It was no contest. It would be much more pleasant to sip a bowl of matzoh-ball soup in a clean, bright place like Benny’s than to slump over the wheel in an overheated car waiting for someone who might not appear for hours, if at all. What would she say to the lawyer anyway? Did he know the warehouse he owned was being used as sex-trafficking den? Did he know a pregnant blond girl named Savannah?
She headed downtown under a leaden sky. Thirty minutes later she pulled up to the restaurant and parked half a block away. A light snow fell, no more than flurries, but her boots squeaked on the layer of snow already packing the sidewalk. She stamped her feet as she pushed through the door.
Benny’s steamy warmth cascaded over her. She headed to the takeout counter and ordered soup. She wasn’t hungry but figured she would save it for dinner. It was after three and the lunch rush was over. The servers behind the counter chatted with each other and the few customers still in line. When her soup was ready, she picked up the white bag along with her receipt.
“By the way, is Bruce Kreisman around?” she asked the African American woman behind the counter.
The woman who’d handed her the soup frowned. “What are you, a comedian?”
Georgia was taken aback. “Sorry. Is he out on a run?”
The woman took in a breath, then let it out through her nose. “Where you been, child?”
“I’m clearly missing something. Was he fired?”
The woman planted her hands on her hips. “No, he ain’t been fired.”
A second woman came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, then crossed them over her chest. She’d obviously been eavesdropping. Both women stared at Georgia as if she was an intruder.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“I’ll tell you what happened,” the second woman said. “They found him in his car two nights ago. With a bullet hole in his head.”
Chapter 42
Nausea climbed up her throat, and Georgia barely made it back to her Toyota. The soup, which had seemed so welcoming moments earlier, was now a bleak reminder of what she’d just heard. She got out of the car, ran to a trash bin, and pitched it. Back in the car she sucked in deep breaths of air.
Georgia didn’t believe in coincidence. Last Monday a man tailed her down Sherman Avenue in Evanston. A dark SUV barreled around the corner and someone inside shot him. The next day she got the note from Savannah, which, according to DNA testing, was legit. After tracking the wrapper to Benny’s a few days later, she interviewed Bruce Kreisman, who led her to what looked like a sex-trafficking den. Little more than twenty-four hours after that, someone in a dark SUV shot out her tire. Now Bruce Kreisman had turned up dead.
Even an idiot could connect the dots. Who did Bruce Kreisman talk to after he took her to the warehouse? What was that person’s connection to her sister? And what was so important that he was killed for it? She supposed his deadbeat pals back in Florida might have tracked him to Chicago, but unless he’d done more than was on his rap sheet, his crimes down there didn’t warrant an execution-style murder. Then again, if the Russian mob was involved, they didn’t need a reason to kill. It was part of their MO.
Someone didn’t want her poking around and was going to lengths to let her know. They could have killed her along with Kreisman. But they didn’t. Why? Why shoot out her tire instead? And where did Chad Coe fit in? Was he the head honcho? Or just a soldier in the chain of command?
She started the engine and punched in the address of the warehouse on her GPS. After a number of twists and turns, she pulled up to the curb. The building was dark, all the doors closed. It looked deserted, with no sign of the homeless squatter. She wondered if the Dumpsters were still full of the detritus from the women, but even if they were, it wouldn’t tell her anything. Except that they’d canceled their garbage service. But she ought to check. She went around to the back and lifted the Dumpster’s lid. The trash was still there: pink bathrobe, food wrappers, empty pregnancy test kit.
The flurries intensified as she drove home, snowflakes whizzing and zooming every which way. Her wipers groaned and scraped across the windshield. She should spring for new blades. It would make things clearer. Not like this case, if you could call it that. Like the snowflakes, all she had were maddening bits and pieces.
She was at a distinct disadvantage. She knew nothing about the other side except that they might have Savannah and they might have killed Bruce Kreisman. They, on the other hand, knew her, where she lived, and who she was talking to.
Chapter 43
That evening Georgia cleaned her apartment. When she was younger and living with her father, she’d been in charge of housekeeping. It was a two-story bungalow with curtains that needed washing, rugs that needed vacuuming, and dust bunnies that needed to be swept up.
She’d taken to the job enthusiastically—she wanted the house to be ready when her mother came home. For months the young Georgia assumed her mother would return; she was just taking a break. On vacation. Not gone for good. So every time she vacuumed or dusted or threw in a load of laundry, she tallied her chores on a mental scorecard, thinking that when she got to the magic number, whatever it was, the front door would open, and her mother would be there. She would drop her suitcase and open her arms to Georgia.
It never happened.
Now she had her own place. But her furnishings were Spartan, and there wasn’t much to clean. Was her minimalist lifestyle in some way connected to her unresolved feelings about her mother? Perhaps, in some subconscious way, even though her mother had abandoned her, and even though Georgia understood why, she still expected her to come back. Which was why she kept everything neat and orderly. Just in case.
She finished and stowed the vacuum in the broom closet. Something was nagging at her while she worked and had been since she drove back from downtown. It wasn’t about her mother, and it wasn’t about Kreisman—although she’d decided to take Jimmy’s advice and call O’Malley in the morning to let him know what was going on. Hopefully, he’d snag the police report for her.
Whatever was bothering her was at the outer edges of her awareness, but she couldn’t force it. It would surface when it was ready. So she fixed dinner, wishing now she hadn’t thrown the soup away. She opened a can of tomato soup and made a grilled cheese sandwich. She took the sandwich out of the toaster oven . Jimmy was probably right. She was investing too much in the situation. Better to stop before it got out of control. She wolfed down the sandwich and swallowed her soup.
Maybe it was time for a movie. She took her tablet into the bedroom. She was in the mood for something light and funny. She hadn’t made the bed that morning, and the rumpled sheets still smelled of sex and Jimmy. As she scrolled through the offerings on Netflix, she debated whether to call him. For the second night in a row she didn’t want to be alone. She didn’t want to dwell on the fact that someone was probably holding her sister hostage. And that Bruce Kreisman was dead.
Death. The opposite of birth. Kreisman had been alive but now he wasn’t. Babies weren’t alive and then they were. A sudden memory of the display in the museum washed over her. Tiny three-dimensional fetuses at twelve weeks, then twenty, then thirty-five. The real things moved their limbs and kicked. Some even sucked their thumbs in the womb.
She sat up. Savannah was involved in a sex-trafficking operation. But she was pregnant. It didn’t make sense. The first thing traffickers would do, after hooking girls on the narcotic of the month, was put them on the pill. They wouldn’t want the girls to get pregnant.
But Savannah was.
Georgia recalled the empty pregnancy test kit at the warehouse. If Savannah was pregnant, another girl might be too. Which meant that the ringleaders had been sloppy about giving the girls their pills. It didn’t add up. Pregnancies just wouldn’t be on the agenda of a sex-trafficking ring.
Unless they were.
Chapter 44
Georgia bolted from her bedroom, so much adrenaline pumping through her that sh
e wasn’t sure what to do first. She hurried to her desktop and began to search online. It wasn’t something people talked about much, but illegal baby-breeding rings, also called baby factories or baby farms, were a burgeoning industry. They catered to couples who’d been rejected from legitimate adoption agencies or were so desperate for a child they elected not to go through the system.
She pored through the references on Google. Most couples who did go through the system adopted from Africa, Central America, or China. White couples who wanted their babies to resemble them biologically got babies from Russia and Eastern Europe. But Russia closed its doors at the end of 2012, and adoptions from Eastern European countries had dropped sixty percent in the past few years.
Was that what Savannah was caught up in? Not a sex-trafficking ring, but a baby-breeding operation? Actually, it might be both, she realized as she read on. Once the babies had been born and sold, the girls who birthed them were often thrown into forced prostitution. She ran a hand through her hair.
Most of the baby rings were overseas and run by organized crime. But those were the rings that had been busted. What about those that hadn’t been? There was no reason why a ring couldn’t be operating here in the US. Even in Chicago.
Georgia tapped her fingers on the desk: one, two, three, four. That might explain why a lawyer like Chad Coe was involved. Contacts had to be made, buyers found, birth certificates forged, documents prepared. Money needed to change hands. And it all had to appear legal. Was that what Chad Coe was doing? Applying a brush coat to the paperwork so it looked authentic? Most of his “clients” probably wouldn’t check to see that everything was legal. He was a lawyer; they’d assume it was.
How much would it cost to buy a baby? The girls had to be housed and fed for nine months. They had to have medical care and checkups. The babies couldn’t be delivered in a hospital, so the ringleaders had to have either their own facility or access to one. They would need a doctor or a midwife. Then, of course, there were the legal fees. And that was before any profit.
She pored through legitimate adoption websites, but the dollar figure was hard to ballpark; there were too many variables: whether the adoption was open, closed, local, domestic, or intercountry, private, licensed, or unlicensed. She went back to the baby-farm articles. One estimated that adoptions could cost up to fifty thousand dollars. But the article was written eight years ago. She mentally added twenty-five grand to the price. Which meant if the ringleaders had fifteen or more girls delivering babies, they could be grossing more than a million a year.
Not too shabby.
She tapped her fingers on the desk again. She wouldn’t be surprised if some couples paid more than a hundred thousand for a baby.
By the time she finished reading, it was nearly three in the morning. She printed out the articles. She would go through them again tomorrow. As she got ready for bed, it occurred to her she hadn’t heard from Jimmy.
Chapter 45
“Ellie Foreman.”
“Georgia Davis.” It was barely eight in the morning, but Georgia was too wired to sleep. She had already downed two cups of coffee.
“Hey, Georgia. Good morning. Everything okay?”
“Yeah, you?” She forced herself to engage in the necessary conversational niceties. They were important to Foreman. “How’s Rachel?”
“When I hear from her, which is about once a quarter, she’s fine.” Ellie’s daughter was now in college, but Georgia had known Rachel before Foreman. Georgia had been the youth officer on the force, and Ellie’s teen daughter had needed some “guidance.”
“So how is he?” Ellie asked.
“How is who?”
“Don’t play coy. Jimmy told us he was taking you to dinner the other night.”
Georgia blinked. “He did.” An awkward silence followed.
“Well,” Ellie said after a few beats, “I guess that’s all I’m going to hear.”
Georgia kept her mouth shut.
Ellie cleared her throat. “So what can I do for you?”
“Ellie, I’m working on…a case, and I need to talk to a lawyer who handles adoptions. For couples who—live around here.”
“Around here?”
“You know, on the North Shore.”
“You mean couples who have money.”
“Would you happen to know someone like that?”
She laughed. “It would be hard not to. Know people with money, I mean.” She paused. “As for a lawyer, you’re in luck. The lawyer who handled my divorce handles adoptions too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. She gets them coming and going.” Another chuckle. “Actually, that’s not fair. She’s a good lawyer. I like her.”
“Can I call her?”
“Of course. Her name is Pam Huddleston. She has an office downtown, near the Daley Center. Plus a satellite office in Winnetka.”
“That’s convenient.”
“She thought so too. Oh—be prepared.”
“For what?”
“Pam doesn’t mince words. She’ll tell it to you straight. And she swears like a sailor.”
“I think I can handle it.” Georgia wrote down the number Foreman gave her. “Hey, thanks, Ellie. I owe you.”
“Okay. How about this?”
“Excuse me?”
Ellie’s voice went flat. “How about you remember that Jimmy Saclarides is one of Luke’s best friends?”
It sounded like a warning. Georgia ended the call.
Chapter 46
Pam Huddleston’s Winnetka law office occupied the first floor of a small building on Green Bay Road near Elm. In the waiting room Georgia took in the thick oriental rug, a coffee table with a fan of today’s papers, and a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Except for the vacant receptionist’s desk—their concession to the weekend, no doubt—it could have been someone’s living room.
She sat on an upholstered chair, listening to muted conversations floating out from two offices. The office door nearest the waiting room was open, revealing the profile of a man in a sweater-vest, sleeves on his blue shirt rolled up. He was on the phone, his feet kicked up on his desk. The door to the other office was open only a crack, but Georgia could hear a woman murmuring in hushed tones. She couldn’t hear the conversation, but she assumed it was Huddleston and that she was delivering bad news, until the mood was abruptly shattered by a raucous laugh.
Never assume.
The woman who emerged from the office five minutes later had short curly dark hair and ruby-red lipstick. She wore a beautifully tailored pants suit, subtle but expensive-looking jewelry, and stylish boots. Ellie hadn’t told her Pam Huddleston was so attractive. Georgia felt underdressed in her jeans and blazer.
“Hi, Georgia.” The lawyer extended her hand. “So nice to meet you.”
“Thanks for squeezing me in, Ms. Huddleston. Especially on a Saturday.”
“It’s Pam. Don’t mention it. I was up here.” She smiled. “Anyway, Ellie said I needed to see you ASAP.”
Georgia returned a cautious smile. The lawyer led her into her office.
The office matched her style, subtle but expensive. Oak desk. Executive chair, another oriental rug, nice bookcases, and two sculptures of women that looked vaguely African.
“So,” Huddleston said after she settled behind her desk. “Ellie said you were interested in adopting?”
“Well, not me personally.”
“Good. Because I don’t do them anymore.” She paused. “But I can refer you to someone who does.”
“That’s all right. I’m just looking for information.” Georgia tipped her head to the side. “Why did you stop?”
Huddleston shrugged. “The laws governing adoptions in Illinois changed a few years ago. I haven’t kept up.”
“How did you get into it?”
“It’s funny. I kind of fell into it. I would hear about someone who was looking for a baby. Then, as if by serendipity, a young pregnant woman would pop up.”
&nbs
p; “Pop up? From where?”
Huddleston smiled. “You’d be surprised…housekeepers…daughters of friends who get into trouble, people who wanted to know their babies, or their daughters’, or their nieces’ would be placed in a good home. Sometimes, a priest or rabbi would call me about one of his flock. It happens.”
“So you’d be the agent—the broker?”
“I was the lawyer who put the parties together.”
“And you’d do the paperwork?”
“Such that it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, as you know, selling babies is against the law. So there was never any contract. It was usually done on a handshake.”
“But money changed hands.”
“The would-be parents typically paid for the birth mother’s maternity expenses. Sometimes it even worked out.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means that the girl—the birth mother—could change her mind at any time. Happens a lot after a baby is born. Mom decides she wants to keep it.”
“Then what?”
Huddleston flashed her a rueful smile. “Then everyone is up shit creek. There’s really nothing anyone can do. That’s one of the reasons I don’t do them anymore. It’s too fucking emotional. But, like I said, I can refer you to someone who does.”
“That’s okay,” Georgia said. “I thought there were some bureaucratic procedures, too. Doesn’t Cook County get involved?”
“Sure. In every adoption, the parents file a petition. The birth mother has to consent; then the court does a cursory investigation. They appoint a guardian ad litem to make sure the baby is going to a good home. If everything’s kosher, an order of adoption is entered.”
“What if a couple was—or knew they would be—turned down?”
Huddleston frowned. “Meaning?”
“What if the couple was older, or same sex, or in some way more desperate for a baby than others? What if they were turned down from legally adopting?”
Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series) Page 13