Yes, that was probably it. Just a New Age information packet.
A little cry emitted from upstairs. Donovon is awake, Mick thought happily as he skipped up the steps.
Nuzzling and feeding the little guy would get Mick’s mind off this needless worry. He hoped Luke would remain asleep though. Been a rough week for the little trooper.
As he neared the nursery he saw Luke sitting up in bed. “Donnie up, Daddy. Donnie crying.”
“I’ll get him. We’ll feed him together, little buddy, then we can read him a story.”
“Three blind mice?” Luke asked as Mick picked up the infant and held him close.
“No. No blind mice.”
Luke puffed out his practiced pout. “Please, Daddy. Blind mice?”
Mick had to laugh. “Fine, we’ll feed the baby and then I’ll read it, but just once.”
Luke snuggled under his covers. “You bring Luke a drink too?”
“Sure thing, buddy.”
Mick walked the baby downstairs to the kitchen and warmed his bottle while he got Luke a milk box from the fridge.
He looked into the infant’s big beautiful eyes. “I am a lucky man having you here. I’m so glad I found you. You and Luke are all that matters, not all this foolishness about Gloria and flunky PI Malone. Silly, silly, silly.”
He kissed Donovon’s smooth dark tan forehead and then took the bottle from the microwave.
“Let’s go read some stories, eh? Donnie?”
Mick had a spring in his step as he ascended the stairs to the nursery.
3.
Maison D’Espoir, Haiti, Very late evening
Martine opened the back gate, her feet blistered, dirt caked into the sores where the skin had been worn away and ripped off. Sweat poured into the torn ridges on her face where branches had slapped her as she ran for her life back to Maison D’Espoir. Once inside the compound, she leaned against the fence. Never did she think she would be so happy to be locked away in this place.
Dr. Tad’s home was about a hundred feet from the gate. A cottage no bigger than the one she lived in, but he had it all to himself. Everyone was asleep now. No one had seen her. The night guard was on the other side, watching the front. No one besides Dr. Tad knew she had left. No one would be peeking out their windows to see her now.
She ran to his door and took the key from under the mat. When she walked into his house she was startled to see Dr. Tad sitting on the couch.
He ran to her and hugged her. “Oh thank God you’re back. Thank God you’re all right.”
“Boni is dead.”
“How do you know? Look at your face! You’re all bloody.” He looked down at her feet. Blood and mud overflowed her sandals and stained his floor.
“Boni is dead. Did you hear me? The baby is gone too. Wild boars were eating Boni and the baby is gone. Those filthy animals,” she panted. “They must have run off with him.”
Tad put his head down. “I’m sorry. Come sit down.”
“I will soil it.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re not staying here long and we’re not bringing that sofa.” He brought her out a wet towel from his kitchen and began to gently wash her face. “The boars killed her?”
“Mr. Puglisi killed her. There was a bullet in her—a bullet to her head, here!” she pointed to the spot.
“Anyone, a thief might’ve—”
“No! She still had her Maison D’Espoir bag. A thief would have stolen it. Only Mr. Puglisi would leave that behind.”
Dr. Tad sighed. “Mick called and told me he had found Boni but I had no idea he killed her.”
“And her baby. He must have killed her baby too.”
“I’ve known Mick for so long and part of me always believed that deep down he had a heart.”
Tad sat on the couch and it was then that Martine noticed his hand. Fingers poked out from beyond the bandages and were swollen. “Ou byen?”
“Papi mal.” Not too bad. “I have a slight infection from when I cut myself on the gate. It’s under control. I’m taking antibiotics and keeping it clean.”
She reached for it but he pulled away. It must hurt a great deal, she thought.
“I just can’t believe Mick killed them,” Dr. Tad said.
“How can you not believe? He is a monster! He killed Luke. Why do you think he could not kill another child?”
Tad rubbed his arm. Martine knew if the pain had spread to his arm, the infection was not “under control” as he claimed. But for right now, she could not worry about that.
“When I was little, my father had some gambling problems.” She didn’t know why Dr. Tad was talking about his family at a time like this, but she did not interrupt. “After my mother died from cancer, my dad drank and gambled away his days. Saw more of his bookie than me.” He turned to her and explained that a bookie was a man who took wagers on all kinds of games and sometimes people bet more than they could afford.
He continued, “I didn’t even know Mick that well, just from the neighborhood. His dad was the bookie so I guess I knew him a little better than the other kids. Mick and I hung around the bar sometimes even though we were too young. I’d be waiting for my dad to come home, cringing when the football games on TV didn’t play out the way he’d wanted. When my dad lost, when any of the men lost and had to go home to their families and say they couldn’t pay the rent, Mick’s dad made money. Wasn’t Mick’s fault though, you know? He was just a kid. Couldn’t hate him for it.
“One night I was home waiting for my dad. He said if his team won this game, he’d buy me a new bike. I fell asleep watching TV, not knowing which team I was supposed to root for.”
“Doctor Tad, why are you telling me this now?” She did not need to hear stories now about little boys with shiny bicycles and parents who threw money away on gambling.
“Just let me finish please. It’s important. My dad never came home that night. Someone mugged him on the way home and beat him up very badly. They stole his money. He died the next day from injuries. I didn’t know what had happened or where to go. I had no other family and no one to take me in. Mick appeared at my door the day my father died to say he was sorry to hear of it. I hadn’t eaten in two days by then,” he said.
“Mick showed up with a meatball sandwich and a bottle of Coke. I was so grateful. We sat down and he told me again that he was sorry about my dad. He said it was important I knew that my dad was a winner and very proud that night, and that my father loved me very much. At least he died happy. Mick asked if I wanted to come home with him.
“So I did. Daddy Puglisi paid for a nice funeral and coffin and ordered an expensive headstone. He worked everything out with social services. Next thing I was living with them.
“I was raised by a Mafia family but they had morals. Different standards than you and me but they weren’t all bad. Maybe life didn’t hold as much value to them as it does to others but they had their own code of ethics. Being raised side by side with Mick and knowing how he rescued me, I’m just surprised about all this killing.”
“You do not believe he kills?”
“Of course I do. He’s killed lots of people without a second thought. But not kids. I’ve never gotten over what he did to Luke, and to know he killed another infant makes me wonder.”
“Maybe your father did not win that night. Maybe he lost again and Mr. Puglisi’s father is the one who killed him.”
“What?”
“Maybe Mr. Puglisi felt guilty maybe because his own father made you an orphan.”
“No, he died a winner.” Dr. Tad’s eyes filled with tears. She had given him a version he hadn’t wanted. But she could see he had thought it before.
“How do you know? Maybe there was no money found on him because there was no money. He lost again and could not pay and they beat him up. And he died.”
“Then why would Mick say that? Why would he lie?” Not a question so much as begging for an answer that might convince him. An answer that would let him b
elieve a truth no longer true to him.
“To make his father a hero instead of a monster. To take away the guilt he felt for being the son of such a man. Mr. Mick Puglisi is not a good man. That is how you see him because you think he saved you, but he is not that way. Maybe he brought you a sandwich and a cold drink. Maybe he gave you a warm bed. But that did not bring your father back, did it? Mr. Puglisi wears a mask. To the public he saves all the young Haitian girls and teaches them nursing and gives them a career. He is a hero.
“But we know he is not. Behind that mask is a man who uses us to make babies for money, and kills those who cannot give him babies. That is the man you look up to, the man you think saved you. And his father? He is the same I am sure.”
Dr. Tad got up from the couch and stared out the window into the darkness. Martine wanted to go to him but knew he needed to be alone with his mind for a few minutes.
“A few days before my father died, he came home with a broken arm. He said he fell but I wasn’t stupid. I knew he’d been on a losing streak. I heard him on the phone to someone begging. Crying. ‘Please, I have a son. I’ll do anything you want but don’t kill me. I’ll get the money.’ I never forgot that but when he died, when Mick showed up, I wanted to believe that my Dad had caught up. Had died a winner. Not died in disgrace, beaten to death for something as pointless as gambling. I couldn’t believe my father would be that stupid to let himself be killed, leaving me all alone.”
“People forget what they do not want to remember,” Martine said. “There is a lot I choose to forget, Doctor Tad. A lot I pretend never happened. It is how a person can get through life. There is no shame in that.” She approached him and softly placed her arms around his waist and rested her head on his chest.
“The truth was right there all that time but it took you to show me.” Dr. Tad said. With his good hand he lifted her face up to his.
He smiled at her. “You’re my family now and I can face what the Puglisis are. Mick is a monster as you say, and the sooner I admit that to myself, the better. We just have to wait it out a little longer, and then we can leave. The second that passport comes, we’ll go.”
“What about Boni?”
“Why don’t you tell Boris about her in the morning, explain where she is. He can arrange to have the body brought somewhere for a proper burial.”
“What are you going to do about Mr. Puglisi? Are you going to say something to him? Tell him that you know what he did? Tell him how you feel?” This is not a time for weakness. This is a time you to take action. Do something!
Dr. Tad stood up and weaved when he tried to walk. He closed his eyes tight and took shallow breaths. Something was very wrong with his arm. More than he admitted.
“When Mick told me he’d seen Boni, he said if I tried anything stupid, he’d kill you. So no, I’m not going to say anything to him. I’m going to pretend everything is fine and as soon as your package comes, we’ll leave. If we confront Mick, he’s liable to kill us both. Right now I need to rest.”
Without another word he went to bed.
Martine turned and limped out on her blisters toward her own cottage to wash off the grime and terror of the night.
4.
Highway, Florida, very late evening
Kurt looked over at Gloria, sound asleep, leaning against the window. He was relieved. This situation was so much deeper than either of them realized, and she needed a break from it.
This wasn’t just some low-level gambling operation or a prostitute ring the Puglisis were running. Not this time. This was a high-tech baby-making, baby-pawning ring. It couldn’t be kidnapping, because no way that many healthy white infants went missing. The kids on the charts were only days old. No hospital or parent would lose a child and not report it. Kurt’s best guess was that at Hope House they’d find some kind of baby farm, with a bunch of girls acting as surrogates. But who were the fathers? The Ganders hadn’t said anything about a surrogacy.
Kurt had heard about places like that, where girls were paid to have baby after baby, but he didn’t see how that was really profitable. If they were housed there the whole nine months, there was no way the Puglisis could generate enough product and profit to make it worth their while.
The girls couldn’t live somewhere else and give birth in Windy Key either. It wouldn’t be safe for them to travel so late in their pregnancies. Kurt was baffled. The Puglisis were about low overhead and high profit. There was nothing profitable about secretly hiring a surrogate to have a child and then lying to the adoptive parents. What if the surrogate changed her mind like that court battle back in the eighties? Baby M or something. No, it couldn’t be that.
As Kurt silently thought about and disproved scenario after scenario, he heard Gloria say something.
“What?”
“Where are we?”
“About halfway.”
She picked up her phone and started dialing.
“Who are you calling? It’s two in the morning.”
“Tommy. His wife will have to deal with it.”
Kurt almost asked her not to call Tommy but then realized it was because he felt jealous. It was their problem now. Their quest. It had nothing to do with Tommy anymore. But Kurt kept quiet. No place for egos at a time like this. Tommy was a lawyer and could probably help them access records Kurt couldn’t get.
The wife must have picked up first because Gloria said, “I’m sorry to call so late but could I speak to Tommy please?”
A minute later she said, “Tommy, I found something important.”
Kurt only heard one side of the conversation, what Gloria said.
“Yes I know how late it is but listen—
“No, listen. I got some files from the agency and you won’t believe it—It doesn’t matter how I got them, but the point is of the five I got, all the adoptive mothers had variations of my name. All of them. The biological mothers were from states all over the country but they all had the same street address. Eighty-three Cherokee Drive.”
Kurt watched her yell into the phone to her ex-husband. She had to force information on him. Not very receptive. Granted, it was a little hard to swallow.
“Yeah, Cherokee Drive. The street we grew up on.”
Gloria looked over at Kurt and nodded. “I think he’s starting to believe,” she mouthed.
“Not only that,” she said into the phone, “but all the children were born in the same place. Some clinic in Windy Key. Hope House.”
She looked down at her phone. “I’m out of battery. I’m not sure how much he heard. My charger is in my laptop case back at your apartment in Miami.”
“Well, it’s going to have to stay there with all the other stuff for right now. You can use my phone if you need to but just wait till tomorrow to call him back. We’ll know a lot more then.” He pointed to the cord dangling from the cigarette lighter. “My charger is here so we can use my phone for the rest of the trip.”
Chapter Seven
1.
Key West, Friday, February 10th, early morning
Gloria awoke suddenly when Kurt touched her shoulder. “We’re here. Come on, let’s go.”
She opened her eyes. Where is here?
She got out of the car and felt her joints crack. She’d been sitting for at least a couple of hours, tensed up, still scrunched tight in fear of being shot at again.
The air was warm and smelled like ocean and fried food. Small cottages in bold colors crowded the narrow street. Vehicles filled the one-car driveways. A disproportionate amount of old model VW Bugs. In the distance, she heard a band playing and someone singing a Jimmy Buffet song.
A couple of chickens ran in front the car. They stopped and squawked at Gloria, angry for the intrusion of headlights where they were trying to rest. Chickens? This was hardly farmland. She looked up at the small white cottage before them. It had a carport and a low black wrought iron fence. A funny looking tree took up most of the tiny front yard. The trunk looked like a mass of gnarled finger
s. The rest of the yard was taken up by a statue of a giant tuskless walrus.
“Where are we? In Wonderland?”
“Welcome to the Conch Republic.”
“Where?”
“Key West.” He pointed to the walrus. “It’s a manatee. It’s one of the state animals and a recurring theme around here.”
Kurt got his laptop and a duffel bag from his back seat. “Let’s go. My friend is expecting us.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s about three. But he’s up, it’s okay.”
Kurt knocked on the bright blue door.
“It’s open,” a tinny voice called from the inside.
Kurt opened the door and ushered Gloria inside. Before she saw anything, the scents of raspberry incense and warm brownies enveloped her. Till then she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She looked around and assessed the cute cottage. Small but cozy. She counted three Buddha statues in the first glance. A few ferns and aloe plants sat in pots on the dark pitted hardwood floor. Then she spotted the brownies in a plate on the coffee table. Without being too obvious she sidled closer to them while still taking in the atmosphere, sniffing the air as much as she could to hold her until she could sneak and scarf down a dessert.
Against the walls lay canvases with some kind of abstract art. Lots of them. None hanging. Their host was obviously an artist waiting to sell his wares. Gloria couldn’t make out what the pictures were of, but they were both sad and soothing at the same time. She couldn’t stop looking at one that was mostly hues of blue.
A very tall, skinny man, too tall for such a low-ceilinged house, got up off a loveseat that was covered with a tan sheet. His movement drew her attention away from the artwork. “Go ahead and have a brownie. I made them for you.”
She reached out and took the biggest one she could find. Sugar was something she really needed right now. Mmm, fudge heaven. These were not from a box; that was for sure.
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