Flowering Judas (42 page)

“Any sixty-year-old woman who sleeps in her car when she's got family she gets along with who want to take care of her
is
a complete idiot. How long before you get here?”

“Fifteen minutes. You're a very unusual man, Mr. Demarkian.”

“My wife says the same thing, but she's usually got a different inflection in her voice.”

Penny London hung up.

Gregor put his phone down on Howard Androcoelho's desk. “Who do we talk to to get a rundown of the history of Althy Michaelman with—what's it called here? Child Protective Services?”

Howard Androcoelho was sitting behind his desk, looking deflated and more than a little worried. Now he looked startled. “Here it is Children and Family Services, OCFS. But they won't talk to us. They can't. Everything they do is supposed to be confidential.”

“They'll talk to us if what's involved is the murder of a child,” Gregor said. “We've got the skeleton of an infant with its skull cracked. That's the murder of a child.”

“But what does that have to do with Althy Michaelman? What does any of this have to do with Chester Morton? I don't understand what's going on in here.”

“Well, I'll clear up the Chester Morton thing in about an hour,” Gregor said. “I just want to put a few things together first. But as for Althy Michaelman—Chester Morton said he was going to buy a baby. I think we've got everybody agreed on that, right?”

“Yes, right, absolutely.”

“Good,” Gregor said. “Well, Haydee Michaelman, Althy Michaelman's daughter, takes a composition class from a woman named Penelope London.”

“I remember Dr. London,” Howard said. “She taught the class Chester Morton was taking back twelve years ago, too. She was teaching farther back than that—”

“Yes, I know,” Gregor said. “And she's the one who witnessed the fight between Kyle Holborn and Chester Morton the last night anybody will admit to seeing Chester Morton alive and around here. I'm going to get back to that in a bit. But as to Althy Michaelman—Haydee wrote a series of essays and journal entries for Penny London's class, and in them she wrote about how her mother had her first child at sixteen. She also wrote about being taken into foster care when she was six. It was a terrifying experience for her because her baby brother had been taken away only a little time before, and she had other brothers who had been taken away and never allowed to come home again.”

“Yeah,” Howard said. “Okay. That sounds about right. Althy dropped out of high school our junior year because she was pregnant.”

“It's all those kids being taken into foster care I'm thinking about,” Gregor said.

“With a woman like Althy? Why? She was a raging alcoholic. She couldn't stay in work. She did a fair amount of low-level drugs. She's the kind of person OCFS spends a lot of time involving themselves with.”

“I agree. But I don't think that's what happened this time. I think Althy Michaelman sold those babies. Every single one of them.”

“She didn't sell Haydee,” Howard said. “If Althy was selling babies, why would she keep just that one?”

“My guess is that she was in jail,” Gregor said. “That's something else I wanted you to look up. Did Althy Michaelman have a record, did she spend any significant time in jail. By which I mean more than eighteen months.”

“Why more than eighteen months?”

“Because,” Gregor said, “if you're going to sell babies, you've got to sell
babies
. That's the point. It's difficult to find a white infant to adopt. If the respective adopting parents have anything at all about them that the social service agencies don't like, there's no chance. And that tends to mean that older couples and same-sex couples get the choice of an older child or nothing at all.”

“Well,” Howard went, “okay. I've heard about that kind of thing. But if she was doing that, shouldn't she have had a lot more money? Didn't I see a
Dateline
report on that where these fancy-ass lawyers were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get hold of infants?”

“They wouldn't be interested in getting hold of one from somebody like Althy Michaelman,” Gregor said. “People of the kind you're talking about are very careful about this kind of thing. They're not going to want an infant who's been exposed to alcohol and tobacco in the womb, and Althy smoked, drank, and did everything else unhealthy for a developing fetus. Althy would have been dealing with people with far less money. I still think she could probably have charged around, say, ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand dollars,” Howard said. “You think Chester Morton bought an infant for ten thousand dollars. Where do you think he was going to
get
ten thousand dollars?”

“He got it from the same place he got the rest of his money,” Gregor said. “He stole it from his mother. Well, you know, from the family firm. But I've met Charlene Morton. She'd have considered it stealing from her, personally.”

“This is nuts.”

“I agree. A lot of this is completely nuts,” Gregor said. “But let's stick with Althy Michaelman now. I want to know if OCFS ever removed any other children from Althy's home and put them in foster care—any of them. I especially want to know if they removed an infant around the same time they removed Haydee around twelve years ago. You should be able to get them to tell you that. That's not confidential information, and we do have the skeleton to account for.”

“All right,” Howard said. “I get that. We can probably do that.”

“Then I want to find out if Althy Michaelman was in prison for about eighteen months or a little longer around eighteen years ago. I think that's about right. Haydee wrote that she was six when she was taken into foster care and she remembers just when because it was just after the police came and searched the trailer park because Chester Morton was missing. Six then, twelve years later, eighteen now. If she gave birth just before or just after going to prison, the baby would have been put into foster care until she was released—unless there was family? Did she have family to take the child?”

“It's the Michaelmans we're talking about here,” Howard Androcoelho said. “They're all like that, except maybe this young one. Althy walked out on her mother when she was pregnant the first time and never looked back. God only knows who her father was. But Mr. Demarkian, I don't get it. If Althy had had all these children taken away by Child Protective Services, why would they have given Haydee back when Althy got out of prison, if she ever was in prison?”

“I don't think Althy did have a lot of business with Children and Family Services,” Gregor said. “Remember? I think she just said she did, to cover the fact that she was selling the infants.”

“Then why didn't she sell Haydee?”

“Because,” Gregor said, “Haydee would have been too old. If Althy went in to prison about the time she gave birth or very soon afterward, and if she stayed there a year and a half or more, she wouldn't have had time to sell the infant before she was incarcerated and the child would have been past the point where people would pay for it when she got out. So there was Haydee. And Althy was stuck with her.”

“Honest to God,” Howard said.

“Go find out the stuff I want,” Gregor said. “I want to commandeer your office for about an hour. I promise to use my own cell phone and not touch any of your papers. Find out if OCFS has any record of removing children other than Haydee from Althy Michaelman's care. Find out if Althy Michaelman was in prison eighteen years ago. Get the stuff Penny London is bringing in in the next half hour or so and give it to me. Then get Darvelle Haymes and Kyle Holborn into a room for me. I'm going to yell at them.”

“Kyle Holborn? Officer Holborn?”

“That's what I said.”

“I hope you know what you're doing,” Howard said.

Gregor Demarkian knew exactly what he was doing, and he felt good doing it. In fact, he felt good for the first time since he'd arrived in Mattatuck, New York.

2

When Howard Androcoelho was finally out of sight and out of mind, Gregor had the urge to get going and get on with it: call Rhonda Alvarez at the FBI; call Ferris Cole and hear about the bodies. Instead, he reached for his phone and tried first Bennis, then Donna, then Fr. Tibor Kasparian, listening to that strange distant ringing all phones gave you in imitation of what was supposed to be happening on the other end. Of course, it wasn't what was happening on the other end. Bennis and Donna and Tibor all had ring tones they'd bought, little snatches of music, all kinds of things. Tibor's general ring tone was the theme from
Looney Tunes.
Gregor found himself wondering why phones could do all the things they did but not give you the ring tone the person you were calling would be hearing. It was a silly thought, useful for nothing. It was the kind of thing Gregor thought of when he was tired.

When Bennis did not pick up, and Donna after her, Gregor got worried. He had a leaden, sickened feeling that he had failed to check in when he ought to have. He imagined their phones on silent and the ringing going on and on and on, but mute, while old George passed away in a hospital bed while the one person he wanted to hear from was nowhere to be found.

On the other hand, Gregor did not know that he was the one person old George wanted to hear from. In fact, it was unlikely. Old George had family. But still.

Gregor didn't leave voice mail messages for Bennis or Donna. He didn't have to. Their phones would tell them they had missed a call from Gregor Demarkian. He thought he would leave a voice mail for Tibor if Tibor didn't pick up, but then, when the ringing had just begun to feel endless, it cut off, and Tibor said, “Krekor? This is you?”

Gregor took a deep breath and expelled it very slowly. He hadn't been aware that he'd been this tense until this moment.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, Tibor. This is me. I just wanted to check up on, you know, things. I feel like I haven't been checking in anywhere near enough.”

“You have been checking in constantly, Krekor. Bennis complains about it. You did not want to call Bennis this time?”

“I did call her,” Gregor said. “She didn't pick up. I called Donna, too. She didn't pick up, either.”

“They have left the baby with Lida and taken Tommy to the movies,” Tibor said. “Then they're going to take him to Chili's to eat. Maybe they're still in the movies.”

“Maybe they are,” Gregor said, feeling better.

“The movie is called
Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore,
” Tibor said. “I went with Grace and her friend who plays the violin the other night. It is a really terrible movie, but I liked it. The way I liked Jacqueline Susann. I felt sorry for the friend who plays the violin.”

“Why?”

“Because he is in love with Grace,” Tibor said, “and Grace is only pretending she is not in love with the doctor who is an intern at that hospital downtown. You can see the problem there.”

“Yes,” Gregor said, “I can definitely see the problem there. What about our problem? What about old George?”

“It is the same as the last time you called me,” Tibor said. “He drifts in and out, sort of, but he doesn't seem to be getting any worse. He just doesn't seem to be getting any better. He talks to people. He really isn't very confused except when they give him the pain pills—”

“Pain pills? He's in pain? Has he always been in pain?”

“Krekor, please,” Tibor said. “They've been giving him pain pills from the first day. You know about this. We have talked about it.”

“It's not a good idea, giving a man that age pills that depress his body functions. That's what pain pills do, after all. They—”

“They're not loading him up,” Tibor said. “They're giving him the lowest possible dose, in an attempt to keep him comfortable. And it seems to be working. He is comfortable. He is not fading. He is just there. I think maybe he is waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For his birthday,” Tibor said. “I have seen it in other old people, Krekor, it is not uncommon. They know they are dying and they are ready for it. They are not in that place some people are where they hate the idea and will do anything to fight it. But there is something they are waiting for. Something they want to do first. I think old George wants to wait until his birthday. I think he wants to be officially one hundred years old. And then. Well.”

“You think old George is dying,” Gregor said. His mouth felt very dry.

“Of course I think old George is dying,” Tibor said. “And so do you. And so do Martin and Angela. And so do the doctors. And so does old George, if it comes to that.”

“That's horrible.”

“No,” Tibor said. “What you are dealing with there,
that's
horrible. Murder. Torture. Rape. The things we do to cause each other pain. Those things are horrible. So are the diseases that make people die before they're ready. Cancer. But this is not horrible. This is a natural end of a human life on this earth.”

“I'm not convinced that there's any other life but the one on this earth.”

“I know, Krekor, but for me it is simpler. I am convinced. But either way, this is not horrible. This is the end of a long good life. You should go now and deal with the things that are horrible. Your murders were breaking news on CNN not twenty minutes ago.”

“Right,” Gregor said. “Of course they were. How do they do these things so fast?”

“They have local partners,” Tibor said promptly. “You hear them talk about it all the time. Go do some work, Gregor. You should come back for the birthday party if you can get here.”

“There's going to be a birthday party? For old George?”

“With a cake and those popper things that pop and then throw out streamers,” Tibor said. “Angela and Bennis and Donna and Lida and all the rest of them have been planning. And I think that the day after that will be the end.”