The Bank of Badness

by Jeff Gottesfeld

  “Yes, young man?” Ms. Herald asked.

  “Where are we supposed to go to take out books and stuff now?”

  “The city library.”

  “That’s four miles away!” Robin exclaimed.

  “Ooooh, poor Shrimp! He’ll have to walk to the lie-berry!” Dodo cooed in a girly voice.

  Mr. Simesso glared at Dodo, then gave the signal for the kids to get to work.

  Robin couldn’t even get out of his seat to help or look for books to take home. He was too sad. Losing the library was like losing family.

  Yeah, he thought. When it comes to losing family, I should know. I should totally know.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After school, Robin and his friends decided to walk to the Center. It was one of the few places in the hood where everyone felt safe. There were game rooms, arts and crafts areas, a homework zone, and a small kitchen. To be allowed in, you had to be under sixteen or over sixty-five. There were never any Rangers.

  To get there, they followed Marcus Garvey Boulevard past the dicey streets that got fought over by the gangs. Thirtieth Street was bad news. So was Twenty-Eighth Street. They passed a lot of gangstas selling reefer and crack. As they crossed Twenty-Eighth, Robin saw Kaykay stiffen.

  “Keep walking,” she instructed. “Don’t look, don’t stare, don’t do nothing.”

  Robin knew better than to challenge his friend. Kaykay finally slowed in front of a liquor store.

  “What up with that?” Sly asked her.

  “Look back toward Twenty-Eighth and Garvey,” Kaykay instructed. “What do you see? I mean, who do you see?”

  Robin peered toward the corner. There was so much cross-traffic that he had to move around for a good—

  Holy moly.

  Tyrone and Dodo stood in the street near the corner. Each wore the black bandana that identified them as a Ranger. As he watched, a late-model Beemer with white kids in the front seat slowed to a stop near them. The window rolled down. Tyrone talked briefly to the driver, took some money, and then handed over a small container. Then the Beemer rolled away.

  Omigod. Tyrone and Dodo were on the grind, dealing drugs for the Rangers.

  “Guess they quit the football team,” Kaykay cracked.

  “Dealing pays better than bein’ in the coach’s doghouse,” Sly joked.

  Robin was not in a joking mood. He was worried. Very worried.

  “You know what this means?” he asked his friends. “If Tyrone and Dodo decide to mess with us more, they got a lot of backup: the whole Rangers gang!”

  Robin stood on the small stage in the rec room at the Center, surrounded by kids and old people.

  “For those who haven’t heard, I want to talk about yesterday,” he told the crowd. “Ironwood PD messed up. They thought I was some kid who’d robbed an old lady. When they figured it out, they let me go.”

  “At least the po-lice is doin’ something,” a very old lady called out. Robin only knew her first name, Wanda. She played piano.

  “That’s a fact, Wanda,” Robin agreed. He didn’t like to lie like this but knew it was the safest thing to do. “I even thanked them. So did my gramma. That’s the whole story. So let’s play some games.”

  Folks seemed satisfied; they drifted away to the card tables that were set up below the stage. Thursday was game day at the Center. In the evening, the seniors would play bingo for money. Robin had seen some of them handle eight or ten bingo cards at once.

  “Yo, Robin Paige! Kaykay! Sly Thomas? You playin’ wit’ me or what?”

  Robin looked to his right. A tall, skinny man was beckoning to him and his friends. This was Mr. Smith. A locksmith before he retired, Mr. Smith wore his pants too high and his shirts tucked in. He had a special shoe on one foot because of a war injury.

  “Yeah, yeah, we’re playin’,” Robin said.

  Mr. Smith had taught them all a bunch of card games like pinochle, hearts, spades, rummy 500, and even a wild Russian game called Durok. Not that it mattered what they played. Mr. Smith won a lot more than he lost. Sometimes the only way not to lose to him was for Sly to grab all the cards and start to do tricks.

  Mr. Smith had chosen a table far from the others. He sat so he had a view of the whole room. Robin and his buds took seats too.

  “We got a lot to discuss,” Mr. Smith kept his voice low. “If I wave my hand like this,” Mr. Smith drew his right hand across his own throat, “that means someone’s coming. Start talkin’ ’bout baseball.”

  “I don’t know anything about baseball!” Kaykay protested. “Can’t we talk about saving the planet from pollution?”

  Robin smiled. Kaykay was totally into ecology.

  “Fake it, Kaykay.” Mr. Smith started dealing the cards. “The game is rummy five hundred; teams are me and Robin versus Kaykay and Sly.”

  The kids grinned. Mr. Smith could be bossy, but he had a heart of gold.

  Robin assessed his cards. They stunk.

  “So, Robin, what really happened with the po-lice?” Mr. Smith asked, his eyes on his cards. “You know you just handed those people a doggy bag full of you-know-what.”

  “I know.”

  He told Mr. Smith the truth.

  He said that Robin had done the right thing by keeping his mouth shut, both about the protection money and stealing the Rangers’ drug money. “In a perfect world you could tell the cops. This ain’t no perfect world. This be Ironwood.”

  “No kidding,” Robin agreed. “In a perfect world, no library would ever close.”

  “The public library’s closing?” Mr. Smith laid down a string of the two, three, four, and five of hearts for twenty points, then dropped a card on the discard pile.

  “Not public. School.” Kaykay picked up three cards from the discard pile and put down four queens for forty points.

  “What?” Mr. Smith exclaimed. “That’s bull—bull bombs! You kids need a library! What’s the next thing they gonna get rid of? Restrooms?” He mimicked a school administrator. “ ‘Here you go, kids. You don’t need no bathrooms. You each get yo’self a coffee can. Write your name on it and keep it in yo’ locker!’ ”

  Robin nodded. He felt the injustice all over again. Closing the school library might not affect kids like Tyrone and Dodo, but it hurt him a lot.

  “You know, rich kids in the burbs got iPads and iPhones and Kindles and whatnot,” Kaykay lamented. “An’ they still got nice libraries.”

  “ ’Cause their schools got chip and we don’t,” Sly observed.

  “Isn’t that what taxes are for?” Kaykay asked.

  “No. That’s what Robin in da hood is for,” Sly suggested. “To tax the bad guys!”

  “Hold on,” Robin cautioned as he picked up one card and dropped another. “This isn’t like what happened with the Center. No one’s saying, ‘twenty-five grand and you can have your library again.’ ”

  Mr. Smith checked his cards. “I went to your school way back when. I can talk to your principal. Money talks, bull bombs walk. He’ll tell me how much money the library needs.”

  “I doubt it,” Sly said. He picked up a card and put down the ace of clubs.

  Kaykay picked up the ace and laid down the rest of her cards. “Rummy! And now, time for card tricks! Sly, that’s your cue.”

  “Nice to the rummy, no to the tricks,” Mr. Smith told Kaykay. He gathered in the cards and started to shuffle.

  Robin played along, but his brain was someplace else. What if Mr. Smith heard something good from Principal Kwon? That a donation of thirty, forty, fifty, or even a hundred thousand dollars could save the library? What then?

  It was like Mr. Smith was reading his mind.

  “That money’s not gonna drop out of the sky, Robin,” he said.

  “I know. But things aren’t like they were,” Robin protested. “Look what happened yesterday! The cops are all over me.”

  “Come on, Robin,” Sly cajoled. “We gotta try.”

  It was Kaykay’s turn to play. Silently, she picked
up a card, then laid down a seven-through-jacks run in spades. Thirty-five points.

  “What do you think, Kaykay?” Sly pressed.

  “I think Robin’s in charge, which means that whatever he decides is fine with me,” she told Sly.

  Kaykay’s words made Robin feel great. In fact, he had the beginning of a plan that could help them in two ways.

  He drew a card. Ace of spades. That had to be good luck.

  “Okay,” he told them as he discarded the five of hearts. “If we’re gonna do something—and I’m not saying we’re going to do something—everybody has to keep their mouths shut.”

  “Woohoo! Robin in da hood be back!” Sly exulted.

  Robin slammed his hand on the table so hard that the cards nearly flipped over. “Dammit, Sly. If you can’t keep your mouth shut, your daddy could be presiding at your own funeral, and I don’t mean make-believe. You feelin’ me?”

  Sly was silent.

  Robin swung around to face his best friend. “I asked, are you feelin’ me?”

  Sly nodded. “I’m feelin’ you.”

  “Good,” Robin declared. “I agree that Mr. Smith should talk to Principal Kwon. If there’s money that will save the library, and if there’s a way for us to take it from the Rangers, and if we can do it without ending up on the wrong end of a gun, then— maybe!—we will do it. Agreed?”

  Everyone nodded, even Mr. Smith.

  “Good,” Robin said. “So the first thing we gotta find out is where the Rangers keep more of their drug money.”

  “Why don’t we ask Tyrone and Dodo?” Sly cracked.

  “Ask who?” Mr. Smith queried.

  Robin explained about how their two enemies at school were now dealing drugs for the Rangers. “Asking Tyrone and Dodo is a great idea. It could even get them off our back. Except I don’t think Sly or me should be the ones to ask them.”

  “Who, then?” Kaykay queried.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, hoping she wouldn’t hate him for what he was about to say.

  “Kaykay? I think it needs to be you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Robin expected Kaykay to protest. She didn’t. Sly did.

  “Robin, are you buggin’?” He shouted so loudly that people at nearby tables stopped their games to stare.

  Robin knew he had to do something. He stood and forced a big smile.

  “It’s okay, everyone,” he explained to the onlookers. “I just made a dumb play and lost the game for us. Ha-ha! Silly me! I must be buggin’! Ha-ha!”

  He sat again and peered at Sly. “Control your piehole.”

  Sly made a big show of zipping his mouth shut and throwing away the key. Everyone laughed. Then Kaykay cocked her head at Robin. “So you’re sayin’ I should ask Tyrone and Dodo? How? And why?”

  “Well …”

  Robin’s voice trailed off. Was he about to put Kaykay into a world of hurt?

  “Go on, Robin,” Kaykay urged. “I wanna hear whatchu thinkin’.”

  “Here’s what I’m thinking.” He kept his voice low so only his friends and Mr. Smith could hear. “Tyrone and Dodo are Rangers now. And he’s way up in your stuff. He wants you to kick me and Sly to the curb so you can hang with him. I’m thinking this would be the perfect time for you to see the light. So to speak.”

  A slow smile spread over Kaykay’s face. “Robin, Robin, Robin. Are you askin’ me to be a spy?”

  “No way, no how!” Sly jumped in. “I’ll tell you what happens to girl spies in the movies. They end up tied to a chair in their underwear, surrounded by the scary dudes!”

  “Life ain’t a movie, Sly,” Kaykay told him. She turned back to Robin, the card game forgotten. “Lemme get this straight. You’re asking me to start hanging with Tyrone and Dodo and get Tyrone to think I’m into him. You want me to get him to talk about the Rangers and report back. Have I got that right?”

  Robin swallowed hard. Now that Kaykay was saying it, it sounded even worse. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “I’m all over it.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “As long as I don’t have to kiss him.” Kaykay made a face. Everyone chuckled. Then she got serious. Robin could tell because her cadence slowed down to almost normal. “Look,” she told everyone. “Robin’s the leader, and the leader makes the plan. Robin wasn’t afraid to take the Rangers’ money. I’m not afraid, either.” She spun toward Sly and stuck a finger in his face. “When Robin asks you to do something scary? Don’t be afraid, either.”

  Sly nodded grimly.

  Robin looked over to Mr. Smith. He was surprised to see the elderly man grinning. Then Mr. Smith laughed again.

  “What’s funny?” Robin asked.

  “You kids know I fought in Vietnam, right?”

  Robin and his friends nodded.

  “I went there as an advisor in 1962. Stepped on a punji stick in the jungle,” Mr. Smith remembered. “That’s how my foot got messed up. Anyway, my CO—my commanding officer—was Captain Goldman. Good guy. From New York. I remember he was twice my age, which means he’s probably buried in a national cemetery now.” Mr. Smith chuckled again. “I’m laughing because now I got me a CO—that’s you, Robin—who’s a fifth my age. Life’s funny.” Mr. Smith used both hands on his chair to get to his feet. “Come on, guys. I mean, bros, as you say.”

  “We going someplace?” Sly asked.

  “It ain’t up to me, it’s up to Robin,” Mr. Smith told them. “But with his permission? If we’re gonna try to steal more money from those damn gangbangers, we need to get prepared.”

  Twenty minutes later, they stood in a knot outside a black-painted storefront a few blocks from the Center. A simple sign hung above the door: City Spy Shop. There was no display window. It was almost like the owner didn’t want his business to be noticed.

  “This is the place,” Mr. Smith told them.

  The door was open. Bells tinkled as they entered. The boss was an older white guy with thick glasses, a gray ponytail, and a long beard. He and Mr. Smith embraced like old friends. Mr. Smith introduced the kids by their first names; the shop owner told the kids to call him “Sal.”

  “That yo’ real name?” Sly asked.

  Sal laughed. “Is Sly yours?”

  “Ask no questions, you get told no lies,” Mr. Smith declared. “Let’s get ourselves outfitted.”

  “How we gonna pay? I don’t get an allowance,” Kaykay told him.

  “I’ll front it,” Mr. Smith told her.

  “I’ll give you all a good price,” Sal assured them. “Mr. Smith’s an old friend of mine.

  “Sal?”

  The owner raised his eyebrows.

  Mr. Smith nodded toward the back stockroom and shrugged his shoulders.

  “You want me to make myself scarce?” Sal asked.

  “Scram,” Mr. Smith told him.

  After Sal went to the back, Robin edged over to Mr. Smith. “I can pay you back. We still have a little money from the last operation.”

  “That’d be good,” Mr. Smith told him, and then he led them on a guided tour of the store. It wasn’t much more than a big room with display shelves and counters. “Now, we might want to start with a few GPS trackers.”

  Robin had read enough spy novels to know why. GPS trackers got put in cars or even in a person’s backpack. The tracker transmitted to a computer, and you could plot where the car or person was on a map. It even showed where they’d traveled.

  “How about some of those pen microphone recorders?” Robin suggested. “Kaykay can use one if she talks to Tyrone. And camera sunglasses. In case she wants to film something.”

  Sly looked at him funny. “How you know all this?”

  “If you’d read instead of spending your time doing magic tricks, you’d know it too.”

  “True,” Sly agreed. “But you can’t turn a twenty dollar bill into a roll of quarters.”

  Robin made a face. “I guess not. But I can use it to buy us all some pepper spray.”

&nb
sp; “What’s that?” Kaykay asked.

  Mr. Smith stepped in to explain. “It’s a non-lethal weapon. It shoots out of a tube in a stream. When it hits your face, it’s agony. You’re blinded for a while, you cough crazy bad, you can’t breathe, and your nose gushes snot. It gives you time to get away from whoever you had to shoot with it. They sprayed it on us in basic training. I wanted to die.”

  “I hope we never have to use it,” Sly said.

  “That’s the idea,” Robin gathered four pepper spray containers. They were small and black, with a button you pressed to fire the stream.

  Would I have the guts to use this? I couldn’t even front Tyrone and Dodo!

  They moved to the cash register. They had a ton of gear. Three GPS trackers, pen cameras, sunglass cameras, pen microphones and recorders, and even a voice changer in case they ever had to make a phone call and disguise their voice. Also, the pepper spray for everyone. They were good to have, but Robin knew the Rangers carried far more lethal weapons.

  If it’s our pepper spray versus their guns? We lose.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The moment Robin stepped through the door of the Shrimp Shack on Friday, two things smacked him. The first was old Marvin Gaye music from his grandmother’s ancient cassette player—an annoying song called “Sexual Healing.” The second was the familiar, delicious aroma of his grandmother’s deep fried shrimp.

  “Hi, Gramma!” he sang out. “It’s me! Can we get some real music, please?”

  Miz Paige hurried out from the kitchen. She wore a white chef’s jacket and a matching tall white hat. Robin loved his grandmother. If Miz Paige hadn’t been around to care for him after his parents had died in that terrible accident, he knew he could have ended up in foster care.

  “Uh-huh, uh-huh,” she said as she held Robin close. “Your gramma’s had a rugged day. You give her some sugar. And you learn to love you some Marvin Gaye.”

  He dropped his backpack on one of the Shrimp Shack’s mismatched tables. In that backpack were all the supplies they’d bought the day before at the City Spy Shop. He still hadn’t figured out a safe place to stash them in the apartment. “Had a bad day?”