The Fourth Stall by Chris Rylander

school board from Barnaby Willis’s email account, but coming from her, I had no idea if I could believe that.
    I gave them their well-earned twenty dollars and then started discussing phase two of the plan to take down Staples’s operation at my school.
    I went over the names of all the bookies that I had discovered as well as where they were normally stationed. I showed the bullies school photos from the year before and gave them instructions to patrol the area around their assigned bookie, making sure that no kid got near enough to place another bet. If the kids still tried to get by, then the bullies were supposed to convince them that it was not a good idea.
    “What do you mean convince them?” Nubby asked. “Like with words or what?”
    “Make them not want to place another bet,” I said.
    “How do we do that?” Nubby asked.
    “By whatever means necessary, if you know what I mean. Make them an offer they can’t refuse,” I said. I heard someone say that in a movie once. It’s one of my favorite phrases.
    “What do you mean by that?” Great White snapped. “Stop talking in bloody riddles and just tell us what to do, aye!”
    “Intimidate them, use a little bit of force if you have to, just get them to stop placing bets. Only don’t go overboard; I don’t want any of these kids to have to go to the nurse, okay? These kids are not to be roughed up like what you did to the Collector.”
    With that I assigned them each a bookie and gave them ten bucks.
    “I’ll be out monitoring the situation this afternoon and if I’m satisfied with the results, you’ll get the other ten dollars,” I said.
    Then they left to go wreak havoc on my school. I felt a little nauseous. I didn’t really like paying nine of the meaner, tougher kids at the school to go intimidate and bully mostly innocent kids and cause problems. But for the sake of our business, the future of the school, and the Cubs game, it had to be done.
    At lunch that day we closed up the office so Joe and I could go monitor the progress of our plan while Vince stayed behind to watch over Fred. We started out in the upper-grade playground. Everything appeared to be going well. The bookies stood at their stations alone. Every time a potential customer approached, the bully assigned to that bookie would get in their face and the customer would sulk away. Pretty soon it became obvious to the kids on the playground what was happening. After a while nobody even tried to place a bet, especially after Snapper almost bit off this one kid’s thumb to keep him from approaching the bookie.
    It was when Joe and I were on the grade school side of the playground that I saw something shocking. We had just finished watching some kids make fun of one of the bookies about this really horrible rumor that PrepSchool had started about him sneaking home chunks of the school meatloaf in his backpack because he was building a meatloaf castle in his bedroom that he was going to live in with his pet hamster, Charleston.
    Anyways, we moved on to Jacky Boy’s post and that’s when I saw him. I didn’t know who it was at first because his back was turned to us, but some kid was having a heated conversation with Jacky Boy. Jacky Boy kept slamming his finger into his palm as if he was expecting the kid to put a stack of cash into it. The other kid shook his head so vigorously I thought it might fall off and roll down the hill, where someone might mistake it for a kickball and punt it out into the street.
    Joe and I glanced at each other and repositioned ourselves so we could get a better look at the kid Jacky Boy was arguing with. The recognition hit me like a medicine ball chest pass from Arnold Schwarzenegger.
    It was Brady.
    I motioned for Joe to go check it out in person while I considered the implications.
    But before I even really had a chance to process what it all might mean, the attack happened. I should have been expecting it, considering what we had done to Barnaby the