The Fourth Stall - Chris Rylander [9]
“How did he know that we’re helping Fred?” Vince asked.
I shook my head. Though after some thought the answer seemed pretty obvious. If Staples had employees all over the school, one was bound to have seen Fred in line here yesterday and then just put two and two together.
We’d just have to be more careful from now on. Now that Staples knew I was trying to protect Fred, we were all going to be targets. Which meant I really needed to get more information on Staples and his business. I didn’t like the idea that he knew more about what I was doing than I did about him. For all we knew, Joe, Vince, and I were the last three kids in the school not working for Staples. The more I learned about this whole mess, the more I realized that it might end up being much more than a simple case of playing bodyguard for a third grader.
That was the first order of business later that day during morning recess: getting as much information as I could on Staples and how his operation worked at my school. I needed to know what we were up against. This was becoming a pretty serious situation, so I reluctantly had Joe hang the “Closed for Plumbing Repairs” sign on the door.
When Fred showed up, Vince went out to take care of some business from earlier in the week and I sent Brady and Joe with him for protection. Vince was pretty big—he was almost half a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than me—but he wasn’t much of a fighter and, as I’ve said, had never been very good at confrontations. I locked the office after they left and sat down to talk to Fred.
“Okay, Fred, let’s start with all the kids you know who work for Staples besides Barnaby,” I said.
“I don’t remember hardly anybody, and I don’t know all their names,” he said.
“It’s okay, Fred; just tell me what you can remember.”
“Okay, umm, well, when I saw him, he usually was with like maybe three or four other kids. They’re all in high school, except Staples, of course—he doesn’t go to school. One of them is his second-in-command or whatever. His name is PJ. He’s got short spiky hair and I think he plays hockey and baseball. He’s a real jerk, too. He’s always making fun of everybody. I don’t really know the names of the other ones, but they’re all pretty tough. Two of them wear grungy clothes all the time and they have tattoos and stuff like that.”
Great. Just great. Staples had a posse of high school kids and all I had was a few seventh graders if I was lucky. I tried not to let my concern show.
“Go on,” I said.
“Well, umm, I only ever met Staples a couple times, but the times I did were at his house. Well, not like inside his house. He has a shed or something that he uses for his office. I don’t even know if he’s got parents; I mean, his office was pretty dirty. I bet he doesn’t got parents.”
I nodded. Bad kid with a bad home life. That isn’t unusual, at least not according to TV shows I’ve seen. Getting to a kid outside of the school system was going to be tough, mostly because there were even fewer rules out there.
“Where is his house, Fred?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They always blindfolded me until I was inside. I don’t think anybody knows where he lives except for those four high school kids.”
“Okay, what about here at my school? How does his business work here?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t remember a lot of stuff, but I think I heard Staples say once that there were ten bookies including me. We all had our own spots where we went every recess, and then kids came to us to place bets. My spot was by the monkey bars in the grade school playground.”
“How many different kids do you think have placed bets so far?”
“I don’t know, Mac. Probably like one fourth of all the kids here, but I’m not too sure about that—I’m really bad at fractions. But I do know that Staples almost always finds a way to make sure that most kids lose their bets,” Fred said proudly, as if that was the most valuable piece of information I could get.
I nodded and smiled at him, but it was obvious that I was already losing control. How could this have been going on without me knowing?