The Baby Merchant

by Kit Reed

  I don’t think Gary would do this, she says. It’s true.

  The detective leans forward. Then who do you think did it?

  She doesn’t catch the nuance. I don’t know!

  Do what you can, Sasha. Answer their questions. Answer questions they haven’t thought to ask. Be calm. She tries. They are polite. They take notes dutifully as she supplies useless information simply because it is information and then, dutifully, they follow up, but it’s clear that their suspicions stop right here and they are only going through the motions. By the end she and the Savannah police will realize they are on a loop, saying all the same things to each other over and over again.

  As the night wears into early morning, Sasha sees without being told that they think she intentionally lost her baby, by which they do not mean lost.

  The questions stop. For the moment, they are done with her. She is a foregone conclusion.

  All Sasha can do, then, as the forensics people turn over the unit and scour the car and bring in other police with lights to walk the woods and comb the terrain around the azaleas, looking for some shred of evidence that will convict her— unless, oh, God, they are looking for Jimmy’s body— all she can do is wait for this phase of the investigation to end.

  They have to move on! Otherwise they’ll never find the kidnapper. He’s been taken. The realization she’s been avoiding rolls in like a stone, sealing the mouth of the cave where she is trapped. Somebody has taken him away. Who did this? What kind of person would break into your life like a burglar and steal your child? The police won’t look outside this room until they’ve run this ugly thread out to the dead end that it is, bastards, why can’t they hurry? Clear the decks and start an organized search for the man? Unless. Carla Hanson’s face flickers on like a porch light, unbidden— that greedy mouth. Recognition makes her gasp. Unless it’s a woman. Yes! Doesn’t it happen all the time?

  “Lieutenant,” she says. “Officer? Somebody! Please.”

  They are all busy doing something else.

  Desperate, she tries to get their attention, but as far as they are concerned, she is a foregone conclusion now. The mother. For all they know, the perp. Their polite indifference makes her shout. She begs them to check the records in neonatal units at all the hospitals, find out whether some poor woman who lost a baby is on the loose out there, mad with grief, she may have stolen Jimmy to replace her own stillborn. Check the fertility clinics. Check the records for stillbirths. Conscientiously, the junior detective takes notes— so fucking polite!— for all she knows he is scribbling, bla bla bla.

  “Do you hear?” Sasha repeats. Anxiety makes her passionate. They look at her warily because she is taking the initiative, where in these cases they expect the mother to be inarticulate and helpless.

  “Yes Ma’am,” the detective says politely, because this is the first night and generally, in these cases you need look no further.

  “Yes Ma’am,” the state troopers say, because by this time there are state troopers too, but Sasha can tell by the way they look at her that to a man (and by this time there are several) they believe this disappearance originated with her.

  As if she would ever …

  Shuddering, Sasha understands that a month ago she actually thought she could give away this baby. What was she, crazy? Was she disconnected from reality and seriously deranged, thinking for even one minute that she could part with the flesh wrenched out of her body and glowing with life and walk away feeling better? She tried to think of it in the abstract, but this is no abstraction. Jimmy Egan isn’t a unique print or a separable entity that she can send out to fly and be happy, he isn’t a firefly or any other damn thing, he is a living person. He was never a spark waiting to be freed to fly upward or any other metaphor an ignorant girl could contrive, he is her child. He is Jimmy, Jimmy Egan, he came out of her flesh and he is HERS and she will do whatever it takes and go wherever she has to go and go on without stopping until she finds him. She loves him because he is part of her now, wherever he goes, and she is prepared to do whatever it takes to find him. As the television news truck rolls in, Sasha lifts her head. The night has changed her and she understands now that her baby is truly lost.

  The television unit. This may be her last chance. Oh, God. It may be too late for last chances.

  For the first time Sasha is face to face with it. All the desperate hopes she has thrown up like barricades between her and the truth have vaporized. Now that she’s argued and protested, now that she’s done everything she can, the police machine runs on without her. Huddled in a cracked plastic chair, she watches them work while the tears run down, reduced to what she really is. Sasha is no artist. She’s a mother, nothing more and nothing less, sealed in the prison of her own helplessness, rocking with grief.

  30.

  Until now, Starbird has managed to maintain his cool detachment all his professional life. With plans in place and clients waiting, he is stalled here in Myrtle Beach and it’s his own damn fault. Instead of faring forward back there, he lost it. He never should have spoken to the kid.

  The thing is, by the time he’d ditched the pickup vehicle and walked back to the new car the product was crying.

  “It’s OK,” he’d said to it, the way you would to an actual person, “Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

  Blunders beget blunders. Tom Starbird, who was stupid enough to interface with the mark, was officially stupid enough to interface with the product. Conversation. He could swear the thing smiled at the end. Usually this kind of encounter wouldn’t touch him but this was the last, and it’s her baby. That lovely woman. What was he thinking? In his line of work you never spoke to the product; S.O.P. It was a matter of expedience. If you had to speak, you kept it brief. You did not relate because you ran the danger of getting invested; start making like a father and you’re well and truly fucked. To do this job you could not under any circumstances get personally involved, but there he was. Alone on the job, changing diapers under the dome light on a godforsaken point in rural Georgia. This wasn’t a problem that would be solved at the end of a short flight to LaGuardia, this problem was riding all the way to Texas with him— three days together in the car. Bad: this phase was taking too long. The product was crying, the problem was his to deal with, what choice did he have?

  “It’s really OK,” he said to the carton, “It’s OK really, there there,” he tried, stupidly mimicking Sarah’s falsetto croon. “Shhshh don’t cry, baby. Tom will take care of you.”

  Rattled, he took the prewarmed bottle of Enfamil out of the hot pack and opened the box. He eased the little thing out of its tangled nest and tried to feed it but to make bad worse, it wouldn’t eat. Its problem was, it was starving and it didn’t know how to fix it; it couldn’t get a grip. When these things are that small they want to eat every few minutes and they never know whether they’re hungry or not. They have to eat every couple of hours or they’ll die, that Starbird knew. This one was making hungry fish faces but it couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. Tom Starbird was stuck trying to feed a starving baby that didn’t know how to eat. Coaxing took time he should have spent behind the wheel, hellbent for Texas. When he was just about to give up on it the baby settled, at least for long enough for its tiny chest to stop heaving and the mouth to latch on. Cool, but it kept losing its place in the procedure and Starbird kept having to remind it. Talk to the baby, dude. Try to sound like a mom. Jiggle. Bump its gums with the rubber nipple to wake it up if it nods off. He heard advancing belly rumblings and wet squirting sounds. Burp it. Now I have to burp it. Next he would have to change it or it would get raw and scream all the way to Galveston. When that was done he took out the usual supplies: baby wipes in quantity because you never know how many you’re going to run through cleaning up one of these things, the smallest size disposable diapers, bucket with bleach to destroy DNA traces before heaving the dirties into the marsh.

  You can feed a product without ever looking into its face, Starbird has do
ne it so often he can complete the operation in his sleep. He can do it without making eye contact with the item. It’s harder to clean and change one, as you have to turn them on their backs face up, but he is practiced at that too. If you have to watch what you’re doing, focus on the details— what’s dirty or raw, which parts need wiping. Where you have to smear on gunk. For this you need the light; why was it so hard? He tried, but this living product squirming under his hands was her get and progeny, whether or not she wanted to discard it, and that’s the source of his grief.

  He didn’t know. He still doesn’t know.

  He helped the mark in the Food King and she ran after him to smile and say thanks; the smile told him that she liked him.

  Would she like him now?

  Efficient as he was, still bent on making the transfer tomorrow in Galveston, Starbird finished with the diaper tabs. He pulled on a fresh onesie with that practiced hand. He was all set to stick it back in the carrier when, at a sound the baby made when he did up the snaps in the crotch, he inadvertently looked it in the face.

  He thinks it smiled.

  It had the girl’s exact expression. The same eyes. He put it back in place, shaken. Did I do the right thing?

  Doubt. The monster had Tom Starbird in its jaws before he cleared the DelMar parking lot. Hell, leaving the Food King. Its teeth met somewhere at the center of him when the product smiled and he groaned aloud. Got to get rid of it.

  It has him now, no question. If he can’t get his shit together it will swallow him whole. At this hour he should still be on the road, driving for his life. Instead he is slouching in this EconoLodge in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with the living product asleep for the moment but snorting like a small animal, clean and fed but, OK, grunting and tossing in the fresh nest he made for it.

  He is on the phone. Got to offload it.

  In the realm of botched exercises, this is the cardinal mistake: rushing a transaction. He has to hand off this baby fast or doubt will paralyze him and he’ll never hand it off. Got to get rid of it fast.

  His party answers. With his operating system close to crashing, Starbird barks, “Zorn?”

  “You’ve got my kid?”

  “There’s been a change of plans.”

  31.

  It is near dawn.

  The police are gentle with Sasha now that they have played out their string. They are winding up here. They turn to Sasha as the television crew enters the room. “OK, Ma’am, anything else?”

  She is beyond speech. Demonstrating futility, she turns her pockets out. “Oh my God, I forgot this.”

  The note. Index card, yes. Firm printing. Broad strokes. She thinks as she hands it over that she was out of her mind last night when she stuck it in her pocket and forgot it, stupid, anxious mother hung up on best-case scenarios. Beautiful printing on the card, strong, broad strokes. Delroy Steptoe didn’t print this. Neither did clumsy Gary Cargill. It’s a message for her, of that she is certain, but it’s a message from somebody completely other. This person took her baby, this bastard, this monster. He’s out there and no matter what she has to do she will by God find him, she will do this no matter what it costs or how long it takes, she will …

  HE’S SAFE.

  TELL NO ONE.

  Someone— news anchor?— is saying, “Live from the DelMar.”

  Sasha lifts her head.

  The Channel Eight crew is in the room now, filling the space as the chief of detectives steps in to make a statement. Someone is brushing Sasha’s face with powder and helping her to her feet. A reporter thrusts a Nerf-ball mike under her chin, asking the classic, “How does it feel?” as the power of speech returns and with it the first clear thought she’s had on this terrible night: television. She will use this to flush him out.

  “How does it feel?”

  Now Sasha Egan is transformed. The change is complete. Where she was taut with rage, she is electrified. Passionate and articulate. She seizes the mike from the startled reporter and glares into the camera. She isn’t speaking to the reporter or the personnel in the room. She speaks only to him. Wherever he is.

  “You, who took my baby, you bastard. Thief. Monster. Hear me,” she says with her voice vibrating with fury. “Hear me now.”

  32.

  When he finally crashed into sleep in his dim motel in Myrtle Beach, Starbird still thought of the transfer of property as a win-win proposition. Good home for the baby, the girl will be relieved. Forget Galveston, do this soonest. Meet Zorn and the wife in Washington, D.C., he needs to look into the woman’s face, make sure she’s a good person, stable, fit to handle a kid. Do that and the girl will thank him. Correction. Would thank him, if he made the suicidal move of revealing himself. He’ll tell Zorn to bring the wife when he calls to give him the details: which hotel and what time. Before he shut down for the night he opened his laptop and scoped his route on the Web, down to the stop he would make to phone Zorn. Surfing for the comfort surfing brings, he found a hotel where he could simply walk in and get a room, pay in cash and leave no tracks. By then it was beyond late and the product was awake and crying again. He fed and changed the baby and patted it down in the pet carrier. Then he dropped like a stone into what little was left of the night.

  The first thing Starbird did when he woke up screaming was turn on CNN. It wasn’t a scream exactly, but it felt like sound—something profound ripped right out of him. How long had he slept? An hour? Two? Too much and not enough. It was the baby screaming, he realized. Still it left him raw and jangling, as though the noise that roused him had been pulled out of him by the roots. The parted curtains showed a wedge of pink sky. He lurched to his feet to slap on the TV before he realized that he was holding the remote. White sound worked on the baby when he first took it from the DelMar and he was looking for the adult equivalent— that predictable tickertape banner spelling disaster along the bottom of the screen, the talking head that can smile while all hell implodes in the background and the earth caves in, describing the scene in that same reassuring drone. With the TV running Tom took a bottle of premixed formula out of the cold pack and put it in the sink to warm while he pulled the baby out of the pet carrier— gently, because he’s been doing this for so long that he is extremely good at it— and changed the kid and sat down to feed it while they zoned out on CNN. Where the baby ate and snoozed, Starbird sat with his mouth cracked wide, waiting. At some level, he understood what he was waiting for. What he didn’t understand that night— will never know— is why.

  He didn’t wait long.

  She sprang out at him. Pre-dawn press conference, direct from the scene in Savannah. The victim— when did you start thinking of her as a victim, Starbird, bad move— the girl was strikingly pretty and the local TV news people persistent. The police called the press conference to draw possible witnesses, to keep her off guard, prop her up and let her make a plea.

  He recognized the sterile, tidy room at the DelMar.

  The girl looked haggard and ashen, what did they do to her? Sweet woman, baby’s fine, what does she need with the cops? The chief of detectives wiped his mouth and read from a piece of paper giving details, what little they had. The room was filled with bobbing cameras but the local news had shouldered into the front row. Sitting in Myrtle Beach Starbird watched the woman he couldn’t dismiss and could not quite let go of shove aside the local reporter— whose makeup was perfect in spite of the hour. The girl batted at the globe of orange fuzz protecting the microphone with such force that two hundred miles away, Tom Starbird flinched as he heard the smack. He put the baby over his shoulder and got down on his knees to stare into the motel TV. Rocking the baby, he leaned close, opening his mouth wider, as though that would help him take it in. He studied the screen carefully. He was looking for something. He wanted to examine that face and know for certain that when he took her baby and left this girl behind at the DelMar he had made her, if not happy, then relieved.

  Instead the girl he thought he was doing a favor was
vibrating with rage. When the reporter asked, “How does it feel?” she seized the microphone and jerked it away, advancing on the camera. Now Sasha Egan’s voice cut through time and space and into Tom Starbird, severing some part of him that he didn’t know he had.

  Two hundred miles away, he groaned. She was beautiful and she was articulate. What did he expect? This woman whose life he had disrupted was nothing like the hapless victims who parade their grief for the cameras, fresh from the beauty parlor and facing the lens with those shaky, inadvertent smiles. Unlike the usuals, who spoke from the safety of their sofas, this girl lunged into the frame with her eyes wide and her teeth bared. She didn’t plead and she didn’t talk at length, which most victims take as their inalienable right. The woman whose baby Tom Starbird had stolen, yes, stolen, advanced on the camera, glaring and intent. Before the local reporter could lick her lips to bring up the sheen and repeat, “How does it feel?” she started to talk. She wasn’t interested in telling anybody how it felt. Instead she told them exactly what she thought. She could have been speaking directly to him.

  If she’d only looked down, if she’d lost it and begun crying the way they usually do, Starbird would have been able to handle it. He could have turned off the television and moved on.

  But this was no run-of-the-mill, bewildered victim and she was nothing like Daria Starbird, greedy for praise and anxious to put her burden down. Sasha Egan glared into the camera. She was looking right at him, and as she spoke, something ended. It ended and grief rolled into Starbird and reamed him out. Never mind what she said. Yes, mind it. He needs to play and replay the diatribe, he has to deconstruct and reconstruct it, he needs to study it and parse it. For the next thirty-six hours it will draw him back to the television here and in Washington, in a terrible, agonizing need to see it play out again and again.