Alice in Jeopardy

3

At 8:45 A.M., Rosie Garrity is still watching television, hoping to hear something about the kidnapping.

There was nothing on last night until she went to bed at eleven, and there’s nothing on this morning, either, not on WSWF, anyway. WSWF is Cape October’s own Channel 36, the “SWF” in the call letters standing for Southwest Florida. Rosie starts surfing the cable channels, one after the other, figuring a kidnapping always gets covered on the cable shows, but there’s nothing there either.

She’s beginning to wonder if whoever she spoke to at the police yesterday has taken any action on the case — Sloane or Slope or something like that, said he was a detective. Because if he was just sitting on this thing instead of doing something about it, why, he should be reported to a superior officer for disciplinary action, these were two innocent little kids out there. She is just about to dial the police again, when the phone rings, startling her. She picks up at once, thinking this might be Detective Sloane wanting further information.

Instead, it is Alice Glendenning.

“Hello, Mrs. Glendenning,” she says. “Have you heard anything further from that black woman?”

“No, nothing yet,” Alice says. “Rosie, the reason I’m calling…” She suspects that she is going to be bawled out for having called the police. But then Alice says, “I don’t think you should come in today,” and Rosie immediately believes she’s about to be fired.

“Why not?” she asks defensively.

“Because my children are gone, and I want to be alone here when that woman calls, if she calls.”

Alone.

She has just told Rosie that she is alone.

Which means the police have not contacted her, as that Detective Sloane said they were going to do, which means the police are most certainly being derelict in their duty.

Well, we’ll just see about that, Rosie thinks.

“I understand, Mrs. Glendenning,” she says. “Just call me if there’s anything you need, okay?”

“I will, Rosie. Thank you.”

But there is something odd in her voice, something cool and distant. Rosie wonders just what the hell is going on here.

“Good-bye now,” she says.

She hangs up, and immediately begins searching the Cape October-Fort Myers-Sanibel directory under GOVERNMENT AGENCIES.

When the phone rings at 9:10 A.M., Detective Marcia Di Luca says at once, “I’m not ready here yet, Will.”

Alice can only think they’ve been working here all damn night, and she’s still not ready. Alice can only think her children’s fate is in the hands of Keystone Kops.

Sloate is putting on the earphones.

“I don’t think it’s her again, so early,” he says. “But if it is, just let her talk, hear what she has to say.”

The phone is still ringing.

“Shall I pick up?” Alice asks.

Sloate hits some buttons on his recording equipment. Reels begin spinning.

“Go ahead,” he says.

Alice picks up the phone.

“Hello?”

“Alice?”

A woman’s voice. She recognizes it at once. Aggie Barrows, her assistant.

“Yes, Aggie,” she says.

“Did you forget your nine o’clock?”

“My…?”

“With Mr. Webster.”

“Oh Je—”

“He’s here now. What shall I tell him? Are you coming in?”

“Let me talk to him, Agg.”

She waits.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Webster, hi, I’m so sorry.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “What happened?”

“I broke my ankle.”

“Well, that’s a new one,” he says.

“I really did,” she says. “I got knocked down by a car yesterday afternoon.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says.

“I’m in a cast. I should have called you, I know, but what with the hospital and all…”

“Hey, that’s all right, we can do it another time.”

“I hope so.”

There is a silence on the line.

“Is… everything else all right?” he asks.

Sloate glances up from his recording equipment.

“Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” Alice says. “I really am very sorry about this.”

“Long as it wasn’t anything I said yesterday.”

“No, no, I really did have an accident.”

“I thought maybe I’d been out of line.”

“No, no, not at all.”

“None of my business, after all.”

“That’s okay, really. I took no offense.”

“I hope not. So how shall we leave this? Will you call me? Shall I look for another broker?”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, Mr. Webster…”

“Webb.”

“I’d love to find a home for you here on the Cape, I really would. But it may be a few days before…”

“I have some other business to take care of down here, anyway. Why don’t we just play it by ear? Just call me when you think you’ll be up and around again.”

“Well, I’m able to walk now,” she says. “It’s just…”

It’s just my children have been kidnapped, you see. It’s just I have two detectives here in the house with me right now, one of them listening to every word you and I are saying. It’s just that in less than three hours, a woman is going to call here again to tell me what I have to do next if I ever want to see my kids alive again. It’s just all that, Mr. Webster, Webb, it’s just I am going out of my mind with fear and anxiety, that’s all it is, Webb.

“I have your number,” she says. “I’ll call you.”

“Please do,” he says, and hangs up.

She looks at the receiver. She places it back on its cradle.

“Sounds like a nice fellow,” Sloate comments.

“Yes,” she says.

“How you doing with that?” he asks Marcia.

“Getting there,” she says.

Sloate looks at his watch.

“You’ve got two and twenty-five,” he says.

“Thanks a lot,” she says dryly.

“Just thought I’d remind you.”

There is between them the easy banter of two people who have worked together for a very long time. It is almost like a good marriage, Alice realizes. Sloate isn’t going to start yelling at her if she doesn’t have her equipment set up in the next two hours and twenty-five minutes, and Marcia is not going to have a hysterical hissy fit if she doesn’t come in under that deadline. Sloate seems confident that she will have the job done in that time. And she seems confident that she will not fail him. As he takes off the earphones, he nods assurance to Marcia, and she looks up from where her rather delicate hands — Alice notices for the first time — are twirling dials and throwing switches, and she winks at him to let him know the situation is completely under control here.

Alice wonders if it really is.

There was a time…

Alice was twenty-two years old, and just completing NYU’s film program. Her idea was to become a famous director. That was before she met Edward Fulton Glendenning. Eddie was twenty-four, a graduate student in the business school. They met in University Park, on a bright afternoon in June.

She was sitting on a bench, crying.

He appeared out of the blue.

Tall and slender, crew-cut blond hair glistening in the spring sunshine, cherry trees in bloom all up and down the side streets surrounding the school. She saw him through the mist of her tears, standing suddenly before her.

“Hey, what’s this?” he said, and sat, and took her hands in his.

His hands were soft. Delicate. She looked into his face, into his eyes. A narrow fox face, with a slender nose and fine high cheekbones, nearly feminine in its elegance, as sculpted as a Grecian mask, the eyes a pale blue, almost gray. She allowed him to hold her hands. Her hands were clasped between his own two hands, slender, a pianist’s hands with long tapering fingers, everything about him so beautifully exact.

He offered her a handkerchief.

He asked her why she was crying.

She told him she’d spent all day yesterday editing hundreds of feet of film, and marking the strips with Roman numerals to differentiate this go-round from the earlier strips marked with Arabic numerals, and one of the other girls on her team — “There are five of us altogether,” she said. “We have to do this fifteen-minute film as our final project…”

One of the other girls came in this morning, and reedited everything she’d already done, messing everything up, getting the sound all out of synch, and replacing the Roman numerals with Arabic numerals all over again because she didn’t know what Roman numerals were!

“Can you believe it?” Alice said. “She’s twenty-one years old, she’s from Chicago, that’s not a hick town, and she’s never heard of a Roman numeral in her life! She thought it was some kind of secret code! Can you believe it?”

“Amazing,” Eddie said.

“I know. How can anyone be so…?”

“You. I mean you. Amazing.”

He was still holding her hands, she noticed.

“You’re so very beautiful,” he said.

“Oh sure,” she said.

“Oh sure,” he said.

They were married six months later.

The two detectives who drive into the bus loading area at Pratt Elementary at 9:30 that Thursday morning are looking for a man named Luke Farraday. Like Sloate and Di Luca, they work for Cape October’s Criminal Investigations Division, and they have been sent here by Captain Roger Steele, who wants them to find out whatever they can about the blue car that supposedly picked up the Glendenning kids yesterday afternoon.

The two detectives are named Peter Wilson Andrews and Julius Aaron Saltzman. Saltzman is very large, standing at six-four in his bare feet, and weighing a good two hundred and twenty pounds when he’s watching his diet. He is wearing a little blue-and-gray crocheted yarmulke fastened to the back of his head with bobby pins, this because he is very proud of his Jewish heritage and will take the slightest opportunity to discuss the impending American holocaust if nothing is done to stop the tide of anti-Semitism in this nation. Saltzman is what Andrews would call a Professional Jew, more or less, in that his Jewishness seems to dictate every move he makes and every word he speaks.

Andrews is perhaps five feet eight inches tall, very short for any cop but especially for a detective, where promotions often depend on brawn rather than brain. He is what one might generously call a redneck. In fact, he drifted down here to Florida after working on a tobacco farm in Tennessee, where his neck and his arms did grow very red indeed and then brown from hours of laboring in the hot sun, until he decided there had to be a better life somewhere for a red-blooded (and red-necked) American boy like himself.

Andrews found that better life here on the Cape, where first he worked as a bouncer in a strip joint on the Trail south of the airport, and then joined the police force as a uniformed rookie earning $28,914 a year. He is now a full-fledged detective in the CID, working with Saltzman, and thanking his lucky stars for his partner’s size and raw power every time they go up against some redneck like Andrews used to be, carrying a sawed-off shotgun or a machete or even a pool cue.

They find Farraday in the school cafeteria. He tells them he came in half an hour ago after supervising the unloading of the buses, and he is just now lingering over a cup of coffee before heading home. What he does, he explains to them, is come in early in the morning to unload the buses, and then goes home until it’s time to come back in the afternoon, when the kids are boarding the buses again. There’s not much for Farraday at home. His wife died three years ago, he tells them. He’s alone in the world, he tells them.

Farraday is wearing bifocals and a hearing aid, a man in his mid-sixties, one of a breed who come down here to retire and then discover that they have all the time in the world to do nothing but play golf and push a shopping cart up and down the aisles of a supermarket. They finally take jobs as cashiers in souvenir shops, or bank guards, or — as is the case with Farraday here — guards at school crossings or bus-loading areas, anything to keep them busy, anything to make them feel useful again. There is nothing like early retirement to make a person feel dead.

The detectives have got to be very careful here.

They have been cautioned by Steele that they are not to indicate in any way, manner, or form that a kidnapping has taken place. The Glendenning woman was warned that if she notified the police, her kids would be killed. Apparently, she is none too happy that the police are already on the job, but that’s the way the little cookie crumbles, lady, and if you want your children back you don’t go to a lawyer or a private eye. You go to professionals who know how to do the job. Though, to tell the truth, this is the first kidnapping Saltzman or Andrews has ever caught.

The point is, a death threat was made.

So they have to tiptoe around old Farraday here — to both Saltzman and Andrews, sixty years old is ancient — find out whatever they can about the car that picked up the kids yesterday, without indicating in any way that any sort of crime has been committed here. They have an advantage in that Farraday seems kind of stupid to them. Then again, all old people seem stupid to Andrews and Saltzman.

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

“You fellas want some coffee?”

“No, thanks,” Saltzman says.

Andrews shakes his head no.

“Make a good cup of coffee here,” Farraday says.

Old farts talk about food a lot, Andrews notices.

“Not as good as Starbucks,” Farraday says, “but pretty damn good for a school cafeteria, am I right?”

“This would’ve been about two-thirty yesterday,” Saltzman prods.

“You know who else makes a nice cup of coffee?” Farraday asks.

“Who’s that?” Andrews says.

“Place called The Navigator? On Davidson? I stop there every morning on my way to work, they give you a good breakfast for a buck twenty-nine. Eggs and all. Nice cup of coffee, too.”

“Would you happen to remember these kids?” Saltzman asks. “The Glendenning kids?”

“He the one can’t talk?” Farraday asks.

This is the first they’re hearing about the kid being a mute. The two detectives look at each other.

“Father drowned out on the Gulf one night. Probably taking a piss over the side, lost his balance, fell in. Most of these small boat drownings are guys taking a piss over the side, did you know that? It’s a fact,” Farraday says, and nods. “The Glendenning boy can’t talk, it’s some kind of post-traumatic thing, the shock of it, you know. Won’t talk is more like it, I guess.”

“That’s a shame,” Saltzman says. “Did you happen to see the Glendenning kids yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes, I did,” Farraday says. “What’s this all about, anyway?”

“Apparently, they missed the bus, and some woman was kind enough—”

“No, they didn’t miss no bus,” Farraday says.

“Whatever,” Andrews says. “The thing is, some woman was nice enough to pick them up, and drive them home. But she left them with the housekeeper, and drove off without saying what her name was.”

“That’s funny, ain’t it?”

“Well, she was probably in a hurry, Thing is, Mrs. Glendenning would like to thank her, so if there’s—”

“But they didn’t miss no bus,” Farraday says. “Fact is, they were about to get on the bus when she called them over.”

“This would’ve been a blue car, is that right?”

“Blue Chevrolet Impala, that’s right.”

“Woman driving it.”

“A blonde woman, yes.”

“Would you happen to know who she was?”

“Nope. Never saw her before in my life.”

“A woman, though?”

“Young blonde woman, yes,” Farraday says. “Hair down to here,” he adds, and runs the flat of his hand along the side of his neck, about three inches above the shoulders.

Scratch a black woman, Andrews thinks. But he asks anyway. “White or black?”

“I just said she was a blonde, didn’t I?”

“Well, yes, but lots of blacks these days bleach their—”

“I suppose that’s true, at that,” Farraday says, and nods. “But this woman was white.”

“How old would you say?”

“I didn’t get that good a look. Just saw a blonde leaning over to open the door for the kids.”

“And the kids got right in, is that it?”

“Got right in the car, yes.”

“Must’ve known the woman, wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t know if they knew her or not. Just saw them get in the car, and she drove right off.”

“You’re sure it was an Impala?” Andrews asks.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with my eyes, mister.”

“Didn’t think there was,” Andrews says, and smiles. In which case, why are you wearing bifocals? he wonders.

“Blue Impala, right?” Saltzman asks.

“Blue as my eyes.”

Which Andrews now notices are, in fact, blue. Behind bifocals as thick as the bottoms of Coca-Cola bottles.

“The year?” Saltzman asks.

“Couldn’t say exactly. But it was a new car.”

“You didn’t happen to notice the license plate, did you?”

“Wasn’t looking for it.”

“Florida plate, would it have been?”

“I didn’t look. I got things to do here, you know. I got a job here. I have to make sure all these kids get on their right buses. I have to make sure they all get home.”

Right, Andrews thinks.

So you let two of them get in a car with a blonde woman you never before saw in your life, quote unquote.

You blind old fart, he thinks.

Special Agent Felix Forbes is here on Rose Garrity’s doorstep this morning at eleven o’clock because apparently she reported a kidnapping to a detective in the Cape October PD’s CID, and no action was taken on her complaint. Standing beside him on Rosie’s doorstep is another federal agent named Sally Ballew, whom the Cape October cops call “Sally Balloons” because of her extraordinary chest development, which even Forbes has noticed on occasion. He does not think she knows the cops call her Sally Balloons. He is wrong. She knows. There is not much that gets by Sally Ballew.

The woman who answers the door is somewhat short and pudgy, in her early fifties, Forbes guesses, with a mop of brownish-red hair, and freckles on her cheeks and nose, and a high sheen of sweat on her forehead. This presages a house without air-conditioning, an unwelcome prospect on a day when the temperature has already hit eighty-six and the humidity is thick enough to swim in.

“Mrs. Garrity?” he says.

“Yes?”

“Special Agent Forbes,” he says, “FBI,” and shows his shield. “My partner, Special Agent Ballew.”

“May we come in, ma’am?” Sally asks.

“Please.”

The small development house is every bit as hot as Forbes expected it would be. Mrs. Garrity leads them into a tiny living room furnished with a sofa and two easy chairs slip-covered in paisley. She offers them iced tea, goes out into the kitchen to get it, and then sits opposite them on the sofa. The two agents sit on the easy chairs, facing her.

“So,” Forbes says, “what’s this about a kidnapping?”

He frankly finds it difficult to believe that the Cape October cops would not have acted swiftly on any report of a kidnapping. These days, however, with terrorists of every stripe and persuasion apparently slipping through the fingers of the FBI and the CIA and the INS, he would be foolish not to investigate any errant phone call, even from someone like Mrs. Garrity here, who, to tell the truth, looks a little too eager to attain her own fifteen minutes of fame by becoming the star of a little kidnapping melodrama she herself has concocted. Sally is thinking the same thing. But they are here to listen.

Mrs. Garrity tells them about being at the Glendenning house yesterday afternoon when Alice Glendenning got home from work, and then about the kids not being on their regular bus, and then about the phone call from this woman who sounded black, according to Mrs. Glendenning, anyway, who told her not to call the police or the children would die.

“Were you listening to this phone call?” Sally asks.

“No.”

“Then how do you know what she said?”

“Mrs. Glendenning repeated the conversation to me.”

“This woman said she had the children?”

“Yes. And she said not to call the police or the children would die.”

“You didn’t hear the caller’s voice, is that it?”

“I did not hear it. That’s correct.”

“Then how do you know she was black?”

“Mrs. Glendenning said she sounded black.”

“She volunteered this information?” Sally asks.

“No, I asked her was the woman white or black. She said she sounded black.”

It so happens that Sally herself is black. Forbes hopes she is not about to get on her high horse here with a lot of racial attitude that has nothing to do with why they’re here. If the woman on the phone sounded black, then she sounded black. There is nothing wrong with sounding black if you sound black. Which Sally herself, by the way, sounds on occasion. Like right this very minute, for example.

“So what happened after this phone call?” Forbes asks.

“I advised her to call the police. She told me no.”

“Then what?” Sally asks.

There is still an edge to her voice. She is still bridling because she thinks Mrs. Rose Garrity here was doing a bit of racial profiling yesterday when she asked if the caller was white or black. It seems to Forbes that this is a perfectly reasonable question to ask in law enforcement, where a person’s color or lack of it might be a clue to the person himself or herself — yes, and how about that, for example? For example, is it wrong to ask if a person is a man or a woman? Is that profiling, too? You can carry all this stuff just so far, Forbes thinks, and says again, “Go on, Mrs. Garrity.”

“When I got home last night, I called the police. I spoke to a Detective Sloane there…”

“Must be Wilbur Sloate she means,” Sally says. “CID.”

“Was that his name, ma’am? Detective Sloate. S-L-O-A-T-E?”

“I thought he said Sloane.”

“Well, maybe there’s a Sloane up there, too,” Forbes says.

“I thought that was what he said his name was.”

“So what happened?”

“He said he’d get on it right away.”

“So why’d you call us, ma’am?” Sally asks.

“Because when I spoke to Mrs. Glendenning this morning, she told me she was alone. And I figured if Detective Sloane, I’m sure his name was, had got right on it the way he said he would, then she wouldn’t be alone in her house when her children are in the hands of some black woman who said she would kill them, was why I called you.”

“You’re sure she was alone there?”

“She told me she was alone. She told me not to come in today, said she wanted to be alone if that woman called again. I have to assume, if Mrs. Glendenning tells me she’s alone in the house, that she really is.”

“And where is this, Mrs. Garrity?” Sally asks.

“Where is what, Agent Ballew?”

“Special Agent Ballew,” Sally corrects. “Where is this house where Mrs. Glendenning is sitting alone waiting for a call from a black kidnapper?”

When the telephone rings, they all turn to look at the clock.

It is 11:40 A.M.

Sloate puts on the earphones.

“I think I’m ready now,” Marcia says.

“Go ahead,” Sloate says, and indicates that Alice is to pick up the phone.

She lifts the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

“Alice?”

“Who’s this?”

“Rafe.”

“Rafe?”

“Your brother-in-law. Want to give lunch to a poor wandering soul?”

“Where… where are you, Rafe?”

“My rig’s right outside a 7-Eleven on… where is this place, mister?” he shouts. “Where? I’m up here in Bradenton. How far is that from you?”

“Rafe, I don’t think it would be a good idea…”

“I’ll get directions,” he says. “See you.”

There is a click on the line.

“I thought he was supposed to be in Mobile by now,” Sloate says.

“Apparently not.”

“Who was it?” Marcia says.

“Rafe,” Sloate says. “The jailbird brother-in-law. He’s on his way over.”

“We don’t need him here,” Marcia says.

“I don’t need anyone here,” Alice says.

The grandfather clock reads 11:45 A.M.

“Hello?”

In that single word, Christine knows intuitively that someone is in that house with Alice Glendenning. She simply senses it. The certain knowledge that the woman is not alone.

“Is someone there with you?” she asks at once.

“No, I’m alone,” Alice says.

“You didn’t call the police, did you?”

“No.”

“Because you know that’s the end of your kids, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Stay right there by the phone,” Christine says, and hangs up, and goes back to the blue Impala she’s parked at the curb alongside the phone booth. She begins driving at once, searching for the next pay phone along the Trail. She is not positive about how telephone traces work, but she thinks maybe they can close in on specific locations if not specific phone numbers. She called on a cell phone last night, from where the two of them are holding the kids, but they decided together that it would be safer if she called from pay phones this morning.

She pulls off the road as soon as she spots one in a strip mall. She gets out of the Impala again, walks over to the plastic phone shell, and dials Alice’s number.

She looks at her watch.

12:10 P.M.

She hears the phone ringing on the other end, once, twice…

“Hello?”

“Have you got the money?” she asks.

“Not yet,” Alice says.

“What’s taking you so long?”

“There are securities to sell. It isn’t easy to raise that much cash overnight.”

“When will you have it?” Christine asks.

There is a silence on the line.

Someone coaching her for sure. Hand signals, or scribbled notes, whatever. She is not alone in that house.

“I’m still working on it.”

“Work on it faster,” Christine says, and hangs up. She looks at her watch again. The call took fifteen seconds, going on sixteen. She does not think they can effect a trace in that short a time. She goes back to the car, and drives along the Trail until she spots another pay phone. It is 12:17 when she calls the house again.

“Hello?”

“Get the money by this afternoon at three,” Christine says. “We’ll call then with instructions.”

“Wait!”

“What? Fast!”

“How do I know they’re still alive? Send me a Polaroid picture of the two of them holding today’s Tribune.”

“What?”

“Send it Fed Ex.”

“You’re dreaming,” Christine says.

The sweep hand on her watch has ticked off twenty seconds.

“I’ll call you at three,” she says.

“Are my children all right? Let me speak to Ashley, ple—”

Christine hangs up.

“Twenty-five seconds this time,” Marcia says.

Sloate is already on the new phone link to the Public Safety Building downtown. Alice listens as he tells his commanding officer that they’ve had no luck with a trace. He tells him the woman is demanding the money by three this afternoon. The big grandfather clock in the hallway now reads twenty minutes to one.

“So what do we do?” he asks. “We’ve got till three o’clock.”

“Let me think on it,” Steele says, and hangs up.

Alice is pacing the room. She whirls on Marcia, where she is sitting behind her equipment. “Why haven’t you been able to trace the calls yet?” she asks.

“She’s never on the line long enough,” Marcia says.

“We can put men on the moon, but you can’t trace a damn call coming from around the corner!”

“I wish it was just around the corner. But we don’t know where she’s—”

“I don’t want you here!” Alice shouts. “I want you all out of here! I’ll handle this alone from now on. Just get out! None of you knows what the hell you’re doing, you’re going to get my children killed!”

“Mrs. Glendenning…”

“No! Just get out of here. Take all your stuff and leave. Now! Please. Get out. Please. I’m sorry. Get out.”

“We’re staying,” Sloate says.

She is ready to punch him.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Glendenning,” he says, “but we’re staying.”

And then, infuriating her because it reminds her again of her father when he used to take a razor strop to her behind, “It’s for your own good.”

4

When Rafe arrives at a quarter past one that afternoon, Alice has no choice but to tell him what’s going on. He looks as if he doesn’t believe her. Doesn’t believe these are detectives here. Doesn’t believe her kids are missing, either. Thinks this is all some kind of afternoon pantomime staged for his benefit. Stands there like a big man who needs a shave and a drink both, which he tells Alice he really does need if all she’s telling him is true. She pours him some twelve-year-old scotch from a bottle Lane Realty gave her at Christmastime. The other brokers all got bonuses, but she hadn’t sold a house yet. Still hasn’t, for that matter.

“What happened to your foot?” Rafe asks, noticing at last.

“I got hit by a car.”

“Did you report it?” he says.

“Not yet,” she says.

My kids have been kidnapped, she thinks, and everybody wants to know if I reported a goddamn traffic accident.

She takes him into the kitchen, and searches in the fridge for something she can give him to eat.

“You tell Carol about this?” he asks.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“My kids are in danger.”

“She’s your sister.”

“This okay?” she asks, and offers him a loaf of sliced rye, a wedge of cheese, and a large hunk of Genoa salami.

“You got mustard?” he asks.

“Sure.”

“You should call her,” he says.

“Let’s see what happens here, okay?”

“She’s your sister,” he says again.

“When it’s over,” she says.

“You got any wine?”

She takes an opened bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge, hands him a glass. In the living room, Sloate is on the phone again with his captain. She wanders out there to see if she can learn anything, but there is nothing new. Three o’clock seems so very far away. When she comes back into the kitchen, Rafe is just finishing his sandwich.

“You’re out of wine,” he tells her, and shakes the empty bottle in his fist. “Have you got a spare bedroom? I’ve been driving all night.”

She shows Rafe the children’s empty bedroom. Twin beds in it, one on either side of the room. Rafe looks insulted by the size of the beds, big man like him. But he finally climbs into one of them, clothes and all.

Alice goes into her own bedroom, and climbs into bed, thinking she will take a nap before three, be ready for whatever may come next.

In an instant, she is dead asleep.

The nightmare comes the way it always does.

The family is sitting at the dinner table together.

It is seven-thirty P.M. on the night of September twenty-first last year; she will never forget that date as long as she lives.

Eddie is telling her he feels like taking the Jamash out for a little moonlight spin. The Jamash is a 1972 Pearson sloop they bought used when they first moved down here to the Cape. It cost $12,000 at a time when Eddie was still making good money as a stockbroker, before Bush got elected and things went all to hell with the economy. They named it after the two kids, Jamie and Ashley, the Jamash for sure, a trim little thirty-footer that was seaworthy and fast.

But Eddie has never taken her out for a moonlight spin without Alice aboard, and this has always required making babysitter plans in advance.

“Just feel like getting out on the water,” he tells her.

“Well… sure,” she says, “go ahead.”

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Just don’t take her out on the Gulf,” she says. “Not alone.”

“I promise,” he says.

From the door, as he leaves the house, he yells, “Love ya, babe!”

“Love ya, too,” Alice says.

“Love ya, Daddy!” Ashley yells.

“Love ya,” Jamie echoes.

In the Gulf of Mexico the next morning, an oil tanker spots the boat under sail, moving on an erratic course, tossing aimlessly on the wind.

They hail her, and get no response.

When finally they climb down onto the deck, there is no one aboard.

Alice gets the phone call at ten that morning.

She screams.

And screams.

The telephone is ringing.

She climbs out of bed, rushes into the living room. The grandfather clock reads ten minutes to two. Sloate already has the earphones on.

“She’s early,” he says.

Marcia is behind her tracing gear now.

Sloate nods.

Alice picks up.

“Hello?” she says.

“Listen,” the woman says. “Just listen.” And then, in a stage whisper, “Tell her you and your brother are okay, that’s all. Nothing else.” And then, apparently handing Ashley the phone, she says, “Here.”

“We’re both okay,” Ashley says in a rush. “Mom, I can’t believe it!”

“What can’t…?”

“Do you remember Mari—?”

The line goes dead.

“Who’s Marie?” Sloate asks at once.

“They’re alive,” Alice says. “My children…”

“Do you know anyone named Marie?”

“No. Did you hear her? They’re both okay!”

“Or Maria?”

“I don’t know. They’re alive!”

“Fifteen seconds this time,” Marcia says.

“Marie? Maria?”

“I don’t know anyone named—”

“A relative?”

“No.”

“A friend?”

“No. My children are alive. How are you going…?”

“Someone who worked for you?”

“…to get them…?”

“Marie,” he insists. “Maria. Think!”

“You think, damn it! They’re alive! Do something to—”

And suddenly the knowledge breaks on her face.

“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.”

The meet, Alice thinks.

“Two: You get out of the car, walk over to her…”

“Why would she risk that? Me seeing her?”

“Tell her to disguise herself however she wants, okay? We’re not interested in identifying anyone at this point in time. The bills are marked, the minute they try to spend them, we’ve got ’em. All we want to do right now is get your kids back.”

“Will I be alone?”

“No. We’ll be there, wherever she says you’re to bring the money.”

“I’d rather go alone.”

“No. We may have to move in.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. These are my kids, damn it!”

“I know that. But these people—”

“What do you mean, you may have to move in? I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“Can you think of a better way?”

“Yes. Leave me alone. Let me handle this alone.”

“How?”

“I don’t know how, damn it!”

Sloate looks at his watch.

“You’ve got ten minutes,” he says. “Relax a bit till the call comes.”

“I’m relaxed,” she says.

He looks at her.

“I’m relaxed, damn it!”

“Ma’am, we’re just trying to help,” he says. “No one wants anything to happen to—”

“Please don’t call me ma’am. My name is Alice.”

“And mine’s Wilbur,” he says.

Alice nods. She cannot in a million years imagine calling this man Wilbur. Or any other man, for that matter. He is still standing near the table where the recording equipment is set up. Leaning against the table. Big gun holstered on his right hip. In the hallway beyond, the grandfather clock ticks noisily.

“Why do you suppose Rafe popped up here all of a sudden?” he asks.

“I don’t know why. My sister said Jacksonville.”

“But here he is on the Cape.”

“I don’t know what he’s doing here.”

“A coincidence probably,” Sloate says.

“Probably,” Alice says.

They look at each other.

“Unless they wanted an inside man at the skunk works,” Sloate says. “Somebody who’d know what’s going on in here.”

“I don’t think Rafe is involved in this,” she tells him.

“Be nice to know if he told anybody about that big insurance policy, though. Be real nice to know,” Sloate says. “How much longer you think he’ll be snoring in there?”

“I have no idea.”

He looks at her again. He’s really trying to figure this out, she thinks. But he seems so very damn stupid. If this wasn’t a hick town with a Mickey Mouse police force…

But it is.

This is Cape October, Florida, population 143,000, and my children have been kidnapped, and in ten minutes the woman who has them will call again and we will make arrangements for an exchange, kids for money, money for kids. And if it works…

“Try to keep her on the line longer this time,” Sloate says. “Tell her you’re getting confused, tell her you can’t keep it straight, all this hanging up. She’ll resist, but she’s closer to the payoff now, so she may be getting hungry. And careless. They sometimes get careless.”

With my children, Alice thinks.

And in that instant, the doorbell rings.

Sally Ballew recognizes Sloate at once.

“Hello, Wilbur,” she says, and steps boldly into the house, taking in the living room with a single swift sweep of her dark brown eyes, knowing at once that the Garrity woman wasn’t snowing them about a kidnapping. There’s another dick from the CID here, too, Marcia Di Luca from their Tech Unit, which means they’ve already set up a wire tap and a trace; nobody’s fooling around here.

“Hello, Marcia,” she says. “Catch yourselves a little snatch here?”

“Who are you?” Alice asks at once.

“Special Agent Sally Ballew,” she says, and shows her shield. “FBI. My partner Felix Forbes. We’re here to lend a hand, ma’am.”

It is three o’clock sharp.

Alice is surrounded by law enforcement people.

Yet for the first time since four yesterday afternoon, she really feels in jeopardy.

The telephone rings.

Alice’s hand is trembling as she picks up the receiver.

“Hello?” she says.

“Have you got all the money?” the woman’s voice asks.

“Yes,” Alice says.

“Good. Now listen to what I have to say. I’ll be on for thirty seconds. You can think over what I’ve told you before I call back again. Is that clear?”

Marcia Di Luca pulls a face. Thirty seconds again! Standing beside her, Sally Ballew seems to grasp what’s going on with the trace. She nods sympathetically.

Into the phone, Alice says, “I understand.”

“There’s a gas station on U.S. 41 and Lewiston Point Road. A Shell station. Do you know it? Yes or no?”

“Yes,” Alice says.

“Bring the money to the ladies’ room there. Ten o’clock tomorrow morning. Have you got all the money?” she asks again.

“Yes,” Alice says. “But—”

“Just listen. There’s only one stall in the ladies’ room. Leave the money in the stall. Ten o’clock. Come alone.”

“I will. But how do I—?”

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

Sally Ballew thrusts out her chest as if to assert female superiority. It is some chest. All the men in the room are impressed. So is Alice. But she does not need the FBI here now, not when her children are out there someplace with a strange woman and whoever may be her accomplice. Too many cooks, she thinks. Too damn many cooks.

“How long does he stay on the line, average?” Sally asks.

“She,” Marcia corrects. “Twenty, thirty seconds.”

“You’ll never get her.”

“We might,” Marcia says dryly.

The two women do not like each other. This is very clear to Alice.

My children will die, she thinks.

“What are you hoping to accomplish?” Sally asks Sloate.

“Who invited you here?” Sloate asks. “I wasn’t aware a state line had been crossed.”

“I’m asking what you hope to accomplish, allowing this woman to talk directly to the—”

The phone rings again.

Sloate nods to Alice. She picks up. It is going to be the same routine again. On again, off again. Except that this time, she is caught in the crosshairs of inter-agency rivalry.

“Hello?” she says.

“Do you understand everything I told you?” the woman asks.

“Yes.”

“Repeat it to me.”

“Ten tomorrow morning.”

“Yes?”

“Shell station at Lewiston and the Trail.”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“The stall in the ladies’ room.”

“Yes. You’ll leave the money there,” the woman says.

“No,” Alice says.

There is a brief silence.

“No?” the woman says. “Listen to me, girlfriend. You ever want to see your children alive again—”

“We make an exchange,” Alice says quickly. “Right then and there.”

Sloate is already shaking his head. Sally doesn’t know what’s going on. Neither does Forbes.

“I hand over the money, you hand over the kids,” Alice says. “A simultaneous exchange.”

“Stay by the phone,” the woman says, and hangs up.

“Thirty seconds on the nose,” Marcia says.

“You just blew it,” Sloate tells Alice.

Charlie gets to the airport Avis desk at ten minutes past three that afternoon. A woman with voluminous blonde hair greets him with a cheery smile, but the moment he asks about who might have rented a blue Chevrolet Impala sometime recently, she tells him she’s not allowed to give out such information.

Charlie tells her what the problem is.

Using the same open infectious smile and innocent guile he used while talking countless susceptible Japanese maidens into bed on R & R in Tokyo during the Vietnam War, he says that he is an artist, and here he shows her several postcard-sized samples of his work from his gallery in Naples. He tells her that his gallery in New York informed him that they were sending an independent contractor down to pick up some of his paintings, but the person never showed up. So when he called New York this morning, they told him a blue Chevrolet Impala from Avis had been rented by the contractor sometime recently…

“What is this man’s name?” the Avis lady asks.

“Woman. It’s a woman. A blonde woman. Hair about to here,” Charlie says, and with his finger shows her the length on his neck. “She’s supposed to pick up four of my paintings,” he says. “I sure wish you could help me, miss,” once again flashing his Come-Hither Lieutenant B. F. Pinkerton smile.

“What’s her name, this woman?”

“I have no idea,” Charlie says. “She’s just an independent contractor the gallery sent down.”

“Don’t they know her name?”

“It was arranged down here.”

“Where down here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, where’d they send her from? If she rented a car here at the airport, she had to be coming in on a plane, am I right?”

“I would guess so. Yes, you’re absolutely right.”

“Well, where was she coming from? How can I locate a rental if I don’t have her name, which besides I’m not supposed to give out such information, anyway.”

“I know that, and it’s very kind of you to give me all this time. But if you could check your records for any blue Impalas you may have rented yesterday or the day before, anytime recently…”

“You know how many blue Impalas we rent every day?”

“How many?” Charlie asks.

“Plenty,” she says. “Also, these look like very big paintings here on these postcards. I doubt—”

“You can keep those if you like.”

“Thank you, they’re very pretty. But I doubt if they’d even fit in an Impala,” she says. “Four of them, no less. Are you sure she rented an Impala?”

“That’s what they told me. Miss, I’m gonna lose this sale unless I can locate her.”

“Don’t know how I can help you,” the Avis lady says.

Just try a little harder, Charlie thinks, but she has already turned away and is starting to talk to the next customer in line.

Rafe comes out of the bedroom at three-thirty.

“Don’t believe we’ve met,” he tells Sally, his glance idly coveting her chest.

“Who’s this?” she asks Sloate.

“The brother-in-law,” Sloate says.

“Rafe Matthews, nice to meet you.”

Sally merely nods. “What’s your plan?” she asks Sloate.

Sloate tells her. Show her the money. Send her for the kids. Make the exchange. Kids for money.

“She won’t go for it,” Sally says. “She’ll take the money and tell you they’ll let the kids go later, such and such a time, such and such a place. That’s the way they work it.”

“Well, we’ve worked it this way before,” Marcia tells her.

“When?”

“The Henley case. Three years back.”

Rafe is listening to all this.

“Must’ve been before our time,” Forbes tells Sally.

“One-on-one exchange,” Sloate says. “Money for the kids, kids for—”

“You sending Mrs. Glendenning out there alone?” Sally asks.

“We’ll be covering her.”

“You really going to hand over the ransom?”

“A cool two-fifty large,” Sloate says. “Supers,” he explains.

“They’ll tip,” Sally says.

“They didn’t three years ago.”

“That was three years ago. What if they tip now?”

The telephone rings.

“Keep her on,” Sloate says.

“Hello?”

“No deal,” the woman says. “Your kids die.”

And hangs up. “She’ll call back in a minute,” Marcia says.

But she doesn’t.

She does not call back until four-thirty.

“Do you want to see your kids alive ever again?” she asks.

“Yes. But please…”

“Then don’t try to make deals with me!”

“I’m not. I’m just trying to set up a reasonable exchange.”

“Who told you to say that?”

“Nobody.”

“Who gave you those words to say?”

“Nobody.”

“Who’s there with you?”

“Nobody, I swear.”

“I hear movement there.”

“No, you—”

“You’re lying!” the woman says, and hangs up.

“Shit!” Marcia yells.

The woman calls back again at five minutes past five.

“I’m getting confused,” Alice tells her. “If you keep hanging up, I can’t follow—”

“Because you’re trying to trace my calls!”

“No.”

“I hear clicking.”

Marcia shakes her head. No. There’s no clicking she can possibly hear. No.

“No one’s here with me,” Alice says. “No one’s trying to trace your calls. I have the money you asked for. I want my children back. Now let’s arrange a reasonable—”

“You’re on too long,” the woman says, and hangs up again.

Alice is on the edge of tears.

“You should never let a vic negotiate,” Sally says.

“They threatened to kill her children,” Sloate says.

“They always do,” Forbes says.

“But they hardly ever,” Sally adds.

Hardly ever, Alice thinks.

“These are not your children!” she shouts. “Nobody invited you into this house. You have no right—”

The phone rings again.

“Ask her to work out the exchange,” Sally says. “See what she has to suggest.”

Alice looks at her.

“Put the whole thing on her,” Sally says. “She’s the one wants the money.”

Their eyes meet.

“Believe me,” Sally says.

Alice picks up the phone.

“Will you be there at ten tomorrow or what?” the woman asks at once.

“How do I know I’ll get my children back?”

“You’ve got to take that chance.”

“Give me some way to trust you.”

“What do you want, girlfriend? A written guarantee?”

“Tell me what you’d suggest.”

“I suggest you leave the goddamn money in that stall!”

“Please help me,” Alice says. “I think you can understand why I can’t just hand over that kind of money without some sort of—”

“Then you want them dead, is that it?”

“I want them alive!” Alice screams.

But the woman has hung up again.

The backup from downtown arrives some twenty minutes later, driving directly into the garage and then coming into the house with a small black airline carry-on bag.

He is a soft-spoken black man who introduces himself as “Detective George Cooper, ma’am, excuse the intrusion.” He is carrying $250,000 in counterfeit money, and he asks her at once if she has her own bag to which he can transfer the bogus bills.

“What do you mean, bogus?” Rafe asks him.

“Who’s this?” Cooper asks Sloate.

“The brother-in-law,” Sloate says.

“Bogus, phony, false,” Cooper says. “Super-bills. Counterfeit.”

“I’ll be damned,” Rafe says.

Alice is back with a Louis Vuitton bag Eddie bought her for Christmas one year. Cooper is beginning to transfer the bills when someone knocks at the back door.

“Who the hell is that?” Sloate asks, and looks at his watch.

“Is the captain sending another backup?” Marcia asks.

Cooper shakes his head no. He is busy moving bills from one bag to the other.

“I don’t want any more policemen here,” Alice says. “Tell them to go away.”

Sloate is already in the kitchen, unlocking the back door. A uniformed man is standing there.

“Sheriff’s Department,” he says. “Got a call from a neighbor saw the garage door going up and down, strange car pulling in, big truck parked outside. Everything all right here?”

“No problem, Sheriff,” Sloate says, and takes a leather fob from his pocket, and opens it to show his detective’s shield.

“What is it that’s happening?” the sheriff asks, puzzled, trying to peek into the living room, where there seems to be a lot of activity and some kind of electronic equipment set up.

“Minor disturbance,” Marcia explains. “No sweat, Sheriff.”

If anyone’s watching the house, Alice thinks, what they’ll see now is a sheriff’s car out there in the drive. They’ll think I’ve notified every damn law enforcement agency in Florida.

“What happened to your leg, lady?” the sheriff asks.

“I got hit by a car.”

“You report the accident?”

“Yes, I did,” she tells him, even though she still hasn’t.

“Well,” the sheriff says, “if everything’s all right here…”

“Everything’s fine,” Sloate assures him. “Thanks for looking in.”

“Just checkin,” the sheriff says. “Like I say, a neighbor saw the garage door goin up, strange car movin in, big truck parked outside, wondered just what was goin on here.”

Everyone in the state of Florida is calling the police on my behalf, Alice thinks. First Rosie sticks her nose into this, and now some neighbor…

“G’day, ma’am,” the sheriff says, and tips his hat to her.

“Good day,” Alice says.

Sloate closes and locks the kitchen door behind him. Alice goes into the living room and peers out through the drapes. Big red dome light flashing on top of his car. People coming out of their houses all up and down the street. He’s alerted half the damn neighborhood. If anyone is watching the house…

They’ll kill the children, she thinks.

Maria Gonzalez was fifteen years old the last time she babysat for Alice and Eddie Glendenning. At the time, she was a somewhat chubby little girl who had come over from Cuba many years ago in a boat with her mother, her father, and her older brother, Juan. Well, fifteen years and three months ago, actually, since Maria was inside her mother’s belly at the time. Agata Gonzalez was six months pregnant with her unborn baby daughter when she and her family undertook the perilous journey from Havana in a rickety boat with thirty-one other brave souls.

Maria Gonzalez is now seventeen years old, and even chubbier than she was two years ago. That is because she is now seven months pregnant with a child of her own. Maria’s father, a cabinetmaker who earns a good living down here where people are constantly buying and remodeling retirement homes, is not very happy to see two police detectives standing on his doorstep at six-thirty on a Thursday night, when he is just about to sit down to supper. When it turns out that they are here to talk to his daughter, he is even more displeased. Maria quit her job at McDonald’s two weeks ago, when she started to get backaches, and now what is this? Trouble with the police already?

The two detectives who are here to see her are Saltzman and Andrews. Saltzman is still wearing a yarmulke, which is appropriate to his religious beliefs, but which makes him look very foreign and strange to Anibal Gonzalez, who himself looks foreign and strange to a lot of people on the Cape, even though he’s an expert cabinetmaker. He does not look at all strange to Saltzman or his partner Andrews, who run into a lot of Cuban types in their line of work, and who would not be at all surprised if this fellow with the mustache here, about to sit down to dinner in his undershirt, turns out to be somehow involved in the kidnapping of the two Glendenning kids. They would not be surprised at all, and fuck what anybody thinks about profiling.

The girl turns out to be as pregnant as a goose, but this doesn’t surprise them, either, these people. Wide-eyed and frightened, she sits down with the detectives in a small room just off the dining room. There is a sewing machine in the room, and Maria’s mother explains that she does crochet beading at home, a fashion that has come into style again. Neither Andrews nor Saltzman knows what the hell crochet beading is, nor cares to know, thank you. All they want to know is why little Ashley Glendenning asked her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez. All they want to know is what Maria Gonzalez has to do with this kidnapping. So they politely ask Agata Gonzalez to get lost, please…

Actually, Saltzman says, “I wonder if we could talk to your daughter privately, Mrs. Gonzalez.”

…and then they explain to the girl that she is in serious trouble here, which is a lie, and that it would be to her best advantage to answer all of their questions truthfully and honestly, which are the same thing, but Maria doesn’t make the distinction, anyway.

“Do you know where Ashley Glendenning is right this minute?” Saltzman asks.

“Who?” Maria says.

“Ashley Glendenning,” Andrews says. “You used to babysit her.”

“I don’t know anybody by that name,” Maria says.

“Ashley Glendenning,” Saltzman says. “Ten years old. She was eight or so when you used to babysit her.”

“Out on Oleander Street,” Andrews says.

“Oh,” Maria says.

“You remember her now?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Has a little brother.”

“Yeah, Jimmy.”

“Jamie,” Andrews says.

“Jamie, right. What about them?”

“Well, you tell us,” Saltzman says.

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“Where they are.”

“How would I know where they are?”

“Ashley brought up your name.”

“My name? Why would she do that?”

“Asked her mother if she remembered you.”

“Why would her mother remember me? That was a long time ago, I sat for those kids.”

“Two years ago,” Saltzman reminds her.

“I was a kid myself,” Maria says.

“We think she was trying to tell her mother something.”

“What was she trying to tell her?”

“Your name.”

“Look, what the fuck is this?” Maria asks, and then realizes her father is probably listening to all this in the next room, and hopes he hasn’t heard her say “fuck,” and suddenly wonders why he doesn’t throw these two cocksuckers out of the house.

“It’s all about Ashley Glendenning asking her mother if she remembered Maria Gonzalez,” Andrews says.

“So what’s so unusual about that? That it brings the cops here?”

“She’s been kidnapped, Maria.”

“Who?”

“Little Ashley. You remember little Ashley? Cause she sure as hell remembers you.”

“I don’t know nothing about no kidnapping,” Maria says.

“Then why’d she ask her mother…?”

“I don’t know why she asked her mother nothing. I’m pregnant, I’m seven months pregnant, why would I kidnap anybody?”

“How does two hundred and fifty thousand dollars sound?”

“What?”

“That’s how much little Ashley and her brother are worth to whoever kidnapped them.”

“I didn’t kidnap nobody. Look, this is ridiculous. Did Ashley say I kidnapped her? Why would she say that?”

“You tell us.”

“I am telling you. I haven’t even seen Ashley since, it has to be at least two years now. If I kidnapped her, where is she? More than two years. Do you see her here? We’re just about to have supper, do you see her here?”

“Where is she, Maria?”

“How the hell do I know where she is?”

“Has your husband got her someplace?”

“I don’t have a husband.”

“Your boyfriend then?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, either.”

“Whoever knocked you up then. Is he in this with you?”

“Santa María, me estás poniendo furioso con todo esto!”

“English, Maria.”

“My baby’s father is in Tampa. He found a better job and a blonde girlfriend there.”

“A blonde, huh?” Saltzman says, and glances at Andrews. Both men are suddenly alert.

“That’s what he told me on the phone.”

“Nice that gallantry’s still alive here in Florida,” Andrews says.

“What?” Maria says.

“What’s his name, this hero of yours?”

“Ernesto de Diego. And he’s no hero of mine.”

“Would you happen to know his address in Tampa?”

“No.”

“When did you see him last?”

“February twelfth,” Maria says.

But who’s counting? Saltzman thinks.

The phone rings again at a little past eight o’clock. Alice picks up the receiver. Sloate and Marcia are ready to do their useless thing, he with the earphones on, she behind her worthless tracing equipment.

“Hello?” Alice says.

“Alice, it’s me, Charlie.”

“If that’s Carol,” Rafe says, “tell her hello for me,” and goes off into the kitchen.

“Who’s that?” Charlie asks.

“My brother-in-law.”

“Have you heard from them yet?”

Alice hesitates. This is her best friend in the entire universe. Sloate is already shaking his head. No. Tell him nothing. Rafe comes out of the kitchen with a coffee cup in his hand. He begins wandering the room, idly observing. Sloate is shaking his finger at her now. No, he is telling her. No.

“Yes,” Alice says. “I’ve heard from them.”

Sloate grabs for the phone. She pulls it away, out of his reach.

“The police and the FBI are here with me, Charlie.”

“Oh Jesus!” he says.

“They’ve been trying to trace her calls…”

“The blonde’s?” Charlie says.

“What blonde?”

“I went over to Pratt a little while ago, talked to the guard who saw the kids get into that Impala.”

“Tell him to keep out of this!” Sloate warns.

“Who’s that?” Charlie asks.

“Detective Sloate.”

“Same one who called you at my house?”

“Yes.”

Rafe is at the living room drapes now. He parts them, looks out into the street.

“Did he tell you to lie to me?” Charlie asks.

“Yes. What blonde?”

“The guard told me a blonde woman was driving the Impala. Is that who you’ve been talking to?”

“I don’t know.”

“She still sound black to you?”

“She could be black. Or simply Southern. I don’t know.”

“What does she want?”

“Quarter of a million dollars.”

“Jesus!”

“By ten tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to leave the money—”

Sloate is out of his chair. He starts to say, “You’re jeopardizing your own—” but just then Rafe turns away from the drapes.

“Red convertible pulling into the driveway,” he says. “Blonde at the wheel.”

“Who…?” Alice starts, but she hears a car door slamming outside. “I have to go,” she tells Charlie. “I’ll call you back,” and hangs up and goes instantly to the front door. Looking through the peephole, she sees Jennifer Redding loping from the driveway to the walk, still wearing the white bell-bottom pants she had on yesterday, still showing her belly button and a good three inches of flesh, but with a blue cotton sweater top this time.

“Who is it?” Sloate asks.

“The woman who ran me over yesterday.”

“Get rid of her.”

Alice opens the door, and steps outside. Bugs are flitting around the light to the left of the entrance steps. Jennifer stops on the walk, looks up at her in surprise.

“Hi,” she says. “How’s your foot?”

“Fine,” Alice says.

“I brought you a little get-well present. I hope you like chocolate.”

“Yes, I do. Thanks.”

“Everybody likes chocolate,” Jennifer says, and hands her a little white box imprinted with the name of a fudge maker on The Ring. “In fact, I wouldn’t mind a piece right now,” she says, smiling. “If you’re offering, that is.”

“Sure, help yourself,” Alice says, and breaks the white string holding the box closed. The aroma of fresh chocolate wafts up past the open lid of the box. Jennifer delicately grasps a piece of fudge between thumb and forefinger, lifts it from the box.

“Wouldn’t mind a cup of coffee, either,” she says. “If you’ve got some brewing.”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” Alice says. “I’d ask you in, but I have company.”

Jennifer looks at the truck parked at the curb and gives Alice a knowing look. She pops the square of fudge into her mouth, chews silently for a moment, and then swallows and says, “That’s too bad. I was hoping we could talk awhile. Get to know each other a little better.”

She is looking directly into Alice’s eyes. Searching her eyes. Alice remembers what Charlie just told her on the phone. A blonde woman was driving the Impala.

“Some other time maybe,” she says.

“Anyway, I wanted to thank you for not calling the police,” Jennifer says.

She is still studying Alice’s face intently.

“Or did you?” she asks.

“No,” Alice says. “I never got around to it.”

“I think it would look much better if I reported the accident, don’t you?”

“Probably.”

“Since I was driving the car and all.”

“I guess so. But I think there’s no-fault insurance down here, isn’t there?”

“I don’t know,” Jennifer says. “I’m a recent import myself.”

“Jennifer,” Alice says, “you have to forgive me…”

“I’ll call my insurance people when I get home, ask their advice.”

“I think that’s a good idea.”

“I’ll let you know what I find out,” she says, and hesitates. “Alice,” she says, her voice lowering, “I’m sorry for what happened, truly.” She offers her hand. Alice takes it. “Later,” Jennifer says, and smiles, and swivels off toward her red Thunderbird convertible.

Alice watches as she pulls out of the driveway.

Jennifer waves good-bye.

“Sweet chassis,” Rafe says. “The car,” he adds, and grins.

Alice says nothing.

“Who is she?” he asks.

“Woman named Jennifer Redding. She’s responsible for the foot.”

He takes her elbow, leads her away from the door. Across the room, the law enforcement people are gathered in a tight little knot, conferring.

“You think these people know what they’re doing?” he whispers.

“No, I don’t.”

“I gather they’re planning to pay the ransom with counterfeit money, is that right?”

“That’s the plan, yes.”

“You gonna let them do that?”

“I want my kids back.”

“Seems like a sure way not to get them back.”

“What else can I do, Rafe?”

“Give them what they want. Go to the bank and—”

“And what? Where am I supposed to get a quarter of a million dollars?”

Rafe looks at her.

“You told Carol there was insurance,” he says.

“They haven’t paid yet.”

“It’s been eight months, Alice.”

“Don’t you think I know how long it’s been? They haven’t paid yet.”

“Well… when will they pay?”

“Rafe, do me a favor, okay? Get in your truck and go wherever you have to go. You’re not doing any good here.”

“I’m just trying to help,” he says, almost plaintively, but she has already moved away from him to where a wall phone hangs over the kitchen counter. She picks up the receiver.

“Who are you calling?” Sloate asks at once.

“Charlie.”

“He’s done enough damage already. Asking questions…”

“He found out she’s a blonde!” Alice snaps. “You sit here with your earphones on, and your expensive equipment, twiddling dials, while a fifty-six-year-old artist—”

“We already know she’s a blonde,” Sloate says.

“What?”

“We already—”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” she says, slamming the phone onto the hook. “These are my children! Why isn’t anyone telling me anything?”

She realizes she is screaming at him. She clenches her fists, turns away. She wants to punch Sloate. She wants to punch anyone.

“I’m calling Charlie,” she says, and picks up the phone again.

“This is a mistake,” Sloate says.

But she is already dialing.

“Hello?”

“Charlie? It’s me.”

“What does the blonde want you to do?”

“Bring her the money.”

“Have you got it?”

“Phony bills, yes.”

“That’s dangerous.”

“I know, but…”

“They’re not locals,” Charlie says. “The blonde was driving a rental car.”

Sloate’s eyes open wide.

“How do you know?” Alice asks.

“Guard saw an Avis bumper sticker. I went to the airport, checked on it—”

“Jesus!” Sloate says.

“—they wouldn’t tell me anything. But now that the cops are all over you, maybe they can find out who rented that Impala.”

“Maybe.”

“Where’d that woman ask you to leave the money?”

“Don’t tell him!” Sloate warns.

“The Shell station on Lewiston and the Trail.”

“What time?”

“Don’t…”

“Ten tomorrow morning.”

“Good luck, Alice.”

“Thanks, Charlie.”

She hangs up, looks Sloate dead in the eye.

“Think you can find that car now?” she asks.

Sloate turns to Sally Ballew.

“Make yourself useful, Sal,” he says. “We’re looking for a blue Impala, maybe rented from Avis by a blonde in her thirties.”

“Piece of cake,” Sally says dryly.

As she and her partner leave the house, the grandfather clock in the hallway reads 8:30 P.M.

When they first moved down here, the kids thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Before they bought the boat, Eddie and Alice used to take them to the beach on every sunny weekend. After they owned the Jamash, it was day trips up and down the Intercoastal or out onto the Gulf when the seas weren’t too rough. At the beach one day…

She remembers this now with sharp poignancy.

Remembers it with an immediacy that is painfully relevant.

Jamie is three years old, and fancies himself to be an interviewer on one of his favorite kiddie TV shows. One hand in his sister’s, the other wrapped around a toy shovel he pretends is a microphone, he wanders up the beach, stopping at every blanket, thrusting the shovel-mike at each surprised sunbather, asking in his piping little voice, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Tirelessly, he parades the beach with his sister, a relentless, pint-sized investigative journalist.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

One day…

Oh God, that frantic day…

They know they are not to go anywhere near the water. The waves that roll in here are usually benign, even at high tide, but the children know that they are not to approach the water unless Eddie or Alice is with them. They know this. And usually, they wander up the beach for… oh, ten minutes or so… Ashley inordinately proud of her little brother’s interviewing technique, Jamie grinning in anticipation as he holds out his microphone to ask even sixty-year-olds, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The beaches here on the Cape are not too terribly crowded, even in high season, so Alice or Eddie can keep the children in sight as Jamie conducts his “interviews.” But on this day…

They are discussing something important. Beaches tend to encourage deep discussions about important matters.

She doesn’t remember now what they were discussing. Perhaps buying a boat. Perhaps deliberating whether they can afford to buy even a used boat; they always seem to be discussing money, or the lack of money, when suddenly…

“Where are the kids?”

This from Eddie.

Alice looks up.

“Where are the kids?” he asks again. “Do you see them?”

She looks up the beach. She cannot see them anywhere. She is on her feet at once. So is Eddie.

“Did they come back this way?” he asks.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Did we miss them?”

Alice’s heart is racing now.

“They didn’t go in the water, did they?” she asks.

“You go that way!” he says, and points, and she immediately begins running up the beach. Eddie is off in the opposite direction.

“Ashley!” she yells. “Jamie!”

Running. Her eyes scanning the water. She does not see them anywhere in the water. Nor does she see them anywhere on the beach. What…? Where…?

“Excuse me, did you see a little boy pretending to be a television reporter?”

Coming toward this end of the beach, the bathers and baskers thinning out now, still no sign of the children, oh dear God, please say they haven’t gone in the water, please say they haven’t been carried out to sea! She turns, comes running back down the beach, her eyes darting from sand to sea, and suddenly…

There.

Coming out of the tan brick building near the parking lot.

“Ashley!” she yells.

She rushes to the children, hugs them close.

“You scared me to death!” she says.

“Jamie had to pee,” Ashley says.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Jamie asks, grinning, and holds out the shovel to Alice.

The woman calls again at a few minutes before ten. “Listen to me carefully,” she says. “All you have to remember is that we have your children. If you don’t come to that gas station alone, your children will die. If you don’t have the money with you, your children will die. If anyone tries to detain me, your children will die. If I’m not back where I’m supposed to be in half an hour, your children will die. That’s all you have to know. See you tomorrow at ten.”

She hangs up.

“Twenty-three seconds,” Sally says.

The grandfather clock strikes ten P.M.

In exactly twelve hours, Alice will be delivering the ransom money. But the woman’s words keep echoing in her head. Your children will die, your children will die, your children will die.