"I ain't goin' to New York."
"That's where you get your flight to London."
"How'm I gonna get out to the airport?" asked Carl, who suddenly noticed a yellow cab slowing down just outside the park.
"That's your taxi, Carl. "
"Give me the money. I'll get my own cab."
"If you had fifteen dollars in your pocket now, you wouldn't even be listening to me, much less willing to take a plane ride. I know how things work, Carl, believe me. That's my problem. Always has been. There's your cab, hurry up."
So Carl Schroeder, in the bloom of his twenty-third year with less than a quarter in his pocket, boarded the waiting cab for a flight to London. At least he would eat well, and that as much as anything kept him going. The voice was right. If he had fifteen dollars he would have had himself a hot dog, gone back to the poolroom, and tried to parlay the remainder into serious drinking money.
The cabdriver knew even less than Carl about what was going on. All he knew was that he was paid half in advance to pick up Carl and would get the other half after he left him at the airport.
On the flight to New York, Carl ate a sandwich and cadged an extra drink. But on the flight to London aboard the Gammon 787, there was nothing to cadge. Everything was given to him. All the champagne he wanted. Filet mignon. A second meal of lobster. Playing cards. Magazines. Silver worth pocketing, and a doozy of a saltshaker.
As the pilot announced they would shortly begin their descent into Heathrow, Carl knew the time had come to do his work. Grumbling about the demands of life, he left the first-class cabin and made his way down the tourist aisles. He noticed how much more crowded the seats were, how much more tired the travelers appeared.
As the voice had predicted, the flight attendants were busy in the aisle. Carl saw the coffeepot, a drip affair that kept a bowl of the dark liquid warm on a heater. Gingerly he moved it to the side, and as the voice had predicted, there was the Phillips-head screw.
He snapped out the cylinder that looked like a fountain pen, unscrewed the cap, and inserted the head of his screwdriver. A perfect fit. Several quick turns to the left and the screw came undone. He presed his hand against the almost seamless plate and it moved to the side.
Despite the voice being correct about everything so far, Carl still expected to see a little plastic bag of white powder. He didn't. Just the aluminum pipe with the Phillips screw. He turned it two times to the left, moved back the plate, replaced the screw, covered it with the pot, and feeling worn out from more work than he'd done in a month, returned to his first-class seat at the front of the plane.
Yes, he told the flight attendant, he would like one more glass of champagne. "I deserve it. A little reward for myself, so to speak, ma'am."
Then he noticed the first mistake the voice had made. There was a little white card on a tray beside the champagne glass and it was his landing card. He had to fill in his passport number.
He didn't have a passport. The voice had said he didn't need one.
"When you were ticketed didn't they ask to see it?"
"That all happened before I got to the ticket booth. They had everything waiting for me."
"Gracious. Let me speak to the purser. You can't pass through customs without a passport," said the flight attendant.
And I probably won't get my hundred bucks in London, either, thought Carl. He was so enraged at the voice that he was tempted to return to the rear of the plane and turn back the screw. Carl Schroeder at that moment realized another thing about honest labor. You could get cheated out of its rewards.
On the way back to him, the flight attendant seemed to jump slightly, as though a passenger had goosed her. But then Carl saw everyone seem to jump. The plane was bucking, bucking so hard that it threw everyone in the aisles to the floor, and then with a sickening lurch hurled every person not buckled in to the ceiling.
Carl would have heard the screams better if he weren't screaming so hard himself.
But the voice was right after all. He did not need his passport when he got to England. He arrived in the English countryside at three hundred fifty miles an hour and, like everyone else in first class and right back to the last four rows of the tourist section, was met not by a customs clerk but by hard English rock.
It was one of the worst air disasters ever, at a time of an increasing number of air disasters, and even before the grieving had begun the lawyers arrived to reap their sustenance from the blood on the ground.
Foremost was the famous Los Angeles negligence firm of Palmer, Rizzuto They not only got to the wealthiest families first, but they also provided the best initial case. They could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Gammon 787 had faulty ailerons. They were backed by the best witness in the business, engineer Robert Dastrow, a man so brilliant that even the high-priced lawyers of airlines and construction firms could never discredit him.
It was said of Robert Dastrow that he knew the company's product better than their own engineers. It was said of Palmer, Rizzuto that on the day the world ended, they would have Earth as their client and would begin legal proceedings against Almighty God.
Even the best negligence lawyers, those unused to taking second place to anyone, tended to back away when the awesome might of this gigantic law firm moved into a case. Airlines and plane manufacturers trembled when they heard the names Palmer, Rizzuto
Besides the major industrialists on the flight, whose lives and services were worth millions, there was even a good case for a ne'er-do-well from Pittsburgh, Carl Schroeder. One of the many junior attorneys working for Palmer, Rizzuto had found an aunt of the boy, and had guaranteed he could prove a loss in a British court, a substantial monetary loss.
His case against Gammon and its failure to properly secure the aluminum aileron-stabilization bar was that they had deprived this aunt of Carl's monumental potential in life. Why was it so monumental? Because, as the attorney intoned to the jury, young Carl hadn't used any of it yet.
The cost of Gammon 787s went up as the awards mounted and every new Gammon was recalled to resecure the aluminum aileron-stabilization bar and make access to it more difficult.
In Paris, France, a young art student pining for Seattle, Washington, made a strange, no-questions-asked deal. She would get her airfare home, provided she smoked a cigarette in a strange place.
She was a good deal shrewder than Carl Schroeder, the Pittsburgh hustler. She was not going to smoke that cigarette in the rear of the plane until it landed. And she didn't want a hundred dollars upon landing. And she also had her passport. And she did most certainly care about possibly harming the lives of others.
So only when everyone was debarking in Seattle from the French jet did she go to the rear lavatory, take two puffs of her cigarette, and put it out in the disposal bin loaded with used paper towels. She was not prepared for how quickly the jet went up in flames, and barely got out with her life.
Francine Waller was torn between going to the police and trying to keep herself out of trouble. She knew now, with the quick combustion of the plane, that she would have been dead along with everyone else on board if the plane had not already landed and discharged most of its passengers.
She did not sleep well for several nights, but what changed her mind, swung it over to the side of the law, was the talking brass bedpost. It was the same voice that had talked to her in Paris and told her how she could get home and make a hundred dollars to boot.
"You didn't earn your airfare, Francine," came the voice.
"I know how voices can be beamed and use metal as speakers. I looked it up after we talked the last time."
"So you know that."
"I do."
"You didn't follow instructions."