Half Moon Investigations - Eoin Colfer [47]
Red was back. My time was up. Nothing to do but admit defeat.
‘Actually…’
Red leaned in over my shoulder. ‘Mercedes,’ he sighed. ‘She’s pretty as they come, Half Moon. But not someone to tangle with.’
‘Really?’ I said, stalling.
‘Roddy says she’s actually a terror behind all the pink business. She squealed on Roddy’s friend Ernie. He was expelled.’
Curiosity straightened my spine. ‘Expelled? For what?’
‘Mercedes saw him selling an iPod that he’d stolen from one of her friend’s desk.’ He shook his head. ‘Little Ern was always a bit light-fingered, although usually he stuck to sweets, or cash to buy sweets. From iPod to cash to sweets would usually be one conversion too many for Ernie.’
Something invisible tapped on my skull. Helloooo, you’re missing something.
‘An iPod? When?’
‘Last week of school this summer. Don’t you remember?’
I did remember. Last week of school. Just about the time this fun-day photo had been taken. Ernie Boyle. Expelled for theft. Not his first offence either. I had a file on him.
I looked at the photo again. There it was. Snaking from Mercedes Sharp’s book bag: a white earphone on a white cable. Just like an iPod cable.
‘Red,’ I said, ‘we need to talk to this boy Ernie.’
‘No time like the present,’ said Red. ‘We just need to stop off at the sweetshop first.’
We tracked Ernie Boyle to a video arcade downtown. His mother was only too happy to tell us Ernie would be there, and offered us a fiver to bring him home. We turned down the contract. We had enough on our plate.
Ernie was the only kid in the arcade that afternoon, because everyone else was in school. Everyone except the suspended kid and the fugitive-from-justice kid. Ernie stood on a stool by the pool table, hustling strangers for sweet money.
He was just finishing off his latest victim when we arrived.
‘Black in the centre pocket,’ he said, then added insult to injury by not even looking at the shot as he played it. The black ball thunked down without so much as a rattle.
The loser threw a euro coin on the table and walked out in disgust.
‘There’s one born every day,’ snickered Ernie, collecting his winnings. With his waistcoat and cap, Ernie looked like he’d just escaped from a Dickens novel.
Red stepped into the glow of the table’s strip light.
‘Still hustling the hustlers, Ernie.’
Ernie pocketed his winnings. ‘Well, if it isn’t Red Sharkey. How’s the assault with a deadly weapon business these days?’
Red picked up a cue. ‘Pretty good. I’m thinking of getting into it full-time.’
Ernie backed down immediately. After all, he had a long way to go before he reached five foot, and even a six-footer would think twice before baiting a cue-wielding Red Sharkey.
‘Just kidding, Red. Pulling your leg. Got any bullseyes?’
Ernie was addicted to bullseyes. They said his own mother wouldn’t recognize him without a bulge in his cheek. This accounted for his smile being yellow and black around the edges.
‘I might have. What are they worth to you?’
Ernie twirled his own sawn-off cue like a baton. ‘Play you for ‘em.’
‘No, no,’ said Red. ‘We want information.’
‘So all I have to do is tell you things, and you’ll give me sweets?’ said Ernie suspiciously.
‘Exactly. All we want is a sentence or two.’
‘Swear?’
‘Swear?’
‘Brick miss must celt?’
This was an Irish marble oath. If a kid took this oath and went against it, he was branded untrustworthy for life.
‘Brick miss must celt,’ intoned Red solemnly, performing the complicated hand routine that went with the oath.
Ernie grinned, and he really shouldn’t have.
‘Excellent. They don’t sell bullseyes here, and I’m running low.’
We squeaked into a leatherette booth.
‘Now what can I do for you two Sharkeys?’
I looked around for the other Sharkey, then realized it was me.
Red nodded my way. ‘This is Watson, my cousin. He’ll take it from here.’
I cleared my throat. ‘I wonder, Ernie, if you could give us your own personal account of the day of your expulsion.’
Ernie glared at Red. ‘He don’t sound like a Sharkey, he sounds like law