Flowering Judas(124)
“I agree. But I don’t think that’s what happened this time. I think Althy Michaelman sold those babies. Every single one of them.”
“She didn’t sell Haydee,” Howard said. “If Althy was selling babies, why would she keep just that one?”
“My guess is that she was in jail,” Gregor said. “That’s something else I wanted you to look up. Did Althy Michaelman have a record, did she spend any significant time in jail. By which I mean more than eighteen months.”
“Why more than eighteen months?”
“Because,” Gregor said, “if you’re going to sell babies, you’ve got to sell babies. That’s the point. It’s difficult to find a white infant to adopt. If the respective adopting parents have anything at all about them that the social service agencies don’t like, there’s no chance. And that tends to mean that older couples and same-sex couples get the choice of an older child or nothing at all.”
“Well,” Howard went, “okay. I’ve heard about that kind of thing. But if she was doing that, shouldn’t she have had a lot more money? Didn’t I see a Dateline report on that where these fancy-ass lawyers were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to get hold of infants?”
“They wouldn’t be interested in getting hold of one from somebody like Althy Michaelman,” Gregor said. “People of the kind you’re talking about are very careful about this kind of thing. They’re not going to want an infant who’s been exposed to alcohol and tobacco in the womb, and Althy smoked, drank, and did everything else unhealthy for a developing fetus. Althy would have been dealing with people with far less money. I still think she could probably have charged around, say, ten thousand dollars.”
“Ten thousand dollars,” Howard said. “You think Chester Morton bought an infant for ten thousand dollars. Where do you think he was going to get ten thousand dollars?”
“He got it from the same place he got the rest of his money,” Gregor said. “He stole it from his mother. Well, you know, from the family firm. But I’ve met Charlene Morton. She’d have considered it stealing from her, personally.”
“This is nuts.”
“I agree. A lot of this is completely nuts,” Gregor said. “But let’s stick with Althy Michaelman now. I want to know if OCFS ever removed any other children from Althy’s home and put them in foster care—any of them. I especially want to know if they removed an infant around the same time they removed Haydee around twelve years ago. You should be able to get them to tell you that. That’s not confidential information, and we do have the skeleton to account for.”
“All right,” Howard said. “I get that. We can probably do that.”
“Then I want to find out if Althy Michaelman was in prison for about eighteen months or a little longer around eighteen years ago. I think that’s about right. Haydee wrote that she was six when she was taken into foster care and she remembers just when because it was just after the police came and searched the trailer park because Chester Morton was missing. Six then, twelve years later, eighteen now. If she gave birth just before or just after going to prison, the baby would have been put into foster care until she was released—unless there was family? Did she have family to take the child?”
“It’s the Michaelmans we’re talking about here,” Howard Androcoelho said. “They’re all like that, except maybe this young one. Althy walked out on her mother when she was pregnant the first time and never looked back. God only knows who her father was. But Mr. Demarkian, I don’t get it. If Althy had had all these children taken away by Child Protective Services, why would they have given Haydee back when Althy got out of prison, if she ever was in prison?”
“I don’t think Althy did have a lot of business with Children and Family Services,” Gregor said. “Remember? I think she just said she did, to cover the fact that she was selling the infants.”
“Then why didn’t she sell Haydee?”
“Because,” Gregor said, “Haydee would have been too old. If Althy went in to prison about the time she gave birth or very soon afterward, and if she stayed there a year and a half or more, she wouldn’t have had time to sell the infant before she was incarcerated and the child would have been past the point where people would pay for it when she got out. So there was Haydee. And Althy was stuck with her.”
“Honest to God,” Howard said.
“Go find out the stuff I want,” Gregor said. “I want to commandeer your office for about an hour. I promise to use my own cell phone and not touch any of your papers. Find out if OCFS has any record of removing children other than Haydee from Althy Michaelman’s care. Find out if Althy Michaelman was in prison eighteen years ago. Get the stuff Penny London is bringing in in the next half hour or so and give it to me. Then get Darvelle Haymes and Kyle Holborn into a room for me. I’m going to yell at them.”