American Outrage

by Tim Green

  “No,” Jake said. “It’s public information, right?”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, looking up at the clock. “And we’re closed.”

  She put a marker up on the countertop and disappeared into the back.

  They walked slowly down the courthouse steps with Jake dialing Judy and asking her if she had a contact who could get him a death certificate at the Ulster County Courthouse.

  “I’ve got a friend in the DA’s office,” she said. “Whose is it?”

  When Jake told her, the phone was silent for a moment before she asked why.

  “I don’t think that baby really died,” Jake said, looking into Sam’s big dark eyes. “If there’s no certificate, then we’ll know it.”

  “Is this for TV?” Judy asked. “Because I thought, when I saw Sam, that this was something personal.”

  “It is personal,” Jake said. “I’m not even with the show. I actually got fired over all this.”

  “See, that’s why I have to let my guy know what he’s getting into,” Judy said. “You don’t cross these people. They may have some hundred-million-dollar foundation to help sick kids, but you cross them and bad things happen.”

  Jake motioned for Sam to sit on the bench, then he walked a few feet away and, speaking softly, said, “I’ve seen bad.”

  “Not guns and bombs,” Judy said. “A bullet you can dodge. A bomb you can diffuse. The things that happen to these people’s enemies ruin your life from the inside out, like anthrax. Odorless. Colorless. You’re walking along and then you’re paralyzed. Then you’re finished.”

  “You’ll get it for me?”

  “Did you ever meet a woman who said no to you?” Judy said. Then she cackled and hung up.

  There was a Quality Inn not far from the courthouse. Jake got a room for them and they had dinner at Monkey Joe’s in the historic Rondout District, built by the Dutch in the seventeenth century.

  “We should go see Ridgewood,” Sam said while they were having cheesecake.

  “Just walk up and ring the bell, right?” Jake said. “Ask for a tour?”

  “No, just see it. From the gates. Check it out.”

  “Look,” Jake said, “we don’t know if these are your people. If they are, there’s a pretty damn good chance they don’t want you around.”

  “Just to see it,” Sam said. “You heard what Judy said. You have to see it. It might give you some ideas. Besides, what else are we going to do tonight?”

  “Looks like they’re setting up for a concert in that park,” Jake said, nodding out the window.

  Sam just stared at him.

  After Jake paid the bill, they crossed the river and headed south toward Rhinecliff on a highway that ran along the ridge of the Hudson’s eastern bank. Every so often the view would open up, exposing the rolling green Catskills and the orange sunset beyond. The river below lay black and still. When they found the turnoff that Judy had described, Jake pulled over to the side of the road.

  Crickets and peepers wailed at them from every direction. The sky above the trees was purple now except for a lone dark cloud with a crimson wound down one side. Sam bumped into him as they walked down the gravel drive, trying to stay close. Ahead, a great wall rose from the gloom and as they closed the gap, Jake could make out the spikes atop the massive iron gates. Through the gates, Ridgewood sprawled atop a rise that Jake knew must overlook the river several hundred feet below.

  It looked more like a museum than a home, with its fluted three-story columns and triangular Grecian frieze. Two wings extended off the main body and the glow of lights from dozens of windows illuminated the manicured hedges of the surrounding gardens.

  Sam sniffed the air and said, “Do you smell them?”

  “I do.”

  They stepped slowly toward the gates. Twenty feet away, they were blasted by white light. Jake jumped back and put his arm up to shield his eyes. Atop the massive stone gateposts, two different bundles of spotlights glared down. Jake took Sam’s arm, tugging him along.

  They walked briskly back up the drive and were almost to the road when they heard the sound of a car engine and the crunch of gravel from inside the gates. Jake started to jog, and he didn’t have to pull Sam along to keep up. As they turned the corner onto the main road, Jake glanced back and saw the shape of an SUV behind a pair of headlights and the tall gates slowly opening.

  “Come on,” he said, his heart leaping.

  They started to sprint, but could still hear the roar of the SUV’s engine and the hiss and clatter of the gravel beneath it as it cleared the gates. Jake’s car was still a hundred feet away and he knew he wasn’t going to make it.

  “Wait,” he said, grabbing Sam. “Just walk. You’re with me. It’ll be fine.”

  They were halfway there when the SUV’s brakes squealed and it skidded to a stop at the mouth of the drive. Jake heard an electric window roll down, then the sound of the truck pulling out onto the road and heading their way. It eased up alongside them as Jake was opening the passenger-side door for Sam.

  The beam of a high-powered searchlight suddenly lit up the car. Sam’s face glowed, his eyes and mouth wide. Jake turned and blocked the light with his arm. He couldn’t see the face of the man inside the truck.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked in the deep raspy voice of a heavy smoker.

  “No,” Jake said, dipping his head for an angle that would show him the man’s face. “We were just looking.”

  “You were trespassing,” the man said. “Please don’t come back.”

  “When does the tour start?” Jake said. “Isn’t this where they filmed The Haunted Mansion?”

  The man said nothing, but Jake heard the squawk of a radio from inside the truck and then the man’s voice softly saying, “Copy. All clear.”

  Jake waited, then rounded his car and pulled away, the beam of the spotlight holding on to them until he turned the bend up ahead.

  “Shit,” Jake said, after they’d gone several miles in the dark, “so much for storming the castle.”

  “They don’t have our names or anything,” Sam said.

  “A deal like that back there?” Jake said. “They got the plates. They’ll have our names, addresses, photos, and my job description before we get to the hotel.”

  44

  JAKE WALKED INTO THE BEDROOM and saw Zamira. He could hear the dribble of blood as it leaked from the crimson hole in her head. Suddenly she sat up, pointing at him and groaning.

  Jake’s eyes shot open. The groaning was the pipes from the shower in the next room over. Sam was already up and at the computer. He swiveled around in his chair. Jake rubbed the sleep from his eyes and swung his legs out of the bed. He took a couple of deep breaths and shook his head to cast loose the image of the dead girl. Then he stood up and pumped some joviality into his voice.

  “Don’t you ever sleep in?” he said, being as casual as he could about removing the chair that he had wedged under the doorknob before going to bed.

  “Look,” Sam said, getting up so that Jake could sit down and read the computer. “Worms.”

  “Worms?”

  “The early bird.”

  The Van Buren family foundation had its own Web site. There was a family tree, beginning with William Van Buren and going for seven generations before stopping at the turn of the twentieth century. Only one of the three brothers from that generation was still alive, Jupp, the youngest, who was now ninety-three. The father of those three was Edward, the governor of New York in the twenties.

  There was countless information on the foundation, all they’d done, all they planned to do, attacking poverty, bolstering the arts. There were countless papers from Edward Van Buren’s governorship. There was a bibliography on the various books written about the family, its fortune, and its various foundations.

  “And see this,” Sam said, clicking through several screens before stepping back.

  It was the Forbes list of the four hundred wealthiest Americans. Number two hu
ndred seventy-two was the Johann Van Buren family with $1.2 billion.

  “I guess they don’t clean their own toilets,” Jake said.

  “See how it says the Van Buren ‘family’?” Sam asked. “That’s when the money is in a trust. They can’t say it’s one person’s, so they use the guy’s name who made the trust.”

  “How do you know?”

  Sam shrugged and looked from the computer screen to the clock. “I been up since five-thirty.”

  “Good God,” said Jake. “So, who was Johann?”

  Sam clicked back through several screens to the family tree and clicked on JOHANN VAN BUREN, 1808–1879. The old photo filled the screen, a dark-eyed Dutchman with a thick handlebar mustache.

  “His dad built ships,” Sam said, “but he’s the one that socked it all away, I guess.”

  “Enough to build Ridgewood,” Jake said.

  “And get elected to whatever they want,” Sam said.

  At breakfast, Judy called to say that her friend with the DA had called the county clerk’s office first thing. He’d have a copy of a death certificate for a Joshua Van Buren-Eggers in April of 1992 for them by ten. She said she’d meet them for coffee at a Deising’s Bakery at ten-thirty. Jake thought about telling her what had happened the previous night, but decided to roll the dice instead and hope the two ends would never meet. He hung up and stared at his glass of tomato juice.

  “So, it’s not me,” Sam said.

  Jake kept staring. He took a drink and smacked his lips.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But maybe not.”

  Jake didn’t want to say what he was thinking until he found out more. He took Sam back to the newspaper. When they got to the microfilm, Jake went right for the obituary section for the day before the funeral. He had to go back two days before he found it, but there it was, Costello Funeral Home.

  “Got it,” Jake said, pushing the viewer into the back of the cubicle and getting out of his chair.

  When he told Sam where they were going, Sam asked why.

  “When someone dies,” Jake said, “the funeral director is the one who collects the body.”

  “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “So, I’m thinking that—since there’s a death certificate, and since I’m sitting here talking to you—there was no body to collect. Maybe he’ll know something.”

  “From thirteen years?”

  “He’ll remember,” Jake said. “The article says it happened at Ridgewood, and he isn’t going to forget a place like that.”

  Sam shrugged. “It does leave an impression.”

  The Costello Funeral Home was an elaborate brick Victorian house on Cedar Street with a decorative wrought-iron gate whose pickets were capped with gold fleurs-de-lis. There were several people getting ready for a funeral at ten. When Jake smiled at the woman running things, her face lit up in recognition even before he said his name. She said she was Jim Costello’s wife, Jacque. She said she loved the show, that she watched it every night, and she took them right around back.

  In her excitement, they walked right in on her husband. Jake looked around and quickly covered Sam’s eyes, turning him away.

  “Whoa,” said the undertaker.

  He was dressed in black suit pants and shirtsleeves. An ankle-length white apron spattered with blood covered his front. The body for ten was ready to go, a somber-looking old man in a dark suit already tucked into his casket, but on the table was a middle-aged woman. She was completely naked, with large breasts, fiery red hair, and a blue face. The funeral director was pumping fluid into an incision below her neck while blood coursed out of the same cut, spilling over her shoulder and down the gutter alongside the table.

  Costello jumped protectively between them and the draining woman, and herded them out of the room while his wife chattered excitedly about who Jake was.

  The wife took them into an office and a few minutes later, Jim Costello came in without the apron and wiping his hands on a paper towel. He gave his wife a baleful look, sat down behind his desk, and asked how he could help. The undertaker looked like a grocer’s boy with his straight blond hair and innocent blue-eyed stare. His young wife stood by the door, nodding her head.

  Jake smiled at her, then looked at Jim and said, “Thirteen years ago, this funeral home buried a baby, one of the Van Burens. From Ridgewood.”

  Jim’s face grew long and he nodded.

  “I took over from my dad about a month before that happened,” the undertaker said.

  “So you remember,” Jake said.

  45

  THE FUNERAL DIRECTOR NODDED. “That’s some place. Plus, that’s a sad thing. It’s always sad, but, you know, a baby like that.”

  “Does that happen much?” Jake said. “People having babies at home like that and you have to get a stillborn?”

  Sam studied his shoes. Jim shrugged and glanced at the clock.

  “We got time,” his wife said.

  “You get them both ways,” Jim said. “Most people have their babies in the hospital, so home is a little less common. They were set up like a hospital though. It wasn’t one of these midwives-in-a-bathtub deals. They had it all.”

  “The Van Burens?”

  Sam looked up.

  Jim nodded. “Old Doc Randalls was there in a mask. It was like a hospital room and they had her, the mom, sedated.”

  “Is the doctor, Randalls, is he still around?” Jake asked.

  “No, I buried him two years ago. Cancer.”

  “What about Martha?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “And, I know this might sound like a strange question,” Jake said, “but it’s very important. Did you see the baby?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was it blue?”

  “Blue?”

  “The baby. Stillborn, they aren’t getting blood.”

  “Well,” Jim said, stroking his hairless chin, “I can’t say, now you ask. The baby was pretty well wrapped up. The blanket was all bloody, and I just took it and put it into a container we use.”

  “A casket?”

  “There’s a molded plastic container that goes inside a casket like that,” Jim said.

  “And once you put it in there, does anybody look at it again?” Jake asked. “The coroner or something?”

  “No,” Jim said, raising his eyebrows. “You got the death certificate from the doctor and there’s no real need with something like that. It’s kind of messy and you don’t have to embalm them, not like Mrs. Higgins in there.”

  He nodded toward the back room where the voluptuous redhead lay. Sam’s face turned pink.

  “Jim,” Jake said, “I’m not trying to say anyone did anything wrong, but is it possible that there wasn’t a baby wrapped up in that blanket?”

  “No, I felt it,” Jim said. “There was blood, too.”

  “But, I’m not saying this is the way it was, but is it possible that it wasn’t a baby in that blanket? I mean, could it have been a doll wrapped up?”

  “The blood.”

  “There’s a lot of blood when a woman has a baby. They could have mopped it up.”

  Jim’s wife sucked air through her teeth. Sam sat wide-eyed, and Jake tried to keep his eyes on the undertaker.

  “Sure,” he said. “I guess.”

  There was nothing more that the undertaker remembered, so Jake thanked him and his wife. On the front steps, she asked if she could have a picture with Jake. Sam rolled his eyes, but Jake smiled and said of course. Afterward, she pressed a business card into Jake’s hand with her cell phone on it in case he ever needed anything at all.

  As they walked to the car, Sam said, “Why do people do that?”

  Jake shrugged. “When people see you on TV, they feel like they know you. There you are, every night, or once a week, in their house with them sitting on the couch.”

  “You’re not on the couch.”

  “But they’re with you,” Jake said. “The magic box.”

  “Not to me.
It’s all phony.”

  “Not all of it,” Jake said. “The good stuff is real. This story’s real. I’ve done things like this for the show before, all the time with NPR. Our job now is to chase down every lead we have. You never know which one is going to spring the truth.”

  “What story?” Sam asked as they got into the car.

  “Yours,” Jake said, sliding behind the wheel. “All this. A rich woman has a baby that she gives away, but maybe she thinks the baby died. Maybe it wasn’t her who gave the baby away, maybe it was the family. Some old doctor goes along with it. That’s all real.”

  “You think she didn’t know?” Sam asked, his dark eyes shiny.

  Jake started the engine and pulled away from the curb. “You heard what he said. She was loopy. How could she know?”

  Sam stared straight ahead and nodded. “Then maybe she didn’t give me away.”

  “Maybe. But I’m betting no matter who was responsible, we’re going to find some connection to the Albanians. They’re not all stirred up over American Outrage doing a generic piece on organized crime. There’s something there. The next thing to do is find her.”

  “My mom?”

  “Martha Van Buren. Whether she’s your mom or not, we don’t know, but we need to find her.”

  “I’m going to have a lot to talk to Dr. Stoddard about.”

  “Is this bothering you?”

  “Nope,” Sam said, grinning, “it’s a real education.”

  46

  THE BAKERY WAS ALSO IN THE HISTORIC DISTRICT, just up the hill from the public pier where the ferry to New York City rumbled to a stop, spinning the brown backwater into dozens of whirlpools. They parked in front of the old brick Maritime Museum, where an ancient tugboat was being refurbished in the yard. The small breeze offered up a whiff of sewage. The sidewalks had been rinsed off by the shopkeepers. Jake and Sam skirted the stagnant puddles as they crossed the street to climb the hill.

  Judy sat under the protective wisps of a tall fern with her back to the window, dipping a bag of green tea. Jake ordered a coffee, while Sam wandered to the counter and pointed out two big pastries behind the glass. The death certificate lay open on the small round table, and when he returned Sam spun it around with powdered fingers so he could read it.