What Could Go Wrong?

by Willo Davis Roberts

  Aunt Molly had to be somewhere in the terminal, I thought in rising panic. Had she heard Mr. Upton’s low command to hang up the phone? Or only the click when the receiver was replaced? Would she think Charlie had hung up accidentally, or would she know we were in danger?

  I’d expected that when Aunt Molly showed up we’d be okay. She was an adult. She’d know what to do. But she didn’t know where we were, and this airline terminal was as big as some small towns.

  Even if she reported to the security police, where would they start to look for us? Would they find us in time?

  I glanced at Charlie, who was walking briskly with Mr. Upton right behind him. He sensed that I had turned my head, and opened his mouth to say something, but Mr. Upton said in a tone that permitted no back talk, “Keep still.”

  The men were moving as if they had a definite destination in mind. What if they took us away from the airport? How would Aunt Molly or the cops find us then? If I’d ever thought Agent Santori was bluffing when he told us these men were very dangerous, I didn’t think so now.

  I remembered how huge San Francisco had looked from the air when our plane banked to approach the airport. Thousands of people, I thought, my mouth so dry I couldn’t even swallow. Thousands of places where they could hide three kids. Three bodies.

  It’s quite terrifying to think of yourself and your cousins as bodies.

  Max had always wanted to be an only child. Maybe now he was going to get his wish.

  “Go left here,” Mr. Upton said, and we turned into one of the side corridors. For a moment I felt a leap of hope, because some distance ahead I could see one of the security gates you have to go through so they can X-ray your baggage to see if you’re carrying weapons. But of course we weren’t going that far.

  “Hold it,” Hawaiian shirt said, and we stopped in front of one of those locked blue doors. Mr. Upton had a key, which he used, and the door swung inward. He nudged Charlie forward, ahead of him, and then Eddie and me.

  We were in a rather large room with couches and chairs covered with sheets of plastic. Two of the walls had been painted pale blue. The carpet had been torn up and a padding had been partially put back down, with several rolls of it stacked close to one of the newly painted walls.

  I heard the door click shut behind us and knew without checking that it had automatically locked. I was sure it would keep other people out, unless they had keys; would it also keep us in? Or could the door be opened from the inside? I wished the blood wasn’t pounding so hard in my ears; it was difficult to hear, or even to think.

  Not that anyone was saying anything so far. Hawaiian shirt swung the briefcase onto one of the plastic-covered tables; Mr. Upton produced a key to it and opened it up.

  I don’t think they intended us to know what was in it. Eddie and I couldn’t see, from where we were standing, but Charlie could. I saw his eyes practically bug out; he swallowed and averted his eyes. I thought he was trying to send us a message and I mouthed, “Drugs?”

  His head moved ever so slightly from side to side.

  “Money?” Eddie whispered.

  That was a mistake, and Eddie knew it as soon as we did.

  Both men turned, and their faces were menacing. Mr. Upton slammed the briefcase shut, but he’d stepped to one side and the lid didn’t come down before I’d glimpsed the contents of the case.

  It was money. More money than I’d ever seen in my life, all in neat packets. Laundering the cash they’d gotten from some kind of illegal business, Agent Santori had said, meaning they would make the cash seem legitimately earned by processing it through a legal business.

  They knew we had seen it. Hawaiian shirt grimaced. “You kids should have minded your own business.”

  There didn’t seem to be any sensible response to that, so we just stood there. It dawned on me that this wasn’t anywhere near as much fun as watching the same kind of situation on TV.

  “What are we going to do with ’em?” Hawaiian shirt asked.

  “We better call the boss,” Mr. Upton said after a moment’s hesitation.

  “He doesn’t like it very much when somebody screws up,” Hawaiian shirt reminded him.

  Mr. Upton gave him a savage look. “Well, who screwed up, buddy? You’re the one who left the newspaper where the kid could pick it up. And who let her keep it long enough to erase part of the message?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to have to leave Seattle,” Hawaiian shirt said, getting angry, too. “You should have retrieved the paper before the kid got off the plane!”

  Mr. Upton’s lips drew back in a snarl. “I thought the old woman had it! You stay here with the kids while I go find a phone. I don’t want to use the one in here. In fact I don’t even know if it’s still working. We can consider ourselves lucky that they’re redecorating the room right now so we have a place to be undisturbed. The workmen won’t be back before Monday morning.”

  He made it sound as if we would still be here Monday morning. Maybe, I thought, fighting dizziness, just our bodies lying here for the workmen to find when they came to finish their job. I could tell by Eddie’s face that he was thinking the same thing.

  “Leave me the gun,” Hawaiian shirt said.

  Mr. Upton gave him a scornful sneer, but he handed it over. “I should think even you could handle three little kids,” he said. I didn’t think they liked working together very well. From Charlie’s face I figured he was calculating how that might be to our advantage.

  I wasn’t too petrified to notice one thing. When Mr. Upton left the room, he didn’t use the key to open the door. It wasn’t locked from the inside, only from the outside.

  I looked at Charlie and Eddie and saw they’d noticed it, too. Charlie took a few steps, and though he didn’t move toward our captor, but away from him, it made Hawaiian shirt uneasy.

  “Stay where you are, kid,” he said.

  Charlie shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. I thought I saw what he was maneuvering toward, though. In the corner there were some cleaning tools, like brooms and a long-handled squeegee to clean windows and a paint roller that had a long handle, too, for doing ceilings and upper walls.

  We’d used broom handles, with no brooms left on them, for the villain’s and the prince’s swords in our play. My heart had already been pounding; now it was like thunder. It made so much noise in my ears I was afraid if Charlie whispered anything I wouldn’t hear it.

  Charlie went up and down a little on the balls of his feet, his legs spread apart for balance. He looked absurd in the plaid shorts and the San Francisco Giants shirt with the orange baseball cap. “How you doing, princess?” he asked me.

  The man with the gun jerked it toward Charlie. “Shut up,” he said.

  The play. How well did I still remember the play? We’d done it two whole years ago. But Charlie was feeding me a line from it, and beside me I was aware of Eddie tensing to spring. I was afraid my own muscles were paralyzed. What if we made a move and the man fired?

  “Don’t you kids try anything cute,” Hawaiian shirt said, and he sounded nasty. “This room’s practically soundproof—you notice you can’t hardly hear the jets taking off?—and I won’t hesitate to shoot all three of you if I have to.”

  “That’s what you’re planning to do eventually anyhow, isn’t it?” Charlie asked. There was a gleam in his eyes much like he’d had the time he proposed we all jump off the bridge into the Pilchuck River, when Dad came along and stopped us and told us we’d have broken our necks because the water was too shallow.

  No, Charlie, no! I was saying silently, but the rest of me—except for my mind—got ready for whatever was coming.

  “Don’t be stupid, kid. The boss may tell us to let you go.”

  And he may not, I thought, wanting to scream from the tension. Because we can describe you and your cronies, and we know you’ve got a whole briefcase full of money, and you knocked Mrs. Basker over the head, and we know you’ve got a key to get into this room. Probably not very many people hav
e keys. If we talk to anybody, they’ll catch you sooner or later. And put you in prison for a long, long time. And you know that.

  Charlie was looking at me, and I knew what he was waiting for. He didn’t dare say that final line aloud, not with that gun pointing at him, but he was thinking it right at me, and I understood.

  In the play I only partly remembered, the villain had sworn to keep me captive forever, and I’d screamed for the prince to come to my rescue.

  I opened my mouth and shrieked.

  “Help! Help, save me!”

  Hawaiian shirt was as nervous as we were, I guess. He didn’t shoot, but he was startled enough to lose his cool. He jerked toward me so the gun was wavering between me and Charlie.

  We all moved at once, and in different directions.

  Charlie grabbed the squeegee and swung it, connecting with Hawaiian shirt’s mouth. Eddie had the broom and slammed it into the side of the man’s head. I grabbed the only thing I could reach that was loose and not covered by plastic, which was a long decorative ceiling light fixture that had been taken down for the painting. It was heavier than I expected, which slowed me down, but it made a satisfying crash when I brought it down on the hand holding the gun.

  It got a little confusing for a minute or so after that.

  The gun skidded across the floor and Charlie kicked it. Eddie yelled “Bonzai!” and swung the broom again. Charlie came back with the squeegee from the other side, and they caught our enemy’s ears from both sides in a sort of sandwich effect.

  Just then the door began to swing inward. I saw it moving and closed my eyes. If Mr. Upton had orders from the boss to eliminate us, it was all over. They’d shoot us here in this practically soundproof room. We would be dead, and my little brother, Max, would get my room and my tape player and my—

  But the voice that spoke wasn’t Mr. Upton’s. It belonged to Agent Santori. My eyes popped open.

  He didn’t look as if he’d been shot or hit over the head. And he wasn’t alone. There were two other men with him. The only one who had drawn his gun was the young guy Charlie had declared innocent and harmless, the one in the patched jeans and colorless sweatshirt.

  We all froze as if we were playing that old game Statues. The man who had held us captive until a minute ago was the stillest one of all.

  Everyone but The Enemy let out the breath they’d been holding.

  Eddie and Charlie put down their weapons. Hawaiian shirt was swearing and wiping at his bloody nose.

  “Where were you?” Charlie demanded of the F.B.I. agent. “I thought you’d never get here in time!”

  “I was afraid they’d killed you,” I admitted, my voice wavering. “And then they were going to kill us!”

  Agent Santori gave me a small, tight smile. “Sorry I had to let you get so scared before I showed up, but we needed as much incriminating evidence as possible. We may be able to pin a kidnapping charge on them now, too. That’s an offense that should add a few years to your sentence, Donovan,” he said to the man who was glaring at us over a bloody handkerchief. “Get him out of here,” he told the young man who looked like a leftover hippie.

  “There’s another one, a guy who calls himself Mr. Upton,” Charlie said as the other two agents led our captor away. “He went to call his boss, to see what to do with us—”

  “I think they were going to shoot us,” Eddie added eagerly. He was still pale, but he was grinning.

  We followed the men out into the corridor, and stopped. Because there were more agents here—and they had Mr. Upton spread-eagled against a wall, searching him. He was swearing, too.

  One of the men swatted him on the shoulder. “Ah, ah, don’t use that kind of language in front of juveniles, Morales.”

  “His name’s Morales?” Eddie asked. “Not Upton?”

  “That’s one of his names,” Agent Santori said dryly. “Come on, get them out of here, fellas. I have some questions to ask you kids, though. Let’s go up to the security offices, where we won’t have an audience.”

  I finally found my tongue. “Our aunt’s looking for us—Molly Portwood, she had us paged, only when Charlie got on the phone Mr. Upton—Morales—made him hang up.”

  “We’ll find your aunt as soon as we’ve talked,” Agent Santori informed us.

  Actually, we found her before he asked us any questions. She was just coming out of the security police office, looking concerned until she saw us.

  “Oh, there you are! I had you paged again after we were cut off, but you didn’t call back.” She stopped and looked at us. “Good grief, I left you here alone too long, didn’t I? What will your folks think when you go home with those outfits? Well, I’m sorry it took me so long, but we got delayed in traffic as well as at the emergency room. I didn’t worry about you, I knew how self-sufficient Charlie is—”

  About that time it dawned on her that the tall, good-looking man with us was with us.

  “Is . . . is something wrong here?”

  I’ve said before that Aunt Molly is pretty. She has dark brown hair and dark eyes, and she was wearing one of those outfits that Aunt Joan thinks are “too extreme”—this one was butter yellow and had a swirly pleated skirt and only narrow straps over her shoulders—and I could tell Agent Santori thought she was pretty, too.

  He flashed his I.D. again and she let her mouth fall open. Even that way, she was pretty.

  “Miss . . . Portwood, is it? And these youngsters are your niece and nephews?”

  “Yes, that’s right. What’s going on? Has something happened?”

  “You might say that,” Charlie told her cheerfully. I was breathing normally again, too, although I felt sort of shaky.

  “I need to ask them some questions,” Agent Santori said. “It’ll take a little while.”

  “Now? You mean I can’t take them home and feed them? Look, they aren’t in trouble, are they?” Aunt Molly demanded. “I mean, you’re not arresting them, are you?”

  “No, no. But we do need to learn some particulars of the case we’ve just wound up. Perhaps—” He hesitated. “Well, of course it is getting late, and they’re probably hungry. Tell you what, Miss Portwood—it is miss, isn’t it? Why don’t I take your address and I’ll give you a couple of hours to get them fed, and then I’ll ask my questions at your place. More comfortable than headquarters, anyway.”

  Aunt Molly considered, looking up at him through sweeping dark lashes that Aunt Joan swears are artificial, and Mom says are real except for the mascara. “Well, I only intend to feed them pizza. We could always pick up enough for one more, if you’d like to join us, Agent Santori. That way I wouldn’t have to give you directions to my place; you could just follow us.”

  He didn’t hesitate very long. “That sounds like a great idea. I’ll pick up the pizza. Pepperoni or Canadian bacon? Or anchovies?”

  The way he said it, nobody would have dared asked for anchovies. Aunt Molly was the only one who liked them, anyway, and she didn’t say a word when the rest of us voted for pepperoni.

  In the car, on the way to Aunt Molly’s new house, I poked Charlie in the ribs with an elbow and leaned toward him to whisper. “I think she likes Agent Santori.”

  He never even heard me. “I hope he’s going to explain it all. The case, I mean. I’ll bet we guessed right about just about everything, but I’d like to hear the details. It wasn’t drugs, so what was it they were stealing and selling across state lines and even out of the country? It had to be something worth a lot to make up a whole briefcase full of money. What I saw was in hundred-dollar bills.”

  I doubted if real agents explained things to civilians the way they do on TV, but I didn’t say so. I wanted to know the details, too.

  I wondered if there was any way to keep my dad from hearing everything that had happened to us, and sighed.

  He wasn’t going to be happy about it, even if it had turned out okay. Maybe we’d be lucky and they wouldn’t mention us when the story came on television.

  Chapter
Seventeen

  Aunt Molly’s new house was on the top of a hill—San Francisco has lots of hills—and when it got dark we could see the lights coming on all over the city below. The bridges looked like sparkling diamonds across the black water of the bay.

  By that time, we’d finished our second supper—nobody mentioned how much we’d eaten at the airport—and Aunt Molly had called each set of parents to warn them that we might be mentioned on the news, but that there was nothing to worry about.

  I was glad she talked to my dad, not me. I didn’t want to know what he thought until he’d had a chance to calm down. I heard her say, “It wasn’t anything the kids did wrong, Don. They saw a crime committed, and the authorities are asking them some questions, that’s all. No, they don’t need a lawyer present, they aren’t accused of anything, nor suspects in the case. In fact, they helped solve it. They’ll tell you about it later, okay?”

  At least he didn’t demand to speak to me personally. I was grateful for that.

  What I wanted, though, was for Agent Santori to start explaining things. We were sitting around this big living room looking out at the lights, mostly on cushions on the floor because she didn’t have much furniture yet except for a blue couch from her old apartment; she sat on one end of that, and Agent Santori—who was generally called Jim, we’d found out—on the other end.

  He leaned forward and took the last piece of pizza, then got out a small notebook and started to ask questions, occasionally writing something down. We answered truthfully, sneaking a glance at Aunt Molly once in a while when we thought she might not approve of what we’d done.

  She rolled her eyes a lot, and when we told about finding Mrs. Basker unconscious she made a squeaking sound the way I do when I can’t come up with the right words. When he finally closed the notebook and stuck it into an inside pocket, though, she had her own questions.

  “Okay, now what was it all about? Where did the money come from? Who does it belong to?”