A Measure of Blood (14 page)

They have looked (talk about a hopeless task) for anything with a Dal or Dol—among auto registrations.

“Nothing for us here other than some decent eats,” Dolan says several minutes later. Christie—everyone—envies Dolan his metabolism. He is always thinking about food and somehow still trim and tidy and muscular.

Someone has provided a ham, someone else a poached salmon, and there are spinach pies and pasta casseroles. Lots of breads.

“Colleen and Potocki should have some of this,” Dolan murmurs. “About the only reward we've had all week.”

But those two detectives are at the office, working. Earlier today, Potocki lugged boxes of handbags and shoes and even some clothing to the office from Maggie's apartment and asked for a chance to look through them.

Colleen has stayed behind to help him.

Christie's phone buzzes after an hour. It's Colleen. “Got the name of the clinic,” she announces. “And also a calendar with appointments on it. And a name. Danilo. You might want to find out if any of the friends knows of a Danilo. Potocki checked on the computer to rule out hairdressers and the like. That's it. We're about done.”

Christie's jaw drops. It's so amazing to get good news—he can hardly believe it. “Where did you find these names?”

“Papers. In the bottom of a box of shoes and handbags. She was hiding them. Sort of about six months of stuff from when she decided on the clinic, I think.”

“Good work. Give me the name of the clinic.”

He pulls a notebook from his pocket and writes it down. He also writes down Danilo and Dal. He tells Dolan, “Ask these people about these names, Dal again and Danilo. I'll ask the kid.”

Matt is sitting on the sagging sofa, half watching the video. He kicks his leg up repeatedly as if illustrating being a kid. Christie takes a seat next to him and is surprised when Matt speaks first. “I think I made a mistake when I told you all that stuff about the Toyota and Dal. Or Doll. Remember?”

“Yeah, I do. The name?”

“No. I think it was a Pontiac.”

Christie takes a deep breath. “What makes you say that?”

“That long badge thing on the front. The line that goes down. I think … I mean I saw it in a magazine and then I looked on the street and it seemed more right.”

“Thank you, son.” He jumps because he didn't mean to use that word and because Matt comes alert when he hears it. “Thank you for coming forward. A Pontiac, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“And you're talking about the chrome on the front grille?”

“The other cars don't divide in front. Pontiac does.”

“Good, good. I have some other questions for you. Ready?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you remember the man's voice? High, low, accent, no accent, quiet, loud?”

“He was angry.”

“Loud?”

“No, quiet. He had some … accent I think.”

“Did he?”

“I think. It was a little bit of an accent.”

“One more question. Did you ever know anybody named Danilo?”

Matt frowns. “No. I don't think. Is the part about the Pontiac important?”

“Yes, I think it is. We'll keep a lookout for a Pontiac. Anything else you remember, you tell me.”

“Okay.”

“Nobody named Danilo?”

Matt appears to think. He shakes his head.

“Okay, good.”

Then, moments later, Christie goes outdoors to the scrubby front lawn and places a call to the number in New York that Colleen has given him. He hopes they're not gone—it's Friday at four. The phone keeps going to voice mail. So, the place exists at any rate.

He clutches the piece of paper, wondering how to proceed. Through the open window, he can see Dolan talking, pretending casualness, and Jan and Arthur following Matt hungrily with their eyes. He tries the number again. Voice mail again.

Greer and Potocki walk up the sidewalk, not touching, and wait at the door for him to escort them in and introduce them around.

Then he goes back outside and tries the number again.

Four thirty. The phone rings for a long time, but eventually there is a harried-sounding person on the other end. He introduces himself, explaining quickly to the woman the particulars of his case.

She says stiffly: “None of that matters. We assure donor anonymity.”

“Right, right. I've seen the movies—”

“What Hollywood does is not of interest here.”

“You do understand that things are changing with some clinics. Also that the law allows for extraordinary circumstances?”

“Here we have a policy. It's a strict policy. I would get into serious trouble if I went against it.”

He wants to keep her on the phone. “How about letting me have the pertinent medical information for the donor. I've met the child and we're concerned about … about his health.”

“I can't do that.”

Before she hangs up, he blurts, “Your address, let's see, is 15 Bleecker Street? Correct?”

“Yes.”

Man, he's not absolutely sure this is the service that got Maggie Brown pregnant. And Maggie might have had a flesh-and-blood lover during those months. “Did Margaret Brown actually specify wanting any sort of anonymity?”

“It wouldn't matter,” she says. “It's just our policy.”

“You understand she's been murdered?”

“You said that.”

He thinks,
Keep her answering, break her down.
“Did she indicate why she chose your clinic? That's an interesting factor that might help us. Did she say?”

“I wasn't working here then.”

Damn. Damn. “Thanks for your help and just one more thing.”
Elaine Eselvetro
. He's written her name. He underlines it three times. “Ms. Eselvetro?” He calculates the risk, the time—a drive to New York. Not too terribly long. Marina has been wanting to see
South Pacific
.
That's two birds. “I'm actually in New York on business right now. I didn't listen very carefully to your phone machine. Are you open tomorrow, Saturday?”

“Um. Only until one. But nothing is going to—”

He lets her say her spiel again while he watches Colleen and Potocki getting plates of food. Then he calls Marina and asks if she has a Saturday rehearsal.

“No,” she laughs. “I think I told you only about eight times! We start Tuesday night. After Labor Day.”

“Pack a bag. We leave tomorrow before dawn. We have to be back Monday because I promised us to the Morrises for a Labor Day thing at Lake Arthur. Meantime, see if you can get tickets to
South Pacific
.”

Saturday

NADAL'S AD RAN
both Wednesday and Friday.

Friday, he got the first of his inquiries. A woman came to see the car in the late afternoon. It was a good day, a sunny day, and the scrubbed-up car gleamed. The woman, unkempt, smelled of smoke. “Would you take five?”

“Five what?”

“Five thousand.”

“Uh, no.”

“It's all I have.”

“Sorry.”

Today, he gets a call and closes the door to his little room. The caller is male, aggressive, sounds middle aged, and asks how many miles are on the car, when the oil was changed, if all maintenance has been done on schedule.

Nadal answers everything.

“You're asking nine thousand dollars?”

“Well, okay, yes.”

“Forget it. A Pontiac.” But the man does not hang up.

“What is your best price?” Nadal asks.

“At the most, seven thousand dollars. If I like it.”

Nadal almost takes it, but gritting his teeth, he says, “I'm going to wait for a better offer.”

“Good fucking luck!”

He's shaken and thinks he made a mistake. But another person calls moments later. That person sounds like a middle-aged Indian man. He speaks carefully, precisely, and explains that he would like to buy a car for his son. “I have studied the Blue Book,” he says. “May we see your car?”

“Yes.”

“We would wish to drive it on a city street and a highway for approximately twenty minutes. Is that permissible?”

“If I go too.”

“Very good. We will come to see it. We will come now.”

Nadal gives his address and paces back and forth, waiting. He works not to make any noise. He hasn't told his roommates he is selling. They still aren't awake—which is good. It's only a bit after ten in the morning. He walks outside to wait.

The father is formal. The son is young, a freshman at Duquesne with a friend at Pitt who saw the ad.

“My son wishes to come home every weekend,” the man explains. “And so we need a car that is big enough to be safe.”

“I understand.”

The father drives the car with his son in the passenger seat and Nadal in his own backseat for the first time, a position that makes him a little road sick. But the trip is short and they end up back at his place on South Neville.

“Would you accept eighty-five hundred dollars?” the man asks. “As I said, I have studied the Blue Book.”

Nadal nods. “Yes.”

“May I ask why you are getting rid of the car?”

“I need the money more than I need the car. Graduate school.”

“Very well. There is a notary in Oakland but not open today—correct?” The son nods. “There is a AAA office open until five. We would like to make the purchase today. Do you have the paperwork?”

It's not in his control. He's afraid of AAA, the record keeping they must do and all that, but he does have the paperwork, and a buyer stands before him. He has to do it.

In his room, there is a brown envelope that has everything he needs. He tiptoes to get it and then he drives the father and son to AAA. When the paperwork is completed—interestingly, the father produces a money order for eighty-five hundred dollars that the clerk pronounces good, but Nadal has never had a money order and it makes him nervous.

“There's a PNC down the street. You could deposit it—are you at PNC?” the clerk asks, seeing his uncertainty.

“We will wait for you,” the man buying the car asserts calmly.

Nadal walks to the bank. A deep breath escapes him when the teller stamps the money order. “Cash? Are you sure?” she asks.

He races back to AAA where the father and son sit exactly as he left them. After he hands over his two keys, father and son drive him back to his apartment where Seung, Shin, and Gab-do are now awake.

“Where you go?” they ask.

“Just walking.”

CHRISTIE DRIVES HIS
CAR UP THE RAMP
and, reading the signs, stops, puts it in park. He hands his keys over to a sleepy-looking, unwashed man with an accent he can't identify.

They started out around four this morning. He drove fast and here they are.

A fortune to park—he's forgotten that about New York. “Let's hoof it from here,” he tells Marina. According to the map in his mind, the fertility clinic is only two blocks away. Marina has an acting assignment. If she gets a phone call from him in which he pretends to be calling one of his other detectives, she is supposed to go into action.

They pass the office walking briskly. “I want to choose my moment,” Christie says. “When she's close to closing.”

“Let's eat there,” Marina says, pointing back to tables on the sidewalk in a café next door to the clinic they just passed. “We can sit outside anyway. And you can see who comes and goes.”

The place they land in is Frenchified, crowded with breakfast and brunch eaters. At neighboring tables they see crusty white bread, cloth napkins, expensive bottled waters, and lots of coffees. An omelet and bread seems to be the standard order.

Marina looks like she belongs here. She is five eight and looking gorgeous these days. He's seen the costume renderings for her for the role of Titania. Earthy, sensuous, and more than a little bit revealing. Almost naked.

Waiters flutter. She studies the menu, oblivious to admiring glances.

Two people leave the clinic. He taps his foot nervously though he has almost two hours to choose his moment. Ah, the whole thing is a crapshoot, but he has to try. They could get subpoenas and go into a long legal battle. But, say they do, then what happens to Matt while they're stalled with the courts?

He breaks off a piece of white bread and butters it, checking his watch from time to time.

“What are you thinking?” she asks. “It's making your face look really fierce.”

“That stubborn woman—how to get her to break the law.”

“Oh, you're good at that,” she says blithely.

An hour later, he has chosen his moment and is in the place. The office is orderly, clean enough, though inelegantly furnished­. In the waiting room there are four hard chairs, covered in a diamond-­patterned cloth, 1960s vintage, meaning they were manufactured and sold before the craze for sperm and egg donorship. One tall, sad-looking woman with long, lank hair sits in one of the old chairs waiting.

There are stacks of brochures and one blown up on the wall.
We can help
, it proclaims, as he moves forward and stands before Elaine Eselvetro. She does not look up for a long time. Finally she does.

He sees that on her desk is a file marked Margaret Brown. Oh, how he wants that file in his hands. He smiles his best smile. “Christie,” he says, showing his ID. “I know you guessed. I won't take much of your time. There are two things I need to know. One. What I'm not clear on is your contract. Did the sperm donor sign something that says he has given up parental rights?”

“I don't know.”

“Legally, it's called a TPR—Termination of Parental Rights. Is it anywhere in the files?”

“I didn't see it.”

“Is it in your advertising material that this is a given?”

“No,” she says. “Not in the advertising.”

“Okay. Second thing I need to know is if you do a medical work-up on the donor. I mean how much medical screening is there?” He adds, a little superstitiously, “Could he have had a serious disease?”

“We don't do a formal screening, no.”

Suddenly she blushes. Out of the back room comes a scruffy, bearded student, strapping on his backpack. “Left the vial in there,” he says in a booming voice. “Have a good one.”

“Thank you.” She flushes harder.

“Students are your donors.”

“Mostly. Yes.”

“How about—just take a peek for anything that could help me. I know you're not supposed to, but there's a child's life …”

She purses her lips. He takes out a small notebook from his breast pocket. A pen. He thinks of the small notebook as unthreatening.

Out of another back room emerges a white-coated man of indeterminate age. He is slight and pale. “Send in Mrs. Vale,” he says.

Eselvetro stands and peers into the waiting room. “You can come on in,” she says.

The tall, sad woman whose hair curtains her face enters and passes right by Christie.

“No,” Eselvetro says to him. “The answer is still no.”

He looks at his watch. “Sorry. I have to make a call and then just one more thing. He consults a piece of paper and punches in several numbers instead of using the speed dial for Marina. He makes up a bunch of stuff off the top of his head when Marina answers. “About the stepmother. Is she working again or not?”

“Okay. I get it. You want me to come over,” Marina says.

He continues with his little act. “Well, is the judge
there
? I mean can you see her? I expected as much. I plan to petition the courts, that's what I plan to do! Oh, we'll get her all right.”

He hangs up, as if angrily.

Eselvetro waits. “What is the one more thing?”

He continues to invent. “I'm sorry. I have to make calls about this family I'm worried about. The children—”

Marina bursts into the room. “Excuse me. I saw the sign. This is some kind of medical office? I really need some help. I could hardly make it down the street. It's my foot,” she says to Eselvetro. “It's my foot. Something's terribly wrong with it. I can hardly walk. I don't think I broke it, but it's so painful, I can't even manage half a block.” Marina limps in from the door and holds on to the back of Christie's chair.

“This is not that kind of office,” Eselvetro says. “You need an emergency room.”

“Oh, I can't. I have an important audition. Do you mind if I sit down over there?”

“We'll be closing in a little while.”

“That's all right. I have to get to my audition.” She whimpers. “I'm trying to flex my foot and it won't move at all.” She limps to the chair. She's very good—distraught face, close to tears. “My best audition yet and I can't walk. Oh, man.”

“Is it letting up?”

“No. I need an Advil or Aleve.”

Elselvetro nods. “What's the audition?”

“For a film. They have Johnny Depp. It's a thriller.”

“Wow.”

“Is there a pharmacy in the area?” Marina asks, wincing mightily.

“About two blocks.”

“I'll go to the pharmacy for her if you just tell me … ” Christie realizes as soon as he's said it that he's made a mistake. The way he related to Marina was too familiar.

Eselvetro looks hard at them. She appears to make a decision. “I might have an Aleve.” She takes her handbag, which is right there on a chair beside her desk, and she walks with it in the direction of the doctor and the sad patient.

When she's out of the room, Christie turns the file folder around.

Marina gets up, continuing her act of limping, and reads over his shoulder.

He memorizes. Senior. Goal: grad school. Born in Lebanon, 1981. Guitar and piano. Jazz. Second Avenue address.
Thomas Zacour
.

“Thomas Zacour,” Marina breathes.

By the time Elaine Eselvetro returns with a glass of water and a blue pill, Marina has hobbled back to a chair, the Margaret Brown file is where she left it, and Christie lets her see his notebook sitting open, blank page.

BUT WHERE CAN
HE KEEP THE MONEY?
Nadal wonders. He left the bank with the bills in an envelope and he stuffed the envelope inside his shirt. Eighty-five one-hundred-dollar bills. He will have to break them up. The roommates are honest, so far as he knows, but it would be wise to hide the cash, not tempt them. He separates the bills into three envelopes, and puts one under the mattress, one in a pair of shoes in a plastic bag, and one—he is looking around when Shin calls into his room, “Nate? Do you want some tea?”

“Yes. In a minute.” He stuffs it into the inside pocket of his winter jacket.

When he has tea with Shin, who is especially happy today, telling Korean jokes and trying to explain why they are funny, Nadal works to keep his body from making restless moves. He tries to laugh appropriately, but all the while he orders himself to check the money each time he returns to his room.

“You are a funny guy!” Shin says.

“Funny?”

“Like the expression they say, ‘a character'!”

“You think so?”

“I think mysterious.”

Nadal shrugs. “Just quiet sometimes.”

“Yes, good, very good,” Shin hurries to add, realizing he has insulted his roommate.

Nadal goes back to his room to study for his course—the first day of which was Thursday night, two days ago. He has to read the same paragraphs over and over because they keep blurring before him.

Here at school and with the Koreans he is Nate. It sounds more American. His mother is the only one who calls him Nadal. For a while he tried just Dal. It's what Maggie called him. The last name Brown does not suit Nadal. He never quite owned it, mostly because he hated the man who had given it to him, but sometimes thinks of himself with his mother's family name, Medina. He plans to take it on one day. And he likes his grandfather's name, Danilo. Once Maggie asked him what Dal was short for. Danilo, he said, and she accepted that. In class the other night, the computer professor called out his formal name, his whole real name, Nadal Brown, in a booming voice. It was strange to hear it called out like that.

He eats a can of soup when the others are busy talking. He is at loose ends. When will he get his son? When will he change his life? Finally he checks his money one more time and announces, “I'm going out.”

“Work?”

“Yes.” He doesn't have work but now that he's blurted “yes” isn't sure how to get out of his lie.