Riley Mack and the Other Known Troublemakers (4 page)

RILEY MACK HAD BEEN HAULED
down to police headquarters a few times before, so he knew how to find the drink machine and where they hid the cookies.

Of course Chief Brown had told him to wait “right here in the holding area, son,” which was basically an empty cinderblock room with no windows, a table, a couple chairs, and a stack of wrinkled magazines—not to mention stinky shag carpet, the color of lima beans. Riley wondered if he'd die of mildew poisoning before his mom showed up to spring him free, but he was keeping his cool and would do as he was told.

He had already bopped down the hall, bought himself a nice cold soda, and snagged a couple chocolate
chip cookies out of the secret snack cabinet.

Drink finished, cookie crumbs dusted off his pants, he checked out the magazine lying on the top of the heap of tired old reading material. The cover showed a U.S. Army Special Forces commando with long hair and a bushy red beard. Goggles up, he was casually corralling a pack of enemy combatants, holding his rifle tight but easy against his chest. The guy looked like a pirate, with a camo bandanna and a daring glint in his eyes.

It wasn't Riley's dad, but it could have been.

His father, Colonel Richard Mack, who everybody called Mack, was currently stationed with the Special Forces over in Afghanistan, just outside Jalalabad—pretty close to the Pakistan border. Thanks to internet videoconferencing technology, Riley and his dad talked most nights—chatting across several thousand miles and a half day's worth of time zones.

They'd definitely be talking tonight.

Riley's mom would make sure of that.

Unless, of course, his dad was off doing something more dangerous than dealing with a high school freshman who liked to pick on fifth graders.

“All the bad guys aren't over here, Riley,” his dad once told him. “Protect your country, protect your family, protect your friends, and defend those who cannot defend themselves. And, while you're doing it,
try to enjoy the ride.”

Yeah. Riley thought his dad was awesome.

The first time Riley had been hauled to the police building was the only time he'd actually deserved it. A couple days before his ninth birthday, his father received new orders and shipped out to a far-off combat zone. That meant he wouldn't be around to celebrate Riley's big day with ice cream and cake.

First, that made Riley sad. Next, it made him mad. Then, he did something extremely bad.

On the morning of his ninth birthday, Riley went to the supermarket and stole a whole ice-cream cake, which he stuffed down the front of his pants. Riley had always been clever. Cunning. But that day, he was actually kind of stupid.

First of all, an ice-cream cake is a pretty huge thing to smuggle out of a store inside your pants. Second, the ice cream melted quickly, so wherever Riley walked, he dribbled an easy-to-follow trail of sticky goo. He was busted before he made it past the baggers.

He and his dad had a long, long talk on their laptops that night.

Surprisingly, his father didn't yell or scream. Didn't threaten to have Riley's mom take away all his video games or lock him in his room till he turned eighteen. In fact, his father remained eerily calm.

“Son,” he said, his voice coming out of the computer
speakers strong and firm, “as you know, I cannot be there to babysit you twenty-four seven. Therefore, you have a choice. You can keep acting up, being selfish, causing your mother grief. Or you can use your incredible skills and talents to serve something bigger than yourself. Your choice, son. I suggest you choose wisely.”

The door opened.

His mom came into the holding room.

“Okay, kiddo. What happened this time?”

Riley shrugged. “Nothing.”

“Nothing? Riley, the chief of police said you were shoplifting again.”

“The chief of police has a very vivid imagination.”

His mom sank down into a chair with a heavy sigh. “Riley? Come on. This isn't funny.”

“I'm telling you the truth. Honest. Just ask Mr. Karpinski. He's the manager at the Quick Pick.”

“Did you threaten to send Mongo after his family?”

“No. Mongo was already with me. Jake and Briana, too.”

Another sigh. This one shot sideways out of her mouth. It sent her copper curls bouncing.

“Why were you guys at the Quick Pick instead of the Pizza Palace doing your homework?”

“The police chief's son, Gavin Brown, was over there picking on this fifth grader.”

“Gavin? I thought he graduated from middle school.”

“He did. And only a year or two later than he was supposed to.”

“So what's he doing coming back to pick on fifth graders?”

“A lot of fifth graders won't fight back. Most high school kids, on the other hand, will. When we got to the Quick Pick, Gavin had this little dude's head jammed into the frozen food case at the back of the store. He was giving the kid what they call a ‘freezy wheezy.' So we ran a little scam that convinced Gavin to act otherwise.”

“Freezy wheezy? Is that like a wedgie?”

“No. It's brand-new. I think Gavin invented it.”

His mom released sigh number three.

“Look, hon—Gavin Brown is a big, bullying baby who always goes running to his daddy every time you outfox him. Then the chief trumps up some kind of excuse to haul your butt down here so I have to haul my butt out of work….”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Well, it's not your fault. Completely. Just promise me you'll stay away from this boy, okay?”

“Okay. Unless, of course, Gavin brings the fight to me, my friends, or another innocent kid. I can't just look the other way.”

“Maybe you should, Ri.”

“Mom, Dad always says, ‘Never run away from danger. Never, never, never. If you do, you only double that danger.'”

“He says that, huh? All those
never
s?”

“Yeah. But I think Winston Churchill said it first.”

A smile quivered across his mom's lips. “He's a smart man, your pops. I miss him, you know? I miss him bad.”

“Me, too,” said Riley. “But don't worry, Mom. We're gonna be okay. I've got your back.”

That made her laugh. “Oh you do, do you?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

They were both smiling now.

“Come on,” said his mom, standing up. “Let's get you home. Oh, if Chief Brown asks, you're grounded for the next fifteen years.”

“Really?”

“For defending an innocent kid from an overgrown goon? Uh, no—I don't think so.”

That's when the door swung open. Chief Brown strode into the cramped room.

Riley pretended to pout. “Aw, Mom. No TV and no computer for a month?”

“You heard me, Riley Mack.”

“But, Mom?” he whined. Briana had taught him how to make it sound legit.

“You want to try for two months?”

“No…”

“I take it you two had that little talk, Mrs. Mack?” said the chief, a sneer curling his lip up toward his nose. He had a flat flounder face, too. Like father, like son.

“Yes, chief,” said Riley's mom. “He's very sorry.”

The chief faked a cheesy smile. “Mrs. Mack, I know your husband is away, serving his country overseas. Everybody tells me he's some kind of hero.”

Riley's mom narrowed her eyes. “And?”

“Well, don't you think you and your son might be happier living out on the army base instead of here in town?”

“We have family here.”

“Still. Might be best for everyone if you two left town.”

“Why, Chief Brown, is that a threat?”

“No, ma'am. Just a friendly suggestion.”

“Well, then, I have a friendly suggestion for you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Tonight, for dessert, ask your son to give you a freezy wheezy. From what I hear, they're delicious.”

MRS. MACK'S BOSS, CHUCK “CALL
me Chip” Weitzel, had dreamed of being a banker ever since he was a young boy cheating at Monopoly.

Whenever he played, he volunteered to be the banker because that put him in charge of the box lid with all the make-believe money stacked inside. It was
so
easy to slip yourself an extra one-hundred-dollar bill every time you passed Go, to pocket a few Beauty Taxes. You could even grab a bright green house and plop it down on your best property while everybody else was crawling around on the floor searching for the metal shoe you accidentally knocked off Marvin Gardens.

Being a banker was why he flew to Las Vegas once a
month for investment opportunities.

“Welcome back, Mr. Weitzel,” said the valet-parking attendant.

“Welcome back, Mr. Weitzel,” said the bellman and the hotel clerk and the maids and the heavyweight champion boxer the casino paid to say hello to people in the lobby.

“Welcome back, sir,” said the woman in the tuxedo shirt and red bow tie who spun the roulette wheel on the casino floor.

Mr. Weitzel had been going to Las Vegas on a regular basis for about a year to make his money grow. He didn't overdo it, of course. That wouldn't be prudent and, as everybody knows, bankers are extremely prudent and conservative. They have to be or other people, total strangers, wouldn't trust them with all their money. So Chuck Weitzel only flew out to Las Vegas once a month for a weekend of what he called “unrivaled investment opportunities”—what other people, cynical people, called “gambling.”

“Chips for Chip,” he said, sliding a mountain of cash across the green felt.

“Fifties?” the dealer asked, pointing to her colorful assortment of poker chips.

“Make them hundreds.”

“Here you go, sir.” The dealer pushed ten neatly stacked towers of ten black chips each across the table.

“Ten thousand dollars.”

As he leaned down to scoop up his stakes, the banker felt something stiff rub against his chest.

Whoops. He had forgotten that he had another envelope of cash stuffed inside his suit coat.

He pulled it out.

Funny. The money smelled like coffee beans.

He figured Mrs. Rollison must have kept her two thousand dollars stashed in a coffee can before she brought it to Mrs. Mack's window at the bank yesterday afternoon.

Mr. Weitzel smiled and asked for more chips.

“Another two thousand.”

If pressed, the senile Mrs. Rollison would most likely say she had given her two thousand dollars to her favorite bank teller, sweet Mrs. Madiera Mack at window three.

That made the banker's smile grow even broader.

There was a very good reason why he always offered to take over Mrs. Mack's window on the Friday afternoons before his monthly investment trips to Las Vegas.

If anything bad happens to the bank's money, folks would know exactly who to blame!

And it wouldn't be Chuck “call me Chip” Weitzel.

THE NEXT WEEK AT SCHOOL,
adoring fifth graders mobbed Riley Mack.

They followed him up the hall, patted him on the back, asked for his autograph, and offered him the potato chips from their lunch sacks. It was like having a fan club. Some of the fifth grade girls gave Riley frilly Valentine's Day cards even though February 14 had passed, like, three months earlier.

The new kid, Jamal Wilson—who, it turned out, was very verbose (one of the words he had memorized from the
V
section of the dictionary) when his face wasn't stuffed inside the deep freeze—had told every kid in the fifth grade the details of what had gone down
at the Quick Pick Mini Mart, including the chief's new nickname for Riley and his gang—the Gnat Pack.

It sort of stuck and Riley didn't mind.

Gnats were tiny menaces, clever little pests with the power to drive grown-ups—who weighed maybe five kajillion times more than the itty-bitty bugs—crazy.

Riley's dad was proud of him, too.

“You did the right thing, Riley,” he said when they linked up on their laptops. “Keep up the good work, son.”

“Thanks. But Mom says I should stay away from Gavin Brown for a while, on account of the fact that his dad is the chief of police and all.”

His father's face turned super serious while he contemplated that. “Can you do as your mother has requested, son?”

“Sure. If, you know, Gavin has learned his lesson.”

“I'll bet he has. Bullies are always cowards at heart. And a coward is one who, in a perilous situation, always thinks with his legs.”

Riley chuckled.

“So let's call off any further Brown intervention,” his father continued. “Of all the stratagems ever devised, to know when to quit is the best.”

“Did Winston Churchill say that?”

In the grainy window on his computer screen, Riley could see his dad smiling as he shook his head.
“Negative. It's an old Chinese proverb. I believe I first read it in a fortune cookie.”

“Cool.” Riley hoped his dad could see his smile, too.

“Let's avoid Gavin Brown with extreme prejudice. Your mom has enough on her plate right now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Because I have to go dark for about a week. My men and I are moving out.”

“Where to?”

“That information is classified. If I told you, I'd have to shoot you. And son?”

“Sir?”

“I love you far too much to have to do that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Riley gave his dad a two-finger salute. His dad gave him one right back. And then they talked about baseball and other junk for over an hour.

 

Friday morning at school, one week after the Quick Pick Caper, Jamal Wilson was all of a sudden at the locker right next to Riley's, tugging down hard on the shackle of the combination lock and slowly turning the dial clockwise.

“Good morning, Riley Mack.”

Riley nodded. “Jamal.”

“Hey, do you know what people are saying about you and your friends?” Jamal clicked the lock's dial two more ticks then cranked it counterclockwise.

“I've heard a few things.”

“You and Mongo and Jake and Briana are illustrious. You know what that word means?”

Riley shrugged because he knew Jamal would tell him.

“Means y'all are renowned, which is another word for eminent, esteemed, or extolled.”

“You spent some time in the
E
section of the dictionary?”

“Last night. I was hoping to find the exact words to express my gratitude and appreciation for what you and your crew did for me last Friday.” While Jamal said all that, he had reversed course on the combination lock and was clicking the dial hard to the right again while still tugging down on the U-shaped hasp. The lock made choppy noises as he forced it forward.

“Got it,” said Jamal. The lock popped open.

“That your locker now?” Riley asked.

“Nah.” He opened the door. “My locker's over with the fifth graders.”

“So how come you know the combination?”

“I don't. I just like to fidget with things. Figure out what makes them tick. You ever play with a Rubik's Cube?”

“Once,” said Riley. “I got bored.”

“I hear you talking, Riley Mack. I mean, once you twist it and turn it and waste a whole minute making all the squares the same color on each side, what are you supposed to do with that thing, use it as a paperweight?”

Riley was impressed. “So how did you open that lock?”

“Oh, I'm a fan of lock sports.”

“And what, exactly, are those?”

“An amateur association of puzzle solvers on the web. We swap tricks on how to pick locks. We do it as a divertissement or beguilement. You know what those words mean?”

“Yeah. You stay out of jail because you don't actually crack open any locks.”

Jamal closed the locker next to Riley's. “Well, sometimes we do. But we always lock 'em back up afterward.”

“So how'd you figure out the combination?”

“Simple. You just have to know how to feel out the numbers. Of course, the first number isn't the first click you feel. It's two past the first click. That's really the only tricky thing you need to remember.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. Takes me twelve seconds to crack open a standard combination lock.”

“Interesting.”

“I'm also very good at mechanical, dexterity, pattern, and sequential movement puzzles. Perhaps y'all could utilize a self-taught and extremely ingenious individual such as myself?”

“For what?”

“Your next caper! We gotta get our stuff back!”

“What stuff?”

“That butt head Brown stole two of my iPods, man! And, I can prove which ones are mine on account of the fact that I had ‘This is mine, Jamal Wilson' and ‘This is mine, too, Jamal Wilson' engraved on the backs of 'em.”

“Why did you have two iPods?”

“In case I lost one, which I did!”

“Look, Jamal—I'm sorry for your loss.”

“This isn't all about me.” Jamal pulled a folded-over sheet of notebook paper out of his pocket. “This is a list of all the other items Gavin Brown has stolen from all the other fifth graders. Just look at it!”

Riley did.

It was a very long list: an MP3 recording karaoke player, several Nintendo DS Lites, assorted iPods, something called a chunky lucky charm bracelet, a robot, baseball mitts, pendant cameras, talking key chains, neoprene lunch totes, a kickboard scooter, Swatch watches, boom boxes, a ten-karat-gold cupcake
necklace, a Nerf dart blaster, wallets, coin purses—on and on.

The itemized inventory filled the entire front and back of the sheet of paper.

“A Lava Lamp?” said Riley.

Jamal nodded. “Girl named Kayla was bringing it in for show-and-tell.” He shrugged. “Girls. Am I right, Riley Mack?”

Riley didn't respond. He folded up the paper, handed it back to Jamal, who was staring up at him with big, hopeful eyes.

“Look, Jamal, I like the fact you're speaking up for all the other fifth graders. But, I'm sorry. The Gnat Pack needs to lie low for a while. Stay off the police department's radar. Let's just hope Gavin Brown learned his lesson and leaves you kids alone. I gotta run. See you 'round.”

He gave the younger kid a wink and a jaunty two-finger salute off the tip of his eyebrow.

Jamal put his tiny hands on his tiny hips. “That's it?”

“Excuse me?”

“You blowin' me off with a hearty ‘buh-bye' and a flip of your fingers?”

“I didn't flip you—”

“I thought you were Riley Mack, man!”

“Look, Jamal…”

“Maybe you just
look
like Riley Mack, because the
Riley Mack I met last week, let me tell you: that dude would do whatever it took to see that justice was served and that this long list of wrongs was rectified. You know what
rectified
means? Means you take those wrongs and you make them right! You rectify them!”

“I gotta go.”

“You're lettin' down a whole lot of people, man. Some of them Valentine cards people sent you? They were homemade, man. The cookies, too!”

Riley slumped his shoulders and headed up the corridor. He almost turned around and said,
I can't help you, Jamal, because I promised my mom and dad I'd stay away from Gavin Brown
.

But he knew that would only make him sound lamer.