"Uncle Nathan," Abby began again, "I'm trying to find my daughter, the one I gave up for adoption. This man is Lou Mason. He's a friend of mine and he's helping me."
"What's that got to do with me? I don't know nothing about that." The little man sat with his arms crossed, his eyes darting back and forth between Mason and the whiskey bottle.
Abby said, "You helped with the adoption. I only want to know who you dealt with, who made the arrangements. Please, Uncle Nathan. It's very important."
"I don't know nothing about any of that. I can't help you," he said.
"Mr. Ruben," Mason said. "You can talk to us or you can talk to the police. We know that your niece's baby was adopted illegally. We know that you were involved. Selling babies is a felony. You can spend the rest of your life living here with your cat and your booze or you can go to jail. Tell us what we want to know and we'll leave you alone."
Mason didn't know any of that, but he ran the bluff to shake up Nathan, convinced that Nathan was immune to Abby's softer approach. Nathan reached for the bottle of scotch, but Mason beat him to it.
"It's not time for your bottle yet, Nathan," Mason said.
"Gimme that!" Nathan said, coming off the sofa and reaching for the bottle.
Mason pressed his hand against Nathan's chest, pushing him back on the sofa. Nathan turned to Abby. "This is how you repay me? You bring this schmuck into my house to beat me up! I'm an old man and you let him beat me up!"
Abby was saucer-eyed, caught between Mason's unexpected harshness and her instinctive sympathy for her uncle in spite of their past. "Lou! Please! It's okay, Uncle Nathan. No one is going to beat you up and no one is going to call the police. Just help us. Please."
Mason stood over Nathan, invoking a silent threat. "Tell your friend to get outta my house or I'm not telling nobody nothing," Nathan said, casting a defiant glare at Mason.
Abby looked at Mason, her eyes pleading. "Fine," Mason said, putting the bottle down. "I'll be in the car."
Abby emerged half an hour later, her eyes red, her cheeks puffy. She slid into the car, closed the door, and turned on Mason.
"You were awful to him! How could you have been so awful?"
"Abby, he's an awful little man. He wasn't going to give us anything unless I shook him up. What did he tell you?"
Abby's eyes filled again. "He is an awful man. He sold my baby because he needed the money. He started crying when he finally told me, but that made it worse for me. He was crying for himself, not for me."
Mason took Abby in his arms. "Did he give you a name?"
Abby shook her head, sitting up and wiping her nose. "No. He said it was a man he met when he was going through the hospital's alcohol treatment program before I even came to St. Louis. The man was a social worker who approached Nathan when he saw the two of us check into the hospital. Nathan didn't remember his name, only that he dressed like a hippy. It's not much to go on, but that's all he remembers except for the money."
"How much?" Mason asked.
Abby clenched her jaw. "Five hundred dollars," she said, "for my baby."
Chapter 26
"Hospitals are where the future is fought over," Abby said. "A nurse on the maternity ward told me that when I was in labor. She said that maternity was the only place where they fought to live because that's where the babies were born. Everyone else was fighting not to die."
They were standing in the lobby of the Caulfield Medical Center studying the directory for the location of the medical records department that was scheduled to open at eight o'clock. The lobby was already crowded with doctors, staff, and visitors, who swirled past them, confident of their destinations. Like all hospitals, it smelled of disinfectant. Mason wrinkled his nose, preferring the lingering tang of smoke and beer that drifted into his office from Blues on Broadway.
"Room B-23," Mason read aloud. "That's in the basement."
They were fifteen minutes early. Abby had been awake since five, tossing restlessly, finally shaking Mason at six.
"I hope it's Jordan," she said. "I mean, I know it's a long shot and it would probably cause more problems than it solves, but I hope Jordan is my daughter."
Mason knew that nothing plays with you more than hope. The sliver of daylight left by the long odds of a dark prognosis. The guarantee of salvation that can't be cashed in this lifetime. The promise of love. Mason knew the truth about hope. That it was a tricky thing people stretched well past specifications, sticking its square peg into too many round holes, forcing it to fit until the peg splintered and the hole snapped shut. He knew that, but wouldn't say it, letting Abby hope a while longer.
The medical records department was across from the elevator. Instead of a door, there was a long white customer counter, furnished with a bell to ring for service and authorization forms for patients to sign permitting the hospital to release their records. The only thing the department was missing was someone to answer the bell, accept the authorization forms, and retrieve the records.
Mason often had to obtain a client's medical records, and used a standard authorization form that hospitals accepted. He'd had Jordan sign one authorizing the release of her records to him before they left Kansas City. Abby filled out one of the hospital's forms requesting her records, clutching it as she paced the empty hallway, the sound of her footsteps absorbed by the carpet, the persistent overhead paging of doctors interrupting their thoughts.
Mason leaned against the counter, watching her, wondering what it was like to reach back into the past and find a piece of yourself. His parents had been killed in a car wreck when he was three, bequeathing him memories that were now little more than vapor. Without the pictures Claire had kept in their house while he was growing up, he doubted he would have remembered what they looked like.
As if sensing his thoughts, Abby said, "You know, it's funny. I remember my labor. It was awful. I kept asking for more drugs. I remember delivery and feeling like my insides were falling out every time I pushed. I remember holding my baby for a few minutes after she was born, before the nurses took her away. But I don't remember her face. How do you forget something like that?"
Mason didn't answer because he didn't know, though he suspected that memory sometimes protected people from remembering. A clerk appeared at the medical records counter. Mason checked his watch. It was exactly eight o'clock. He motioned to Abby, who had slipped back in her memories, searching for a face.
"Can I help you?" the clerk asked.
He was a slender, middle-aged man with dull eyes who asked his question with an uncertain voice, suggesting that he didn't think so. He wore a photo ID badge around his neck identifying him as Gene. Mason had worse luck with bureaucrats, private and public, than he had with women and bad guys. He was convinced they had a secret web site where they posted his picture under the heading Make Him Beg. Mason decided to make Gene his friend, figuring Gene was the kind of guy who needed one.
"You bet, Gene," Mason said. "We need some medical records." Mason and Abby handed him their authorizations.
"ID?" Gene asked them.
"Absolutely," Mason said, "glad you asked. Can't be too careful, huh?"
Gene carefully studied their driver's licenses. "It's the rules," Gene said. "Patient Social Security numbers?" he asked. "That's how we search for the records," he explained, pointing to the computer terminal behind the counter.
"They're on the authorizations," Mason said, forcing his smile to stay on duty, deciding that Gene would probably ask his own mother for her ID and Social Security number.
Gene ignored Mason's goodwill, sitting down at the computer, his back to them. He disappeared a few moments later, returning with a thin file of papers he handed to Mason.