“And we’re even more sure of that now than we were before,” said Nicoletti, including Kearny and Tranquillini in his remarks. “I’ve had men out digging. Pivarski was delivering plaster that day to a subdivision site down in Fremont. He delivered his last load there just in time to get out to Concord to Hawkley’s office, then down to the DKA office by about five-thirty. We checked on the deposit Simson made to the bank. They don’t log-in deposits, but they do have a rule that any deposit made after five o’clock is recorded as a transaction on the following banking day. The one Simson made on November fifth was recorded the following Monday — the eighth.”
“So where do I come in?” asked Delaney.
“I want you to meet Hawkley and Pivarski at the Golden Gate entrance of the State Office Building tomorrow morning, rather than inside, and maybe take them up the street to a coffee shop to discuss Pivarski’s testimony ahead of time.”
“I’d do that anyway,” said Delaney. “But why—”
“My witness is in town even though we’re sure Hawkley thinks he left for Canada on Friday. We want him to get an eyeball of Pivarski.”
“Why? If you’re sure Pivarski isn’t the man—”
“Mainly because Hawkley has worked so hard to keep us from getting an eyeball of him.”
Delaney was silent for a time. Finally he shrugged. “Okay. As long as you guys all understand that I think
DKA is guilty as charged, and that I’m going to do my damndest tomorrow to take away their license to operate.”
Nicoletti made a grandly dismissive gesture. “Fine with me.”
Kearny looked glum. Tranquillini nodded.
“And as long as you understand, Johnny, that I’m going to roast your witness’s butt in a way you wouldn’t believe.”
Harris House was a five-story brownstone in the 100-block of West 122nd Street in Harlem. Bart Heslip had gotten off the bus from Boston at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Eighth Avenue, had wired his flowers to Rosalind Parton, and then had walked the Sunday-sparse streets up to 122nd just to get the kinks out. At the front door he was told that Mommy Harris was off at church with the older among her fifty charges, and that he should come back at eleven.
As he was finishing a cup of coffee around the corner, he saw a fiftyish-looking slat-thin black woman, followed by a Pied Piper gang of kids, trooping by the direction of Harris House. He finished his coffee and followed.
Ten minutes later he sat with Loretta Harris, the woman’s daughter, in her paneled, crowded office of the ground-floor hall of Harris House. Through the half-open door could be heard the muffled confusion of half-a-hundred kids freed by the Lord’s day from weekday restraints. “Bart Heslip, sure. Rosie Parton called this morning. Thinks she’s tough, that one, woman of science, detached, medical.” She gave a rolling peal of laughter. “Soft as butter. My mother will be either out in the kitchen seeing what the cook’s up to for Sunday dinner, or on the second-floor babies’ suites.”
Going up the stairs to the nursery after striking out in the kitchen, Heslip felt a growing sense of anticipation. In the past ten days he’d come to have a puzzled regard for Verna Rounds. Started out as an ignorant little file clerk, so ignorant she got recruited into whoring, got knocked up and clapped up and on heroin — and could you get any dumber than that? Then quit the profession, lost a baby, cold-turkey’d her habit, and now was an assistant in the damndest orphanage Heslip had ever seen.
An orphanage where the kids had living parents who were off straightening themselves out, kids who’d been born junkies, kids who now got love and attention from a sixty-five-year-old black woman he was about to meet. He thrust his head around the doorjamb, “Mrs. Harris?”
The thin woman he’d seen on the street had as warm a smile as her daughter’s fleshier one. Her face had the tremendous dignity certain black faces got with age and righteousness, yet was youthful and humorous despite the network of wrinkles around the deep-set eyes. “Call me Mommy, most everyone does.”
“Bart Heslip.”
“About Verna. Yes. Come on in, let’s walk and talk a bit.”
They walked and talked the length of the babies’ suite, which ran the length of the house. At the front were cots for the two- and three-year-olds being made up or changed by a couple of chattering assistants. Heslip had noted all the assistants were black.
“The girls who work here, are they...” He paused.
“Ex-addicts?” Mommy shook her head. “Ex-addicts have been through detoxification and withdrawal, but they still have to live in residences where they can get constant advice and attention and see a psychiatrist when they need one — at least once a week. We just don’t have time for that around here. The kids take all our attention.” She gave a sunny smile. “And all our love.”
“Then Verna must be different,” said Heslip.
“Oh, she is, she is. Her baby had died, for one thing, and she needed someone to care for outside herself, bad as a body can need. Also, she didn’t need any rehabilitation. She’d done that for herself, along with Rosalind’s help.”
At the rear of the house was a bright, sunny room where the very small children who still needed cribs slept. The walls were vivid with nursery wallpaper; the floor was atumble with toys and stuffed animals and dolls. Some toddlers were going down a small, bright, metal slide in the middle of the room. Others played with toys, one was crying, a little girl was bashing a little boy over the head with a big red sausagelike balloon, both of them crowing gleefully.
Keeping minimum order was a slim black girl with big warm eyes and a patient face and her hair worn in the sort of bun that Mommy wore. Mommy stopped to hug a little girl who was trying a variety of dresses on a brand-new-looking doll, one after another without first removing the previous one.
“My, isn’t that a pretty doll?” Mommy marveled.
“That fum my mama,” said the girl.
“Just as beautiful as can be. But not as beautiful as you.” They went on. Mommy said to Heslip, “Her mother quit the street, and has a job as a secretary while she studies window-decorating. In another year she’ll be able to take Elaine home with her.”
“They look pretty much like any other kids,” said Heslip.
“Oh, the kids aren’t the problems. It’s the mothers. They don’t know how to take care of children, and I think drug addiction dulls the maternal instincts, bums out the ability to reach out toward someone else. Even your child. We not only have to train the mothers to care for their kids, we have to teach them how to love their kids, too.”
“That makes Verna even more unusual.”
They were beside the slide where the assistant was making the children take orderly turns.
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?” said Mommy Harris. “Verna, this is Mr. Heslip from San Francisco, who I told you about.”
They were drinking strong, fresh coffee at one of the long tables where the children and the help ate all their meals family-style. Heslip had laid out the whole thing for both women, but Verna did not seem to have assimilated what he had said. When she spoke, it was only of kids under her care. “Oh, I have the terriblest time knowin’ whut to do, and that’s the very truth,” she said. Her adoring gaze rested on Mommy’s face for a moment. “But I’m leamin’.”
“Big trouble is,” said the older woman, “around here we get thinking these kids are like other kids. But they aren’t. Not emotionally.”