What Could Go Wrong?

by Willo Davis Roberts

  I’d have been angry but I was too scared. There was no doubt about it, the man I was afraid of was coming right to me, and there was no sign of Charlie or any of the security men.

  I gulped and tried to think what to do. If I screamed, would the people around me come to my rescue? Or would they pretend it had nothing to do with them and ignore it, even if The Enemy started to drag me away?

  I didn’t even know if I could scream. My mouth felt the way it had the time I was being initiated into one of Charlie’s clubs, when I’d been blindfolded and told I was going to have to swallow cod liver oil. I hated cod liver oil, and I braced myself for it and vowed I’d get even later. Instead they’d stuck a spoonful of feathers in my mouth. For a minute I thought I’d choke on them, or suffocate, before I got them all off my tongue.

  The Enemy had arrived. He came right up to me, but he didn’t try to take my bag. His face was ugly, and he was angry. “I think you took something of mine,” he said to my astonishment. “You stole my newspaper.”

  My jaw dropped open. My scream faded into a whimper. Where was Charlie? What was I supposed to do now?

  I tried to speak and at first all I could do was squeak. “I—I thought you were through with it!” I finally managed.

  “Well, I wasn’t. So I’d like it back.” He didn’t wait for me to reply; he simply bent over and pulled the folded paper out of the pocket of my flight bag and slapped it against his thigh. For a minute I thought maybe he was going to slap me with it.

  “Next time,” he said in a menacing manner, “keep your hands off other people’s belongings.”

  “B-but I thought you’d thrown it away, I d-didn’t know you were coming b-back—” I hadn’t stuttered since I had speech therapy in the second grade. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t listening, anyway. He turned around and walked away, leaving me dazed.

  He hadn’t struck me. He hadn’t threatened me with a gun. He hadn’t even stolen my flight bag.

  Was it all over now? Was this all that was going to happen?

  I was shaking. And angry. I still didn’t see Charlie, but when I turned Eddie was there.

  He was staring at me with his mouth open.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “What did it look like?” I asked, sounding waspy. “He said I stole his paper and he wanted it back, so he took it. What were you doing when he came up to me? He could have—have stabbed me or anything!”

  “He didn’t have a knife,” Eddie protested. “He didn’t hurt you.”

  “But he could have! Fat lot of good you and Charlie were!” I cried, feeling near tears I struggled to control. As upset as I was, I knew I’d never live it down if I bawled about it.

  And then I saw Charlie coming. I guessed he’d been crouched behind a divider at one of the adjoining boarding gates, and he didn’t seem in the least perturbed. “You okay, Gracie? What did he say to you?”

  I was trying to calm down. “Where were you? Why didn’t you come to my rescue, the way you were supposed to?”

  Charlie fell into his reasonable voice. “He didn’t touch you. Didn’t take anything except the newspaper that really was his, after all. I couldn’t call a security officer for that. And what good would it have done for me to walk out and confront him? I couldn’t very well demand that he let you keep the paper, could I?”

  “You could have given me a little m-moral support!” I blurted. “I was scared to death!”

  “You did great, Gracie. Didn’t she, Eddie? Only we didn’t get any evidence that he’s done anything wrong.” That seemed to be his main concern.

  “I don’t care about him anymore. Let’s try calling Aunt Molly again, see if she’s at her friend’s or has gone home or what. I wish I knew which hospital she took her friend to and I’d call her there. I want to get out of here!”

  “Yeah, okay, maybe you’re right. Let’s go back to the phones,” Charlie said, giving in.

  “Why did he want the newspaper?” Eddie wondered as we walked toward the bank of telephones. “I mean, did he fly all the way here from Seattle just to get back a newspaper? He could have bought another paper there a lot cheaper.”

  Charlie stopped walking to look at him with admiration. “Eddie, that’s a good thought. I mean, I’m sure he had a better reason for flying to San Francisco, but what was so important about the paper? And if he saw you picking it up, Gracie, why didn’t he say something at the time?”

  “He wasn’t anywhere around when I picked it up,” I said. “I looked for him, to be sure.”

  “How’d he know you were the one who had it, then?” Charlie chewed speculatively on his lower lip. “If he didn’t see you pick it up?”

  “She had the top of the paper with the name on it, Seattle Times, sticking over the edge of the pocket on the bag,” Eddie offered.

  “Sure, but plenty of people on Flight 211 had newspapers, and probably most of them were copies of the Seattle Times. And if all he wanted was the news, he could have bought a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle right there.” He gestured at a vending rack of papers.

  “Who knows?” I dug into my pocket for the scrap of paper that had the telephone number on it. “Maybe he wanted to finish his crossword puzzle. Though he’s sure not very good at them.”

  And that was when it hit me.

  The boys said afterward that I went so pale they thought I was going to faint.

  “What?” Charlie asked when I sagged against the side of the phone cubicle. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

  “Maybe,” I said weakly. “I mean—I think I know why he wanted the paper back. Sort of. It was because of the crossword puzzle.”

  “Oh, come on,” Charlie began, but I waved him into silence.

  “He’d done part of the puzzle,” I said. “Only he didn’t put in the right letters for the words it called for. I didn’t notice what he’d filled in until I tried to do some of the other spaces and they didn’t match up with what he’d written. Some of his fill-ins weren’t even letters; they were mostly numbers.”

  There was noise and movement around us, but it was as if we were in a cocoon of our own, a bubble that shut out everything but the three of us.

  “He left the paper on his seat on purpose,” Charlie said slowly, “for somebody else to pick up. Because there was a message in it. In the crossword puzzle.”

  And then we all three spoke together; even Eddie figured it out.

  “In code,” we said. “A message in code!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Eddie repeated the words, sounding dazed. “A message in code. Geez! What did it say, Gracie?”

  I remembered how he’d sat there reading his stupid old comic book instead of watching what was happening to me. It made my tone sarcastic. “It was in code, Eddie. That means it wasn’t written in plain English. I don’t know what it said!”

  “No, I mean, what were the letters written out? Maybe we can decipher the code. Can you remember what the letters were?”

  “He’s right,” Charlie said. “If you remember them, write them down right away before you forget what they were.”

  “You guys are still getting secret messages out of cereal boxes. This one isn’t going to say the treasure is hidden behind the couch, or whatever. This is something serious.”

  “Sure. We know that. Here.” Charlie reached over and took the scrap of newspaper out of my hand, turning it over so he didn’t write on top of the phone number Aunt Molly had given me. “You talk, and I’ll write. Let’s get it down. You do remember it, don’t you? It wasn’t very long, was it?”

  “No, but I’m not sure I can remember it all. I didn’t realize it was important,” I said, but I recited what I thought the letters and numbers had been, and Charlie carefully wrote them out and looked at them.

  “X’s. And more numbers than letters. Hmmm.”

  I had an unpleasant thought. “I was trying to fit in my words, and I erased a couple of his letters. They may be mad when they find out it’
s not all still there.” And come looking for me? I wondered, to ask what I’d erased? I’d thought it was all over when The Enemy walked away with the newspaper, and now it occurred to me that it might not be over, that they might shoot me if I didn’t tell them what I’d erased. I swallowed audibly.

  “The newspaper belonged to the guy in the loud shirt,” Eddie pointed out. “He must know what he wrote there.”

  “Then why is he here? Why did he come up and take it away from me?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, not making me feel any better. “If he wrote it there himself, and—say—left it on his seat for someone else to pick up—like Mr. Upton—only Mr. Upton saw Gracie take the paper. And the Upton guy knew he’d lost it so he quick went and called Hawaiian shirt, wherever he’d gone, so he’d know. That’s why he was late getting on the plane. Told them at the desk it was an emergency or something.” He paused to think, working it out in his head. “Let’s see. Upton knew somehow that Gracie gave the paper to Mrs. Basker. He saw her stick it in her flight bag—the old lady, I mean—and after he got on the plane he tried to get the bag away from her long enough to get the paper back. He apparently didn’t see her give the paper to Gracie, and when his attempts to steal the bag didn’t work—remember how he tried to get the seat next to Mrs. Basker? And how grouchy he was when the flight attendant said he had to sit where he’d been assigned?—he used some ruse to get her off where he could hit her over the head and search her stuff.”

  “He probably pulled a gun on her,” Eddie said, nodding. “Told her he’d shoot her if she didn’t go with him.”

  “Sure. And when he didn’t find the paper, he figured she must have passed it along to Gracie, who kept talking to her, so they started watching us. And when they realized Gracie actually had the paper, the guy in the loud shirt just walked up to her and took it.”

  It sounded horribly logical, but there were a lot of gaps. “But if the guy in the Hawaiian shirt wrote the message, why would he need the paper back? Why would he fly all the way to Portland to get it, when he apparently hadn’t intended to get on our plane in the first place?”

  “He didn’t remember what it was,” Eddie said promptly. “That’s why people write things down, like you wrote down the telephone number for Aunt Molly’s friend. It’s hard to remember numbers. Especially if you’re middle-aged, Mom says.”

  “Or maybe he was only a messenger,” Charlie contributed. “Maybe he didn’t write the message, he was just supposed to deliver it to someone at the airport—Upton—who would then carry it away to San Francisco.”

  “So why did the other man follow him, then?”

  “Follow us, I think. I’ll bet Upton wasn’t sure he’d recognize us, especially Mrs. Basker. So he wanted Hawaiian shirt along to be sure he got the right person. And the message is important; they couldn’t take a chance on losing it.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie chimed in. “I’ll bet the guy in the Hawaiian shirt even chartered a plane to catch up with us in Portland, to make sure they got the code message back.”

  “Only we weren’t supposed to land in Portland,” I objected, “so how would he know he could—uh-oh.”

  I didn’t like the idea that had just struck me. It struck Charlie at just about the same time.

  “Maybe,” Charlie said, almost whispering, “he made us land in Portland, to give him time to catch up with us. Maybe he called the airlines and told them there was a bomb on Flight 211. They wouldn’t take any chances with a planeload of passengers and crew. They’d come down as soon as they could, and call out the people who look for bombs.”

  Eddie liked that idea, which was more than I did. It made me sure that none of this was a joke, none of it was harmless, and that when the men realized they didn’t have the entire message they would be back—after me.

  “How could he know it would be Portland where we’d land, though?” I asked, hoping my speculations were crazy.

  “We were on a 727. It’s too big to land at any of the little airports anywhere else. Portland International was the only logical place, short of San Francisco,” Charlie asserted.

  “There wasn’t any bomb,” Eddie said, sounding awed. “They just wanted to get their newspaper back, with the message in it. Wow! It must be something really important!”

  “And crooked,” Charlie added. “Very crooked.”

  “And dangerous,” I croaked. “Dangerous for us.”

  After a moment of silence, Charlie handed me the scrap of the edge of the newspaper we’d written on. “Here. Try calling Aunt Molly again.”

  My finger was unsteady as I dialed; I held my breath, willing her to answer in person.

  “Hi, this is Molly Portwood! If my caller is Gracie, hang on, kids, I’ll be there as soon as I can—”

  I must have looked as bleak as I sounded. “It’s the same recorded message. She’s not back yet.”

  Eddie was less excited and more anxious than he’d been a minute ago. “Maybe we ought to call home and tell them what’s going on,” he said uncertainly.

  “What good would that do?” Charlie asked before I could voice my opinion. “It must be eight hundred miles or more and a couple of hours away even if they flew down here. A day and a half if they drive. They could murder all three of us before our folks could get here, if they wanted to.”

  “So what are we going to do? We’re sitting ducks,” I said. “Even in this great big airport, surrounded by people, we’re sitting ducks. Charlie, we’d better go to the police. Talk to the security guards and ask them to lock us up—in protective custody, sort of”—I watched TV shows, too—“until Aunt Molly shows up, or else have them call the regular police.”

  “We could do that,” Charlie said, but he sounded as if he were thinking again, and I knew that going into protective custody wasn’t what he wanted to do. “On the other hand—”

  “I don’t think I want to know what you think on the other hand,” I said, and I wasn’t kidding.

  As usual, he didn’t pay any attention to what he didn’t want to consider. “If we do that, chances are it will be hours—if ever—before we get anyone to believe us. To believe that bomb threat was to slow us down so these mysterious guys could catch up with us. To investigate this situation.”

  I started to shake my head. “No, Charlie. No, it’s not up to us to investigate it. We’re just kids, and we don’t know anything about—”

  He interrupted me. “We know it’s real. We know we’re not making it up because we watched one too many cop shows on TV. And we have the coded message—most of it, anyway, if Gracie remembered it accurately. Maybe we can figure it out. Maybe we can turn the tables—find those guys and watch them and see what they do. Make sure they don’t get away with their crooked business, whatever it is.”

  The first time I ever went swimming in the ocean and got knocked down by a big wave, I felt sort of like I felt then. Cold and numb and terrified.

  That time in the ocean my dad had been there to grab my hand and pull me out.

  Now there were only Charlie and Eddie, and I was beginning to think maybe Dad was right about Charlie: Maybe he did attract disasters the way movie stars drew photographers. He didn’t usually get hurt—not too much, anyway—but what if this time he wasn’t so lucky? What if none of us were lucky?

  In the middle of those hundreds of people traveling—maybe there were thousands of them right there in that one airport—I felt as alone as I’d ever been in my whole life. Dad was at least four hours away from me. Even if he could get an immediate flight it would take him almost that long to actually get here, by the time he arranged for reservations and drove to Sea-Tac from where we lived in Marysville.

  I couldn’t depend on my dad to save me this time.

  Charlie was watching my face, reading my emotions. “Eddie and I could keep on investigating, and let you go into protective custody, I guess,” he said.

  He sounded neutral, as if it didn’t matter whether I stayed with the boys or not, but I had a s
udden picture of going back home and having everyone know I’d been a baby, that I’d chickened out before they did. (At least you’d be a live chicken, a tiny voice said in the back of my brain.)

  My voice shook a little. “I don’t suppose they could actually do anything to us in such a public place, if we stick together. At least, they wouldn’t actually shoot where people would see them.”

  “They wouldn’t shoot you, anyhow,” Eddie volunteered, “not until you told them what they want to know, about what you erased from their message.”

  “If that’s supposed to be comforting,” I told him, my heart thudding, “you might as well know it isn’t working.”

  I had been standing there with the receiver to my ear, hearing all of Aunt Molly’s recorded message, and when it came to an end I’d hung up. I didn’t know what else to do. It seemed pointless to try to explain to the answering machine what was happening to us. She might panic and try to get to us so fast she’d wreck her car or something.

  “Eddie’s right. They didn’t kill Mrs. Basker. There’s no reason to think they’d murder us, either. What good would that do them?” Charlie and his logic again.

  “She’s an old lady, and she really didn’t know what they were talking about. They knocked her out. That could have killed her.”

  Charlie straightened up, throwing his shoulders back, and I knew he’d made up his mind what he was going to do.

  “You want us to take you to the security guards and leave you to explain what’s going on, see what they do?”

  I met his gaze bleakly. I was pretty sure I knew what they’d do. They wouldn’t listen, not seriously, and if they locked me up, it wouldn’t necessarily be in protective custody. I wondered if they had mental wards at Juvenile Hall.

  “Or do you want to stay with Eddie and me?” Charlie asked.

  My throat hurt so it was hard to speak. “I guess I’ll stay with you. Only don’t do anything really stupid and get us hurt, okay?”