by Colin Meloy
“Tate the Great,” put in Molly. “One of the best.”
Amir had to stifle an urge to laugh as he recounted, “See, Tate, he’d work lone wolf, yeah?—on his own. And he’d fan some party like a ballroom dance. He’d work the floor, binging pokes, ridge, slum—whatever they had—but before he was done, he’d bing all the fellas’ suspenders and stand off, watching all of ’em running off to the bandstand, holding up their britches like this.” He grasped his pants’ waist with both hands and comically ran across the room as if his trousers were about to drop to his ankles. Everyone laughed, even Charlie. “Tate’d ding the suspenders—he’d dump ’em all—outside the ballroom, and the gents would spend the next hour tryin’ to figure whose was whose, all the while their pants falling down.”
“He was a classic,” said Borra, his laugh a husky guffaw. “Not many of his kind anymore.”
“Where is he now?” ventured Charlie.
“Some layoff spot somewhere,” said Amir, somewhat mournfully. “He’s off the whiz these days.”
“You can do that?” asked Charlie. “Just . . . be off the whiz?”
“Yeah,” said Amir. “Anyone can do it. Declare yourself out, it’s called.”
“But why would you want to?” put in Michiko, fanning out a multicolored stack of crisp franc bills like a peacock’s tail.
“Exactly,” said Amir, smiling at Charlie.
“We’re on the whiz,” said Pluto, “because we want to.”
“Because we’re good at it,” added Michiko.
“The Headmaster doesn’t force the rackets on anyone,” said Jackie, herself now holding a gold watch and admiring it. “We’re here because we’re drawn to it. And because we can do our little part to wage war on the rich in a way that no army could.”
Charlie squinted and pointed a finger at the crowd around the table. “Wait,” he said. “Are you guys Communists?”
Jackie laughed. Borra spat derisively on the ground. Michiko shook her head and said, “We are not anything. We are the Whiz Mob du Marseille.”
“Binged a few okuses off commies, though,” said Sembene.
“Not particularly fat marks, them,” added Molly.
“Tools follow no particular political persuasion, Charlie,” said Amir. “We follow the prats.”
“How does this— How did you—” Charlie paused, trying to arrange the flood of questions he had into one succinct thought. He asked, “How do you all know each other?”
This question caused everyone at the table to look up at Charlie. They exchanged a few furtive glances. Jackie shot a look at Amir. Sembene said, “Can we tell him?”
“We’ll have to kill him,” said Michiko, giving a mischievous smile.
“Can I do it?” asked Pluto. He sneered at Charlie. Clearly, the boy was still harboring ill will toward Charlie for having binged the centime.
“Shush, Pluto. Amir?” asked Jackie.
“We can tell him,” said Amir. “He should know.”
“We might as well,” added the Bear. “He has seen everything else.”
“What?” asked Charlie, confused, looking around the room. “What’s the secret?”
“We’re a whiz mob, Charlie,” said Amir. “One of lots. All over the world.”
“Every major city’s got one,” said Jackie. “We’re not the first you’ve run into. Not that you would know.”
“We work in secret,” said Sembene.
“In the shadows,” said Fatour.
“And that’s all you need to know,” said Michiko.
“Oh, come on,” said Amir. “If he’s going to run with us, even playing center field, we just gotta tell him.”
“Please do,” said Charlie.
Amir nodded to Jackie. “You tell him.”
“The School of Seven Bells,” said Jackie. “Ever heard of it?”
“Can’t say I have,” said Charlie.
“Of course he hasn’t,” put in Pluto. “He’s a chump. He’s a—”
“Just tell him your story, Jackie,” interrupted Amir.
Jackie paused before speaking again. She picked up a gold chain necklace and draped it between her fingers. “When I was a girl in Chattanooga—a very little girl—growing up on a plantation, I had a lot of time on my hands. I had a big family; every one of my brothers and sisters had to figure out how to stand out. I developed a . . .” She searched for the word. “A skill. Not only how to use my fingers in a crafty and secret way, but I figured out how to mess with folks’, you know, understanding of where they were—and where I was. It was like I could manipulate time. I could totally change the way people were in the world. I found I could take my daddy’s bifocals off his face without him even knowing it. I taught myself to pick locks, to steal candy. I could frame the gardener—or any one of my brothers or sisters—for anything I might’ve done wrong. You can imagine I was a bit of a handful. But I had a talent. Turns out, I had the know.
“The grift know. The grift sense. I wasn’t aware at the time, but it was a thing that linked me with tons of other kids in the world, all over the world. One day I was playing in the garden of the big house when a man arrived. He was dressed real nice, had a suit on. He spoke in a strange accent. I remember him clear as day. He knelt down in front of me, held out a coin. He made it do magic things. He made it disappear, made it reappear in the pocket of my pinafore. He asked for my father and mother; I remember them speaking to him at quite some length. When they were done talking, my father came over to me and said that the man was there to take me somewhere. Somewhere incredible. Where kids like me could be taught, where a particular talent like mine could be refined and honed. Next thing I knew, my bags were packed and I was driven away. This guy’s name was Nigel. He was a Finder. We traveled for many days—by car, by plane, by boat. We crossed countries and oceans. Until finally we arrived at the strangest place I’d ever seen. On top of a mountain in the middle of Colombia—in South America, we came to the school. The School of Seven Bells.”
Charlie listened intently as the girl spoke. The room had quieted. All eyes were on Jackie.
She continued, “You probably can imagine how strange it all seemed, me just a six-year-old girl from Chattanooga. This castle-like building in some place on the other side of the world from where I was born. But that’s where I learned to channel my talent into something useful. Something that can change the world. Me . . .” Here she gave a wave of the necklace still wound in her fingers to include the rest of the kids in the room. “And everyone you see. We were all brought together by our skills, our abilities. Under the instruction of the Headmaster, we honed those skills. We became a whiz mob. And we were sent out into the world to do our work.”
“To pick pockets?” asked Charlie.
“To right the imbalances,” interjected Michiko. “To take the rich folks down a peg.”
“Also to get rich ourselves!” threw in the Bear with a wide smile.
“We take our little cut, the rest goes to the Headmaster,” said Jackie. “What he keeps is kinda like tuition.”
“Paying for the education of tomorrow’s cannons,” said Amir, his hand dramatically on his heart.
Charlie let out an astounded laugh. He looked at each of the kids in turn, waiting for them to break character, to reveal their elaborate joke. When they didn’t, Charlie said, incredulously, “Do you know how crazy that sounds? A secret school for pickpockets? In South America?”
Amir shrugged his shoulders. “Craziness is relative, yeah?”
“And you’re all sent out to work in groups like this? I mean, is there a whiz mob in, say, Washington, DC?”
“Yeah,” said Amir.
“Tokyo?” asked Charlie.
“Uh-huh,” said Molly.
“Moscow?”
“There is,” responded the Bear. “Konechna.”
“Um . . .” Charlie searched his brain. “Sydney, Australia?”
“A very fine one, in fact,” answered Jackie.
“Kik
o’s in that mob, right?” asked Amir. He gave an impressive whistle. “Now, there’s a cannon.”
“We are everywhere,” Jackie reiterated. She spun the gold chain around her index finger a few times before flinging it onto the heap of gold on the table.
“Okay,” said Charlie. “So why is it called that? The School of Seven Bells?”
“A very astute question, Charlie,” said Amir, “with a very simple answer.”
“It’s named for the final test that every kid must take before he or she is declared a true cannon, before they’re turned out on the whiz,” explained Jackie. “We all have passed the Test of the Seven Bells.”
Charlie scanned the room; everyone nodded in succession.
“So . . . ,” he ventured. “What is the test?”
“Seven coins,” said Sembene.
“For seven pockets,” said Fatour.
“Let us demonstrate,” said Jackie.
Jackie had grabbed Amir by the shoulders; she proceeded to lead him to the center of the crypt. An electric light in a black shroud hung over the place where he stood, casting ominous shadows over his body. She helped him don what looked to be a khaki-green soldier’s coat that she’d retrieved from one of the catacomb’s stone recesses. Several cargo pockets decorated the chest of the jacket.
“In the middle of a room called the arena,” explained Jackie, “a big, open room in the center of the school, there’s a dummy. A mannequin. That’s all that’s there.” She walked back over to the table and retrieved a handful of coins from a pile. Amir, hearing her description, did his best impression of a mannequin, though his rigid features drew laughs from his audience.
“Shhh!” chided Jackie. “You’re a dummy.”
“That should be an easy one for you, Amir,” called Molly the Mouse.
Amir’s face dropped as the room erupted in laughter. “Brilliant joke, Mouse,” he said, deadpan.
Jackie continued, “And on this dummy is an outfit with a bunch of pockets with little bells attached to each of ’em. And inside each pocket is a coin.” She proceeded to drop, in quick succession, the treasures in her hand into seven of Amir’s pockets; she described each drop as she did so: “One in the coat jerve. One in the tog pit. One in the coat pit. One in the right chest kick and one in the left. One in the tog tail. And one in the top britch. Seven coins. Seven pockets. Seven bells.”
She stepped away and looked at Amir where he stood. She waved Michiko over. “It is the student’s job to make each touch without ringing the bells.”
Michiko, rising to the challenge, rubbed her hands together excitedly and faced Amir’s unmoving mannequin. Her fingers moved with fluid grace—while there were no bells hanging from Amir’s pockets, Charlie could barely see the fabric of the pockets move as the girl managed the first and second touches in quick succession.
“She does it, she passes the test,” said Jackie. “Ring a single bell, however, and it’s a fail.”
Michiko circled Amir like a lion stalking its prey. She studied each pocket briefly before—zip—her hand struck quickly and quietly, snagging the coin from its hiding place.
“There is problem, though,” put in the Bear, walking toward the mock test in session. “Three pockets in—if you make it that far—Headmaster comes into the arena. Wants to see if you can still perform under pressure. You think you’re in good shape because you are really swinging with it—you’ve nailed four of seven touches. But then all of sudden you’ve got Headmaster coming at you.” Borra then took on the gait of an altogether different character than himself: he hunched his back slightly and, spitting on his palms, aggressively parted his hair into the semblance of a severe comb-over. He was applauded by his compatriots for his efforts—they began to hoot and jeer this new addition to the reenactment. The entire room had by now taken on the feel of a theatrical production. “Okay, so now—I’m middle-aged man with bad breath,” said Borra, his voice pitched in a mock British accent, “and terrible teeth.”
Michiko tried to keep a straight face as Borra began slouching around her, peeking up over her shoulder and whispering in her ear. A few of the onlooking pickpockets laughed; he might’ve been overdoing it a tad.
“Careful, Michiko,” he hissed. “Don’t rumble him. Mind those prats. Keep your composure, what.”
Despite the pressure, the girl managed to coerce another coin from its pocket; Amir remained the steadfast mannequin, his eyes comically unblinking and his arms stiff. Michiko rounded Amir’s shoulder and maneuvered her hand into his jacket’s inside pocket. Borra followed her so as to be looming directly over her shoulder as she went for the prat.
“Some make it,” said Jackie, giving a wink to Amir. With that signal, Amir let out a loud “DING!”
“Most don’t,” she continued.
Michiko, once so confident, was deflated. Borra-as-Headmaster leered and guffawed like a vaudeville villain. The entire room erupted into applause, as if some great stage production had finished. The three kids—Michiko, Amir, and Borra—snapped out of their individual characters, stood gamely in line and, smiling, took their bows.
Charlie couldn’t help but clap along. “That’s amazing,” he said. “Simply amazing.”
“You wouldn’t make it very far with your technique,” said Pluto, frowning at Charlie. “Wrestling the mannequin to the ground would not work.”
“He does have a point, Charlie,” said Amir, shedding the khaki jacket.
“Yeah, well,” said Charlie. “I do need practice.”
“Oh, you’ll get practice,” said Amir.
The Whiz Mob had returned to their winnings on the table and continued to sort. They gabbed and chided one another as they spoke with a winning camaraderie that was undeniably magnetic. It seemed to Charlie that there could not be kids on the entire globe who were more diametrically opposed to the financiers’ and politicians’ children he was likely to meet. His was a sanitized, guarded existence; his peers were all equally sheltered. These kids would undoubtedly mop the floor with the bullying Päffgen boys of the world, and likely make off with their wallets for good measure. This was a crowd Charlie could roll with, if only he could develop the skills. One day, perhaps, he could stand at this table in this mysterious catacomb as an equal, sorting the day’s take and telling stories of old jobs (“punching gun,” as they called it). After a time, the waiter Bertuccio returned from the café upstairs with a large cutting board covered in sliced salamis and baguettes.
“Oh, sing us a tune, Bertuccio,” called out Molly to the waiter. The Whiz Mob all seemed equally enamored of this idea, and they began hammering their fists on the table, demanding song.
Bertuccio smiled, blushed, and wandered over to one of the catacomb’s decorated nooks, where a Spanish guitar was waiting for him. Taking it up, he plucked a few of the strings, tinkered with the tuning pegs, and began singing.
Charlie, now sitting in a chair next to Amir, fell into a kind of reverie at the sound of the man’s voice—it was a rich, gliding thing that echoed about the low stone ceilings of the catacomb like wisps of cloudy vapor. He sang in Italian, and Charlie could not recognize the song, but he fell under its spell nonetheless. When the waiter had finished, the entire room gave up their applause and demanded more; Bertuccio humbly obliged. Charlie began to lose track of time, here in this subterranean chamber, surrounded by the piles of treasure and food and otherworldly chatter of the Whiz Mob. Eventually, he moved to one of the recesses and, lounging against a large tasseled pillow, might’ve nodded off momentarily, lulled to sleep by the intoxicating world he’d found himself in.
After a time, Charlie came back to earth. He glanced at his watch, but he saw that he’d neglected winding it; the second hand was still. “Anyone have the correct time?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
Jackie, reclining back in a chair at the table, looked at the face of a watch she’d been admiring. “Ten o’clock,” she said, before holding it to her ear to assess its condition. “Nope,” she added, and s
he threw it to the table. She began cycling through a pile of watches, seeking out the working specimens. “Five fifteen. Nine thirty-five. Four ten.” She smiled at Charlie. “Take your pick.”
“I should really get going,” said Charlie, “whatever the time. My father—I’m expected home.”
“Wait a second,” said Pluto. He looked at Amir. “How do we know he’s solid? How do we know he’s not going to beef gun to the whiskers?”
Amir shrugged. “At this point, Pluto, we can only take his word.”
“I’m solid,” replied Charlie, hoping that would suffice. “I won’t . . . beef gun. To the whiskers. Or anyone else, for that matter.” He looked around the room, shifting uncomfortably. “What are the whiskers again?”
Someone laughed. Michiko let him off: “The cops, Charlie, the cops!”
“Right,” said Charlie. “Definitely not the whiskers.”
“If you’re in, you’re in,” said Amir. “No backing out now.”
“I’m in,” said Charlie. “Very much so.”
Amir pointed at Pluto. “Pluto, our folder man, has a job for us Sunday. If you want to come along. Ain’t that right, Pluto?”
“What’s he gonna—” began Pluto grumpily, before Jackie interrupted him.
“He’s here now, ain’t he?” she said. “We’ll take him along. Let him play center field. He can’t do any harm.”
“C’mon, Pluto,” said Amir. “We need our ninth tool.”
Pluto kicked his shoe against the stone floor before saying: “Hippodrome Marseille Borély. Racecourse. It’s the Prix de Saignon. Massive quarter horse stakes race.” He gave Amir a sour look before adding, “Every fat mark in the south of France will be there.”
“And I will be there too,” said Charlie cheerily.
“Nine a.m. sharp,” said Pluto, rolling his eyes. “Front gates. Don’t be late.”
“On my word,” said Charlie. He held his hand up in a gesture that could only be described as a combination Boy Scout salute and taxi hail. Suddenly aware of the awkwardness of this motion, he quickly let his hand fall to his side.
