Swindle Page 2

  “How can you find out for sure?” asked Ben.

  “There are experts in this kind of thing.”

  Ben’s eyes widened. “Palomino’s Emporium?”

  Griffin smiled bravely. “We’ll get an appraisal.”

  Palomino’s Emporium of Collectibles and Memorabilia was a fortress unto itself. It was located just past the main strip of town in a low building surrounded by a high chain-link fence that always made Griffin think of a prisoner-of-war camp. It had once been a stonecutter’s workshop. As young children, he and Ben had always been fascinated by the display of grave markers in the small courtyard. Now the headstones had been replaced by sickly grass and a large dog, who was thankfully asleep.

  Griffin indicated the front door.

  VINTAGE ITEMS BOUGHT & SOLD

  BEST PRICES GUARANTEED

  S. WENDELL PALOMINO, OWNER AND PROPRIETOR

  Although they lived less than a mile away, this was their first time inside the store. Kids almost never came here. It was more like a museum than a comic shop — a museum where you could look but not touch, and everything was under surveillance by grim-faced guards. There were no rows of shelves cluttered with books, toys, knickknacks, cards, and souvenirs. In Palomino’s Emporium, everything was frozen into its own glass case, with harsh lighting and security wiring. The whole place felt about as welcoming and warm as a bank vault.

  Ben leaned into one of the displays to see an action figure and gaped at the sticker. “Six hundred and forty bucks? Are they crazy?”

  A tall, cadaverous man with a ring of white hair around a bald crown walked over to him. “That’s because it’s a genuine 1966 Mr. Spock doll from the classic Star Trek TV series, still in its original packaging.”

  Ben frowned. “What kid has six hundred dollars to spend on a toy?”

  “Exactly,” the man agreed. “This isn’t a toy store. Rare collectibles aren’t for kids. They’re a serious investment.”

  “Are you Mr. Palomino?” Griffin asked him.

  “I’m Tom Dufferin, the assistant manager.” He stretched out a bony arm and indicated another man, who was behind a long counter, inserting comic books into precisely sized protective sleeves. “That’s the big boss over there.”

  S. Wendell Palomino was short, stocky, and surprisingly young — in his mid-thirties, Griffin guessed, not nearly as ancient as Tom Dufferin. His curly hair almost (but not quite) fit underneath a New York Rangers cap. Thick glasses made his eyes appear twice their size, like two eggs, sunny-side up. He turned those eggs on his sixth-grade visitors. “What can I do for you, young gentlemen?”

  Griffin pulled out his Babe Ruth card. “I’m thinking of selling this. I hear you guarantee the best prices.”

  The owner extended a pudgy hand and accepted the last surviving piece of the Rockford estate. His bushy eyebrows shot straight up to the Rangers logo on his hat.

  Griffin was immediately alert. “It’s valuable?” he asked.

  Palomino laughed shortly. “Well, it would be — if it was real. You see, a lot of the old card series were reissued in the sixties and seventies. This one — the Top Dog Bakery line — was knocked off in 1967. I’ve seen a couple of these before, but not in a long time. Excellent quality reproduction.” He held the card under a large magnifying glass attached to the counter. “You see this solid blue border? That was striped in the original. They weren’t allowed to make an exact replica, because that would have violated counterfeiting laws. That’s how we know it’s a copy.”

  Ben took in the crestfallen look on Griffin’s face. “Nineteen-sixty-seven was a long time ago,” he said hopefully. “So it’s still a little bit valuable, right?”

  “Absolutely,” the collectibles dealer confirmed. “Why, I saw a whole set of these once go for fifteen hundred dollars. But a single card like this — well, I’m a sucker for the Bambino. I’ll give you a hundred bucks for it.”

  Griffin sighed, his visions of solving the family’s money woes popping like soap bubbles. Still, he was a born negotiator. “A hundred and fifty,” he said instantly.

  Palomino chuckled. “You drive a hard bargain, sonny boy. Tell you what — one twenty.”

  “Sold.”

  The dealer counted out six crisp twenty-dollar bills from a thick roll and accepted the card in return. The boys peered over the counter as he stooped to turn the dial of a portable safe on the floor at his feet. He opened the door and locked his new acquisition inside.

  Griffin frowned. “If the card isn’t valuable, how come you need to keep it in a safe?”

  “This isn’t Toys ‘R’ Us, sonny boy,” lectured Palomino, out of breath from the simple act of straightening up. “We take security seriously at Palomino’s Emporium. A baseball card is the easiest thing in the world to swipe. Stick it in your pocket, and nobody even knows it’s there. It stays in the lockbox until it’s cataloged and ready for the display cases.”

  “Can’t somebody just steal the whole safe?” Ben put in.

  The dealer snorted. “You kids kill me. Steal the safe. That’s funny.”

  Griffin spoke up for his friend. “He means it’s not very big, and there’s a handle on top. You could pick it up and walk out the door.”

  Palomino beckoned the two boys behind the counter. “All right, you guys. Give it a try.”

  Griffin and Ben took firm hold of the handle and pulled. The lockbox didn’t budge.

  “Come on.” The dealer was grinning at them now. “Put some muscle into it!”

  Grunting with effort, they pulled with all their might. Nothing.

  Palomino burst out laughing in their faces. “It’s bolted to the floor!”

  Embarrassed, Griffin and Ben slunk out from behind the counter and headed for the door.

  Tom Dufferin offered a sympathetic smile as they passed by. “You’re not the first to try it. I doubt you’ll be the last.”

  “Pleasure doing business with you, young gentlemen,” Palomino called after them. “Come back any time.”

  As they passed the sleeping dog and stepped outside the fence, both boys relaxed visibly. There was something unnerving about Palomino’s Emporium — almost as if the store had its own energy field.

  Ben took a breath of fresh air. “Sorry you’re not rich.”

  In answer, Griffin took out his money, peeled off three of the twenties, and handed them to Ben. “Your cut,” he said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Ben protested.

  “Sure you did. You stuck with the plan when everybody else bailed.”

  That’s how it was with Griffin. Always the plan — even when the plan had nearly gotten them buried under a building.

  4

  The light was on in the garage.

  This was no big surprise — the light was always on in the garage. It was Mr. Bing’s workshop. As long as Griffin could remember, his father had been tinkering with some invention in there. But never before had Dad become so obsessed with one of his creations that he’d quit his engineering job so he could develop it full-time.

  The SmartPick™. Fruit picker of the future. When Griffin retreated to the garage later that afternoon to escape his parents’ argument, the prototype lay on the workbench. Griffin pressed a button, and the telescoping aluminum shaft whirred outward. He worked the control in the opposite direction and the pole receded into itself.

  There was nothing on the market like it. The FruitSafe™ picking mechanism used padded pincers and a twisting motion, rather than a cutting blade, for a zero-percent chance of damaged produce. It was a revolution in agriculture. Only …

  Who needs a SmartPick when there are perfectly good human beings with real hands?

  Griffin felt guilty for his disloyal thought, yet the common sense of it would not leave him alone. The Bings had bet their entire future on this so-called revolution. Otherwise, Dad would have kept his job, and nobody would be thinking about moving. It was thanks to the SmartPick that his parents were in the kitchen right now tearing their hair
over some bill they didn’t have enough money to pay. Their raised voices carried all through the house. Bickering, agonizing — sell A to pay for B, cut corners, spend less, economize, economize, economize.

  And the worst part was that there was absolutely nothing Griffin could do about it. Here he was, The Man With The Plan, and he might as well have been a blob of Play-Doh for all he could help his family. He was too young to get a part-time job. He couldn’t even hand over the sixty bucks from the Babe Ruth card without confessing the whole Rockford house escapade.

  As he set down the SmartPick, the pole brushed against the antenna of his father’s old black-and-white TV. For an instant, the ten-inch screen resolved itself into a very familiar face before returning to snow and interference.

  Huh?

  Griffin fiddled with the aerial until the picture returned. No, he wasn’t seeing things. Grinning out at him were the unmistakable features of Babe Ruth. It was the baseball card from the old Rockford house!

  He turned up the sound.

  “… when I bought the collection, I had no idea … but the instant I laid eyes on it … I mean, wow …”

  Griffin recognized the breathlessness of the voice — like the speaker had just run a marathon.

  The sunny-side-up eyes of S. Wendell Palomino appeared on the small screen.

  What’s a guy who sells overpriced Star Trek dolls doing on TV? Griffin wondered.

  The dealer stood in the courtyard of Palomino’s Emporium, holding up the Babe Ruth card for a group of reporters and cameramen.

  “There are a lot of similar cards out there,” one woman was saying. “What makes this one so special?”

  “It was printed in 1920,” Palomino explained, “Ruth’s first season as a Yankee. But look at the picture —”

  A cameraman zoomed in. “That’s a Red Sox uniform,” he observed.

  Palomino nodded enthusiastically. “Right. The Top Dog Bakery people wanted to compete with the cigarette and chewing gum companies that dominated the baseball card market. The presses were already rolling before the trade went through. They were able to call back most of the run, but two hundred copies were released into circulation. Only a handful are known today. That’s what makes this card especially valuable.”

  Griffin felt his blood boil. That liar, that cheat! He said it was a fake — a knockoff from the sixties! He invented a whole story about a solid border instead of a striped one!

  “How much is it worth, Wendell?” another reporter piped up. “What are you selling it for?”

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen.” The dealer chuckled, obviously loving every minute. “This isn’t the kind of item you slap a price tag on and stick in the window. The card will be sold to the highest bidder at Worthington’s Annual Sports Memorabilia Auction on October seventeenth. The opening bid will be” — he paused dramatically — “two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Griffin nearly choked.

  The reporters were astonished.

  “You think you can get that much?” asked a woman.

  “I think I can get more,” Palomino replied smugly. “Specimens from the famous T-206 set frequently sell for six-figure amounts. The legendary 1909 Honus Wagner card recently went for over two million. This misprint, showing the Bambino in a Red Sox uniform, is just as rare. The people at Worthington’s think it could be the second card in history to break the million-dollar barrier.”

  A million dollars!

  Griffin couldn’t believe it.

  It was right in the palm of my hands — enough to solve our money problems for life!

  “I’m going over to Ben’s!” Griffin hollered in the direction of the kitchen. He didn’t wait for an answer from his parents, who were still wrangling over the checkbook.

  An argument that wouldn’t be happening if not for S. Wendell Palomino!

  He jumped on his bike and pedaled down the driveway. He hoped Mom and Dad were too preoccupied to look out the window and notice that he was turning left, away from the Slovak house. He had another destination in mind.

  He arrived at Palomino’s Emporium just as the press conference was breaking up. The reporters and crew were filing out the opening in the fence, under the watchful eye of a Doberman pinscher.

  “ ’Scuse me, kid.” A soundman brushed past Griffin, bumping him with a microphone boom.

  Suddenly, Griffin realized that he had no idea what he should do next. He may have been The Man With The Plan, but he had thought no further than getting himself to the store.

  What could he say? That’s not his card, it’s mine? Technically, that wasn’t true. Griffin had sold it and had been paid in full. Yes, Palomino had tricked him by implying that the card wasn’t real. It was shady, underhanded, unethical, and even sleazy. But sleaze — by itself — wasn’t against the law.

  Besides, what if nobody believed him? He had no proof that he’d been the one to find the card, except for Ben’s say-so. Adults didn’t listen to eleven-year-olds. At the town meeting, they had refused to sit through a three-minute presentation about a skate park. Why would they accept the word of two kids when a million bucks hung in the balance?

  When the media people had gone, Griffin ventured up to the store. The Doberman blocked the front door, its teeth bared. On top of everything else that was intimidating about this place, add one attack dog.

  “That’s okay, Luthor,” came a voice from inside.

  Reluctantly, the Doberman backed away, and Griffin entered. Palomino was in his usual spot behind the counter. With effort, he tore his attention from the baseball card in his hand. “What can I do for you, sonny boy?”

  “You knew,” Griffin accused him. “The minute I brought you that thing, you could tell it was no fake.”

  “Wait,” the dealer said. “You’re not saying that the piece of junk you sold me was this card? I found this in a collection I bought in an estate sale on the West Coast. Good luck — it happens. Somebody up there must like me.”

  “So where’s my card?” Griffin demanded. “Show me my worthless piece of junk next to your Babe Ruth masterpiece.”

  “I already sold it. Took a bath on it, too. You were lucky I gave you as much as I did.”

  Griffin stared at him, blown away by the sheer dishonesty of the man. This wasn’t some kid; it was an adult, the owner of a business. How could he act this way?

  Palomino spoke once more. “A word to the wise: The world is a big fat scary place filled with people who’ll chew you up and spit you out if you give them half a chance. Consider this your first life lesson.”

  “I came to you for a fair deal,” Griffin sputtered.

  “Oh, come down off your high horse.” The dealer sneered. “You were after money, just like I was after money. Everybody’s after money. Some of us are just a little better at it, that’s all.”

  Griffin’s eyes narrowed. “You won’t get away with this.”

  Palomino laughed. “That’s where you’re wrong, sonny boy. You’ve heard that possession is nine-tenths of the law? In the collectibles game, it’s ten-tenths of the law. If it isn’t in your hand, you don’t own it. Now get out of my store.” He stuck a fat finger in his mouth and let out a sharp whistle.

  With a growl that was more of a roar, Luthor burst into the shop. The Doberman sprang at Griffin, who backed away, colliding painfully with a display case of Yoda action figures. The big dog’s snapping jaws were just inches from his trembling chin.

  “Easy, Luthor,” Palomino commanded with a chuckle. “Our friend was just leaving.”

  The dog withdrew a half step, but no more. Terrified, Griffin managed to sidestep the Yodas and retreat in the direction of the exit.

  “We appreciate your business. Please do not come again,” the dealer heckled gleefully as Griffin turned and ran out the door.

  Back on his bike, Griffin struggled to wrestle his spinning thoughts into some kind of order.

  (i) I’ve been CHEATED!!

  Picturing the sentence as it might have appeared in
one of his famous plans made him feel a little more in control. Cheated — that was exactly what had happened to him. And out of a lot more than a baseball card. A million dollars to develop the SmartPick. Even if the invention turned out to be a bust, that money would allow Dad to find a new job and start over. This was about the entire future of the Bing family!

  It was time for The Man With The Plan to embark on the most important plan of his life.

  But what could that possibly be? A lawsuit? The Bings could barely pay their mortgage. Where were they going to get money for lawyers?

  No, there was only one way to get the card back.

  Palomino had stolen it from him.

  Griffin had to fight fire with fire.

  5

  Ben’s eyes very nearly popped out of their sockets. “You want to pull a what?”

  “Shhh,” whispered Griffin. It was lunch recess and the playground was crowded. “A heist.”

  “Like in the movies? A robbery? That’s stealing!”

  “Not stealing,” Griffin amended. “Stealing back. There’s a big difference.”

  “Are the police going to think so?”

  “What would the police think about a store owner who rips kids off?” Griffin challenged.

  “S. Wendell,” Ben said with a sigh. “Never trust anybody whose name sounds like swindle.”

  “He’s the ultimate Swindle,” Griffin agreed. “He sure swindled me. And the only way to get that card back is to take it. What do you say?”

  A hand came down on Ben’s shoulder. “I say it’s time for Mr. Slovak’s allergy medication,” announced Nurse Savage.

  “Oh — right!” Ben exclaimed, startled. The last thing he wanted was for this robbery talk to be overheard by the school nurse. He began to follow her through a maze of whirling jump ropes.

  Griffin grabbed his friend’s wrist. “Hey, if your allergies are so bad,” he asked in a low voice, “why weren’t you sneezing from all the mold and dust in the old Rockford house?”