Life Blood Part 22

Still, I felt a tinge of caution as we entered. At some level this was trespa.s.sing.

"Come on," she said, casually flipping a switch on the right-hand 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 s.p.a.cious, with a row of white ba.s.sinets 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 ba.s.sinets 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 a.s.sumption that the ba.s.sinets 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, s.p.a.ced-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, a.s.suming, I suppose, that I was one of Alex G.o.ddard'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 ba.s.sinets.

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 ba.s.sinet, 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 ba.s.sinets, 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." G.o.d, 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 ba.s.sinet.

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 G.o.ddard 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.

Which went a long way toward explaining why he didn't want Children of Light to be featured in my film. And the Guatemalan colonel who'd just trashed my home was almost certainly in on the operation. Alex G.o.ddard might be a New Age miracle worker rediscovering ancient Native American herbal cures, but he also was running a very efficient money machine.

Still, the big question kept coming back: Where did he get all the babies? To extract any more information about that from Quetzal Manor, I'd have to break into an office somewhere, and I wasn't quite up to that yet. I didn't have the nerve of Colonel Jose Alvino Ramos.

"Tell you what, Tara, I think I'm out of here." I was returning the Betacam to its bag. Nothing I'd shot was remotely broadcast quality, but I did have proof of what was going on. My "undercover"

investigation was making some headway.

"Okay." She sighed her expression increasingly glazed.

I took one last look around the room, at the row of ba.s.sinets, then gave her a parting pat and headed for the exit.

"Look," I said turning back as I reached the door. "Don't say anything to anybody about me being here tonight, okay? Can we just let it be our secret?"

"Sure, whatever." She shrugged absently. Like, why not.

"And Tara, do yourself a favor. Get out of this place."

"But there's nowhere else I can go," she said sadness in her eyes. As I slowly closed the door, the last thing I heard was the sound of the Beethoven sonata dying away.

What a day . . . and night. As I walked down the hallway carrying the camera bag, I tried to process my new information. I'd just seen some of the most incredibly lovable babies ever. That part of it was a beautiful experience, one that pulled at my heartstrings more strongly than I'd ever imagined something like that could. The part that troubled me was, the babies were so alike, so fair, and . . . they all could have been perfect siblings for Kevin and Rachel.

No, I told myself, surely that was my imagination. Though they did look amazingly related. . . .

As I moved across the parking lot, I thought I saw a movement in the shadows just inside the entry archway, a quick change in the pattern of dark. Was it Ramala or one of the girls, I wondered, or was it just my paranoia?

Keep walking, I told myself. Lose yourself in the snow. The only way they can stop you from exposing this racket now is to kill you.

When I got back to my car, I gazed up at the imposing turrets of Quetzal Manor one last time, wis.h.i.+ng there was enough light to film them, and collected my thoughts. Was the story about the babies being orphans or abandoned children or "whatever" really true? I didn't believe it, not for a minute.