Joe at the very edge of his vision. While he wanted to even the score with him, this was not the time or the place to do so. He knew a better opportunity would open up later, and let the issue lie.
Harry once chanced a trip over to Jimmy’s neighborhood, stopping a few blocks away just to try to get eyes on his target. Sadly, the neighbors, or possibly the guards, reported him, and a cop politely, but firmly suggested that he may enjoy his day better if he departed. Harry took the hint, irritated that even public streets were being denied to those who had a legitimate reason to be there, even if it went against the best interests of his targets. He gave a quick and silent thanks that at least it wasn’t raining, just before a few white flakes started drifting down. They didn’t stick, when they hit the ground, or asphalt. He pulled his trench coat closer about him, and went back to his hotel, hoping to come up with another angle.
Fortunately, at 4 feet tall, Harry didn’t really stand out while he hung out in front of the elementary school which Jimmy attended. Eventually, he came in contact with a couple of his classmates. Sadly, they gave no useful information about him. It was almost as if they were scared. Eventually, Harry found out why. It took Sally the Snitch to give him the real skinny. Jimmy was running his own small criminal enterprise in the schoolyard. He was involved in everything from selling tests to entry level drugs. He even engaged in the more clichéd taking lunch money from other kids. But anyone discovered interfering with his little entrepreneurial schemes had a mysterious way of ending up hurt, or worse. Sally was only immune because her family was rich and privileged, and had their own system of street justice.
Harry was buoyed by the information. Finally he would have something real to report, even if it was hearsay. Santa didn’t hold that against his detectives. This wasn’t a courtroom, this was Christmas. They were allowed to gather information any way they could.
On his way back to his hotel, this time Harry spotted Joe before Joe saw him, so he managed to duck under the clumsy swing, and take out Joe’s knees. Even writhing on the ground, Joe told him, “I warned you about digging into Jimmy’s story. If he doesn’t get his fair share of Santa’s bounty, you will pay.”
Harry scoffed at the threat. He left Joe without looking back. He knew that Joe would never walk normally again, and that was just about sufficient repayment for the lumps on his head, which would heal a whole lot better than Joe’s knees.
Over the next few weeks, he slowly gathered even more information about Jimmy, having established a reputation as someone who could really pay for dirt on the kid. While writing his report on Jimmy, Harry noted which kids were really helpful in the endeavor. Saint Nick had always repaid the really helpful kids with extra holiday bounty. Although nobody ever seemed to notice, Santa’s candy never even caused cavities. Perhaps it went unnoticed, because the parents who replaced the coal with candy and goodies far outnumbered those few kids that were truly deserving of Santa’s bounty.
Writing up the final report, filled with all the grisly details, Harry wondered what Santa would be leaving Jimmy. Then, he shrugged. It wasn’t his job to judge, just to provide the information. He knew Santa would find exactly the right thing. Now, he’d just have to watch his back for Joe, but this was nothing particularly new.
Harry actually got his own little surprise on Christmas morning. In addition to a fat check for his work, under his tree was a brand new, warm trench coat. Attached to it, was a tag which read “To: Happy Picklepants Merry Christmas! Love, Santa.” He winced a little on reading the tag. He’d worked so hard to put that name behind him. But at least he’d been good this year.
A cute story, very appropriate for Christmas. And in the old, PI noir style, with all the right adverbs and adjectives like "ball of pain." Cool.
A couple of writing pointers … In a couple of places announcing the speaker, like when you said, "Joe informed him." Is unnecessary because we already know that it is Joe speaking. Also in the middle of the story, you use he instead of Harry several times in a row. Lead off with Harry in some of those sentences. Finally, I think it would be better to move to action rather than description when Harry meets Sally (no intentional relationship). She should be telling him all the good stuff she's got on Jimmy.
Book 2 of The Commander and the Chief series finds the Chief "on the warpath" and "counting coup" with her enemies on both sides of the ocean. Meanwhile, she fights an indictment and risks losing her latest love, the Commander, as well as unleashing
“We’re going to use nine megaton warheads in space and we’re not sure they’re large enough to be effective. Why would you even consider using kiloton-range surface-to-air warheads as back-up?” The answer was succinct. “Because they’re all we have.”
