Bounced Read online

  To the usual suspects

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  Chapter 1: Borsalino Bounce

  Chapter 2: Balcony Bounce

  Chapter 3: World’s Best Bounce

  Chapter 4: Boyfriend Bounce

  Chapter 5: Banjo Bounce

  Chapter 6: Bullfrog Bounce

  Chapter 7: Both Sides Bounce

  Chapter 8: Bump Bounce Boogie

  Chapter 9: Bottoms-Up Bounce

  Chapter 10: Backfire Bounce

  Chapter 11: Brown Rice Bounce

  Chapter 12: Big Money Bounce

  Chapter 13: Business Bounce

  Chapter 14: Black Mamba Bounce

  Chapter 15: Meant-to-Be Bounce

  Chapter 16: Third Base Bounce

  Chapter 17: Beach Bounce

  Chapter 18: Bounce Back

  Chapter 19: Bandits Bounce

  Chapter 20: Aurora B Bounce

  Chapter 21: Bye-Bye Bounce

  Chapter 22: B&G Bounce

  Chapter 23: Bandana Bounce

  Chapter 24: Butt Out Bounce

  Chapter 25: Bob's Bounce

  Chapter 26: Better Bounce

  Chapter 27: Big Time Bounce

  Chapter 28: Believe-It-or-Not Bounce

  Chapter 29: Baby Bounce

  Chapter 30: Back Pocket Bounce

  Chapter 31: Biggest Bounce

  Appendix One: Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

  Appendix Two: Bad Bounce

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  In the beginning, it was simple: I wanted to be a detective and I needed something to detect. How that led CC, Zal and me to everything that happened, and now to this — well, I’m hoping telling it will help me understand.

  I’m also not sure what it means. Maybe nothing. Wiley Kendall asked me the other day if I’d learned anything from it all. Be careful what you wish for, is what I answered, but I’m not sure I believe that. If you were careful about wishes, there’d be no thrills at all.

  CHAPTER 1

  Borsalino Bounce

  My career as a detective started with a bad bounce, so maybe I should start there. I’d gone with my friends Zal and CC to the Fidelity Bank on 3rd Avenue. Zal needed to get some birthday money out for a new ball glove, an Arturo Rocinante infielder’s model, from Good Sports in the next block. The ATMs were down so he was in line with a lot of others, waiting for a teller. It was a hot Saturday in June and the bank was air-conditioned, so it was fine with me that sleeping turtles probably moved faster than Zal’s line.

  I was no stranger to banks. My Aunt Jenn, who I lived with, used to be a teller at one. CC had gone to a variety store to get a Popsicle. I waited in the cool inside the bank, by a table with free coffee laid on, passing the time with Zal’s bouncy ball. That ball was pretty zingy, and even though I was being careful with it, just making little tosses, it got away from me and rabbited off across the bank’s polished floor.

  I spun after it and smacked headfirst into the middle of someone hustling toward the front doors. It was a soft middle. I grabbed the guy in a one-way hug to keep from falling over. He gave a little oof of surprise and we danced around for a second, my head in the armpit of his blue coat. I smelled the laundry soap they use on clothes you buy from the Goodwill and glimpsed a green-and-white tote bag from a local grocery in a gloved hand. Then he shook me off, and I stumbled on, yelping “Sorry!”

  He was out the doors almost before I could turn around. I caught a glimpse of blue coat and ball cap behind people coming in, the guy kind of hunched over as if I’d hurt him. “Sorry,” I called again, which was pretty useless.

  A lady with a lemon-sucking frown handed me the bouncy ball. I was slinking back to my spot when another lady, dressed up and with a name tag, strode past with a set of keys and locked the doors.

  Turning to everyone, she announced: “Sorry, folks, no cause for alarm, but we’ve just been robbed. The robber has already left the building. There’s no danger. You may leave if you wish, but we ask you to stay if you can. Police are on their way. They may want statements from you.”

  Naturally, the whole place started buzzing. I hustled over to Zal. He hadn’t seen a thing. “I was practising,” he said. Zal showed me how he was walking a quarter across his knuckles. He wants to be either a magician or a major-league shortstop. It’s all in the hands, he likes to say.

  Listening to everyone else though, it didn’t take long to realize the bank robber was the guy I’d bumped into. That gave me a little chill, I can tell you. Then, when someone said, “Borsalino Bandit,” everyone was talking at once. The Borsalino Bandit had been robbing banks in our city for weeks. He was a bearded guy who wore a big hat to keep his face from security cameras. The cops were so frustrated they’d offered a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward.

  “This guy didn’t have a big hat,” I said to Zal.

  “He’d have to change things up a little.” Zal squinted behind his glasses as he thought it over. “Or people would suspect him the moment he walked in. It stands to reason.”

  Zal had nothing to tell the cops, so he left to meet up with CC, who was peering impatiently in the window. We agreed they’d come back for me after he got the ball glove.

  I knew I should wait for the police, and I wanted to. I was an important witness, maybe. Plus, it was exciting. I’d been reading a whack of detective stories and this would be a good chance to see how the cops operated — even though I knew from the stories that amateurs and private eyes were almost always smarter.

  The police arrived a few minutes later. When they found out about how I’d bumped into the robber, one of them — Detective Yee — asked to take scrapings from under my fingernails, and a whole bunch of questions I really couldn’t answer. Then her boss asked me the same stuff all over again. His name was Sergeant Castro. He was a flat-nosed, gum-chewing guy in a grey suit, balding, black-haired and not big, but he looked as if trucks would bounce off him.

  “Duncan … Fortune?” He peered at the notes he’d been given. We were in someone’s little office in the bank. “Why can’t cops write neater?”

  I didn’t know why. Instead, I said again that I was almost thirteen years old and going into grade seven at Studies Institute, that I lived with my Aunt Jenn, why I was at the bank and that I hugged the bank robber.

  “Studies Institute?” said Sergeant Castro. “Impressive.” He didn’t sound impressed. Chew, chew, chew, went his jaw. “You like it?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m only starting there in September.” Zal and CC were too. I didn’t mention that.

  He nodded. “Okay. Business.” He squinted at the notes. “You didn’t see the guy’s face?”

  “No, just his jacket. It was blue. I was chasing a ball,” I explained. It sounded pretty lame. I added, “I think he had a blue cap. I saw that after. And he had gloves, leather work ones.”

  “And a shopping tote full of stolen money,” Sergeant Castro said, chewing some more. He sighed. “Well, we have other descriptions, including a green cap and a black one, and a brown one, but we’ll get something from the cameras. Anything else come to mind? A fancy belt buckle? Shoes? A smell?”

  “Laundry soap,” I remembered, “from the jacket. Like the kind you smell on clothes from the Goodwill.” I stopped. I didn’t want Sergeant Castro thinking Aunt Jenn and I got all our clothes there. We didn’t, just some. “And french fries, maybe.” I hurried on, “He had a soft middle.”

  Sergeant Castro nodded glumly and worked his gum. “You’re making me hungry. Well, on the bright side, no one got hurt.”

  “Was it the Borsalino Bandit?” I asked.

  Sergeant
Castro shrugged. “Wouldn’t we all like to know. Could be a copycat.”

  “Is there really a fifteen-thousand-dollar reward?”

  “That there is, Duncan, but I’m afraid your evidence is a little thin to qualify. Anyway, I doubt we’ll be in touch again, but here’s my card. Call the number on it if you think of anything else. And thanks for trying. I can tell you’re the kind of kid who’d do his best to help us. Have fun at SI. I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  “How come?”

  “Went there myself. If they still have it, avoid the tuna noodle hot lunch.”

  Zal and CC were waiting outside. Zal was wearing his new glove. CC was pacing, in spite of the heat.

  “Finally,” she said. “What did you tell the cops?”

  “There wasn’t much to tell. Anyway, that’s not important.” The rest just spilled out: “That had to be the Borsalino Bandit. There’s a big reward, right? I want to catch the Borsalino Bandit.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Balcony Bounce

  But wait. I see now that to understand what happened next, I have to tell you about Studies Institute, The World’s Best 100 Detective Stories and Lamar Del Ray. (I knew writing this was going to be hard.) I also see how Zal’s bouncy ball linked everything together. Every bounce made a mark in a crazy connect-the-dots pattern of clues I didn’t notice till it was too late. Maybe you’ll see it before I did.

  Okay, so. Studies Institute is a special school downtown, for smart kids, run by the university. Back in January, Miss Linton, our teacher at Park Lawn School, suggested to our families that CC, Zal and I should apply.

  I could see Zal and CC doing that, they were total brainers. Zal, especially, was pumped. He did a little research and said not only was their computer science department super cool, he figured he could make the baseball team. Me, well, I wasn’t so pumped. I didn’t think I was a brainer; Miss Linton said I was “creative.” She’d really liked this story I did before Christmas, about how I’d started to suspect about Santa way back in grade three, after we left a sandwich out for him Christmas Eve, and next morning I found peanut butter on Aunt Jenn’s pillow. Later, I started writing my own story with the characters from Zombiology, and Miss Linton posted it for me on a fanfiction website and told me to keep writing.

  When Aunt Jenn heard about SI, she was all over it. “Of course you’re going, Skeets.” She always called me Skeets or Skeeter. She said it was because when I was little I buzzed around like a mosquito all the time. Now she was doing the buzzing.

  “But you have to pay to go there, and you always say that—”

  “Money’s tight,” she finished for me, waving her fork. We were having dinner at the time. “And it is. It was tough when the bank let me go. You know that. But now that I’m working again things are getting better. Come spring I bet I can get lots of extra hours. And maybe Gram and Grandpa can kick in. I’m creative too, you know. And Miss Linton says there’s a financial aid package we can apply for, and you’ll have to help out. C’mon, you’re going to write the entrance test and we’re gonna go for it.”

  An entrance test? Money raising? Going downtown to school instead of around the corner? Becoming a brainer? This was turning into something bigger than I felt comfortable with. Truth to tell, I kind of liked life the way it was. “Why can’t I just be smart at Park Lawn?”

  “Because I don’t want you doing what I did, getting bored and dropping out.”

  “No one drops out of grade six. I just don’t want to go to a nerd school.”

  “You don’t want to keep with CC and Zal? They’re nerds?”

  Well, yeah, they were kind of, but in a cool way. And I did want to stick with them; they were my best friends. Things were getting complicated. Aunt Jenn was a good arguer.

  “Listen, Dunc. It’s three hundred dollars just to write the test. This is not fooling-around stuff, kiddo. Promise you’ll do your best, and I’ll do my best for you.” She arched an eyebrow over her iced tea. I promised. She put down her glass and smiled. Aunt Jenn had a smile so wide it could wrap around you. I’d seen it save her from speeding tickets too. She said, “But your best still won’t beat me at cribbage.”

  “I have homework.”

  “Soon as you’re done. I’ll be shuffling the cards.”

  The entrance exam was in March. We all got in. I was amazed I made it. I think the only reason I did was because one choice for the essay question was Describe and explain the best way to survive the zombie apocalypse. I’d done a lot of thinking about that and had some good tips. I can tell you later if you want. (See Appendix One.)

  Anyway, to celebrate, Aunt Jenn sprang for pizza, a movie and The World’s Best 100 Detective Stories, a set of little hardback books with crumbly yellow pages that I’d found in the Goodwill. Aunt Jenn and I read a lot, but practically always books from the library, so owning these was special. “Just don’t get any ideas,” she kidded me.

  The stories in World’s Best were old but good. Whenever I read a good story I want to be like the hero, so for a little while I wished I was a brilliant detective, solving cool mysteries. But this was before the Borsalino Bandit, and our neighbourhood wasn’t exactly a hotbed of crime. With nothing to detect, I decided to make up my own mystery instead. I was about done with zombies, and I even had a hero figured out: private eye Nick Storm, smart as a whip, cool as a cucumber and tough as nails. I know that is a lot of similes, but I found them in World’s Best and they’re exactly right.

  Problem was, I had no mysteries for Nick Storm to solve, either. I was stumped. That’s where the bouncy ball and Lamar Del Ray come into it. A few weeks later, on a warm Saturday in May, I was changing light bulbs for Wiley Kendall, the building super of the eight-plex we lived in. Getting paid for chores around the building was my way of helping save up for the SI fees. Wiley Kendall stood by my ladder, his big broom leaning against the wall. He was going on about his favourite subject while I worked fast as I could. His favourite subject was Aunt Jenn.

  “That bank was nuts to let your aunt go, everybody’s favourite teller.” Aunt Jenn had worked in the B&G Trust branch in the local plaza.

  “She likes her new job,” I said, to cut it short. If I didn’t, we’d talk again about how the bank manager fired Aunt Jenn because she “wasn’t a team player.”

  “If your boss won’t admit a rule is dumb, she’s not worth working for anyway,” Aunt Jenn told me at the time. These days, she drove a truck for Aurora B Nurseries.

  “She deserved better,” Wiley Kendall groused. “She bringing my order home with her tonight?” Now that Aunt Jenn was there, Wiley placed all his garden orders for the building with Aurora B.

  “I guess. Done.” I jumped down, bumping the broom. The metal handle hit the floor with a hollow clatter that echoed in my head. “Gotta go do science homework,” I called, and ran for the stairs. I was expecting Zal and CC any minute. We had a project planned.

  CC had gotten a new phone as her reward for getting into SI. Zal had gotten a new trick from a magic shop as his, and as a bonus, the bouncy ball: a rock-hard little planet of bright red something. “Zectron,” Zal told us. “Ninety-two per cent coefficient of restitution.” Zal loved that kind of stuff.

  What it meant was it bounced like crazy. “Science homework” was just our cover story. Really, we were going to make a YouTube video of bouncing the ball from my third-floor balcony. Zal had the ball and his fielder’s glove, CC her phone and two fish-landing nets. Her family was all about outdoors stuff.

  Snagging the rebound from a three-storey throw was tough, even with fishnets and a fielder’s mitt. Filming was even tougher. That ball was wild. There was a deal of window rattling, ricochets off garbage bins and a close call with a chipmunk. Also a lot of yellow paint splotches after the ball hit the garden bench Wiley Kendall had painted that morning. It was a good thing he’d gone out jogging before we started.

  “Man,” Zal said, impressed. “You could knock yourself out with one of these.” He had the
ball in his scuffed old fielder’s mitt.

  “You could knock a moose out with one of those,” CC said, waving her landing net. She would know. “My throw.” She grabbed the ball. “Ready?”

  I aimed the phone. The instant CC heaved the ball at the pavement, Zal yelled, “Wait!”

  I saw some of the next part on the phone screen. The ball rocketed down as a rusty SUV and a cube van both pulled into the parking lot. The ball hit gravel, shot sideways, BONGGED high off the cube, smacked the hood of the SUV and caromed into the bushes, just missing a ground-floor window. Brakes squealed, a garbage bin toppled.

  We all ducked back inside before anyone could spot us. Voices sounded down below. I peeked out. Two bearded men in big hats were standing beside their vehicles, looking up. The cube van had a logo: Aurora B Nurseries. Uh-oh.

  “I better go down,” I said. “You stay here.”

  By the time I got downstairs, Wiley Kendall had come puffing back from his jog. “That’s crazy. Nothing falling off my roof,” he was saying to the drivers.

  “That’s not a optic allusion,” the SUV guy said, pointing at his hood. It wasn’t the only dent, either. The rumble of the SUV’s muffler almost drowned him out. Apart from his dark brown beard, everything about him was tan: workboots, cargo pants, baggy safari shirt and a cowboy hat with one side of the brim curved right up against the crown.

  I walked slower. Wiley Kendall saw me. “You know about this, Duncan?”

  “What? Oh, no, I was just, uh, looking for something.”

  “That fell?” His eyes narrowed behind his steamy glasses. He looked up. We all did. I saw now that the second landing net was dangling out our balcony rails. I also noticed I had streaks of yellow paint on my hands.

  “Well, kind of.” I shoved my hands in my pockets.

  The SUV guy laughed and climbed back into his vehicle. A magnetic sign plate on the door hung a little crookedly. Gator Aid, it read. He said something out the window to Wiley Kendall that got lost in the muffler noise.

  “Why you want to know?” Wiley Kendall said. “That’s private information.”