Minor Characters
Del
Del is a popular kid at Moose’s school and one of the after-school baseball game team captains. He’s very upset about Piper’s scheme to run classmates’ laundry through the Alcatraz laundry system, and so his father sends the warden a letter informing him of the scheme.
Mrs. McCraw
Mrs. McCraw is a distant relative of Mom’s. Some time before the events of the novel, she told Mom to put Natalie in an asylum—and Mom asked her to never come back.
Miss Bimp
Miss Bimp is Moose’s unsmiling and matronly Advanced English teacher.
Pete
Pete was Moose’s best friend in Santa Monica. Though Moose writes to Pete a few times after he moves, they gradually grow apart.
Mrs. Mattaman
Mrs. Mattaman is Theresa and Jimmy’s mother. She has her fifth child, a son named Rocky, a week or two after Moose’s family moves to Alcatraz.
Meeger
Meeger is a boy at school who plays baseball with Scout and Moose.
Mrs. Caconi
Mrs. Caconi lives in the apartment next to the phone, and as such, she’s the one to alert other residents when they have a phone call. Moose thinks she’s ill-suited to this job, as she’s overweight and struggles to climb the stairs to upstairs apartments.
Bea Trixle
Bea Trixle, Mr. Trixle’s wife, is one of Moose’s family’s neighbors. She gives perms in her kitchen and thus runs the only “beauty salon” on Alcatraz.
Mr. Trixle
Mr. Trixle is a guard on Alcatraz.
Weasel
Moose and Piper encounter Weasel, an Alcatraz inmate, on the boat headed to San Francisco for an appeal. Piper explains that he knows as much about the law as trained lawyers do.
Mr. Purdy
Mr. Purdy runs the Esther P. Marinoff School.