The Fourth Stall Part II (4 page)

Tyrell had access to all kinds of awesome spy stuff that he sold to us for a pretty good price, plus a small fee for installation. We bought two small cameras from him. They were wireless and transmitted to digital recorders that we could hide inside the empty toilet tank in our office, in the first stall from the high window.

We set up the first camera in the corner so that it captured pretty much the entire bathroom but, most important, the fourth stall and trash can where we kept our Books and the Tom Petty cash, which was a lockbox containing a few hundred dollars that we used for day-to-day business. The rest of the cash was stored in my bedroom closet behind a false panel in the wall.

Vince and I boosted Tyrell to the ceiling, each of us holding one foot. He was able to conceal the first camera pretty well amid all of the cobwebs and dust and who knows what else that had collected up there over the years.

The second camera was installed just outside the bathroom so we would have a recording of every person who ever came in or out of our office. Tyrell was able to position that one on top of the red fire alarm so that you could see it only if you knew to look for it; otherwise it looked just like a part of the fire alarm.

“And these will have sound?” I asked as we tested out the transmission to the digital recorders by hooking up one of the DVRs to a small handheld TV that Tyrell had brought.

Tyrell grinned and turned on the TV. Then suddenly there we were on the screen, the three of us standing just outside my office. Tyrell hit Play, and the last few minutes played out on the screen. The camera had recorded everything we said.

“They come with ultra-sonic digital microphones capable of recording conversations from up to a hundred feet away,” he said. “Also, they have motion sensors, so they only record if they detect movement. That way you don't just burn through all of the space on the DVRs every night. The DVRs will need to be brought home every few weeks to be backed up and emptied.”

“Wow. Thanks, Tyrell,” Vince said. I nodded.

I took off my backpack and got out the funds I'd brought from home to pay Tyrell. Even thought he was giving us a good price, this stuff was still setting us back a pretty good chunk of money. But it was worth it for better peace of mind. That's what my dad had told my mom when he convinced her to get a security system installed a few months ago after our house had been vandalized.

Of course it was my fault that it had gotten vandalized, but I wasn't going to fess up to that to save my dad a few hundred bucks or whatever it was that his system cost. Once my dad was set on getting some new gadget, there was no stopping him anyway. He probably spent like ten grand a month on new phones because he was obsessed with always having the best one. I mean, who cares if your phone is waterproof up to ten feet or fireproof for up to ten minutes? It's not like you'll be making phone calls from the middle of a raging inferno or from the bottom of a lake.

I shook my head while fiddling with Tyrell's cool miniature TV. Some people and their weird technology obsession. Seriously . . .

W
e were swamped with new customers right away at early recess the next morning. The first was this tall lanky kid. He was almost as tall as Joe but probably weighed half as much. I almost wanted to, like, string up a flag on him, he was so tall and skinny.

“Have a seat.” I motioned to the ridiculously small chair across from me. He looked at it like a big-game hunter might look at a water gun. Then he sighed and lowered himself into the chair. I had to stifle a laugh when his knees almost hit his chin. I felt bad for not having better accommodations, but I wasn't used to living skyscrapers walking into my office.

“Sorry about the chair,” I said after he told me his name was Timmy B.

He shrugged.

“So what's on your mind?”

“It's our coach,” he said. I assumed he meant basketball coach since football season was over and the only two sports going on right now were basketball and swimming. He could have been a swimmer, sure, but something told me this kid was a basketball player. Call it a hunch.

I motioned for him to continue.

“Well, he's kind of been running up the score on people lately. And, I mean, of course it feels good to win and everything, but I feel bad for the bench guys. Me and the other four starters have been playing almost the whole time, even when we're up by like forty points.”

I nodded. I'd even noticed that myself. Vince and I tried to catch as many of the home basketball games as we could. Everybody did. Our basketball team was one of the best in the region, maybe in the whole state. In fact, I thought our team could even beat some of the high school teams in the area.

I guess it was pretty easy to run up the score when you're that good. I know the crowd mostly loved it. But the thing is, even I had noticed how much the coach was rubbing it in. I mean, when you're up 68 to 15, like we were the Friday night before last, then you know your starters shouldn't be in the game anymore. That's part of why I loved baseball so much more than basketball: baseball players have some class. I mean, you'd never see a baseball team stealing bases and dropping sac bunts in the seventh inning while up by ten runs.

“So . . .” I said, not sure exactly what he wanted. I agreed with him, sure, but I didn't see why it was so bad for him that he got to play all game and pad his stats.

“Well, I just feel bad, you know? Like one of our backup forwards, Leonard Leery, well, he worked pretty hard to make the team this year despite the fact that he's not very athletic—and he still hasn't even gotten into a game once. I feel bad for the kid.”

“Wait, wait, Leonard Leery made the team?” I asked.

Timmy B. nodded.

Leonard Leery was a nice guy, but he was about as uncoordinated as an ostrich with no legs, which means about what it sounds like: he was equivalent to a bird body with a long neck and tiny head flopping around on the ground—just imagine trying to throw a chest pass to that. Oh, and he's also about four feet tall, which if you know anything about basketball makes him about as good a forward as a jug of Kool-Aid.

I think Timmy B. could see that I was struggling with the concept of wanting to get Leonard Leery more playing time, especially when our team had a reputation for being so stellar.

“Look, I know Leonard stinks,” he said, “but that's beside the point. He worked really hard to make the team, and I kinda respect that he was willing to even try, you know? A lot of nerds like Leonard just sit around and wish they could play sports and make fun of us for being dumb just because they have no athletic ability, but he just went for it. It's not like he's so bad that he'll lose us the game in just a couple minutes of playing time when we're already up by over forty points. Right? He hasn't gotten to play a single second, Mac, and that's just not right. Hardly any of the bench guys have played.”

He definitely had a point.

“Do you think you can get some of the bench guys some playing time? I mean, just because I heard Leonard call our team a ‘squadron,' the basketball the ‘spheroid game-piece,' the hoop the ‘goal-scoring receptacle,' and a jump shot a ‘levitating toss throw' doesn't mean he shouldn't get to play.”

Then we both burst out laughing. Leonard was just so nerdy, it was kind of hard not to like the kid for some reason.

“I'll do what I can, Timmy B.,” I said. “I'll even do this one pro bono, since it's more like a charity case than you asking for something for yourself.”

“Uh, thanks, I think. . . .”

“Pro bono means for free,” I said, noting his furrowed brow.

“Oh, cool. Thanks a bunch, Mac.”

I nodded, but I knew this would be tough. Now I had both a job to get a teacher off someone's back and one to change a coach's policy on end-of-game tactics. These were major league problems, so to have more than one made them even more challenging. But if anybody could pull it off, it would be Vince and I.

Timmy B. nodded good-bye and then slowly lifted himself up from the tiny chair and left my office.

The rest of recess didn't get much better as far as getting any easy problems. A few more kids complained about finding poop in their lockers, though luckily they weren't quite as desperate and manic as Tony had been about it.

We also had a real meathead-jock type kid come in and complain about having to do “sissy stuff” in gym class lately. Like dancing and Hula-Hoop and limbo and parachuting and stuff like that. I actually thought the last one sounded pretty cool until I found out that it involved the class grabbing a parachute and throwing it in the air until it inflated. That still sounded kind of cool, but this kid was the sort of kid who wasn't happy unless gym class somehow involved him pelting nerdy kids in the face with rubber balls thrown at teeth-shattering speeds, which he somehow managed to do while playing just about any sport and not just dodgeball.

Another issue that several kids had come to me for that day was the upcoming SMARTs that Dr. George had talked about the day before. Kids had been hearing rumors that the tests were really tough. Our school was scheduled to take them all next week. Apparently they were a pretty big deal because a lot of kids were coming to me wondering if I could get them test answers. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to swing that since the tests were administered by someone outside of the school system. I told them I'd look into it, but I wasn't as worried as they were. Like I said before, kids like to overreact when it comes to tests. Our school was pretty smart; I was sure we'd do well.

More than just making me extra busy (and, hopefully, extra wealthy), all of this business had me wondering what was up. The weird school lunches, poop in kids' lockers, a sadistic basketball coach, a science teacher who may or may not be terrorizing someone, a new vice principal who happened to be a Lord of Punishment . . . Could all of these things really just be coincidence? I wasn't sure how they could be related, except that it seemed likely that Dr. George had been brought in to fix up some of these things. Some of these problems were likely the other issues that Dickerson had referenced during the assembly. But I had a feeling something was up. One way or the other I intended to find out.

A
t lunch that day we had to close up the office so we could start working on some of the recent cases coming in. Vince and I started out by dealing with Jonah's problem and actually going to the cafeteria for lunch. Well, okay, we weren't ever going to eat the school lunch, but we at least got in line like everybody else.

“Hey, check it out,” Vince said, pointing at the dry-erase board on the wall.

The sign read:

TODAY'S LUNCH

Monte Cristo with Raspberry Preserves

and Powdered Sugar

Double-Battered Onion Rings with

Creamy Dipping Sauce

Double-Chocolate Fudge Milk Shake

 

“That sounds pretty good. Except, what the heck is a Monte Crispo?” I said.

“It's Monte
Cris-To
,” Vince said. “It's basically a huge triple-decker turkey and cheese sandwich that's battered and deep-fried with jam and powdered sugar on top.”

After I picked up my lower jaw off the floor, I said, “No wonder Jonah was freaking out so hard. I wonder how many calories are in one of those things?”

Vince shrugged. “Probably like five thousand or something; I don't know.”

A few girls behind us overheard me and started giggling. Then I noticed that one of them was Trixie, and I felt my face turn red so quickly, it was like someone had doused it with gasoline and then lit a match on my teeth.

“Watching your figure, Mac?” Trixie asked. Her friends giggled madly at this.

I shook my head. Normally I'd just let the joke and the giggling go, but I didn't want Trixie to think I was anything like Jonah. “I'm on a case, actually.”

But this only made them laugh harder. Even Vince smirked, and he slapped my shoulder as we turned away from Trixie and her friends. I heard one of them say the word “adorable,” which was then followed by more laughter. I didn't really appreciate being likened to a stuffed animal or puppy or something, but I figured it was best just to keep my mouth shut at that point.

“So why are they serving this stuff? Everybody knows that school lunches are supposed to be disgusting,” I whispered.

“I don't know. Do you really think we can get them to stop? Even if we do, kids are going to hate us, Mac,” Vince said.

I looked across the lunchroom. It was true. Kids were stuffing their faces with thick, golden onion rings, their hands slick and yellow with oil. Grease ran from their mouths and dripped off chins onto shirts as bites were taken from giant battered sandwiches. Some kids with crinkled noses used their forks to pick at the jam sitting atop their Monte Cristos, but their disgust at the greasy sandwich didn't stop them from practically dunking their whole heads into bucket-sized milk shakes.

Vince was right. If we actually got the lunches to return to normal and word ever got out that we were to blame, we'd be as good as dead.

“Well, we should still probably at least see what's going on, right?” I said.

Vince nodded.

We each grabbed a lunch tray and moved through the line.

The first lunch lady was actually not a lunch lady at all. It was a small old man with the biggest pair of glasses I'd ever seen. The frames were red and almost as thick as a school textbook, and the lenses themselves were the size of hockey pucks.

He slapped a huge pile of onion rings onto my tray with a pair of glowing, greasy tongs.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Not that I'm complaining, but why are you serving us such good food lately?”

He looked at me, his eyes magnified by the lenses so that they filled his entire face. Then without a word he plopped another small army of onion rings atop the ones already on my tray.

“No, no, I don't want more. I was just wondering . . .”

He snatched up more onion rings with the tongs, so I decided to move on before I had an entire mountain range of thick golden hoops on my tray.

I looked at Vince, who was grinning.

The next lunch lady gave us our sandwiches, which had to weigh close to five pounds each, considering the noise they made when they hit our trays. Then at the end there was a large tray with milk shakes on it. We each took one. We handed the last lunch lady our school IDs and she scanned them into the computer.

“Can I ask you something?” I said after she handed back my ID.

She tilted her head toward me as if she was too tired to actually turn and face me.

“I was looking forward to a healthy and nutritious meal like always, and I was wondering why you're serving this instead?”

Her face didn't move. Not even a smile or a blink. Then she said, “Look, kid, you get what you get, okay?”

“But who sets the menu?” Vince asked.

The lunch lady shrugged.

“How can you not know? How do you know what to make? Who tells you? Where does this food come from?”

“Hey, I don't need this, okay? Next, please,” she called out, looking past me now.

I sighed and looked at Vince. He tilted his head toward the swinging doors behind the ticket lady.

I nodded, and we moved on. After a few more feet we veered back around and slipped through the doors into the kitchen.

In the back sat four gigantic vats of steaming grease. They were each the size of a bathtub but twice as deep. A man with a pretty big stomach and two red-haired old ladies were dipping huge baskets of sandwiches and frozen onion rings into the bathtubs of oil.

One of the red-haired ladies turned.

“Hey, you can't be back here,” she said.

“Hi!” I said as friendly as I could. “We're doing a report on school nutrition for our class newspaper. How does this lunch fit in with the state regulations?”

“What?” the other redheaded lady asked.

“You can't be back here,” the first one said again.

“What are your names?” the man with the large belly said.

I set my tray on the counter because my arms were getting tired from holding what was surely thirty pounds of food.

“Who makes the menu choices here?” Vince asked.

“What?” Redhead Number Two said again.

“You can't be back here,” repeated the first one.

“What are your names?” the man said again, putting down his fry basket.

I was beginning to wonder if the school had somehow invented robot cooks. But then that theory went out the window when Redhead Number Two put down her own basket and moved toward us. This time she finally said something other than “What?”

“Get out of here, right now!”

“But our report—” I started.

“I don't care. Get out. Now!” she yelled.

As we shuffled back out into the cafeteria, I heard Redhead Number One say, “They weren't supposed to be back here.”

“Well, that was pretty unproductive,” Vince said.

“Oh, like you helped any. The one time a quote from your grandma might have actually helped us and you just stood there.”

“Well, you know what she'd say now, don't you?”

I couldn't help but laugh. “No, but I bet I'm going to find out, right?”

“She'd say, ‘When the sun rises to the north and sets to the turkey, then you'd better get ready for a whole lot of bananas wearing cowboy hats.'”

I shook my head and fought back another laugh.

“Well, one thing's for sure: I'm not touching that lunchroom business again,” I said. “I'm thinking we just find a way to get Jonah his healthy food each day and let everybody else enjoy the fried stuff while it lasts.”

“Good thinking. Then we need to start working on the Kjelson case. It won't be long before Trixie comes back to complain about him again. The way she described him makes Joseph Goebbels seem like Mister Rogers, but from what we've heard and witnessed during practice, he's a pretty cool guy. And a Cubs fan.”

“Who and Mister Rogers?” I asked.

“He's— Ah, never mind. Don't you read or pay attention in class ever?” Vince said.

“Hey, I've got better things to do. Like run my business to pay for all your video games and books and stuff.”

“Touché,” Vince said with a grin.

I wasn't sure what “tooshay” meant exactly. But whatever he was saying, he was right: the Kjelson problem was probably the most perplexing at this point. We'd have to look into that later that day if we could. The thing was, I just wasn't sure when we'd find time since our whole day was pretty much booked solid already.

From the cafeteria we headed to Tony Adrian's locker to investigate. The Hutt was there just finishing up his cleaning duties while Tony stood behind him several feet away, practically dancing he looked so anxious.

“Almost done,” the Hutt slurred. Not only did this kid look like Jabba the Hutt, but he also sounded just like him, too.

In one hand he held a pile of little black pellets; with the other he was picking more up from the bottom of the locker. I made a mental note never to shake that kid's hand again. I had to say, I knew the Hutt was nasty, but I couldn't believe he hadn't used gloves or even a plastic bag. I think Tony Adrian was thinking the same thing because he was practically convulsing behind him. I thought for sure Tony was going to break into a seizure at any moment.

I looked at the rest of his locker. It was like a hospital or something. Every item inside was carefully wrapped in plastic. And there were stacks of small plastic Tupperware containers with various items inside, such as pencils and erasers and pens. Everything was neatly stacked and symmetrical like a tessellation or pattern or something. I couldn't decide right then who was actually the weirder kid: the Hutt or Tony.

“All done,” the Hutt sloshed. He carried his pile of poop to a nearby trash can. When he got back, he held out his hand for me to shake. “Thanks for the job.”

I hesitated. On one hand it was unprofessional not to shake hands after a business transaction, but on the other that hand had just seconds ago been holding a pile of poop the size of a softball. But in the end my business sense won out. I couldn't help it: I like to run a sound operation.

I shook the Hutt's hand, which was warm and kind of sticky, and I almost gagged. Then the Hutt grinned at me and said, “Let me know when it needs to be cleaned again.” He turned and walked down the hall, slapping kids on the back as he went. Then at the end of the hallway I could have sworn I saw him stick his hand into his mouth for some inexplicable reason.

“Mac, what did you just do?” Vince said through laughter. “Remind me to never ever share food with you again. Also, I don't think you can be my catcher anymore. I mean, sure, spitballs have some extra action to them, but I'm not so sure that poop-balls give us any competitive advantage besides maybe kids whiffing on purpose so they don't get fecal matter on their bats.”

“Towel,” I said. Then I said it again perhaps more loudly than necessary, “Towel. Towel!”

I motioned desperately for Tony to get me one of his little wipes while holding my hand out in front me as if I had the Cheese Touch from this hilarious Wimpy Kid book that I read once. I grabbed my forearm with my other hand like a tourniquet to keep the poop from spreading to the rest of my body. Tony handed a towelette to me and then took several steps back. I wiped my hand with the wet towel, scrubbing every finger and my palm as if I was trying to rub all of my skin right off, which was almost the case. Then I asked for another towel and repeated the process until I was sure my hand was as clean as it would ever get.

Meanwhile Tony was on the floor near his locker scrubbing the bottom with a bottle of cleaner that he'd had inside. He worked furiously but in a controlled and efficient manner, as if this was something he did everyday anyway, with or without poop.

When he was done, he said, “Thanks, Mac. I hope you figure out soon how this is happening.”

“We will,” I said.

Vince and I examined the locker thoroughly with a flashlight that Vince had brought with him. We didn't see any possible entrance or exit for small animals. It was baffling. How was the poop getting in there?

“What do you think?” I asked him.

“Well,” Vince said, “let's lay down some humane, kill-free traps. Probably best to find out what kind of animal it is first.”

I nodded. As usual Vince had a great idea. “All right, we'll have Joe come by tomorrow right before the first bell to lay some down. Can you meet him here?”

Tony nodded. “Sounds good,” he said, wiping his hands with another towel.