What a dream. Where had he pulled that from? Frieda yet! And Hannah and Dena sliding into that canyon!
He lay still for a minute, blinking away the terrible sight, and then he got up—pale light scalloped the window shades’ bottoms—and went into the bathroom.
He hadn’t been up once during the night; a really good sleep. Except for that dream.
He went back into the bedroom, brought his watch over to one of the windows, squinted at it. Twenty to seven.
He got back into the warm bed, pulled the blankets up around him, and lay and thought, morning fresh.
Six identical boys—no, six very similar boys, maybe identical—lived in six different places, with six different mothers all the same age, and six different dead-by-violence fathers, all the same age, similar occupations. It wasn’t impossible; it was real, a fact. So it had to be dealt with, unraveled, understood.
Lying still and at ease, he let his mind float free. Boys. Mothers. Hannah’s breasts. Milk.
The perfect name for a baby…
Dear God, of course. It had to be.
He let it all come together…
Part of it, anyway.
It explained the grapefruit juice, and the way she’d rushed him out. The way she’d rushed the boy out too. Quick thinking, pretending his bare feet and no bathrobe were what worried her.
He lay there, hoping the rest of it would come. The main part, the Mengele part. But it didn’t.
Still, one step at a time…
He got up and showered and shaved, trimmed his mustache, combed his hair; took his pills, brushed his teeth, put in his bridge. Dressed and packed.
At twenty after seven he went into the kitchen. The maid Frances was there, and Bert Labowitz in shirt-sleeves, eating and reading. After the good-mornings he sat down across the table from Labowitz and said, “I have to go to Boston earlier than I thought. Can I go with you?”
“Sure,” Labowitz said. “I leave at five of.”
“That’s perfect. I have to make one phone call. Just to Lenox.”
“I’ll bet someone warned you about Dolly, the way she drives.”
“No, something came up.”
“You’ll enjoy the ride more with me.”
At a quarter of eight, in the library, he called Mrs. Curry.
“Hello?”
“Good morning, it’s Yakov Liebermann again. I hope I didn’t wake you.”
Silence. “I was up.”
“How is your son this morning?”
“I don’t know, he’s still sleeping.”
“That’s good. That’s the best thing, a lot of sleep. He doesn’t know he’s adopted, does he. That’s why you got nervous when I told him he has a twin.”
Silence.
“Don’t get nervous now, Mrs. Curry. I won’t tell him. As long as you want it a secret, I won’t say a word. Just tell me one thing, please. It’s very important. Did you get him from a woman named Frieda Maloney?”
Silence.
“You did, ja?”
“No! Just a minute.” The thump of the phone being put down, footsteps going away. Silence. Footsteps coming back. Softly: “Hello?”
“Yes?”
“We got him through an agency. In New York. It was a perfectly legal adoption.”
“The Rush-Gaddis Agency?”
“Yes!”
“She worked there from 1960 to 1963. Frieda Maloney.”
“I never heard the name before! Why are you butting in this way? What difference does it make if he does have a twin?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Then don’t bother me again! And don’t come near Jack!” The phone clicked. Silence.
Bert Labowitz drove him to Logan Airport and he caught the nine-o’clock shuttle to New York.
At ten-forty he was in the office of the assistant executive director of the Rush-Gaddis Adoption Agency, a lean and handsome gray-haired woman, Mrs. Teague. “None at all,” she told him.
“None?”
“None. She wasn’t a caseworker; she wasn’t qualified for that. She was a file clerk. Of course, her lawyer, when she was fighting extradition, wanted to present her in the most favorable light, so he implied that she played a more important role here than she actually did; but she was simply a file clerk. We notified the government lawyers—we were very anxious, naturally, to have our association with her put in its true perspective—and our head of personnel was subpoenaed as a witness. She was never called on to testify, though. We considered issuing some sort of statement or press release afterwards, but we decided that at that point it was better simply to let the matter fade away.”
“So she didn’t find homes for babies.” Liebermann pulled at his ear.
“Not a one,” Mrs. Teague said. She smiled at him. “And you have the shoe on the wrong foot: it’s a question of finding babies for homes; the demand far exceeds the supply. Especially since the change in the abortion laws. We’re able to help only a small fraction of the people who apply to us.”
“Then too? In 1960 to ’63?”
“Then and always, but it’s at its worst right now.”
“A lot of applications?”
“Over thirty thousand last year. From every part of the country. Of the continent, in fact.”
“Let me ask you this,” Liebermann said. “A couple comes to you, or writes to you, in that period, 1961, ’62. Good people, fairly well-off. He’s a civil servant, steady job. She’s—now let me think a second—she…is about twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and he’s fifty-two. What chance is there for them to get a baby from you?”
“None whatsoever,” Mrs. Teague said. “We don’t place where the husband’s that old. Forty-five is our cut-off, and we’ll only go that high if there are special factors involved. We place mostly with couples in their early thirties—old enough to be stable in their marriage and young enough to assure the child of continuing parental presence. Or the likelihood of it, I should say.”
“So where would a couple like that get a baby?”
“Not from Rush-Gaddis. There are agencies a bit more flexible. And of course there’s the gray market. Their lawyer or doctor might know of a pregnant teen-ager who doesn’t want to abort. Or who can be paid not to.”
“But if they came to you, you turned them down.”
“Yes. We’ve never placed with anyone over forty-five. There are thousands of more suitable couples, waiting and praying.”
“And the applications that were turned down,” Liebermann said, “they were filed maybe by Frieda Maloney?”
“By her or one of the other clerks,” Mrs. Teague said. “We keep all applications and correspondence for three years. It was five then, but now we’ve cut it down; we’re short of space.”
“Thank you.” Liebermann stood up with his briefcase. “You helped me very much. I’m grateful to you.”
At a telephone mini-booth across the street from the Guggenheim Museum, with his suitcase and briefcase on the sidewalk beside him, he called Mr. Goldwasser at the lecture bureau.
“I have some very bad news. I have to go to Germany.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“You can’t! You’re at Boston University tonight! Where are you?”
“In New York. And tonight I have to be on a plane.”
“You can’t be! You accepted the booking! They’ve sold the tickets! And tomorrow—”