Fresh Kills (10 page)

I drove along Victory Boulevard to Richmond Avenue. Right on Travis, a narrow street that was overgrown with tall reeds on one side and developed into two-family houses that all wore the same drab green paint job on the other. I scanned the cross streets and pulled into a parking place just after the one I wanted. I was somewhere near the group home Amber had lived in before her marriage, but it was on the other side of the mall. I walked along the street, noting the well-kept lawns, the magnolias in full bloom, the basketball hoops on the sides of the houses.

The house Amber lived in looked like all the others. I walked up to the front door, which was guarded by an aluminum screen door with a curlicue
C
on the front, and rang the bell closest to me. A woman about my age opened the door and stood behind the screen. She had blond hair worn in short curls and held a fluorescent green substance in her hand.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I'm looking for Amber Lundquist,” I said. “Or Amber Wylie,” I amended. “I'm not sure which name she's using.”

“She lives upstairs,” the woman explained, punctuating her remark with a toss of her head. “The other bell.”

“Oh. Sorry,” I replied, and pushed the second buzzer.

A child came up behind her. Five, maybe, with red shoulder-length hair and a freckled face. “Aunt Betsy, Matthew hit Jason with—”

“I'll be right there, Erin,” the woman said, leaning down. She handed the green blob to the little girl. “Here, take this Play-Doh back to the table, honey.”

“Okay,” she said and skipped away.

“They must be quite a handful,” I remarked. I could hear the sounds of children at play—
at war
sounded more like it.

“Oh, they're not mine,” the blonde replied with a laugh. “I baby-sit, and my niece comes over some afternoons to play with the other children.”

Better you than me
, I thought but didn't say. Amber appeared in the doorway just as the blonde disappeared into the grayness behind the screen door.

“Thanks, Mrs. Scanlon,” she called after her retreating back.

“Who did you say she was?” I asked Amber as I followed her up the steps to the second level of the house.

“That's Betsy Scanlon,” Amber replied. “Doc Scanlon's ex. She's renting the top floor to Scott and me.”

“So the ex-wife of the doctor who delivered your baby is now your landlady,” I remarked, not bothering to mute my sarcasm. “How many other little surprises have you got in store for me, Amber?”

My client shrugged. She wore an oversized man's dress shirt over flowered leggings; her feet were bare. “Why not? When I told Doc I needed a place for me and Scott to live with the baby, he said his ex-wife was looking for a tenant. Scott and I came right over. It's okay,” Amber said with another shrug. “We'll need more space when the baby gets bigger, but it's okay for now.”

It was a typical cheap construction-box apartment, with no frills and dead white walls, bare floors made of stained pine, and white Venetian blinds on windows without drapes or curtains. There were no cardboard cartons, though; Scott and Amber must have unpacked their few belongings in record time.

The living room was a little bare of furniture, and what was here looked hastily assembled from family castoffs, yard sales, and the Goodwill, but that was to be expected for newlyweds just starting out. I noted Ellie Greenspan's Santa Fe rug on the floor in the living room, and saw her crystal wind chime in the window.

“Are you still wearing that pendant?” I asked. No, demanded. Demanded to know how Amber could bear to use the things Ellie gave her while hurting her so deeply.

Amber's fingers went to her throat and she touched the amber talisman with a secretive smile on her face. “Why not?” she countered. “It's pretty. She gave it to me.”

“She gave it to you when she thought you were bringing light into her life,” I shot back. “And now you're taking it away.”

This was not what I came to talk about. I was here to confront my client with Marla's bombshell, to ask her once and for all who was the father of the child she'd borne, to get enough truth out of her so I could walk into court and represent her without being afraid of what I'd learn. But those insolent young blue eyes infuriated me, made me realize how naive I'd been. How right Mickey had been to warn me against putting my faith in yet another aspect of the legal system.

I hate it when other people are right, and I'm stuck with the mess I made because I didn't listen to them.

Amber raked me up and down with eyes as sharp as fake fingernails. “I thought you were my lawyer,” she said, cold contempt flattening her voice. “Why not let Marla take care of Ellie?”

“I don't like being used.” I tried for the same calm, flat tone my client was using to such effect, but my rage got in the way.

Another twentysomething shrug of indifference. “I thought a lawyer was supposed to be used. To do whatever the client wants.”

“You thought wrong. If I walk away from here convinced that you shouldn't have that baby, that's what I'll tell the court. You can find another lawyer.”

It was a bluff and her eyes knew it. They shone with triumph as she played her trump card. “Doesn't the judge have to approve your withdrawal from a case?” Amber's use of the correct legal terms told me she'd done her homework, that she had me and she knew it. Sylvia Feinberg was not going to want to bring in a new lawyer at this stage. And unless she let me go, I was stuck representing Amber even if I knew her to be a liar who had deliberately used the Greenspans.

We were still standing in the bare living room. I decided to sit, to let Amber know I was prepared to stay here until I had what I'd come for. I walked over to the couch, which was covered in faded cabbage roses against a dark blue-green, and sat down, falling into its sagging upholstery as if into a swamp.

She folded her arms and remained standing.

“Who's the father, Amber?” I asked conversationally.

She stiffened. “I'm not sure,” she said. “I think Scott.”

“Marla served papers in which she claimed Josh was the father.”

“He could be.”

“He could be,” I repeated. I didn't have to exaggerate my tone of disbelief. How the hell had I come to be sitting on this fourth-hand sofa listening to my client tell me she'd had sex with the man who was adopting her child?

“No wonder Josh picked your ad out of the
Dreamchild
newsletter,” I remarked, remembering Ellie's glow of surprised pleasure when she told me how Josh had selected Amber out of all the birth mothers in the listings. “He must have written the damned thing in the first place.”

She didn't bother confirming something so obvious, just walked back and forth along the cold wooden floor, her long toes reaching for the boards like prehensile appendages.

She was thinking, searching for words to explain the unexplainable, to justify the unjustifiable.

Then she found them. “It was like I told you,” she began. The insolent stare was gone; her eyes refused to meet mine. “We went out on a date. We had dinner, and the next thing I knew, he was ripping my clothes off. I told him I didn't want to, but he forced me. Then when I told him I was pregnant, he said he'd adopt the baby but his wife couldn't know it was really his. So he set up the whole thing with Doc Scanlon and Marla, made me pretend I'd never seen him before.”

I was having a hard time accepting Josh Greenspan as a rapist, but even if Amber had consented to sex, it made sense that Josh would try to protect Ellie from knowledge of his affair with another woman. Especially another woman with working ovaries.

I decided to proceed as if I believed Amber's story—at least for the moment.

“So you decided to get revenge,” I said. “Set him up to believe you'd give him the baby, then change your mind at the last minute. Pay him back for raping you. Good plan, Amber,” I complimented my client, “except of course that you're hurting Ellie even more than Josh and she certainly didn't rape you.”

Amber turned her face toward the window, where the April sun struck the crystal wind chime, making long rainbow streaks of color against the white wall.

“He hurt me,” she said in a low growl. “He pinned me down with his big hairy arms and pushed himself into me. Then when I told him I was pregnant he grabbed me and—” Amber ran long fingers against her arm, rubbing herself as if to soothe the pain of that long-ago assault.

“He said he had to have the baby. He said he'd pay anything, anything I asked for. His eyes were crazy.” She turned her own blue eyes on me, begging for understanding. “And after what he did to me, I didn't want his baby, so I said yes. And then I met Ellie, and I—”

She dropped her eyes, let her hands fall to her sides. “I wanted so much to make her happy.”

She stood in silence for a moment, seeming to go deep inside herself. I'd never seen Amber so naked, so vulnerable.

“It's not revenge,” she said at last. She turned the full force of her intense blue eyes on me. “It's the baby. He doesn't look like Josh, he looks like Scott.”

“So your wanting him back depends on the outcome of a DNA test?” I asked. “Marla's petitioned the Family Court to order one, so we'll know soon enough who the father really is.”

She shook her head. “That's what I thought at first,” she replied, her voice a near whisper. “But the more I think about Jimmy, the more I know I can't live without him no matter who the father is. I want my baby, Ms. Jameson. I want him more than anything in the world.”

Jimmy. It came back to that, to the silly name she'd called her unborn child when he nestled in her womb. If she hadn't named him, or if she'd called him Adam as a reminder that he was destined to become a Greenspan, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

“Could I see the baby's room?” I asked. It was an abrupt change of subject, but I wanted an antidote to the image of Josh forcing his heavy body onto Amber's.

“I want to be able to tell the judge that you and Scott are ready to give the baby a good home,” I explained, trying to soften the investigative aspect of the situation.

Amber ushered me into the back bedroom with a triumphant smile. All the stuffed animals from Amber's room at the group home were lined up on a white shelf unit. A white crib with a Sesame Street mobile hanging over it sat in one corner of the room, while a matching changing table and chest of drawers flanked the opposite wall. A baby quilt with the letters of the alphabet appliquéed in pastels hung over the crib.

“Nice,” I said.

There were cardboard cartons with a Kansas return address sitting open in one corner of the room. “Looks like you're getting baby presents already,” I remarked.

“From my folks in Kansas City,” Amber said. “And my sister in Baltimore.”

“Scott's parents live here on Staten Island, don't they?” I asked. “I imagine they're pretty excited about their new grandchild.”

Was I cross-examining my client or just making polite conversation? Amber looked at me as if she wasn't sure, and I couldn't have sworn which I was doing myself.

“Not really,” she said in a small voice. “I wish they were. I'd love the baby to have grandparents close by, but they don't get along with Scott. They think his marrying me was a mistake.”

“Amber, are you sure about this?” I blurted out. I looked at the nest she'd made for her offspring and realized it was a monumentally stupid question. Sure or not, Amber wanted this child and had made ready for it. What else did the law require? What else could I require?

She gave a long sigh. “Yes,” she said, her tone firm. “I know I can raise Jimmy with Scott's help. I'm sorry about Josh and Ellie, I really am, but I can't let them keep him or I'll regret it for the rest of my life.”

“Look, it's better this way,” I said for the fifth time. “The last thing that kid needs is to become the Baby Jessica of Brooklyn.”

“Baby who? Oh, that case in the Midwest. God, that was awful,” Dorinda said, her eyes widening. “Can you imagine raising a child for two-and-a-half years and then—”

“My point exactly,” I cut in. My finger hit the counter as punctuation for my words. “If those adoptive parents had given back the baby as soon as the birth mother changed her mind, they could have done their grieving and started over with a baby they could keep. And that poor kid wouldn't have been carried off crying for Mommy and getting used to a new name.”

“You make it sound so simple,” my old friend objected. She was wiping glasses on a vintage fifties dishtowel with a red-and-blue rooster print. Her long, wheat-colored hair hung in a thick single braid behind her head. She could have auditioned for a revival of
I
Remember Mama
and gotten the part hands down.

“I didn't say it was simple,” I muttered. “Look, just pour me another iced coffee, will you?”

“You drink too much coffee,” Dorinda pronounced. “I made some cold red zinger. You could—”

“I said iced coffee and I meant iced coffee,” I replied. “This court appearance is the worst thing I've faced since Rojean's arraignment. I'm going to need caffeine and plenty of it, so zing me no zingers.”

“O-kay,” the proprietor of the Morning Glory Luncheonette sang as she strode to the oversized jar filled with the healing brew. She scooped ice into an old-fashioned soda glass and let the dark brown liquid flow into it. My mouth watered just looking at it; Dorinda, for all her pretenses to running a health food restaurant, had invested in a nice blend of Colombian, Javanese, and French Roast that stood up to ice very well. Of course, she had me as her consultant on what she loftily referred to as “stimulants.”

“Sure, the Greenspans will feel terrible for right now,” I went on, “but they'll get over it. They'll find another baby, and maybe the next Adam won't come with a cloud on the title.”