The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  As it turned out, I shouldn’t have been worrying about that.

  What I should have been worrying about was why the heck the steamer was back two weeks early.

  * * *

  • • •

  Meanwhile . . .

  From the Truant Officer’s journal:

  Mrs. Mummy’s powers to persuade are remarkable. First with Bawdy Claude, then with the Keepers, and now with Smudge, the captain of the mail steamer.

  She somehow managed to convince him to reverse his course and take us to Isle X, even though he wasn’t supposed to go back for several weeks.

  I suppose it is hard for anyone to say no to a mother in search of her daughter.

  Even so, it is amazing that it has worked out. That we are here! As our ship pulls closer to the island and the horn blows, we see real live elves running to greet us on the dock.

  And children.

  40. A TRIO OF UNPLEASANT SURPRISES

  The first surprise came when I was standing on the dock watching the ship come in and I heard someone calling me.

  “Liar!” came the voice from the boat. “There you are! My friend! And Brat! And Cruel! All of you!”

  “Is that . . .” the Brat said.

  “It can’t be . . .” the Cruel said.

  But it was.

  The Vainglorious.

  Have you ever had one of those moments when the world makes no sense?

  It was impossible that he was on the mail steamer, and yet there he was, at the front of the deck, waving at us.

  And then I heard another voice I knew.

  “I told you before, Luigi Curidi,” it said. “I always catch my man!”

  It was my nemesis! The Truant Officer! But how could that be? The last time I saw him, he was with . . .

  Oh, right. We had left the two of them together! But still, how could they have found us? It was impossible, it was—

  “No,” the Thief said.

  She had just seen who else was on the ship.

  “Oh no,” the Thief said softly. “No, no, no.”

  I could see the gold tooth of that hideous smile glistening all the way from shore. I can still see it.

  Can we stop this chapter and take a break? Please?

  Because I still can’t handle what happened.

  41. WHAT HAPPENED

  So, you can probably imagine what was going through my head—what was going through all of our heads. How, how, how did this happen?

  Of course, you already know how these three jokers—plus the Brothers Jack—managed to get to Isle X. For us, however, there was a lot of explaining to do.

  But before that came the big family reunion.

  “My dear, dear daughter!” Mummy said, bursting into big sloppy fake tears and hugging the Thief. “I was so, so worried!”

  In the grip of that headlock of a hug, the Thief looked like a rabbit caught in a dog’s mouth—in shock. She wasn’t moving and her eyes were wide and glassy.

  I was in a little bit of shock myself.

  “You came all this way just to take me back to school?” I said to my archenemy.

  “This is not about skipping school,” the Truant Officer said. He explained how busting up our “ring” was going to make him famous and that as a reward he would become a real policeman. “Maybe even an FBI agent!”

  Then there was the Vainglorious.

  “You must have all been so worried about me!” he said as he hugged each of us. “No need to worry anymore! I’m fine! It was just a terrible mistake at the train station!”

  The rest of us looked at each other.

  Could he really be this deluded?

  “Yes, such a terrible mistake,” I said. “We are so glad you found us.”

  Which was mostly a lie, but not totally. I myself was a little glad he was here. Because that meant there were finally nine of us.

  We were the No-Good Nine for real!

  “Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Santa said.

  And here’s where we got to the explaining part. Of course, a lot of it was a lie. At least, when it was Mummy Rummy doing the explaining it was a lie.

  We tried to tell Santa that she was an evil bootlegger—that she had left us for dead!—but he wasn’t having any of it.

  You think I’m a good liar? Well, Mummy had Santa believing she was the most concerned mother who had ever walked the face of the earth. In fact, she blamed us for corrupting her daughter.

  “These dirty-rotten Naughty Listers!” Santa said, shaking his head.

  The Vainglorious wasn’t helping our case, either.

  “Oh, you guys! Always misunderstanding things,” he said. “Maybe it’s the language. Because Mummy is the nicest lady.”

  The Truant Officer vouched for her, too. He then told Santa that he’d take us back to the proper authorities in Pittsburgh and that we’d all likely wind up in reform school.

  “That sounds like an excellent idea!” Santa said.

  The idea of going to reform school sounded pretty bad—even worse than home—but not half as bad as where the Thief was headed.

  “Don’t you worry about this one, men,” Mummy said, holding the Thief tight. “I’ll set ’er back on the path of the straight and narrow. She won’t be escaping from me again.”

  The Thief no longer had that glassy-eyed look. Her eyes were racing around like she was desperately searching for a way to escape.

  In the meantime, there was one person on the ship that Santa was not happy with.

  Capt. Smudge.

  “How dare you bring these Naughty Listers to my island!” Santa yelled at him. “After all I’ve paid you over the years!”

  “Oh, please don’t be mad at ’im, Santa!” Mummy said. “’E is a sweet man ’oo thought ’e was ’elping the children. And after all, ’e ’elped me come get my daughter. And ’e’s going to take them away, too.”

  “The sooner the better,” Santa grumbled.

  “I ’ope not too soon,” Mummy said. “I just don’t think I can bear getting right back on that boat.”

  She held a hand to her forehead like she was a damsel in distress in some dopey movie.

  “Well, I suppose you can stay for a day . . .” Santa said.

  “And I would just love to see ’ow your operation works!” Mummy said, putting a hand on Santa’s arm. “I ’ave a little manufacturing business myself. A . . . baking operation. Maybe you could give me some tips. I would love to see ’ow a master industrialist operates.”

  “Well, I certainly could,” Santa said, puffing out his chest. “I suppose I can stand the sight of these Naughty Listers for one more day. In fact, I will treat you all to a dinner at my house! To show you how forgiving I can be.”

  “Does this mean you forgive me for burning down your factory?” I said.

  Santa looked at me. His eyes narrowed. “It does not.”

  I didn’t think so.

  42. THE TOUR

  Mummy, the two Jacks, and my archenemy were being given a tour of Isle X like they were some kind of visiting royalty.

  “We actually have had the king of England here,” Santa said. “Not to mention three presidents, Babe Ruth, Mark Twain, and the pope.”

  “And none of them have ever revealed the location of Isle X?” the Truant Officer asked. “Why not?”

  “Because I’d put them on the Naughty List!” Santa said. “HO HO HO!”

  Yeah, ho ho ho. It was all a big laugh for Santa now. Meanwhile, we were running out of time if we wanted to figure a way out of this mess.

  Reform school?

  That was not good.

  “Well I’m not going,” the Brat said. “Once we get on the ship, we’ll overpower the Truant Officer and go our own way.”

  “But what about Mummy and the
B-B-B-B-Brothers Jack?” the Know-It-All said. “They’ll b-b-b-be on the ship, too!”

  While we hung back and huddled over how to escape, Santa was out front bragging about his factory.

  “Now, don’t get me wrong,” he said to the Truant Officer and Mummy, “the factory burning down is a major setback. We may have to cancel Christmas this year all together.”

  Mummy gasped. “’Ow ’orrible!”

  “Yes. But as you can see, we’ve already begun building a new factory, and by adding state-of-the-art machinery, our production will soar. By next Christmas, we should be able to make up for this year by giving children double what they ask for!”

  “The nice ones,” Amanuensis said, looking back at us with a sneer.

  The Rude stuck out his tongue at him.

  “All of this machinery—can it only be used to make toys?” Mummy said, all innocent voiced. “Or can any of it be changed over to make—oh, I don’t know—a bottled grain-based beverage?”

  The tour curved around to the top of the island, where the stables and reindeer pens were located. Coming back around, we arrived at the sleigh maker’s workshop.

  Walking in, Santa explained how they had phased out the old-fashioned wooden sleighs years ago. “Now all our models have modern steel suspensions and all-metal bodies. And instead of jingle bells, we use air horns.”

  BLANNNH!

  he demonstrated.

  The main sleigh—THE XMAS NITE SPECIAL—was enormous. The vehicle was as big as Mummy’s trucks and then some, with different levels to store the toys and built-in ladders to get at them. How this massive hunk of metal ever got off the ground, I couldn’t imagine.

  “What an amazing delivery system you’ve put together, Mr. Claus,” Mummy said.

  “Oh please, call me Santa!”

  While Mummy was oohing and ahhing over Santa’s sleighs, I took my archenemy aside. He might have been my nemesis, but he wasn’t a bad guy—not like Mummy. If only I could convince him what Mummy was really like, maybe I could convince him that he couldn’t let her take the Thief.

  But no matter what I told him about what Mummy had done to her—“She’s not even really her daughter!”—he wouldn’t believe he was being duped.

  “Look,” I said, “in all the time you’ve known me, have I ever lied to you?”

  He looked at me like I was nuts.

  “Yes,” he said. “All the time!”

  “That may be true,” I said. “But I’m not lying now.”

  I couldn’t get through to the Vainglorious either.

  “Doesn’t Mummy seem—oh, I don’t know . . .” I said. “Evil?”

  “You have her all wrong. She’s a swell lady! The whole trip here she kept saying how much she wanted to get all of you back so she could teach you a lesson. See?” he said. “She’s a teacher!”

  They were both hopeless.

  Walking back toward the Square, Mummy asked Santa how he got to be in charge and he explained the whole election process.

  “Before that, I was just an elf like any other,” Santa said. “But once I put on the suit, all the other elves had to do whatever I said.”

  “So you’re saying ’ooever wears that suit is absolutely, 100 percent in charge?” Mummy asked.

  Santa nodded. “Elves like order. And we never break rules.”

  Mummy smiled her wicked gold-toothed smile.

  The lady was just oozing evilness! How could these guys not see that?

  43. WHAT’S FOR DINNER

  After a demonstration of the public address system—in which Amanuensis sent a booming welcome out across Isle X to our very special guests—we exited the Eye by the back door and followed a path up a cliff that jutted out over the water. Here, the sea breeze blew away the coal smoke and you could finally breathe. At the very highest point of the cliff stood the final stop: Santa’s house.

  The house itself looked like it had been dropped there from somewhere else. Instead of red brick like everything else on the island, it was made of wood, and painted gray and black. It had slate roofs slanting from all different levels and angles, with round roof gables on the turrets and fancy ironwork. Cheerful it was not, but it was impressive, and the inside was a hundred times nicer than any of the elves’ overcrowded workers’ housing.

  In the hall, Santa kicked off his boots and removed his coat, his hat, and—this was disturbing—his beard, which I hadn’t realized was fake. He hung it on a hook in the hallway next to his outfit.

  He then put on a smoking jacket, a fez, and a pair of slippers.

  The house was full of incredible smells coming from the kitchen—meat!—and there was a phonograph playing opera records.

  Santa re-stuffed his pipe, and Mummy joined him with a cigar in the wallpapered drawing room. While the two of them gabbed, the rest of us sat around in awkward silence until dinner got served.

  And what a dinner!

  One of the kitchen elves set a silver platter down in the middle of a long dining table dressed with fancy linens. There was a big juicy roast on it, and more kitchen elves brought more heaping trays full of mashed potatoes and creamed spinach and carrots and cabbage.

  I had never seen a spread like this! I had to hold my mouth closed with my hand to keep the drool from spilling out.

  “Who would like to say grace?” Santa said after he finished carving the roast.

  Without skipping a beat, the Rude said

  “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,

  Whoever eats fastest

  Gets the most!”

  And we all dug in.

  It was not pretty, I can tell you that. But it wasn’t us who were the most disgusting eaters—it was the elves.

  Santa and Amanuensis dug in with their fingers and were licking the grease off of them and burping.

  Santa saw how disgusted Goody-Two-Shoes was and said, “Slurping and burping is considered polite in elf society.”

  “I like this kind of polite!” the Rude said, and burped himself.

  Goody was embarrassed that Santa had caught her being judgmental, so she tried to recover by saying, “This meat is delicious. Is it beef?”

  “Oh, no,” Santa said between loud chews. “It’s reindeer.”

  The sound of everyone eating stopped with the clinking of forks hitting plates. We all looked at Santa.

  “It’s the only kind of meat we have up here,” he said helplessly.

  “I wonder if this one’s Donner,” Mummy said, taking another bite. “Donner for dinner! AH-AH-AH!”

  The two Jacks laughed, too.

  As well as the Rude.

  “What? It’s funny,” he said as I elbowed him to quit it. “And reindeer is delicious.” The Rude licked his fingers and reached for another piece.

  I was still hungry, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat any more Donner or Blitzen or whichever reindeer it was, so I just munched on mashed potatoes.

  Meanwhile, Mummy kept peppering Santa with questions. Out of anyone else’s mouth, I might not have thought they meant anything, but with Mummy, I was mighty suspicious. The one question she kept asking was:

  “Are you sure the elves will follow whoever wears the big red suit?”

  At the end of the meal, she and Santa went by the fire and started smoking again. (There was a lot of smoking in 1932, proving people were never very smart.) She then took out a bottle and poured something into Santa’s glass.

  “This is a little sample of what I make,” Mummy said.

  “I thought you were a baker,” Santa said, sniffing at the glass. “This smells like liquor!”

  “So it does,” Mummy said, grinning. “And much like you with your toys, I am—’ow would you say it?—an exporter. My problem is getting my goods across the border. Your sleigh-and-chimney delivery system, ’owever, would be perfect for my rum-ru
nning. And I could make so much rum if I took over your factory.”

  Santa let out a jolly HO-HO-HO!

  “Why do you laugh?” Mummy said.

  “Because you’re joking,” Santa said. “You are joking, I hope.”

  Mummy assured him that she was not.

  And that was when Santa got annoyed.

  “Those sleighs are only for toys!” he thundered. “Not bootlegged liquor! And my factories! MY factories!” He got up, slammed down his glass, and pointed out the door. “It is time for you to LEAVE, madam!”

  “I am not the one ’oo’s leaving,” Mummy said.

  She snapped her fingers, and the Jacks got up from the table, each holding a gun.

  Where had they been hiding those things?

  “Mrs. Mummy!” the Truant Officer said, rising to his feet. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “Sit down and shut up, you fool,” she said, pushing him back into his seat. “These flying reindeer and magic sleighs will make me the most powerful bootlegger in the world! And with this factory and these worker elves, I’ll make liquor faster than Coca-Cola makes sugar water!”

  Confused—stunned—shattered, the Truant Officer looked from one gun to the other. “Are you taking us . . .” he said, “prisoner?”

  Mummy laughed.

  “That would be a yes,” I said to my archenemy.

  “You’ll never get away with this!” Santa said, exploding. “Why—why—the elves will RISE up and free me!”

  “Oh, really?” Mummy said. She walked into the hall and put on the Santa outfit.

  “I always wanted a beard! AH-AH-AH!” she said as she put on the final item.

  She looked ridiculous.

  “But you can’t be Santa,” Santa said. “There’s never been a WOMAN Santa before!”

  At that, Mummy’s good cheer vanished. “If there’s one thing Mummy ’ates, it’s being told I can’t do something,” she said, dark and menacing. “The only thing I ’ate more is when someone tells me I can’t do something because I am a woman!”