The Cradle Robbers (11 page)

It helped that Al and I were not busy with other work, but I think that even if our office had been groaning under the weight of cases, we both would still have devoted our time to Sandra and her baby.
Neither of us could stomach the idea of stopping, of giving up. It would have meant giving in to what had befallen Sandra, and we were both too stubborn to do that. We don’t have very much in common, my partner and I, but one thing we share is a mule-headed stubbornness. This quality is one that we admire tremendously in each other. We’re lucky in this, because everyone else in our lives finds it excessively irritating.

“I’ll go to Pleasanton with you,” Al said.

“Just give me a couple of days to stockpile enough breast-milk to see Sadie through another day without me.”

Poor Sadie. There is a photo album chronicling every month of Ruby’s first year. Even Isaac had managed to fill three albums by his first birthday, and at least half a dozen of the pictures in there were of him alone, without his sister. Other than the official hospital photograph marking Sadie’s birth, and a few shots of her older siblings holding her in their laps, Sadie’s first months had gone by entirely unremarked upon—at least on photo stock. I had made her no baby book, and had I managed to motivate myself to do so, instead of the requisite notations of the first smile, first tooth, and lock of hair
from the first trim, it would have been far more honest to make an inventory of the indignities she suffered that her siblings never had. Being separated from her mother at the age of four months, from dawn until dusk twice in a single week, probably wouldn’t have ended up high on the list.

A
L
and I did not premeditate our masquerade. Our intention when we left John Wayne Airport in Orange County (the only airport Al consents to fly out of—he says because it’s smaller and better managed; I think it’s because he fancies himself a lot like the Duke) was to do a simple interview. Our plans remained the same when we landed in Oakland, when we squeezed ourselves into the miniature doors of the Monopoly playing piece the rental car agency insisted on referring to as a “car,” and all the way along the freeway winding through the gray-green hills to Pleasanton. It was only when we entered the offices of the Lambs of the Lord that
our mendacious plan began to hatch. Its birth occurred simultaneously in both our minds.

I took one look at the artfully framed portrait of the young blond couple, their cheeks painted in rosy tones, their eyes the blue of the sapphire seas, and I knew what we needed to do. I nodded toward the painting with just the barest motion of my head, and Al took in with a glance the dark-haired baby the couple held, its skin dusky gold, its eyes a muddy color somewhere between brown and black. Over the trio hovered an angel with palms outstretched in benediction. Al aimed a nearly invisible wink back at me.

“Welcome to the Lambs of the Lord,” a smiling older woman said. She sat behind a reception desk that was new but made to look antique, with elaborate scrollwork and spindle legs. The sleek, black, multi-line telephone looked incongruous in the middle of the polished cherry expanse. The lines all blinked, but the receptionist ignored them. “Can I help you?”

“We don’t have an appointment, I’m afraid. But we’re interested in applying to be foster parents.” I could not believe I had allowed that faux-Southern twang to creep into my voice. Now I was going to
have to keep it up for the entire visit, otherwise the Lambs would think I was insane. Yet another reason why one-time high school thespians should avoid undercover work.

“Oh, that’s all right,” she said. “You can go ahead and fill out a fostering application. Mr. Summer has some time this morning. That’s Joe Summer, our executive director. I can probably talk him into conducting an interview.”

“Y’all are so kind,” I said. “Do y’all need to see some form of identification?” I began rummaging in my purse.

“Oh, no. That’s all right. Just fill out the paperwork. After your interview I’ll have to get your fingerprints, but that’s just a formality. And don’t you worry, we’ve got this printing pad with invisible ink. No nasty black stuff to stain that pretty sweater of yours.”

Al and I sat in adjoining chairs and wordlessly began creating a fictitious life as a couple. He knocked ten years off his age, and I added five to mine, putting us close enough to make our marriage believable. Sadie had kept me up the night before, so I was exhausted enough to look Al’s real age, let alone my pretend one. The job Al wrote down for himself was
the one he always gives when assuming a fake identity: assistant manager of a direct mail processing facility. Very occasionally, when he needs more authority, he becomes the manager. The idea behind the identity is that it is believable while at the same time so tedious that it elicits absolutely no questions. Al has even learned a few bits of direct mail lingo—phrases like “lift letters” and “freemiums”—enough to lend credibility yet scare away even the hardiest conversationalist.

I wrote down that I was a homemaker. That was not far from the truth. While I was a part-time investigator, most of my time was spent with my children, although hardly at home. Today’s stay-at-home mother does anything but. A better descriptive phrase would somehow incorporate the real heart of the modern family. I was a stay-in-minivan-mom. A station-wagon-maker.

It took a long time to fill out the detailed questionnaire about our income ($42,000 per year), our home (Al’s in Westminster), our family backgrounds (Los Angeles born and bred), our religious affiliation (Covenant Pentecostal Church in Westminster—a mile or so from Al’s house and an island of white, evangelical prayer in an otherwise multicultural
city). By the time we were done, I felt like I knew Al and Juliet Cromley (another familiar alias—one we both used) quite well. I didn’t like them much.

Mr. Summer, however, had different taste. He liked them an awful lot. So much, in fact, that within fifteen minutes he was behaving as though he were the one being interviewed, so eager was he that we agree to become foster parents for his agency. He extolled the social value of taking care of at-risk children. He called them “little lost souls” and talked movingly of the satisfaction of watching a child with no advantages, a “flower from the rockiest soil,” blossom and flourish under loving and competent care. His words were compelling, and I had to remind myself that some of these souls were not, in fact, “lost” at all. They had family members ready and able to care for them, and their own mothers wanted them. What Mr. Summer thought of the quality of the care offered by these mothers was only too obvious.

“I do have one question,” I asked when he seemed to be winding down.

“What’s that, Juliet? May I call you that?”

“Of course you may. I was just wondering what
happens when the girls get out of jail. I mean, my husband and I, we’re affectionate folks, and we’ve been waiting on a baby for a long time now.” I was really getting into my down-home, country drawl. “It would just about break our hearts if the mother got out of jail and came looking for her baby.”

Mr. Summer leaned conspiratorially across the table. “Juliet, let me say this. The job of the Lambs of the Lord, my job, is to place a baby with you, in your home. What happens after that, that’s out of our control.”

“But . . .”

“Wait, let me finish,” he said. “If, say, you move and we don’t have your address, then there’s no way we can track you or the baby down. Especially if you move out of state. It gets very difficult in those circumstances. In fact, we’ve never been able to find a couple who didn’t want to be found.”

Al said, “So what you’re telling us is that you’ll give us a baby, and if we move away with it, then that’s our business, whether the natural mother comes looking or not?”

Mr. Summer leaned back in his chair. “In a manner of speaking.”

“So we’d get to keep our baby?” I said.

He smiled. “If we couldn’t track you down, then you would of course keep your baby. We can only do so much at the Lambs of the Lord. We’re a foster care agency, not a detective agency.”

Al looked at me and I nodded.

“That’s very interesting, Joe,” Al said. “Because Juliet and I actually
are
a detective agency. You don’t mind if I call you Joe, do you?”

The blood left the man’s face, leaving it ashen.

“We’re here on behalf of one of those natural mothers,” I said, dropping the accent. “One of the women whose babies you aren’t able or interested in tracking down once you’ve placed them.”

“You can’t prove anything,” he said. “I didn’t say anything. It’s your word against mine.”

I reached into my capacious handbag and took out my microcassette recorder. “Your words and ours are all on tape, Joe. Al, can you count how many state and federal crimes Mr. Summer has broken with this baby-stealing ring of his?”

“Well, there’s accessory to kidnapping, for one,” Al said. “And fraud, those are the easy ones.”

“What do you want?” Joe said, his face contorted in anxiety. “What do you want from me?”

“We want Sandra Lorgeree’s baby,” I said.

“Who?”

“Sandra Lorgeree. A prisoner at Dartmore. Her son Noah was born two months ago. Who did you place him with? I want the name, address, driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers, everything you have on the couple.”

“We never fostered a child born to any Sandra Lorgeree.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Look, I’ll show you,” he said. With a few strokes on his keyboard he brought up a database on his computer screen. “The paper files are organized by the last name of the fostering family, but we can search the computer records using anything, including the birth mother’s name.” He input Sandra’s name, asking me to spell Lorgeree. The screen flashed “No Records Match Inquiry.”

“Put in Hubblebank—Pauline,” I said.

“I know that name’s here,” he said. “It’s a small agency; we’ve only fostered two dozen children. I recognize that name.”

“Input it,” I said.

He did, using the same process he had for Sandra’s
name. Pauline’s daughter’s file immediately came up on the screen. Her name was no longer Taniel Hubblebank, however. It was listed as Samantha Krause, and she lived in Danville, California, with her parents Barbara and Philip.

“You didn’t arrange for a foster family for Sandra’s baby?” I said.

“No.”

“And you’re willing to stake me taking this tape to the FBI, the Department of Social Services, and the newspapers, on your word?”

“That baby was never in our custody.”

“Well, do you know whose custody he
was
in?”

“No.”

Al and I both looked at Joe Summer, sizing up his veracity.

Suddenly I thought of something. “Do you have a packet of information you give to the mothers?”

“Excuse me?”

“The prisoners. Like a brochure and a contract? You must have some documents they sign.”

“Of course we do.”

“May I see them?”

He looked at me suspiciously, but then handed me a three-fold brochure on cheap, slick paper. The
print was off-center, and I noticed a spelling mistake right away. The contract was printed on tissue-thin paper with pale blue ink. These documents could not be more different from the fine engraved stationery Sandra had been sent.

“I don’t know anything about that woman or her baby,” Joe Summer said. “What will it take for me to get that tape from you?”

I thought of Sister Pauline’s daughter, seven months old. I considered my own children at the same age. Attached to me, true, but still so small, so malleable. Memories still undeveloped. I made a decision.

“I want Taniel Hubblebank—the baby you know as Samantha Krause—back in her mother’s arms. You do that and you’ll get this tape.”

“But parental rights have already been terminated in that case.”

“Consult an attorney. I’m sure you can figure something out. The court will reopen the case if they are made aware of the fraud. But I’m confident there’s an easier way out of this for you.”

We left Joe Summer looking battered and his receptionist confused. When we got into the car I said,
“So, what do you think the guy’s going to think if he ever gets his hands on this microcassette?”

“I think he’s probably going to feel like a jerk for allowing himself to be blackmailed by someone who can’t even remember to turn on her tape recorder.”

I
pulled on to the freeway, intending to head back to the Oakland Airport, but at the last minute I changed my mind and went south, toward Dartmore.

“Is this okay with you?” I asked Al.

“I suppose so,” he said. “Don’t have much else to do. Are we going to the prison?”

“No, the hospital.”

He shrugged noncommittally and settled back in his chair for a snooze. Al prefers to sleep when I drive. He says that otherwise he wears out his brake foot. His complaints are just payback for my own. I’m always bitching and moaning about how he still
drives like he’s got a siren on his roof and a badge in his wallet.

The county hospital outside of Dartmore was small, what you’d expect from a rural hospital in a depressed area where by far the largest employers are the prison and a few factory farms. I couldn’t help but wonder about the quality of the medicine practiced inside. What kind of physician chooses exile to such a place? Is this really where you’d want to be treated if you were crushed under the wheels of a combine or stabbed in the back with a knife carved from a toothbrush? Not that either population has any choice in the matter.

The hospital comprised two squat buildings linked by a covered walkway. One building was covered in pebbled stucco, the kind sprayed from a hose, and the other building was wrapped in some kind of pale blue rubberized siding. Neither had an obvious main entrance, so I parked more or less in the middle of the lot.

“Do me a favor,” I said to Al. “Wander around or something. Kill time in the cafeteria. I’m going to chat up the labor and delivery nurses.”

He nodded. Regular folks, especially women,
are always my turf. Al’s a terrific investigator, but his interrogation techniques are those taught by the LAPD, and cops are getting busted for that kind of thing nowadays. Our partnership works well if he and his naturally suspicious self do other kinds of legwork. That is, unless confrontation is specifically called for. He’s terrific at that. It’s funny, because Al’s great undercover. It’s just that when he’s not pretending, he becomes far too gruff and intimidating.