The Fourth Stall Part III Read online

  “What do you think?” Vince said once Jimmy was clear.

  “I don’t know. I mean, first of all, can we trust him?”

  Vince shook his head. We both knew it was a good question. I didn’t like the idea of handing over my business to someone who might dirty its reputation. Then again, Jimmy, despite being weird, did seem to have things mostly in order. And he had gone through the trouble of making sure we were on board.

  I pointed this out to Vince and he agreed. Besides, if Jimmy was untrustworthy, then he’d probably start his own business either way. So we might as well start out on his good side regardless. Especially if there was some mostly risk-free money to be made along the way.

  “I mean, really,” I added, “making this deal is sort of our way of really getting out, right? If we hand over the business to someone else, then that’s it. We’re done except for the small franchise fee we’ll be getting. This is what we wanted. . . .”

  Vince nodded slowly. “Yeah, and then also all of these kids’ problems can get fixed, too. We won’t get harassed all day and have to feel so guilty all the time. Mac, this kid just made us an offer we can’t refuse.”

  “So we’re saying we’ll give him the okay, then? It all makes sense, but it just feels so . . . weird.”

  “It’s like my grandma says, ‘Nugget.’”

  I waited. Vince just looked at me evenly.

  “That’s it? ‘Nugget’?”

  “Yeah, some days she just wanders around the house saying ‘nugget’ over and over again. It’s weird.”

  I grinned and shook my head and then signaled to Jimmy.

  He rejoined us at the table. “So what’s the deal, bros?”

  “Make it fifteen percent of the profits and you got yourself a deal,” Vince said before I could respond.

  Jimmy looked at each of us with his best poker face. Then a smile slowly spread across it. “All right, it’s a deal, dudes!”

  He held out his hand and we all shook on it. Then we got down to the business of discussing the intricacies of the East Wing boys’ bathroom, the fourth stall from the high window, and most important, the method of payment for our cut of the green stuff.

  I’ll fast-forward a few weeks here to spare you on the boring stuff. That’s right, for two whole weeks nothing bad or crazy had happened to us. In fact, boring is about the only way I can describe the first two weeks following our deal with Jimmy. Or normal. Either word works.

  But I’m not complaining. I mean, I loved it. Now that I was truly out, life couldn’t have been better. Kids had even stopped coming to me to plead for help within days of our arrangement with Jimmy.

  It didn’t take long for the word to spread about Jimmy reopening my business. And apparently he hadn’t been joking around: he was pretty good at it. The kids I’d talked to all said he was fast, fair, and efficient. I even heard he got JJ Molina his Roberto Clemente rookie card back. Some kids seemed to think Jimmy might even be better at running the business than I had been. Which was annoying. . . . I mean, it’s like Jimmy said, building the bike is harder than riding it. But, whatever. If they were all happy, then I was happy. Especially since Jimmy was cutting Vince and me in on all of his profits just like he’d promised. He was making the cash drops right on schedule, every Monday and Thursday like clockwork.

  We had a pretty good system for the drops, too. One of Jimmy’s guys would package our cut and wrap it in sealed plastic, like in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Then with the cash hidden in his shirt he would go into the North Wing boys’ bathroom at 12:02, just after lunch had started. He’d stash the money in the bottom of the trash can underneath wads of used paper towels. A place where no sane, unsuspecting kid would ever randomly decide to stick an arm into.

  Then at 12:05 Fred would enter the bathroom and retrieve the bag. He’d enter a stall and remove the cash. He’d take his cut out, which was pretty minimal, and then conceal the rest of the cash in his backpack. Then sometime after lunch and before afternoon recess he’d walk past my locker and slip the cash in through the vents.

  That might seem complicated. And, yeah, it was. But we just couldn’t be too careful with Dickerson on our tail the way he had been. Vince and I learned over the years from watching a lot of mobster movies like The Godfather that dirty money had to be laundered to conceal where it came from. We wanted our link to the current business to be as weak as possible.

  Anyways, on that third cash-drop Monday when I opened my locker, my knees almost buckled. There was a small lake of cash at the bottom of my locker. Seriously, I practically needed a boat just to fish out my gym shoes.

  Later that day after school when I showed Vince and we counted the money, we could hardly believe it. There was more than one hundred dollars, all totaled.

  “Mac, there’s no way this is fifteen percent. It has to be more!” Vince said. “I mean, if this is actually fifteen percent, then Jimmy just beat our all-time four-day profits record by two hundred and ninety-eight dollars!”

  “That’s not just beating our record, Vince. That’s obliterating it.”

  “How is that even possible? He’d have to see like ninety customers per day. There’s just not enough time for that to be possible. The numbers don’t add up, Mac. And numbers don’t lie. It’s like the TINSTAAFL axiom in action right before our eyes.”

  My social studies teacher had taught us about that on the first day of class this year: TINSTAAFL (pronounced “tin-staw-full”). It means, “There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” Which basically means if a deal seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

  All money going out in business, in life, in the universe, eventually needs to equal or reconcile with all money coming in. If we were making this much money, then who was losing out?

  “He must just charge more money than we did?” I suggested. “Also, he might offer more of an express type service. You know, faster results but less personal attention and treatment. He goes for volume.

  Vince nodded. “I guess.”

  And so we added the money to our Funds, and didn’t talk about it again that week. Especially not after Thursday. Because that was when Vince and I realized Jimmy’s business practices were the least of our problems.

  Vince called me around four o’clock that Thursday. This wasn’t too unusual, as we talked to each other or hung out pretty much every single day. But I could tell right away that something was different about this call.

  “What’s up? Did you call to try pointlessly to challenge my vast Cubs knowledge?” I said.

  “Mac! You gotta get over here!”

  “What? Why?”

  “You’re never going to guess what happened. . . . This is bad, this is so bad,” he said.

  “Hey, it can’t be worse than the way the Cubs season has gone. I mean . . .”

  “Mac, listen to me!” he yelled. “That’s nothing compared to this. Now get over here. You’re never going to believe this unless you see it.”

  Then I heard a deep voice in the background say something and laugh. Then I heard what sounded like a small scuffle, and Vince said something I couldn’t make out, but I could tell that he was even angrier and more upset than he had been just seconds before.

  “I gotta go, so get over here,” Vince said, and then the line went dead.

  I was still grounded from my bike technically, but I took it anyway. I didn’t think I could survive the length of time it would take me to walk to Vince’s. I had no idea if he was in trouble, what kind of danger he might be in, what was waiting for me when I’d get there. But the one thing I knew was that I was going to get there as soon as I could.

  My parents had stashed my bike on some shelving that ran across the rafters of the garage. It was a place they thought I couldn’t get to, but they were wrong. I climbed up using my dad’s workbench as a ladder. Then I crawled over to where my bike was and slowly lowered it as close to the ground as possible.

  It was still a pretty good drop, but I had no other choice, and I let
go of the bike. It clattered to the garage floor loudly but landed in one piece. Then I set off for Vince’s.

  Everything looked okay from the outside of his place. I mean, his trailer wasn’t engulfed in flames or anything. The lights were on; everything was relatively quiet aside from the sound of cars driving on nearby roads and kids playing in the trailer park playground behind Vince’s mobile home.

  I knocked, and Vince answered a split second later.

  “What’s going on?” I demanded.

  “Come on,” Vince said, motioning for me to follow him to his room. “You’ll need to see for yourself.”

  Vince didn’t have a gaping head wound or broken bones poking through skin or anything. So I followed him back to his bedroom, a place where I’d spent many hours hanging out, playing video games, watching the Cubs, and even having an epic fight or two.

  That’s when I saw him.

  “Hey, the other one! Perfect!” Staples jumped up from Vince’s desk chair and punched my arm playfully.

  By “playfully,” I mean it felt like someone had just taken a sledgehammer to my bicep. I grabbed my arm and tried to laugh off the punch, but it was hard even to stay upright, it hurt so much. I saw Vince tenderly holding his own arm, and I kind of wondered how many “playful” punches he’d gotten already.

  Staples was still dressed well, like he had been when he visited me a few weeks earlier. Except this time, there was that glint of sadistic glee in his eyes that I kind of had never wanted to see again.

  “How’s it going, Christian?” Staples asked, and then laughed.

  What exactly was going on here? I knew Vince’s mom would be getting home from work any minute. Surely she’d put an end to whatever sort of sick torture Staples had in mind for us. I looked at Vince to ask what Staples was doing here. At first he just squirmed uncomfortably. Finally, he spoke.

  “He’s my new big brother,” Vince said.

  “What?” I shouted. “I thought his dad got sent away or is in jail or something! Plus, how could your mom possibly be into that guy? No offense, Staples.”

  Staples didn’t seem offended. He just kept grinning at me.

  “No, not like my real big brother. He’s my Big Brother, through that program for kids with no dads. My mom thought that that whole thing with us getting caught last year with our business and all the bad stuff we did was because I don’t have a ‘positive male role model’ or whatever. So she signed me up!”

  “We’re all going to be good buddies now!” Staples said with delight. Clearly he still loved making me uncomfortable.

  “Why are you in the program?” I asked him. “And why would they take you?”

  “Hey, now,” Staples said. “Let’s try not to insult me too much, Mac, right? Anyway, it’s like I told you a few weeks ago. I’m trying to get custody of my sister. Participating in the Big Brother program is one of the best ways to score points with the courts. And they took me because, technically, my whole criminal record was wiped clean when I turned eighteen. That and I think they’re kind of desperate for volunteers, especially in this neighborhood.”

  He had a point: there wasn’t exactly an abundance of model fathers in this part of town.

  “Makes sense, I guess,” I said.

  “Yeah, it does.”

  Staples doled out another round of arm punches for Vince and me. Getting hit in that exact same spot hurt so much, I thought I would go blind in one eye.

  “So you’re just going to be hanging around us a lot more, then, is that it?” I asked.

  “That’s right. I’ve got this so-many-hours-per-week schedule that I have to fulfill. Man, what a lucky draw for me to get Vince,” Staples said, leaning against Vince’s bedpost. “Right? In all seriousness, I think I might have a thing or two to teach you guys.”

  Vince and I looked at each other awkwardly. I had a lot I wanted to talk to him about, but it was weird to discuss anything with Staples standing right there.

  “So are you two still retired, then?” Staples asked.

  “Sort of,” I said. We proceeded to explain to Staples the deal we’d made a few weeks ago with Jimmy Two-Tone.

  “Let me tell you something, Mac,” Staples said after thinking it over for a minute. “You can’t ever truly get out. Didn’t you know that when you started this business? Once you choose this life, you’re in it forever, or at least until you’re dead. I’m sure this seems like the perfect setup right now, but don’t forget, there’s a business at your school, and in the end, it’s all going to be tied to you. Getting out means cutting all ties completely, even leaving a part of yourself behind. There’s no such thing as halfway out in this business. Believe me, I know.”

  His words carried an ominous and dark weight to them, like thick, heavy rain clouds ready to dump tons of water onto an unsuspecting town. But at the time, with things going so well, they weren’t what I wanted to hear.

  “Look, Staples,” I said. “Things have changed a bit since the last time you were in business. We’ve got this under control. In fact, if you still need help help getting your sister back, you might consider paying Jimmy a visit.”

  Staples shook his head.

  “No, I’ve changed my mind since I last talked to you. To accomplish anything meaningful it needs to be on the level. I need to do this the right way for once. I just can’t risk losing my sister again. Getting her back and taking care of her is all I’ve got left, and the last thing I want to do is blow it by getting involved in some two-bit middle school crime ring.”

  I had never heard Staples be so serious about anything. Still, I didn’t buy it. He had to have an angle he was playing. People like Staples don’t just change that drastically overnight. The question was what exactly did he have up his sleeve?

  “Hey, it’s like my grandma sometimes says,” said Vince, finally chiming in. “‘If it ain’t on the level, then you’d better hope that the penguin starts puking up strawberry-banana gravy.’”

  I’d never heard that one before, and so in spite of the tense mood I couldn’t help but laugh. Then Vince laughed, too, and I swore I even saw Staples crack a smile as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and started typing on it.

  “All right,” I said. “I better go home before my parents notice that my bike is gone. If they haven’t already.”

  “How about the ultimate question before you go?” Vince said.

  “Yeah, if by ‘ultimate,’ you mean ‘insanely easy,’” I said.

  “Cubs pitching great Charlie Root supposedly once said, ‘I gave my life to baseball, and I’ll only be remembered for something that never happened.’ What was he referring to?”

  I froze. I couldn’t believe it, but he actually had me. I opened and closed my mouth a few times somehow hoping the right answer would just come out on its own. I mean, I was vaguely familiar with the name Charlie Root because I knew he was up there with Mordecai Brown among Cubs pitching records, but he never got the same recognition as old Three-Finger Brown. I felt like the answer should have been obvious and that I’d be kicking myself once I found out what it was. I was just about to offer up a random guess and accept my defeat when Staples spoke.

  “He was the pitcher during Babe Ruth’s called shot at Wrigley in game three of the 1932 World Series,” he said.

  Vince and I both turned and stared at him in shock.

  “What? I’m a Yankees fan, remember? By the way, who, ah, won that World Series again?” he taunted.

  Obviously the Yankees had won. Neither Vince nor I gave in to his goading with a response. Vince was probably upset that Staples had bailed me out, but at the time, I think he was more in awe of his baseball knowledge than anything else.

  “You’re right,” he finally said. “But to be fair Ruth never actually called the shot; everybody knows that’s an old baseball legend. It’s like Charlie Root also said later, ‘Ruth did not point at the fence before he swung. If he had made a gesture like that, well, anybody who knows me knows that I would have put on
e in his ear and knocked him on his ass.’”

  “Yeah, you would say that, sore loser. You Cubs fans are all the same. You just whine about everything and make excuses and always blame everything bad that happens to the Cubs on everybody else but the Cubs. Whether he pointed or not, no one can deny he hit a home run or that Gehrig hit one right after that and the Yankees went on to win the Series that year. Right?”

  Staples shrugged an empty and insincere apology of sorts and went back to typing on his phone.

  Man, who ever would have guessed that I’d be pulled out of the clutches of Cubs trivia defeat by Staples? Or that for the first time in my life I’d be happy to be in the same room as him, even if it was for only a few seconds?

  Having Staples around as a third wheel for the next several days was complicated, and by that I mean it was terrifying, nerve-racking, difficult, painful (my arm felt like it could fall off at any moment), surreal, and—okay, I kind of admit it—at times even kind of cool. I know that sounds crazy, but being seen out in public acting like we were friends with a legend, an eighteen-year-old legend at that and one who attracted attention from lots of cute older girls, was pretty awesome. I can’t lie about that part of it.

  Plus, he was pretty funny once you got past all the arm-punching and how much he made fun of Vince and me for pretty much everything we did or wore or said. And he was sort of like the sadistic version of Vince’s grandma in that he kept giving us advice on business, girls, life, all that stuff. Except instead of giving crazy and illogical advice like Vince’s grandma, Staples’s was actually helpful. Even if it was sometimes a little demented.

  Some of the things he’d said to us over the past few weeks included such treasures as:

  “You’re only as tough as your actions show you are. That means you won’t intimidate anyone if all you do is talk tough. People will see right through that. You need to bust some heads. That’s what will get you respect. A great man once said, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.’ Which is great, even if my advice would instead be ‘Speak loudly and carry a big stick.’”