I’ll fast-forward a few weeks here to spare you on the boring stuff. That’s right, for two whole weeks nothing bad or crazy had happened to us. In fact, boring is about the only way I can describe the first two weeks following our deal with Jimmy. Or normal. Either word works.

But I’m not complaining. I mean, I loved it. Now that I was truly out, life couldn’t have been better. Kids had even stopped coming to me to plead for help within days of our arrangement with Jimmy.

It didn’t take long for the word to spread about Jimmy reopening my business. And apparently he hadn’t been joking around: he was pretty good at it. The kids I’d talked to all said he was fast, fair, and efficient. I even heard he got JJ Molina his Roberto Clemente rookie card back. Some kids seemed to think Jimmy might even be better at running the business than I had been. Which was annoying. . . . I mean, it’s like Jimmy said, building the bike is harder than riding it. But, whatever. If they were all happy, then I was happy. Especially since Jimmy was cutting Vince and me in on all of his profits just like he’d promised. He was making the cash drops right on schedule, every Monday and Thursday like clockwork.

We had a pretty good system for the drops, too. One of Jimmy’s guys would package our cut and wrap it in sealed plastic, like in a Ziploc sandwich bag. Then with the cash hidden in his shirt he would go into the North Wing boys’ bathroom at 12:02, just after lunch had started. He’d stash the money in the bottom of the trash can underneath wads of used paper towels. A place where no sane, unsuspecting kid would ever randomly decide to stick an arm into.

Then at 12:05 Fred would enter the bathroom and retrieve the bag. He’d enter a stall and remove the cash. He’d take his cut out, which was pretty minimal, and then conceal the rest of the cash in his backpack. Then sometime after lunch and before afternoon recess he’d walk past my locker and slip the cash in through the vents.

That might seem complicated. And, yeah, it was. But we just couldn’t be too careful with Dickerson on our tail the way he had been. Vince and I learned over the years from watching a lot of mobster movies like The Godfather that dirty money had to be laundered to conceal where it came from. We wanted our link to the current business to be as weak as possible.

Anyways, on that third cash-drop Monday when I opened my locker, my knees almost buckled. There was a small lake of cash at the bottom of my locker. Seriously, I practically needed a boat just to fish out my gym shoes.

Later that day after school when I showed Vince and we counted the money, we could hardly believe it. There was more than one hundred dollars, all totaled.

“Mac, there’s no way this is fifteen percent. It has to be more!” Vince said. “I mean, if this is actually fifteen percent, then Jimmy just beat our all-time four-day profits record by two hundred and ninety-eight dollars!”

“That’s not just beating our record, Vince. That’s obliterating it.”

“How is that even possible? He’d have to see like ninety customers per day. There’s just not enough time for that to be possible. The numbers don’t add up, Mac. And numbers don’t lie. It’s like the TINSTAAFL axiom in action right before our eyes.”

My social studies teacher had taught us about that on the first day of class this year: TINSTAAFL (pronounced “tin-staw-full”). It means, “There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” Which basically means if a deal seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

All money going out in business, in life, in the universe, eventually needs to equal or reconcile with all money coming in. If we were making this much money, then who was losing out?

“He must just charge more money than we did?” I suggested. “Also, he might offer more of an express type service. You know, faster results but less personal attention and treatment. He goes for volume.

Vince nodded. “I guess.”

And so we added the money to our Funds, and didn’t talk about it again that week. Especially not after Thursday. Because that was when Vince and I realized Jimmy’s business practices were the least of our problems.