PONS Die drei ??? Fragezeichen Soccer Gangsters

1. An Evil Foul

Peter was in extreme pain. Justus saw the Second Investigator fall down in slow-motion.

"Peter!" Justus screamed, but his friend couldn't hear him. Taking big strides he ran down the narrow stone steps and almost bumped into Elizabeth and Kelly. The girls belonged to the medical team that takes care of injured players. They were running onto the playing field behind two men carrying a stretcher. Justus wanted to follow them, but a boy with an armband held him back. "Not you," he said rudely "you don't belong here." Justus gave him a dirty look but stopped at the side line. He could see Peter's belly quickly moving up and down. Kelly was worried and bent over her friend.

Almost all of the players jogged up to them and stood in a circle around the injured boy. The referee signaled to the helpers to hurry. Justus felt his anger growing. Here was a seriously injured player lying on the ground and this jerk, was reacting as cool as a cucumber.

"Idiot," he hissed. Carefully they lifted Peter onto the stretcher. Then the helpers and their patient disappeared behind the wide swinging doors into the first aid room.

Justus wasn't interested in soccer until his high school team made the varsity league. The rules weren't hard to understand for him, but he still wasn't a real fan. He was only half interested in today's match as well. The only reason he came along was because Peter had become the midfield-star of the team in the past weeks.

"Hey!" Justus went back to the boy from the security squad. "How did that happen?"

The other boy looked at him with pity. "During the counterattack after the corner ball, the boy from the 'Angels' covering on the left missed a cross." He seemed to use as many special technical terms as possible. He wanted to show off as an expert of the new favorite sport of many teenagers and also wanted to make Justus angry. "Your man got the ball and the Angels' sweeper swept him away."

"Well, they're stupid to still play with a sweeper, it's really old-fashioned!" the First Investigator said. He wanted to stand up to this show-off. At the same moment the door of the first aid room opened and Kelly stormed out. "It's probably the cruciate ligament," she called, "it's either overstretched or a bit torn. He has to be x-rayed."

"I have a problem," Justus said. "I would like to go along to the hospital but my cousin is arriving today. He is staying with us for a while. I promised Uncle Titus to go along to the airport."

"No problem," Kelly said. "Elizabeth and I will go along with Peter. We'll call you afterwards, okay?"

Justus nodded and was relieved. In the past he often felt that both girls and their whole cheerleading squad were quite complicated. But that changed totally ever since Bob and Peter's girl-friends started playing soccer. They were also responsible for organizing tournaments.

Two hours later Justus and Uncle Titus were standing in the airport waiting area. Because the air traffic controllers at the airport were on strike, the chaos here was worse than usual. Several signs were up about the strike - the air traffic controllers wanted to have more breaks during working time and they needed more workers. A few weeks ago there was almost a collision in the sky over Los Angeles. The result of the investigation showed that it was the fault of an overtired air traffic controller in the tower.

"Have I ever met Jimboy before?" asked Justus.

Uncle Titus shook his head. "Aunt Mathilda and I were in Chicago after he was born. But you weren't around yet."

Aunt Mathilda already told Justus about the complicated relationships between his relatives. His mother and Jimboy's father had a mutual father, who was Uncle Titus' father's brother. Understanding this was no problem for Justus, the mastermind. Justus wanted to explain to Peter and Bob how he was related to Jimboy. But they waved it off and said they didn't care.

"I can't wait to see if we look alike," the First Investigator said.

"I doubt it," Uncle Titus said. "Jimboy's father, Derny, is very, very tall. He's two feet taller than anyone else in the family. Jimboy inherited his talent for soccer from him."

When the first travellers came out of the gate Justus craned his neck to get a better view. The first one he saw was a blond guy, who seemed really nice. He had a duffle bag and was wearing cowboy boots. But he didn't even look at Uncle Titus. Justus knew that Jimboy had Uncle Titus' photograph with him so he wouldn't miss him. Next, a red-haired boy in a track-suit came along, who was looking at the people waiting.

"Hi," a deep voice on their right suddenly said, "I'm James Jonas."

Justus looked around surprised. He had seen the tall guy with the long ponytail when he came out, but never thought he could be his athletic cousin. He looked more like a musician or a painter.

"I'm Titus Jonas," Uncle Titus said, "and this is your cousin Justus." "Hello, Jimboy." Justus and Jonas shook hands and smiled.

"Jimboy?" he repeated. "Nobody in Chicago calls me 'Jimboy' anymore."

"Here we always call you that when we talk about you. Do you mind?" Justus asked. They were walking to the baggage claim area. James shook his head. "Actually no," he answered. "Maybe it's not too bad to say goodbye to 'James'."

Even though Jimboy was only five months older than Justus, he was much taller. He was wearing baggy jeans and a casual sweater. But you could tell he was in good shape. They fetched Jimboy's duffle bag and fought their way through the crowd to the exit. A few minutes later they turned onto the highway.

"Have you ever been on the West coast before?" Justus asked. Jimboy said no.

"Have you ever been in the East?" Jimboy asked. This time Justus shook his head.

Jimboy wanted to stay in Rocky Beach to attend Tamilton High School for at least half a year. The school's varsity soccer team was famous all the way down to Mexico.

Next weekend a national tournament with the best soccer talents would take place to promote the new professional league. And Jimboy was so talented he was chosen out of hundreds of candidates in Chicago.

"I want to become a professional soccer player," he said. "And I'm quite sure I can make it."

Justus liked his self-confident attitude. "We'll get along great," he thought.

Of course Jimboy knew that Justus had a successful detective agency with two friends. But that was all he knew, so Justus told him all about the Three Investigators.

"We can't count on Peter at the moment," he finally said. "He was the victim of an evil foul this...