The holding pens at Brooklyn Criminal Court flashed before my eyes. Sitting eyeball to eyeball with Rojean, her head twitching, her voice guttural, her pupils needle points in her thin face. “Gotta get me out,” she mumbled, her hands working in her lap. “Gotta get me out to feed my babies.”
I’d looked down at the complaint just to be sure I’d read it right the first time. “… did cause the deaths of Tonetta, Todd, and Trudine Glover by means of …”
When we stood before the judge on the question of bail, she made her own plea directly to him: “Gotta get home, y’Honor. My babies alone, they need me.”
“And besides,” Marla went on, jarring me back to the smoke-filled present, “if this works out, there could be more. I place a lot of babies out of this group home on Staten Island, and as long as Feinberg’s on the bench, the girls will need separate counsel. But I’d like to know I’m dealing with someone I can trust. I’d rather have you than some brother-in-law who questions everything and knows nothing. The last lawyer I had to deal with—God!”
“Hey,” I said, “just keep in mind the only thing I know about Family Court is where they keep the juvenile delinquents.”
“That’s the beauty part, sweetie. I’ll teach you everything you need to know. For starters,” she added, dropping her butt to the floor and crushing it with a black and silver pump, “we’re not in Family Court. That’s a poor people’s court, and adoptive parents are used to better. So in the City we do adoptions in Surrogate’s Court. Much nicer atmosphere. You’ll see.”
If memory served, Marla had taught me everything I needed to know about wills in one long all-nighter just before the exam. I got a D in the course.
Marla’d said a D was no big deal.
CHAPTER TWO
I felt as if I’d been listening to Marla talk for a month. I’d begged her not to smoke in the car, so she lit up and held the glowing cigarette out the window, in the fond belief that the smoke would waft into the damp March breeze instead of back inside the vehicle.
“… hope nothing’s really wrong with her,” Marla said. She’d heard that the doctor who was scheduled to deliver Amber’s baby was making a house call. “I mean, the last thing we need is a defective baby, right?”
“What happens if—”
“Depends,” Marla replied, her eyes fixed on the road. We were on Victory Boulevard, a main highway on Staten Island, an uncharted wilderness to an Ohio girl transplanted first to Greenwich Village and then to brownstone Brooklyn. From the window of Marla’s cream-colored Beemer, it looked a lot like Cleveland, even down to the depressing St. Patrick’s Day rain.
“When people adopt through an agency,” Marla explained, “they fill out a form listing what defects are acceptable and which are deal-breakers. Like they could handle a kid with a missing finger, but not a Down’s syndrome baby. I thought it was a good idea, so I lifted a copy of the form when I left the agency, modified it a little, and now I get all my adoptive parents to sign it.”
I pondered this in silence, tired of punctuating everything Marla said with incredulous exclamations. You mean people actually choose between cerebral palsy and cystic fibrosis? If the kid’s got a defect, they send it back to the manufacturer? What is this, adoption or buying stereo equipment, for God’s sake?
And I’d thought criminal practice was cold.
Marla took a left off Victory Boulevard, and we sped past the infamous Willowbrook State Hospital, euphemistically renamed the Staten Island Developmental Center—where Junior Greenspan might end up if he was lacking in the brain department. We then passed a giant enclosed mall, the first I’d ever seen inside the five boroughs.
“Looks a little like Cleveland,” I remarked.
“God, yes,” Marla agreed. “Depressing, no?”
Actually it made me feel slightly—very slightly—homesick for a place I hadn’t lived in twenty years. And I cheered up a little, thinking that at least Amber, the birth mother, wasn’t living in some hole waiting for her baby, but had a nice suburban home.
“Tell me again why Amber’s in this group home,” I asked. “I mean, it’s a private adoption, right? The agency has nothing to do with it, so why—?”
Marla shook an exasperated head. “God, Cass, if you’d just listen. I told you, Doc Scanlon thought she might have a little trouble with her pregnancy; she was behind on her rent and couldn’t work, so he agreed to let her stay at the home until she gave birth. The agency’s charging her for the room, but it’s a lot cheaper than an apartment. It’s all perfectly legal; every penny the adoptive parents spend on her support has to be documented in an affidavit before the court, so there’s no hanky-panky. Just a logical solution to a simple problem.”
The car—a four-year-old BMW; the adoption business must pay pretty well—took a wide left onto a road marked Platinum Avenue and traveled behind the mall into a complex of low-rise garden apartments, each a depressing replica of its next-door neighbor.
The development showed a positively stunning lack of taste, but it was clean and suburban-nice; bare trees poked spindly branches into the wan March sky. Lawns were still winter-pale, with outcroppings of black-edged snow; near the houses an occasional snowdrop poked a white, bell-shaped head above ground.
Marla turned a few times and pulled up before a huge false-brick two-family house. A regular American house, like the one the Brady Bunch used to live in. There was no sign at all that this place was occupied, not by one big happy family, but by the flotsam and jetsam of not-so-happy families.
The door opened and a very pregnant girl stepped out. She looked about fifteen, with lanky, mouse-colored hair and a pale moon face. She wore a pink smock over leggings; her swollen feet were jammed into pink slippers. She waddled over to the car.
My first impulse was to tell Amber to get the hell back into bed. But before the words escaped my mouth, Marla greeted the child with a “Hi, Lisa” in a voice so patently artificial you could have put it in coffee and not gained a pound.
Lisa looked at Marla with bovine sullenness. “Hi, Ms. Hennessey,” she said unenthusiastically. “Mrs. Bonaventura sent me to tell you Doc Scanlon’s with Amber. You can come inside, but you’ll have to wait till he’s finished.”
“Is something wrong?” Marla and I both asked approximately the same question at exactly the same time.
“I don’t know,” Lisa replied. “But Doc looked serious when he came in, and you know how he is. Always smiling. Like Santa Claus,” she added, a smile creeping over her plump face.
“Jesus” was all Marla said, but she slammed the car door hard and walked quickly, the heels of her shoes making little holes in the grass as she took the straightest path to the door, disregarding the curved flagstone path. I followed, wrapping my jacket around me and wondering how Lisa could stand being outside without a coat.
Inside, the place was homey, but institutional. Everything had been done to make it seem as though a family lived here—afghans over the rocking chairs, souvenir plates mounted on the wall, a colorful rag rug—but with a touch of impersonality. Like a Shelter Island summer house, with transient group renters season after season.
A middle-aged woman I took to be Mrs. Bonaventura came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. She extended a still-damp palm and motioned for me to sit. I chose a rocking chair; she sat on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking sofa. She didn’t bother urging Marla to sit; anyone with half an eye could see my colleague was bent on pacing and smoking until she’d seen the doctor.
“This is a nice place,” I said lamely.
Mrs. Bonaventura smiled as though I’d called the home a palace. “We do what we can,” she said. She was about five feet tall, with dark hair pulled back into a bun. Her accent could have been Spanish, Italian, Greek—Persian, for that matter—indefinably not American.
This was a deeply meaningful conversation, but it wasn’t getting me closer to my client. But then I wasn’t sure I was ready for another girl with a high school face
and a mother’s belly, especially one being seen by a doctor who might pronounce the product unfit for sale.
Jesus, stop thinking like that. I spoke to myself pretty sharply. I did not want to start talking like Marla, wearing armor clothes, peroxiding my hair. Smoking.
My colleague stubbed her cigarette into a cut-glass ashtray, the kind you see at stoop sales for fifty cents because nobody smokes anymore. Two hard twists of the wrist and the butt stopped smoking, ground into the glass by Marla’s efficient hand. She reached into her Coach bag and pulled out a badly folded legal paper. She handed it to me with a casual air that was supposed to mean she’d almost forgotten this little detail. But I’d known Marla a long time, and something about the move seemed calculated. I went on the alert.
“What’s that?” I said brightly.
“Oh, nothing much. I like to get a consent to adoption before the birth, then firm it up once the baby’s delivered. Mrs. B. here is a notary, so—”
“How convenient.” I fixed Marla with a stare I hoped conveyed amused tolerance for her naive attempt at manipulation. “I can read, you know,” I pointed out. “I may have started this case not knowing much about adoptions, but there’s this really handy reference book. Maybe you know it—it’s called the Domestic Relations Law, and it contains everything you ever wanted to know about New York adoptions. Including,” I finished, letting my voice carry a touch of steel, “the fact that prebirth consents aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Marla, dear,” I went on, matching her poisonous sweetness, “why are you asking me to have my client sign an unenforceable consent?”
She leveled a stare that should have had my hair falling out. “I know it’s unenforceable,” she said, spacing out the words. “You know it’s unenforceable. But the little dears who give up their babies don’t know it’s unenforceable. It’s just my way of making sure they know what they’re doing is for keeps. If they really want to change their minds, they’ll find out soon enough the consent doesn’t matter until after birth—and by that time, they’ll have signed another, valid consent.”
I’d started shaking my head in the middle of her speech, but it didn’t stop her making her case. Now I said it flat out: “No, Marla. I will not take that form to Amber. I will not pretend she’s signing a valid consent to adoption now when I know the consent is worthless. You brought me into this case as her lawyer, and that’s who I am. Amber’s lawyer. Not your patsy.”
She shoved the paper back into her bag, then gave me an unexpected grin. “Hey, it was worth a try.”
Mrs. Bonaventura asked us if we wanted anything to drink. I shook my head, and Marla muttered something about a neat vodka, cold, with a twist. She didn’t get it.
Next thing I knew, Santa Claus was in the room with us. A young Santa, about fifty-five, with rosy cheeks and a tiny bud mouth hidden inside a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, laughing blue eyes, and a smile that could have melted the North Pole. A well-dressed Santa in a charcoal suit cut to fit his bulk, and handmade shoes on his oddly small feet.
“I’m Dr. Scanlon,” he said, holding out a plump hand. I shook it; he squeezed a second or two longer than politeness dictated or allowed, then turned to Marla.
“She’s okay,” he said. “Fetal heartbeat strong. No sign of premature labor. Just a little spotting, some high blood pressure.” He frowned and turned his attention toward the diminutive housemother. “She really should rest,” he pronounced. “I’ve told her to cut down on her trips to the mall until the baby’s born. It would be better if she stayed off her feet altogether, but—” He raised his hands, which were tiny compared to his swollen stomach, in a gesture of futility.
Mrs. Bonaventura shook her head regretfully. “You’ll never get that Amber to stay in bed for two hours, let alone a week,” she said in a dark-chocolate voice. Her prediction rang as portentously as anything said on the streets of Troy by the original Cassandra.
The mall we’d passed on the way to the group home was a huge complex of stores, anchored by Macy’s, Sears, and Penney’s. I had visions of a very pregnant teenager wandering through its covered, fountained vastness, clutching her distended belly and moaning in pain as she cruised the boutiques.
“Can’t you order her to stay in bed?” I asked, my voice rising slightly. “After all, you’re the doctor.”
As soon as the words flew out of my mouth, I blushed for my stupidity. If I’d had a dollar for everyone who thought I could do something because I was the lawyer, I wouldn’t have been standing in a group home on Staten Island making a fool of myself. I gave the bulky man a rueful smile by way of apology.
“I can strongly advise bed rest,” he explained, locking eyes with me as though we were the only people in the room. His were blue and slightly bulging, pulling me into the seriousness of his words. “She’s young and basically healthy,” he said. “I’d admit her to the hospital right now if I thought she was in real danger. It would be better if she stayed as immobile as possible, but I can’t prevent her from going for walks.”
“I can,” Marla interrupted. “I can and I will. If anything happens to that baby because she’s tramping around that mall—”
“Amber always gets to go to the mall,” dumpy little Lisa complained. “Whatever Amber wants, she gets. It’s not fair.”
“Lisa, not now,” Mrs. Bonaventura said in a firm voice. She moved toward the sullen teenager, about to shepherd her out of the room, but the litany of grievances had just begun. “… her own room, her own phone line,” the girl recited as the housemother all but pushed her into the next room.
“So can we see her or what?” Marla cut in.
Dr. Scanlon raised bushy, graying eyebrows. “Of course. Just don’t upset her. Anything that can wait, should wait until after she gives birth.”
I trudged up maple-banistered stairs after Marla, feeling like a sailboat caught in the wake of a liner. We passed room after room furnished with identical twin beds, matching pine dressers, and blue shag carpets. There were wall posters with huge blowups of the stars of “Beverly Hills 90210,” rap groups whose names I didn’t recognize, graduation photos of pimply boys—the proud fathers.
At the far end of the hall there was a big television room with fake leather couches crammed with teenaged girls in varying stages of pregnancy. All were white.
Amber had a room all to herself. She had a double bed instead of twins, fancier furniture with carved accents instead of plain pine, a Navajo-style throw rug over a beige carpet nicer than the blue shag the other girls had, and a white phone on the bedside table, the first phone I’d seen on this floor. It was a special room, a princess room. Lisa had a point; Amber had possessions and privileges the other girls didn’t share. I wondered why, then filed the question for future reference.
The room was empty—well, not exactly empty; there were enough stuffed animals to fill a window at FAO Schwarz—but there was no one in the big bed or the straight chair next to it. I took the opportunity to look around while Marla went back down the hall to look for my client.
The room was a jumble of Care Bears, Hallmark cards taped to the walls, and posters with rainbows promising better tomorrows. Yet amid the rainbow-bellied bears was a white coyote, head raised to the ceiling in mid-howl, wearing a turquoise neckcloth. On the wall adjoining a “Just for Today” poster was a blowup of the Albuquerque balloon festival. The room seemed to have been decorated by two people with totally opposite tastes. I wondered which, if either, sensibility belonged to Amber.
Next to the window hung an unusual wind chime; I walked over to inspect it more closely. In addition to the usual tubes of tuned metal, there were silver-wrapped nuggets of semiprecious stones. I recognized a lavender amethyst, a rose quartz, an aquamarine. I was fingering a lemon-yellow stone when a voice behind me said, “Ms. Jameson?”
I turned. My client stood in the doorway, holding herself upright with one hand balanced on the door frame.
First surprise: Amber was no teenager. Twenty-thr
ee at least, she sat with a composed look on her perky face, manicured hands folded over her enormous stomach. She wasn’t pretty, though her long, wavy hair had the kind of shine and bounce that sells conditioners. Her skin was fresh and rosy, her eyes clear blue. She looked like fun, like a ride on a roller coaster, like fresh-spun cotton candy, like a softball game on a breezy spring day.
Second surprise: Instead of a maternity top, Amber wore an oversized T-shirt that bore a replica of the New York Post’s most infamous headline: “HEADLESS CORPSE IN TOPLESS BAR.” The latest in designer fashion for the mother-to-be. I couldn’t help smiling; this kid had a sense of humor.
“Amber?”
She lifted a hand with French-polished fingernails and held it out. “Ms. Jameson,” she said, her voice was low and sexy. She could have been the lawyer, so self-possessed was she, so firm and confident was her handshake.
“This is really interesting,” I said, gesturing at the wind chime. I let my fingers play with the dangling gems, and a bell-like sound emerged, deeper in tone than I would have expected from the miniature metal tubes.
Amber beamed. “Ellie made it for me,” she explained. “Ellie Greenspan,” she added unnecessarily. “She’s been just wonderful to me.”
Amber touched a pendant at her throat with a manicured finger. “She made this, too.”
I bent closer. It was a round, polished piece of amber, clear and pure, turning sunlight to gold as Amber held it toward the warm rays. It was cocooned in silver, caressed by a sterling hand—which, on closer examination, turned out to be the slim, naked body of a woman draped over the shining stone. She lay on the smooth surface as if she were embracing a lover, trying to bury herself in his naked flesh.
“Ellie says amber brings light into the body.” The accompanying smile was both warm and secretive. “She says it’s a good name for me because I’m bringing light into their lives with this baby.”
Fresh Kills Page 2
