Alice in Jeopardy

by Ed McBain

  Rafe is listening to all this.

  “Must’ve been before our time,” Forbes tells Sally.

  “One-on-one exchange,” Sloate says. “Money for the kids, kids for—”

  “You sending Mrs. Glendenning out there alone?” Sally asks.

  “We’ll be covering her.”

  “You really going to hand over the ransom?”

  “A cool two-fifty large,” Sloate says. “Supers,” he explains.

  “They’ll tip,” Sally says.

  “They didn’t three years ago.”

  “That was three years ago. What if they tip now?”

  The telephone rings.

  “Keep her on,” Sloate says.

  “Hello?”

  “No deal,” the woman says. “Your kids die.”

  And hangs up. “She’ll call back in a minute,” Marcia says.

  But she doesn’t.

  She does not call back until four-thirty.

  “Do you want to see your kids alive ever again?” she asks.

  “Yes. But please…”

  “Then don’t try to make deals with me!”

  “I’m not. I’m just trying to set up a reasonable exchange.”

  “Who told you to say that?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Who gave you those words to say?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Who’s there with you?”

  “Nobody, I swear.”

  “I hear movement there.”

  “No, you—”

  “You’re lying!” the woman says, and hangs up.

  “Shit!” Marcia yells.

  The woman calls back again at five minutes past five.

  “I’m getting confused,” Alice tells her. “If you keep hanging up, I can’t follow—”

  “Because you’re trying to trace my calls!”

  “No.”

  “I hear clicking.”

  Marcia shakes her head. No. There’s no clicking she can possibly hear. No.

  “No one’s here with me,” Alice says. “No one’s trying to trace your calls. I have the money you asked for. I want my children back. Now let’s arrange a reasonable—”

  “You’re on too long,” the woman says, and hangs up again.

  Alice is on the edge of tears.

  “You should never let a vic negotiate,” Sally says.

  “They threatened to kill her children,” Sloate says.

  “They always do,” Forbes says.

  “But they hardly ever,” Sally adds.

  Hardly ever, Alice thinks.

  “These are not your children!” she shouts. “Nobody invited you into this house. You have no right—”

  The phone rings again.

  “Ask her to work out the exchange,” Sally says. “See what she has to suggest.”

  Alice looks at her.

  “Put the whole thing on her,” Sally says. “She’s the one wants the money.”

  Their eyes meet.

  “Believe me,” Sally says.

  Alice picks up the phone.

  “Will you be there at ten tomorrow or what?” the woman asks at once.

  “How do I know I’ll get my children back?”

  “You’ve got to take that chance.”

  “Give me some way to trust you.”

  “What do you want, girlfriend? A written guarantee?”

  “Tell me what you’d suggest.”

  “I suggest you leave the goddamn money in that stall!”

  “Please help me,” Alice says. “I think you can understand why I can’t just hand over that kind of money without some sort of—”

  “Then you want them dead, is that it?”

  “I want them alive!” Alice screams.

  But the woman has hung up again.

  The backup from downtown arrives some twenty minutes later, driving directly into the garage and then coming into the house with a small black airline carry-on bag.

  He is a soft-spoken black man who introduces himself as “Detective George Cooper, ma’am, excuse the intrusion.” He is carrying $250,000 in counterfeit money, and he asks her at once if she has her own bag to which he can transfer the bogus bills.

  “What do you mean, bogus?” Rafe asks him.

  “Who’s this?” Cooper asks Sloate.

  “The brother-in-law,” Sloate says.

  “Bogus, phony, false,” Cooper says. “Super-bills. Counterfeit.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Rafe says.

  Alice is back with a Louis Vuitton bag Eddie bought her for Christmas one year. Cooper is beginning to transfer the bills when someone knocks at the back door.

  “Who the hell is that?” Sloate asks, and looks at his watch.

  “Is the captain sending another backup?” Marcia asks.

  Cooper shakes his head no. He is busy moving bills from one bag to the other.

  “I don’t want any more policemen here,” Alice says. “Tell them to go away.”

  Sloate is already in the kitchen, unlocking the back door. A uniformed man is standing there.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” he says. “Got a call from a neighbor saw the garage door going up and down, strange car pulling in, big truck parked outside. Everything all right here?”

  “No problem, Sheriff,” Sloate says, and takes a leather fob from his pocket, and opens it to show his detective’s shield.

  “What is it that’s happening?” the sheriff asks, puzzled, trying to peek into the living room, where there seems to be a lot of activity and some kind of electronic equipment set up.

  “Minor disturbance,” Marcia explains. “No sweat, Sheriff.”

  If anyone’s watching the house, Alice thinks, what they’ll see now is a sheriff’s car out there in the drive. They’ll think I’ve notified every damn law enforcement agency in Florida.

  “What happened to your leg, lady?” the sheriff asks.

  “I got hit by a car.”

  “You report the accident?”

  “Yes, I did,” she tells him, even though she still hasn’t.

  “Well,” the sheriff says, “if everything’s all right here…”

  “Everything’s fine,” Sloate assures him. “Thanks for looking in.”

  “Just checkin,” the sheriff says. “Like I say, a neighbor saw the garage door goin up, strange car movin in, big truck parked outside, wondered just what was goin on here.”

  Everyone in the state of Florida is calling the police on my behalf, Alice thinks. First Rosie sticks her nose into this, and now some neighbor…

  “G’day, ma’am,” the sheriff says, and tips his hat to her.

  “Good day,” Alice says.

  Sloate closes and locks the kitchen door behind him. Alice goes into the living room and peers out through the drapes. Big red dome light flashing on top of his car. People coming out of their houses all up and down the street. He’s alerted half the damn neighborhood. If anyone is watching the house…

  They’ll kill the children, she thinks.

  Maria Gonzalez was fifteen years old the last time she babysat for Alice and Eddie Glendenning. At the time, she was a somewhat chubby little girl who had come over from Cuba many years ago in a boat with her mother, her father, and her older brother, Juan. Well, fifteen years and three months ago, actually, since Maria was inside her mother’s belly at the time. Agata Gonzalez was six months pregnant with her unborn baby daughter when she and her family undertook the perilous journey from Havana in a rickety boat with thirty-one other brave souls.

  Maria Gonzalez is now seventeen years old, and even chubbier than she was two years ago. That is because she is now seven months pregnant with a child of her own. Maria’s father, a cabinetmaker who earns a good living down here where people are constantly buying and remodeling retirement homes, is not very happy to see two police detectives standing on his doorstep at six-thirty on a Thursday night, when he is just about to sit down to supper. When it turns out that they are here to talk to his daughter, he is even more disple
ased. Maria quit her job at McDonald’s two weeks ago, when she started to get backaches, and now what is this? Trouble with the police already?

  The two detectives who are here to see her are Saltzman and Andrews. Saltzman is still wearing a yarmulke, which is appropriate to his religious beliefs, but which makes him look very foreign and strange to Anibal Gonzalez, who himself looks foreign and strange to a lot of people on the Cape, even though he’s an expert cabinetmaker. He does not look at all strange to Saltzman or his partner Andrews, who run into a lot of Cuban types in their line of work, and who would not be at all surprised if this fellow with the mustache here, about to sit down to dinner in his undershirt, turns out to be somehow involved in the kidnapping of the two Glendenning kids. They would not be surprised at all, and fuck what anybody thinks about profiling.

  The girl turns out to be as pregnant as a goose, but this doesn’t surprise them, either, these people. Wide-eyed and frightened, she sits down with the detectives in a small room just off the dining room. There is a sewing machine in the room, and Maria’s mother explains that she does crochet beading at home, a fashion that has come into style again. Neither Andrews nor Saltzman knows what the hell crochet beading is, nor cares to know, thank you. All they want to know is why little Ashley Glendenning asked her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez. All they want to know is what Maria Gonzalez has to do with this kidnapping. So they politely ask Agata Gonzalez to get lost, please…

  Actually, Saltzman says, “I wonder if we could talk to your daughter privately, Mrs. Gonzalez.”

  …and then they explain to the girl that she is in serious trouble here, which is a lie, and that it would be to her best advantage to answer all of their questions truthfully and honestly, which are the same thing, but Maria doesn’t make the distinction, anyway.

  “Do you know where Ashley Glendenning is right this minute?” Saltzman asks.

  “Who?” Maria says.

  “Ashley Glendenning,” Andrews says. “You used to babysit her.”

  “I don’t know anybody by that name,” Maria says.

  “Ashley Glendenning,” Saltzman says. “Ten years old. She was eight or so when you used to babysit her.”

  “Out on Oleander Street,” Andrews says.

  “Oh,” Maria says.

  “You remember her now?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Has a little brother.”

  “Yeah, Jimmy.”

  “Jamie,” Andrews says.

  “Jamie, right. What about them?”

  “Well, you tell us,” Saltzman says.

  “What do you want me to tell you?”

  “Where they are.”

  “How would I know where they are?”

  “Ashley brought up your name.”

  “My name? Why would she do that?”

  “Asked her mother if she remembered you.”

  “Why would her mother remember me? That was a long time ago, I sat for those kids.”

  “Two years ago,” Saltzman reminds her.

  “I was a kid myself,” Maria says.

  “We think she was trying to tell her mother something.”

  “What was she trying to tell her?”

  “Your name.”

  “Look, what the fuck is this?” Maria asks, and then realizes her father is probably listening to all this in the next room, and hopes he hasn’t heard her say “fuck,” and suddenly wonders why he doesn’t throw these two cocksuckers out of the house.

  “It’s all about Ashley Glendenning asking her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez,” Andrews says.

  “So what’s so unusual about that? That it brings the cops here?”

  “She’s been kidnapped, Maria.”

  “Who?”

  “Little Ashley. You remember little Ashley? Cause she sure as hell remembers you.”

  “I don’t know nothing about no kidnapping,” Maria says.

  “Then why’d she ask her mother…?”

  “I don’t know why she asked her mother nothing. I’m pregnant, I’m seven months pregnant, why would I kidnap anybody?”

  “How does two hundred and fifty thousand dollars sound?”

  “What?”

  “That’s how much little Ashley and her brother are worth to whoever kidnapped them.”

  “I didn’t kidnap nobody. Look, this is ridiculous. Did Ashley say I kidnapped her? Why would she say that?”

  “You tell us.”

  “I am telling you. I haven’t even seen Ashley since, it has to be at least two years now. If I kidnapped her, where is she? More than two years. Do you see her here? We’re just about to have supper, do you see her here?”

  “Where is she, Maria?”

  “How the hell do I know where she is?”

  “Has your husband got her someplace?”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  “Your boyfriend then?”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend, either.”

  “Whoever knocked you up then. Is he in this with you?”

  “Santa María, me estás poniendo furioso con todo esto!”

  “English, Maria.”

  “My baby’s father is in Tampa. He found a better job and a blonde girlfriend there.”

  “A blonde, huh?” Saltzman says, and glances at Andrews. Both men are suddenly alert.

  “That’s what he told me on the phone.”

  “Nice that gallantry’s still alive here in Florida,” Andrews says.

  “What?” Maria says.

  “What’s his name, this hero of yours?”

  “Ernesto de Diego. And he’s no hero of mine.”

  “Would you happen to know his address in Tampa?”

  “No.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  “February twelfth,” Maria says.

  But who’s counting? Saltzman thinks.

  The phone rings again at a little past eight o’clock. Alice picks up the receiver. Sloate and Marcia are ready to do their useless thing, he with the earphones on, she behind her worthless tracing equipment.

  “Hello?” Alice says.

  “Alice, it’s me, Charlie.”

  “If that’s Carol,” Rafe says, “tell her hello for me,” and goes off into the kitchen.

  “Who’s that?” Charlie asks.

  “My brother-in-law.”

  “Have you heard from them yet?”

  Alice hesitates. This is her best friend in the entire universe. Sloate is already shaking his head. No. Tell him nothing. Rafe comes out of the kitchen with a coffee cup in his hand. He begins wandering the room, idly observing. Sloate is shaking his finger at her now. No, he is telling her. No.

  “Yes,” Alice says. “I’ve heard from them.”

  Sloate grabs for the phone. She pulls it away, out of his reach.

  “The police and the FBI are here with me, Charlie.”

  “Oh Jesus!” he says.

  “They’ve been trying to trace her calls…”

  “The blonde’s?” Charlie says.

  “What blonde?”

  “I went over to Pratt a little while ago, talked to the guard who saw the kids get into that Impala.”

  “Tell him to keep out of this!” Sloate warns.

  “Who’s that?” Charlie asks.

  “Detective Sloate.”

  “Same one who called you at my house?”

  “Yes.”

  Rafe is at the living room drapes now. He parts them, looks out into the street.

  “Did he tell you to lie to me?” Charlie asks.

  “Yes. What blonde?”

  “The guard told me a blonde woman was driving the Impala. Is that who you’ve been talking to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She still sound black to you?”

  “She could be black. Or simply Southern. I don’t know.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Quarter of a million dollars.”

  “Jesus!”

  “By t
en tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to leave the money—”

  Sloate is out of his chair. He starts to say, “You’re jeopardizing your own—” but just then Rafe turns away from the drapes.

  “Red convertible pulling into the driveway,” he says. “Blonde at the wheel.”

  “Who…?” Alice starts, but she hears a car door slamming outside. “I have to go,” she tells Charlie. “I’ll call you back,” and hangs up and goes instantly to the front door. Looking through the peephole, she sees Jennifer Redding loping from the driveway to the walk, still wearing the white bell-bottom pants she had on yesterday, still showing her belly button and a good three inches of flesh, but with a blue cotton sweater top this time.

  “Who is it?” Sloate asks.

  “The woman who ran me over yesterday.”

  “Get rid of her.”

  Alice opens the door, and steps outside. Bugs are flitting around the light to the left of the entrance steps. Jennifer stops on the walk, looks up at her in surprise.

  “Hi,” she says. “How’s your foot?”

  “Fine,” Alice says.

  “I brought you a little get-well present. I hope you like chocolate.”

  “Yes, I do. Thanks.”

  “Everybody likes chocolate,” Jennifer says, and hands her a little white box imprinted with the name of a fudge maker on The Ring. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind a piece right now,” she says, smiling. “If you’re offering, that is.”

  “Sure, help yourself,” Alice says, and breaks the white string holding the box closed. The aroma of fresh chocolate wafts up past the open lid of the box. Jennifer delicately grasps a piece of fudge between thumb and forefinger, lifts it from the box.

  “Wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, either,” she says. “If you’ve got some brewing.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” Alice says. “I’d ask you in, but I have company.”

  Jennifer looks at the truck parked at the curb and gives Alice a knowing look. She pops the square of fudge into her mouth, chews silently for a moment, and then swallows and says, “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could talk awhile. Get to know each other a little better.”

  She is looking directly into Alice’s eyes. Searching her eyes. Alice remembers what Charlie just told her on the phone. A blonde woman was driving the Impala.

  “Some other time maybe,” she says.

  “Anyway, I wanted to thank you for not calling the police,” Jennifer says.

  She is still studying Alice’s face intently.