Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

Well, desperate people do desperate things.

When he first told Christine about the insurance policy on his life, she thought this was very interesting but did not see how it applied to their current situation.

“If I die in an accident, the death benefit is doubled,” he told her.

“So?”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“So?”

“So if I die in an accident, Alice gets two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And we get to start a new life together.”

“One,” Christine said, “how do we start a new life together if you’re dead?”

“I’m not dead. I’m presumed dead.”

“And two, if Alice is the one who gets this insurance money, how do we get to start this new life together?”

“We kidnap my kids and hold them for ransom,” Eddie said.

After he faked the drowning, they moved out of the state entirely. It might have been safe to settle on the East Coast of Florida someplace, but from Fort Myers to Palm Beach was just a short hop across the state on U.S. 80, and farther south you could jump onto Alligator Alley at Naples and be in Fort Lauderdale in what, two, three hours? They couldn’t take that chance. Eddie Glendenning was dead. They didn’t want any travelers from Cape October to run into his ghost in a bar someplace.

They chose New Orleans.

Easier to get lost in a big city.

Fun town besides. The Big Easy, they called it. And nobody looked cockeyed at a black-white relationship there. Plenty of those there already; Eddie and Christine didn’t even merit a raised eyebrow.

He knew you could buy a fake ID on the Internet, but he was reluctant to do that because he felt it would leave some kind of paper trail that might come back to bite him on the ass later on. He was also leery of contacting anyone… well, criminal… who might be able to help him establish a new identity. By faking his own death, Eddie had already committed insurance fraud, and he was about to commit the crime of kidnapping, but he still did not think of himself as a criminal. He had not given up gambling — just because a person is dead doesn’t mean he has to stop gambling — but gambling wasn’t a crime. Gambling was an addiction, even though Eddie wasn’t quite ready to admit he was an addict, either.

However, some addictions are related, and so there were gamblers in New Orleans who also used narcotics, and the sale or possession of controlled substances was a crime in Louisiana, the same as it was in any other state of the union. And these gamblers who were also using drugs knew the people who were selling these drugs, of course, and these people were criminals, even Eddie had to admit that. And these drug-dealer criminals knew people who were involved in yet other types of criminal activity, and one of those activities happened to be the manufacture and creation of false documents like passports, birth certificates, driver’s licenses, credit cards, and even diplomas from Harvard University.

So by asking around — cautiously, to be sure — Eddie finally got a line on a man named Charles Franklin (“No relation to Ben,” he told Eddie with a grin) who was able to provide a false driver’s license issued to one Edward Graham residing at 336 East 120th Street in the city of New York, State of New York, with Eddie’s new signature on it and everything.

And he was able to provide first a false American Express card under the cloned name of Michael Anderson, which he said would take Eddie through the month of October when the company would bill the real Michael Anderson, who would begin squawking about charges he’d never made. Franklin then created a cloned Visa card (true owner a man named Nelson Waterbury) that would take Eddie through November, and then a cloned Master Card for December and a cloned Discover card for January. By then, Eddie had found a job selling computer equipment and established a bank account of his own. When he applied for a bona fide credit card under his new name — Edward Graham, no middle initial — it was granted at once. He had no trouble passing a Louisiana driving test, either, and acquiring a legitimate driver’s license as well.

By then, he had also married Christine Welles, who became Christine Graham, thereby adding the crime of bigamy to Eddie’s already growing list of denied crimes.

Then again, it wasn’t Eddie Glendenning who married her.

Eddie Glendenning was hardly a memory by then.

Always mindful of leaving a trail that can somehow be picked up, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Graham fly not to Fort Myers — the closest airport to Cape October — but instead to Tampa, where they rent a car and drive to a marina he knows in St. Pete. Using his new name and his new legitimate credit card and driver’s license, Eddie rents a forty-foot Sundancer, a Sea Ray power cruiser that, with its pair of twin Volvo 430-horsepower engines, is capable of high performance in open water — although he plans only to take her down the Intercoastal to Cape October. In effect, he needs the boat more as a floating hotel than as a means of transportation.

Once on the inland waterway, he motors leisurely southward past the towering Sunshine Skyway to Anna Maria and Longboat, into Sarasota Bay, and past Venice and Englewood, and finally rounding Cape Haze and coming past Boca Grande. On the first day of April, he exits the Intercoastal at October Bay, where he finds the marina he and the family stayed at aboard the Jamash several years ago. Here on the northern end of Crescent Island, a thousand yards from where Lewiston Point Road dead-ends into Crescent Inlet, the azure docks of Marina Blue beckon in brilliant sunlight as he parks the Sundancer and cuts the engines.

He reminds Christine that this is April Fool’s Day.

An appropriate time to be setting their plan in motion.

Eddie Glendenning drowned in the Gulf of Mexico on the night of September 21 last year. Surely the insurance company has paid the death benefit by now. Even so, they do not plan to take the children till the middle of May, after they’ve gone over the ground a hundred times, walked it through again and again to make sure there will be no mistakes.

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is riding on this little venture.

Their entire future together is riding on this little venture.

He does not dare wander very far from the boat, for fear someone will spot him, and recognize him, and blow the whole scheme.

It is Christine who purchases the hinged hasp that Eddie himself fastens to the door and jamb of the forward stateroom. In the same hardware store on the Trail, she buys a padlock that fits into the hasp, to keep the children secure until it is time to release them.

It is Christine as well who takes the ferry over to Lewiston Point, and phones for a taxi to carry her to the Fort Myers airport. They dare not choose any of the rental car companies that line U.S.41. It is their reasoning that if she rents at a smaller site, she might be recognized later on. There is a lot of traffic at an airport the size of the one in Fort Myers. No one will remember her. Or so is their reasoning.

The flat rate for the ride from the Lewiston Point ferry landing to the airport is seventy-five dollars. She goes directly to the Avis counter and presents her Clara Washington credit card and her Clara Washington driver’s license with her Clara Washington photograph and signature on it, and within fifteen minutes she is driving a blue Chevrolet Impala out of the airport.

She picks up Route 78 West, and drives directly to the Cape.

At the Shell station on Lewiston Point Road, she crosses U.S. 41 and drives out over the bridge to Tall Grass. At the end of the road, she parks the car and again boards the ferry to Crescent Island.