The Cradle Robbers

by Ayelet Waldman

  “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.”

  Thirteen

  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.

  I found my way to Labor and Delivery. It was an entirely different world from the one in which I had my babies. At Cedars-Sinai, the unit was always busy, the private rooms full of laboring and recovering women, nurses bustling about, patients in wheelchairs being whisked to and fro, women walking the halls trailing IV poles, doctors rushing from room to room to catch the last few minutes of drama. If there was someone in labor on this floor, she was having a very quiet delivery. Three women were at the semicircular nurses’ station, two wearing pale pink scrubs. A third, in scrubs of traditional green, sat up on the counter, one white-clogged foot resting on a chair.

  “Hi,” I said.

  They greeted me politely.

  “I was hoping one of you might be able to help me out with something. A young woman gave birth here two months ago. Sandra Lorgeree. From CCI Dartmore. I’m looking to talk to anyone who might have attended her during or after her labor.”

  The nurses in the pink scrubs glanced at each other. “Sorry,” one said. “We have an awful lot of births. We could never remember one of them in particular.”

  The four of us gazed around the empty floor and she had the grace to blush.

  The other then said, “We can’t talk to you about a patient. All that information’s confidential.”

  “Sandra Lorgeree was murdered a few days ago at Dartmore Prison. Before she was killed she asked me to help find the newborn son who was stolen from her.” My specific intention was to shock them. I wanted them to go pale with horror. Their response was exactly what I had hoped for.

  “Can you help me?” I said.

  The three looked at each other. Suddenly, the woman in the green scrubs said in a strangled voice, “I need some air. Call me if anything comes up. I’ve got my pager.” She leapt down from her perch and rushed to the elevator bank.

  I said to the other two, “Please. Won’t you help me find this poor woman’s baby?”

  “We can’t,” one of the nurses said. “We just can’t.”

  I shook my head, turned, and left. When I turned into the elevator bank I saw the third woman standing in the middle elevator, holding it open for me. She put her finger to her lips and motioned me inside.

  “I’m Lois Curtin,” she said when the doors had closed. “I’m the midwife who delivered Sandra’s baby. We need to talk.”

  * * *

  Al noticed us walk into the cafeteria, but made no attempt to come over to the table in the far corner of the room where Lois and I sat.

  “I’m not surprised you’re here,” Lois said. “At least, I’m not surprised someone’s here. What’s going on with these poor women is terrible.” The midwife was a woman in her late forties, with short ash-blonde hair cut in an old-fashioned style, a lot like the wedge cut I had sported in junior high school, when I was emulating Dorothy Hamill, before I went into my Farrah Fawcett phase. Her face was lightly lined, especially around the eyes and next to her mouth. She wore the traces of a lifetime of ready smiles.

  “You know about the babies being taken?” I said.

  She wrapped her strong hands around the Styrofoam cup of coffee she had poured herself before we sat down. “Yes,” she said. “That, and all the rest of it.”

  I knit my brow in confusion. “The rest of it?”

  “Animals wouldn’t be treated the way those women are. They bring them in here shackled, with their ankles and wrists in chains. By the time they’re admitted most of them have been laboring for hours like that. Have you ever been in labor? Can you imagine what it’s like to go through that in chains?”

  I stared at her, stunned, and remained silent.

  “Once the women are in my care, I try to force the guards to unlock them, but most of the time they won’t. The guard chains them to the bed by a wrist and a leg. The leg iron stays on until they are ready to push. I can’t do anything about the shackles, even if I’d prefer they walk or move.”

  “That’s just despicable,” I said. “We’re not talking murderers here. The vast majority of those women are in for drug possession or prostitution. Why would the guards think they were a danger? Or are the guards afraid the women are going to try to escape?”

  “As if any woman in the throes of labor could manage to escape.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to drink my coffee. “This is just horrifying,” I said.

  “It gets worse,” Lois replied. “I always make sure the nurses provide the prisoners with extra packages of sanitary napkins when they leave the hospital, as well as the disposable undergarments we use. Well, I found out recently that the guards take the supplies away from the women as soon as they get to the prison. The guards then dole them out as they see fit. A woman with postpartum bleeding is expected to manage until a guard decides she deserves a sanitary napkin.”

  I don’t think it
was the Kotex that made me cry. I think my feelings about Sandra’s death finally caught up to me, and the image of a woman in a bleak prison cell, her baby gone from her, her legs streaming with the blood of her loss, a wad of saturated cotton sodden between her thighs, just set me off. I lay my head down on the table and wept. I wept for Sandra and for all those other women, some of whom had made terrible decisions, others who had had miseries foisted upon them. I wept for those mothers who labored in shackles, had their babies torn from their arms, and then watched their blood flow onto the floors of their grim and lonely cells.

  I felt two gentle hands smooth my hair. We sat like that for a few moments, this kind and generous woman whom I knew not at all and I; she stroking my hair while I cried. When I finally looked up, she cupped my cheek with her hand. Her touch was tender, and yet sure and strong. I could so clearly imagine her delivering a child.

  “Do you remember anything about the people who took Sandra’s baby?” I asked. “Anything at all?”

  “They came right away—I don’t think she’d been in labor for more than two hours when they arrived. One of the nurses came in and told me they were there, in the waiting room in Labor and Delivery. I had them sent to wait in Recovery so that Sandra could have a few hours with her son. I didn’t see them. Her patient record will include some information. It has to indicate to whom the baby was released. It usually says the name of the foster care agency and the name of the social worker from the Department of Social Services. I remember that this case was unusual because the foster parents came on their own.”

  “But those records are confidential. I can’t get them.”

  A weary, sad smile flitted across her face. “You can’t, but I can.”

  Fourteen

  TWO days later, when I had all but given up on her, Lois Curtin called me with the names of the couple with whom baby Noah Lorgeree had been placed. I ran a skip trace on them and found them easily enough, on Alcatraz Avenue in Oakland. The address was recent, and the phone number came up listed with the bill paid through the end of the month. I had them.