’Twas the Day before Christmas, and the Missing Lynx Detective Agency was definitely still stirring.  No time of the year brings out more people wanting to hire me to find their long-lost relatives than Christmas.  Nonetheless, it was Christmas Eve, and we were closing early.  I’m no Scrooge, and I was not expecting to have many last minute shoppers coming in, desperate to that one last gift.       (I made a note to myself: “For the person who has everything, including an unfaithful spouse — Missing Lynx gift certificates.”)       As I completed the final paperwork on the Musselman case — one which had resulted in a happy reunion, something that detectives rarely get to see — my receptionist knocked on the door.  She came in wielding a small yellow envelope.       “This telegram just arrived for you, Mr. Lynx,” she said.       “Thanks, Amber.”       The telegram read: Wish to hire you for delivery job. <stop> Come to Times Square at 11:15 if interested. <stop> K. Kringle. <stop>       “‘K. Kringle?’" I thought.  “Nah.  Couldn’t be.”         I was intrigued, though, and showed up at Times Square shortly after 11.  I waited around for ten minutes, wondering how I would find the mysterious Mr. Kringle.  Presumably, he would recognize me.  I soon began looking at my watch, as the time creeped toward quarter-after.       “AYOOOAH!” came a cry from above, and I ducked, as a young woman dropped out of the sky to the sidewalk beside me.  She was clad in a Peter Pan-type outfit, and glowed brightly.  I noticed her pointed ears, to be certain, but it was the Colt .45 in her hand that took most of my attention.       “Y-you’re a elf!  With a gun!”       “A girl’s got to protect herself,” she said.       Even at 11:15 on Christmas Eve, Times Square was by no means empty, but, for some reason, no one seemed to be paying attention to this flying, glowing elf holding me up.  Then I realized — this was Times Square, and nothing short of a talking duck or aardvark was apt to make these people think anything odd was going on.       She pulled the trigger.  Water squirted all over my face.       “K. Kringle, I presume?” I said, wiping the excess water off my cheeks and moustache.       “Not by a long shot,” said the elf.  “I’m CJ.  But Santa sent me.”       “Santa Claus?  Kris Kringle?  You’ve got to be kidding.”       “Not really,” she said . Then she licked the tip of her index finger, and reached out to touch me on the nose.  Both nose and finger glowed red for a moment, and stayed warm.       “Remember Santa Cruz, California?  Last Christmas?”       Maybe it was the touch, but suddenly I did remember.       “How could I have forgotten?” I asked, rhetorically.  “So, what does Santa want from me this year?”       “Well, ever since the turn of the century, the job of delivering all those toys to all those kids on Christmas Eve has become just too big for one woman to handle by herself.  There’s only so much that one sled tesseract can hold, after all, and if she stops time for too long in order to get the job done, it tends to throw off weather patterns all over the Indian Ocean.  So, in addition to moving her production and shipping departments to a more central location, she got into mass production, which freed some of the elves for other jobs — managerial, advertising, delivery, you know.  These days, we’ve got...,” she counted on her fingers, “...fourteen of us doing delivery now, plus Santa herself still covers Western Europe and Africa, and a quarter of Indiana.”       “Fine,” I said.  “So why does she want me?”       “Three of the elves are down with a bad case of the swine flu.  It seems they went out to an all-you-can-eat buffet and made pigs of themselves.  Some people go overboard on being literal.       “The rest of us have covered their routes as best we can, but Mongolia and most of New Jersey are just impossible for us to hit.  We’ve got a prototype AI system that will handle Mongolia, but every time we program it for New Jersey, it aborts with an unexplained syntax error.”       “I don’t blame it,” I whispered.       “Knowing that you had moved to this side of the continent, Santa suggested that we hire you to deliver the toys to New Jersey.  We’ll provide all the necessary equipment...”       “Including the time-stop device?”       “Of course.  You’d never make it, otherwise.”       I gave my best “well-I-don’t-know” look.       “We’re prepared to pay handsomely — double whatever fee you’re thinking of asking.  Be adivsed, though,” she said, wagging her finger, “if you know that you are asking for too much, Santa will, too.”       “Okay, okay,” I said.  “So where’s my sleigh?”       “Right over here.”  She led me to an alley that I had not noticed before, an alley which held a large brown delivery van with a small yellow shield painted on the side.       “What’s this?” I asked.  “Where’s the ‘sleigh and eight tiny reindeer?’  Doesn’t it fly?”       “Welcome to the 90’s, Mr. Lynx.  You’re delivering to New Jersey.  Every kid in America knows that Santa Claus drives a U.P.S. truck.” (Special thanks for the bits of CJ to Richard and Wendy Pini, Dave Sim, and Steve Gerber and Marvel Comics, among others.) Best wishes for the Holiday Season from Marc Lynx and all the “Missing Lynx” characters.   Click here to return to the main Signature Quotes page Click here to return to the main Missing Lynx page
	All content © 2002 Marc Lynx