Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel (9 page)

“She won’t go for it,” Sally says. “She’ll take the money and tell you they’ll let the kids go later, such and such a time, such and such a place. That’s the way they work it.”

“Well, we’ve worked it this way before,” Marcia tells her.

“When?”

“The Henley case. Three years back.”

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 displeased. 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?”