Hope House (26 page)

Mick smiled.
Yeah, what are the chances?
All Mick could think about was how badly he wanted to close up shop and get home. He hadn’t had lunch yet and was getting a little cranky.

“I just can’t believe how perfect she is,” Mrs. Milner said holding the tiny hand in her fingers.

“She’s a good baby too. The foster mother,” meaning Nanny who bitched about having to watch all the babies in the basement, “said she already sleeps through the night.” Okay that wasn’t true but every parent he told this lie to was just thrilled by it. Honestly, what three-week-old really slept through the night? Why would you want them to? More than a few hours of silence from a baby that young would have Mick in a panic.

But people wanted the fantasy. That’s what they paid for.

“We can’t thank you enough,” Mr. Milner said.

“My pleasure. Thank you for understanding about all the medical bills.”

“Oh that’s all right. I can see how happy this little girl is going to make my wife. You can’t put a price tag on that—like they say in the ads—priceless!”

“I sure understand that,” agreed Mick. “Look, I’m going to run down the hall and get some papers for you to sign. You’ve spoken with our lawyer about the next step of the process?”

“Yes, we know what we need to do.”

“Well then, let me get the documents.” Mick started to walk out but turned around. “And congratulations on the birth of your daughter and the beginning of your new family!”

Mr. and Mrs. Milner were too absorbed in the baby to reply but that was all right. Besides money, the next most important thing was that the adoptive parents adore their children.

Last year Mick had refused a couple because the husband looked cruel. He’d had to return the deposit but felt good about his decision. Something about the guy wasn’t right despite the Social Services clean bill of health. Just six months
later the guy had killed his wife. Mick’s stomach went into knots whenever he thought of what might have happened if he hadn’t followed his instincts.

Mick left the conference room trying to shrug off the bad memory.

The Milners would be good parents. No need for worry there.

Five babies down, five to go, he thought as he headed toward his office.

3.

New York City, late afternoon

Kurt hailed a taxi to drive them to the Clarkson’s’ condo in Manhattan. He gave the driver the address, then he and Gloria got in.

“The snow is really coming down,” Kurt said.

“Yeah, well it’s February in New York. It’s been a pretty warm winter but it has to snow sometime.”

“I guess.” Kurt cleared the fog off the windows. It had been years since he’d seen snow, years since his hands had been cold and his hair covered in flakes. 

“What’s the matter?”

Kurt watched the snow falling on the city streets. He missed this. And the way he
felt about Gloria gnawed at him. He hadn’t let himself feel in so long and now here he was, head over heels. He was probably deluding himself thinking that it could work, that he could live in this identity and be safe. Carrying on in the life of an itinerant housepainter or even a shady PI Skip Tracer was one thing. But living with, marrying even, a woman always in the public eye, meeting with authors and agents . . . All it would take was for a newspaper to snap his picture beside her, and the feds would be all over him. Gloria said she wasn’t nearly as social as he thought, but she had no idea how easily fugitives could be found once they started popping up in public.

“Stop thinking so much,” Gloria said as she reached for his hand. “Let’s just worry about meeting the Clarksons for right now okay? We’ll worry about us later.”

He smirked. She already knew him too well.

A few minutes later they pulled up to a huge gray granite building. Kurt paid the driver and they got out.

“You ready?” he asked her.

“Yeah.”

A doorman ushered them to the front desk where an older man waited, poised. “And you’re here to see?”

“Tanya and Henry Clarkson,” Gloria said.

“Are they expecting you?”

“Yes,” Kurt said. They were lucky that the two families they had chosen had the same addresses as when they’d completed their adoptions. The fact they were willing to see them on such short notice was another boon.

The man made the call then told them to go to the twelfth floor.  When they got off the elevator, a thin Charlize Theron look-a-like was standing down the hall with the door open. She waved and smiled. A little blond boy ran out of the apartment toward them. “Hi, I’m Henry Junior.” He reached out and shook Kurt’s hand.

“Firm shake for a little guy,
” Kurt said.

“Cute kid. Really cute kid,” Gloria added her compliment.

“Come on, I’ll show you my toys.” He took Gloria’s hand and led her to his house.

When they approached the door, the woman extended her hand. “So nice to meet you. I’m
Tanya Clarkson. I see Henry Junior has made his own introductions. He’s very social. I think he’ll be a politician someday.” She laughed. “Come on in.”

The place was huge. High ceilings, hardwood, and granite everywhere. There was a black marble mantle around the gas fireplace, and black and white photographs in
silver frames covered the walls, including a huge close up of Henry Jr. as an infant. Others of the two Henrys together, as individuals; a creepy close up of a Weimaraner . . . no pictures of Tanya so he guessed she was the photographer.

Henry Clarkson, a lawyer who could “only give them a few minutes of his time because he had to prepare for  a big case,” joined them in the living room. He was a skinny little balding guy with an air of superiority he probably didn’t merit, and a big chip on his shoulder. Typical Manhattan stuffed shirt asshole, thought Kurt.

But his wife was nice. Tanya offered them tea and desserts she’d bought from a gourmet bakery down the street. Henry Jr. grabbed a piece of Biscotti then ran into his room to watch TV. 

After a few minutes of introduction and the spiel about Gloria’s book and why they were there, Gloria asked about the birth mother.

“We never met her of course, but when she was four months pregnant we got a call from New Age Adoption Agency. They said they’d found a young college girl, an English Lit major, who was at a university on scholarship.” Tanya’s eyes lit up.

Henry chimed in, “Not financial aid or grants, an academic scholarship. She’s a smart girl who we figured would yield us an intelligent child.”

“Not that it’s important, we’d take any healthy—” Tanya began.

“We would have, but why not shoot for the moon? If we could get a smart kid with a healthy mom, who wouldn’t prefer that over a baby with no past that someone finds on a stoop?”

“Henry, that’s a terrible thing to say!” Tanya said.

“That’s all right. I understand what you mean. If you’re going to pay top dollar, might as well get the best bang for your buck.” Kurt felt he needed to intervene to move them along. He didn’t care about their morality or what kind of child they would or wouldn’t have settled for. All that mattered was how they got Henry Jr. and how much they paid.

“So, after you were contacted, how did it go then?” Gloria had her pen poised over her notepad, pretending to take notes for a book that would never be written.

“Well, Henry and I took overnight to discuss it, even though I didn’t need to. I knew we wanted this baby but Henry says you always have to sleep on major decisions. In the morning I called New Age right away and told them that if the girl really went through with giving up her baby, we’d love to give the child a home.”

“Then you just waited until she was nine months along and got a call to pick him up?” Gloria asked. They both knew that’s not what happened but needed Tanya to tell them.

“I wish it had been that easy. Mr. Puglisi called me a couple of months later and told me the mother, Gia Carp was her name, had taken an excursion with some of her friends to Key West. She’d started bleeding and had been rushed to a nearby hospital.”

“In Key West?” Gloria asked.

“Well no, one of the smaller Keys. Windy Key. She’d made a day trip there.  Mr. Puglisi said she was having some complications but so far was okay. I was devastated. In just that short time, Henry and I had gotten all excited that in three months we’d have a new infant. I was going to be allowed in the birthing room with her and see our child come into the world. And now, I thought, that chance was gone and who knew what kind of child we’d get.”

“You must have been crushed,” Gloria said, holding Tanya’s hand.

“I was. We were. I just thank God there was a birthing center right there when it all started. What are the chances?”

It was a rhetorical question so Kurt didn’t reply with a sarcastic, “Yeah, what are the chances?”

“But she gave birth obviously,” Gloria said, who had withdrawn her hand to scribble furiously on her pad. Kurt peered over at her notes. It looked like shorthand. When he looked closer though he could see it was just really bad penmanship. Funny, he figured Gloria to be the type with perfect cursive. Not chicken scrawl like his. Must be a left-handed thing. 

“She sure did. But we had to pay for her to stay in the center for three months,” Henry added with a little shake of the head. “Hell of a lot of money, if you ask me. I don’t know what Gia was thinking traveling when she was that far along anyway.”

“Doesn’
t matter now though. We paid it,” Tanya said.

“Three months in a hospital is a long time.” Gloria said. “I’m surprised such a small clinic had the resources to house a patient that long.”

“That’s what Henry said too, didn’t you?” She turned to her husband. He nodded. She turned back to Kurt and Gloria. “He said it smelled like a scam to him but Mr. Puglisi had them send us a brochure. It came from Windy Key too. Henry checked the postmark. He never misses a trick.”

That’s what he thinks, Kurt thought.

“I’ve got the pamphlet in a box somewhere. It’s a big brick building. Huge really, considering its location. Some great ob/gyns there,” Henry said.

“They get a lot of calls for births out on a remote island like that?” Kurt asked. He was having a difficult time not blurting out that they had been swindled by Mick Puglisi for every penny he could get out of them.

Henry stood up and walked over to Kurt, doing his best to look strong and tough in a little nerd body. Kurt hadn’t meant to get him all riled but was amazed such smart, well-to-do people were so blind when it came to spending their money.

“A lot of celebrities go there when they want to be left alone,” Henry said, defending himself. “Famous people who avoid public hospitals because of the paparazzi. I can’t divulge names, but some very famous celebs have gone there with their high risk pregnancies to struggle through them in privacy. And they weren’t all as fortunate as our Gia.” Then Henry sat down. He was done with fighting.

Hope he’s not a litigator
, Kurt thought.  This guy had bought it all—hook, line, and sinker. Mrs. Murray hadn’t mentioned a brochure or the movie star pregnancies angle. Probably because she accepted the first explanation Puglisi threw at her. Henry needed more proof, a compelling reason to accept what he was being told. A brochure didn’t cut it so he’d got the added tale that it was a hideaway for the pregnant rich and famous.

Who knows what other backup stories Puglisi had waiting for the really hard to convince? No matter. Henry Clarkson paid the money and believed. 

Kurt went to speak again but Gloria put her hand on his and shot him a look.  She knew he was about to blurt something about gullibility.

“Obviously it’s a wonderful facility, Mr. Clarkson. They took good care of Gia so she could at least have an easy labor even if the pregnancy was arduous,” Gloria said.

“Not so easy,” Tanya said. “Gia needed an emergency C-section a week before her due date. I was disappointed when Mr. Puglisi called and told me I’d missed the birth but he said she had a healthy baby boy and I could come to Miami to pick him up.”

“Why Miami, why not Windy Key?” Kurt asked.

“Gia was still there recuperating and didn’t want to meet us, said it was too emotionally painful.”

“But weren’t you going to meet her? I mean you were going to witness the birth right?” Kurt asked.

Tanya shrugged. “That was the plan but she struggled with post partum depression. Mr. Puglisi said if she met me, it might make her more depressed and she might change her mind. I didn’t care at that point. Obviously it was her baby. We have reams of medical expenses to prove it.”

“From the birthing center in Windy Key?” Gloria asked, still writing.

“Yes. Hope House. Isn’t that an appropriate name?” Tanya asked.

“Sure is. And now you have a healthy baby boy so it was all worth it.” Gloria said, wide smile in place.

Tanya nodded. “The adoption office is in Miami so it was easier to just pick up Henry Junior there.”

“Sign the papers and go,” Henry said. “Direct flight and home in a few hours.”

“Makes sense,” Gloria said.