Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“Set up the sweep,” he says. “Full team, twenty-four-seven, the whole nine yards. But find this woman fast, or back off.”

Sally can almost see herself on television already.

“I’ll find her, sir,” she says.

The little digital clock on Stone’s desk reads 1:47:03.

The phone call comes at two o’clock sharp.

By then, Charlie has figured out the wiretap equipment and is sitting with the earphones on his head. He flicks a switch and nods for Alice to pick up.

“Hello?” she says.

“We’ve got a problem here,” the woman says. Alice’s heart leaps into her throat. Charlie is suddenly attentive, as if he’s listening for incoming mail at Khe Sanh.

“Somebody followed me,” the woman says.

“Let me talk to Ashley.”

“No, your daughter’s got a big mouth, you don’t have to talk to her again,” the woman says. “My partner spotted them behind us. Two men in a maroon Buick. It wasn’t for a garbage truck, we’d be in serious trouble here.”

Alice says nothing.

My partner, she is thinking. Does this mean her partner in this ambitious little enterprise of theirs? Or does it mean her sexual partner? Is this a pair of lesbians she’s dealing with?

“Were they cops?” the woman asks.

“I don’t know who they might have been,” Alice says. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“Are they there with you now?”

“No one’s here with me,” Alice says.

“I’ll call you back, anyway,” the woman says, and hangs up.

“That’s her pattern,” Alice explains. “She’s afraid we’ll be tracing the call.”

“Is she right about that Buick?”

“I have no idea.”

“How damn stupid can these people be?”

“I told you, Charlie. They deserted me this morning…”

“Putting a clumsy tail on—”

The telephone rings.

“There she is,” Charlie says.

Alice picks up.

“Hello?” she says.

“Why’d you call the police?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who were those men in the Buick?”

“I don’t know. I came there alone. I don’t know anything about anyone following you. Let me talk to my daughter.”

“Forget it.”

“You said—”

“Never mind what I said. You went back on your word.”

“I did not call the police!” Alice screams into the phone.

Even Charlie almost believes her.

The woman is silent for a moment.

Then there’s another click on the line.

“Damn her,” Alice says, “I could kill her!”

“When she calls back, get right to the point. Tell her she’s got the money, ask her when and where you can pick up the kids.”

Alice nods.

“Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let her rattle you. If the kids have been harmed already—”

“Oh Jesus, Charlie, don’t even—”

“—they wouldn’t be calling you, don’t you see, Alice? The kids are still all right.”

The phone rings.

“Remember. Stick to the point. When, where? Stay calm.”

“Okay.”

“Pick it up.”

He throws the LISTEN switch. Alice picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

“We can’t give you the kids today,” the woman says.

“You promised…”

“We have to check out the money first.”

They’ll discover it’s fake, Alice thinks. They’ll—

“Give us time,” the woman says, and suddenly her voice softens. “Your kids are okay, just give us a little time here.”

And she is gone again.

It is ten past two by the time Carol gets to I-75 South. Big rigs like the ones Rafe drives are roaring at her on the other side of the divider.

She figures it will take her some ten to twelve hours to get to Cape October. According to her map, it’s a good hour or more to Macon, some sixty-five miles or so, before she has to turn off at the Valdosta exit to merge with I-475 South. Just now, she feels wide awake and peppy, but she plans to stop at a motel for the night, get to the Cape in time for breakfast tomorrow morning. The longest stretch of road will be the four-hundred-plus miles between Macon and St. Pete, but she’s made the trip before — with kids screaming in the backseat, no less — and she knows she can make it this time, too, with no sweat.

She cannot possibly imagine how Alice must feel, her kids gone and a passel of fools handling the case. She can remember times when the two of them were growing up in Peekskill, Carol the older sister and constantly getting Alice out of jams. But nothing as serious as this had ever—

Well, Eddie drowning that way.

Carol had taken the first plane down out of Atlanta. She thought her younger sister would never get through it; God, how she loved that man. Held her sister in her arms, sobbing, Alice clutching a photo of Eddie with his shining blue eyes and crooked grin and pale unruly hair.

Carol wonders what it’s like to love a person that much. Here alone behind the wheel of the Ford Explorer, trucks coming at her like attacking Martian spaceships, she wonders if in fact she really loves Rafe at all, really ever loved him at all.

Unlike her sister, Carol never went for the slight slender type, oh no, it was always the big brawny college football hero or the wrestling team champ. Though Rafe is neither, Rafe never even graduated from high school; no wonder he got in trouble with the law those two times. Well, dope. Everybody’s into dope these days, she hopes some damn dope fiends haven’t got their hands on those two adorable kids, what on earth is wrong with the cops down there, handling this so damn stupidly?

Her foot is pressed hard to the accelerator.

A glance at the speedometer tells her she’s hitting seventy, seventy-five, the needle wavering. She doesn’t want to get stopped by the Georgia Highway Patrol, but neither does she want to drive along too slowly, risk lulling herself to sleep that way. Rafe told her once that he averages ninety miles an hour on his long hauls; he was probably lying to her, ninety is really too fast.

His call this morning was… well, peculiar.

Broke the news to her about the kidnapping, told her Alice was already on the way to meet whoever it was had the kids, carrying a bag full of funny money, he sure hoped those people would accept it.

“What do you mean?” Carol said.

“Otherwise, there might be trouble.”

“You mean if they…?”

“If they tip to the money being fake,” Rafe said.

“Well, you just told me it’s very good stuff.”

“Is what the cops told Alice, yes.”

“So how can they tip?”

“These people ain’t fools, you know,” Rafe said. “You can’t be a moron and figure out something like this.”

“That’s right, it takes a rocket scientist to grab two kids and ask for ransom.”

“I mean, the way they’ve been handling it, Carol. I’ve been right here, you know, I see how the woman hangs up every two, three seconds, I see how carefully they’ve worked this whole thing out. All I’m saying is I hope they don’t realize Alice brought them counterfeit money. I worry about them kids, Carol.”

She wonders now if he really worries about Alice’s kids, or anybody’s kids, for that matter. Or anyone but his own self.

Carol has long suspected that her husband plays around on these long trips of his. Never calls her when he’s on the road — today was an exception, but it’s not every day your sister’s kids get kidnapped. Gone sometimes three, four weeks when he’s hauling to the West Coast, you think he’d call every few days, tell her he loves her, whatever. Never does. That’s either a man who’s in tight control of his emotions, or else it’s a man fooling around with whatever comes his way on the road, she wouldn’t be at all surprised.