The Fourth Stall (9 page)

“Let’s go, loser. You trying to get me or what?” I said to my attacker.

He scowled and charged at me.

As soon as he lunged forward, I jumped from the middle of the teeter-totter onto the seat behind me. The other end fired up like a Chuck Norris roundhouse. I didn’t actually see what happened, because I was too busy making sure I landed on my feet, but I heard a crack that sounded like a baseball being crushed out of its skin by a wooden baseball bat.

The attacker was on the ground moaning and I felt a little bad. I stepped toward him to see how badly he was hurt, but he looked up like he was going to murder me. I turned to run as he started getting to his feet, but there was no need. Kitten just came flying out of nowhere and did what he did best: something insane.

He was bent over my attacker, and while I couldn’t see what was happening, the screams coming from the seventh grader were horrifying. “Aaaah! Okay, okay, please!” the seventh grader pleaded.

Kitten stood up, a stapler hanging from his hand in the open position. The kid’s pants leg was full of staples.

I helped the seventh grader to his feet.

“Let’s go,” I said, and led him around to the side of the building where I could talk to him privately. Kitten stayed close.

“Are you done?” I asked the kid as I shoved him against the school.

“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. I only did that because I owe Staples a lot of money and Justin said that I wouldn’t have to pay him back if I beat you up. He said some- thing about avenging Willis or something like that, I don’t know . . . I hardly know the guy.”

“How did you know to find me out here?”

“This is just where Justin told me to watch out for you. That’s all I know, I swear. I didn’t even want to do it, but I had no choice.” His eyes nervously flickered back and forth between the stapler in Kitten’s hand and my face.

I nodded and took a step back. The kid pulled at the places on his leg where Kitten had stapled him and then whimpered like a puppy.

“Okay. I’m going to let you go. But I better not ever see you in this sort of situation again. Got it?”

“Yeah. I swear, I really didn’t even want to do it in the first place. Thanks, Mac, really,” he said, and then limped toward the school. I watched as he went inside, probably to the bathroom, where he could cry in privacy.

Justin had known that I was going to be out here today. And I’d had no idea to even watch out for that kid. Something definitely wasn’t right. First the Tanzeem thing and now this. I was getting a bad feeling that I had a snitch on my hands, and considering what I saw just moments before the attack, I had a good idea of who it might be. One thing was definitely pretty clear: I couldn’t really trust anybody outside our business anymore.

During afternoon recess I dismissed all of the bullies and my other employees except for Fred, Joe, and Vince. There was no sense in moving forward with any further plans until we took care of the snitch. As long as Staples had a man on the inside, none of us were safe. I scheduled a meeting for Joe, Vince, and me for later that night to discuss what to do about the mole.

At least the plan to neutralize Staples’s influence here was working for the time being. No bets were being placed and we had eliminated the Collector. That’s why it was too bad that it all came crashing down after school that day. A day I now refer to as Black Thursday.

Chapter 11

T
hat day after school as Vince, Joe, and I walked Fred home, I heard someone shouting for help. It was coming from an alley that ran behind the houses across from the school. There were actually a few voices yelling for help.

“Hear that?” I asked as I veered off toward the alley.

“Yeah, Mac, but be careful,” Fred said.

We approached the alley with great caution, but there was no need to. We saw them almost immediately. It was most of my hired muscle.

Four of my bullies all sat next to each other right in the middle of the alley and two others stood nearby. We jogged over to them and I swore under my breath when I was close enough to see them clearly. Little Paul, the Hutt, Kevin, and iBully were all tied up on the ground. Some were crying. Only Snapper and PrepSchool were not bound, but they still looked pretty shaken. They were trying to untie the others, unsuccessfully. I knew immediately what had happened. I had ordered a hit on Staples’s hit man, so he responded by ordering a hit on
my
hit men.

“Help us, Mac,” Kevin said. Kevin was a seventh grader. A real tough kid, actually, and now his eyes were red from crying.

We freed the four of them and they all rubbed their wrists and tried to soothe their injured pride. These were the kings of the school and they had just been manhandled and made fools of. They weren’t even angry; they all looked more scared than anything else.

I addressed the Hutt, as he seemed to be the only one who could talk without crying or stumbling over a busted lip.

“How did this happen?” I asked.

“They were jus’ there waitin’ for us,” the Hutt said.

“Who?”

“It was a bunch a’ high schoolers and Justin Johnston. I was on my way home when these two high school kids grabbed me and forced me here. And then when I got here, they tied me up and then they brought everybody else here, too. There were like four or five high school kids and Justin and his friend Mitch. They, like, punched us and kicked us and, uh, we tried to get free and fight back, but we couldn’t. The only one of us who even got a hit on one of them was Snapper. She bit one of them in the ear because they refused to fight her, due to her being a girl and all.” The Hutt practically choked on his panic. “They said to give you a message, too.”

“What?”

“They said we’re all outta commission. They also said that you were next. They said that you’re a dead man for not giving up Fred and for what you did today.”

I kept silent and tried to look calm. If I showed my fear, then we’d be doomed. People always turned to me last for help, and if I was too scared to help them, then . . . well . . .

“I told you Staples was bad,” Fred said with wide eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mac, but I’m out. I quit. I don’t care how much money you give me,” the Hutt said.

The other bullies agreed.

We tried to convince them otherwise, but in the end all six of them quit right then and there. Which was probably for the better. I had gotten them hurt already. If they kept working for me, who knows what could happen to them. I needed to deal with this myself. I couldn’t risk any more innocent kids getting hurt. Compared to Staples, even the bullies were innocent.

We were careful the rest of the way home, but there was no sign of trouble. Someone was obviously toying with me, stabbing me in the back, selling me up the river, double-crossing me, two-timing me, or whatever else you want to call it. Someone was feeding Staples inside information. He just knew too much.

That night, after I convinced my dad that I was finished with my homework, I went over to Vince’s house to discuss a plan to oust the rat. As much as going to Vince’s at night creeped me out due to its proximity to the Creek, I still tried to go over there once in a while so he didn’t feel bad about where he lived.

We sat in his bedroom and played video games while we talked. I loved his room because it was covered in Cubs stuff. Posters; a framed, autographed jersey that we had bought a few years ago with our profits; banners; baseball cards. He even had Cubs sheets on his bed. He had one amazing poster that was like this panoramic shot of Wrigley Field. You could never go wrong brainstorming under the gaze of so much Cubs stuff.

“Staples clearly has an informant, someone close to our operation,” I said. “Given the exchange Joe and I saw between Brady and Jacky Boy earlier, I think it’s pretty obvious who the number one suspect is. Brady likely owes Staples a bunch of money and is now spying on us to help repay it.”

Vince nodded, but Joe seemed less certain.

“I’d be careful jumping to conclusions, Mac. It could just be a coincidence. We really shouldn’t assume anything. We need to be sure before we do anything drastic,” Joe said.

“Joe’s right, Mac,” Vince said. “How do we know Brady wasn’t arguing on our behalf? Maybe they were arguing about Jacky Boy taking bets. Plus, we can’t forget Nubby, Great White, and Kitten as suspects.”

I nodded. They were both right, of course. I was just so ready to wrap up this problem and move on to the bigger issue of taking down Staples himself that I was rushing myself and jumping to conclusions. I’d forgotten about the fact that the other three bullies weren’t ambushed. Was that just a coincidence? Or did it mean something more? Outside of Kitten, who I was pretty sure would never side with Staples, these weren’t exactly the most trustworthy kids to have working for you.

“Yeah, those are good points. This whole thing is a much bigger mess than I thought,” I said. “One thing is clear, though. We need to figure out who the mole is before we move ahead with any other plans. Because as long as Staples knows what we’re up to, we’ve got no shot at winning.”

With that the three of us came up with a way to verify just who the snitch might be. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. In fact, what we’d be doing tomorrow would get us expelled immediately if we were caught. But it was a necessary risk; we needed to know who was leaking information, and we needed to know soon.

Chapter 12

T
he next morning Joe and Vince met me in my office before school like we’d planned the night before. We chose a time so early it was still dark outside. As much as our bloodshot eyes hated us for that, it was essential that we not be seen doing what we were about to do or we could all kiss our futures good-bye. Expulsion doesn’t look good on permanent records, even if the importance of those things is a little overblown by adults.

We put on ski masks in case we
were
caught. Then we’d still have a chance to run and possibly get away without being identified. We nodded at one another and left my office, creeping through the halls, staying low and close to the walls.

Soon we arrived at the fourth-grade locker bay. I looked at a printout of locker assignments that I’d acquired earlier this year by helping out an administration office student assistant with a problem involving her parents and some boy who apparently had really dreamy eyes. We stopped in front of our target’s locker.

“You have the key?” Joe asked me.

“No, we came all this way and I forgot to check,” I said.

Joe rolled his eyes. “I was just asking.”

I smiled at him and held up the small brass-colored key. Vince and Joe nodded, but if there is such a thing as a nervous nod, those were it. We all knew how serious searching through another kid’s locker is. Especially if you broke in by using the master key. That’s right. I was holding the master key to every locker in the school.

How did I get such a key? Well, there’s actually a pretty cool story that explains it all, how I got my office and keys to the school and all sorts of other perks, such as the locker master key. Remember how I said before that I’m in tight with the janitor? Well, it’s kind of a long story, but I don’t think you’ll mind.

It all started a couple years ago. At that time, I didn’t have the cool office in the East Wing boys’ bathroom. Back then we operated our business inside two giant tires on the far side of the grade school playground. It wasn’t much. I mean, it was just two huge tires that they stuck in the ground for kids to climb on. But it did the job. The tires were pretty big and they provided just enough privacy for us to run our business. Of course, back then things were much simpler. We didn’t handle the same sorts of problems, and the tires were really all we needed. To be honest, a lot was different back in those days. I even had a different strongman; we called him Bazan. The story of what happened to good old Bazan is pretty long and complicated itself, so I’ll leave that for some other time.

Anyways, like I was saying, back then business was pretty simple. I worked out of the tires with Vince and Bazan and mostly just handled easy stuff like writing kids notes to give to their crushes or maybe getting them snacks that their parents wouldn’t buy for them. Young kids had a lot of simple problems that they just couldn’t solve themselves, so business was booming. But it was booming in a small sort of way because they also didn’t have much money.

About that time, the school was experiencing some problems of its own. It seemed that some kid had been splattering the school with graffiti. It was everywhere: in the bathrooms, on the sides of the building, on lockers, on walls, on the trophy case. The artist even managed to tag the principal’s door. The coolest part was that the graffiti wasn’t lame stuff like a name or a dumb saying; it was actually really awesome caricatures of all the school’s teachers and staff like the lunch ladies and counselor.

The drawings were really funny. They always pointed out the teacher’s funniest parts. Like Mr. Dickerson. The graffiti version had a really huge balding head and big creepy eyes, just like the real Mr. Dickerson. One of the math teachers, Mr. Thompson, had two big front teeth, and his graffiti picture had even bigger front teeth and little bunny ears. My personal favorite was this drawing of a history teacher named Mr. Ritter. Mr. Ritter had thick, huge fingers, and in the graffiti drawing his fingers were giant sausages. Everybody started calling him Sausage Fingers. It was a little obvious but still pretty hilarious. Pretty much all the kids loved the graffiti drawings. But of course the teachers really hated them.

After a few weeks the artist had drawn almost all of the school’s staff and still hadn’t been caught. It’s pretty amazing, really, especially with all the teachers on high alert. He was so good at not getting caught that all the kids started calling him the Graffiti Ninja. Not even the students knew his real identity.

After this had gone on for a while, the school began to put serious pressure on the janitor to clean up all of the graffiti as soon as possible. The problem was that the Graffiti Ninja used a Magnum 44 marker to do his drawings. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Magnum 44 marker, but they’re huge. They’re, like, almost the size of a baseball bat practically. And they smell like a billion chemicals all mixed together with gasoline. The ink is almost impossible to wash off. In fact, to this day, you can still see the faint outlines of some of the Graffiti Ninja’s work.

So the janitor was getting pretty frustrated. It wasn’t easy cleaning up graffiti all the time, not to mention all the usual stuff he had to clean around the school like toilets and whatnot. He didn’t know where to turn. And I suppose that’s why he eventually came to me. That’s why most people came to me, because they didn’t know what else to do.

I’m still not entirely sure how he found out who I was and what I did. I know he had a son who was just a few years older than me. So it’s likely that one night when the janitor was crying during dinner or something because of all the stress he’d had lately because of the Graffiti Ninja, his son told him about Vince’s and my business. That’s how I always imagined it went, anyways.

Either way, the point is that the janitor did come to me for help. And I have to say he looked pretty funny, too, with his legs folded under him like a pretzel, crammed inside the giant tire like a foot-long hot dog in a regular-sized bun.

“So what can I do for you?” I asked him after Vince gave me a nod and walked back to his post outside the tire. I touched my fingertips together in front of me like I was holding a sub sandwich and was about to take a bite.

He looked like he was trying to hide a smirk. That was okay, though. Adults never take little kids seriously. I was used to it.

“Well, I want you to find the kid who has been making those drawings all over the school. And I’d
really
like it if you could somehow get him to stop,” he said.

I nodded and tapped my fingers together.

“That would be quite a challenge,” I said.

The janitor was smirking again. I ignored it.

“You
do
know that my services are not free, yes? Especially for a favor of this magnitude.”

“Oh, oh yes. Yes, I’m well aware of that, thank you, Mac,” he said, still smiling.

“Okay, then, I think I may be able to help, but I can’t guarantee anything. I’ll see what I can do and then I’ll contact you later. How does that sound?”

“That sounds good. Thanks again, Mac,” he said.

But he said it in that way that adults sometimes talk to kids. You know, how they draw out each word and then make it high pitched on the end. Like they’re saying, “Oh, you’re so cute because you’re a kid and I know that whatever you say doesn’t really matter.” That’s kind of how he spoke to me. But I didn’t care. I knew the best way to get him to take me seriously was to just go and solve his problem.

So that’s what I did.

The first step was to call a meeting. I had Bazan and Vince round up a huge group of kids to meet me by the large tires. There were probably about ten kids total and they were all gossip girls, kids on the junior debate team, ballet dancers, kids who loved James Bond movies, nosy kids—basically everybody who I thought would be good at either gathering information or sneaking up on people.

“Okay, I’ve gathered you all here because I have a mission for you. A mission for which you will be paid very well,” I said. A murmur rippled through the kids. Grade school kids do not get money very often, unless they have an allowance or a paper route and those only get them so far. “The mission is for you to discover the identity of the Graffiti Ninja.”

This time they erupted in conversation. It was like I had just told them to find out whether or not aliens really existed. It was a task thought to be impossible, and a little silly.

“How are we, like, supposed to do that, or whatever?” one of the gossip girls asked.

“
You
just need to do what you do best: Find the gossip, find the dirt. You ballet dancers sneak around all day and try to catch him in the act. Debate kids, you grill everybody you come across. Nosy kids, you spy on everybody and anybody; look for inky fingers or Magnum-sized bulges in backpacks. And all of you just keep your eyes and ears peeled. If we all do this together, then we
will
find out who it is,” I said.

They stood there looking at me.

“Okay, you can all go earn your money now,” I said, and clapped a few times. The group slowly dissipated.

I turned to Vince after they were all gone.

“What do you think?”

“I think that I’d like some peanut butter ice cream right now,” he said with a concerned look on his face.

I smiled. “I’m serious, Vince. Do you think they have a chance?”

“I’m serious, too, Mac. I love PB ice cream.”

I laughed.

“Honestly, Mac, I’m not sure if they do have a chance. I think you should look into getting some extra help,” he said.

Leave it to Vince to give it to me straight. I wasn’t sure what else there was I could do, but Vince had a way of always being right that was both annoying on one level but also super beneficial to the success of our business.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I think you need to think outside the box, do something drastic. The normal tricks might not be enough for a problem this difficult.”

I looked at him and raised my eyebrows. “You mean . . .” I started.

“Yup. I think you should go talk to Tyrell Alishouse. Because I think this is going to be a make-it-or-break-it thing for our business. We’re paying these kids a lot of money, and this is a high-profile gig. No reason to hold back now.” Vince turned and hopped inside the large tire to rework our Books. Just like that, Vince had casually suggested a course of action that would drastically change the face of our business for the better for years to come. That’s why whenever we disagree on something, I usually end up coming around to his argument.

In the end, I wasn’t sure just how “make-it-or-break-it” this case was, but it definitely was the most massive and expensive mission I had ever undertaken. And Vince almost never steers me wrong, so I took his advice and went to go see Tyrell.

Tyrell Alishouse is this kid obsessed with spying on people and lurking in the shadows and stuff like that. Most kids avoid him because they think he’s a creepy weirdo, and he avoids most people because you can’t be a spy if you’re always being seen. His idols are Nancy Drew, James Bond, some guy named Shaft, and two dudes called the Hardy Boys. I understand why a lot of kids avoid him—he
is
pretty strange. But Vince and I know better.

I spotted him in the bushes out near the faculty parking lot that afternoon recess.

“Hey, your name is Tyrell, right?” I said.

His head popped up from the bushes like a gopher, with one finger pressed against his lips. Then he motioned for me to join him. I climbed back to where he was, wedged between the bushes and the school building.

“I need your help,” I whispered. I had no idea why I had to be quiet, but I didn’t want to mess up whatever sort of sting he had going on.

“You’re that problem solver guy, right? MacGyver?” he whispered back.

“Yeah.”

He nodded. “I thought you might be looking for me.”

“How did you know?” I asked.

“I heard you were starting a task force to track down the Graffiti Ninja,” he said.

“But I only started it this morning; how could you know?” I asked.

“Because I was there,” he said.

“But . . .”

He smiled. Then he shook his head. “The first thing you need to know is I’m only seen when I want to be seen.”

I knew right then that this kid and I were going to have a long and successful business relationship. I filled him in on what I needed and told him what the pay was for the job. He accepted without a moment’s hesitation. I paid him more than anybody I had ever paid before, which I knew was risky, but without risk there’s no reward. Or as Vince’s grandma said once: Without Risk there’s no such thing as Yakutsk.

And this time the risk paid off. Tyrell took to the challenge like my godfather, Bruce, to a bottle of moonshine. Slowly but surely the other kids on the task force began to bring me information. It was little things at first: The Graffiti Ninja was supposedly a sixth grader. She was a girl. She struck only during lunch and before school.

But it was Tyrell who busted the case wide open, just like I knew he would. I still don’t know how Tyrell did it, but he somehow got an actual photograph of the Graffiti Ninja drawing a picture on the gymnasium floor. I remember how my jaw dropped when he showed me the photo inside my tire.