As Shank listened to this tale of woe, a smirk began to appear on his cinder-block features. And the more miserable, desperate, and tragic the narrator became, the wider the smile grew, until Sheldon Brickhaus was positively beaming.
Griffin was outraged far beyond the point where he could worry what Shank might do to him. “You’re sick, you know that? This is the first time I’ve ever seen you smile, and it’s only because somebody else’s life is totally ruined! Thanks a lot!”
“I’m not smiling because you’re in trouble,” the burly boy cackled. “I’m smiling because you’re lucky!”
“Lucky?” Griffin seethed. “I’m going on trial for something I didn’t even do! And I’ll be found guilty for sure, because nobody’s ever going to believe what happened. The only thing that could get me off the hook is the ring!”
Shank took Griffin by the shoulders, shaking him like a rag doll. “You’re so stupid, Justice — I love that about you! You can’t see the forest for the trees! Think! A pack rat — don’t you know what that is? It’s nuisance wildlife!”
Griffin stared at him. “You bought that fruitcake idea? You think a pack rat found my retainer, got carried to school with it, and then swapped it for the ring?”
“Nuisance wildlife is my family’s bread and butter, man! What you just described — that’s practically Pack Rat Behavior One-oh-one.”
Griffin was thunderstruck. Of all possible explanations of what had happened to the ring — the original four suspects and the Jets-hating custodian — Savannah’s pack rat theory was by far the craziest. Yet here was Shank acting like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
The burly boy was pink with exhilaration. “My old man goes up against pack rats and a whole lot worse every day — and I’ve been watching him for fourteen years! I could catch a pack rat standing on my head!”
“But —” Griffin had given zero thought to Savannah’s rodent story because never in a million years could he have imagined that it might be true. Now his brain was rebooting, examining the problem from every possible angle. “But even if you catch the pack rat, you won’t have the ring. That could be anywhere.”
Shank dismissed this with a wave of his ham-sized hand. “Once I’ve got him, I can make him lead me to the ring. This is doable, Justice.”
Griffin regarded his tormentor in suspicion. There was no trace of malice or trickery in Shank’s face. For whatever reason, this bully honestly wanted to help him. Still, he had to ask. “What’s in this for you? What do you care about clearing my name?”
Shank nodded slowly, as if he himself wasn’t sure of the answer. “We Brickhauses — we’re not exactly a high-achieving family. We don’t excel, as the teachers say. In fact, we stink at pretty much everything. But this is what we do. For Bill Gates, it’s computers. For us, it’s nuisance wildlife. What are the odds that the skill set you need is going to turn out to be what I’ve got? A million to one? That’s destiny, Justice. It’s meant to be.”
For the first time, Griffin noticed something familiar in Shank’s cement features. It was something he normally saw only when looking in a mirror — the energized excitement of a scheme coming together.
Griffin and Shank had something in common.
The scourge of Jail For Kids was a planner!
22
Ben dragged his feet all the way home from school. Without Griffin walking by his side, the trip was depressing and arduously uphill. Ferret Face may have been the master of the wake-up nip, but he was no replacement for your best friend.
In science, Ben’s new lab partner turned out to be Darren Vader. Like life minus Griffin wasn’t hard enough, Ben had to be paired with one of the possible reasons Griffin was gone in the first place — if it didn’t turn out to be Tony or Celia White or Dr. Evil, or even Mr. Clancy.
Just thinking about the suspect list made his head spin.
“I can’t risk getting acid on my hands during football season,” Darren had announced today.
So Ben did all the work while his partner studied the Seahawks’ playbook. Ben could never bring himself to stand up to Vader, Griffin-style. It was reason number 147 why he needed Griffin back — after Always admits he’s cheating at Monopoly but before Juvie is no place for the greatest friend in the history of the world.
He could see his house, but he wasn’t anxious to get there, even after a long day at school. Most of the allure of his front door lay in the knowledge that, sooner or later, Griffin would be knocking at it.
Now Ben wasn’t sure that would ever happen again.
A boy wearing construction boots sat on the front walk, dismantling an anthill with king-sized heels. Ben was amazed he hadn’t noticed the newcomer sooner. He was not much taller than Ben himself, but the kid was built like an M1 tank — massive and muscular, with a large, square, crew-cut head.
Spying Ben, he stood. His brawny frame was as wide as it was tall. “You’re Slovak, right? I recognize the weasel in your shirt.”
“Ferret,” Ben corrected nervously, all while thinking, Who is this hulk, and what does he want with me?
The newcomer grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Sheldon Brickhaus. We’ve got a mutual friend.”
Light dawned on Ben. This was Shank from JFK! Crushed fingers were a small price to pay in exchange for a lifeline to Griffin.
“Is Griffin okay?” Ben asked.
Shank let go and stomped on some escaping ants. “He told me to bring you up to speed on the plan.”
The plan! Never before had those words been such music to Ben’s ears. Had Griffin actually found a way out of this black hole?
“There’s a plan?” he barely whispered.
The reply was a slap on the back that very nearly knocked him flat.
“Welcome to Operation Dirty Rat.”
BRAINSTORMING MEETING — DUKAKIS HOUSE — 8:45 p.m.
In attendance: SLOVAK, Ben; BENSON, Pitch; KELLERMAN, Logan; DRYSDALE, Savannah; DUKAKIS, Melissa; BRICKHAUS, Sheldon; FACE, Ferret; LUTHOR.
Via videoconference: BING, Griffin
Shank was completely unruffled when Luthor approached him with teeth bared. “Cute puppy,” he commented mildly.
“Why did you bring the dog?” Ben asked Savannah. The Doberman was a fact of life at the Drysdales’, but he expected Melissa’s house to be Luthor-free.
“It was the only way I could get out,” Savannah explained. “My parents are all over me except when I’m taking care of the animals.”
The team sat in a circle on the floor of the small bedroom. Melissa, the hostess, started the meeting with the click of a mouse. Griffin’s face appeared on her laptop screen.
“Thanks for coming, everybody,” he greeted them. “Guys, meet Shank. Shank — the team. Now, we all know there’s a possibility that Savannah’s pack rat is at school, and that he’s got the Super Bowl ring hidden there somewhere. The objective of Operation Dirty Rat is to catch him and get him to lead us to his stash.”
“And we do this how?” asked Pitch in amazement.
“Piece of cake,” Shank said confidently. “It’s kind of a family tradition for us Brickhauses.” He helped himself to a potato chip from a big bowl and tossed one to Luthor, who caught it in midair.
“Shank’s our nuisance wildlife specialist,” Griffin informed them. “He’ll be running the operation with me.”
“With you?” echoed Savannah. “You’re under house arrest. How are you free to go rat catching at the middle school?”
Melissa supplied the answer. “Griffin’s PEMA hub transmits a unique code to a monitoring system in the police station. If I can hack in and clone that code, I might be able to rig a pocket transmitter to send the same signal.”
“Which will tell the police I’m at home being a good little boy,” Griffin finished.
Melissa nodded. “So long as the unit is within range of the bracelet. Which it will be, since you’ll keep it with you.”
“What about the rest of us?” asked Savannah.
r /> “The school’s never empty,” Griffin told them. “Teachers and administrators come in at odd hours to work on things. They can’t find out we’re there ring hunting. And don’t forget Mr. Clancy. Remember — there might be more than one rat in this scenario. Just because we’re after the rodent doesn’t mean we’ve eliminated the other suspects. We have to be careful.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Pitch. “Create a diversion?”
Shank shook his head seriously. “We need more time than that. First we have to catch the pack rat. Then we have to follow him to the ring.”
“No diversion lasts that long,” Ben agreed darkly.
“Except one,” Logan put in. “Hail Caesar.”
Griffin frowned. “The school play?”
“Wednesday is opening night,” Logan enthused.
“But the school will be full of people!” Ben protested.
“People watching the play,” Logan amended.
“Not when they’re going to the bathroom.”
Logan assumed an expression of haughty dignity. “I have created a Julius Caesar so riveting, so multidimensional that no one will be going to the bathroom. For my Caesar, they’ll hold it in.”
Shank regarded Logan oddly. “Is this kid for real?”
Pitch nodded. “He does a scooter wipeout that could win a Golden Globe.”
“It’s perfect,” Griffin decided. “Logan’s play is our cover. Melissa’s on electronics, Shank handles nuisance wildlife, and we’ve got Savannah as our rodent behavior expert. Pitch on climbing; Ben for tight spaces. It’s a plan!”
They went around the circle. All groundings and punishments would be over by Wednesday, all team members ready and willing. There were nods of agreement and determined grunts of “We’re in” and “Let’s do it.”
Shank was impressed. “Man, I thought I was in the middle of a dweeb convention! You guys are my kind of people!”
An uneasy murmur was punctuated by the smack of Luthor’s tongue as he helped himself to the rest of the chips.
None of them wanted to be Shank’s kind of people.
23
OPERATION DIRTY RAT – EQUIPMENT LIST
9 (nine) animal traps – Shank
1 (one) rodent harness – Savannah
1 (one) climbing rope – Pitch
3 (three) walkie-talkies – Griffin
1 (one) fishing rod …
Griffin put down the notebook, trying to blink away a pounding headache. Operation Dirty Rat had not yet even begun, and he was already stressed. There were so many fine points that needed to be ironed out before zero hour on Wednesday. His parents, for example. They’d never let him leave while under house arrest, and sneaking out was no good, either — not for hours. What if they checked his room and found it empty?
No, Mom and Dad had to be sent away someplace. But where, and for what reason?
A single blown detail could bring the entire operation crashing down around his ears. Hard experience had taught Griffin this.
The planning session was taking place at the ping-pong table in the basement, while Melissa probed with a screw driver inside the PEMA hub, which was bolted to the floor. That was another source of his jitters. One false move could alert the police.
Chill out, he soothed himself. Melissa knows what she’s doing….
Her voice was so soft that he almost missed it. “Ready,” she announced.
“Really? That’s — uh — great. Are you sure? I mean — uh — what’s ready?”
She held out an old cell phone with the backing removed and the wiring exposed. “This handset generates a digital signal that matches the hub on the floor. If you shut down the hub and turn this on, it will transmit to the police station directly. We have to test it, of course.”
“Of course.” Griffin accepted the device, handling it as if it were filled with nitroglycerin. He had faith in Melissa, but he didn’t relish the prospect of more face time with Detective Sergeant Vizzini.
She read his mind. “Well, if it doesn’t work, better to know now than on Wednesday night,” she reasoned. “If the police get an alarm signal, you’ll be home. They’ll figure it’s a glitch in their system.”
Griffin took a deep breath. “Okay, on three. One … two …” He powered on the converted cell phone at the same instant that Melissa clicked off the hub.
The transmit light on the floor unit winked out. Griffin’s heart jumped up the back of his throat. But —
He pulled up his pant leg and checked the indicator on the PEMA anklet. Solid green.
They waited. Three minutes. Then five. No sirens in the distance. No insistent pounding at the front door.
“It works?” he asked.
“I think so,” she told him. “In here. Now we have to try it outside the hub’s range.”
Right. Who cared if the device did the trick in the house, where Griffin was allowed to be anyway? The real test would be to take it beyond the two-hundred-foot limit.
They headed upstairs. Mom was out and Dad was in his workshop, experimenting with different bait trays for the Vole-B-Gone. They were safe for the moment — so long as a stray police car didn’t pass by.
“Let’s go.”
Griffin wasn’t sure why he was so afraid to walk on his own lawn. He did this every morning en route to the JFK bus. The anklet wouldn’t begin to flash its warning until he reached the road.
He clung to the transmitter with white knuckles. If Melissa was right, the device would trick the PEMA system into thinking he was still in the house.
He stepped down to the blacktop. Anklet check: no blinking.
Two more strides took him to the middle of the street. Nothing. He crossed the road and jogged onto the opposite lawn. The anklet was now at least a hundred feet out of range, and the indicator still showed solid green.
It works! It really works!
Since the cell phone was now acting as the hub, all he had to do was hold on to it. He could be miles from home, yet the device would never be far from the bracelet on his ankle — well inside the two-hundred-foot limit.
“Melissa,” he called, his voice low despite the triumph he felt. “You’re a genius.”
Her eyes were covered by her curtain of hair, but her lips betrayed a rare smile.
A loud mechanical clanking disturbed the quiet of the block. Griffin watched in horror as the Bings’ garage door began to open. He saw his father’s shoes … pants … shirt — in another second, the whole guy would be standing there with a perfect view of his house-arrested son!
Griffin dashed across the street and up the walk in a desperate bid to outrun the rising door. He flung himself inside just as the mechanism clicked off, and Mr. Bing stepped onto the driveway.
“Oh, hi, Melissa,” he said, noticing the shy girl. “I didn’t know you were coming over.”
“I was just leaving,” she told him before starting for home.
Her work there was done.
24
At two o’clock on Wednesday afternoon — zero hour minus five — Mr. Bing was at his computer, browsing through farm blogs. For people who worked from dawn till dusk, farmers certainly seemed to be quite an online community, always willing to share their expertise. But no one seemed to have any idea what bait to use to trap the orchard vole.
His frustration had been growing in recent weeks. The SmartPick and Rollo-Bushel were both fully operational. If he could only perfect the Vole-B-Gone, it would round out his resume as an inventor and establish him as a major player in the orchard world.
He chuckled ruefully. The voles, apparently, had other plans.
A chime alerted him to the arrival of a new e-mail. He called up his inbox. The message was from Dalton Davis of Davis, Davis, and Yamamoto, the law firm the family had hired to represent Griffin.
Mr. and Mrs. Bing:
I would like to confer with you as soon as possible on the subject of a break in your son’s case. As I’m in court all afternoon, would it be pos
sible to meet at the Four Corners diner at 7:30 p.m? I apologize for the short notice, but I think you’ll be pleased with the outcome.
Dalton Davis
“Honey!” he called excitedly to his wife. “Come and see this!”
Mrs. Bing hurried into the room. “A break in the case!” she repeated. “That sounds hopeful!”
The Bings had no illusions about their son. Griffin was capable of spectacular mischief and had proven it more than once. But to see him go down for something he hadn’t even done was the ultimate torture. Could this be the first ray of hope to penetrate the black cloud that had surrounded the family for weeks now?
Eagerly, Mr. Bing typed a short reply: Thanks — we’ll be there. They had met at this roadside restaurant before. It was located about halfway between Cedarville and the offices of Davis, Davis, and Yamamoto in New York City.
The couple joined hands. The shadow over their son’s future was almost unbearable. But perhaps there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Mrs. Bing’s eyes fell on the folded copy of the Herald on the desk beside the mouse pad. Celia White’s column was on the front page. The headline read:
CMS VISITS ANCIENT ROME WITH HAIL CAESAR
Her melancholy returned. “The school play,” she said sadly. “While we’re meeting with lawyers, fighting for Griffin’s life, other parents will be bundling their kids into costumes and watching them perform.”
Her husband nodded unhappily. “The worst part is seeing him locked in the house like a criminal. That used to be his school. Now he can’t even buy a ticket and go to their play.”
What Mr. and Mrs. Bing did not know was that Griffin was very much going to the school that night — not to watch the play, but to lead the team in Operation Dirty Rat. And the e-mail they believed was from their lawyer had actually come from the laptop of Melissa Dukakis.
TONIGHT — 7 P.M.
CEDARVILLE MIDDLE SCHOOL
PROUDLY PRESENTS
HAIL CAESAR
A TRAGIC STORY OF POWER AND BETRAYAL