by Ed McBain
“Been coming down here for more ’n thirty years now, never been to Disney World, can you imagine?” he says.
“Is your wife black?” Cooper asks.
“Black?” Holt says. “No. What kind of question is that? Black? I’m from Cleveland. What do you mean, black? My wife? What’s this all about, anyway?”
He does not look or sound like the sort of person who has kidnapped a pair of little kids, but then again not many rapists look like rapists or bank robbers like bank robbers, at least not in the experience of these two cops. In any case, there is just this one room here, and the bathroom beyond, where they can still hear the shower going, so they have to assume—until they can check out the bathroom, at any rate—that since there are no little kids in evidence, this is not the man and woman who kidnapped the Glendenning children. Unless Mrs. Holt—if she is Mrs. Holt—turns out to be the black Sheena of the Jungle they followed strutting up Citrus Avenue with the expensive French luggage bouncing on her hip and the wide gold bracelet on her arm.
“We’d like to have a look in that bathroom whenever Mrs. Holt is finished in there,” Sloate says.
“I don’t suppose you have a search warrant, do you?” Holt asks.
“No, we don’t, Mr. Holt,” Sloate says. “Do you want us to go all the way downtown to get one?”
Holt decides he would rather not have them do this.
For the next five minutes or so, they stand around awkwardly, waiting for Mrs. Holt to finish her shower. At last, she turns off the water. Holt goes to the bathroom door, knocks on it, and says, “Hon, there’re some police detectives here. You’d better put something on before you come out.”
“There are some what here?” a woman’s voice answers.
She does not sound black.
She comes out a moment later, wearing a pink robe and a bemused expression that says, Gee, there really are two people who look like detectives standing here with my husband!
She is definitely not black.
She is, however, blonde.
But not the slender blonde with hair to her shoulders Sloate saw at the wheel of the Impala. Instead, she is in her late forties, a somewhat stout little woman, her short hair still wet and straggly, her face shiny bright from the shower.
“Sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Sloate says, and they both go into the bathroom to look around, though neither of them now believes there are any kids here in this motel room.
“Sorry to bother you,” Sloate repeats as they come out of the bathroom. “Just had to check out something.”
“What is it you’re looking for?” the woman asks.
“Routine matter,” Cooper says in his shuffling, soft-spoken way, and they thank the Holts for their time, and then leave the room, and drive out of the motel grounds, on their way to the next place on their list.
“Now what do you make of that?” Holt asks his wife.
Judy Lang is perhaps five feet seven inches tall, and slender, and quite beautiful in a fox-faced way, her blonde hair cut so that it falls loose and straight to just above her shoulders. When she opens the door to the tenth-floor condo, she is barefoot and wearing a brown mini and a short pink cotton sweater that exposes a ring in her belly button. Her blue eyes open wide when she spots the yarmulke on the back of Saltzman’s head. Her first thought is that somebody has told the rabbi she’s been dating an eighteen-year-old Cuban.
Dating isn’t quite the proper word, either, since she and Ernesto haven’t yet gone anywhere together, except the backseat of his brother’s big roomy Oldsmobile. Judy knows that her husband will kill her for sure if he ever finds out about what she’s been doing in that car every day of the week except Saturday and Sunday, with a Cuban teenager, no less. So here’s this big tall guy with a yarmulke, standing on the doorstep, here to read her passages from the Talmud, she feels certain. Instead, he flashes a badge that has the initials copd on it, which—it immediately becomes clear—stand for Cape October Police Department.
“Detective Julius Saltzman,” he says. “My partner, Detective Peter Andrews.”
The shorter guy with him mumbles something Judy doesn’t quite catch. At least they aren’t here from the synagogue.
“May we come in, please?” Saltzman asks.
“Well… my husband isn’t home,” she says.
“It’s you we want to talk to,” Andrews says. “If you’re Judy Lang?”
“Well… yes, I am,” she says. “But why?” Despite the exuberant breasts in the snug sweater and the lissome hips in the tight-fitting mini, there is a certain adolescent gawkiness about this woman. Both detectives suddenly wonder if Ernesto de Diego hasn’t nailed himself another little teenager here, instead of the thirty-something housewife Judy Lang actually is. They follow her into a living room that overlooks the wide green expanse of a golf course below, and take seats on a sofa opposite her. All they want to know is whether or not Judy Lang might have been the blonde who picked up the Glendenning kids yesterday afternoon. Being cops, however—and small- town cops at that—they can’t come right out and ask her if she happened to kidnap two kids. Instead, they go at it in a more subtle manner, they think.
“Do you drive a car?” Andrews asks.
“Yes, I do,” she says.
“What kind of car is it?”
“A white Jag. My husband gave it to me for my thirty-fifth birthday.”
Thirty-five then. Going on thirty-six.
“Ever drive a Chevy Impala?”
“I don’t think so. No. Why?”
“Blue Chevy Impala?”
“No.”
“You weren’t driving a blue Chevy Impala this past Wednesday afternoon, were you? Down in Cape October?”
“Not this past Wednesday or any Wednesday,” Judy says. “I’ve never been to Cape October in my life.”
“But your boyfriend’s from the Cape, isn’t he?”
“What boyfriend?” she says. “I’m a married woman. What are you talking about, boyfriend?”
“Do you know a girl named Maria Gonzalez?”
“No. Did somebody run her over with a Chevy Impala?”
“Ever hear of a woman named Alice Glendenning?”
“No. Who is she?”
“Did Maria Gonzalez ever mention the Glendenning children to you?”
“I told you I don’t know anybody named Maria Gonzalez.”
“Judy?”
A voice from the front door. They all turn to look at the arch leading to the entrance foyer.
“Is someone here, dear?” the voice asks.
He is wearing sandals, khaki slacks, and a lime green shirt. He is a man in his fifties, they guess, bald, tanned, with a dead cigar in his mouth. Putting his keys back into his pants pocket, he enters the living room, his eyes squinching in puzzlement when he sees the two men sitting on the sofa.
“Yes?” he says.
“Darling,” Judy says, and rises, and goes to him and takes both his hands in hers. “These gentlemen are from the Cape October Police Department.”
“Oh?” he says.
“Detective Saltzman,” Saltzman says.
“Detective Andrews,” Andrews says.
“Murray Lang, what can I do for you?”
His manner is abrupt and hostile. He is not used to finding policemen in his luxurious condo, even if one of them is wearing a yarmulke, and his attitude clearly wants to know what the hell they’re doing here. Judy’s eyes are darting all over the place, from one detective to the other. Just a few minutes ago, they mentioned a boyfriend, which means they know about Ernesto. She is sensing imminent disaster here. She is thinking of throwing herself out the window before her husband finds out what’s been going on. Her eyes have a desperate pleading look. They are saying, “Please, officers, don’t tell him about Ernesto, okay? Please.”
The detectives don’t want to cause any trouble here. All they want to know is whether or not Judy Lang and some black woman—
It suddenly occurs to Saltzman that
they may have real meat here. However unlikely might seem the menage à trois formed by a married Jewish lady in her thirties, a teenage Cuban boy, and a black woman also in her thirties, the possibility exists that Judy Lang, Ernesto de Diego, and the nameless woman on the telephone are all in this together. A coalition of the willing, so to speak.
“We’re trying to locate a blue Chevy Impala,” he says.
“Why?” Murray Lang asks. “And what’s it got to do with us?”
“A woman who fits your wife’s description—”
“Am I going to need a lawyer here?”
“Not unless you want one, sir.”
“Because I have lawyers coming out of my wazoo, you want lawyers.”
“We want to know where your wife was at two-thirty P.M. Wednesday afternoon, sir. Is all we want to know.”
“Tell them where you were, Judy. And then you can get the hell out of here,” Murray tells the detectives.
Judy can’t tell them where she was Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty because at that time she was on the backseat of an Oldsmobile parked behind A&L Auto Repair, where Ernesto and his brother work, and where everybody else who works there knows that Ernesto fucks the nice Jewish lady at two-thirty every afternoon on the backseat of his brother’s car. A&L Auto is where Judy first met Ernesto when she brought the white Jag in for a tune-up a month ago, little realizing that Ernesto would soon be giving her regularly scheduled tune-ups the likes of which she has never before had in her life. But she can’t tell the detectives any of this, not while her beloved husband Murray is standing there glowering with a dead cigar in the corner of his mouth. She thinks again that throwing herself out the window might not be such a bad idea.
“Ma’am?” Saltzman prods.
“Wednesday afternoon,” she says, thinking hard.
“Yes, ma’am. At two-thirty.”
“Why do you want to know this?”
“Were you in Cape October Wednesday afternoon at two-thirty?”
“No, I was not. I told you. I’ve never been to Cape October in my entire life.”
“At Pratt Elementary?” Andrews says.
“Is that a school down there?” Murray asks.
“It’s a school, yes, sir. Were you at Pratt Elementary—”
“I told you I’ve never been to Cape—”
“—behind the wheel of a blue Chevy Impala?”
“Did some schoolkid get run over?” Murray asks. “Is that it?”
“Were you, ma’am?”
“No, I was not.”
“Then where were you?”
“Tell them where you were, Judy.”
“Shopping,” she says.
This Murray can believe. His wife knows shopping. Boy, does she know shopping!
“Shopping where?” Saltzman asks.
“International Plaza.”
“Is that a shop, ma’am?”
“No, it’s a mall.”
“Where’s it located?”
“Near the airport,” Murray says. “Everybody knows International Plaza.”
“We’re not that familiar with Tampa,” Saltzman says. “Can you tell us where it’s located?”
“Boy Scout and West Shore.”
“Are those cross streets?”
“They’re boulevards. Boy Scout Boulevard, West Shore Boulevard.”
“Where in the mall did you shop?” Andrews asks Judy.
“Different shops.”
“Which ones?”
For a moment, she hesitates. But she’s been to the mall often, and she’s familiar with all the stores there.
“Neiman Marcus,” she says. “Arden B. Lord & Taylor. St. John Knits. Nordstrom. A few others.”
“Must’ve bought a lot of stuff,” Andrews says.
“No, I didn’t buy anything at all.”
This causes Murray’s eyebrows to go up onto his forehead. The detectives look surprised, too.
“I didn’t see anything I liked,” Judy explains.
“What time did you leave the mall?”
“Around three-fifteen.”
Which is about when she was pulling up her panties and rearranging her skirt on the backseat of Godofredo’s Olds.
“Spent about forty-five minutes there, is that it?”
“Little bit longer,” Judy says.
“Came right back home, did you?”
“No, I stopped for a small pizza at the California Pizza Kitchen.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the mall. On the first floor. Right by Nordstrom.”
“Had a pizza there, did you?”
“A small pizza, yes.”
“See anybody you know in the Pizza Kitchen?”
“California Pizza Kitchen. No.”
“Or anyplace else in the mall?”
“No.”
“So we just have your word for where you were.”
“Her word is good enough for me,” Murray says, smiling, and goes to her and takes her hand, and pats it.
“We’ll be checking all those shops you went into,” Andrews says.
“See if anybody remembers anyone answering your description,” Saltzman says.
“Was it a kid got run over?” Murray asks.
In the hallway outside, Andrews says, “She’s lying.”
“I know,” Saltzman says.
“We really going to check out all those stores?”
“I don’t think so, do you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Cause if she kidnapped those kids, I’ll eat my yarmulke.”
Andrews looks at his watch.
“We’re gonna hit traffic going back,” he says, and sighs heavily.
Back at the lab—which is a very modern lab for a town the size of Cape October—the boys print the latents they lifted at the Shell station, and run them first through their own Bureau of Criminal Identification, but they come up with nothing on the multitude of stuff they gathered. So they try the Automated Fingerprint Identification Section next, and come up blank with them as well. Having exhausted their own BCI and the nationwide AFIS, and having no other letters in the alphabet to turn to, they inform Captain Steele that the black woman Mrs. Glendenning met outside the toilet has never been in the armed forces, has never held a state or federal position, and has never been arrested for any criminal activity whatsoever, otherwise her prints would be on file someplace.
This is now almost five-thirty in the afternoon.
“So what are we dealing with here?” Steele asks Johnson. “Amateur night in Dixie?”
He is commenting about the kidnappers, Johnson hopes.
“We do have some nice hair and fiber samples,” he says. “We ever get anything to compare against.”
Rosie Garrity is at home that evening when the local news comes on at six P.M. Her husband, George, is a waiter at the Unicorn Restaurant up in Sarasota, and he’s already left for work, so she’s alone, sitting in the genuine-leather recliner/easy chair he bought for her at Peterby’s Furniture on the Trail.
The television news anchor is a man named Taylor Thompson, handsome as homemade sin, with a voice as deep as an Everglades swamp. He is giving them the headlines of the stories he will discuss at greater length later. Rosie likes Taylor Thompson even better than she likes Tom Brokaw.
“…raging out of control in downtown Fort Myers,” Taylor is saying. “A pair of housewives foil a holdup attempt in a Sanibel supermarket. And in Cape October…”
Rosie leans forward in her recliner.
“…a cat in a jacaranda tree is rescued by heroic firemen. This is Taylor Thompson, back to you in a moment with all the news in the Fort Myers area.”
“Not a word about those poor little darlins,” Rosie says aloud.
More and more, Alice is beginning to believe that the two women who kidnapped her children are lunatics. They have their goddamn money, why haven’t they called yet?
“And what is it Ashley couldn’t believe?” she asks Charlie,
as though he’s been reading her thoughts. “That they were even letting her talk to me?”
She is pacing the room. The steady ticking of the grandfather clock is a constant reminder that they still haven’t called.
“Were they treating her so badly that just allowing her to talk to her own mother…”
“Don’t go there, Al,” Charlie warns.
“She sounded so amazed, Charlie! ‘Mom, I can’t believe it!’”
In her mind, she goes over the entire conversation yet another time.
Tell her you and your brother are okay, that’s all. Nothing else. Here.
We’re both okay. Mom, I can’t believe it!
What can’t…?
Do you remember Mari—?
And she was cut off.
So… well, of course… she’d been about to say “Maria.” And that had to be Maria Gonzalez. What other Maria could it possibly be? Alice doesn’t know anyone else named Maria. Or even Marie. So, yes, the black woman grabbed the phone because she didn’t want Ashley saying Maria’s name.
But what is it that Ashley found so goddamn unbelievable?
Maria surfacing again after almost two years, more than two years, however long it was? Maria returning to kidnap her?
Well, yes, that’s unbelievable.
To Alice, it is utterly unbelievable that this mild-mannered, soft-spoken, chubby little girl who still spoke English with a Spanish accent would come to kidnap her children all this time after she’d babysat them, that is totally and completely unbelievable to Alice— but apparently not to Captain Steele, who has sent his Keystone Kops chasing after her.
We’re both okay. Mom, I can’t believe it!
And then, immediately: Do you remember Mari—?
Even before Alice completed her sentence, even before she possibly could have known that Alice was about to ask “What can’t you believe, honey?”
Do you remember Mari—?
And silence.
A dead line.
“Something’s missing,” she tells Charlie.
And the phone rings.
It is ten minutes past seven.
Charlie immediately puts on the earphones.
“Hello?” Alice says.
“Mrs. Glendenning?”