The Baby Merchant

by Kit Reed

  Professional smile. Unprofessional rage flickering too close to the surface. “Oh, it’s much too late in the game for that. Now get back in there and give those nice people a chance.”

  “They aren’t nice, they’re all wrong!” They are at an ugly little standoff here in the hall. They aren’t exactly grappling, but it’s close. Inching toward the elevator, Sasha hears herself pleading, “I can’t.”

  Maureen snarls but the charge nurse is watching from her station, so she can’t hit or grab this recalcitrant patient, inmate, whatever Sasha is. She warbles, “You mean you can’t do this today.”

  “Ever!”

  The charge nurse pads up on white, rubber-soled shoes. “Is everything all right?”

  Sasha whips her head around so fast that the tears spray. “Not really.”

  “Don’t worry Margaret, I’m on it.” Maureen glares at the nurse until she goes away. Then she raises her voice so Margaret will hear her asking, as per Newlife policy, “Sarah, are you all right?”

  “No.” Pulling free, Sasha darts for the elevator panel and stabs the UP button. “Get out of my way!”

  As per Newlife policy, Maureen nods with that phony by-the-numbers smile, but when she speaks it is coldly, firing icicles like darts. “Sarah, this is the seventh set of probables that you’ve turned down. We’re running out of possibilities. You might even say this is your last chance and you are just about to blow it.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Yes you do, you’re just upset.” Do these people get bonuses for every successful placement or is Maureen just a controlling pea-brained bitch? “Get back in there.”

  Thank God the elevator comes. “No.”

  “I mean it. You’re out of time.”

  Sasha stumbles inside. “I know!”

  Maureen thumps the closing doors with a plump shoulder. They roll back with a jerk. She pokes her head in and what she says next is quick and vindictive and nothing like the Newlife party line. “You’d better pick somebody soon if you don’t want to have that baby in a ditch.”

  “Shut up, Maureen.” She stabs the button again. Again.

  “This is my case!” The bitch has her foot in the door.

  “Not any more.” Sasha grinds her heel into the bitch’s open toed Birkenstock, which Maureen withdraws with a yip. Stumbling backward into the hallway, she won’t hear what her patient says next. The doors close on Sasha’s last words, which come as a surprise even to her. “I can’t stay here.”

  Two

  The Subject

  9.

  Starbird

  With this meeting with Zorn hanging fire, there are things I have to do. Before I meet with him, I make certain preparations. Another rule of life: when you quit a job, move out and move on.

  Before I meet Zorn tomorrow, I have to tie up all the loose ends. I’ve already made the apposite phone calls. Certain clients. My realtor. The banks. My financial officer is coming in after the Everetts leave with their new baby. Assuming all goes well they’ll be gone by nine and he and I will begin. It won’t matter what time we finish or when he completes the list of tasks I have for him, finance never sleeps. The lights are going on in some financial institution somewhere on this parallel as we speak; international markets open for business on the hour and bank vaults swing wide sequentially, time zone by time zone, girdling the earth.

  Even before I liquidate, I have plenty. I can afford to walk away.

  As soon as I close the books on the Everetts. The pickup on this one was penciled in for tomorrow until Zorn’s call came in. Apologies to the Everetts for rushing you out of the office like that, and apologies to everybody on my wait list, I won’t be getting back to you.

  Meanwhile I have this transaction to complete. It’s risky, making a pickup without prep time, but I have do this today. If things go smoothly, my clients will have the product sooner than they thought and I can vaporize, but this is assuming every small detail falls into place. Conditions are volatile. So are suppliers. Winds and weather affect schedules, along with health conditions and outside events. If things go right I’ll complete the pickup by six tonight and prepare the product for delivery; we’ll meet at eight and I can get shut of the pair of you, but high rollers that you are, you Everetts, you might as well know that in this instance, there’s no guarantee. If I can’t secure the subject today, I’ll have to sign off on you. I’m sorry, but I need to close the books on this matter now. Tomorrow’s anybody’s ballgame.

  If for some reason I do abort, naturally you get your money back, along with enough cash to cover the insult plus travel and hotels. If I return your deposit it means I can’t proceed, and I wish I had better news for you.

  Although I usually keep subjects on reserve for a week between acquisition and delivery, I expect to bring this one off quickly, barring the unforeseen. Lucky for you, the subject and the supplier are close by. Because of the risk factor I usually avoid working locally, but even before Jake Zorn rattled my chain, this one was ordained.

  See, the Everetts’ request was broad in most respects and specific in only one. They want the child of a Juilliard graduate, with potential musical talent assumed— funny what some people care about. Gender: either will do, and coloring? Not an issue, but they expressed a preference for fair. I hacked into the Juilliard database and worked from there. The search yielded five in-state matches and over time I settled on the right one. I’ve been watching the family for weeks. Overworked mother, too many kids and as a result, plans for a career as a concert pianist gone to hell, Juilliard, remember.

  There is obvious resentment; there’s been neglect, potential for abuse. I think by overlooking the chipping, this woman who never made it as a concert pianist was getting her revenge. No college for this baby, not unless I make the rescue and have him chipped. This one needs to be saved. In case you wonder whether my babies really end up in better homes, the Everetts say it all: top talent manager in Los Angeles, wife works at ICM— nice people, been trying for years. They want this so badly that they’ve flown in for three meetings and aced all the tests. Plus we’ve shaken hands and curt as he is right now because I put them off, I like the guy. Nice mother for this baby, good dad. Company Learjet, which means they can afford to give the product better than everything it needs. And will love it more than the supplier.

  I think.

  In this instance my supplier and the subject live in one of the boroughs— don’t ask, confidentiality prevents— which means I can wrap this one up fast. The Everetts think they’re coming in to finalize the paperwork, and I can guarantee you that there will be a bonus for me when they find their order’s been filled and transfer of property is scheduled for tonight. With high-level professionals like them, quick service is an issue. In a way, I love this job. Forget the money. I get off on the power, that smile when they take the baby, the gasp of delight.

  It’s time to prepare.

  For pickups, I dress on an occasional basis: what’s right for the venue and the specific time of day. Although I have been known to wear off-the-rack Armani and drive a high end car for pickups in certain circumstances, I usually go in uniform. There are times when a provider in my line has to dress to impress but in most cases the anonymous service person is a better base identity, that face you look at and don’t see because you never look past the emblem on the cap. For a local pickup, it’s the only way. There are service trucks in every neighborhood and nobody looks twice. Now, as for transportation. I use the service truck with removable panels and changeable top devices: mall security emblems and roof lights for one job, exterminator logo and roof insect for another and because of bad associations— pederasty, kidnapping!— never, ever the ice cream truck. I am, in every other respect, adaptable. The stable I keep garaged in the crosstown Park and Lock includes a mail truck and a U-Haul moving van, useful for interstate transfers because there’s room in the back for a cubicle complete with crib and all the necessaries for a long haul.

  Today I w
ill use the UPS truck, which means the brown uniform, with brown shorts even though it’s raining buckets. Something about those naked knees inspires trust.

  Now, on to the rescue. Do not feel sorry for the suppliers of my subjects, I am doing them a favor. I don’t snatch cherished infants out of their cradles. I’m not that kind of guy. The last thing I need is a baby somebody wants. I specialize in the category nobody talks about but everybody understands, and this is a very special service that doesn’t cost them a cent.

  Removal sounds too abrupt. Let’s say I bring relief to women overwhelmed by too many kids, like the one I will intercept today. My average supplier is a mother who already has too many kids. Here she is, pregnant. Again. She tries to put a good face on it but she hates what she has become and she blames the infant intruder. She’s overworked and frantic. Spread so thin that for one reason or another, she doesn’t bother to have the baby chipped. My scanner can read tracking signals in a house full of kids— and like the government issue model, it detects the absence of same.

  I won’t touch onlies— unless the parameters are unmatchable anywhere else and the price is right because love them or not, these woman are too sharply focused. My typical supplier is the one with a new baby that, I swear to you, she does not want. Don’t listen to what she says when you run into her in the supermarket and say what a cute baby, look into her eyes. Just scan and see if you pick up a signal. Not on your life. Now, don’t judge her and for God’s sake don’t judge me. Just try to understand. This interloper in her life is ripe for rescue. In the end she will thank me for it although she can never, ever admit it, at least not out loud and never right away.

  The absence of a signal makes it clear. The rest is a matter of timing and susceptibility. Now, a woman with too many children spends her life juggling particles— one too many and she hits the wall. Look for yelling. Silent tears. That’s when I move in.

  The best time of day for these actions, incidentally, is twilight. Night makes people edgy and puts them on guard, but at the end of the long, exhausting day there is a fleeting window of opportunity, that murky moment in late afternoon when the eyes can’t trust what the mind tells them that they see. Everything changes at twilight. People let down because they’re close to the end of another hard day. Women who are ordinarily edgy and vigilant relax. In the shadows, motives slide. Outlines blur.

  Now, as for location. Locations vary. I prefer public places because the multitude of witnesses means that even though bystanders may be looking, they don’t see. Nobody sees anything.

  For my money, pickups on private property are unnecessary and intrusive. Now, if I find my supplier’s child carrier set down on a back porch or in a garden and the target strapped inside it, temporarily alone, that is another matter. Leave the baby outside for long enough, snoozing in its car seat because it will cry as soon as you wake it up or sleeping in its stroller on your sunny terrace and I may seize the opportunity, but be assured I never, ever enter the house. I do not invade your privacy because I am a professional. Only the vindictive ex-husband or a deranged pervert would break into a house that’s occupied. Only a thief would sneak in through an unlocked door, creep upstairs past the rooms where the others sleep and take an infant out of its bed in a private home.

  There are dozens of better arenas for the action, anywhere a woman with small children goes: pharmacy. Supermarket. Mall. I choose times and places where stress gets to her and she’s most likely to let down her guard: busy playgrounds and bus stops, mass transit stations; any clearance sale anywhere, because mothers rolling strollers into department stores will shuck their coats on the spot and run to the nearest mirror to find out whether the bargain they are stalking fits; movie matinees, because that kind of woman won’t care what happens as long as the baby is quiet so she and the half-dozen others present can gum chocolate and watch the show; the post office at Christmas, when my unwitting suppliers stagger in under piles of unmailed packages, fed up with their duties and exhausted from standing in line; busy supermarkets near suppertime, when the shopper in question forgets for a second and turns her back on the baby in the cart.

  Absolutely the best place to complete a pickup is your supermarket parking lot. The most confusing time for any mother, worthy or unworthy, is when she should be home by this time and ready to start supper and she’s running late and instead she’s yoked to the shopping cart, with one child crying and another yammering and the others whining and she’s half out of her mind with getting the week’s groceries into the car.

  The easiest way to remove the subject is from a shopping cart and the second easiest, from a stroller, although the surest is after the supplier thinks she has her children strapped safely into the car. Only in extreme cases will I try to detach a new baby propped on the seat in one of those harnesses that mothers strap to their chests. It’s been done, but I detest the necessary jostling, the specially honed cutters it takes to separate those bulky straps. My favored method is much subtler. I wait until my supplier is swamped by demands— children tugging here, squalling there. I like to see her hampered by groceries and overburdened— one in a stroller, one in a Baby Björn or a Snugli and one in a backpack with the fourth hanging with its full weight on the one free arm— a woman like the one I will relieve of her unwanted burden today.

  Today’s mark buys her food for the week at the Stop and Shop on Thursdays, perfect for me. Of course she has packages, and whether she is loading children into car seats or transferring her purchases to the trunk, eventually she has to undo the harness and put the new baby down. Of course I’ve been surveilling her; I am meticulous in my work. Usually she detaches the harness from her front first, undoing the baby and buckling it in the infant car seat with an audible whew. When I hear that, I think, Oh, lady. I have come to help you, although she won’t see it right away. The older child gets snapped into its bucket in front; by that time he’s hungry and whining and she pushes him down a little bit too hard into the seat. When he yowls she does the snaps with a little crack: “There!” Then she takes the one in the stroller and buckles her into the car seat in the back, next to the baby. I see her thinking: There’s all that. Now for the packages.

  Now.

  I’ve done this so often that I can tell you exactly how it will go. I wait until she has the children stashed and she’s loading the collapsed stroller and that fetishist’s dream of a baby harness and all her purchases into the trunk. This is when I strike.

  Generally I start with Tootsie Rolls for the toddlers, effectively cementing their teeth shut and while they are mumbling through that combination of drool and melting chocolate I plied them with I extract the subject with a slash of my prepared Exacto knife, and slip the infant into the specially outfitted parcel and snap it shut before the product can squeak. Truth? The older siblings are awed; they are drunk on the chocolate I gave them and ravished by my grin. They won’t admit it but since I am removing a source of irritation that’s kept their mother too busy to do anything but yell at them, they are also glad.

  “Mom,” the older one cries dutifully and at least three beats too late.

  “In a minute,” she says, as I wink and back away with my prize.

  “Mo-om!”

  “I said, just a minute!” Unless she says, “Shut up.”

  “Mom,” the child repeats as I seal the container and duck into the shadows and out of earshot, “Mo-om!”

  By the time the supplier turns around with an impatient, “What!” I’m gone. By the time she figures out what’s happened, I’m well gone.

  In these actions, I count on the initial moment of confusion to cover my retreat: Oh my God, where’s the baby? She ruffles the blanket, which I have left in the car seat in a confusing heap; she looks on the floor and peers into the trunk. What happened to the baby, did I leave him/her in the store? Did I forget to bring him, did I miscount? Did you children do something to your baby sister? Does his father have him? Did I forget and leave him in the shopping cart? Des
perate, she runs back into the store.

  The manager will have everybody looking soon.

  By the time the supplier figures out what’s happened, my charge and I are locked into the speeding truck light-years away, heading for a better life.

  She will tell the police later that she loves her children, she loves them so much! but in disappearances and kidnappings the overwrought mother is uniformly the first person police suspect. The detectives will turn full attention on her, so prejudice works in my favor. By the time they are done badgering her I’ll be so far out of the picture that they’ll never guess I was there. If they do, they’ll never find me. They won’t have the foggiest idea where to look. In these cases the product and I are off the scene before she can call 911.

  Meanwhile investigators are pressing her: “Ma’am, are you sure you didn’t …” Naturally she protests but they remember other disappearances, you read about them in the papers every day. These cops remember dozens of sad stories other weeping mothers told— elaborate lies that police swallowed in the heat of things and then had to disgorge en route to the ugly truth. Experience makes the police hard on her and she begins to cry. She loves her babies. She does. She’s a good mother, she does her job!

  Officer, don’t be too hard on her. Even the most scrupulous mother has to turn her back on her children some time.

  By the time the police understand that she isn’t the only suspect, the product is under observation in my safe house in Chelsea, being examined fore and aft by my pediatrician and cleaned up and outfitted for delivery to wealthy new parents far better than you.

  Oh, yes I am good at my job.

  Usually my people do the vetting and prepare the product for transfer, but this is a rush job. When I get back to the city I leave the truck at the Park and Lock and pick up my own car at a better garage three blocks down. I take my pickup out of the parcel only when we are inside my building, and getting out of the elevator at the top. I don’t usually handle the product between pickup and the transaction meeting, when I hand it over, but in anticipation of the meeting with my accountant, I dismissed Grace tonight. This means I have to feed and bathe and dress this one myself, which is how I get to see him up close. Cute little boy. Fair, just what they specified. The subject is at the optimum age for this: three months old, old enough to goo and sleep through the night and young enough to forget there was ever anybody else. I’m taken by the big, soft head with airy red down instead of hair and that strong jawline obscured by multiple chins, the clients wanted a winner and this one will knock them off their feet. Ordinarily I’m not interested in babies, but today’s catch is really cute, maybe because he’s the last. Instead of being larval, like most of them, he’s interactive. He snuggles down and takes to the Enfamil like we are old friends. After I do the bath and the diaper and get the onesie snapped I tickle him a little bit. Every time I put my face close enough for him to make it out, he smiles.