The Fight for Kidsboro

by Marshal Younger

  “You know, you should’ve seen how well this alarm was placed in a hole in the wall. It looked like a professional did it. With professional tools,” Scott said, holding up a staple gun. “Kind of …well, kind of like this one.” I wanted to applaud.

  Nick brushed a drop of sweat from his forehead. “Lots of people have staple guns.”

  “Wow, look at this,” Scott said, holding up a screw. “We found these very same screws in Nelson’s house.”

  “Ha! That’s a lie!” Nick shouted. “His walls are too thick for that screw.”

  “But I thought you said you’ve never been in Nelson’s house.”

  Bravo! Scott looked at Nick, who was breathing hard and appeared to be thinking harder.

  “Well, maybe I did go in there once. I don’t remember.”

  “So, you’re saying you remember what type of wood he has for his walls, but you don’t remember if you actually stepped foot in his house?”

  “Okay, I’ve been in his house a couple of times. He’s invited me in.”

  “So, you’re friends?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “But I thought you said a couple of minutes ago that you didn’t care anything about Nelson.”

  My chin had dropped to the ground about two minutes before, but now the rest of my body was about to join it. Scott was amazing. Maybe endless hours of watching tough-guy detective shows had finally paid off for him. Scott grilled him for a while longer until Nick finally got sick of getting caught in lies and confessed to breaking into Nelson’s and Marcy’s houses. He also confessed to setting up Roberto. I told him that he would probably be kicked out of town for this. He acted like he didn’t care.

  Scott and I walked away. I felt so proud of him. Scott seemed unaware that he had just done something incredible. He casually told me that he needed to go home for dinner. But as he walked away, I spotted him putting his hat back on.

  Something still bothered me, though. I couldn’t understand why Nick would do it. Scott had tried to ask him about this too, but by that time Nick had had enough and wasn’t about to answer any more questions. What possible reason could he have for breaking into two houses and not taking anything?

  This, of course, led me back to Valerie. Did she hire him? I could understand the first break-in. She was trying to frame Roberto to make me look bad so that she could take over as mayor. But the second house made absolutely no sense. She had to have done it, though. Who else would have anything to gain by breaking into two houses?

  Suddenly, like a message from above, I got my answer. As I was walking back to my office, I noticed Max Darby surrounded by a crowd of people. He was selling insurance. I was pretty sure this didn’t happen in real life—an insurance salesman having to fight people off.

  Of course! Max was getting rich because people were scared of being robbed or vandalized! Max had something to gain! Max must have paid Nick to break into the houses! This would explain how Nick got the money and the wood to build a huge addition to his house. That was it! It was an insurance scam!

  After the crowd around Max dwindled, I approached him. “Selling a lot of policies?”

  “Fourteen total,” he said. “Seems to be the hot item. Change your mind about it?”

  “No thanks. I’m sure glad someone is benefiting from this rash of crime.”

  “Oh, I’d never want to benefit from something like that.”

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t,” I said, knowing full well he would love to benefit from something like that. “I just found out who did it.”

  “Well, partner, I think you’re a little late. Everybody else in town has known for days. It was that Roberto kid you brought in.”

  “No, It wasn’t.” I paused for effect here. I wanted to be able to read guilt in his eyes, so I watched closely as I laid the bomb on him. “Nick did it.”

  He didn’t flinch, blink, or blush. “Really? Never would a suspected him. Good guy, that Nick. Quiet, shy type. That’s always a good type of person to sell insurance to.”

  I could suddenly picture Scott and his merciless grilling of Nick, and I decided to go in for the kill. “You paid him to do it.”

  Max smiled and chuckled a little, as if the thought had never occurred to him. I expected him to deny it, but instead he offered a much more interesting idea. “Prove it,” he said.

  He had me there. I could accuse him all I wanted to, but unless Nick admitted Max’s involvement to me point-blank in front of witnesses, I had no case.

  Max took another unexpected turn. “Now, I know you didn’t mean that. You’re just fishin’, I know. But let’s pretend for a second that I did commit this tragic crime. What exactly can you do about it? Kick me out of town? I know how politics work, and banishing your most valuable citizen doesn’t look too good come election time.”

  “You think you’re our most valuable citizen?”

  “Where else you gonna get wood, buddy? You banish me, and you’ve got no future. You can’t build anything. And it’s not like you paid for this wood with real money. It’s pretend. Which means I can take it back. I can rip apart these houses faster than they went up. And you know, it’s real cute to see you acting like this is some kind of great democracy you’re runnin’ here, but when it comes down to it, this town is just a bunch of clubhouses in the woods. You lose me, you got nothing.” He smiled again and turned away. I watched him walk quickly over to a clubhouse and knock on the door. He had insurance to sell.

  6

  FRIENDS AND FOES

  I WENT BACK TO NICK’S house. He was packing up his things, figuring that he was going to be kicked out of town. We talked for a while, but he would never admit to being hired by anyone. He never denied it either. He had learned his lesson from our last interview and wouldn’t answer any of my questions with anything more than a “yes” or “no.” I told him I would ask the council not to banish him if he would tell me who had hired him, but he wouldn’t budge. He said he wasn’t a rat. This was, of course, evidence to me that there was someone he could be ratting on.

  But I still had no real proof.

  We held a city council meeting after school the next day. Jill, Nelson, Alice, and Scott filed in. Everyone knew why we were there—to discuss Nick’s punishment. A trial wasn’t necessary since he had confessed in front of two of us. After a short discussion, we voted unanimously that Nick had to be banished and Roberto would be cleared of all charges. Alice felt quite embarrassed by the whole thing, since this meant she had put an innocent man in jail. But she didn’t protest. She’d made a mistake and was ready to move on. I think she was still mad at me, though.

  Before everyone got to their feet after the meeting, I made an announcement. I wanted to vote on the punishment of Max Darby.

  “What?” Jill asked, speaking for the whole group.

  I cleared my throat to show them I was serious, then said, “I have reason to believe Max hired Nick to break into the houses so that he could sell insurance policies.”

  They stared at me in disbelief. Finally, Jill was able to speak. “Do you have proof?”

  “Well … no. But I’m pretty sure about it.”

  “Did he confess?”

  “No.”

  “Well, we can’t banish him just because you think he did it.”

  I was losing them. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Alice shook her head as if I were crazy. “Sorry, Ryan. No can do. Not without a trial.”

  That’s what I wanted them to say. “What if I get him to trial? Let me tell you why I think he’s guilty, and then you tell me if you think he’ll lose in court.”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Jill interrupted. “I don’t wanna hear this.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want you bringing him to trial. What if he’s found guilty?”

  I was confused by the question. “Well … then justice would be served.”

  “Would we banish him?”

  “Sure, I guess.”

/>   “Then where would we get our wood?” she said. Alice and Nelson nodded in agreement.

  My heart sank. I never expected anyone on my city council to place more value in wood than in justice.

  “Wood?” I asked weakly.

  Jill continued, “I mean, I’m for justice being served and all that, but if we banish Max, we’re in deep trouble. We can’t build anything. We can’t add to the population. We have to think about the future of the town.”

  “The future of the town?” I asked, my voice raising. “What kind of future are we going to have if people like Max know they can get away with stuff like this? What happened to our laws? Who cares about the quality of our houses? What about the quality of our people?” This was a great line, and if I hadn’t been trying to make a point, I would’ve written it down and saved it for the debate.

  Jill thought for a minute, but then shook her head. “Maybe we should let this one pass. Sorry, but like it or not, we need Max.”

  “She’s right,” Alice said. “I hate crime, but we gotta have wood.”

  Nelson nodded along with her. Scott had been completely uncommitted from the moment I started talking. My mouth hung open in shock. I had nothing else to say. I turned around and left, defeated.

  I talked to Roberto the next day at school and told him he was welcome to come back to town. He was hesitant, saying that he didn’t feel comfortable coming back right now. I could tell it still hurt him that people had jumped to the conclusion that he was a criminal. I understood and said that I’d be back to ask him again soon.

  The election was to be held on the first day of May, and I felt that the past week had been a definite victory for me. I’d been right about Roberto. My approval rating was probably up, and Valerie had lost her whole “He’s letting criminals into town” argument. So even though I was disappointed in my city council, I had something to keep my head up about.

  I headed over to Jill’s office to see how she was planning to cover the Nick/Roberto story in the newspaper. As I approached the newspaper office, I heard two angry voices coming from inside. I rushed in to see what was going on. It was Jill and Marcy. Marcy had one hand on her hip, and with the other she was shaking a pencil in Jill’s face.

  “You just think you’re Miss Journalism, don’t you?” Marcy said, not seeing me yet.

  “I’m not running your story,” Jill said. “That doesn’t mean I won’t run other stories.”

  “It’s a perfectly good story.”

  “There are finally some things going on in this town. We don’t need fluff. Nobody cares about your canary.” Jill glanced over at me. “Ryan, do you care about Marcy’s canary?”

  I’d seen Marcy’s canary. It was cute. Would I throw myself in front of a bus for Marcy’s canary? No. But did I care about it?

  “Are you gonna answer the question, Ryan?”

  “Oh … uh … I don’t know. Why?”

  “Well, you see, Marcy’s my new assistant. I’m paying her 10 tokens a week so she can keep her house.”

  Hey! The Everybody Works program in motion! I thought.

  “So I told her to write a story,” Jill continued. “Well, she came back with a story that I don’t think works very well for our newspaper.”

  “But it’s great!” Marcy said. “It could become a regular column: ‘Citizens and Their Pets.’ I think Nelson and Valerie have a Siamese cat.”

  “Great. We’ll make it a double issue,” Jill said sarcastically.

  “This is not The New York Times. We’re kids.”

  “It’s lame, Marcy.”

  “It’s not. But even if it was, so what? At least it fills up space.”

  “Let me explain something to you.” Jill squared her shoulders as if she was about to teach her pupil something. “There are only two ways that this newspaper makes money—people subscribe to it, and people advertise in it. Okay, right now I have 11 subscribers and one advertiser—Max and his scary insurance ads. Now if any of those people decide that your canary story is too lame for them to keep spending money on this newspaper, I’m doomed. Do you understand?”

  Marcy’s shoulders fell. “Fine. I’m leaving. Maybe somebody’ll murder me on the way home and you can have your great story.” Marcy left.

  Jill turned away from me and crumpled up the piece of paper in her hand. “Maybe we should rethink this Everybody Works thing. I didn’t know it would cause this,” she said.

  “You don’t think she’ll work out eventually?” I asked.

  “She’s a really good friend … but she doesn’t have a clue about the newspaper business.”

  “Then why’d you hire her?”

  “I had to. She was desperate. She didn’t want to lose her house, so she came to me. I couldn’t turn her down. She’s my friend.” She sighed, but then her eyes brightened. “I want to have another city council vote on the Everybody Works law.”

  “We can’t back out on it yet. Just give it a little time. It’ll work.” Little did I know that the problems between Marcy and Jill were only the tip of the iceberg.

  “Everybody Works Doesn’t Work,” part two, occurred the next day when I ran into Pete and Nelson. Nelson was walking quickly, trying to get away from him, but Pete kept up the pace, jumping in front of Nelson to force him to make eye contact.

  “But … how do you feel about the break-in?” Pete asked.

  “I don’t feel anything,” Nelson said impatiently. “It just happened. They already caught the guy. It’s over.”

  “But don’t you feel emotional distress or anything?”

  “No. Now go away.” Nelson insisted. I was terribly confused by this conversation.

  “What about future stress? Do you think you’ll have to go into therapy because you’ll never feel safe in your own home again?”

  “Listen, I’m working on a spanking machine, and I won’t hesitate to make you my first guinea pig.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “He’s trying to get me to sue somebody. But there’s nobody to sue,” Nelson explained.

  Pete was unmoved by my presence. “Okay, let’s forget the break-in. What about your life? Has anybody discriminated against you recently? Maybe someone defamed your character?”

  “I’m in middle school. Everyone defames my character.”

  Pete’s eyes lit up. “Okay, okay. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Forget it, Pete.”

  I stepped in. “Look … there’s no place for this. We can’t have lawsuits against each other.”

  “Can I sue the government?” Pete asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, what else am I supposed to do? I’ve never made any money by being a lawyer. Now with this wonderful new law you’ve passed, I have to find a way to make some money or I lose my house.”

  “There are better ways than this.”

  “I’m a lawyer, Ryan. I love the law.” I could tell he got that line from a TV show, as well as the next one. “If I do anything else, it’s like cheating on my girlfriend.”

  I rolled my eyes. Pete remained undaunted and looked at Nelson. “Now are you gonna listen to me or not?”

  “No.”

  “You’re missing out on almost certain riches, my man.” Pete shook his head sympathetically, and then took off to badger more potential clients. I looked sheepishly at Nelson.

  “We should’ve seen this coming,” Nelson said. “And you know what? Somebody’s gonna end up suing. And if it works … everybody’s gonna want a piece of the action. It’ll be a litigation free-for-all.”

  Something told me Nelson was right.

  7

  EVERYBODY WORKS

  I SAT IN MY OFFICE, banging a pencil against my card-table desk. History is filled with leaders who had to make tough decisions under pressure. I’m sure plenty of people asked George Washington, “Why are we crossing the Delaware? It’s a dumb idea to cross the Delaware. Let’s just go around the Delaware.”

  I picked up a pen and began
to drum it against the desk as well. I knew that nobody would blame me if I decided to change my mind about the law. If I took the idea back to the city council, they’d choose to forget the Everybody Works program had ever happened. The town wasn’t too thrilled with it—I knew that. But I also believed it would work over time. In a few months, when the economy had picked up, people would be telling me what a brilliant idea it was. The thought passed through my brain that I could take back the new law, get reelected, then pass it again. But I knew that wouldn’t be right. Maybe I could get reelected just on the basis of my integrity—the fact that I wouldn’t take back the law, even if it meant possibly losing the election. George Washington stuck to his guns. So would I. Maybe people would reelect me because of that.

  Fat chance.

  Jill burst in without knocking. I jumped when she slapped a piece of paper down on the desk in front of me.

  “I’m being sued!”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday’s paper had an interview with Corey Hawkins.” Corey was the neighborhood garbage collector. “You know how Corey wants to start having recycling bins in town?”

  “Right.”

  “So I let Marcy do the interview. And she writes in the article that after he picks up our garbage, he uses some of it to decorate his room.”

  “What?”

  “Exactly what I said. I asked her, ‘Are you sure he told you that he decorates his room with garbage?’ I asked her that three times. She swore up and down that’s what he said. So I did what you told me to do—I figured I would give her a shot. I ran the story. Well … as it turns out, Corey doesn’t decorate his room with garbage. He simply knows someone who decorates his room with things that other people would consider garbage.”

  “That’s a pretty bad misquote.”

  “Apparently Corey’s the laughing stock of the town now. He told me that one kid gave him a moldy donut and a nail and asked him if he wanted to hang it up on his wall.”