Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel

by Ed McBain

  “Three of the bills were counterfeit,” she tells him.

  “How do you know?”

  “I tried to cash them at a bank. They’ve got a machine. The bills are what they call super-bills…”

  “Hold it, hold it…”

  “Honey, please listen to me.”

  There is that familiar intense look in his eyes. He is afraid she’s going to tell him that all their careful planning was for nothing. She has already told him three of the bills—

  “Honey, please,” she says. “It’s not bad, really. Just listen.”

  “I’m listening,” he says.

  “The bank refused to cash them. In fact, they—”

  “Why’d you go to a bank?”

  “To get some smaller bills. Honey, please, for Christ’s sake, listen!”

  She sees him tense the way Vicente used to, sees the muscles in his jaw tightening, is fearful that in the next minute he is going to punch her or slap her or shove her…

  “I’m listening,” he says again.

  “They call them super-bills. They make them on some kind of presses the U.S. sold to Iran when the shah was still in power. They use German paper to print the bills. You can’t tell them from the real thing, honey, except with these machines the Fed has, and now all the Southwest Federal branches. Which is how they flagged the bills, they ran them through their machine. But a diner where I had breakfast accepted one of the—”

  “Slow down,” he says.

  “A diner cashed one of the hundreds. So did Victoria’s Secret. Which is why I bought the television set. I paid for it with nineteen hundred in cash, and nobody batted an eyelash. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying the rest of the money is real. You’re saying we don’t have to worry…”

  “No, honey. I’m saying it don’t matter if they’re real or fake or whatever. We cash them where there are no machines, and we’re home free.”

  He looks at her.

  He is nodding now.

  And now he is smiling.

  “Let’s go celebrate tonight,” he says.

  The features editor of the Cape October Tribune is a man named Lionel Maxwell, who has been in the newspaper business for forty years now, and who doesn’t need a twerp like Dustin Garcia telling him about placement. Garcia is saying he wants his weekly column to run on the first page of tomorrow’s Sunday section.

  “That is patently absurd,” Maxwell says.

  This is a small newspaper, circulation only 75,000 in a town of 143,000, which tells you something, doesn’t it? In addition to being a star reporter in his own mind, Garcia writes this column he calls “Dustin’s Dustbin,” and it usually runs on page five of the Sunday section. But now Garcia is insisting it should run on the first page instead.

  “Give me one good reason,” Maxwell says.

  He knows the good reason. Garcia wants greater exposure. His picture runs at the top of the column—“Dustin’s Dustbin,” for Christ’s sake!—but that isn’t good enough for him. He wants his picture and his precious words to run on the section’s first page, where anyone too lazy to turn to page five will see it at once.

  “I think it’s an exceptionally good column this week,” Garcia says.

  He can’t tell Maxwell that running it on the first page of the section is Detective Wilbur Sloate’s idea. Detective Sloate is looking for higher visibility. He wants to make sure that the people who have those kids will see the piece without having to go digging through the paper for it. But Garcia can’t explain that to his boss.

  Nor can he tell him that the story he’s written is a complete fabrication. He’s afraid that Maxwell won’t run it at all if he knows not a word of it is true. Well, the kids being picked up at school is true, but the rest is all a crock. Garcia feels he’s performing a public service here, helping to get those kids back. He doesn’t want to run into bureaucratic red tape from an old-timer like Maxwell who doesn’t know what new-wave journalism is all about. He doesn’t want to hear him sounding off about libel suits, the way he did that time Garcia wrote a column about municipal garbage pickups regularly and routinely being ignored in the predominately Cuban Twin Oaks area, which actually did happen one Friday, the garbage not being picked up, and which even Garcia had to admit was not exactly an epidemic of neglect, but the city hadn’t sued anyway, so what was all the fuss?

  “Also,” Maxwell says, “I’m not sure I like all these Shakespearean references.”

  “That’s what makes the column special,” Garcia says.

  “Half the rednecks down here never even heard of Shakespeare.”

  “Come on, Lionel, everybody knows Shakespeare.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  But he is softening.

  Garcia is thinking if his column helps crack a kidnapping case, he’ll get the Pulitzer.

  “Please, Lionel?” he says. “Give me a break, okay? Front page of the section, upper right hand corner. Please?”

  “I must be out of my mind,” Maxwell says.

  They pick up I-75 ten miles east of the Cape, and then drive the Taurus north toward Sarasota. He tells Christine he’s afraid they might be spotted if they try any of the local restaurants, most of which aren’t any good, anyway. In Sarasota, there’s a wider selection.

  They both must realize that Alice is sitting by the phone, waiting for a call from them, but they aren’t talking about her, or the kids locked in the forward stateroom of the boat. As long as they catch the last ferry back at ten-thirty, the kids will be okay. Instead, they talk about where they should go now that they have all this money.

  The Unicorn is a restaurant all the way out on Siesta Key, secluded and quiet in the off-season. A month ago, it would have been thronged with Midwesterners. Tonight, they are virtually alone in the place. He orders a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. They toast to their success, and then order from the truly magnificent menu.

  He sips at his champagne, gives the glass an admiring glance, eyebrows raised. He is dressed casually, tan slacks and a brown cotton sweater that perfectly complement the long blond hair. Christine is wearing an off-the-shoulder yellow dress, strappy yellow sandals, dangling yellow earrings. In Florida, especially during the off-season, no one dresses up for dining out.

  She wants to talk about where they should go, now that they have all this money. She wants to talk about leaving Cape October forever, now that everything’s worked out the way they hoped it would, now that they’re finally rid of his wife.

  “She’s not a bad person,” he says.

  “I thought—”

  “It’s not her fault that we happened to meet.”

  “You and her, you mean?”

  “No, you and me. It’s not her fault that I met you and fell in love with you.”

  “Nice save,” Christine says, and hesitates a moment, and then asks, “Are you glad you met me?”

  “Of course,” he says.

  “And fell in love with me?”

  “I am very glad I fell in love with you.”

  She remembers the way they met.

  Thinking back on it now, it seems to her they fell in love that very first instant. This will always be a source of amazement to her. That they met at all. People tend to forget that Florida is the South. In fact, it is the Deep South. And he is white and she is black. But they met. And fell in love.

  He looked almost like a teenager. Three years ago, he was wearing his blond hair in a crew cut well suited to the summers on Cape October. Down here—and she was only just learning this because she’d recently moved down from Asheville—the summer months were horrendous. In Asheville, she’d worked serving burgers at a Mickey D’s. Down here (big improvement!) she was scooping ice cream at a place called The Dairy Boat. That’s where they met. At the Boat.

  “Which are the no-fat flavors?” he asked.

  Crew-cut blond hair. T-shirt and shorts, Reeboks. This was a Saturday, he’d probably been out running, high sheen of sweat on his face and his b
are arms.

  “Up there on the chart,” she said.

  “I can’t read,” he said, and grinned.

  That grin. Jesus!

  “Chocolate-vanilla swirl,” she said. “Strawberry. Coffee crunch.”

  “What’s the coffee crunch?” he asked.

  “It’s got like these little chunks of chocolate in it.”

  “Is it good?”

  “I like it.”

  “What else do you like?”

  Little bit of double intender there?

  She looked at him.

  “Lots of things,” she said.

  “You like walking hatless in spring rain?”

  She looked at him again.

  “You flirting with me?” she asked.

  “Yep,” he said.

  “You too young to be flirting with a grown woman,” she said.

  “Thirty-three last month,” he said.

  “You look younger.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Nice age difference,” he said.

  “You think?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “How about that other little difference?” she asked.

  “The Great Racial Divide, you mean?”

  “No, I mean the gold band I spy on your left hand.”

  “Oh,” he said. “That.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Yep,” he said.

  “So whut’s a married man like you doing flirting with a nice colored girl like me?”

  “Gee, I really don’t know,” he said. “What time do you get out of here?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Want to come for a ride with me?”

  “A ride where?”

  “To the moon,” he said.

  That was the start of it.

  “You still love me?” she asks now.

  “Adore you,” he says.

  “Even after what we had to do?”

  “Well,” he says, “desperate people do desperate things.”

  “Desperate, huh?”

  “Is what we were,” he says. “We had to do what we did. There was no other way.”

  “Here’s to all that money,” she says, and raises her glass in a toast. They clink glasses. Her eyes flash with sudden awareness.

  “Why’s that waiter staring at you?” she whispers.

  He turns to look.

  “The bald guy over near the serving station.”

  “He’s not staring at me.”

  “He was a minute ago.”

  They drink.

  “Good,” he says.

  “Yummy,” she says. But she is still looking toward the serving station.

  “I wonder why they gave us fake money,” he says.

  “If it’s all fake. We don’t really know.”

  Still looking across the room.

  “It must be, don’t you think?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” she says. “Good as gold either way.”

  He pours more champagne for both of them. They sip silently for several moments.

  “So where do you think we should go?” she asks. “After we turn the kids loose?”

  “Where would you like to go?”

  “Bali.”

  “Okay.”

  “You serious?”

  “Sure. Why not Bali?”

  “Oh, wow, I’d love that.”

  “Fake money, fake passports, why not?”

  “Can we get them? The passports?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Do you know somebody?”

  “Same guy who made the other stuff.”

  “Then let’s do it.”

  “We will.”

  “Let’s get out of Florida tonight,” she says, really excited now. “Let’s give her a call…”

  “Well, not yet.”

  “…tell her the kids are all right…”

  “Well...”

  “…drop them off someplace, and get the hell out of here.”

  “Well,” he says, and takes another sip of champagne. “The kids may be—”

  “Excuse me, sir,” a voice says.

  He turns.

  The man standing at his elbow is the waiter who Christine says was staring at him a few minutes ago. Fifty years old or thereabouts, tall and lean, with a balding pate and clear blue eyes, an apologetic smile on his face now.

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meal,” the man says. “Just wanted to say it’s nice seeing you here again.”

  “I… uh… I’m sorry, but this is the first time I’ve been here.”

  “Ah? From some other restaurant then? I used to work at Serafina’s out on Longboat…”

  “Never been there.”

  “Or The Flying Dutchman downtown?”

  “Don’t know either of them. Sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry to’ve bothered you. I thought sure… well, excuse me, I’m sorry.”

  He nods, smiles, backs away from the table.

  “Do you know him?” Christine whispers.

  “Never saw him in my life,” Eddie says.

  Faking his death was the easy part.

  It had to look like a sudden whim.

  Take the sloop out for a moonlight sail when it’s too late to get a sitter on such short notice. Gee, Alice, I’d like to take the Jamash out tonight, would you mind? Sudden inspiration, you know? But in preparation for this seemingly impetuous idea, he’s been watching the daily forecasts, waiting for a night when the seas will be high and the wind will be blowing out of the east.

  They keep the boat at a ramshackle landing pier called Marina Jackson. It doesn’t have any hoists or storage racks, which they don’t need anyway because they never take her out of the water except to have the bottom scraped periodically, and they have that done at a true marina out on Willard. The guy running Marina Jackson is named Matt Jackson, and he’s surprised to see Eddie driving in at eight o’clock that night, fixing to take the boat out when the Coast Guard has issued small craft warnings. Eddie tells him he’ll be staying on the Intercoastal, which isn’t his plan at all, but Jackson frowns at him, anyway, and tells him to be careful out there tonight.

  The sloop is a thirty-foot seaworthy Pearson that can sleep four, perfect for the Glendenning family, with a V-berth that can accommodate two up forward, and a port settee in the main salon that converts to a double berth. Eddie does indeed start out under motor on the Intercoastal, but the minute he rounds the tip of the key, he hoists sail and grabs the first wind that takes him westward, into the pass and out into the Gulf.

  Man, it is not fun out here.

  Expert sailor though he is, he knows this is goddamn dangerous, knows he can really drown out here tonight, if he doesn’t get off this boat fast, before it gets too far from shore. He inflates the rubber dinghy, carries it back to the stern platform and lowers it into the water. Clinging to the line that holds it to the Jamash, he climbs down into the dinghy, and starts its fifteen-horsepower Yamaha engine. He lets the line fall free of the sloop’s cleat. Still under sail, the Jamash seems to fly away westward into the night, disappearing from sight almost at once.

  He is still fearful that he might really drown.

  Waves crash in over the sides of the rubber dinghy, drenching him, threatening to capsize the small boat. He keeps its furiously bobbing nose pointed consistently eastward, constantly checking a handheld compass, squinting into the squall, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

  At last he sees the light marking the entrance to the pass and the Intercoastal. He shifts course slightly, adjusting for the wind that threatens to blow him and the dinghy farther out into the Gulf. When he comes to within a hundred yards or so from the white sand beach that marks the tip of Willard Key, he removes a bait-cutting knife from its sheath and rips two gaping slashes in the dinghy’s orange rubber hide. He is over the side and swimming for shore as the deflating dinghy, weighed down by the engine, sinks out of sight.

  He lies
on his back on the sand, breathing harshly.

  The night rages everywhere around him.

  But Eddie Glendenning is dead.

  Isn’t he?

  Christine is silent all the way back to the ferry landing. She is still wondering about that waiter in The Unicorn. They park the car, lock it, and board the ferry at ten-thirty. Ten minutes later, they are approaching the marina.

  Years ago, when Ashley first saw the place, she began applauding. Jamie, who was then four, began clapping his hands, too, in imitation, and not knowing what he was cheering. Both children kept clapping as Eddie brought the Jamash in. The only approach to Marina Blue was by water. You either came on your own boat, or you took the rickety ferry over from the end of Lewiston Point Road.

  Then, as now, the docks were painted the palest tint of azure, streaking the wood like a thin wash of watercolor. Before the site was turned into an eccentric boating hideaway, the grounds had served as an artists’ retreat called The Cloister. Here, in the dim distant past, as many as a dozen writers, painters, and composers at a time could be housed and fed for periods as long as two months, while they worked on projects proposed to and accepted by The Cloister’s board of directors.

  Isolated on this secluded stretch of land a thousand yards off the northern tip of Lewiston Point, a wide assortment of creative men and women lived and worked in wooden residences affording views of tranquil Crescent Inlet to the east, and the sometimes turbulent Gulf of Mexico to the west. The largest of the dwellings served as a community meeting place, where the transient citizens of the retreat gathered nightly to discuss and sometimes vociferously evaluate each other’s work in progress.

  It was rumored that back in 1949, when Marina Blue was still The Cloister, John D. MacDonald wrote his first novel, The Brass Cupcake, while living on a houseboat here. It was further rumored that this earlier experience afloat served as inspiration for Travis McGee’s Busted Flush. Adding credence to the hearsay was the large framed photo of the writer now hanging in the marina dining room, which had once been the community meeting hall. None of the other wooden buildings remained, although there were now tennis courts and a swimming pool on the grounds as well, luxuries not thought essential to the creative process back then in the bad old days.

  The long weekend the Glendennings spent at Marina Blue provided the fondest of memories for the entire family. Eddie guessed he was still in love with Alice at the time. He had not yet begun gambling heavily. He had not yet met Christine. He later supposed he started gambling only when he realized he could not make his for tune as a stockbroker. In his view, betting on the dogs was a lot like buying and selling stocks, bonds, and commodities. It never occurred to him that one was a job and the other was an addiction.