The Fourth Stall Part II (3 page)

But then Tony did shake my hand. Afterward, he immediately took out one of his little towels and wiped off his hand. Instead of getting mad, though, I just grinned at him. I mean, what else was I going to do? This kid clearly had issues that only a professional could handle.

“We'll be sure to clean your locker by tomorrow morning. Just let me know if and when it needs to be cleaned again while we work on solving the problem permanently.”

“Okay, thanks, Mac,” he said while standing up and putting on his backpack.

He opened the stall door and left, and just before he walked out of my field of vision, I saw him pulling out another towel to wipe his hand. I shook my head and smirked at Vince, who was leaning against the wall across from the fourth stall. He grinned back. And then when the door closed and Tony was gone, we both burst out laughing.

We stayed pretty busy the rest of the day. No one else complained about lunches or rat poop or Mr. Kjelson, but we did get quite a few more kids with big school problems. A few kids even complained that bullies weren't getting punished as much as usual. Like Great White, this British kid who loved to fight. Usually when he was caught fighting, he got at least a few days of detention. But lately, according to two customers that day, all he got was one hour of detention, so he'd been picking fights even more than usual. Basically all of this just meant big money for us. As long as nothing crazy happened in the next few weeks, we were going to walk away from this month with record profits. Our Cubs World Series Game Fund would reach an all-time high soon.

Later that day, at the end of afternoon recess, Fred, Vince, Joe, and I held a quick meeting to discuss all of the business that had bombed us that day.

“Well, it's like my grandma always says, ‘There ain't no can of—'” Vince said.

“‘Of soda that can dance as well as a lion with no toes?'” I finished for him.

“Hey, how did you know that?” Vince looked hurt.

“Because you've already used that one before.”

Vince looked down at the tiles of the bathroom and furrowed his brow.

“Yeah, remember? It was right after Fred told us about how they had to dance in gym class last week,” Joe said.

Vince looked up and smiled. “Oh yeah. Now I remember. Well, I guess that one is just versatile, right? I always said my grandma's a genius.”

We laughed, more at the thought of Vince's grandma being a genius than anything else.

“That girl today seemed crazy, though, didn't she, Mac?” Fred asked.

He had heard our whole conversation, being that he sat in the stall next to my office and kept a detailed written record of each customer I saw.

“That's just how girls are. You'll see what I mean someday,” Joe said.

“Right, like you would know,” I said.

Joe shrugged.

“I don't know; I kind of liked her,” Vince said.

We looked at him, ready for some sort of joke or something. Because he couldn't be serious. That girl was crazy. Even a little third grader like Fred could see that.

But Vince merely shrugged. “What? I like crazy people, remember?”

Fred and Joe laughed.

“Okay, whatever. None of this answers the big questions: is any of her story about Kjelson true? And if so, how should we deal with him?”

I'm not proud of it, but I'd taken down several teachers over the years, or at least gotten some customers around their problems somehow. But it was harder with new teachers. I didn't know much about them, and the janitor, who was usually my best source for dirt on teachers, wouldn't know much yet either. All of this could be beside the point, though. Trixie seemed a bit unstable, and what I'd heard about Mr. Kjelson made him sound like a stand-up guy. I would definitely need to look into things a little before diving in with my guns blazing. So to speak anyway—obviously I don't own any real guns.

“I don't know, Mac. You're the genius,” Joe said.

“I'll think of something, I guess. Maybe Vince and I can get a better feel for the situation at baseball tryouts today. Then tomorrow we'll have to start investigating Jonah's lunchroom problem and Tony's, uh, poop issue.”

Fred giggled, and Vince and I exchanged looks. Third graders. Have to love them.

“So any volunteers on that one?” I said.

They all looked at one another. Of course nobody wanted to volunteer for poop duty.

“Maybe we could outsource the cleaning?” Vince suggested.

“Outsource?” Joe said, sounding as confused as the rest of us probably were.

“Basically we can pay someone outside the business to clean Tony's locker. Like the Hutt. He probably showers in toilet water anyway.”

“Gross,” Fred said, and then giggled again in that way all third graders do at basically anything that involves poop or pee or vomit.

I agreed that was pretty gross, but Vince had made a good point. The Hutt was this bully who'd gotten his nickname because he was basically a big old slug like Jabba the Hutt from
Star Wars
. He'd probably do that locker job for cheap, maybe even for free if we let him keep the, uh, mess. That was a stretch, but this was the Hutt we're talking about.

“That's a great idea. Let's bring him in tomorrow,” I said. “Then Vince and I can team up to take the mystery of how the poop is getting in his locker in the first place. It will be just like old times.” It wasn't that often that Vince and I had to do fieldwork together anymore, but considering the amount of customers we'd had lately, it was pretty obvious we'd all have to pitch in quite a bit.

Vince's eyes lit up. “Can I even wear my old-timey hat like I used to?”

“What are you talking about?” Joe said.

“Don't ask,” I said.

Vince had found this old hat at the secondhand store a long time ago. It was the kind that you see gangsters wearing in those old movies about Al Capone and tommy guns and stuff. Back in the early days of our business Vince used to wear it all the time, in spite of my protests—or maybe because of them.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Vince said. “I've been thinking about this one all day. You ready, Mac?”

Joe and Fred groaned, and wandered out of the bathroom to go back to class since recess was ending soon.

“When aren't I ready?” I said after they left.

“Hey, just checking. I still haven't forgotten how you weaseled out of defeat a few months ago.”

“Weaseled? Staples almost killed me!” I practically yelled, even though I wasn't really mad at all.

“All right, whatever. Here it is: before 2007 and 2008 when was the last time the Cubs went to the play-offs two years in a row?”

The Chicago Cubs were our favorite baseball team. Cubs baseball was like oxygen to us. No, really. We'd be a couple of pale blue corpses without it. We had this thing where we were always challenging each other with Cubs trivia.

“You're really asking that now?” I said, my voice not really shielding the hurt.

This was a painful time for us. The Cubs had been knocked out of the play-offs a few months ago. They'd made it further than they had in decades. It still hurt to think about how close they had come to a World Series. They haven't won a championship for over a hundred years, the longest drought in all of sports history. It was shocking that Vince could just bring up the play-offs like this.

“What? It's a fair question,” he said.

“I know, I know. The answer is 1907 and 1908, the last time they won the World Series. Thanks a lot now, for jinxing them for next year, too.”

“Whatever. They were doomed before I even said anything.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yeah, they were, weren't they?”

That's the thing about the Cubs. They were so deeply cursed that they were jinx proof. They had a permanent jinx, and nothing anybody said or did would ever change that.

T
he school held a surprise assembly shortly after recess ended. All of the students and teachers were called down to the Olson Olson Theatre, which was the name of the school's new, expensive theater. How it got such a ridiculous name is kind of a long story, so maybe I'll share it some other time.

Kids whispered among themselves as everybody found seats. Even some of the teachers looked curious. Unplanned all-school assemblies were unusual. And, to be honest, they made me a little nervous.

Principal Dickerson walked onto the stage after everyone was settled. He stepped up to the microphone and started talking. He didn't say good afternoon and make us answer him back; he didn't say hi; he didn't even smile. But then again Dickerson never did any of those things; he was a no-nonsense type of guy. “No-nonsense” is an expression I've heard my dad use before. I think it's like a polite way for adults to call people jerks.

“As some of you may be aware, the school has been having some discipline issues lately, as well as some other internal areas of concern. As a result, the school board has decided to bring in a vice principal for the indefinite future. He will primarily be in charge of handling all disciplinary issues and also will be investigating any and all other reported or suspected funny business. Also, I want to remind you all that . . .”

As Mr. Dickerson droned on about showing respect and remembering what we're all there to do and blah, blah, blah, I couldn't help but wonder where the heck the phrase “funny business” had come from. I mean, why did old people call bad acts “funny business”? Shouldn't they call it, like, “bad business” or “corrupt activities” or something more fitting? I snapped out of my wondering in time to catch the new vice principal's introduction.

“. . . and so I'd like to welcome our new vice principal, Dr. George.”

I think the student body was supposed to clap because I saw some teachers doing it, but basically nobody really did, so the few claps that were echoing around the room sounded especially lonely and unwelcoming. But I didn't care about that. All I cared about was trying to confirm if Dickerson had said what I just thought he had, that Dr. George was our new vice principal.

Dr. George was kind of famous in this area. He was known for being the toughest school principal around. He'd cleaned up some of the worst schools in the area. There were even articles in the local newspapers about him a year ago because he'd whipped into shape this one nearby high school that had been so unruly and horrible that people had started calling it the Failure Factory.

Dr. George wasn't a real doctor, like the kind you'd go to see if you were sick. Apparently you can become, like, another kind of doctor, too. I'm not sure exactly how that works, but all I know is that in my experience the fake doctors like Dr. George were usually a lot meaner, and thought they were the smartest people alive.

My fears were confirmed when our new VP walked up onto the stage. I recognized his stiff toupee from the pictures he'd had in the papers. His eyes bulged from his skull like analog sticks on a PlayStation controller. He and Dickerson shook hands and then George stepped to the podium.

“Well, thank you for the warm welcome,” he said. He wasn't smiling. “We're going to have this school running smoothly very soon. Rest assured, anybody who wishes to prevent this from happening or insists on causing problems will be punished to the fullest extent of the school bylaws. From here forward funny business of any kind will not be tolerated.

“Additionally, we're going to be administering new state-government-funded and -monitored tests called the Standardized Minimum Aptitude Reviewer Tests, or SMARTs. These tests are an accurate barometer for student achievement and education quality, and I myself have personally worked with state officials and other school administrators within the state to help develop these tests to be effective, efficient, and consistent in their accuracy. They can measure this school's or any school's success in a quantifiable way, which is to say, in a way that can be scientifically measured. The quantification of the abstract is one of mankind's greatest achievements, and we expect to explore that further here.

“The SMARTs are only one small part of a new initiative that I will be working into your school this year in an attempt to clean this place up and make it a suitable institute of American education, suitable for American students. That is all; you are dismissed.”

That was that. He was a man of few words, I guessed. Another no-nonsense guy, which basically meant that now we had two jerks running this place.

There were murmurs across the room as kids stood up. Clearly some of them knew who Dr. George was, and they knew his reputation. Some didn't, but I had a feeling that we all would know him all too well soon enough. Other kids were murmuring about the SMARTs that Dr. George had talked about with so much pride on stage that you'd have thought the test was like his own flesh and blood—which knowing how dry Suits usually were, it was totally possible that Dr. George was made up of paper and documents and statistics as opposed to blood and bone and guts like the rest of us. But anyway, you know how kids are; they always overreact to those two words: “big test.”

I wondered briefly if some of the “internal areas of concern” that Mr. Dickerson had mentioned were the very same problems that kids had been coming to me for lately. If so, then Dr. George's arrival was now a problem on two fronts: 1) He was a hawk for troublemakers and funny business, which were basically my bread and butter, how I made a living; and 2) He was potentially going to be working to solve the very same problems that I needed to solve myself to keep making money. Either way you shook it, I didn't like it. Not at all.

It was like putting Joe Blanton in the game to pinch-hit in the ninth inning with the bases loaded and down by three, which is to say that it was becoming a no-win situation because, for one, you'd never want a pitcher pinch-hitting, and two, it's Joe Blanton.

Ripping on Joe Blanton had become kind of a thing between Vince and me lately. It had all started when I was complaining to Vince that I didn't get how Joe Blanton could always dominate the Cubs, because he was so terrible. Then Vince made me Google Joe's stats to show me that he wasn't nearly as bad as I'd thought.

But that was the thing: numbers weren't everything in baseball, because if they were, then Barry Bonds and Pete Rose would have been no-brainer, first-ballot Hall of Famers, and a guy like Derek Jeter would simply be a really good shortstop and not a modern-day legend. Baseball was more than just numbers; it was also about intangibles and respect. It was about playing the game the right way, which was to play smart and play for the team and not to pad your own personal numbers. To play with grit and get the job done, which meant taking one on the chin and losing a couple teeth if that's what it takes to get a guy to second base. Or at least that's what I thought. Vince was much more of a numbers guy. To him the numbers didn't lie. That's what he always told me anyway. “Mac, the numbers don't lie.” He thought he could win any argument with that line.

Anyways, all of that is beside the point. What mattered was that having a pitcher like Joe Blanton at the plate with the bases loaded was about as miserable a situation as you could put yourself in as a baseball team. He was like 95 percent likely to strike out three times in a single at bat, which of course isn't possible, but with Joe any dubious feat was possible. And that's kind of what we were dealing with here with Dr. George now showing up. It felt like he was on our team but would undoubtedly cost us the game.

Vince and I met up at my locker after school to head over to the gym for baseball tryouts. For the next few weeks it was going to be only for pitchers and catchers, kind of like how they always report first for Spring Training in the majors. The position player tryouts weren't for another month or so, when the temperature outside would warm up a little.

We were both especially curious to see how this would go, considering how we'd now heard two completely different versions of what the new coach was supposedly like. Mr. Kjelson generally had a good reputation, but after what Trixie Von Parkway told us earlier, I wasn't too sure what to expect.

I did not expect him to look so small, that's for sure. That's the first thing I noticed when we stepped inside the gym. He was just barely taller than some of the seventh and eighth graders around him. There was a pile of catcher gear in the middle of the floor and a bag of baseballs at his feet.

“Come on in here, guys.” Mr. Kjelson waved us over. We walked over and joined the group of kids standing around him.

Other than being fairly short and small, Mr. Kjelson was a pretty normal-looking guy. He seemed to be a little younger than my dad and had short hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in a while. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and he did not have a whistle like most coaches do, which I was pretty happy to see. Seriously, most coaches abused their whistles worse than the Cubs general manager abused his payroll, which could get annoying really quickly.

I scanned the other kids in attendance. It was pretty tough to make the team as a sixth grader. In fact, there was only one other sixth grader there, a kid named Tazaharu Matsuko, a foreign exchange student from Japan. Everybody at our school just called him Taz.

“Okay, everybody, this is the first day of tryouts for pitchers and catchers. Today I just kind of want you all to take it easy. Don't worry about blowing me away with your ninety-mile-per-hour gun. Just focus on hitting your spots and getting loose. No pressure today, right? Now, let's have the pitchers all group over here and the catchers here.”

There were about seven of us catchers and more than twenty pitchers. He said we'd be rotating. Kjelson lined us catchers up along the gym on one end where he had laid down some rubber mats, then took the pitchers the correct distance to the other end. He had placed a piece of red tape earlier that he must have measured as the fifty-four feet between the plate and mound.

He explained how the rotation system would work. Five pitches per catcher then switch. Just light throwing for the first twenty or thirty minutes. Try to hit the glove, nothing more, nothing less.

“And remember, we're all trying to make the same team, so I don't want to see any Barrett and Zambrano action, okay?”

A few of us chuckled. I raised my hand. “You're a Cubs fan, Coach?”

He smirked at me, the kind of empty and sad smile that only another Cubs fan could recognize. “Unfortunately I am.”

I shook my head in sympathy, but really I was pretty happy. Being a Cubs fan was like a sacred bond. It was like a lifelong connection to every other Cubs fan that was almost stronger than being actual family because real families usually don't suffer as much together as Cubs fans do. Being stuck in crappy situations seems to bring people together for some reason, so being Cubs fans brought us all together each and every year. It was good to have that connection with our potential coach.

And I had to admit it . . . there was no way a Cubs fan could be as awful a guy as Trixie had said Kjelson was.

Tryouts went well, I thought. Some kids were clearly rusty, and so we catchers spent a lot of time blocking balls and retrieving the ones we missed, which bounced all over the hard gym floor. It was pretty painful and difficult trying to block bad pitches in that gym, but none of us complained.

The pitchers did some light throwing and then moved on to fastballs. No breaking stuff for the first tryout. Vince was clearly the best kid I caught. He hit my glove every time; I swear I never had to move even an inch. Also, he threw harder than most of the other kids, and he didn't even come close to throwing as hard as I knew he could. I think Kjelson was impressed, too, because he seemed to spend extra time watching Vince pitch, and he gave more pointers to him than to the other kids, which was a good sign.

Kjelson called over Vince, Taz, and me after he dismissed everyone else.

“I was really impressed with what I saw today out of you three,” he said. “It's going to be tough for three sixth graders to make the team, I can't lie about that, but if you all keep it up, there's definitely a chance it could happen this year.”

“Thanks, Coach,” I said, and Taz gave a short nod.

Then Kjelson smiled and said, “I mean, if Joe Blanton can actually make a major league rotation, let alone one that includes Oswalt, Lee, Hamels, and Halladay, then anything is possible, right?”

Vince and I laughed, and Taz just kind of nodded again. No doubt now that Kjelson was going to be a great coach if we were lucky enough to make the team. I mean, Joe Blanton wasn't exactly a household name. I couldn't believe he'd just dissed him like Vince or I would have done in that same spot. I glanced at Vince, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing, even though he was always defending Joe Blanton because Vince was such a sucker for numbers.

“Hey, not that I'm arguing about us being able to make the team,” Vince said, “but Joe Blanton once struck out eleven batters in a single inning, so I'd watch what you say.”

This, of course, was not even close to being true, but that was just how Vince's humor worked. I only hoped Mr. Kjelson would realize that or Vince was going to look like a mouthy jerk. But once again I probably hadn't given Mr. K. enough credit because he laughed so hard, you'd have thought that Vince had just made the single best joke in baseball history.

Later that night Vince, Joe, and I met up with Tyrell Alishouse outside the school. Tyrell was my ace in the hole. He was the best thing a guy like me could have on his payroll. He specialized in all types of surveillance.

I had a key to get us into the school through the East Wing entrance, due to a sweet deal I'd made with the janitor several years ago. We were there now to set up video cameras, something I'd intended to do a long time ago but had never really had the funds for. Since we still had all our Cubs game funds from last season and had the sudden burst of customers lately
and
Dr. George had just shown up out of nowhere, now was the best time to do it.