Chopped! Read online

  They must have sold the car. Or gotten it out of town.

  Whichever one it was, Robin knew that the GPS was now useless. He’d hoped against hope that it might lead him to a new bank of badness. No such luck.

  He turned off the computer, lay down on his bed fully dressed, and closed his eyes for a moment. He didn’t intend to nap, but he did.

  He dreamed that the Rangers were after him again. So were the guys who worked at the business at the corner of Garvey and Ninth. So was the Ironwood Police Department. And so was Chantelle Price.

  It was a nightmare.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  It was three days later. Robin was down in the Shrimp Shack getting ready to take the usual Friday protection money to the Rangers. They always paid a hundred a week, though the Rangers had talked about a price increase. After his experience at the U-Store, Robin wasn’t sure that paying off the Rangers was such a bad idea. Better than getting gunned down by them or having the Shrimp Shack torched.

  “You don’t have to take the money to the Rangers for another twenty minutes, Robin,” his grandmother said. “Have some fine shrimp.”

  “Okay, Gramma,” Robin said. “I will.”

  He never tired of his grandmother’s fried shrimp, which was a good thing since he had it for dinner three or four times a week. His friend Kaykay, who was vegan, winced every time Robin told her he’d had shrimp for dinner. She went on and on about how Robin was ruining his arteries.

  Robin chewed a couple of shrimp and washed them down with some lemonade his grandmother had poured for him. She was a big woman, as tall as many men and hefty in a white chef’s outfit. She nodded approvingly as he ate. She was okay for someone who had recently been gravely ill.

  “Can I ask you something, Gramma?”

  “You keep eatin’ yo’ shrimp like that, you can ask me anything,” Miz Paige responded.

  “How come you never told me you knew Mr. Smith?”

  Robin had been waiting for the right opportunity to talk to his grandmother about Mr. Smith. Now was the time. He’d asked it point blank. He saw his grandmother stiffen. A little vein above her left eye throbbed.

  Why is she reacting like this?

  “Well …” His grandmother seemed to be choosing her words with care. “You never asked me.”

  It was almost exactly the same thing that Mr. Smith had told him.

  What a dodge!

  “That’s not saying much,” Robin commented.

  “Keep eatin’ yo’ shrimp,” Miz Paige instructed. “You a growin’ boy.”

  “That’s not saying much,” Robin repeated. But he took another shrimp anyway.

  “Then I’ll say mo’, though this brings back some memories I don’t want to remember, necessarily. Mr. Smith and your late grandfather Horace and me were all good friends back before your father was born,” Miz Paige shared. “After your father came along, we sort of stopped bein’ such good friends.”

  “Really?” Robin was fascinated. “How come?”

  “He and Horace had a fallin’ out over something. Horace never told me. I never asked. It don’t matter none now. Maybe Mr. Smith will tell you more. Maybe—”

  She stopped talking. Her eyes swung to the door. So did Robin’s.

  Two Ninth Street Rangers had just stepped into the shop. One of them was the guy with the shaved head and mole under his nose, who was in the car when Robin did his usual payoffs. The other guy was new. Almost as tall as the leader, with long sideburns and wild eyes. Both gangstas wore all black, with black bandanas tied through their belt loops.

  “We want to talk to Shrimp,” the leader announced from the doorway.

  Miz Paige bristled. “His name is Robin. This is my shop. If you’ve come for my hard-earned money, I’ll give it to you. Just remember that when you’re in my shop, you talk to me.”

  The leader smiled, flashing a new gold tooth.

  “We want to talk to Robin,” he intoned, using Robin’s real name instead of his hated nickname. “You stand outside while we talk. You can watch through the glass. But this is between him and us. We gonna talk a little bid’ness with Robin.”

  “No!” Miz Paige refused.

  The leader turned to her. “Miz Paige? If you know what’s good for you, you will step outside the door.”

  Robin’s heart thumped. He felt a bead of sweat roll down his back. Were the Rangers here to talk to him about what happened at the U-Store? Had they figured out that it was him and his friends? If they had, what were they going to do?

  He clutched the table. Maybe they want to kill me in front of my gramma.

  There was nothing he could do except wait for it to happen. Meanwhile, his grandmother moved toward the door. With one last look at Robin, she stepped outside. A moment later, Robin could see her nose pressed against the glass door.

  The two Rangers pulled up chairs and sat in them backward, facing Robin. Robin waited for them to pull out their Glocks and waste him. The only thing that kept him from crying out and running was his fear that they’d gun down his grandmother after they did him. If he kept calm, maybe he could save her life.

  They didn’t shoot him. But what they said shot him through his soul.

  First, the leader introduced himself.

  “Robin, you can call me Master. Everybody else do that. My boy here, you don’t gotta know his name. Not yet, anyway. Whatchu wan’ us to call you?”

  “Robin,” he croaked.

  “Okay, Robin it be, no mo’ Shrimp,” Master promised.

  “Why you wan’ talk to me?” Robin asked them.

  Master and his sidekick exchanged a smile.

  “Speak good English,” Master told Robin. “That’s why we want to talk to you. Don’t be someone you ain’t. Recently, there was a problem at your school,” Master went on. “Two of our junior boys got themselves popped. They had drugs in their lockers. They gonna be in juvie till they turn eighteen. Maybe longer. Stupid be as stupid do, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Robin thought the smart thing to do was nod, though he didn’t know what Master was saying at all. Or at least, not where the Rangers’ boss was heading with this.

  “We been doin’ some talkin’, and we been thinkin’ we need some junior Rangers who gots brains, Robin. Some that be smart enough not to take drugs to school. Smart enough not to talk ’bout what they doin’ as Rangers. Smart enough to speak good English to the po-lice. Smart enough that peeps won’t think they be Rangers. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Robin nodded again, though a pit big enough for his heart to fall through had widened in his belly. If this was going where he thought it was going. …

  Master leaned forward so that the chair he was on tilted on two legs. “I want you—and maybe your two friends, Kaykay and Sly—don’t ask me how I know ’bout ’em, I know everythin’ ’bout everythin’—to think ’bout becomin’ Rangers.”

  Oh my God. He wants me and my friends in his gang!

  “We’ll talk mo’ ’bout this next week,” Master told Robin. “Jus’ wanted you to start to think on it. Could be real good for you. Okay to talk wit’ your homeboy and homegirl ’bout this. Not your grandma. We out now.”

  He and the other Ranger headed for the door. As they did, Robin realized they hadn’t asked for their usual protection money.

  The moment they were gone, Miz Paige rushed over to Robin. “What did they want from you?”

  Robin’s head was spinning. No way was he gonna do what Master asked him.

  “They want me and my friends to join their gang.”

  “No!” Miz Paige thundered. “No, no, no!”

  Robin was about to say more, when he saw someone looking through the glass door of the Shrimp Shack.

  Not Master or his scary homeboy.

  Chantelle Price.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “What do you want? What do you want?!”

  By the time he ran to the door, she was gone.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Early Saturday morni
ng, Robin went with his grandmother to one of her endless doctors’ appointments at the community clinic. The doctors wanted to do a follow-up on her Lyme disease treatment and some other blood tests. Miz Paige took a fistful of pills a few times a day for achy joints, diabetes, and high cholesterol. It scared Robin a lot.

  If she dies, I’m all alone.

  As usual, the clinic was jammed. The waiting room had benches instead of chairs, and every inch was taken up with poor folks of all ages, sizes, and shapes. There were plenty of screaming babies too. It made Robin think that if any place in the hood needed a big donation of money, this was it. More doctors, more nurses, and a better waiting room.

  A million dollars could do the trick, he figured.

  He winced. He might have had access to that kind of money at the bank of badness, once upon a time. The thought made Robin mad at himself all over again.

  At ten o’clock, Miz Paige insisted that Robin head over to the Center. Saturday mornings there were special; the young members made and served a hot breakfast to the old people. The meal wasn’t fancy—sometimes it was just reheated fast food egg sandwiches or hotcakes. But since many of the old folks were living on Social Security, free food was a big deal.

  By ten thirty, Robin was in a white apron behind a buffet table, with Kaykay to his left and Sly to his right. They were all supposed to be helping the old folks with their food, but only Robin and Kaykay were actually serving. Sly was doing magic tricks.

  “Step right up and pick a card,” Sly told an old lady named Wanda. “Any card!”

  “Let Wanda eat her breakfast before you do the morning entertainment,” Kaykay growled. Then she turned to Wanda. “Can I help you with your tray, Wanda?”

  “That would be lovely, Kaykay,” Wanda said. Then she winked at Sly. “Maybe you can give me a private magic show sometime, you handsome boy.”

  Kaykay hooted. “Wanda, are you flirtin’ with Sly?”

  “He a handsome boy; he deserve some flirtin’,” Wanda said. Kaykay prepared Wanda’s tray with a plate of hotcakes, fresh fruit, and a cup of hot coffee. She escorted Wanda to her table and gently set down her tray.

  When Kaykay was gone, Sly lamented, “Only girl interested in me is a hundred zillion years old!”

  “That is not true,” Robin told him as he loaded plates for the other diners.

  “Well, Kaykay be all into you. Tell who be all into me?” Sly went on.

  Robin didn’t really have an answer for him. “Wanda said you’re handsome,” he deflected, mock-punching Sly’s arm.

  “Handsome? No way, no how!” Sly was aghast. “Handsome? I’m funny. I’m talented. I’m a good person. But I’m as big as a house.”

  “Lotta girls don’t care about that,” Robin assured him. He poured out five cups of coffee and put them where the senior citizens could easily reach them.

  “Oh yeah? Like who?” Sly challenged.

  Robin pursed his lips. He knew he was in no position to give girl advice to his buddy. Kaykay was his first girlfriend. At least, he thought she was his girlfriend, even though they’d never gone on an actual date.

  Does that mean I need to ask her out? To the movies or something? If I do, how am I gonna pay for it? I don’t even get an allowance!

  Money was still on his mind when he and his friends sat down to eat with Mr. Smith. Robin, Mr. Smith, and Sly all had hotcakes, bananas, and buttered biscuits. Kaykay the vegan had brought a salad of bean sprouts and organic tomatoes.

  “Maybe I should be eating that,” Sly said, looking at the salad dubiously. “Could help me drop three or four of my spare tires. Of course, that’d leave six or seven to go.”

  “Can we talk about something else, please?” Robin suggested. “A couple of Rangers came to the Shrimp Shack.”

  Mr. Smith swallowed a bite of his biscuit. “To pick up their payoff, no doubt.”

  Robin shook his head. “Nope. They didn’t take any money. Instead they asked me—and maybe Sly and Kaykay too—to join up with their gang. Said they needed some brains. Not knuckleheads like Tyrone and Dodo.”

  “I ain’t gonna be a Ranger!” Sly exclaimed. “No way, no how!”

  “Tyrone be worse than a knucklehead. He be walking dog doo.” Kaykay speared a tomato and forked it into her mouth.

  “What’d you tell them?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “I didn’t tell them anything. They didn’t want an answer. They just told me to think about it. But they wouldn’t take any money. Didn’t even ask for it.”

  Sly whistled. “I guess that means they be serious.”

  “What do we do?” Kaykay addressed the question not to everyone, but to Robin.

  “Well, we sure aren’t gonna say yes!” Robin responded.

  “But you don’t want to make them brothers mad, either,” Mr. Smith advised them. He sipped his coffee. “A mad Ranger is a bad Ranger.”

  “I think it’s good they’re askin’,” Kaykay told Robin. “It means they don’t suspect you—us—all of us—of nothing else.”

  “So what I gotta do is figure out a way to say no, but not make them mad at us.” Robin forked up the last bite of his hotcakes.

  “What I wish is that we could still get into that storage room,” Sly said softly. “I’d love to be the one to give my daddy the money for his mission.”

  Sly’s words silenced the table. Robin still felt awful. It would have been so easy to get enough money from the bank of badness to send three church busses to the hurricane zone. They could have taken enough money to send thirty busses!

  And the community clinic? We coulda built them a whole new building.

  “I wish we could do that for you, Sly,” Kaykay said honestly. “But that’s just not how things worked out. We saved the Center, we saved the school library—sometimes you gotta be satisfied with what it is, not what it might be.”

  “I know we can’t take mo’ money from the Rangers,” Sly agreed with her. “If only there was someone else bad we could hit up.”

  “There ain’t no one,” Mr. Smith said. “So let’s finish up our breakfast and play some cards.”

  “No, Mr. Smith,” Robin said suddenly.

  “No what, Robin Paige? You don’t want to play no cards? Whatchu want to do, then?” Mr. Smith asked.

  Robin rubbed his chin. He did that a lot when he was thinking hard. “I’m thinkin’ about what Sly just said.” He stood. “Who’s comin’ with me?”

  A half hour later, the four of them were standing on the opposite side of Garvey at Ninth Street, about a half block from the weird auto repair business.

  Robin pointed to it. “That’s the place.”

  “What about it?” Sly squinted in the midday sunshine. “It look normal.”

  “That’s what I thought too, at first,” Robin told him. “But I don’t think that now. Now what I think we should do is walk down Garvey one at a time so no one gets suspicious—Kaykay, you walk with me, it’s safer—and case the place. We’ll meet at Garvey and Eighth. Mr. Smith, you go first.”

  The kids hid out of sight while Mr. Smith took his walk. Three minutes later, Sly followed. And then Robin and Kaykay three minutes after that. Robin saw nothing out of the ordinary. Neither did Sly. However, when they met up again at Eighth and Garvey, out of sight of the strange business, Mr. Smith was agitated.

  “Lemme tell you what I saw. As I was passin’ the front, two dudes opened the garage. And then, like they’d timed it, another dude came flyin’ in behind the wheel of an old Honda Civic. Then the first dudes pulled down the garage door like the sunshine was poison,” Mr. Smith reported.

  “I saw a Honda go in there too,” Robin told them. “Last week. And no cars ever come out.”

  “Of course not,” Mr. Smith declared. “Cars come in, but no cars go out. Except in parts, of course.”

  “I don’t get it,” Sly said.

  “That’s ’cause you a good human bein’, Sly Thomas. Hondas are the most stolen car there is.” Mr. Smith was all excited. “Lad
ies and gentlemen, Robin in da hood has uncovered a chop shop in da hood! Where they take cars and chop ’em up for their parts. Then they sell the parts to whoever wants them. Cheaper than buying from a factory.”

  Robin rubbed his chin again. “Well maybe … if it is what it seems to be—and that’s a big if—maybe there’s a way for us to make a withdrawal.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Robin tightened his new black hoodie as he turned into the alley behind Ninth Street. He wore jeans and sneakers. In his pockets were his pepper spray and a flashlight. To his left was Sly, dressed the same way.

  It was late Sunday afternoon. They were on their way to the chop shop—if that’s what it was—to see if they could break in and maybe relieve the shop owners of some ill-gotten money. Kaykay couldn’t be with them, since her parents were having relatives over for Sunday dinner, and she couldn’t talk her way out of it. Mr. Smith, though, would be meeting them. Robin was counting on Mr. Smith’s lock-picking skills to get them into the building.

  After that, it’s up to Sly and me to find what we can find. Mr. Smith will stand guard outside.

  Robin was pretty confident there’d be no one inside. He and Sly had watched the front entrance for almost the entire afternoon, while Mr. Smith had been stationed at the alley. Two Latino guys left the shop at one thirty; neither had returned. The place was apparently deserted.

  Of course, there was always the chance they’d surprise someone.

  “You got your pepper spray?” Robin asked as they made their way along the alley.

  Sly nodded. “You buggin’, Robin. You asked before we left your grandma’s place.”

  “Always worth a double check. Good thing she’s volunteering at the church. We’d never be able to do this otherwise.”

  They got to the rear door of the chop shop and only had to wait a moment for Mr. Smith to hobble up to them. He wanted to go right to work on the lock, but Robin held him off.

  “Boost me up to the window,” he told Sly and Mr. Smith. “Lemme see if there’s anything to see.”