The Fourth Stall (10 page)

“How did you get this?” I asked.

“Sorry, Mac, but I can’t reveal my methods,” he said.

I looked at the photo again.

It turned out the Graffiti Ninja was this sixth grader named Skylar Kuschel. People usually just called her Koosh because her name is funny and that’s what kids do when people have odd names.

She’s a pretty quiet kid, not too popular but not a complete dork either. She just kind of blended in with the crowd. I called a meeting with her and made a proposal: I would help her make money off her talents if she agreed to stop drawing on school property. I wouldn’t even take a cut of the earnings. She agreed, and I set her up with a business selling personalized drawings to kids. Man, did she make a lot of money selling those things for a few years. She’s in high school now, and I heard that she already has a few art schools that have been in touch with her. You’d think that the teachers might recognize her style, and maybe some even did, but in the end they had no proof that the Graffiti Ninja was her so there was nothing they could do anyway. Besides, teachers never suspect the “good kids” of troublemaking. Which is partially why Vince and I are able to get away with running our business right under everybody’s noses.

Anyways, back to the janitor. After I made the deal with Koosh, I sent a message home with the janitor’s son asking his dad to meet me. Still, I was kind of surprised when he showed up. I figured he thought I was too young to help him.

“Hey, thanks for coming,” I said as he wedged himself inside the tire.

“Yeah, my son said that you had news for me,” he said.

“I do, I do. I’ve found our graffiti artist,” I said.

“Really?” the janitor asked. I could tell he was skeptical, but there was also a glimmer of hope in his eyes.

“And . . . I got her to stop drawing all over the school.”

He was silent. He looked at me and shook his head. Then he let a huge smile spread across his face. Right then I could tell he’s not like the other adults at the school.

“Are you serious?” he said.

I nodded. “Now it’s all just a question of payment.”

“Well, I have money, but . . . I think that I can offer you something a little more valuable.”

“I’m listening,” I said.

“Well, there’s this bathroom in the East Wing. It’s missing a toilet, has some plumbing problems, and is way back by the old band room, which is just a storage room now, so hardly anyone ever uses it. I still don’t know why they even put a bathroom back there in the first place, but I stopped asking the administration those types of questions a long time ago. It’s like asking a gerbil to explain quantum physics. Anyways, I was going to recommend to the school that this bathroom be closed down permanently . . . . But I think it might be of better use to you. Think of it as your new office. What do you say?” He smiled, a set of keys dangling from his hand.

“Are
you
serious?” I said. I didn’t think adults could be this cool. Especially not ones who work for the school.

“I sure am, Mac. You’re saving me a huge headache by getting that kid to stop drawing on the school. It’s the least I can do.”

“Deal.” I took the keys and shook his hand.

The East Wing bathroom is a safe place to have an office because, really, the janitor is the only school official ever to go in that bathroom. Dickerson never would because of his unfortunate toilet seat incident, and all the other teachers have their own cleaner, bigger bathrooms in the teachers’ lounge, so I’m free and clear. And the students don’t complain either. Our business helps them out, and like I said before, squealing is not allowed here. The best part was that once word got out that I had orchestrated the unmasking of the Graffiti Ninja, our business doubled. So that’s how the janitor and I started our business relationship. He still comes to me for help from time to time to get kids to stop putting gum under their chairs and stuff like that.

So I can get pretty much any key I want from the janitor, no problem, no questions.

But that’s kind of what made this particular mission so dangerous. If we got caught in the school before it opened, I could potentially get the janitor fired and us expelled. Which would be about the last thing I’d ever want to see happen.

“Hurry up, Mac!” Vince whispered.

I nodded and slid the key into the small slot on the combination dial. I had to wiggle the key a little as I turned it, but eventually a metallic click was followed by the creak of the locker door swinging open. We were in.

I wasn’t sure exactly what we’d find, but I remembered from my meeting with Jacky Boy that he carried around a notebook of all the bets he’d taken. I just hoped he kept it at school. His locker was a disaster, and we found a surprising amount of loose dollar bills and, oddly enough, a nice collection of little bundles of hair of all different colors. We looked at one another, resisted the urge to ask because none of us actually wanted to know, and then kept searching.

Then I found it. Nestled way in the back behind a huge geography textbook. His little notebook. We flipped it open and scanned the pages together using a small flashlight. When we got to page thirteen, that’s when we saw it.

Brady’s name. And next to it a staggering dollar amount with a negative symbol in front of it. Then right after that in parentheses Jacky Boy had scribbled,
Doesn’t have the money, will pay back with major favor
.

We didn’t want to believe it, but it doesn’t get much clearer than that. Brady was our snitch. How could I have been so stupid? I blamed myself, really, for the information leak. The general rule was never to let anyone outside the business know what you’re thinking. And I had broken that rule by bringing in Brady.

“The little snitch. We should do to him what Ronald McDonald does to ketchup packets,” Vince said. From the look in his eyes I could tell it wasn’t a joke. That’s the thing about Vince that only I know: Most of the time when people think he’s only joking around, he actually is being serious.

Joe laughed, but he didn’t sound all that amused. “We should make copies of this book.”

I was just about to agree when the hallway lights flicked on. We froze. That meant it was 7:05. Teachers would be showing up any minute. There just wasn’t time. We shoved the book back into its hiding spot, slammed the locker shut, and took off sprinting toward the nearest exit. After removing our masks, we circled the block and came back in through another door as if we were just arriving.

Chapter 13

L
ater that day at lunch Joe escorted Brady into my office. I’d had to fire someone only once before and it hadn’t been pleasant. Plus, I still liked Brady. I couldn’t believe he would double-cross us like that.

“What’s up, Mac? Why’s everyone acting so serious?” he asked as he sat down.

“The jig is up, Brady. It’s over,” I said.

He shook his head and furrowed his brow.

“Don’t play dumb, Brady. I know what you’ve been doing,” I said.

“Mac, I . . . I’m not sure what you mean,” he said slowly.

“I think you
do
know,” I said. “And it’s over. You’re fired.”

“Why are you doing this, Mac? What about Fred? Who will watch over him? I need to be here. I need this job, Mac!” he said. His face fell, and I could tell he was dropping the act. “I admit that I got into a bit of trouble. I mean, I guess I owe a lot of money to Staples. But I swear I’m on your side! That’s
why
I’m on your side. I can’t ever pay back what I owe, so my only chance is to help you take out Staples before he takes me out.”

“You know what?” I asked him. “I just don’t care. I’m sick of being lied to. Whether you’re telling the truth or not, I just can’t trust you anymore.”

“But,” he started, and then seemed to give up. He knew he was had.

“Good-bye,” I said coldly.

I wanted him to break down. I didn’t feel comfortable punishing him any further without a full confession. But he just started crying tears of guilt and buried his face in his hands. I nodded at Joe. He lifted Brady out of the chair and escorted him out of the bathroom.

I spent the rest of lunch convincing Great White, Nubby, and Kitten to stay on board with our business after what had happened to the other bullies. Then I told them all about the rat and note I found in my locker. I wanted everybody to be extra careful, just in case. To try and stick together as often as possible. And I agreed to up their pay a little in light of the increased danger of working for me.

At afternoon recess I organized another meeting between Joe, Vince, and me that night at Vince’s place. It was probably an especially dangerous time for us to be meeting near the Creek, given the threats we’d received, but it was also important that we rotate our meeting places. Besides, it was kind of fun to visit my old trailer park once in a while. The purpose of this meeting was to move up the ladder. Now that we had our snitch situation taken care of, it was time to strike a real blow against Staples.

“We need a new plan,” I said as the three of us played video games in Vince’s room. “I think we need to go straight to the top this time.”

“What! We can’t go after Staples—we’d get wasted! I heard he’s got a pit bull chained up near his office,” Joe said.

“You’re right. That’d be crazy; we don’t even know how to get to Staples. We don’t know what he looks like or where he lives. But we can go after Justin Johnston. He runs the business at our school and without him Staples will have nothing here. He takes the money and bets. I bet he also does some of the bribing of athletes and stuff, too. I think that if we take out Justin, we can deal Staples’s business a pretty good blow,” I said.

“Let’s do it,” Vince said.

“What are we going to do, though?” Joe asked as in the video game I got my revenge by dropping a grenade onto his character after he walked into my trap.

“I don’t know. You guys got any ideas?” I said.

“Mac, that’s perfect!” Vince yelled. “What you just did to Joe in the game, I mean. We should do the same thing to Justin Johnston. It’ll be like when Ronald Reagan was so obsessed with “Star Wars” that he totally blew the U.S.’s chances of getting out of the Cold War before nineteen ninety.”

I shook my head and sighed. Vince references history stuff a lot. He’s really good at school and reads a lot of huge dusty books from the nonfiction section of the library that I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.

Vince grinned at me and said, “Just try to imagine a chimpanzee named Bonzo with strings attached to his hands and feet like a puppet and it’ll make sense.”

I laughed, but of course it still didn’t make any sense at all. Once Vince started pulling out monkey references, it was time to move on or he’d start saying some really bizarre stuff.

“Look, guys, I hate to interrupt, but even if we do trap Justin, what are we actually going to do to him? We can’t exactly blow him up with a grenade like in the game,” Joe said.

“We’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse,” I said.

Like I said, I always try to say that as often as possible. I love that movie. I think it’s called
The Godfather
, but it doesn’t have any pizza in it and it isn’t about some guy’s crazy godparents or anything, so don’t let the title mislead you. I know I’d never want to watch a movie about my godfather, Uncle Bruce. He smells funny, like a hospital specializing in chemical burns, and he always punches me on the arm and calls me kiddo like we’re in some lame TV show on Disney. Once during a family reunion, I saw my uncle Bruce peeing off the balcony of his hotel room. I heard my parents say something about him falling off a wagon. I think maybe he hit his head pretty hard when he fell off that wagon and is now brain damaged or something.

“What does that mean, ‘an offer he can’t refuse’? You’re always saying weird stuff like that,” Joe said, but he was laughing. “I swear, sometimes I think you two are the strangest kids on earth.”

I grinned. It was times like that that I realized how close Joe was to becoming an adult. Vince and I spent the next few minutes filling Joe in on what we had in mind. And I have to say that it was a pretty good plan. Vince and I smiled at each other as we discussed it, and even Joe was smiling by the time we’d finished explaining it.

But then I wasn’t sure if Vince was smiling because he liked the plan or because he had just snuck up behind me in the video game and swiftly stabbed my character in the back.

We hung out and played video games for another hour or so. Then Joe had to leave.

“What are you guys doing this weekend?” he asked as he put on his jacket.

“We’re going to the lake with my family,” I said. “So take the weekend off.”

“All right, sounds good,” he said.

Vince and I still had to find time to start planning the trip, with everything else going on, and this seemed like a good chance to start. Normally, talking about the Cubs winning a series before they actually do would be a huge jinx, and we probably
were
ruining it for all Cubs fans right then and there in Vince’s room. But it was a necessity for us. Two sixth graders just can’t up and go to a World Series game on the spur of the moment. An event as sacred as a Cubs World Series required careful planning. It went above the jinx.

“So you think that we should just go cheap and sit in the nosebleeds or try to go all out and sit in the lower section?” I asked.

“I want awesome tickets, of course, but we can’t afford them with you handing out our money like political pamphlets. The good ones are going for over twenty-seven hundred bucks apiece right now! We may not even be able to get the cheap seats at this rate,” Vince said. “That’s so much money, Mac. I mean, just think about it.”

“I know that’s a lot, Vince, but what choice have I had? We’re in this for the long haul now; I don’t think we can back out. Besides, the bullies have helped us. We’re close to ending this whole thing.”

“Maybe,” Vince said, but it didn’t seem like he was really even thinking about the Cubs game anymore. He was just kind of looking out the window with eyes that resembled glazed donut holes. What was with him lately? I guess the stress of this Staples business was really getting to him.

“Which game should we try for? One? Seven?” I asked.

Vince pondered this with the same glassy-eyed stare he’d had for much of the night. Then he finally said, “I think we should just go for the first game, because what if the Cubs choke like they always do and get swept? Then there won’t be a game seven and we’ll miss our only chance to see a World Series game at Wrigley. Possibly forever.”

I nodded.

I know it must seem like we were pretty negative fans, but that’s the way you’re supposed to think if you’re a Cubs fan. Otherwise, you’d just get your heart broken again and again and again.

Right now you’re probably thinking: No way. There’s no way this little sixth grader could have enough money to buy two tickets to a game this expensive. And you know what? It
does
seem a little ridiculous. But Vince is a great business manager. He kept us on track saving money religiously for over four years. And the business did pretty well, so there was a lot of money to save. Besides, we also get money for allowance and birthdays, too. Plus, we have no bills to pay, like for cars or rent, nothing outside of our normal business expenses. Add all that up, and we’d amassed a pretty large pile of cash inside my closet.

How much?

Well, Vince would be the guy to tell you for sure, because he’s the one who kept track, but I believe at that time the two Funds combined with our regular savings would have equaled about six thousand dollars. Which is totally, mind-bogglingly crazy, but we did run a pretty tight little operation, like I said before.

“Well, we should probably worry about getting rid of Staples before we worry about what seats to buy, because if we don’t do that, then there won’t be a Cubs game for us at all,” I said.

“I think this new plan will work, though. It’s kind of like my grandma says, ‘There ain’t no use whining like a sharecropper when it’s raining raisins and acrobats.’”

“Gross,” I said, but laughed anyway.

“Okay, Mac, I’ve got it,” Vince said.

“What, you know a better way to take out Staples’s operation?” I asked hopefully.

Vince smiled. “No, no. I’ve got a Cubs question that’s sure to crown me champion. Ready?”

I nodded and rubbed my temple.

“On what day and against what pitcher did Ernie Banks get his five-hundredth home run?”

“Ooh, tricky . . . I know that it was May twelfth, nineteen seventy, against Atlanta, but the pitcher . . . That’s not really a fair multiple-part question, Vince. It’s like two separate questions!” I said.

“Hey, remember that time you hit me with a double question on Ron Santo?”

He had a good point. I resumed rubbing my temple and closed my eyes.

After a few moments I smiled. “Pat Jarvis.”

Vince shook his head in defeat. “I really thought I had you that time.”

“All right, I better go. It’s getting late. I’ll see you tomorrow. Remember, we’re leaving around seven in the morning for the lake cabin,” I said. My parents rented a lake cabin a few weekends every year and they usually let me bring Vince with.

“Okay, Mac, see you.”

Outside I hopped on my bike. It was fall, so it was already dark even though it was only eight o’clock. That made it especially creepy being this close to the Creek. I cut through an alley across from Vince’s trailer park because it was a shorter route to my house. That’s when two headlights popped up behind me.

I turned and looked back; some car was turning into the alley. Perfect timing, I thought as my eyes squinted into the bright lights. I turned into someone’s back driveway to let the car pass through because there wasn’t room for a bike and a car in the narrow alley.

But it didn’t go. It just sat there at the entrance with its lights on and its engine running. I wondered if it was waiting for me to go through first. I decided that must be the case and rode back into the alley. Then I heard gravel crunch behind me as the car started driving forward.

What was this jerk doing?

The car’s headlights flicked a much brighter shade of whitish blue and blinded me. I heard the engine rev and the car surged forward even faster. I remembered the note from the locker saying I’d be roadkill if I didn’t hand over Fred. My heart began beating so fast and so high in my chest that it felt like I was choking on it.

I turned and pedaled, pushing as hard as I could as the car gained on me. There were six-foot wooden fences on either side of me. Nowhere to go but the end of the alley or the underside of the car. My lungs pumped and my calves burned.

I heard the car just a few feet back now. I was a dead man, I knew it, but I put on a burst of speed and cleared the alley, turning right as sharply as I could onto the sidewalk. My bike slid underneath me and I fell on top of it onto the grass.

The car exited the alley and screeched to a halt as it tried to turn right with me. It was going too fast and fishtailed out into the middle of the street. Under the streetlights I could see that it was an older red sports car with faded black racing stripes on the hood. The windows were tinted and I couldn’t see who was driving it. But I didn’t really have time to examine any closer, because the car suddenly lurched forward and then turned to face me.

I quickly got back on my bike and drove toward my house as the car bounced up onto the sidewalk after me. I couldn’t believe it; the driver was actually trying to hit me. I felt the headlights engulf me as the car got closer. He was driving up on the sidewalk and even on people’s yards. I envisioned myself being crushed underneath an old sports car on somebody’s front lawn while the family inside grouped around the window and watched. They would all be drinking huge cups of hot cocoa.