by Tim Green
“See any connection there?” Jake said, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward.
Katz wrinkled his brow and frowned in puzzlement.
“Look,” Katz said, “you need a big story.”
“Like the one that bimbo is tracking right now?” he said, raising his voice and stabbing his finger toward the edit bays. “Like that?”
“You need a couple big stories. It’s beyond me now. The lawyers in LA are asking me to justify re-upping your contract next month and I’m having a hard time.”
“Now the lawyers are making decisions? Jesus. Why don’t you just fire me?”
Katz put his pen down. “I like you, Jake. You can write. I’ve seen you get great interviews. You got balls. Maybe too much. Who takes on the U.S. Army?”
Jake blinked and nodded his head.
“So, I want to help,” Katz said. “Remember the guy up in Syracuse who was holding those women prisoner in that bunker?”
“I remember hearing about it.”
“Well, the pretty one, Catherine Anastacia, the blonde, is going to talk,” Katz said. “No one ever got her and she’s good TV. The guy goes on trial next week and I think it could give the story new life, especially with her talking. I want you to go up there and get him, too. Word is the lawyer can be bought. Get the DA if you can and a couple other victims. You see how I’m helping you here? We could do a five-part series for sweeps and it’ll go a long way out in LA.”
“My son is—”
“You used to work up there, didn’t you?”
“At the CBS affiliate,” Jake said. “That’s where I met Karen. That’s where we got Sam.”
“So, you’ll go.”
Jake ran the edge of his thumbnail up and down the space between his front teeth for a minute, then said, “Yeah. I’ll go.”
6
THE KITCHEN IN JAKE’S BEACH HOUSE also looked out over the Atlantic Ocean. The table sat in an alcove of glass, separated from the rest of the room by a white marble bar. Since Karen died, Jake and Sam ate at the bar with their backs to the view, even though Juliet scolded them for not sitting down like a normal family. They enraged her even more when they had a forty-inch plasma screen put up over the refrigerator so they could watch SportsCenter while they ate.
And, while Juliet was a good cook, she made mostly Caribbean-style rice dishes and salads. So the bulk of Jake’s and Sam’s diet was what they cooked themselves on the grill. Sam was more finicky than Jake, so if it was something like steaks or lobster tails, he cooked. When it was burgers and dogs, Jake got to man the fire. Juliet’s food they lavished with praise, but mostly just pushed around on their plates.
After steaks, plantains, and a cabbage-and-pepper salad, Sam went to walk Louie while Jake helped Juliet clean up. He talked with her about staying for a few days to watch Sam, then went upstairs to pack enough things for a week upstate.
Jake’s office was on the same level as Sam’s bedroom. His desk was a thick sheet of glass resting on a black lacquered base with drawers. The chrome-and-leather chair sat facing a big square window that also looked out over the dunes and the ocean beyond. Once his briefcase was ready for the trip, Jake sat down and stared out at the sky, thick clouds brewing over a whitecapped ocean.
He drew a deep breath and let it out through his nose, then turned on the computer and began the first stages of his search for Sam’s biological mother. He didn’t know how long he’d been there before he realized that Sam was back from his walk.
“I got an idea,” Sam said.
“Uh-huh,” Jake said, clicking on the Web site of an international adoption agency only to find that it specialized in babies from China.
“This guy Stoddard’s a joke,” Sam said.
“Mmm,” Jake said, adding the word Albania to his search requirements.
“Matt Parker once,” Sam said, “he went to the Grand Canyon on a family trip. He was gone for a week.”
“I’d like to see that sometime, too,” Jake said, clicking on a new site. “We’ll do it one of these days.”
“I mean, you’re gone all the time,” Sam said. “I’m sick of being alone.”
“Juliet’s here,” Jake said.
“She goes to bed at like, eight-thirty and I can’t stand that gospel music.”
“You like her.”
“I know, but I don’t even have school this week.”
Jake let his hands fall to his lap and swung around. “You want me to go do this thing, or not?”
“I do. With me.”
“Oh, that Grand Canyon? No. You got Stoddard, jerk or not.”
“Definitely jerk.”
“You want to find where you came from, this trip couldn’t come at a better time.”
“I’m not saying I mind you going for this,” Sam said. “I’m just saying in general you go too much.”
“You gotta take the bad with the good,” Jake said, without turning his head.
Instead of going to his room, Sam hovered over Jake’s shoulder. Jake tried to ignore it and keep working, but Sam’s heavy nasal breathing cut right through his concentration.
“Sammy, I love you, man,” Jake said. “But you’re huffing and puffing on me.”
Sam grinned at him and nodded. “This is my world.”
“Yeah?” Jake said. “It’s called the International Children’s Adoption Agency of Central New York. I can barely say it, let alone find it.”
“You’re using the wrong search engine,” Sam said, pulling up another chair, nudging Jake over a bit, and letting his fingers scamper across the keyboard.
“Google,” Sam said.
Jake watched Sam riffle through a series of screens. Finally Sam stopped and shook his head.
“The only thing I get for agencies in Syracuse is Catholic Charities and the World Adoption Agency that’s like some franchise. You sure about the name?”
“I’m the one that got you.”
“It’s not there. Not in any phone books, no directories. No Web connection for sure. You sure you’re sure?”
“Hang on,” Jake said.
He left Sam in his study and went upstairs.
On the floor of the bedroom closet, Karen had a fireproof lockbox. Jake opened it with a key from his sock drawer and found the papers from Sam’s adoption along with the house deed, Jake’s will, and a copy of his TV contract, which he couldn’t help checking for the date of expiration because it didn’t seem that three years would have really passed by the end of next month.
Sam’s papers included a declaration of abandonment from an Albanian state-run orphanage and an order of adoption from a court in Tirana and their English translations. At the back of the envelope was a letter that Karen had saved. It was from Ron Cakebread, the man who ran the upstart adoption agency they’d heard about through a woman Karen had met during her treatments. Back then, they didn’t know if they’d have the three to five years to wait for a domestic adoption to go through, and Karen’s friend told them about Ron Cakebread.
The letter had come only two weeks after their first meeting and it announced that the agency had found a perfect baby boy for them to adopt. Jake held the letter up to the light and wondered if the small round spot on the lower corner had been a tear of Karen’s or just something Ron Cakebread spilled on his desk. Jake remembered Cakebread as a scarecrow of a man in a camel-hair blazer with a pale purple tie whose knot was the size of Jake’s wallet.
Jake went back downstairs and handed the letter to Sam.
“The agency name was right,” Jake said, “but how about this?”
On the letter’s heading, Cakebread was listed as Ronald O. Cakebread.
“That’s a good name,” Sam said, typing it in. “I’ll find him. You guys have AutoTRAK, right? Can you give me the account?”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know about that?”
Sam huffed and said, “Dog The Bounty Hunter?”
“The bleached blond guy with the ponytail?”
; “It’s a cool show. He uses it.”
Jake nodded, gave Sam the account information, and watched him search. After half an hour, Sam slapped his hand on the desktop and looked over at him.
“What did I miss?” Sam asked.
“I think you did everything I could think of and more,” Jake said. “That’s how it goes sometimes. The Yankees are playing. Let’s watch the last couple innings. You make some popcorn and I’ll get the drinks.”
“But we’re not giving up?”
“Hey, we just started.”
Jake looped his arm around Sam’s neck and pulled him tight.
In the morning, Jake ran on the beach while it was still dark and kissed Sam on the forehead in his sleep before slipping out. He had a late-morning flight out of LaGuardia and just enough time to stop at the Albanian Embassy on the Upper East Side. It was a long shot, but it was on his list of possible leads and it was right there, fifteen minutes from the airport. Jake pulled to the curb when he saw the red flag with the black double-headed eagle. The street sign read DIPLOMATS ONLY but there was still space for another car, so Jake got out and went up the steps. Through the glass and steel bars, Jake saw a squat bald man sitting at a security desk.
After Jake rang the bell, the man got up and looked him over before opening the door to ask in a thick accent what he wanted. Jake showed his press credential and asked to speak with someone who might be able to help him find the mother of an adopted Albanian child. The guard scowled, but let him in and told him to have a seat before he picked up the phone in one hand with the credential in the other and said something Jake didn’t understand. After setting down the phone and the credential, the guard returned to his original position, with his bare head settled back into the thick rolls of his neck, staring blankly ahead like a toad.
Jake looked at his watch and waited. After fifteen minutes, he got up and peeked outside to make sure his car wasn’t being towed, then walked to the desk, politely asking if someone was going to be able to help him. The guard blinked at him and picked up the phone once more, talking in his thick Slavic-sounding dialect back and forth in quick staccato bursts with someone on the other end.
When he hung up the phone, he said, “Twenty minutes, maybe thirty.”
Jake sat back down and took out his BlackBerry, sending out a flurry of e-mails to help get things organized for the shoot up in Syracuse. When two men and a young woman, all wearing dark suits, came in through the front door, Jake stood up. But after glancing at him, they spoke to the guard and passed through the inner door.
Jake stayed on his feet. After thirty minutes had passed, he stepped toward the desk once more. Before he got there, the inner door opened and a young man with fashionable frameless glasses and a buttoned-up navy suit stepped out, picked up Jake’s press credential off the desk, and began to study it. Jake had seen the type. Embassy brats who grew up to be diplomats themselves. They were like lab rats, colorless and practiced at running the maze. This one surprised Jake when he looked up, extended his hand, and apologized for the delay.
“I’m sorry about just dropping in,” Jake said, “but I’m on my way to shoot a story upstate for the show.”
The young man introduced himself as Peter something, the embassy’s assistant press secretary. He said he’d seen Jake’s show. He led Jake into a small office down a narrow hall. Jake sat and explained his situation. The young man’s eyes stayed on his except when they drooped sympathetically in a way that filled Jake with hope. Jake handed the papers across the desk and the man studied them for a minute before handing them back.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Carlson,” he said. “But without a birth certificate, finding your son’s mother is impossible. The certificate of abandonment means that he was a foundling.”
“What about someone at the orphanage?” Jake asked.
Peter shook his head and again said he was sorry.
“Would you have any way of helping me find this organization?” Jake asked, handing the letter from Ron Cakebread across the desk. Peter looked at it and said no.
“But they were bringing Albanian babies over here,” Jake said. “Lots of them. Not just Sam. These are government papers. Someone has to know, right?”
“Mr. Carlson,” Peter said, “that was a difficult time. The government fell apart. Soldiers were in the streets. Our country is still working its way out of everything bad that happened. It’s a new government now.”
“You know who Arnold Schwarzenegger is?” Jake asked.
“Austria’s practically a neighboring country to Albania,” the young man said.
“Exactly,” Jake said, standing up. “So, I’m doing a sit-down with Arnold this one time and I ask him if he remembers the name of the guy who took second in his first bodybuilding contest, you know, to do a kind of comparison to how close that other guy was to all Arnold has done.
“So, Arnold says he doesn’t know and there’s no way of him really finding out and I said, ‘Just take my card. Something might come to you.’ The Governator rolls his eyes, but he takes it.”
The young man raised his eyebrows.
“Two weeks later,” Jake said, “Arnold calls me. Said it just came to him in the shower. It was a great piece. The guy’s a motorcycle mechanic in Munster and a huge Arnold fan.”
Jake pushed one of his cards across the desk.
“So . . .you know,” Jake said, and saw himself out.
7
JAKE GOT A HOTEL IN ARMORY SQUARE, the renovated part of downtown Syracuse, and set up shop. Catherine Anastacia, the blonde Katz had talked about, was being handled by the show’s booker in New York. That interview was set for tomorrow. The rest of the interviews that would round out the story were up to Jake and the producer for the series, one of the show’s best, Barbara Simon. Jake would work in tandem with her and after his blowout with Muldoon, he wanted to send a message that he was still very much a team player.
He called the DA’s office to get the ball rolling there, and began leaving messages for the list of women, besides Catherine Anastacia, who had also been victims in the concrete bunker. The lawyer for the monster who had kept them there—one for nearly three years—was an easy play. He wanted money and American Outrage was willing to pay ten grand for a jailhouse interview with a two-week exclusive. The lawyer was even going to smooth the way to get their cameras inside the jail and suggested he might be able to get them in the same room so they didn’t have to shoot through the visitation glass.
With some work done, he dialed Sam and asked how it had gone with Dr. Stoddard.
“Did you find her?” Sam asked.
“Sam,” he said, “you gotta stop doing this. If I can find her—and it will be really tough, Sam—but if I can, it’s going to take time. These things sometime take years. I’ve got an idea I’m going to check out later on. I’m working here, too, don’t forget. Now what about Stoddard?”
The school psychologist was still an asshole, but Louie was good and Juliet was making pasta with vodka sauce so Sam was okay.
“Good,” Jake said. “Okay, I gotta go.”
“What can I do?” Sam asked.
“Take care of Louie and Juliet and don’t give Stoddard a hard time. That’s help enough.”
“Give me a job. Something on the computer. I’m good at it.”
Jake agreed that if he had something, he’d call. He told Sam he loved him, hung up, and checked his e-mails. One was from Katz apologizing, because Barbara Simon, the producer he’d promised to Jake, had had a breakthrough with Russell Crowe, nailing down the first interview with him since he kicked a dog he caught pissing on his Bentley. Barbara had to go straight to LA, so Katz was sending Muldoon.
Jake snapped his phone shut.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, shaking his head. “Russell fucking Crowe.”
He put on his suit jacket, scooped up his briefcase, and walked out into the afternoon sun. The trees along the street were fat with budding leaves and as he walked along, Jake belie
ved that he could smell the first hints of warm mud and baking grass, the promise of an early summer.
The building where the agency had been was only a few blocks away. Inside, a sleepy-looking security guard straightened up in his chair and eyed Jake while he waited for the elevator.
“Hey,” the guard said, “aren’t you that guy?”
Jake let his face go slack and he gave the man a blank look.
“On TV?” the guard said. “I seen you, right?”
The guard started snapping his fingers, trying to connect a name with a face. Jake shrugged and shook his head like the guy was nuts.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Aw, you look just like that guy,” the guard said.
Jake shrugged again and got onto the elevator, taking it to the third floor. Jake thought he remembered the tan paint on the frame of the door. Missing chips exposed the dark metal below. The nameplate read AA EUROPEAN TRAVEL, INC.
Jake walked in and stopped cold. He straightened his back and tightened his stomach and stared. The girl behind the gray metal desk had her head angled down at some paperwork and the flourish of her pen. Beside her, a small CD player buzzed with David Gray. On either side of a comfortable-looking couch was a potted tree. A coffee table rested on a worn Oriental rug and the air was thick with the spicy smell of incense, reminding Jake of a college dorm room.
The girl’s long straight hair was glossy and black. Her eyes were large and dark and their lashes swept up toward her olive-skinned brow and down toward high cheeks and a long narrow nose. It wasn’t until she raised her head that he saw the bone-white scar that ran nearly the full length of the far side of her face. Where it curved across the corner of her mouth the full lips were dimpled, giving her a permanent half-frown.
“Can I help you?” she asked with the hint of an accent.
“I’m Jake Carlson,” he said, his face warming. He crossed the open space and extended his hand.
“Zamira,” she said, taking it. She wore a short-sleeved taupe sweater that revealed the subtle curves of her chest and shoulders.