Fassler held Frieda Maloney’s shoulder, kissed her cheek, and backed her into the corner, speaking softly. She was gone behind his bigness.
Liebermann cleared his throat and sat down, drew the chair in to the table.
He had seen what photographs had shown: an ordinary-looking middle-aged woman. On the small side, graying hair combed up at the sides, curls on top. Gray-white unhealthy skin, a wide jaw, a disappointed mouth. Eyes that were tired but resolute, a lighter blue than the prison dress. She might have been an overworked chambermaid or waitress. Some day, he thought, I would like to meet a monster who looks like a monster.
He held the table’s thick wood edge and tried to hear what Fassler was saying.
They were coming to the table.
He looked at Frieda Maloney, and she—as Fassler drew back the chair opposite—looked at him, the blue eyes measuring, the thin-lipped mouth down-drawn. She nodded, sitting.
He nodded back.
She flicked a thanking smile toward Fassler, and with her elbows on the chair arms, tapped with the flats of her fingers at the table edge, one hand’s fingers and then the other’s, fairly quickly; then stopped and let them rest there, looking at them.
Liebermann looked at them too.
“It’s now exactly”—Fassler, seated at Liebermann’s right, studied the watch on his raised wrist—“twenty-five of twelve.” He looked at Liebermann.
Liebermann looked at Frieda Maloney.
She looked at him. Her thin eyebrows arched.
He found he couldn’t speak. No breath was in him; only hatred. His heart pounded.
Frieda Maloney sucked at her lower lip, glanced toward Fassler, looked at Liebermann again; said, “I don’t mind talking about the baby business. I made a lot of people very happy. It’s nothing I’m ashamed of.” She had a soft South German accent; easier to listen to than Fassler’s Düsseldorf rasping. “And as far as the Comrades Organization is concerned,” she said contemptuously, “they’re no comrades of mine any more. If they were, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I’d be down in Sowze Amayrica”—her eyes widened—“living zee good life.” She put a hand above her head and snapped her fingers, swaying her torso in mock-Latin rhythm.
“The best thing, I think,” Fassler said to her, “would be for you to tell everything as you told it to me.” He looked at Liebermann. “And then you can ask whatever questions you want. As time allows. You agree?”
Breath came back. “Yes,” Liebermann said. “Provided time does allow for questions.”
“You aren’t really going to count minutes, are you?” Frieda Maloney asked Fassler.
“I certainly am,” he said. “An agreement is an agreement.” And to Liebermann, “There’ll be enough time, don’t worry.” He looked at Frieda Maloney and nodded.
She folded her hands on the table, looked at Liebermann. “A man from the Organization got in touch with me,” she said. “In 1960, in the spring. An uncle of mine in Argentina told them about me. He’s dead now. They wanted me to get a job with an adoption agency. Alois—the man, that is—had a list of three or four of them. Any one would be all right as long as it was a job where I could look at the files. ‘Alois’ was the only name he ever gave me, no last name. Over seventy, white-haired; an old-soldier-type with very straight posture.” Her eyes questioned Liebermann.
He gave no response, and she sat back in her chair and examined her fingernails. “I went to all the places,” she said. “There were no openings. But after the summer Rush-Gaddis called me in, and they hired me. As a file clerk.” She smiled musingly. “My husband thought I was crazy, taking a job in Manhattan. I was working then at a high school only eleven blocks from home. I told him that they promised me at Rush-Gaddis that in a—”
“Just the essentials, yes?” Fassler said.
Frieda Maloney frowned, nodded. “So. Rush-Gaddis.” She looked at Liebermann. “What I did there was go through the mail and the files looking for applications where the husband was born between 1908 and 1912 and the wife between 1931 and 1935. The husband had to have a job in the civil service, and both of them had to be white Christians with a Nordic background. This was what Alois told me. Whenever I found one, and that was only once or twice a month, I copied it on the machine there along with all the letters between the couple and Rush-Gaddis. These were only people who hadn’t been given babies, of course. Two sets I made, one for Alois and one for me. The ones for him I mailed to a box-number he gave me.”
“Where?” Liebermann asked.
“Right there in Manhattan. The Planetarium Station, on the West Side. I kept doing that, looking for the right kind of applications and mailing them, the whole time I was there. After a year or so it got even harder to find them, because I’d been through the files by then and only had the new applications to look at. The civil-service part was changed then; as long as the job was like civil service it was all right. Something where the man was with a big organization and had some authority; an insurance company claim adjuster, for instance. So I had to go through the files again. Altogether I must have mailed off forty or forty-five applications in the three years. Copies of applications.”
She leaned forward and took one of the paper-wrapped glasses from the tray, turned it in her hands. “Between…oh, Christmas 1960 and the end of summer 1963, which is when it ended and I left, this is what would happen. Alois or another man, Willi, would call me. Usually Willi. He’d say, ‘See if…“the Smiths” in California want one in March.’ Or whatever month, usually two months away. ‘Ask “the Browns” in New Jersey too.’ Maybe he’d give me three names.” She looked at Liebermann, explained: “People whose applications I mailed before.”
He nodded.
“So. I would call the Smiths and the Browns.” She picked the wrapper-top out of the mouth of the glass. “A former neighbor of theirs told me they wanted a baby, I would say. Were they still interested? Almost always they were.” She looked challengingly at Liebermann. “Not just interested. Overjoyed. The women especially.” She gathered the wrapper into her hand, pushing the glass out bit by bit. “I told them I could get them one, a healthy white infant a few weeks old, in March or whenever. With New York State adoption papers. But first they had to send me as soon as possible complete medical reports—I gave them Alois’s box-number—and they’d also have to agree never to tell the child it was adopted. The mother insisted on that, I said. And of course they’d have to pay me something when they came and got the baby, if they got it. A thousand usually, sometimes more if they could afford it. I could tell from the application. Enough so it would seem like an ordinary black-market arrangement.”
She put the crushed wrapper on the tray and lifted the stopper from the carafe. “A few weeks later I’d get another call. ‘Smith is no good. Brown can have it on March fifteenth.’ Or maybe—” She tipped the carafe over the glass, tipped it farther; nothing came out. “Typical,” she said, turning the black carafe upside down. “Typical of the way this whole damn place is run! Wrapped glasses but no water in the damn bottle! God!” She slammed the carafe down onto the tray; wrapped glasses jumped.
Fassler stood up. “I’ll get some,” he said, taking the carafe. “You go on.” He went away toward the door.
Frieda Maloney said to Liebermann, “I could tell you things about the gross ineptness here…God! So. Yes. He tells me who gets the baby and when. Or maybe both couples are good, so he tells me to call the second and tell them it’s too late for this one but I know another girl who’s expecting in June.” She rolled the glass between her palms, her lips pursed. “On the night a baby was given,” she said, “everything was worked out very carefully in advance. By Alois or Willi and me, and by me and the couple. I would be in a room at the Howard Johnson Motel at the airport, Kennedy now—it was Idlewild then—using the name Elizabeth Gregory. The baby was brought to me, by a young couple or a woman alone or sometimes a stewardess. Some of them brought more than one—at different times, I mean—but usually it was someone new each time. They brought the papers too. Exactly like real ones, with the couple’s names filled in. An hour or two later the couple would come and get the baby. Joyously. Grateful to me.” She looked at Liebermann. “Nice people who would be good parents. They would pay me, and promise—I made them swear on the Bible there—never to tell the boy he was adopted. They were always boys. Darlings. And they would take them and go.”