Son of the Mob

Vince speculates about why it is that his father is letting him collect Jimmy’s debt. He thinks that it might be in order to throw the rumored “inside man” off of the adults’ trail, or perhaps it might just be to motivate Vince and to give him a life lesson.

At his New Media class in school, Vince discovers that his cat website is surprisingly popular. In the Meow Marketplace section of his website, there are many new ads for cats; these ads, however, are strangely worded. The cats are described in not typically feline terms, such as “a prime minister of a cat” and “a real eight ball” (129-32). Vince asks his teacher if he has any advice or insight, but his teacher is unperturbed: “What do you care if they don’t make any sense? The e-business economy isn’t about sense, it’s about traffic” (134).

Vince also discovers that he and Kendra have been nominated by a mysterious person for homecoming king and queen. He discovers this by finding a poster with their names on it hung up in the high school hallway. He immediately tears the poster down and confronts Kendra, suspecting her of having hung up the poster in order to make their relationship public.