Girl Waits with Gun (37 page)

What was it she told me when I asked about Lucy's child?
It's better off wherever it is now.

And she probably believed that.

At last sleep caught up with me again and I didn't move until the chickens started cackling at daybreak. The truth was with me, as if I had known it all along.

THE SKY HAD CLEARED
and the snow had hardened overnight. Dolley didn't want to be out in it any more than I did, but I nudged her along Sicomac Road anyway. A number of motor cars passed me, each of them honking and swerving and nearly running us off the road. Dolley had never been a high-strung horse, but these black and noisy machines were making a nervous animal out of her. I tried to cluck at her the way Norma did, but she didn't find it soothing.

I stabled her for a few hours in Paterson and walked over to the orphan asylum in the gray sludge that had been pushed aside by the plows. In no time at all I was at the front door, relieved to find Mrs. Griggs at her station.

She was considerably less friendly to me than she had been to Sheriff Heath. When I made my request, she frowned and said, “Shouldn't Sheriff Heath be the one asking the questions?”

I stood a little straighter and spoke in the most commanding voice I could muster.

“He requested my help on a sensitive matter. A girl got into some trouble, and the sheriff thought it best to have a lady make the more delicate inquiries. That's why he brought me here. If you feel his introduction was not satisfactory, I'll go now to Hackensack and return with him for a second one. But I know he won't be happy to be called away from the prison and his important work protecting the citizens of Bergen County simply to do again what he has already done.”

She pressed her lips together in a disapproving frown. “You know I can't tell you anything about our private placements. If the mother surrenders a child, the records are sealed forever.”

I knew that well enough. The same promise had been made to me. “What if a woman brought a child in and claimed to be its mother, but wasn't?”

“We'd have a look at the birth certificate. We'd ask for identification or a witness.”

“But some children are born at home. They don't all have birth certificates.”

“What are you looking for, exactly?” Mrs. Griggs asked.

I could tell that I wasn't going to get into those files unless I told her what I suspected. I gave her Marion Garfinkel's name, described her, and told her again the boy's age and when we thought he would have been brought in.

She wrote it all down and then scrutinized the paper in front of her. “You're suggesting the boy was kidnapped.”

“It wouldn't be that unusual. Isn't it possible that someone would try a thing like that to cover up a scandal in the family?”

She searched my face thoughtfully for a minute, then rose from her desk and disappeared into the office. After a long wait she returned, clutching a folder to her bosom as if she wasn't sure she was ready to let me see it.

“We had only one private placement of a boy that age during the strikes,” she said, easing gingerly back into her chair. “If this is the child you're looking for, then I believe we still have him.”

I took a deep breath and dropped into the chair across from her. The realization that I might have done this—that I might have helped Lucy find her son—this sent all the blood to my cheeks and set my heart pounding.

I wasn't sure I trusted myself to speak. She set the file on her desk and ran her hands across it.

At last I said, “Is he here now? Could I see him?”

“Certainly not,” she said. “If this is a matter for the sheriff, then the sheriff should come and see the child.”

By then I had my breath back. “Of course he will,” I said evenly. “I only wish to be sure of the situation before I ask him to take an afternoon away from his duties. Do you know anything more about the circumstances under which the boy was brought here?”

With a long and shaky sigh, Mrs. Griggs opened the file and lifted it toward her so I could not see the papers it held. After flipping through them for a few minutes, she said, “I don't remember this one, but from what I can see, it was an unusual case. A woman brought the baby to us, but had none of the papers we require—no birth certificate, no letter from a doctor, and no list of family members. She wouldn't even provide the boy's name or his last known address. She said that she'd had the baby abroad to avoid suspicion and had only just recently returned. We called him Teddy for lack of another name.”

“But the mother—the woman claiming to be the mother—that was Marion Garfinkel?”

She closed the folder. “She gave a very common name and I suppose it could have been false. Our director will have to speak to the sheriff before we can say anything more about it. This may require a hearing before a judge. It's very unusual.”

“But the boy is here?”

For the first time, a smile worked around the corners of her lips. “If this is the boy—and I'm not saying it is—we definitely do still have him. There are so many infants that come to us, and those are adopted first. Even a child of one or two years is hard to place.”

“Mrs. Griggs, you've done a little boy and his mother a great deal of good today,” I said, jumping out of my chair. “The sheriff must be told immediately. Could you place a telephone call to his office?”

She looked down at the brass phone on her desk and drummed her fingers. “I shouldn't make the call,” she said. “But our director can.”

She ran upstairs and, after another interminable wait, returned with an expression I couldn't read. “As I suspected, you'll have to go to a judge before a claim can be made. But first the child must be identified by its mother. Sheriff Heath said he would fetch the girl and be right over. He said you would know where to find her.”

I gave her Lucy Blake's address, and she disappeared again up the wide staircase, her fingers trailing along a banister into which a row of laurel leaves had been carved. I waited the better part of an hour, with Mrs. Griggs running downstairs to tell me that Sheriff Heath was on his way, and then rushing back up to tell the nurses to get the boy ready. From her excited air I gathered that they felt quite sure that one of their charges was going home with its mother. I hope they hadn't given the boy that impression. I couldn't stand to see Lucy shake her head and tell the boy that he did not belong to her.

I paced the lobby and tried to picture Marion Garfinkel carrying a baby in. I couldn't see her without also seeing the chain of errors and misfortune that brought her here. There was Henry Kaufman's father, putting him in charge of a factory he had no ability to run. There was Henry Kaufman himself, forcing his way into Lucy's room with his own disgraceful intentions. And then Lucy, hoping—naively, perhaps stupidly—that he would face up to his obligations.

Finally, there was Marion, the expedient one, the efficient one. She saw a problem and, just as quickly, she saw its solution. It was not difficult to understand how Marion got the idea. If I were to stop a hundred women on the sidewalk in Paterson and ask them what an unmarried factory girl should do if she got herself into trouble, they would all give the same answer.

It was the answer I'd come to myself, seventeen years ago. It was the only sensible solution, and Marion Garfinkel was, I had to admit, eminently sensible.

I stopped pacing and had just sat down across from Mrs. Griggs's desk again when Sheriff Heath pushed the door open and led a trembling and tearful Lucy Blake into the halls of the Paterson Orphan Asylum Hospital.

She hadn't even taken off her apron. When she saw me, she ran across the lobby to me. “I don't know what I'll do if it isn't him,” she said.

“It's all right,” I said, although I wasn't sure if it was. “Be a brave girl and try not to upset the child.”

Mrs. Griggs called a nurse who led us up the stairs, through a locked door, and into a short, windowless corridor. At the end of it was a door with a brass plate marked “
BOYS
.”

She unlocked the door and pushed it open. We stepped into an enormous room with high windows and rows of iron beds on either side. Shoes and jackets and children's blocks were scattered about the room.

And in the middle of it stood one little boy.

Lucy ran for him before any of us had a moment to think. He was in her arms and smothered against her shoulder so fast that I didn't get a good look at his face. As she spun around, all I could see was black hair like his father's, wetted and combed along a neat part, and the back of the smallest blue suit I'd ever seen.

The nurse smiled and stepped back into the doorway to motion for her colleagues, who must have gathered just outside when they heard us come upstairs. Sheriff Heath bowed his head and stepped away to make room for them.

Lucy didn't stop spinning and I began to wonder if she was ever going to let the boy come up for air. They formed their own planet in the middle of the room, rotating around a sun that only they could see.

LUCY LOOSENED HER GRIP ON THE BOY
. She sat down on the edge of a bed and held him in her lap. He had Mr. Kaufman's hair and round forehead, but he'd inherited Lucy's eyes and her fine Irish profile.

Sheriff Heath knelt down in front of them and held out his hand to the boy, who didn't know to shake it but gripped his fingers. He was a fine, plump boy, old enough to walk on his own, but too young to understand what was happening.

“It's nice to meet you, son,” was all that Sheriff Heath could say.

I stood in the doorway and talked in a low voice with the nurses. They were willing to fix up a room so that Lucy could stay the night.

“It's better that way,” one of them whispered to me. “If we make her go home without him, she could make such a fuss that the other children would hear it. We'd never get them to bed after a scene like that.”

Lucy overheard us and rose from the edge of the bed, carrying the boy on her hip as if she'd been doing it every day since he was born. “The sheriff already told me he'd have to stay here tonight,” she said. “It's all right. I work for two shut-ins who are expecting their supper. They've been very gracious, but I should go back to them.”

“I'll get a judge to see us tomorrow, and I'll take statements from the nurses tonight so we'll be ready for his questions,” Sheriff Heath said, and he and I walked downstairs and left Lucy to say her goodbyes. The news had already reached Mrs. Griggs, who was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs.

She smiled broadly. “This doesn't happen often enough around here. The nurses are terribly pleased.”

“In my years as a sheriff, I've never returned a lost child to its parents. And I didn't do it this time, either. We have Miss Kopp to thank for this one.”

She nodded at me, still smiling. Then she turned back to the sheriff and said, “I suppose the story will come out before the judge tomorrow and may be in the papers.”

“We hope to keep it out of the papers,” he said quickly.

“Yes. I gather that the boy's father is not . . .”

“No. The father won't have anything to do with the child. But the girl is in a comfortable situation as a domestic servant for two spinsters who are willing to take in the boy. I spoke to them this afternoon, and they have agreed to sign a letter for the judge. My stenographer will get it written tonight.”

“Well,” she said. “If the judge is satisfied, we will be, too.”

At last Lucy appeared at the top of the stairs, along with a nurse who had no doubt been sent along in case of hysterics. But Lucy's head was high and she seemed to have a firm grip on herself. She walked slowly but deliberately, and smiled bravely when she said, “I told him I had to go and make a bed for him. He's grown too much for the one I had.”

The next morning, Sheriff Heath and I were waiting in front of the factory when Marion Garfinkel arrived. “If it's about the trial, you'll have to speak to Henry,” she said when she saw us. “I want nothing to do with it. I told him I would pay Mr. Ward's bills, but I'm not paying another attorney. He's on his own now.”

She opened the side entrance just enough to let herself in and tried to close it behind her. Sheriff Heath caught the door before she did. “We can speak here, or I can bring you to the courthouse,” he said quietly.

Marion shrugged without looking back at him. “We can talk all day if you want. I'm not responsible for my brother anymore. I haven't even seen him in weeks.”

We followed her across the empty factory floor. “I've taken over Henry's desk,” she said, leading us into his office, which had been thoroughly cleaned and transformed from a clubhouse back into a room where business could take place.

Sheriff Heath closed the door behind him. “This concerns Lucy Blake.”

She dropped into her chair and gave an elaborate shrug. “I haven't seen her either. Maybe the two of them ran off together.” She picked up a letter opener and slid an envelope open.

That indifferent gesture—the flick of a knife through paper—enraged me. How could this woman sit so casually after what she had done? The sheriff had warned me to stay quiet, but I couldn't.

“We found him,” I said. “Right here in Paterson, where you left him.”

The letter opener dropped to her desk. She kept her eyes down. The sheriff cleared his throat and leaned forward. “A boy was left at the Paterson Orphan Asylum last year. Lucy Blake has identified the child as hers. One of the nurses at the asylum remembers when you brought in the baby. She described you perfectly last night. And your handwriting is in the file. It isn't your name, but it happens that we brought in an expert on the study of handwriting. He's helping us with the case against your brother.”