The Baby Merchant Read online

  “I just wanted you to know.”

  Oh, please! Why should she respond after what he did? What he did to her? How can he explain that he wasn’t doing it to her, he was doing it for her? What is Starbird waiting for her to say to him, thanks for calling? That she’s glad to hear from him?

  “Sasha.” Saying her name makes his heart stumble. “Are you there?”

  She won’t answer.

  “I know your name but you don’t know mine.”

  He can’t even hear her breathing.

  Oh, Sasha. Say something. Anything.

  “It’s Tom Starbird.”

  The long silence is punctuated by clicks. He knows what they are doing; he knows. Finally he says:

  “My name is Tom Starbird.” It seems important for her to know him exactly. “You know, Tom, from the Food King?”

  In the background somebody mutters, “Answer him.” Somebody else says, “String it out. Keep him on the line.”

  Nothing. Naturally she will give back nothing. Not after what you took from her. Get off the phone, Starbird, you can still make it out of here.

  He will do anything to break the silence. “Please?”

  Just her breathing.

  Idiot, stop. Clumsiness overcomes him and he blurts, “I did it for you.”

  So Sasha Egan’s voice comes into the receiver at last, and it’s nothing like he imagines. It is low and charged with loathing. She speaks and the air around him trembles. “Did you really imagine I would thank you?”

  “Just listen,” he cries.

  She breaks the connection before he can get the words out.

  “I’m sorry,” he says anyway. Even though she’s long gone Starbird says to the empty room, “You’ll know where he is by six tonight.”

  He hits redial. There is the sound of steel jaws snapping as four people pick up on four phones.

  “Tell her she’ll know where he is by six tonight.”

  “Where are you?” They don’t need to ask. By this time they know.

  The only thing that remains is to go to his computer and hit SEND.

  The files are so big that it takes them a minute to go. As soon as this part is done Starbird destroys the copies on his hard drive. No need to keep a backup. He knows what he said. The short version is burned into his heart.

  My name is Tom Starbird. I am very good at what I do but I am done with it. For eight years I was a baby merchant. I stole children to order and sold them to high end buyers at a tremendous price.

  Over the years I have stolen more than a hundred babies and put them into new homes, and I did this for profit, although I wanted them to be happy. I told myself I was doing it for their own good. I stole the Egan baby and delivered him to the television Conscience of Boston, Jake Zorn, a walking slime mold who tears up innocent people on national TV Now, Zorn knew what he was doing and if I am guilty of a crime here, so is he.

  I did what I did because … no. No explanations. What I did was monstrous. Sasha Egan, wherever you are when you see this, was only trying to help, and this is the hell of it. You can use up your heart trying to do right and still have it come out all wrong.

  35.

  The Savannah police detective’s voice is rough with exhaustion and loaded with apology. They’ve been together in here for entirely too long and she’s having a hard time remembering his name. Dwight, she thinks. Dwight Larcen. Detective Larcen to you. The room Sasha fixed up for her new baby is littered with equipment and takeout cartons, the detritus of a long wait. Except for Larcen, the police and FBI people come and go in shifts. He sleeps in a chair. Sasha is on duty here full-time. She sleeps when she can. Not for the first time, the detective is trying to get her to the phone.

  “No,” she says. “I’ve said everything I had to say to him.”

  “Not the perp.” Larcen shakes his head. “It’s your grandmother again.”

  “I don’t want to talk to her.”

  “She’s at Savannah International.”

  “Here?”

  “Yes Ma’am. She wants to talk to you.”

  When the animal who took her baby called, everything changed. Sasha has the power now. She hisses, “No.”

  “She wants to take you to a hotel.”

  “Tell her no.”

  “As soon as we know anything, you’ll know, I promise.” Sasha knows the look. He’s afraid to refuse the old lady, everybody is. “Yes Ma’am, I’ll tell her, Ma’am.” He says to Sasha, “Really. You’ll be a lot more comfortable. We can patch incoming phone calls to your hotel.”

  She’s too tired to repeat. She waves him off.

  “You can relax, Ma’am. Your baby’s safe.”

  “You don’t know that.” Interesting. Through all the hours of interrogation, Jimmy wasn’t “your baby,” he was “the baby.” He was “the baby” until the kidnapper called and their positions slid into flux. He’s “your baby” now. She wants to be happy but she can’t. She won’t be happy until she can hold her child. She won’t relax until her arms close around him, strong and tight enough to keep him safe for as long as she lives. Understand what is happening here. Sasha is not so much planning as admitting a bond that will outlast her; she is opening the door to a huge and powerful force that rushes in to fill up the rest of her life. There is no physical change in her, not really. There is only a ripple of— what, excitement? Joy or fright? None of the above or all of the above, because Sasha Egan is no longer autonomous. With grace she may grow up to be an artist, but she’s Jimmy’s mother first. What happens next will, miraculously, happen to both of them.

  The detective is saying, “It’s all we know.” Larcen sees she has slipped into another zone and touches her arm to bring her back. “It’s OK to leave here, now that your baby is within reach.”

  “You mean, now that I’m no longer a suspect.”

  Embarrassment creeps up the man’s face until the skin under the combover goes red. “I mean, you look like you could use the sleep. Your grandmother …”

  “No.”

  How powerful he was, when they first began this. How anxious he seems. All his teeth show. He can’t seem to get her to take the phone. “She says put you on or she’ll sue the city.”

  Sasha’s sudden laugh is more like a sob. “That’s not my problem.”

  The detective’s sweaty face is filmed over with desperation. In his hand the phone weaves like a rattler’s head. “Ma’am, please.”

  All these hours, she thinks. The questions that were really accusations. The clumsy search. The false apologies when the man who stole her baby telephoned. Did he really say, I’m not like that? So her baby is safe, but where? All these hours. Larcen slides the handset across the table and Sasha shoves it back. Her voice hardens. “When did you start calling me Ma’am?

  “Just talk to her, OK? Then we can get out of here.”

  “You’ll take me to my baby?”

  “We can’t, not until the D.C. cops find out where.”

  Her teeth close on this like a bear trap. “Then take me to D.C.” The grim, murderous rasp surprises her. “I’ll get it out of him.”

  “Yes Ma’am.” Bastard, he temporizes. “After the D.C. police bring him in.”

  “Not good enough …” Sasha is as anxious as anybody to get out of this terrible, crowded room. The knotty pine-paneled walls, the dingy pink bedspread, the welter of equipment and people cluttering the space are all she knows. They’ve been together in here for so long that her room at the DelMar is its own snow globe, filled with particles and hermetically sealed. Within this reality, their positions have reversed. She adds a condescending period. “Dwight.”

  Like a flight of hornets, her grandmother’s voice comes boiling out of the handset halfway across the room. The detective is no longer in a position to give orders; he is pleading. “All she wants to do is talk to you.”

  “It’s never that simple.”

  “It isn’t just the lawsuit,” Larcen says. “She’ll crucify us in the press.”<
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  “Will she.” It isn’t a question and he knows it. Sasha stands, resting her fists on the table between them. “I have to go.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “You’ll do what I want.” She leans in with her jaw drawn taut. Their faces are so close that he can’t look away. “You might as well know, I’ve had offers for my story too.” She has.

  “I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything.”

  “How do you want to look to the audience, Dwight? How do you want to look to the world?”

  Defeated, he groans. “I’ll get on it.”

  “I talk her off the phone and then we move out. You get me to the airport. Fast.”

  Exhaustion has left him shaky and dubious. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “No. You’ll do it. Now give me the phone. Hello,” she says. “Hello, Grand.”

  At the other end of the line Maeve Donovan is talking but none of her threats and none of her extravagant offers can touch Sasha now. Ugly custody suit, trip to Europe, ancestral diamonds, nothing Grand says will make any difference. Sasha doesn’t assent and she doesn’t protest; after the first hello, she doesn’t say anything. She just holds the phone at a slight distance until noise stops coming out of it. Across the room, the detective, her nemesis, her designated driver, is taking a call. His eyebrows lift at the news. He gestures.

  “No need to go to D.C.”

  What, Sasha mouths. What?

  “Baby’s in Boston.”

  Her voice goes up like a rocket. “Yes!”

  Grandmother talks on as though none of this has happened. Trust fund. Bearer bonds. Volvo wagon to keep our baby safe. It’s not your baby, Grand. You don’t have to live with us, I’ll buy you a house of your own. “Thanks for calling,” Sasha says right before she hangs up on the old lady forever. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  The detective is flushed with relief. “So it’s only a matter of time.”

  She wheels on him. “Time!”

  “They said Child Services will fly him to Savannah as soon as they pick him up.” What’s the man grinning about? Oh, right. He wants her to hug him but she isn’t giving anything away.

  “Not Child Services, Mr. Larcen. I’m picking him up. Me.”

  “I don’t know if that’s …” He is backpedaling. “OK, we’ll go in the cruiser.”

  “Police helicopter, please.” Sasha is trying to sound stern but her voice lifts, bubbling in spite of her. Her heart is inflated and jumping like a Mylar Happy Birthday balloon. She taps a business card on the table: never mind which one. “It’s the least you can do.”

  “OK.” Anything to get her off his back. After all these hours of grilling and cruelty and refusal to listen, what else can the man do? What else can he say to her? “We’ll get you to the airport soonest. We’ll get you out on the first thing Delta has.”

  “No.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I don’t wait.” Like Starbird, Sasha has seen the CNN press conference a dozen times. She is surprised by what the crisis has made of her. In this tight enclave, the baggy, awkward detective was in charge. Now she is the one dealing from strength. She summons the cold, furious tone that comes up again and again on CNN, the glare that brought the baby thief to his knees. “I need a private plane.”

  “That’s a lot to ask.”

  She has backed him up against the crib. Now they are standing nose to nose. “After everything, you can damn well front for it.”

  “We found your baby, he’ll keep until you get there.”

  Sasha Egan, who has never in her life hit another person, slams the heel of her hand into the detective’s chest. “You didn’t find him.” Again. “I did.”

  “Ma’am!”

  Harder. “My grandmother isn’t the only one with grounds for a suit.”

  He goes white.

  “Clear?”

  “Clear.” The detective backs off with a tight, gray look. He gestures to his partner. “Get on it. A.S.A.P.”

  Weeks from now, when she and Jimmy are settled into the place she will find for them in Santa Barbara, when she’s banked the modest down payment on her story and given the first in a series of taped interviews, she may take one of her grandmother’s calls. The money isn’t huge, but it will keep her afloat until she finds somebody she can trust to take care of Jimmy at night while she goes out to the local art center to teach. In exchange for X hours of teaching, her tuition will be free. When she does talk to the old lady, which won’t be until she’s damn good and ready, the conversation will be short. “Teaching art classes, thanks. MassArt is transferring my credits so I can finish up out here. He’s fine. I’m fine, thanks for asking. No, thanks. Thanks, really. We don’t need anything. Yes I know what I’m doing, thank you. Oh, if we ever go east again …” The we comes out in a little zig-zag of delight, “ … If we ever do, we’ll certainly keep that in mind.”

  36.

  Maury is settling the baby in his pretty new bed when Jake steps into the archway leading into the living room, where she’s keeping the bassinet. His face is such a confusion of joy and avarice that she has no idea what he’s about to say. Then the rocky facade softens and he smiles. “Are you happy now?”

  “Yes.” Her heart jumps. She can’t help adding, “I think so.” There is always the chance that they will be caught. Caught is the way she thinks of it now, the way she’s been thinking of it ever since they got back on the shuttle at National Airport and she peeled off the little hat and saw that the baby hadn’t been chipped. She sat with Jake tapping on his laptop and the new baby sleeping in her arms, fixed in a silence so complete that she had too much time to think. She’s not sure how Jake brought off this transaction or where the baby Maury is stroking came from or whether there’s anybody looking for him but she is nursing an odd, visceral ache that lets her know that whatever they’ve done, whoever may be the victim, she and Jake are engaged in something deeply, terribly wrong.

  Her man, whom she loves but doesn’t really know, squints like a cryptographer trying to decode her face. “You sure?”

  “I am,” she says. “I am happy, but …” It’s the look, she thinks. The last look Jake’s paid go-between threw at her followed her out the door as surely as a Ninja throwing-blade, hit its mark and stuck. Like the microchip that all babies have— well, all babies except this one— it is lodged deep in her hide.

  Relieved, Jake says, “Good. He’s a great baby, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  He relaxes into that wonderful Jake Zorn grin. “Great, I knew you’d like him. I know a guy who can get him registered with the government, no questions asked. Tomorrow we’ll do the paperwork so we can get him chipped.” Before she can respond he flips the remote toward the TV and the portrait-sized plasma screen comes to life.

  “Don’t, he’s sleeping.”

  “Gotta see this.” He puts it on MUTE.

  Can’t he leave TV alone for a minute? Going to and from D.C., Jake was too preoccupied with the mission to check on the competition. He stayed focused on the canvas bag at his feet and it came as a welcome relief. At the airport hotel he was tired and distracted by the child. Coming home this morning, Maury hoped having a baby had changed him, but she sees now that it was the briefest of vacations. A temporary respite is no respite.

  Her mind runs ahead to newscasts. What if there’s been a … She can’t let herself complete the thought. “I wish you wouldn’t, Jake.”

  “They’re running a sixty-second promo— preview of my Nebraska baby ranch expose. Engineered multiple births, infants caged like so many cocker spaniels. It goes on at six.”

  “Oh, Jake.”

  “It’ll only take a minute.”

  The new baby begins to whimper. With a shudder, Maury turns to the bassinet. She says, “Please. It’s so sordid,” but that isn’t what she means. That just may be the problem here.

  “Shh, honey. Be quiet.” He hits the MUTE button again. Sound bleeds into the room. “
I think it’s the next thing up.”

  Thus they are both listening when the voiceover cuts in. “We interrupt this broadcast for breaking news.” There is the inevitable background thunder of a helicopter as the airborne unit approaches the scene as in the studio the squirt from Jake’s office says gravely, “Now, live from suburban Auburndale, where …” Therefore the Zorns are both watching the screen as the airborne camera picks up the TV ground crew’s van and a flying wedge of police cars converging on a quiet, leafy street. As it becomes clear that the helicopter is directly above them, Maury will see— both on the screen and out their front window— police and child services workers and FBI and the Channel Five news team— Jake’s rivals!— spilling out of their vehicles and trotting up the front walk to the beautifully kept Boston Victorian Zorn-Bayless house. “And now, from Washington, D.C., an astonishing confession …”

  Seizing the baby, Maury buries her face in him.

  She hears a new voice say, “My name is Tom Starbird. I am …”

  “It’s OK,” Jake says vainly. He grabs her, pointing her toward the screen. “It’s OK, Maury. Look!”

  As the doorbell rings she nods and looks at the screen just in time to see her husband and the baby merchant exchanging handshakes for a camera she hadn’t guessed was in the room. She sees the bag full of money, noting that Jake is front and center for this exchange. In the background she sees the pet carrier their contact used to carry the baby; although she knows that by the time he had handed the child to her …

  The doorbell rings again and she groans aloud.

  … although by the time they shook hands she was holding the baby, the little grate on the pet carrier is shut and her sobbed thank you has been swept from the recording. She is nowhere visible on the screen. As though the baby merchant wanted to protect her which, as a lawyer, she knows is impossible.

  “ … so-called Conscience of Boston,” Starbird is saying and now the video is superseded by a picture of Jake Zorn, full-frame, “a walking slime mold who tears up innocent people on national TV …”