Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“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.”

This surprises Charlie. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face. Why would the cops have been here? Alice told him they let her go yesterday, so why…?

“Sorry to bother you again then,” he says. “She’s just eager to thank the woman.”

Farraday is a man maybe sixty-five, seventy, in there, one of the retirees who come down here to die in the sun. Charlie’s fifty-four, which is maybe getting on, he supposes. But he knew what he wanted to be when he was seventeen. Had to leave art school when the Army grabbed him, but returned to his studies and his chosen profession the moment he was discharged. He’s been painting ever since, never hopes to retire till his fingers can no longer hold a brush or the good Lord claims him, whichever comes first.

“These’d be Jamie and Ashley Glendenning,” he says. “Little boy and girl.”

“Yep, I know them. But like I told the detectives this morning—”

“That when they were here?”

“Round ten o’clock,” Farraday says.

“And you told them what?”

“Told them a young blonde woman called the kids over to the car, drove off with them.”

“What’d she look like?”

“Straight blonde hair down to here,” he says, and indicates the length of it on his neck. “Slender woman from the look of her, delicate features. Wearing sunglasses and a white little-like tennis hat with a peak.”

“She wasn’t black, was she?” Charlie asks.

“Cops asked me the same thing.”

“Was she?”

“I don’t know many black blondes,” Farraday says. Then, chuckling, he adds, “Don’t know many blondes at all, for that matter. Nor too many blacks, either.”

“How old would you say?”

“I couldn’t say. Young, though. In her thirties maybe? I really couldn’t say.”

“Called over to the kids, you said?”

“Called to them. Signaled to them. You know.”

“What’d she say?”

“Now there’s where you got me, mister,” Farraday says, and lightly taps the hearing aid in his right ear.

“Couldn’t hear what she said, is that it?”

“Knew she was calling over to them, though. Waving for them to get in.”

“And they just got in.”

“Got in, and she drove off with them.”

“In a blue car, is that right?”

“Blue Chevrolet Impala.”

“Notice the license plate?”

“No. Told the cops the same thing. Wasn’t looking for it.”

“Florida plate was it, though?”

“Must’ve been, don’t you think?”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause it was a rental car.”

“How do you know?”

“Had a bumper sticker on it. ‘Avis Tries Harder.’”

Bingo, Charlie thinks.

The call from Captain Steele comes at twenty minutes to three.

“What does Oleander Street look like right this minute?” he asks Sloate.

“Empty. No traffic at all, nobody parked.”

“Do you think they’re watching the house?”

“No.”

“If I sent somebody over right now, with those bullshit hundreds from the Henley case, can he drive right into the garage?”

“Yes. It’s a two-car garage, there’s only the vic’s car in it right now.”

The vic, Alice thinks.

She is pacing the floor near the table where Sloate sits with the phone to his ear. The vic.

“I’ll call when he’s on his approach. You can raise the door then.”

“Got it.”

“I’m sending Andrews and Saltzman to check out that babysitter,” he says. “You think there’s any meat there?”

“I hope so.”

“Meanwhile, when your lady calls, tell her you’ve got the money.”

“Okay.”

“And set up a drop.”

“Okay.”

“Do you think they know we’re already in this?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Stay in touch.”

Sloate puts the phone back on its cradle.

“What?” Alice asks.

“He’s sending two of our people to talk to Maria Gonzalez.”

”They found her then?”

“Yes. And he’s sending someone else here to—”

“No! Why?”

“With bogus bills.”

“Bogus…?”

“Counterfeit hundred-dollar bills.”

“No. If anyone’s watching the house…”

“He’ll be driving right into the garage.”

“If they smell something fishy…”

“They won’t, don’t worry.”

“These are my kids we’re talking about!”

The grandfather clock now reads 2:45 P.M.

In fifteen minutes, the woman will call again with instructions.

“When she calls,” Sloate says, “tell her you have the money. That’s the first thing.”

“They’ll know the bills are phony.”

“No, they won’t,” he says. “These are confiscated super-bills. The Federal Reserve loaned them to us when we were working another kidnapping case down here.”

“What’s a super-bill?”

“All you got to know is they’re so good nobody can tell them from the real thing. She won’t recognize them, believe me.”

“How do I get my children back?”

“That’s the whole point of this phone call. You’ll set up an exchange. Kids for money. No kids, no money.”

“They won’t go for that.”

“You’ve got to insist on it.”

“How?”

“Way we’ve done it before—”

“How many damn kidnappings do you have here in Florida?”

“One every now and then. Way we do it is this. You get out of your car with a satchelful of money. You go to her alone. She checks out the money while you’re there with her. But you don’t actually give her the money till she goes to get the kids from wherever…”

“Why would she do that? Once she’s got her hands on that money—”

“She’ll do it. That’s the way we’ve worked it before. They need to have some assurance…”

“No! I’m the one who needs—”

“Mrs. Glen—”

“—assurance that I’m going to get my kids back! Either she has the kids with her, or I don’t turn over the money. Period!”

“Well, that’s what we hope will be the case.”

“That’s not what you said. You said she takes the money and runs. That’s what you said.”

“I said you don’t actually give her the money. All you do is show it to her. Mrs. Glendenning… ma’am… let us try to help you, okay? Give us a chance here.”

Alice says nothing.

“Let me go over it one more time, okay? One: You set up the meet.”