The Fourth Stall

by Chris Rylander

  They say he used his network to operate an illegal gambling ring. He’d take bets for pro sporting events like football and baseball games, but he mostly took them for local middle school and high school sports games. He also fixed the games. That is, he paid kids to lose on purpose. To miss free throws and easy layups in basketball and fumble the ball in football games and stuff like that.

  Some of the rumors even say that Staples is to blame for the Cubs being terrible for so long. I heard some kid say once that Staples was the one who paid Mark Prior and Kerry Wood to fake injuries their whole careers.

  And that was the problem with what Fred was telling me. Staples couldn’t be real. No way. I’d never encountered anyone who had actually seen him or claimed to have gambled through his network. And even if he did exist, there’s no way his business could have spread here. I would have known about it. I knew everything that happened at this school.

  I rubbed my eyes and then addressed Fred.

  “The Staples?”

  Fred nodded and then looked at the floor.

  “How can you be so sure?” I asked.

  “Because I work for him,” Fred said, still looking down. “I used to take bets for him here.”

  Then he started crying.

  I sighed. “Vince?” I said loud enough for my business partner to hear me outside the stall. “You want to join us?”

  A few moments later the door opened and Vince stepped in. Fred seemed too busy rubbing his eyes to notice. Normally nobody sat in the stall but me and the customer. But I made exceptions when stuff like this came around. Things as major as the revelation of the existence of a force like Staples. And Vince was the only person I’d ever made that exception for.

  Vince gave me a look as he leaned against the stall’s wall beside my desk. He must have heard enough from the outside to know what was going on. Vince was the master of giving simple looks that could say a lot.

  “I don’t gamble myself,” Fred finally continued. “I don’t even really get how it all works. But there are plenty of kids my age who do. I’d take their money and stuff and then give them their winnings if they ever did win, which was almost never. The legends are true, you know.”

  “How long has he been operating here?” I asked.

  “Umm . . . like three or four weeks or something,” Fred said.

  “Why now?” Vince asked.

  Fred glanced at Vince as if noticing him for the first time.

  “He always said that grade schools are tougher to break into because it’s hard to find young kids to work for him,” Fred said.

  “How did you get recruited, then?” I asked.

  Fred shook his head. “My brother works for him at the high school in Glyndon. He talked me into it. I was too scared to refuse.”

  A brief silence followed. The shock of Staples’s existence was starting to catch up with me. Especially the shock over how long it had taken me to find out that he really exists.

  “Why is Staples after you, Fred?” Vince finally asked.

  Fred lowered his head and bit his lip. He looked terrified, as if the very mention of why he’s being targeted could get him in trouble.

  “Because I tried to leave. I told him I didn’t want to take bets anymore and he told me that it was too late. He said nobody quits. And then I said that if he didn’t let me quit, I’d tell Principal Dickerson what’s been going on around here. And he said that if I did that I would be a rat and rats get the worst punishment of all. He said I would have to eat my food through a straw after they were done with me. I’ve seen what he does to people, Mac, and I—”

  “Hang on, Fred. Why exactly did you want to quit?” I asked.

  “Because it’s not right, what he does. He’s been paying kids to play bad on purpose. Remember last Friday when Kyle dropped that really easy touchdown pass at the end of the game and we lost? Staples paid him to make sure we lost that game. He made a fortune on that one. Lately he’s been letting kids make bets even if they don’t have money. And . . . and then if they lose their bets, he’s been sending the Collector after them to get the money. But the kids don’t usually have the money, so instead they’ve been getting beat up real bad and the Collector steals their iPods and phones and stuff like that. And then they’re told that if they ever squeal, then they’ll really be in trouble—and one time Staples even threatened to kill this kid’s dog. I just can’t work for him anymore; the things I seen already . . . they give me nightmares.” He was finished, and I could tell that he was fighting back more tears.

  “It’s okay, Fred. You did the right thing,” I said.

  That was no way to run a business. I mean, sure, I’ve had my share of deadbeat customers who never came through on their end of the bargain, whether it be repaying a favor or making full payment. But I’d never rectify it by sending out some hoodlum to rough them up. That just wasn’t good business. There were other ways; I had my own method of dealing with welchers, and it had worked just fine this far without ever having to use physical force. In grade school there are bigger things than getting beat up.

  “Who is this Collector?” Vince asked.

  Fred shook his head. “He’s a mean guy. He’s an eighth grader, and I think his name is Willis or something like that.”

  I nodded and rubbed my chin. I knew who Fred was talking about: Barnaby Willis. He was new here; he’d transferred from somewhere out east about a month ago. When I first saw him, I thought he might be trouble simply because of his size and the way he always strutted around like such a tough guy. But so far nobody had complained about him. And I’d heard from other eighth graders that he wasn’t much of a troublemaker. Either they’d been too afraid to tell the truth or Willis had been lying low while helping Staples get established. I looked at Vince. We both knew what this meant.

  “You need protection, then?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I guess, I . . . I didn’t know where else to go. My parents would just go to the principal, but I can’t let them do that, not now.”

  “I understand, Fred. I want to help because you seem like a good kid, but I have a pretty strict policy on payment. The only kids who get freebies are the innocent ones. You’re not exactly squeaky clean on this whole thing, you understand?” I said.

  Fred nodded. I felt bad to take such a hard line. But with the Cubs game just a few weeks away I couldn’t afford to just hand out my services for free to every customer who cried. I glanced at Vince. He gave me a slight nod. Like I said before, it seemed like he was more willing to help out kids for no charge. Which was kind of funny, considering he was usually the one stressing about our money flow. But either way it was nice to get his approval to charge Fred for our services.

  “So?” I asked Fred after a few moments.

  “Well, I still have like twenty dollars left from my last payday. Is that enough?”

  “Sure, that’ll be just fine, for a few days at least. This could get pretty dangerous, though, so I may require more later on,” I said.

  Fred nodded and sniffled.

  “It’s okay, Fred. We’ll protect you.”

  I leaned back in my chair and looked at Vince again. We both knew this might be bigger than a simple protection job. Had business been slow lately because Staples was cheating my customers out of the money they’d normally be spending on my services? Whatever the reason, I knew I had to focus on trying to protect Fred for now. First things first.

  But would I actually be able to protect a defenseless little kid from a monster like Staples?

  Chapter 3

  You really think it’s true?” Vince asked after Fred left. He tossed a baseball in the air and caught it. Vince was always playing around with a baseball. Some of the best ideas we ever came up with happened while we were just tossing the ball back and forth.

  I nodded. “Didn’t you see this kid? He was terrified.”

  Vince pondered the situation for a bit longer. “This is a real dilemma. It’s like that one time that I wanted barbecue ch
icken but I couldn’t have it because I decided to be a vegetarian for two weeks to see what it was like to be a giraffe.”

  Joe and I laughed. Vince has this way of making me laugh at the most serious times. It’s part of why I love him so much. And the things he says usually don’t make much sense because he reads so many books and knows about so much obscure stuff. Nobody usually knows what the heck he’s even talking about.

  After Fred explained his problem to me, I had Joe post a sign on the bathroom door that said the office was closed for the day. Well, the sign didn’t actually say that exactly. It really said, “Caution: Wet Floor,” but all the kids know that is code for “closed for the afternoon.” If we put up the sign that says “Closed for Plumbing Repairs,” then the students know that the office is closed until further notice, which might be several days. I hated closing early. It meant disappointed students and lost money—which was not good for our Game Fund. Right now, though, we needed to think. We sat on folding chairs in the bathroom, eating the lunches that my mom had packed for us. My mom made all three of us lunch almost every day. She always liked to make food for my friends. She was cool like that.

  We were supposed to be strategizing, but mostly we chewed and kept saying how much trouble we were in.

  Now, you have to understand, I’m not usually afraid of much. I own this school. But if all the rumors about Staples were true, then we were dealing with one dangerous guy. And the last thing I needed was a kid that dangerous to have it in for me before I even had a plan for how to handle him. I needed to think of a way to protect Fred without revealing who was doing it.

  “So?” Vince asked. He had been watching me think.

  “Let me worry about it. You just make sure that Brady sticks to Fred like gum to the bottom of a desk.”

  Brady was this third grader who did odd jobs for me sometimes. He happened to be in the same class as Fred, so we decided we were going to pay him a dollar a day to keep an eye on Fred during class and especially in the halls between recesses and lunch.

  There are teachers who monitor the halls, but I’ve found over the years that most teachers are pretty clueless when it comes to how things work among kids. They are never around when the real stuff goes down.

  “What about at recess? Who’s going to protect Fred then?” Vince asked.

  “We’ll have to hire more help, right, Mac?” Joe said.

  Vince gave him a look. He didn’t like the idea of hiring more help because it would be expensive. The more money we spent on this stuff, the less money we’d be able to put into the Game Fund. Vince was always worried about our profit margin.

  “He’s right, Vince,” I said. “We need to hire an older kid to watch over Fred during lunch and recess. We’ve got to keep the office open, and that’s when he’ll be most vulnerable. Brady isn’t big enough to do it on his own.”

  “I know we need help, Mac,” Vince said as he tossed me the baseball, “but we’d have to get a seventh grader at least. Do you know how much that will cost us?”

  I caught the ball and nodded. He was right, but what else could we do? I felt the stitching and then spread two fingers across the ball like I was going to throw a splitter.

  “We may have to dip into the Emergency Fund,” I said, throwing the ball back. The Emergency Fund is a pile of money that I started a few years ago. I keep it in my closet right next to the Game Fund, and it’s there in case we are ever in a pinch and need a bit of money.

  Vince caught the ball and shook his head.

  “But that’s only supposed to be for real emergencies, like if I need an ice cream really bad and I don’t have any spare change. Or if I lose a video baseball game because my dumb third baseman makes an error and I get so angry that I throw my whole gaming console right out the window and it smashes the windshield of my mom’s car,” he said.

  I smirked in spite of myself. Even now, when he was genuinely concerned about our money supply, Vince was still joking around.

  “If we get to the point where we actually have to use the Emergency Fund, then . . . well, then this whole situation probably will be an emergency,” I said.

  “Actually, I just got an idea for this Fred situation that might help to save some money,” Vince said.

  That’s one reason Vince is such a great business partner—he always comes up with great ways to save money and pinch pennies, thrifty ways to solve tough problems. I mean, sure, his jokes are fun, too, but I’d trade those in any day for his ingenious ideas.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “Well, we could let him hang out in here until we find someone to do it for cheap. That would keep him safe and it would be free,” he said.

  “Nice, Vince,” I said. “But won’t that let people know that we’re involved?”

  “Maybe, but kids are going to find out eventually either way. We’ll just make sure we get him here as soon as possible each recess and lunch and hope that too many kids don’t notice.”

  “All right, let’s plan to do that for now, but I don’t want anything to interfere with normal business long-term. We eventually need to find someone else. We need to keep things running smoothly,” I said.

  Vince nodded. “It’s like my grandma said once. ‘When the coin purse is empty, the pocket lint is king,’” he said after a moment of silence.

  We all looked at him and then burst out laughing.

  Vince’s grandma is senile. She is a hundred and three years old or something like that, and she is always saying stuff that doesn’t make any sense at all. Most of his family looks at each other uncomfortably when she does that, but Vince loves it. He writes down all the stuff she says in a quote book. Vince loves to quote his grandma. Which I usually find pretty funny.

  After a few more minutes of discussion we decided to hire a kid named Tanzeem down the line to look after Fred during lunch and recess long-term, if things went on longer than expected. Tanzeem is a pretty tough seventh grader, and Joe said we could trust him. Joe was going to tell him to meet me here tomorrow during lunch.

  This was shaping up to be a pretty tough case, but the one thing I actually thought I had on my side was the element of surprise. Staples didn’t know yet that Fred had this kind of protection. Something I learned long ago from watching lots of action movies and playing video games is that having the element of surprise is huge. It’s one of the best things to have.

  That’s why it really sucked that I didn’t actually have it. Not at all. We soon found out that Staples somehow knew I was protecting Fred right from the beginning. Kids usually didn’t get the drop on me. But then, Staples wasn’t your usual kid.

  Chapter 4

  The first sign that somebody had the drop on us came the next morning before school. I went a little early so I could stop by my office to make a few notes in my Books. I unlocked the door to the bathroom and flicked on the lights, and was in the process of shutting the door so I could lock it when it was pushed back open. The force on the other side was so hard it knocked me backward onto the floor of the bathroom. I sat up and saw the assailant looming over me in the doorway. It was Barnaby Willis, a.k.a. the Collector.

  “Hey, look at what I found,” he said with a slight accent. He talked like a wiseguy from some New York gangster movie.

  He isn’t as big as I had thought, but I’m the smallest sixth grader in the school, so I still didn’t stand a chance either way. He wore cargo shorts and a black T-shirt. A small gold cross hung from a neck that supported a pointy face and gelled black hair.

  I scooted back and tried to get to my feet but he was too quick. He stepped forward and pressed his foot onto my chest, pinning me to the floor. My lungs felt like a deflating whoopee cushion, only without any laughs.

  “No you don’t,” he said.

  I grabbed his foot and tried to lift it, but that only made him press down harder, so I let go.

  “So,” he said as if he was starting a conversation with an old friend, “I hear that you’re harboring a fugi
tive?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as calmly as I could. It was always best at these times to remain as calm as possible.

  “Oh, you don’t? Oh, my bad. Sorry about that, sir. I guess I got the wrong guy. Here. I’ll help you up,” he said, faking like he was going to let me up.

  I just lay there, trying to come up with a plan to get out of this.

  “Hah! Just kidding,” he said, laughing at his stupid joke.

  I felt myself starting to panic. Joe or Vince usually didn’t stop by here in the mornings. Heck, I usually didn’t either. I didn’t really stand a chance against this kid by myself and nobody would be coming to help me.

  “Do you know that in most states harboring a fugitive is considered as serious an offense as being the fugitive himself?” Willis asked with a playful grin.

  “Wow, I didn’t know that. Tell me all about it,” I said with a mocking air of wonder in my voice.

  “Hey! Don’t be a smart guy! You’re in no position to talk to me like that,” he said, pressing his foot down a little harder to make his point.

  “Okay,” I managed to squeeze out.

  “Anyways, like I was saying, your little buddy Fred has threatened to rat out some very important people. Which is a pretty serious offense, as I’m sure you know. And as long as you’re helping him, you’re in just as much trouble as he is. Understand?” he said.

  “Not really,” I grunted, even though I understood completely. It was getting hard to breathe under his foot.

  He laughed.

  “That’s too bad, Mac,” he said as he leaned in closer.

  I saw his fist go back and I braced myself for the blow. I had no idea what to expect because I’d never been punched before. But the blow never came.

  The bathroom door opened and then suddenly the pressure on my chest was gone. I sat up and saw Vince standing in the doorway. His mouth was open and he probably looked more scared than I did.