It was a steal! It was money for jam!

But Spike kept a straight face as he spoke.

"I'll give you fifty cents each,"" he said, "Cash up front."

"Fifty cents!" gasped Collins, the smallest kid in my class, "That's good
money!"

"Tell you what," said Spike "I'll double it if you bring me some big
ones."

Collins had dollar signs on his eyeballs. He shook Spike's hand and
laughed.

"I'll get them for you, no sweat." he said.

That was what Spike did to people. He conned them. He'd offer some poor
kid a few measly cents and then make a killing. They did all the work. He
made all the money. That's what he did with Joe, the kid from Room 2. He
gave Joe a dollar for every egg from a certain bird's nest, which I can't
tell you the name of in case you get ideas, and then he sold the eggs to a
collector for twenty bucks each. Twenty bucks! Man, that was a killing.

Now he was doing it to Collins. Everryone knew Collins was broke. His
uniform was worn so thin you could see his underpants through the back of
his shorts. He never had any money for the tuck shop. His bike was a
rust-bucket.

Collins had to catch geckos for fifty cents each. That meant he had to
climb all over the hills, with a crowbar. He'd risk his life on the
cliffs, levering rocks out and dodging them as they fell. He'd reach into
dangerous gaps, grabbing the squirming bodies of geckos before the rocks
came down on his fingers. He'd spend hours working like mad to catch just
two or three, and then he'd get home tired and bleeding, with bruises on
his legs and knees, and all he'd get for his trouble would be fifty cents.

Spike didn't care. He thought most people were stupid. It wasn't his fault
they wanted to work like slaves to help him get rich.

Another con he got going was with comics. He offered us ten cents each for
any really old ones we had, even if they were ripped or scribbled on. It
seemed like a good deal. Trouble was, he was making heaps. There was a
dealer, somewhere overseas, who was offering top dollars for comics. Not
the latest ones. They had to be from a many years back, so Spike dumped
the useless, more modern ones, and made hundreds of dollars out of the
others.

No wonder he bought himself a new mountain bike that term.