Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“You were so good with the camera, Alice, please say yes.”

“Well, I…”

She could barely speak.

“Where will you be shooting?” she asked.

“Toronto,” Denise said. “For New York.”

“How long is the shooting schedule?”

“I haven’t worked it out yet, but I’m assuming six, seven weeks — seven weeks tops. Neither of us will be drawing salaries, Alice, but we’ll share in the profits, if there are any. And if we bring this one in on budget, and win a few prizes…”

“Oh sure, prizes.”

Her heart was racing.

“Why not?” Denise said. “What I’m saying is it’s a start, there’ll be other ones in the future. Alice. Please.”

“I’ll have to talk to Eddie,” she said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Eddie didn’t think it was such a good idea.

Things weren’t going too well at Lowell, Hastings, Finch and Ulrich; he wasn’t becoming a millionaire quickly enough. In fact, he wasn’t making anywhere near the kind of commissions he thought he should be making by this time.

“So how can we afford your being away for two, three months, whatever it is…?”

“Seven weeks tops,” Alice said.

“Seven weeks, okay, even so. We’d have to get a nanny for Ashley, where are we supposed to get the money for a nanny? Line producer and cinematographer are very nice titles, Alice, but you said yourself there wouldn’t be any salary while you’re…”

“If the film shows a profit…”

“Oh sure, how many of these indie films make any money?”

“It’s what I trained for, Eddie!”

“I know. I’m not saying don’t put your training and your expertise to use, Alice, I’m only saying don’t do it right this minute. Do it sometime in the future. This just isn’t the appropriate time for you to be running off to Canada.”

“But the opportunity is here now, Eddie. Not sometime in the future. And why isn’t this an appropriate…?”

“Because I’m thinking of leaving the firm.”

“What? Why would you want to do that ?”

“Because the bonanza boat at Lowell-Hastings has already sailed, Alice. Which doesn’t mean I can’t make it somewhere else in the world of high finance. I was thinking…”

“Somewhere else? Where, Eddie, New York is our…”

“Why can’t we move to a small town on the West Coast? Or maybe somewhere in the Southwest? Or even the South? Maybe Beaufort, South Caro…”

“Beau…”

“…which I hear is a lovely place to live. Plenty of opportunities elsewhere, Alice. Maybe Florida. Why not Florida? Nice and warm in Florida. But I don’t think you should go to Canada just now, honey. Not at this juncture of my career.”

Your career? Alice thought.

What about my career?

What about the juncture of my career that was put on hold when Ashley was born five months ago, what about that little career, Count Dracula?

That night, she called Denise and told her she was really sorry, but she couldn’t go in with her at this time.

“Thanks, Denise,” she said. “I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“That’s okay,” Denise said. “Another time. “I love you, hon.”

“I love you, too. Good luck with it.”

“I’m gonna need it,” Denise said.

The pill Alice’s new gynecologist prescribed was “ The Pill,” a combination of the synthetic female hormones progestin and estrogen, as differentiated from “The Mini- Pill,” which contained only the one hormone, progestin. Dr. Abigail Franks recommended the combination pill because it was supposed to be 99 percent effective as opposed to the 97 percent effectiveness of the progestin-only pill. This meant that if a hundred women took the so-called combination-pill every day of the year, only one of them would become pregnant.

Alice took the pill every day at the same time, right after she brushed her teeth and just before she went to bed, because it was easier to remember taking it that way. She gained a little weight at first, and she experienced some spotting, but these side effects went away after her first three or four menstrual cycles, and after that the daily routine became as fixed as bathing Ashley in the morning or kissing Eddie goodbye before he went off to work.

And then one day, she missed her period again.

She didn’t think this was possible. She hadn’t skipped a day of taking the pill, so how was this possible? Besides, ever since she’d started taking the pill her periods were always very light, sometimes nothing more than a brown smudge on a tampon or in her panties. So she knew that if she hadn’t missed any pills — which she was certain she hadn’t — then even these light periods counted as menstruation. That was because the hormone doses in the pills were so very low that not much uterus lining built up, and very little blood needed to come out each month.

But this particular month, there was no blood at all.

Nada , zero, zilch.

So Alice went to the nearest CVS pharmacy and bought herself a trusty old reliable Instastrip Onestep HCG Pregnancy Test. And guess what? All the colors of the goddamn rainbow showed up after she dipped the test strip in a little cup of her pee.

Just her luck, Alice turned out to be the one woman in a hundred who got pregnant taking the pill that year!

Jamie was born in the month of October, a year and five months after his sister came into the world. That same month, Denise’s film Summer of Joy won the $100,000 Leone dell’Anno Prize at the Venice Film Festival. When she called Alice to ask if she would join her on her new venture, Alice regretfully had to decline again, she was so very sorry.

“That’s okay,” Denise said. “Another time. I love you, hon.”

Just before Thanksgiving that year, the family moved to Cape October, where Eddie began his new job with the investment firm of Baxter and Meuhl.

At the time of his drowning last year, Eddie still hadn’t made his first million dollars. In fact, they were still paying off a $150,000 mortgage on the house, and making monthly payments on the Jamash, and the two cars, and what suddenly seemed like far too many other things.

Long before then, Alice had given up her girlish dream of making movies that would win all the prizes.

When she gets back to the house, a faded maroon Buick is parked in the driveway behind her sister’s black Explorer. The police, she thinks. A maroon Buick. Gee, fellas, what took you so long?

“I had to let them in,” her sister explains. “They have badges.”

“Sorry to bother you again,” Sloate says.

He is here with Marcia Di Luca, who has already made herself at home behind the monitoring equipment, sipping a cup of coffee Alice assumes her sister prepared.

“Long time no see,” Alice says.

She cannot quite hide the enmity she feels for these people.

“Let me fill you in,” he says. “To begin with—”

“To begin with,” Alice says, “they know you followed them.”

“How do you—?”

“The woman called me,” Alice says. “They know a maroon Buick followed them. Is that the car outside?”

Sloate makes a sort of helpless gesture.

“Even so,” he says, “the bills are marked. We feel certain someone will spot the serial numbers and call us.”

He now explains that genuine hundred-dollar bills are printed in so-called families, with serial numbers starting with different letters of the alphabet, but that the super-bills supplied for the ransom drop are all A-series bills, and they all bear the identical serial number, which happens to be A-358127756.

“Once the perps try to cash any of those bills,” he says, “someone will spot that number.”