Life Blood --XII---Page 39

The hallway was dark, silent, and empty except for the two of us. Still, I felt a tinge of caution as we entered. At some level this was trespassing.

"Come on," she said, casually flipping a switch on the righthand wall and causing the overhead fluorescents to blink on. "He's away now, and everybody's in bed. But I'll bet they're still awake in here. It's a perfect time."

I didn't feel anything was perfect, but I did know I wanted to
learn what was behind the door I'd seen when I was leaving. It
was at the end of the hallway, wide and steel and painted hospital
white. And, sure enough, that was exactly where Tara was
heading.

She just kept talking nonstop, in her dreamy, little-girl voice. "We've got to try and make them understand it's okay. That it'll be just for a minute."

She shoved open the door without knocking, and my ears

were greeted by the faint strains of Beethoven's "Moonlight

Sonata," one of my favorites. For an instant I was caught up in the music, a poignant moment drawing me in.

The room itself was spacious, with a row of white bassinets

along one side and subdued lighting provided by small fluorescent
bulbs along the walls. It was, I immediately realized, a no-frills
nursery. Alongside the bassinets were tables with formula and
boxes of Pampers and Handi-Wipes. Two short women of
indefinable nationality—they looked vaguely Asian—were in
attendance, and at the moment one was facing away and
bouncing a baby on her shoulder. Her infant looked like a boy—or
was that just my imagination?—and I felt my heart go out. The light
was dim, but I could tell he was a gorgeous sandy-haired kid
plump and peachy, so sublime in his tender vulnerability as he
gazed around with eyes full of trust. He was staring directly back
at me and before I could stop myself, I gave him a little wave and
wrinkled my nose. He stared at me a second then responded with
a tiny smile. Hey, I thought, I've got the touch.

"Come on," Tara said ignoring the women, "let me show you. They're all so beautiful."

By then my eyes were adjusting to the subdued light, and as
we walked down the middle of the long room, I confirmed my
assumption that the bassinets next to the tables all contained
infants. I'm no expert on babies, but I'd guess they were all
around six weeks old maybe a couple of months at most.

This is the nest, I thought. Ground zero. Kevin and Rachel

were both probably in this room at one time too. . .

"Aren't they wonderful?" Tara was saying, still in her squeaky, spaced-out voice.

I was opening the Betacam bag when the first woman, the
one holding and lightly bouncing her little boy, absently put her
hand under his quilt, then spoke to the other in deeply accented
English.

"He's wet again."

It was the first words either of them had uttered. Then she

turned to me in exasperation, assuming, I suppose, that I was one
of Alex Goddard's flock. "And I just changed him." Again the
accent, but I still couldn't identify it. She made a face, then carried
him over to a plywood changing table in the center of the room.
        I felt a great baby-yearning as I moved over beside her, but
she was behaving like a typical hourly wage-earner, glumly going
about her job, and I just stood there a moment, vainly wanting to
hold him, then turned back to Tara.

"Where do all these children come from?"

"Ramala says they're orphans or abandoned or something. From overseas or wherever." She sighed. "They're so perfect."
        She was completely zombied-out. It felt like talking to a
marshmallow on downers.

"But how, exactly, do—?"

"People bring them here." She seemed uninterested in the
question, just plunging on as she wandered on down the line of
bassinets.

I'd finally come to my senses enough to take out the Betacam, though the light wasn't actually enough to really work with,
certainly not broadcast quality.

She stopped and picked up one of the infants out of its

bassinet, then turned back to me, her eyes turning soft as she hugged it the way she might a small puppy. "Isn't this one cute? I'd so love to have him."

Was she on some kind of drug that suppressed curiosity? I

found myself wondering as I panned the camera around the room.
There must have been at least twenty bassinets, all just alike,
wicker with a white lace hood. A couple of the babies were
sniffling, and the one Tara had picked up now began crying
outright, much to her annoyance. The room itself smelled like
baby powder.

"And then what happens?" I asked finally, zooming in on one of the women.

"What happens when?" Now Tara was twirling in a circle,
humming futilely to the shrieking child. "You mean, after they
come here?"

"Right." God, getting answers from her was making me crazy.
        "The girls here take them to their new mothers." Her eyes had
 turned even more dreamy as she lightly bounced the bawling
bundle she was holding one last time, after which she returned it
to its bassinet. Then she gazed around the room. "It's so sad to
see them leave."

Did Paula and Carly get their babies that way? I found myself
wondering. Probably, but it was one more thing I'd neglected to
ask.

"Come on," Tara continued. "Let's take some of them out. He
makes the nurses try and speak English around the children, but
they don't really know much. Maybe you could figure out a way to,
like, explain—"

"Tara, I don't think taking any of these babies out into the

snow is a very hot idea. Not tonight. Maybe in the morning." Stall
her, I thought. She's completely out of it. Then I looked at the
woman changing the baby. Sure enough, I was right. It was a boy.
        "But I want to." Tara turned crestfallen. "To show them how
beautiful—"

"Well, I don't speak whatever language they're speaking," I
said, cutting cut her off. "I'm not even sure I could make it sound
reasonable in English. So you'll have to do it without my help."

Then I turned to the woman who'd been changing the baby.
        "Do you know where this child came from?" Why not take a
 shot?

She just stared at me, alarmed, then turned away. Nothing.
She clearly wasn't going to tell me anything, even if she could.
She and the others were just cheap hired help, probably illegal
immigrants without a green card and scared to death for their
jobs. They weren't going to be doing an in-depth tell-all to
anybody.

I thought about the situation for a moment, and decided I'd
seen what I came to see. This was pay dirt. Alex Goddard was
running a full-scale adoption mill, just as Lou had suspected. He
was collecting beautiful white babies from "overseas or
wherever," and selling them here at sixty thousand a pop.