Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (11 page)

This, Claire realized, must be the Vi Lori remembered, although Lori had said she had a brunette. The nurse confirmed Claire’s guess by introducing herself. Then she stood a half-step behind Dr. Bradford and began to study the ceiling while the doctor quickly kneaded Claire’s breasts. She remembered Dr. Gregory’s advice to flinch away from his touch.

“Ouch!”

“Tenderness is common in early pregnancy,” Dr. Bradford said, a little above it all, and Vi looked down long enough to tip Claire a wink behind his back. As the doctor conducted his equally efficient pelvic exam, Claire became aware the harsh sound of Vi’s breathing cutting through the silence. She remembered the nurse’s nicotine-stained fingers, so like Susie’s, and hoped Susie wouldn’t end up sounding like Vi fifteen years from now.

In less than two minutes Dr. Bradford said, “You may sit up now.” He turned to the nurse. “Okay, Vi, why don’t you go check on our other patient?” With a nod, she slipped out the door.

Dr. Bradford slipped on a pair of half-glasses that hung from a chain around his neck and then picked up the paperwork. “Now I see from the questionnaire you filled out that your last period began about six weeks ago, is that correct?” Claire nodded. From the pocket of his lab coat, he pulled a flat cardboard wheel and began to turn it. “So your estimated date of confinement would be about thirty-four weeks from now, or around the first part of December.”

“Date of confinement? That makes it sound like I’m going to be locked up in a mental institution.” As she heard her own words, Claire realized the comment was hers more than Lucy’s. Earlier she had decided that Lucy would be more meek and deferential than Claire really was.

“It’s an old term, probably left over the days when women spent weeks lying in. Over the edge of his glasses, Dr. Bradford gave her a professionally fatherly look that was belied by his pale, calculating eyes. “And why were you interested in carrying this baby to term and then giving it up for adoption?”

“I believe in a woman’s right to choose, but for me, I just can’t do it.”

“And what about the father of this child? I see that you’ve left the spaces for his information blank. What does he want?”

Claire looked down at her lap and twisted her hands. “He’s just someone I met at a party right before I came up here from California. To be honest” - she paused for what she hoped was the right amount of time - “I don’t even know his last name.”

“Well, Lucy, let me tell you something about the way we work around here.
 
We specialize in matching babies to the right families. We’ll want to know everything about you in order to give your child a home that will best suit him or her.” He lifted a page of the questionnaire. Now I see that under medications you’ve marked, ‘None.’ Does that also include what we call street drugs?”

Claire remembered to answer as the shyer Lucy. “No, sir. I mean, doctor. I mean, I haven’t used anything at all.”

“Not even marijuana? I’m not so old that I don’t remember my own youth on campus.”

She shook her head and dropped her eyes.

“Now I need to ask, Lucy, if you have ever been tested for the virus that causes AIDS.”

The thought of Dante suddenly threw Claire off balance.
 
In reality, she and Dante had been tested right after they met. The thought flashed through her mind that maybe she had been unwise to agree to their giving up condoms. “I gave blood about three months ago and nobody said anything. Don’t they test it then?”

“Yes, they do, although that probably shouldn’t be a reason to give blood, since there is a window in which a blood test for AIDS could be negative. I need to ask how many sexual partners you’ve had in the past six months, including the father of this child?”

In response to Dr. Bradford’s sterile question, her mind offered up another image of Dante, with his full mouth and smoothly muscled shoulders. Claire didn’t need to fake a blush as she dropped her eyes to her lap and gave him Lucy’s story.
 
“Just the one guy I met at the party. I, I broke up with someone a little over a year ago and I haven’t really dated since then.”

While she had been speaking, Dr. Bradford had been snapping on rubber gloves. Now he began to probe the crook of her arm for a vein. “We need to test a sample of your blood for syphilis, as well as the presence of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It’s just a precaution, as any sexual activity that can cause pregnancy can also cause disease.” He plunged the needle in swiftly while Claire averted her eyes. He continued talking as he capped the tube of blood and then discarded the needle in a small red plastic box mounted on the wall. “Assuming your tests are negative, which they most likely are, then there is a good possibility we would be interested in your assistance in providing a family with a child. Now, as you were told on the phone, the Bradford Clinic offers complete confidentiality. If you give your child up for adoption through us, it will be as if this pregnancy never happened.”

Claire swallowed and nodded, wondering how Lori had felt when she had heard these same words. Dr. Bradford explained that at each weekly visit she could expect a two-hundred dollar stipend (“to help defray living expenses”) as well as a checkup and regular medical tests. She would deliver the baby at the clinic, but she wouldn’t leave empty-handed - she’d go home with fifteen thousand dollars in cash.

“So are you still interested in our program?”

Trying to convey the right mixture of certainty and sadness, Claire said, “Yes. Yes, I am. It seems like the best way.”

He gave a little nod. “I think you’re making the right decision. Stop by the front desk and talk to Vi before you leave.”

As Claire was getting dressed, she heard Vi’s voice call out, “Bye, Jennifer. See you tomorrow.” A glance at her watch showed it was a few minutes after five o’clock.

The front desk was empty when Claire came out. With no one observing her, she took a minute to scan the layout. Her target when she returned, she decided, would be the two tall file cabinets that stood on either side of a photocopier.

Her thoughts were interrupted when Vi came tapping down the hall. “Okay, we’ll need to get you registered.” She reached underneath the overhang of the counter and pulled out a thick green ledger book. When she flipped it open, Claire saw that a tab separated the book into two sections. Vi found a page in the front that was half-full of hand-written entries. In blocky printing that was easy to read upside down, she wrote down a number, 98027D. Claire could see that the number directly below it was 98026D, and the one underneath 98025D, so she figured she was probably the twenty-seventh woman to sign up in 1998. Vi left the next column blank, then wrote in Lucy’s name. “Your address?” she asked without looking up. She wrote it down, without seeming to notice the long pause before Claire recited it. Then again, college students probably moved frequently. “Phone number? “ She wrote that number down, then stopped to cough into her fist, bending her head so that it blocked Claire’s view of the ledger. Her loose rattling cough seemed to go on and on. Finally, Vi looked up at Claire with watery eyes and said, “Do you have a beeper number or a cell phone?” Claire shook her head no. She was still straining to see the other entries when Vi finished her questions and closed the book.

Claire’s heart was beating fast. Maybe all the information she needed was just a few inches from her non-pregnant belly. Information. With a guilty flash, she remembered Ginny. “You know, I think my friend is planning on having her baby here,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. “Ginny Sloop. She recommended you guys. Do you know Ginny?” She kept her eyes on Vi’s face.
Vi’s blue eyes didn’t blink or look away. “No. But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Complete confidentiality, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Claire said in Lucy’s embarrassed voice. “I forgot.”

“Now just let me get you your prenatals.” Vi leaned down to rummage under the desk. Claire risked leaning closer and squinting at the tabs on the edge of the closed ledger that still sat on the counter. One said, “Parents” and the other “Donors.” She straightened up just as Vi sat back up with a bottle of vitamins in one hand and an oversized paperback book in the other. She set a copy of
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
on the counter and then handed Claire the vitamins. “These things are horse pills, so be sure to take them with a big glass of water. And if you’re prone to morning sickness, try taking them at night.” She patted the book. “This should answer most of your questions, but you need to call us right away if you experience any bleeding or cramping. Also, Dr. Bradford expects you to follow the diet that’s listed toward the back of the book. I’ll warn you, it’s rather strict.” Vi shot Claire an amused look, and she remembered how Lori had talked about the nurse sneaking her peanut butter cups.

“You’ll also need to” -. Vi didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. The intercom on her desk buzzed to life. “Vi, could you come back here for a minute, please?”
 
Dr. Bradford’s voice sounded strained. In the background was the sound of a woman breathing fast and shallow, with a little grunt of effort at the end of each pant.

“I should be back in a couple of minutes,” Vi said. She tucked the ledger book back underneath the overhang before she pushed her chair back. “Have a seat and look through
What to Expect
for a minute, see if you have any questions.”

Claire smiled and nodded, but as soon as she heard the door close in the hall she walked around the desk and snagged the ledger book with one trembling finger. Maybe she could solve Lori’s problem now, without resorting to her pick kit. She could sneak a peek and then put the book away the minute she heard the door in the hall open. Quickly, she paged back through the pages of donors, lines and lines all filled up with women’s names. As she had thought, the first two digits seemed to stand for a year, because she only had to go back three pages before the numbers began with 97. Partway through the numbers that began with 97, she found Ginny’s name, address and phone numbers, plus a string of meaningless checkmarks and initials. But on the end there was one thing she did understand, “2/17/98, twin Bs.” The date was the day after she had met with Ginny. Claire didn’t have time to feel relief that she had at least partially solved the mystery of what had happened to Ginny. Now she needed to find who had adopted Lori’s daughter. But the ledger book ended when 1996 began. Only then did she notice three other ledgers tucked behind the first. Her heart was beating so strongly that the pulse filled her eardrums. Alert to any sign that Vi was returning, Claire pulled out the next book and began to leaf back through it faster and faster. Her fingers rifled the pages until she found some where the first number began with an 88. The year Lori had given birth. A few times Claire tensed, thinking she had heard something, but it was never the sound of a door opening, of heels marching efficiently down the hall.

There. She had almost paged past it. Lori’s name, listed as Lori Hesselwhite because that was what she had been before she married Havi. She was 88095D. At the end of the column was the notation, “G.” And in the second column, in the one that Vi had left blank when she entered Claire’s information, there was another five-digit number that also began with 88.

Claire’s hands were sweating so badly that she was leaving fingerprints on the page. She would bet any amount of money that that second number had its match in the section marked parents. In a few seconds, she would know who had adopted Lori’s baby.
Hurry, hurry, hurry
, she thought as she thumbed through the pages. She found a page where the second column started with 88097D, very close to Lori’s first number of 88095D. Or was that really Lori’s number? Damn. Now she couldn’t remember what Lori’s number had been. She had to go back and look it up.

Vi’s heels tick-tocked in the hall. Claire had been so intent on finding the record that she hadn’t heard the door open. There was no chance she could put the book back and get back out into the waiting room in time. Besides, the answer must be right her, staring her square in the face.

Claire threw the open ledger on the photocopier, pushed the button, and then did the only thing she could think of to do.

ALLLII

Chapter Eleven

That girl, the one who called herself Lucy, hadn’t fooled Vi by throwing up on her shoes. Vi had been hinky about Lucy even before she asked about Ginny, and that had given the game away. They even looked something alike. Same pale oval face and wide blue eyes. This girl might be her sister, maybe, or a cousin.

Growing up in Eastern Oregon, of course Ginny had been in 4-H, raised sheep and goats. She wasn’t naive. She understood about birth. She even told Vi about how one time she’d had to reach her hand inside a cow straining over a breech birth. Again and again, she tried to slip a rope loop around a tiny hoof. Ginny had told Vi she would always remember how that felt, the hot wet muscles clamping down on her arm as strong as a vise. Kneeling in green shit and dark blood, she had thought that the cow bellowing and thrashing on the floor was going to wrench her arm off. Finally, when the cow got too exhausted to fight, Ginny had managed to haul out the calf.

Ginny had assured Vi she knew what birth would be like, but the way it turned out, she hadn’t known anything at all.

And now here was this girl, sniffing around, claiming to be pregnant, asking about Ginny, and holding her breath while she waited for the answer. Vi didn’t like to think about what that meant. And Vi was also pretty certain this girl had been at the ledger book, although she was wasting her time if she had looked in there. The only person who really knew what had happened was Dr. Bradford, and he wasn’t telling.

She could get out a magazine and a pair of scissors, Vi supposed, but that seemed kind of silly, not when they could dust the paper for her fingerprints, maybe even find an eyelash and analyze her DNA. Instead she simply sat down and began to write.

And when Vi had finished the note, she sealed it up in an envelope addressed to the person who called herself Lucy Bertrand and hoped that it would find its way.

###

Charlie smoothed down the photocopy Claire had made at the clinic, crumpled after its brief detour to her bra. They were sitting at the heavy oak dining room table. A storm had blown in as Claire was driving home from the Bradford Clinic, and now the rain was lashing at the window so hard she couldn’t see outside. There was just a vague, smeary impression of the limbs of the poplar whipping back and forth as the rain stripped the new leaves from the branches.

“Are you sure that this is the page with the right number?” Charlie asked. “The one that belongs to the people who adopted Lori’s baby?”

“No,” Claire said miserably. When she had first slapped the page down on the photocopier, yes, she had been sure that the number that matched Lori’s was somewhere on that page. Or at least she thought she had been sure. At that point her head had been jumbled with numbers - phone numbers, Social Security numbers, addresses, dates, reference numbers. There were all the numbers that really belonged to her, the imaginary ones she’d given to Lucy, the ones she’d seen as she flipped through the ledger book and the ones on the page they were looking at now. “I’m pretty sure it was one of these numbers. At least I think I was sure.” She had already given Charlie the news that the records showed Ginny had had her twins.

When she had heard Vi’s heels clicking back down the hall, Claire had had only a second to throw the ledger onto the copier. As her right hand was pressing the copy button, she was sticking the fingers of her left hand down her throat. She was so nervous and frantic that the first brush of her finger was enough to make herself gag. The nurse appeared just in time for Claire to throw up on her white pumps. Vi let out a squeal and then ran to the bathroom for a handful of paper towels. The brief window of time was just long enough for Claire to quickly thrust the ledger back under the desk and then stuff the photocopy in her bra. By the time Vi got back, Claire was kneeling with her head hanging over the wastebasket. She had muttered a pitiful explanation of how she had quite been able to make it to the bathroom, hoping that Vi couldn’t hear the faint crackle of the stolen paper in her bra.

Now what Charlie and Claire were looking at was a photocopy of a lined page filled with seven entries, each separated by a skipped line. The first entry looked like this:

88097P88010D
  
Teresa Marquette
  
555-2381
  
check
  
check
   
G
  
8412 SW Arthur
  
555-99364
  
Portland, OR 97201

The information marched along in columns, entered in what Claire recognized as Vi’s neat, square handwriting. In the first column, each number began with an 88 and ended with a P. The number at the top of the column was 88097P, the next one was 88098P, and so on in consecutive order until the last number on the page, 88103P.

“The 88 must be for the year, and the P on the end must be for parent or parents.” Under her pale pleated lids, Charlie’s blue eyes snapped with excitement.

Claire ran her finger down the second column. All the numbers in this column began with an 88 and ended with a D. “Then these must be the tracking numbers the clinic gives to the pregnant women. D for donor. This was the column were I thought Lori’s number was.” The numbers came earlier in the series and hopscotched out of order. The first number was 88010D, the one at the bottom was 88009D. She frowned. “Except I don’t understand why they’re not in order. Shouldn’t they just give the first baby that comes out to the first person on the list, the second to the second, and so on?”

Charlie shook her head. “I think I know the answer to that, Clairele. They must match up the babies with the parents. You know, a child whose real parents have brown eyes and brown hair is probably given to people who look like that, and so forth. And look at this column on the end.” For each entry there was either a G or a B noted, for a total of four Gs and three Bs. “It is likely that all these people who are paying to be parents want to choose the sex of their child. I think that is what these Gs and Bs stand for. Girls and boys. And there are only four marked with a G. Four girls.” A look of satisfaction crossed her face. “That cuts the work nearly in half for us already.”

“Assuming I got the right page,” Claire said. The more she looked at it, the more uncertain she became. “And what about all these check marks? What do they mean?”

“There’s a P at the top of the first column and a D at the top of the second. So all of these children must have been P’ed and D’ed, whatever the P and D stand for.”

“It can’t be parents and donors all over again, can it?” Shaking her head, Claire answered her own question. “That wouldn’t make any sense.” The next “D” word that came to Claire’s mind was dead, and even though she knew it couldn’t be right it gave her a chill. “D for denied wouldn’t make sense, because all seven have it, and I doubt Dr. Bradford denies anyone.”

“Delivered. It must be D for delivered.” The furrows around Charlie’s mouth deepened as she spoke.
 
Claire saw the older woman unconsciously rub her left index finger along the green ink tattooed on her right forearm, unfaded after fifty years. The numbers in the ledger must remind Charlie of her own number, Nazi Germany’s solution to tracking human inventory even when it was naked, stripped of everything except its own skin. “What about P? P could be for pregnant, but that does not seem right either. Promised?” Click, click, click as Charlie tapped her manicured nail on the letter.

Claire thought of the only answer. “P must stand for paid. I have a feeling that would always be the most important thing to Dr. Bradford.”

Charlie nodded. “I have been thinking about that ever since you told me that he charges one-hundred thousand dollars for each child, and that the woman who has the baby gets about twenty thousand.” Charlie scooted back her chair and went to the kitchen and took a calculator from the drawer where she kept the bills. “Let us see. Your number was 98027, so you were the twenty-seventh woman to register for this year. If we divide that by the number of weeks we have had this year, that is about three pregnant women per week. So three women a week times fifty-two weeks times eighty-thousand dollars is ...” she pressed buttons on the calculator and then said slowly,”...a little bit less than twelve and one-half million dollars. Accounting for the other costs of running the clinic, let us say twelve million dollars, or perhaps eleven and a half.”

The number called for a whistle, but Claire had never mastered the art. She blew a puff of air between her lips instead. “That’s a lot of money. Especially when you think that he’s been running the clinic for fifteen or twenty years. He’s had a lot of time to get used to having that much money. And twelve million dollars would mean he had plenty to spread around to make sure people look the other way and keep looking. That’s what Michael said he does.”

“Michael? Who’s Michael?”

“Dr. Gregory, I mean.” Until Charlie asked, Claire hadn’t realized that she had called him by his first name.

Charlie narrowed her eyes. “He’s too smooth, that one.”

“I’ll admit he does look like he either takes a lot of vacations or has a frequent-flyer discount for the tanning booth at the JCC. But I saw a different side to him when he took me out to dinner.” She didn’t tell Charlie that she had her own reservations, that she was still unsure of Dr. Gregory’s motives. The most likely possibility was that he liked her in a romantic way, and she already knew that no matter what was happening with Dante she didn’t return Dr. Gregory’s feelings. At the same time, if it would help her find Lori’s daughter, Claire wasn’t above taking advantage.

Charlie didn’t argue, but the expression on her face didn’t change. Claire also hadn’t found the words yet to tell her about Dante’s probable betrayal.
 
Nor did she know what to do about Dante himself.
 
After fretting about it for several days, she had finally decided to wait. She wouldn’t call him or write him, and see how he reacted. So far, she hadn’t heard from him, which told her more than she wanted to know. With a sigh, Claire looked back down at the list. “Lori was counting on me to come back from the Bradford Clinic with one name, not four.”

“But now it is only four. Before, we had no idea who had adopted Lori’s child. And we have their addresses. We will go to them and look and see what we have. Do a stakeout.”
Shteakout
.

Claire shook her head. “What’s this ‘we’? I don’t want you getting involved, Charlie. This could be dangerous.”

Charlie straightened up to her full four feet, ten inches. “Do you want me to sit in a rocker, knitting? And how dangerous can it be? This is only about finding a child, after all.”

“It’s more than that, Charlie. I’ll guarantee you that it’s more than that, especially if it involves twelve million dollars.”

“The frightening thing is not dying,” Charlie answered, her mouth set tight. “The frightening thing is not living.”

Claire gave in. Charlie had been her own woman for seventy-nine years, and she wasn’t going to change now.

“All right. But promise me you’ll be careful.” The last time Charlie had helped Claire, she had ended up kidnapped.

“Of course I will be,” Charlie said, in a tone that didn’t convince Claire at all. With a decisive nod of her head, Charlie picked up her car keys from the hook by the door. “I will get the map of Portland from my car.”

Claire knew she couldn’t put off calling Lori any longer. She picked up the phone.

It was answered after one ring. “Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“ Lori yelled, “I’ve got it, Havi,” so that Claire would understand she couldn’t talk openly.

“I got in the clinic. I even managed to see the records for a second.”

“And?” Claire could tell that Lori was holding her breath.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, but I don’t have just one name. I have four. All girls, all around born the same time your daughter was. And I’m sure one of them is your daughter,” Claire said with a firmness she didn’t feel. But sharing her uncertainty seemed cruel - and with any luck, unnecessary.

“Four.” Lori’s voice was flat.

Claire said hurriedly, “But we have all their addresses. Tomorrow, Charlie and I will start looking at them. One thing that would be useful would be to have photos of you and Havi at around the same age your daughter is now. Can we meet someplace tomorrow?”