Thomas Hoover - Life blood

"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.

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 Goddard 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 bassinets, 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, wishing 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.

But as Carly Grove said, Alex Goddard could "make it happen." The problem for me was, he wouldn't tell me where he got the children, and nobody I'd talked to so far seemed to want to know, not really.

I wanted to know.

In moments I was heading down the snowy drive, south toward my home (which had been hopefully put back together). I pushed the pace, mesmerized by the snow, and tried to decide what to do next. The thug Ramos had stolen some second-generation interview footage from me, but now I had a tape of something a lot more interesting.

When I pulled into my street, the time was just past eleven and I was thinking about calling Lou, or Steve, or both. But then I saw something odd. A woman was walking down the steps from the lobby of my building, a woman I recognized from somewhere.

Her hair was tangled and she was wearing black jeans and a black sweater. It took a second before I finally processed the fact it was Carly Grove. And she seemed frantic. I assumed she'd come in a cab, but she had my home phone number, so why would she come over if I didn't answer? New Yorkers don't just drop in. A social no-no.

Maybe the reason had something to do with how she looked. I felt like I was seeing a specter.

"Thank God you're here," she blurted out, striding up. She was actually shaking, and I could tell she'd been crying. Nothing like the gutsy woman I'd seen a few days earlier. "I kept getting your machine, but I thought maybe you were hiding."

I looked at her, and forgot all about my own issues. It was hard to remember ever seeing a human being in such distress, except for Sarah.

"Why would I be hiding?" I was taking out the Betacam bag and closing my car door, hoping to seem normal and professional.

"They called me about six o'clock tonight. Children of Light." She could barely get the words out. "They'd seen my interview with you. How did they get it?"

I looked down at the snowy-make that slushy-street and felt a chill go through me, followed immediately by anger. Ramos, that bastard.

"They… Somebody took a copy this morning." Stated like that, it sounded pretty lame. "I'm so sorry-"

"He threatened Kevin. He actually said if I signed a release to let you use the film, my child would 'meet with an accident.' And then he said something about you, that your own-"

"Who? Who called you? Did he tell you his-?"

"He wouldn't give a name. Just some man. He had a foreign accent." She threw her arms around me, and I hugged her back as best I could.

"Where's Kevin now?" I was so concerned about Carly that I'd repressed the information that he'd also mentioned me.

"Marcy was there, so I told her to take him with her. To her mother's place in the Bronx, where she lives." Carly was still trembling as she loosened her grip on me. "I called a car service to drive them up."

"Well, come on in. Let's talk." Truthfully, I wasn't sure how much I wanted to tell her about what I'd just seen at Quetzal Manor. It would probably just distress her more. Where had Kevin come from? Did I really want to de-legitimize him in her eyes?

As I led her through the lobby, hoping to appear composed, Patrick Mooney greeted us, announcing that his sister, Rosalyn, had been gone for an hour and that she appreciated my memorable tip.