Panic in Pittsburgh Read online

  Travis struggled out of bed and eased himself to his feet. He began moving very slowly toward the bathroom.

  There were the voices again. Louder now.

  “Sunday morning!” one yelled.

  “I say tonight!” another shouted back.

  “It’s all set up for Sunday morning!”

  Travis stopped, listening. These weren’t voices in his head. They were real. Real voices coming from the room next door.

  There was a doorway between Travis’s room and the next one. It was a double door, locked on both sides. Travis knew this because, of course, it was one of the first things Nish had checked when they arrived. Nish was convinced that if he could slip into another room, he might be able to look at an adult movie and have the charge go to someone else’s bill.

  The voices dropped, becoming more of a murmur, but every so often a word or two came through the closed door.

  “No!”

  “We do as Bert says!”

  “This is a joke!”

  Travis remembered – yes, remembered, it made him smile with relief – a trick Data had taught them when the Owls were convinced a girls’ ringette team had taken over the suite beside them in a motel.

  The boys had heard giggling and were trying to listen through the wall to whatever it was the girls were saying. They hadn’t had much luck until Data went into the washroom and returned with a drinking glass. He moved his wheelchair up tight to the wall, placed the bottom of the glass against his ear, and pressed the other end hard against the wall.

  Data told them every word the girls were saying. They were talking about boys, he said. But none of them was called Travis or Lars or Nish or Jesse Highboy or Derek Dillinger or any other name belonging to a Screech Owl.

  Travis made his way to the washroom and found a glass neatly wrapped in paper. He undid the paper and returned to the door with the glass, placing it against his ear and then pressing tight enough to the door that the glass was snug against the wood.

  The voices were clearer now.

  “It’s the key, dammit,” one of the men was saying. “We won’t be able to get it until Sunday morning, and then we’ll only have an hour or so to pull it off.”

  Pull what off? Travis wondered.

  The other voice was angry. “This is not something you want to do in broad daylight,” he said. “We’ll be seen.”

  “Can’t,” the first man said. “And we can’t do it the night before, or tonight, because we don’t have access to the key.”

  “How do you know we will Sunday morning?”

  “Weekend shift for the staff. Our man will be in early and will make it so the key doesn’t work. When the guy comes down to get his key re-coded, our man will be the one doing it, and he’ll make a copy for us.”

  “Can we trust this person?”

  “He’s being well paid.”

  “Then what? How do we get it out of here without being seen? You’ve seen the parking area. There’s no place you can conceal something like that.”

  “We won’t be using the parking lot.”

  “How, then?”

  “We go down the fire exit, then around the corner of the building. It’ll be in a duffel bag and our man will be carrying a hockey stick – people will think he’s heading off to play somewhere. He’ll take the Incline up Mount Washington, and you’ll be up there waiting with the car. It’s simple.”

  “Sounds dangerous.”

  “You got a better idea?”

  “I guess not.”

  Travis let the glass slip and it crashed on the edge of the dresser, shattering loudly. Immediately the voices stopped. He could hear the door to the room opening, then banging closed, as if someone was going out for a while.

  Careful not to cut himself, he picked up the pieces of glass as best he could, wrapped them in the paper the glass had come in, and dumped them into the garbage in the bathroom.

  What had he heard? What had all that been about? What were they doing with someone else’s key? What did the man mean when he said they’d have “it” in a duffel bag and some guy would be pretending to be a hockey player?

  And what was that about the Incline and the car up top? There was no rink up there, was there? He wouldn’t really be going to play hockey, would he?

  Travis’s stomach growled. He was getting hungry. He craved a snack of some sort, only there was nothing in the room.

  But wait a minute. Nish’s chocolate stash! Travis went back to the dresser and yanked open the lowest drawer. They were still here. He grabbed a Mars bar and went back to sit on the bed, slowly unwrapping the bar and even more slowly chewing the rich, thick chocolate candy.

  He had remembered something. Nish’s stash. That was a good sign.

  But what had just happened here? Had he really overheard some conversation about plans to steal something from the hotel?

  Maybe it had all been a dream. He’d been having crazy dreams ever since the concussion.

  It must have been a dream.

  12

  “You’re not going to believe this!”

  Sam’s face was nearly the color of her carrot hair. She seemed shocked and delighted at the same time – her expressive face twisting between amusement and alarm as she raised a hand to indicate Sarah should follow her.

  The Screech Owls were having a light practice skate. Muck wanted to make sure they kept sharp as they waited to find out which team they would meet in the semifinals. So far, the tournament had gone well for them: two wins following the overtime victory against the River Rats.

  Sam was leading the way, twisting through an equipment room toward the ice surface. Sarah could “feel” the ice in the air, the cold coming in through the door Sam had opened. The colder the air, the better the ice – and Sarah liked the coldness of this rink.

  “Look at that!” Sam said, pointing.

  Sarah heard it before she saw it: the sweet sound of a good skater – like the sizzle of a frying pan – cutting through a corner on fresh-flooded ice.

  She moved quickly to the boards behind the players’ bench and stopped fast. She couldn’t possibly be seeing what she was seeing.

  It was Nish. At least, she presumed it was Nish.

  It was certainly Nish’s body: there was no mistaking that chubby thing rounding the corner. He was wearing Jeremy’s new goalie mask with the Screech Owls crest painted over it.

  And the mask was pretty much all he was wearing. He had tied a sheet around his neck, and it flowed back like a great cape, a flag flapping in the wind he was making.

  He had on his skates … and his disgusting, frayed old gauchies. Skates, mask, underwear, cape – and not a single thing else.

  “Hey! Fat boy!” Sam yelled. She called him over with a gesture that looked like she was splashing water in her face. Almost as if she were trying to wake herself from a bad dream.

  Nish skated over, stopping hard in a shower of snow, some of which cleared the boards and landed on the two laughing girls.

  “What makes you think it is me?” Nish asked in a fake voice from behind Jeremy’s mask.

  “Who else would be so stupid?” Sam shot back.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah asked.

  “Practicing,” Nish said, using his normal voice. “Muck called a practice, so I’m practicing.”

  “Practicing for what?” Sam demanded.

  “I’m going to streak the final,” Nish said, matter-of-factly. “If there’s fifty thousand people in the stands, I’ll make the Guinness World Records.”

  “As what?” Sam sneered. “The world’s stupidest kid?”

  “Laugh if you like,” Nish said. “I’ll streak and I’ll moon them – and no one will ever know it was me.”

  “Then how will you get in the Guinness book?” Sarah asked.

  Nish pushed back Jeremy’s mask and winced, his red face steaming like a cooked lobster.

  “My cape,” he said, smiling smugly. He reached back and pulled the sheet up. “This will have
a huge I on it, for ‘Iceman.’ ”

  “And people will know that?” Sarah asked. “You honestly think that people in the stands will know you’re supposed to be the Iceman?”

  “Not supposed to be. I am the Iceman!”

  “They still won’t know who you are. All they’ll see is some sick kid in a goalie mask and an old sheet.”

  “Then I won’t have a mask,” Nish argued. “I don’t have to wear it. You watch! I’ll do it Sunday in the final.”

  “Thanks all the same,” Sarah said, turning to go. “But we’d rather not watch.”

  Nish snapped the goalie mask back down in place and took off, his sheet snapping behind him in the quick wind, then dropping down and entangling in his skate.

  He went down with a thud, spinning on his stomach toward the far net.

  The girls were in pain they were laughing so hard. Sarah could barely speak.

  “Good thing the Iceman is wearing those gauchies!”

  13

  Travis woke with a start.

  Where was he? Oh yeah, Pittsburgh. What time was it? Heck, what day was it?

  He lay with his head cradled deep in a pillow, not moving. Every time he opened his eyes in the semidarkness, it was as if new information flowed into his brain. It slowly came back. The injury. The doctors. The quiet room. The closed curtains. The slow but sure recovery. It no longer made him dizzy to sit up. He no longer felt ill walking to the washroom. He was eating well and hungry again. Breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? He wasn’t certain which one was next.

  He felt a lot better, but it seemed he’d been dreaming far more than he’d been awake the past few days. Some of the dreams had been silly – a dog that could talk, jet-propelled hockey skates, a permanent, year-round rink in his backyard – and some had been frightening – his head splitting open from pain, his family lost, him never playing hockey again.

  The sound of a door slamming in the hall reminded him of another door being banged, and then another dream he’d had came flooding back. The argument about what day to do something. The talk about the key that would be copied. The plan to use the Incline up Mount Washington so as not to be noticed. The guy faking he was just a hockey player carrying his stick and equipment bag off to practice or a game.

  It made no sense. It had to be another of those silly dreams.

  Travis got up and went to the window to pull back the curtains. He winced when the sharp sunlight poured in, but there was no pain. There was no pain, no nausea, no sense that he needed to lie back down right away in the dark.

  His eyes slowly adjusted and he looked out. He could see down toward the river and across to the city of Pittsburgh. He felt truly good for the first time since he had been knocked cold. He wanted to go out. It was the first time he had felt this, and it made him smile.

  He was getting better. And getting better fast. Maybe, he thought, he could even play if the Screech Owls were still alive in the tournament. But then he remembered what the doctor had said, how he needed to be cleared by his own doctor back in Tamarack. He knew Muck and Mr. D would never do something so foolish as to put an injured player back in the lineup.

  He turned to go to the washroom and jumped back. A pain like fire shot through his foot.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down. In the light streaming in through the window, something sparkled on the bottom of his foot. Travis brushed lightly at his naked heel and the pain shot through his foot again. He could see something sticking into his heel.

  A shard of glass.

  Ever so carefully, Travis pinched the sliver of glass between his thumb and forefinger and pulled it free. It slipped out easily, and a small drop of blood beaded on his heel. He reached for a tissue and dabbed it. There was no more blood. He put his foot down on the floor and stood again. There was no more pain. He had got all the glass out.

  Where had it come from? And then he remembered.

  He went into the washroom and checked the garbage can. In the bottom was a little paper parcel, and wrapped inside the paper were the jagged pieces of a broken water glass.

  Another memory exploded in his brain. He got up and almost ran to the dresser to pull out the lowest drawer.

  It was filled with chocolate bars. Nish’s stash. But one had been eaten: a Mars bar wrapper was off to the side. Travis knew he’d eaten that bar, and he knew when.

  The chocolate bar, the glass he had used to listen in on the strange conversation in the next room. It hadn’t been a dream. He really had heard it. The men really had been planning something.

  But what?

  14

  It was Saturday, the second-last day of the Peewee Winter Classic, and the Screech Owls were one game away from the final. They had played exceptionally well, even without Travis Lindsay in the lineup, but now they were about to meet the Portland Panthers to decide who got to play for the Winter Classic championship.

  The Owls knew the Panthers well. They had beaten them and been beaten by them in past tournaments. They had even got to know some of the players – Jeremy Billings, the slick little defenseman, and Stu Yantha, the tall and powerful center – and had come to like and respect them.

  Sarah was wearing the C. She had worn it before, so this was nothing new. She’d been the Owls’ first captain, but the C had gone to Travis when she went to play for an all-girls team, and it had stayed with Travis after she returned. They were both team leaders, and if there could have been two C’s, Sarah and Travis would have been the two Owls wearing them.

  She was beside Sam, the two of them dressing quietly in the huge football-team dressing room at Heinz Field. The other Screech Owls were scattered about, none of them – not even Nish – talking while they readied themselves for what they knew was going to be a very tough, hard-fought game.

  Most were fully dressed and finishing up tightening their skates when Muck came in and stood at the center of the room. It seemed he was about to make one of his special “speeches” – always using as few words as possible, always seeming slightly taken aback that he had to say anything at all. Muck wasn’t one for inspirational speeches. He also believed that players decided games, not coaches. He was unusual in that way, and the Owls loved him for it.

  Muck cleared his throat.

  “It’s a big game, kids. You know that. You don’t need to be told what to do or what to think. You know what to do, and if you haven’t already been thinking about this all day, you’re not hockey players. You don’t need any more coaches than you already have – but this game we’re going to add one, if you don’t mind.”

  “Who?” Fahd cried out.

  Muck gave him a withering look. He then turned to the door, where Mr. Dillinger was standing with a grip on the handle.

  Mr. D opened the door and in walked Travis. He was wearing his Screech Owls tracksuit and he was smiling through a deep blush.

  The Owls’ dressing room burst into cheers and screams of “Travis!” They rushed their red-faced little captain, high-fiving and fist-rapping with him, all of them so excited to see him back he couldn’t get a word in himself.

  Mr. Dillinger put his fingers in his mouth and blew his trademark shrill whistle.

  “Listen up, now!” he shouted. “Travis will be on the bench this game, but he won’t be able to play until we get back home and he gets cleared. But he’s feeling good enough to be out, and the doctor here checked him over and says he’s doing just fine. So, let’s get out there and get into the big game, okay? That’s what we came here for!”

  “For Travis!” Sam shouted.

  “Travis!” the other Owls screamed.

  Travis made his way to the visitors’ bench and sat in his usual place. He stuffed his hands in his tracksuit pockets and took in the sights. There were thousands in the stands, but they still looked empty. The rink in front of him looked tiny, shrunken, out of all proportion to the football stadium surroundings, but he knew it was just an optical illusion. The rink was regulation size. It was the stands that were Oly
mpian.

  The Owls were flying about the ice in a quick warm-up. Travis wished he could be out there with them. He watched Sarah take the far corner so fast her jersey snapped like a flag in the wind. He watched Nish dancing forward, backward, forward, backward in quick succession – the Iceman making sure his pivot was good and the edges of his skate blades right. Mr. Dillinger had done his usual perfect job of sharpening.

  “Hey, Travis!” someone called. Travis looked toward the home bench and saw little Billings making his way along the boards.

  Billings stopped in front of the Owls’ bench. “I heard you got hurt,” he said. “Okay now?”

  Travis nodded. “I’m good.”

  “Good man,” Billings said, reaching his stick out to tap Travis lightly. “See you back on the ice soon.”

  Travis just nodded. He was so struck by Billings’s little gesture with the stick that he could hardly swallow, let alone speak.

  The officials called for the game to start. Sarah came in opposite big Yantha at the face-off, and Yantha, just as Billings had done, reached over and gently tapped Sarah’s pads.

  “Good game,” he said.

  “You, too,” said Sarah.

  And it was a fabulous game, the puck moving fast all over the ice, the crowd much louder than Travis had expected, given the size of the stadium and the distance they were away from the action.

  Billings and Yantha combined on the first goal when Billings joined the rush, and Yantha simply dropped the puck in the slot and used his size to plow through Fahd and Lars on defense. Billings’s quick, accurate shot beat Jenny five-hole. She got up fast and swung her stick hard against the far post. But it hadn’t been her fault. No one could have stopped such a quick, hard shot.

  With the Panthers up 3–2 heading into the final period, Dmitri knocked down a pass from the Portland defense and broke in alone, his familiar forehand-backhand move twisting the Panthers goaltender out of the crease, and his backhand sending the water bottle flying.