The No-Good Nine

by John Bemelmans Marciano

  “I’d like to beat him with a whip,” Goody-Two-Shoes said.

  (Even Goody could get violent when innocent animals were involved.)

  Normally, this was when Mummy was in her best mood, but today she was preoccupied. She didn’t even cackle her usual “AH-AH-AH!”s.

  What was going on?

  As soon as the sleigh was packed, Mummy blasted her air horn—BLANNNNH!—and Black Jack cracked the whip. In an instant, they were up and off, flying southward against the silhouette of the moon.

  It would’ve been beautiful, if it hadn’t’ve been so horrible.

  * * *

  • • •

  Even though I had already done it yesterday, I redrew the slash to mark the set of ten.

  One HUNDRED days. For real.

  Hooray.

  How many more hundreds of days would we be stuck here?

  I told you how one of us was even angrier and more miserable than the rest of us to be in the lockup. There was also a Ninester who wasn’t angry or miserable at all.

  “Prison sweet prison!” the Vainglorious said. “It’s not really so terrible, is it, fellers? After all, at least we’ve got each other!”

  Everyone pounced on the poor guy. Me, I was so exhausted, I just fell asleep to the sound of the arguing. I was used to it.

  Now, this should be where this really long chapter finally ends, but it’s not. Because that thing that kept happening happened again.

  We woke up to someone surprising us.

  But this someone wasn’t lurking or sneaking.

  They were barging in. Loudly.

  “Wake up! Wake up, my children! Merry Christmas! MERRRRRY Christmas!”

  I had to rub my eyes, because for a minute, I thought it really was Santa Claus, what with the red suit and hat and the stuffed sack slung across their back.

  Of course, the real Santa was lying on the floor next to me in his dirty underwear, snoring. And when this Santa reached into the bag, she pulled out wads of money to toss into the air.

  “Merry Christmas! AH-AH-AH!” Mummy cackled.

  I plucked one of the fluttering notes out of the air. It was a hundred-dollar bill! Now I really thought I was dreaming.

  “’Ere, my children, take the money! Take this ’ole sack! And you want to know why?” Mummy said. “Because if not for YOU, none of this would ’ave ’appened to me!”

  Mummy pulled her beard below her chin and flipped it around so it hung down the back of her suit like a furry white cape. With her teeth, she pulled the cork out of one of her bottles of elf-made rum and held it high.

  “Tonight I toast to you, my children. And to ME!”

  She took a swig.

  “Do you know ’oo I met tonight? You will never believe it,” she said. “Al CAPONE!” She took off the hat when she said it, like the very name demanded respect.

  “And ’e ’as ’eard of me—of Mummy Rummy! Can you imagine? Al Capone ’imself!”

  She pressed the hat to her heart.

  “What is more, ’e wants to do business with me. The entire Syndicate does! Tonight, they placed the biggest order of booze any rumrunner ’as ever ’AD!”

  She took another drink and—instead of cackling—laughed a smaller, more self-satisfied kind of laugh.

  “’E thinks I will work for ’im—they all do, ah-ah-ah,” she said. “But soon they will be working for me!”

  “Is that what all the weapons are for?” Goody-Two-Shoes said. “To take over the Mob?”

  “Those guns are for protection!” Mummy said, grinning. “In case some other bootlegger gets wise to my operation and tries to take it over. I am going to turn Isle X into a fortress, children. Other bootleggers can ’ave Canada. I will ’ave my own country! With an elf army to defend it!”

  “You’re going to make the elves use guns?” the Truant Officer said, ’orrified. I mean, horrified.

  “Why, of course!” Mummy said. “But first, we ’ave an order to fill. The factory must be going day and night! Three days—we only ’ave THREE DAYS! And then it will be Christmas for Mummy!”

  She took one more swig.

  “But then, every day will be Christmas for Mummy! AH-AH-AH!!!”

  It was your classic bad-guy gloating session. This was a part of hero-ing I’d come to expect later. Y’see, it’s no fun for a bad guy to do all their badness unless they can brag about it to someone else, preferably the one person (or group of persons) who could stop them but is otherwise trapped. They save their biggest brag for the moment when they are on the brink of total victory. In the movies, it never works out for the bad guy. But we weren’t in no movie.

  “Now, no going back to sleep!” Mummy said. “Get up and get to work!”

  She left, still swigging and cackling.

  “Would the elves really do that?” Goody asked Santa. “Shoot guns?”

  Santa shrugged. “She wears the suit.”

  Me, I could not believe it.

  I had a hundred bucks!

  I looked down at the crisp green bill.

  “Don’t be so h-h-happy,” the Know-It-All said. “It’s only a piece of paper if you don’t have anything to b-b-buy with it.”

  He really should have been called the Killjoy.

  “We have to stop her,” the Truant Officer said.

  “Stop her?” the Hooligan said. “We can’t stop her! Al Capone can’t even stop her! All I want is some real food!”

  “I’d take not having to sleep on this freezing stone floor,” the Rude said.

  “I just want to l-l-l-leave!” the Know-It-All said.

  “Well, none of what any of you want is going to happen,” the Cruel said. “So we might as well get up and go to work.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “One thing we want is going to happen. We’re going to leave. In three days! And I know just how we’re going to do it.”

  And that was no lie.

  47. A REALLY SHORT CHAPTER IN WHICH A SWELL PLAN IS AGREED TO

  The most amazing part of my escape plan was that everyone not only listened to me, they agreed to do it.

  Which, frankly, should tell you more about the quality of our options than how much faith my fellow No-Good Ninesters had in me.

  But the thing was, in order to escape from a prison like this, you had to have a plan that was tricky and deceitful.

  Once again, this was my department.

  My plan would swing into action right after Mummy left to make her big delivery. Because I know you’re anxious, let’s just skip all the boring talking and get to that part—the good part—right now!

  48. A FAKE FRACAS

  “Keep loading! I don’t care ’ow ’eavy it is,” Mummy barked. “On the way back, the sleigh will be much lighter! Money does weigh less than liquor! AH-AH-AH!”

  Mummy was giddy, but you can sure bet no one else was. Because she hadn’t been joking when she said she’d keep the factory going day and night. I’m not sure how the elves managed to stay on their feet so long. Of course, they were no longer on their feet. They had trudged off to the elf barracks and were probably already asleep in their bunks, while we still had to pack this stupid sleigh.

  And it wasn’t one of those speedy little models like we had been loading. No, tonight we were packing the industrial-strength sleigh—THE XMAS NITE SPECIAL. The thing was so huge, it took eight reindeer to pull instead of the usual one or two.

  As we loaded the last of the cases onto the sleigh, Mummy took her place on the seat next to Black Jack.

  “Don’t wait up, children! I might not be back for days!” she said. “And when I do come back, I will be the Queen of the Mob! AH-AH-AH!”

  That evil laugh was really getting annoying. But it wasn’t as bad as the

  BLAAAANH!

  of the air horn Mummy blasted as th
e sleigh lifted off the ground—barely—and flew up into the sky.

  As Rooster Jack and the Thief led us away for the night, the Truant Officer spoke up loudly.

  “Just another NORMAL night of walking home to our prison,” he said.

  How was this guy ever a spy? He was going to blow our whole scheme before we even started!

  Luckily, Rooster Jack and the Thief weren’t paying any attention. However, as she was about to bar the door, the Thief did notice something was off.

  She cocked her head to one side and looked at the Cruel. “What, no insult tonight?” she said.

  The Cruel rolled her eyes.

  “The fun is gone,” she said.

  The Thief’s face twisted into a skeptical knot as she slammed the door shut and bolted it

  SLAM! ERRR!

  Now the only person watching us was Hendrick, the night guard elf.

  As far as guards go, Hendrick was pretty bad. For one thing, he was too nice; for another, he always fell asleep. Of course, with only one tiny barred window and a bolted front door a foot thick, there wasn’t much chance of us escaping.

  Not unless Hendrick let us out.

  It was time for the plan to begin!

  “Get outta my way,” the Rude said to me.

  “No, you get outta my way!” I said, loud enough that Hendrick could hear. “I am so tired of you being such a rude little jerk!”

  (Which was true.)

  At this point, the Rude raised a finger at me—I think you know the one—and said, “Climb it, Tarzan!”

  “Ooooh!” the other Ninesters went.

  It was hard to tell which of us threw the first punch, because we did it at pretty much the same time.

  Then we started pounding each other, not so much because it was a part of the plan as it was just plain fun.

  “Hey! Why don’t you two fellers break it up, will you?” the Truant Officer said in the worst fake voice imaginable.

  I groaned.

  My nemesis was really awful at this.

  “Come on, you are all friends here!” he said.

  “I’m not his friend!” I said.

  “Me neither!” the Rude said.

  We fell into a heap on the floor and started rolling around, wrestling.

  “Is it working?” I whispered. “Is Hendrick buying it?”

  The Know-It-All, looking out the little window, shook his head no.

  “You should just stop fighting,” Goody-Two-Shoes said.

  “Ah, let them fight!” the Cruel said. “It’s fun watching these two beat each other’s brains in.”

  “You know who I want to fight?” Goody said. “You!”

  “Oh, Goody-Two-Shoes wants to fight, does she?” the Cruel said. “This is gonna be—oof!”

  The Cruel couldn’t finish the sentence because Goody had tackled her in the gut.

  “Katie-bar-the-door, it’s a brawl!” the Hooligan said. “I want in on this!”

  He head-butted the Brat, and now everyone was at it.

  “Will you cretins stop this nonsense!” Santa said as we wrestled each other. “I should make a Stupid List and put you all at the top of it! Can’t you see your plan is NOT WORKING!”

  We all stopped except for the Vainglorious, who—as usual—wasn’t listening. He landed a punch right to the face of the Rude, who had let his guard down. For the first time, I saw the the shortest Ninester get mad.

  “Sorry?” the Vainglorious said.

  If you thought the Rude wasn’t tough because he was small, you’d be wrong. He didn’t work at a boxing gym for nothing.

  He gave the Vainglorious a couple of lightning-quick jabs to the face and then

  POW!

  landed a right cross to his solar plexus.

  It looked like it hurt. A lot.

  The Vainglorious doubled over

  “OOF!”

  and his open mouth—which is to say his teeth—landed right in the Rude’s skull.

  There was a whole lot of bleeding. The Rude from the top of his head, the Vainglorious from his mouth.

  There was a whole lot of wailing in pain, too.

  “What’s going on in there?” Hendrick finally asked from the other side of the door.

  “They got hurt! They’re bleeding real bad!” I yelled. “You have to let us out!”

  “I’ll call the ambulance!” Hendrick hollered. “I’ll get Dr. Elf!”

  “There’s no time for that!” I said. “You have to come in here—we need to take them NOW!”

  I heard the sweet errr! of the bolt getting thrown back. Hendrick’s face went pale when he saw the blood, and he rushed to check on the Rude and the Vainglorious.

  “You poor children!” he said. “Don’t worry! Dr. Elf will help!”

  Then Hendrick turned back and saw all of us looking down at him.

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  We should have been racing outside to hop aboard a sleigh—that was the next part of the plan—but Goody-Two-Shoes insisted on playing nurse again.

  “I might have to stitch that up,” she said, looking at the top of the Rude’s head.

  “No! Please no!” the Rude said. “I saw what you did to the Cruel! You ain’t puttin’ no needle through my scalp!”

  While the Rude begged for mercy, I went to look at the Vainglorious’s mouth.

  I told him to smile. It was not pretty.

  His teeth were outlined in blood, which was bad enough, but the really gross thing was that one of his front teeth was askew. In fact, it was practically sideways.

  “Is it bad?” the Vainglorious asked.

  “No,” I said. “Not at all.”

  And that’s when the tooth fell out and dropped to the stone floor with a bounce.

  The Vainglorious picked it up, and for some reason seemed pleased.

  The Know-It-All asked why he wasn’t more upset.

  The Vainglorious shrugged. “It’ll grow back.”

  “What will grow back?” the Know-It-All asked.

  “The tooth.”

  “No, it won’t!”

  “Sure it will,” the Vainglorious said. “I’ve lost every single tooth in my head, and they’ve all grown back. And the Tooth Fairy always leaves me something. Unlike Santa.”

  Santa rolled his eyes.

  “But those were your baby—”

  “Don’t say another word, Know-It-All!” I said. I turned to the Vainglorious. “He’s just teasing, pal. The tooth’ll grow back. Sure it’ll grow back. You put that under your pillow, and the Tooth Fairy will bring you sump’m real nice!”

  Now it was time for the next part of our plan.

  And that’s when things got all mucked up.

  From the open door came a sudden stream of loud and menacing threats. Exactly what was said, I can’t tell you, because it was said in French.

  Rooster Jack!

  He had a gun. Pointed right at me.

  Well, it was pointed at all of us, but it felt like it was pointed right at me.

  Anyway, we put our hands up but he kept yelling and I thought he was gonna shoot and then

  BLAM!

  The sound was not from a gun.

  It was from a bat. To the back of Rooster Jack’s head.

  Mummy’s sonny-boy went down with a

  THUD!

  revealing who had done the swinging.

  The Thief!

  She tossed her weapon to the ground.

  “It’s me, stupid,” she said.

  I did love that password.

  49. BUT SHOULD WE BELIEVE HER?

  It was weird. We were all just standing around looking at the Thief, silently. A cold wind whistled in through the open door behind h
er, Rooster Jack lay unconscious on the floor before her, and you’re probably thinking the same thing I was.

  Haven’t we been through this before?

  When we first met her, the Thief helped us. Then she betrayed us and stole the Brat’s money. Then she saved us. Then she betrayed us—again. And now she had saved us—again!

  “Cantcha just make up yer mind which side you’re on?” the Hooligan said.

  The Thief looked at him like she couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  “I’m on your side,” she said. “I’ve only been pretending to be with Mummy!”

  Now the Cruel was the one looking like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “Puh!” she spit out. “Why on earth should we believe you?”

  “Because I am helping you escape! Look,” the Thief said, pointing. “The door is wide open. Mummy is gone. All you have to do is take one of her sleighs and you’re free! None of us could have escaped if I was trapped inside here, too.”

  It was a good point, you have to admit.

  “Well, I still don’t believe her!” the Brat said, a ripe red tantrum rising into his face. “It’s some kind of trick!”

  “What trick? Do you think I want to get in trouble with Mummy again?” the Thief said. “Look, we have to hurry. We only have a few hours to break into Mummy’s safe and take her money and get out of here!”

  “Wait,” the Know-It-All said. “The p-p-p-plan is to leave! I don’t want to get c-c-caught trying to steal her money.”

  “No, hold on. She does have the right idea,” the Brat said, his greed overriding his tantrum. “I may not trust her, but we should definitely take the money. And my silver is in there, too!”

  Take the money and run, or just run? There was a whole lot of arguing over which tack to take, but Goody-Two-Shoes wasn’t having either of them.

  “What about Christmas? What about Mummy?” she said. Not only had we ruined the holiday, Goody pointed out, we’d given Mummy access to a magical manufacturing empire. “Didn’t you guys hear what she’s planning? She’s going to take over the Mob, and it’s our fault. We have to stop her!”