The Fourth Stall Part III (6 page)

N
one of us talked much on the way to the race tracks. And we especially didn't talk about Abby. We mostly just passed the time by talking about the current baseball season and how bad the Cubs sucked that year, which Staples found hilarious, of course. But then, he was a spoiled Yankees fan, so who cares what he thinks. At least Vince and I like a cool, authentic team, and once the Cubs finally break the curse, it will be a
real
championship, not a purchased one. Today's Yankees fans don't know what it's like to
earn
anything, the real way. But whatever, back to the story.

I have to admit that racing go-karts with Vince and Staples was pretty fun. Afterward we were all in pretty good moods. Which is why I thought during the drive back to our houses that it might finally be safe to bring up what had happened in Thief Valley. It seemed like the only time Staples was truly genuine was when his sister was involved or connected in some way to the conversation or events.

“So, TV Elementary is a pretty rough scene, huh?” I said.

“Yeah, did you see that yeti pummeling those kids?” Vince said, taking my lead.

I waited nervously to see how Staples would react. I shifted my leg back as far as I could. It couldn't handle another shot today. There was already a deep purple bruise developing where Staples had gotten me the first time.

But he didn't reach back again. This time he just nodded calmly.

“Yeah, I went there back in the day,” he said. “It's always been tough. Kids there like to . . . well, assert themselves a little more than usual, I guess. That's part of why I want to get her out of there. I mean, going to that school
and
living with those foster parents . . . that's two strikes against her having a good childhood and turning out happy as an adult.”

I nodded.

“Makes sense,” Vince agreed.

“If I get custody of her, then she can go to your school, since I live in your district. You guys like it there, right?”

I laughed.

Staples gave me a confused look in the rearview.

“Things are great there,” Vince assured him. “Mac's laughing because we turned ourselves in, exposed our business last year—something we'd never thought we'd do—all because of how much kids love that school. So, yeah, I think Abby would be much better off there than Thief Valley.”

Staples nodded but didn't say anything else for a while.

“Well, if I told my grandma about this, she'd probably say, ‘Just don't ever trust a person with three hands. It may seem neat that they have three hands and all, but I ain't never met a mutie that had a conscience. I also ain't never met one that didn't own a lobster for a pet; those muties sure love their lobsters. But don't ever trust a person that gives a name to a lobster neither.'”

“Mutie?” I managed to ask while laughing so hard I almost kicked the back of Vince's seat.

“Yeah, it's what she calls mutants . . . which to her are basically anybody who doesn't look like they could have starred in
The Brady Bunch
. Like, at the mall this one time we saw this kid with a Mohawk, not a fake one like tools wear but a real one, like two-foot-high spikes and the sides shaved to bare skin. She just kept screaming, ‘Mutie! Mutie! Someone check its pockets to see if it's got papers!' I don't even know what she meant by that, but I was too busy laughing to ask her.”

“Man, your grandma is the best,” I said through more laughter.

Even Staples was laughing now, too.

Then suddenly he hit the brakes and swerved the car to the curb, nearly taking out a mailbox.

“Hey, you guys want some lemonade?” he said, pointing to a few younger kids with a lemonade stand on the street corner ahead of us. “Come on. This is exactly the sort of thing that Big Brothers were invented for.”

We all got out of the car and approached a small table sitting on the sidewalk in front of a house. A couple of younger kids selling lemonade sat behind it. While it was kind of weird how suddenly Staples had pulled over for this, I couldn't deny that on a scorching, early-fall day like today some ice-cold lemonade would be pretty awesome.

Two small girls and one boy sat behind the table. They were probably third graders, give or take a year. They had a handmade cardboard sign taped to the front of the table that read: “Ice Cold Lemon-Aid Only $3 Bucks!! A Bargan! Clearance!!!” Three dollars was definitely a little steep for this neighborhood but whatever. They'd figure out how proper pricing could maximize their profit eventually.

Staples ordered three glasses. They poured iceless lemonade into three tiny Dixie cups, and then one of the girls said, “Nine dollars, dude.”

Staples grinned and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Keep the change.”

We downed our too-small drinks. And I almost had to spit mine out. Not only was it not ice-cold, but it was warm. And it was terrible. Given its color and consistency and temperature, I couldn't be positive that what we'd just drunk wasn't actually some kid's pee with lemon flavoring.

“Yuck!” Vince said while grimacing.

Staples also spit out his nasty lemonade, but he didn't get upset like Vince and I had. Instead, he just seemed mildly amused by this whole exchange.

“Is this cut?” I asked them. “With water or something? You can't charge a premium price for a product that's been cut with water. This tastes like lemon carpet cleaner!”

“We can do whatever we want!” one of the little brats said back.

“But why would you do this?” Vince asked, trying a different approach. “Don't you want people to come back?”

“They'll come back because every other stand around here serves the same stuff,” the little boy said. “They're all owned by the same guy, so people got no other choice.”

“And what about how warm it is? If you advertise ice-cold drinks, then they need to be at least kind of cold,” I said.

“Hey, boss's orders,” one of the girls said. “Boss says ice is too expensive.”

“Who owns these stands?” Vince asked. “Who is your boss?”

“Jimmy Two-Tone, duh,” she said while rolling her eyes at our apparent stupidity.

Vince and I looked at each other. Why would Jimmy Two-Tone cut corners on something as simple as a lemonade stand? Especially when, up to this point, he seemed to be proving himself as a more than capable businessman. He was doing just fine without opening up a reputation-tarnishing lemonade scam.

Staples smirked at us. “Still so sure that your deal with him was a good idea?”

Instead of answering, I threw the Dixie cup at the little trash can next to the table. It bounced off the rim and landed in the yard behind the kids. Staples laughed while I stomped around and picked it up and then placed it into the garbage can.

I wasn't sure exactly what all this meant, but I intended to find out.

 

The next morning at school I tried to track down Jimmy to ask him what was going on. But he was nowhere to be found. I checked the East Wing hallway, but the closed-for-repairs sign was up.

So at lunch Vince and I went to find Ears. Ears was my main source of information. He was the biggest gossip in the school and heard everything. If you wanted to know what kind of cereal the kid that sat next to you in science class puked into a cute girl's lap last year during homeroom one day, Ears could tell you that he had definitely heard that it was Corn Bran with sugar on it.

So Vince and I found Ears behind the old metal slide on the playground to ask him what he'd been hearing about Jimmy. Ears always hung out by the old metal slide, and he was always there with three or four of the more popular girls at school. I had no idea what they talked about all the time, but something told me I didn't even want to know.

I tapped him on the shoulder right as he was laughing and making fun of how “that girl over there looks like a linebacker in that sweater.”

Ears turned around. Then his eyes widened and he grinned.

“Hey, Mac, Vince. I thought you guys were retired?”

I shrugged, made a face, and then noticeably looked at the pack of girls he had been talking to.

“Oh, right,” he said. “One second.”

He turned back and said something mostly inaudible to the girls, and they all started giggling before wandering over to the monkey bars.

“Better?” Ears asked me.

“Sorry, Ears, it's hard to kick old habits,” I said. “Anyways, we are retired. I just wanted to ask you a few questions . . . for, ah, mostly personal reasons.”

His smile grew, making his already giant ears stick out even more. He kind of looked like a coffee mug with a handle on each side. Then he held out his hand, palm up. I looked at it, then back at his face.

“Pay the man,” I said to Vince.

Vince sighed and took out a five from his wallet and gave it to Ears.

“Sorry,” Ears said, “but, you know, it's hard to kick old habits.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “All right, I'm just wondering what you've heard about Jimmy Two-Tone's business? You know, how are things going? Are kids mostly satisfied? Is he delivering on his promises? Solving problems in a timely fashion? That kind of stuff.”

Ears nodded slowly. “Yeah, things have been good mostly. I haven't heard too many complaints. I mean, word is that a couple of whiners have been complaining that his hired help can be a little mean sometimes, but what do you expect from guys like Justin and Mitch and Lloyd, right?”

“He hired those guys on a permanent basis?” I said, suddenly worried that I'd handed my business over to Staples Junior.

“No, no, I mean, they're jerks all right, but word is they've been pretty well behaved, actually. For them, I mean. From what I hear Jimmy runs a pretty tight ship. He's fast. And good. Like, he always seems to be prepared no matter what. I've actually been thinking maybe he's a little too good, a little too prepared, if you know what I mean.”

“Well, no, I don't, actually,” I said.

Ears grimaced like I was asking him to run a mile instead of explain himself.

“Well, remember last week when eleven bikes had their tires slashed?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, our friend Fred was one of the owners,” Vince said.

“Well, several kids whose parents wouldn't or couldn't buy them new tires came to Jimmy for help, and he just happened to have a bunch of extra bike tires on hand.”

Vince and I glanced at each other. That was pretty odd, no doubt.

“Maybe he anticipated he'd need them after the first few slashings,” I suggested.

“Yeah,
maybe
,” Ears said. “But still, you have to admit it was a little convenient.”

“What else?” I asked.

“Then there's our team's last football game . . .”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “What about it?”

“Well, not many people heard about this, since it never became an issue, but fans of the other team stole our team's shoelaces right before game time. The reason no one heard about it wasn't because the school had emergency laces on hand. What I heard is that Jimmy just
happened
to have twenty-five sets of brand-new shoelaces with him. The equipment manager bought them off him right then and there. Either he's psychic, or something fishy's going on.”

I started to respond but then stopped. What was there to say? Assuming all of that was true, it certainly didn't look good. Was it possible Jimmy was creating all the problems himself to drum up extra business? That was about as crooked as it gets.

Vince must have been thinking the same thing. “Any rumor out there that Mitch or Justin or Lloyd or maybe even Jimmy himself was involved in the bike slashing or the stolen shoelaces?” he asked.

“Yeah, some kids actually thought that might be the case, but my most trusted sources tell me that the four of them pretty much all have alibis for most of these things. That's what makes it so weird how prepared he is. Anyway, you guys have your five bucks' worth.”

Ears walked toward the monkey bars and his snarky popular girlfriends.

Vince and I looked at each other.

“This is getting complicated,” I said.

Vince could only nod in response.

L
ater that day at afternoon recess we did something we thought we'd never do again: we went to the East Wing boys' bathroom.

We got there as quickly as we could, but there was already a line of customers. Mitch and Lloyd stood outside the door doing the job that Joe had done for me during the past few years.

Vince and I didn't want to risk waiting in line. We'd already had to pay this bully Little Paul to cause a scene out in the playground to distract Dickerson so we could get down there undetected. But that would only keep the principal busy for so long.

We went to the front of the line.

“No cutting,” Lloyd said, and took a step toward us.

“We really need to see Jimmy. It's important,” I said, holding out my hand, a five-dollar bill tucked into the palm.

He slapped my hand away. “I said no cutting!”

Man, didn't this kid know how to take a bribe? I was about to just give him the five dollars in plain sight along with written instructions that this was, in fact, a bribe, but Vince stepped in first.

“Don't you remember who this is?” Vince said.

Lloyd shrugged. Mitch knew, of course, but he didn't say anything.

“This is Mac, the guy who handed this business to Jimmy. What do you think Jimmy will say when we tell him later that his gorilla doorman didn't let in the founder and godfather of his business?” Vince said.

Lloyd and Mitch looked at each other. Lloyd looked to be helplessly lost in his cavernous brain. But Mitch scowled and then stepped aside.

“Go ahead,” he said. “We haven't let in the first customer yet, so Jimmy is free. But hurry up; we've got a lot of people to see today.”

I glanced at the line; it had almost doubled in just the few minutes since we'd gotten there. Mitch wasn't kidding.

Justin Johnston greeted us as we entered. He smiled, but not in a Hey-How-Are-You sort of way but more in an I'm-Going-to-Enjoy-Smashing-Your-Face-In sort of way. I guessed he must have still been pretty upset about what we'd done to him last year when he had been working for Staples.

“Hey, guys, great to see you,” he said sarcastically.

I just gave him a head nod in return. Then I noticed what they'd done to my formerly clean, professional, intentionally nondescript office. They'd desecrated it with a giant
Scarface
poster. Now, a lot of guys think
Scarface
is like the be-all and end-all in gangster movies. The coolest thing ever. But we true gangster-movie fans know that
Scarface
is like a stupid ant compared to the giant scorpions that are the
Godfather
movies. Not to mention
Goodfellas, Casino, The Departed
, and
Miller's Crossing
.

Scarface
is like
The Godfather
's ugly and stupid third cousin who the whole family is embarrassed about. I mean, okay, sure, on its own it's an
okay
movie. But the way everybody treats it as the Holy Grail makes me sick. Never, ever be friends with a dude with a
Scarface
poster.

“Like it?” Justin asked.

I nodded, trying to stay polite. It would be best to keep this civil, I had a feeling.

Then he led us into the fourth stall from the high window. The very stall that used to be my office. The setup was similar to mine; there was a small desk inside and two chairs across from each other. The main difference, I supposed, was that this time I would be sitting on the other side of the desk.

“Hey, guys, how's it going?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, okay,” I said. “How are things here? I heard you've been working a pretty tight ship?”

Jimmy grinned and nodded. “The payments have been pretty big, haven't they?”

“Sure,” I said, “but then, it's not too hard to make money when you're selling a cheap and shoddy product.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Huh?”

I told him about our experience at his lemonade stand that weekend. About how we'd basically been swindled and that the kids said that's how all the stands were in the neighborhood.

“Jimmy had no idea! Jimmy subcontracted the stands, assuming someone else could be trusted to handle them. Business was a little busier than I'd expected at first so I had to divvy up some of the jobs; I had to outsource to other people. I swear Jimmy will make sure this doesn't happen again. Friends, that's a Jimmy Two-Tone Trademarked Pipe Lock Guarantee.”

He seemed to be genuinely surprised and even a little angry about the shoddy lemonade stand being connected to his name.

“Okay, but what about the fact that you're always conveniently prepared for any number of random problems? You have to admit, it seems a little suspicious.”

“Hey, guys, Jimmy just likes to be prepared. It's part of why I'm so good at this. Jimmy
anticipates
things. The best businessmen see things before they happen. You dudes should know that better than anybody.”

It was a good argument, but I still didn't buy it. Something seemed off about all of this. I could tell Vince was thinking the same thing because right now would have been the perfect time for a grandma joke, but instead he just sat there silently.

“All right,” I said. “But no more cut lemonade, right? I mean, my name is still attached to this business.”

“Right, guy. Jimmy will take care of that. Don't worry about it. Now, if you don't mind, I've got a lot of customers to see.”

Vince and I nodded and left the office.

On our way back to class we talked about what could be going on. It was really Jimmy's word against some random gossip, and even if the gossip was true, it was impossible to tell how much Jimmy was actually involved.

But before we could figure out what to do next, one of the hall monitors stopped us and told me Mr. Dickerson wanted to see me.

This couldn't be good.

The secretary told me to enter his office as soon as I got down there. I opened his huge wooden door, which seemed to be larger than the last time I had been here, for some reason, and stepped in, closing it behind me.

Mr. Dickerson was seated behind his desk, scowling. “Have a seat, Mr. Barrett,” he said.

I sat across from him and tried to look as innocent as possible. I pretended I was a helpless puppy to try and get into character. I didn't think he was buying it.

“I thought we had ourselves an understanding,” he said.

“We do. Why? What's this about?” I asked.

“You were spotted by a teacher down near the East Wing today,” he said. “Want to explain what you were doing down there?

I took a moment to collect my thoughts before just wildly blurting out denials. I'd learned that getting instantly defensive usually didn't do anything but make things worse. For one, he'd said near the East Wing, not in the bathroom or even near the bathroom. Two, if he'd found out about other kids going down there, then this meeting would have been entirely different; it either wouldn't have existed or I'd already have been expelled. Which meant he didn't know much of anything. All he knew was that I had been in the area today.

“I was looking for Vince,” I said.

“Why would he be down there?”

“Well, he wasn't. I only looked down that way because I couldn't find him anywhere else. Turns out, he was in the other bathroom. Got sick, apparently. I think it was the chicken we got served today. Are you sure they cook the chicken thoroughly?”

Dickerson actually growled then, low and slow like a mean dog just starting to get riled.

“That's enough of that,” he said. “I'm tired of you kids making lunch jokes.”

He then proceeded to lecture me for the better part of fifteen minutes about watching my mouth and knowing better than to go snooping around that area of school again, no matter what the reason.

“You narrowly avoided getting expelled for the last incident, Mr. Barrett,” he said as he was winding down. “Your promise to stay away from that bathroom and stay out of trouble for your last two years at this school was a part of that deal.”

I nodded and agreed, just like I had been doing the whole time.

He sighed and shook his shiny head. “I just don't get it. . . . You could be such a good student. I don't get why you insist on causing so much trouble.”

“I'm sorry, sir,” I said again. It was pretty much the only thing he'd been allowing me to say. “I'll be more careful next time.”

“Don't think I'm not onto you. There's something going on around here, and I have a feeling I know who's behind it. Know that the next time I see you anywhere near that hallway, or anything that even remotely resembles funny business goes down at this school, then you're outta here for good, young man! Expelled. You tell that to your friend, Vince, too. Got that? Now get to class.”

As I walked slowly to my next class, I couldn't help but think of a Vince's-grandma quote he'd used earlier that summer. “Getting expelled ain't so bad. It's getting Sponged that you need to worry about. Sponges eat everything. I seen a sea sponge bite a man clean in half in his bathtub once.”

If only that were true, then I wouldn't have been feeling so anxious about everything. I couldn't believe it had come to this again. Vince and me being out of the game had lasted all of a month. Whether or not Jimmy was telling the truth, something was definitely up, and now Dickerson was on my case even more than he had been. Staples was right—you're either in or you're out. And, despite what we thought, everything we had tried to do, it's clear that we weren't out.

If I was going to figure this one out, the first thing I needed was more information. I decided right then that I would find Tyrell after school and put him on the case.