Alice in Jeopardy: A Novel (24 page)

Christine is almost afraid
to break the news to him.

There is something very frightening about this man.

He’s never hit her or anything like that, he’s not a violent man, although you never can tell with the ones who look as delicate as he does. Once, back when she was still living in North Carolina, she used to date this Latino who looked like a stork, he was that slender and dainty. Actually, he was dealing dope, but that was another matter. The point is, the minute she started living with him, he began batting her around. “What’re you gonna do?” Vicente used to ask her, that was his name, Vicente. “Call the cops?” No, she didn’t call no cops. She just left. Fuck you, Vicente.

The situation is very different here. Christine knows she could never end this relationship, even if he ever did hit her, which he better not try, but she’s not afraid of that, really. He’s never hit her yet, and they’ve been together—what? It must be almost three years since they met, and a year since he cooked up this scheme of his, she can still remember the day he told her about it, she thought he was crazy. That intense look in his eyes, that’s the word for him, she guesses, intense. Everything about him is so fucking
intense,
man. You can almost feel him vibrating sometimes.

She thinks maybe the reason she’s afraid to tell him what she’s discovered is that this whole idea was his to begin with, and now he may think she’s trying to muscle in on it, come up with an idea of her
own,
you know? That was one of the things used to get Vicente in a rage all the time, her coming up with ideas of her own. It’s like these delicate guys have to prove they’re not as feminine as they look, so they put you down whenever you try to express yourself. And if dissing you doesn’t work, there’s always the fists, right? They can always give you a black eye or a bloody lip. That hasn’t been the case here yet, but she’s a little gun-shy, she has to admit, of somebody who so perfectly fits the Vicente profile of profound passion in a slight body.

He hasn’t yet asked her why she’s back so late.

All she was supposed to do this morning was ditch the Impala and rent a new car, which she did without any trouble. But going to the bank to break down the hundreds into smaller bills was her idea, not because she suspected any of the bills were counterfeit but only because cashing a big bill in a shitty little town like Cape October could become a hassle.

He’s watching television when she comes in.

The kids are locked in the forward stateroom of the boat. She doesn’t ask him how the kids are. Truth be known, she doesn’t give a shit about the kids. Now that they’ve got the money, all she wants to do is turn the kids loose and get the hell out of here. A quarter of a million dollars can take them anywhere. Stop playing hide-and-seek with the locals here. Go to Hawaii or Europe or the Far East, wherever. Go someplace where a black woman and a white man with blond hair won’t attract the kind of attention they do here in Crackerland.

But she still has to tell him about those three queer bills, and her idea about the rest of the money.

“Where’ve you been?” he asks.

“Here and there,” she says, and goes to him and kisses him on the cheek.

“Did you get the car?”

“A red Taurus.”

“Can’t wait to see it,” he says, and gets up to give her a hug, flicking his long blond hair as he rises. His hair was short when they met three years ago, made him look more butch. She doesn’t dare tell him he looks a bit faggoty with the longer hair, which he didn’t start growing till after all this started, even though they moved out of town where nobody could possibly recognize him.

“I missed you,” he says. “What took you so long?”

“I bought some things,” she says.

“Uh-oh,” he says, but he’s smiling.

“Want to see them?”

She puts the Victoria’s Secret shopping bag on the kitchen table. He’s already recognized it, his eyes are already dancing. He may look like a pansy, but man, the opposite is true when it comes to reaction and performance, you know what I’m saying? She removes the boxes from the bag one by one, stacks them on the table. She shows him the push-up bras in the black hydrangea and the cheetah print. She shows him the leopard-print low-rise thongs. He rubs the fabric between his forefinger and thumb, as if he’s testing one of the hundred-dollar bills. She shows him the red sequin-lace baby-doll nightgown. He especially likes the black lace garter belt.

“I’ll wear it for you tonight,” she says.

“How about now?” he asks.

“We have to talk,” she says.

“What about?”

“I also bought a television set. It’s in the car.”

“A television set? What for?”

“Cost me nineteen hundred bucks.”

“What? Why’d you spend…?”

“To test the bills.”

He looks at her.

“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 bare arms.

“Up there on the chart,” she said.