Manhattan Lullaby (19 page)

“Ma, I don't think we should go looking for her. She could cause problems. You know.” Bradley wasn't sure how to put his fatherly feelings into words. They were still embryonic and he wasn't yet used to feeling them. But the overwhelming specter of Rogue having another parent out there who might also want him was filling him with dread.

Maxine, ever practical, knew that a situation once arisen has to be confronted. “We have to do it for the sake of the baby,” she said gently. “Think about it. One of these days, twenty years from now, he's going to walk into a bar—no, make that a library—meet a girl, and when she asks him what sign he was born under, what's he going to say, Bloomingdale's?”

Bradley knew she was right. He couldn't go on pretending that his son didn't have a mother, especially when the woman had information that would be vital to his child's life. “I guess you're right, Ma,” he agreed reluctantly. “But how do we find out where this Pauline McCormick lives?”

“We look her up in the phone book,” replied Maxine with excruciating simplicity, and went to get one.

There were several listings for McCormick, P. It was Bradley who picked out the most likely one.

“That's her,” he said to Maxine, running his finger below the name.

“How can you be so sure?”

“It's in Tribeca, Ma. That's definitely a pink hair area.”

Maxine thought that sounded reasonable enough. After all, Bradley had gone through a few hair colors himself when he was younger, so he would know about these things.

“Do you think we should call her?” he asked, his heart pounding, trepidation trickling through his veins like so much liquid amphetamine.

Maxine thought for a moment. “No, I think this requires a visit.”

“When do you think we should go and see her?” Bradley was thinking maybe next week or the week after. Sometime in the sweet by-and-by. Any time, in fact, except right now.

“Now,” replied Maxine, and before he could protest she was on her way to get her coat.

It all happened so fast that he and Maxine and the baby were standing outside the door of Joyce and Harry's apartment before he knew where they were going.

Joyce opened the door.

“You're sure you don't mind?” asked Bradley's mother, passing his son over to his stepmother.

“Like I said on the phone, it's no problem,” replied Joyce, receiving the baby and settling him in the curve of her arm.

“It'll only be for a couple of hours,” said Maxine. “Bradley and I have a little errand to run.”

“Fine. Take your time,” replied Joyce. “Rogue and I know how to get along. Don't we, baby?” Her voice went up a decibel or two and she pulled a funny face as she looked down at the scrunched up pink face in the blanket.

As they waited for the elevator to take them back downstairs, Bradley remarked to his mother that Joyce seemed to be putting on a little weight.

“That's married life,” explained Maxine matter-of-factly, though she didn't say
which
particular part of married life was responsible for Joyce's expanding waistline. She had already decided that if Joyce and Harry were going to go ahead with the pregnancy—and it looked as though they were—it was Harry's job to tell his son he was about to become a brother, not hers.

They took a cab down Seventh Avenue, past Houston Street and on down to Canal and lower, descending farther and farther into the lower reaches of the island. Maxine had never been “down here” before. It was a part of Manhattan that nice Jewish girls of her generation avoided for the simple reason that there was nothing here to attract them. And, reflected Maxine as she stared out the window of the taxi at the ever-deteriorating view, if there was nothing there to attract them when they were young, there was even less when they got older. Or to put it another way, it was a lo-o-o-ong walk to Saks.

Finally, after hitting his thirty-second pothole of the journey—Maxine knew this because she had kept track—the driver let them off at the foot of Thomas Street.

Maxine got out of the cab, looked around and clutched her purse just a little more tightly under her left arm. With her other hand she grabbed hold of her son. In her mind there were all sorts of dubious lifeforms lurking in the alleys and the doorways they would have to pass to reach their destination. And she wasn't about to take any chances. She wanted to survive her visit to New York's netherworld with both kid and credit cards intact.

“Definitely a pink hair area,” she said to her son. And then, screwing up her courage, “Come on.” She started off down the street in the direction of what looked like a group of decrepit warehouses.

When they got to the right one, or rather the one with the right address, since none of these buildings could have been described as being even remotely “right” in any other sense of the word, Maxine took a deep breath, and being careful to keep her gloves on, cautiously reached up a finger and pushed a buzzer that looked like it had already been the victim of several thousand ungloved and grimy hands.

Bradley hung back, still unconvinced that this was the right or even the safe thing to do.

“Maybe nobody's home,” he urged hopefully, tugging at his mother's arm as she went to push the buzzer one more time.

But before she could reach it, a voice crackled over the intercom. “Who's there?”

“It's Maxine Kraft,” said Maxine, leaning close to the intercom but being careful not to inhale just in case any germs were lingering from whomever had last leaned this way.

There was a pause before the voice responded with a guarded, “So?”

This threw Maxine for a second. “My son and I would like to talk to you.”

Again there was a pause. “What about?” asked the voice with more than a hint of suspicion.

“Ah … It's about Rogue.” It was the first time Maxine had willingly said the name out loud, and she made the sacrifice only now for the sake of expediency. If whoever was on the other end of the intercom knew anything about a certain baby, then this was the way to establish their connection. If not, then it was better to establish that now, while they were still outside and capable of beating a hasty retreat.

But a few seconds later the bleat of the door buzzer signaled that the disembodied voice did indeed know someone named Rogue.

“Well, come on,” said Maxine, sounding much braver than she felt. Anything could be on the other side of that door. Drug addicts, pimps, thieves, mice!

They went through the decaying, peeling door with its pollution-encrusted pane of glass, over the crumbling, sagging threshold and—into another world.

Maxine, though she may have suspected many things lay beyond the door, had not expected this hidden display of opulence. But she was not reassured. In fact, she was immediately on the alert.

“Look at this place,” she whispered sotto voce to her son.

“Yeah, isn't it great!” cried Bradley, who had suddenly gained a whole new respect for the woman with the pink hair.

“Shush!” warned Maxine as they began to climb the stairs. She was sure now that there were videocameras and microphones hidden nearby to keep an eye on the comings and goings and whisperings of those who had witnessed the glories of this Manhattan version of Ali Baba's cave. “There's something wrong here.”

“Wrong? What's wrong? This place is fantastic!”

“That's what's wrong. Fantastic places do not get hidden away inside derelict old warehouses. It defeats the point. Whoever owns this place is trying to hide something.”

“Ma, come on. Maybe they just like it this way.”

“Nobody in their right mind would like living this way in
this
area. If they like living this way, they should be living uptown where they can be in
Architectural Digest
. Unless they're up to something.” She ran her hand over the expensive carved banister. “Drug money,” she mouthed the words to her son and nodded once to reinforce her point.

“Oh, Ma …”

They reached the top of the stairs, and Maxine was beginning to wish that she had let Bradley talk her out of coming here after all. A simple telephone call would have been enough. And, if a meeting had been necessary, a nice crowded public place—say, the third floor of Lord and Taylor's during the pre-Christmas sale—would have been a much better choice than this.

Before they could even knock at the door at the top of the stairs, it opened with just enough of a creak that the hairs on Maxine's neck stood up in spite of her turtleneck sweater. And the hairs stayed at attention when she saw that standing a few steps inside the doorway was a tall, muscular woman with short-cropped black hair. She was wearing a man's white undershirt with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of black leather jeans, and cowboy boots with spurs.

“I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” murmured Bradley.

“Shut up,” hissed Maxine at the same time as she was smiling her hello to the woman with the spurs.

“Come in,” said the woman. And without smiling back she moved aside so they could both enter.

Bradley and Maxine sidled past her into the luxe interior of the loft. Neither one of them had any idea who this woman was, but neither one of them was about to challenge her right to be there—or anywhere else, for that matter.

Maxine spoke first. “We are looking for Pauline McCormick,” she said with more authority than she actually felt.

“Yeah,” said the woman and turned and walked over to the area that evidently served as a living room. Maxine deduced this because although the loft contained no interior walls, the furniture was grouped in the traditional manner. A bed was paired with night tables further down the open space and here, couches and chairs were mixed in with coffee tables, speakers, guitars and keyboards.

“You're a musician!” cried Maxine, her voice displaying a note of relief because she could now account for both the location of the loft, the look of the woman and the luxury of the surroundings without having to ascribe criminal activity to any or all of the above—a circumstance that made her personal safety quotient soar to the highest level it had been since they had passed Herald Square.

“I know who I am. What I don't know is who you are,” replied the woman aggressively as she took out a cigarette from the pack that had been rolled up in one short white sleeve.

“I'm Maxine Kraft, and this is my—”

“Yeah, we did that number already,” Paulie let out half a dozen perfect smoke rings in quick succession. “What I meant was,
who
the hell are you and what's this got to do with Rogue?”

Maxine waved an errant smoke ring away from her face. “My son—Bradley—is the father of a baby named Rogue. We found an American Express receipt.”

Paulie nodded. “Oh yeah? I get it. Luba left the receipt in the bag when she took the kid to the synagogue. So much for keeping it anonymous. Jeez!” Paulie shook her head in amazement. “You know, she may have looks. She may even have talent. But sometimes when I look at her I can see that even though the lights are on, there's nobody home. You know what I mean?” She took another deep drag on the cigarette and gave Bradley the once-over. “So you're the father, eh?” was all she said.

Bradley wasn't sure if he had just been insulted or not, and if he had been, what he planned to do about it since this woman looked like she could quite easily reduce him to a series of compound fractures without knocking the ash off the end of her cigarette. He decided not to pursue her opinion of his paternity.

Maxine picked up the slack. “He is the father, and Pauline McCormick is the mother. We'd like to see her. Is she in?”

“Yeah, she's in,” said Paulie, who was beginning to enjoy her little game of cat and mouse with these two, who looked so straight they could be used as a level. “But she's not the mother.”

“But the receipt …”

“
I'm
Pauline McCormick. And believe me, the only thing I ever gave birth to was an album. You want Luba. She's the mother, but she's out shooting right now.”

“I told you,” whispered Maxine out of the side of her mouth. “Probably holding up a bank.”

“She's an actress. She's got a role in this picture,
Witches of Wall Street
,” continued Paulie, who may or may not have heard what Maxine had said.

“Who are you, then?” asked Bradley, who was trying to get a better picture of what was going on here and just who his baby's mother was.

“I was the father before you,” replied Paulie, a little ironic grin playing at the corners of her mouth.

“Oh,” was all Bradley could think of to say. He thought he had a pretty good picture now of what was going on. He felt his face begin to tinge with red.

“So how's the kid?” inquired Paulie.

“The baby's just fine … now,” answered Maxine.

Paulie picked up on the “now.” “Now? What happened to him?”

“I had to take him to the hospital,” said Bradley.

“That's why we're here,” added Maxine.

Paulie looked from one to the other and shrugged. “I don't have a medical plan. But if you need some money …”

“No, no, it's not that. We need to get some information about the baby. Birth weight, age, medical history.” Maxine ticked off the list on the end of her still-gloved fingers.

“And we need his birth certificate,” added Bradley, “for when he goes to school.”

“School? You uptown types like to plan ahead, don't you?” Paulie laughed and relaxed a little. Her initial thought when she heard Maxine mention Rogue over the intercom was that they wanted to give the baby back, so she had decided to play dumb. She knew that Luba didn't want the baby back. And had in fact signed a three-picture deal with TriStar only yesterday. The kid's acting career was starting to take off. Probably because she had done what Paulie said and let her white-picket-fence side show through. With the right handling she could go far as the next Little Miss Middle America, especially now she had got rid of the pink hair, the mesh stockings and the army boots.