Alice in Jeopardy

by Ed McBain

  The woman who answers the door is somewhat short and pudgy, in her early fifties, Forbes guesses, with a mop of brownish-red hair, and freckles on her cheeks and nose, and a high sheen of sweat on her forehead. This presages a house without air-conditioning, an unwelcome prospect on a day when the temperature has already hit eighty-six and the humidity is thick enough to swim in.

  “Mrs. Garrity?” he says.

  “Yes?”

  “Special Agent Forbes,” he says, “FBI,” and shows his shield. “My partner, Special Agent Ballew.”

  “May we come in, ma’am?” Sally asks.

  “Please.”

  The small development house is every bit as hot as Forbes expected it would be. Mrs. Garrity leads them into a tiny living room furnished with a sofa and two easy chairs slip-covered in paisley. She offers them iced tea, goes out into the kitchen to get it, and then sits opposite them on the sofa. The two agents sit on the easy chairs, facing her.

  “So,” Forbes says, “what’s this about a kidnapping?”

  He frankly finds it difficult to believe that the Cape October cops would not have acted swiftly on any report of a kidnapping. These days, however, with terrorists of every stripe and persuasion apparently slipping through the fingers of the FBI and the CIA and the INS, he would be foolish not to investigate any errant phone call, even from someone like Mrs. Garrity here, who, to tell the truth, looks a little too eager to attain her own fifteen minutes of fame by becoming the star of a little kidnapping melodrama she herself has concocted. Sally is thinking the same thing. But they are here to listen.

  Mrs. Garrity tells them about being at the Glendenning house yesterday afternoon when Alice Glendenning got home from work, and then about the kids not being on their regular bus, and then about the phone call from this woman who sounded black, according to Mrs. Glendenning, anyway, who told her not to call the police or the children would die.

  “Were you listening to this phone call?” Sally asks.

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know what she said?”

  “Mrs. Glendenning repeated the conversation to me.”

  “This woman said she had the children?”

  “Yes. And she said not to call the police or the children would die.”

  “You didn’t hear the caller’s voice, is that it?”

  “I did not hear it. That’s correct.”

  “Then how do you know she was black?”

  “Mrs. Glendenning said she sounded black.”

  “She volunteered this information?” Sally asks.

  “No, I asked her was the woman white or black. She said she sounded black.”

  It so happens that Sally herself is black. Forbes hopes she is not about to get on her high horse here with a lot of racial attitude that has nothing to do with why they’re here. If the woman on the phone sounded black, then she sounded black. There is nothing wrong with sounding black if you sound black. Which Sally herself, by the way, sounds on occasion. Like right this very minute, for example.

  “So what happened after this phone call?” Forbes asks.

  “I advised her to call the police. She told me no.”

  “Then what?” Sally asks.

  There is still an edge to her voice. She is still bridling because she thinks Mrs. Rose Garrity here was doing a bit of racial profiling yesterday when she asked if the caller was white or black. It seems to Forbes that this is a perfectly reasonable question to ask in law enforcement, where a person’s color or lack of it might be a clue to the person himself or herself—yes, and how about that, for example? For example, is it wrong to ask if a person is a man or a woman? Is that profiling, too? You can carry all this stuff just so far, Forbes thinks, and says again, “Go on, Mrs. Garrity.”

  “When I got home last night, I called the police. I spoke to a Detective Sloane there…”

  “Must be Wilbur Sloate she means,” Sally says. “CID.”

  “Was that his name, ma’am? Detective Sloate. S-L-O-A-T-E?”

  “I thought he said Sloane.”

  “Well, maybe there’s a Sloane up there, too,” Forbes says.

  “I thought that was what he said his name was.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He said he’d get on it right away.”

  “So why’d you call us, ma’am?” Sally asks.

  “Because when I spoke to Mrs. Glendenning this morning, she told me she was alone. And I figured if Detective Sloane, I’m sure his name was, had got right on it the way he said he would, then she wouldn’t be alone in her house when her children are in the hands of some black woman who said she would kill them, was why I called you.”

  “You’re sure she was alone there?”

  “She told me she was alone. She told me not to come in today, said she wanted to be alone if that woman called again. I have to assume, if Mrs. Glendenning tells me she’s alone in the house, that she really is.”

  “And where is this, Mrs. Garrity?” Sally asks.

  “Where is what, Agent Ballew?”

  “Special Agent Ballew,” Sally corrects. “Where is this house where Mrs. Glendenning is sitting alone waiting for a call from a black kidnapper?”

  When the telephone rings, they all turn to look at the clock.

  It is 11:40 A.M.

  Sloate puts on the earphones.

  “I think I’m ready now,” Marcia says.

  “Go ahead,” Sloate says, and indicates that Alice is to pick up the phone.

  She lifts the receiver.

  “Hello?” she says.

  “Alice?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Rafe.”

  “Rafe?”

  “Your brother-in-law. Want to give lunch to a poor wandering soul?”

  “Where… where are you, Rafe?”

  “My rig’s right outside a 7-Eleven on… where is this place, mister?” he shouts. “Where? I’m up here in Bradenton. How far is that from you?”

  “Rafe, I don’t think it would be a good idea…”

  “I’ll get directions,” he says. “See you.”

  There is a click on the line.

  “I thought he was supposed to be in Mobile by now,” Sloate says.

  “Apparently not.”

  “Who was it?” Marcia says.

  “Rafe,” Sloate says. “The jailbird brother-in-law. He’s on his way over.”

  “We don’t need him here,” Marcia says.

  “I don’t need anyone here,” Alice says.

  The grandfather clock reads 11:45 A.M.

  “Hello?”

  In that single word, Christine knows intuitively that someone is in that house with Alice Glendenning. She simply senses it. The certain knowledge that the woman is not alone.

  “Is someone there with you?” she asks at once.

  “No, I’m alone,” Alice says.

  “You didn’t call the police, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Because you know that’s the end of your kids, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stay right there by the phone,” Christine says, and hangs up, and goes back to the blue Impala she’s parked at the curb alongside the phone booth. She begins driving at once, searching for the next pay phone along the Trail. She is not positive about how telephone traces work, but she thinks maybe they can close in on specific locations if not specific phone numbers. She called on a cell phone last night, from where the two of them are holding the kids, but they decided together that it would be safer if she called from pay phones this morning.

  She pulls off the road as soon as she spots one in a strip mall. She gets out of the Impala again, walks over to the plastic phone shell, and dials Alice’s number.

  She looks at her watch.

  12:10 P.M.

  She hears the phone ringing on the other end, once, twice…

  “Hello?”

  “Have you got the money?” she asks.

  “Not yet,” Alice says.

&
nbsp; “What’s taking you so long?”

  “There are securities to sell. It isn’t easy to raise that much cash overnight.”

  “When will you have it?” Christine asks.

  There is a silence on the line.

  Someone coaching her for sure. Hand signals, or scribbled notes, whatever. She is not alone in that house.

  “I’m still working on it.”

  “Work on it faster,” Christine says, and hangs up. She looks at her watch again. The call took fifteen seconds, going on sixteen. She does not think they can effect a trace in that short a time. She goes back to the car, and drives along the Trail until she spots another pay phone. It is 12:17 when she calls the house again.

  “Hello?”

  “Get the money by this afternoon at three,” Christine says. “We’ll call then with instructions.”

  “Wait!”

  “What? Fast!”

  “How do I know they’re still alive? Send me a Polaroid picture of the two of them holding today’s Tribune.”

  “What?”

  “Send it Fed Ex.”

  “You’re dreaming,” Christine says.

  The sweep hand on her watch has ticked off twenty seconds.

  “I’ll call you at three,” she says.

  “Are my children all right? Let me speak to Ashley, ple—”

  Christine hangs up.

  “Twenty-five seconds this time,” Marcia says.

  Sloate is already on the new phone link to the Public Safety Building downtown. Alice listens as he tells his commanding officer that they’ve had no luck with a trace. He tells him the woman is demanding the money by three this afternoon. The big grandfather clock in the hallway now reads twenty minutes to one.

  “So what do we do?” he asks. “We’ve got till three o’clock.”

  “Let me think on it,” Steele says, and hangs up.

  Alice is pacing the room. She whirls on Marcia, where she is sitting behind her equipment. “Why haven’t you been able to trace the calls yet?” she asks.

  “She’s never on the line long enough,” Marcia says.

  “We can put men on the moon, but you can’t trace a damn call coming from around the corner!”

  “I wish it was just around the corner. But we don’t know where she’s—”

  “I don’t want you here!” Alice shouts. “I want you all out of here! I’ll handle this alone from now on. Just get out! None of you knows what the hell you’re doing, you’re going to get my children killed!”

  “Mrs. Glendenning…”

  “No! Just get out of here. Take all your stuff and leave. Now! Please. Get out. Please. I’m sorry. Get out.”

  “We’re staying,” Sloate says.

  She is ready to punch him.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Glendenning,” he says, “but we’re staying.”

  And then, infuriating her because it reminds her again of her father when he used to take a razor strop to her behind, “It’s for your own good.”

  4

  When Rafe arrives at a quarter past one that afternoon, Alice has no choice but to tell him what’s going on. He looks as if he doesn’t believe her. Doesn’t believe these are detectives here. Doesn’t believe her kids are missing, either. Thinks this is all some kind of afternoon pantomime staged for his benefit. Stands there like a big man who needs a shave and a drink both, which he tells Alice he really does need if all she’s telling him is true. She pours him some twelve-year-old scotch from a bottle Lane Realty gave her at Christmastime. The other brokers all got bonuses, but she hadn’t sold a house yet. Still hasn’t, for that matter.

  “What happened to your foot?” Rafe asks, noticing at last.

  “I got hit by a car.”

  “Did you report it?” he says.

  “Not yet,” she says.

  My kids have been kidnapped, she thinks, and everybody wants to know if I reported a goddamn traffic accident.

  She takes him into the kitchen, and searches in the fridge for something she can give him to eat.

  “You tell Carol about this?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “My kids are in danger.”

  “She’s your sister.”

  “This okay?” she asks, and offers him a loaf of sliced rye, a wedge of cheese, and a large hunk of Genoa salami.

  “You got mustard?” he asks.

  “Sure.”

  “You should call her,” he says.

  “Let’s see what happens here, okay?”

  “She’s your sister,” he says again.

  “When it’s over,” she says.

  “You got any wine?”

  She takes an opened bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge, hands him a glass. In the living room, Sloate is on the phone again with his captain. She wanders out there to see if she can learn anything, but there is nothing new. Three o’clock seems so very far away. When she comes back into the kitchen, Rafe is just finishing his sandwich.

  “You’re out of wine,” he tells her, and shakes the empty bottle in his fist. “Have you got a spare bedroom? I’ve been driving all night.”

  She shows Rafe the children’s empty bedroom. Twin beds in it, one on either side of the room. Rafe looks insulted by the size of the beds, big man like him. But he finally climbs into one of them, clothes and all.

  Alice goes into her own bedroom, and climbs into bed, thinking she will take a nap before three, be ready for whatever may come next.

  In an instant, she is dead asleep.

  The nightmare comes the way it always does.

  The family is sitting at the dinner table together.

  It is seven-thirty P.M. on the night of September twenty-first last year; she will never forget that date as long as she lives.

  Eddie is telling her he feels like taking the Jamash out for a little moonlight spin. The Jamash is a 1972 Pearson sloop they bought used when they first moved down here to the Cape. It cost $12,000 at a time when Eddie was still making good money as a stockbroker, before Bush got elected and things went all to hell with the economy. They named it after the two kids, Jamie and Ashley, the Jamash for sure, a trim little thirty-footer that was seaworthy and fast.

  But Eddie has never taken her out for a moonlight spin without Alice aboard, and this has always required making babysitter plans in advance.

  “Just feel like getting out on the water,” he tells her.

  “Well… sure,” she says, “go ahead.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?”

  “Just don’t take her out on the Gulf,” she says. “Not alone.”

  “I promise,” he says.

  From the door, as he leaves the house, he yells, “Love ya, babe!”

  “Love ya, too,” Alice says.

  “Love ya, Daddy!” Ashley yells.

  “Love ya,” Jamie echoes.

  In the Gulf of Mexico the next morning, an oil tanker spots the boat under sail, moving on an erratic course, tossing aimlessly on the wind.

  They hail her, and get no response.

  When finally they climb down onto the deck, there is no one aboard.

  Alice gets the phone call at ten that morning.

  She screams.

  And screams.

  The telephone is ringing.

  She climbs out of bed, rushes into the living room. The grandfather clock reads ten minutes to two. Sloate already has the earphones on.

  “She’s early,” he says.

  Marcia is behind her tracing gear now.

  Sloate nods.

  Alice picks up.

  “Hello?” she says.

  “Listen,” the woman says. “Just listen.” And then, in a stage whisper, “Tell her you and your brother are okay, that’s all. Nothing else.” And then, apparently handing Ashley the phone, she says, “Here.”

  “We’re both okay,” Ashley says in a rush. “Mom, I can’t believe it!”

  “What can’t…?”

  “Do you remember Mari—?�
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  The line goes dead.

  “Who’s Marie?” Sloate asks at once.

  “They’re alive,” Alice says. “My children…”

  “Do you know anyone named Marie?”

  “No. Did you hear her? They’re both okay!”

  “Or Maria?”

  “I don’t know. They’re alive!”

  “Fifteen seconds this time,” Marcia says.

  “Marie? Maria?”

  “I don’t know anyone named—”

  “A relative?”

  “No.”

  “A friend?”

  “No. My children are alive. How are you going…?”

  “Someone who worked for you?”

  “…to get them…?”

  “Marie,” he insists. “Maria. Think!”

  “You think, damn it! They’re alive! Do something to—”

  And suddenly the knowledge breaks on her face.

  “What?” Sloate asks.

  “Yes. Maria.”

  “Who?”

  “A babysitter. This was a long time ago, I’m not even sure she—”

  “What’s her last name?”

  At two o’clock that afternoon, Charlie Hobbs, at the wheel of the Chevy pickup he uses to transport his huge canvases, drives into the bus-loading area at Pratt Elementary School, and asks to talk to Luke Farraday. It is a hot, bright, sunny day on the Cape, the temperature hovering at ninety-two degrees. Charlie is wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Farraday is wearing a blue uniform with a square shield, and a little black plastic name tag over the left breast pocket. L. FARRA-DAY. Yellow school buses are already beginning to roll into the lot.

  Charlie has to be careful here.

  The warning from whoever has taken Alice’s kids could not have been more explicit:

  Don’t call the police, or they’ll die.

  Charlie doesn’t want Farraday to think anything out of the ordinary has happened here. At the same time, he hopes to get a bead on that blue car.

  “I’m a friend of Alice Glendenning,” he says. “She wants to thank whoever picked up her kids yesterday afternoon. Maybe you can help me.”

  “Cops’ve already been here,” Farraday says. “Told ’em everything I know.”