have been extinguished. Alvirah knew it was no use arguing with her-she had made up her mind. The best she could do was stall for time.
“Kate,” she said, “just do me one favor. I’ve been making some calls about the Bakers. Already I’ve found out that they are known to be con artists. They’ve just never been arrested-yet! Give me till Christmas to prove that Bessie didn’t write that will, and even though it looks like she signed it, I bet if she did, she never knew what she was signing.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “Oh, Alvirah, there’s no way to prove that.”
“Yes, there is,” Alvirah said with a hearty confidence she did not feel. “And I already know where to start. As soon as I see Monsignor Tom, I’m going to the James and Eileen Gordon Real Estate Agency and tell them I’m hunting for a co-op. Those two are going to see a lot of me in the next couple of weeks. Maybe they’re part of the Bakers’ scheme, or maybe they’ve just had the wool pulled over their eyes, but one way or another, I’m going to find out which it is.”
15
Lenny Centino had managed to stay out of prison by not being too greedy. The deliveries he made of drugs were small-time and infrequent, so except for having attracted the unwanted attention of Detective Joe Tracy, he was never high on the hit list of any police officer. Also he never actually sold drugs, he just delivered them, which, if he were caught, carried a lighter sentence. The drugs had been paid for in advance, so he never handled the money either. He had earned a reputation among both dealers and users of being dependable, and of never dipping into the goods, so he was in demand.
Still, because he liked to limit his involvement with the always dangerous drug trade, Lenny worked off and on for a reputable liquor store. Making deliveries for them, he was able to scope out people’s apartments. He was a gifted burglar-he always made his hit when he was sure people were out, and he never bothered with anything but jewelry and money.
His earlier, very satisfactory career of robbing poor boxes and votive candle offering boxes had ended with his theft at St. Clement’s. The church’s silent alarm and his unwitting kidnapping of Star had made him realize that he was getting too close to the edge. Now even the smaller churches were getting smart enough to put in silent alarms.
That was why it was with confidence in his own ability to survive that he let his contacts know that he was back in the city and once again available. Over a couple of beers on Monday afternoon he had bragged about what he’d been doing since September, helping to run a scam for a fake computer company. What Lenny did not know was that an undercover cop had infiltrated the group he was boasting to, and when the cop had filed his report at the precinct, Detective Tracy had picked up on it and now had Lenny under surveillance, which included a wiretap. What the police did not know was that Lenny feared just such a situation and had an exit planned. He had a stash of money from the last job, along with a fake identity and a hideout all arranged in Mexico. But since his return to New York, Lenny had added another element to the exit scenario. It was obvious that Aunt Lilly was dying. He was genuinely fond of Star, and she always had been an asset to his operation. She was also his good-luck charm, so he had decided that if he ever had to get out of the country, he’d take her with him.
And as he often told himself, “I am her daddy, and it wouldn’t be right to abandon her.”
Unspoken, but perhaps even more pertinent, was Lenny’s awareness that a man traveling with a little girl would be unlikely to appear to anyone to be a crook on the run.
16
Sondra had promised herself that she wouldn’t go near St. Clement’s again. If Granddad weren’t coming in for the concert, I’d go to the police right now, she thought. I can’t live like this any longer. If someone found the baby in those few minutes, and read the note and decided to keep her, and she’s being raised in New York, then there might be a fake birth certificate. It would have been easy enough for someone to claim the baby was delivered at home. In that hotel, no one knew that I had given birth-I never had a single pain.
All the pain has come afterwards, she reflected as she lay awake Sunday night. As dawn was breaking, she finally drifted off. After having slept for only a few hours, she awoke with a blinding headache.
She got up and listlessly put on her jogging clothes. A run might clear my head, she decided. I’ve got to be able to concentrate on practice today. I’ve done so many things wrong-I don’t want to add ruining the concert for Granddad to the list.
She had promised herself that she would stay in Central Park today, but when she came near the northern end of the park, her feet turned west. Minutes later she was standing across the street from St. Clement’s, remembering once again the moment when she had held her baby for the last time.
It had warmed up a little, and the street was busier, so she knew she couldn’t dawdle for fear of drawing attention to herself. The snow that had been arctic white on Thursday was now almost fully melted, and the remaining dregs covered with soot.
It was very cold that night, she remembered, and the snow on the sides of the Street was icy. That secondhand stroller had a stain on the side. I scrubbed the inside, but it was so terribly shabby that I hated to lay the baby in it even for a minute. Someone at the hotel had thrown out the shopping bag I used as extra protection. I remember it had a Sloan’s logo on it. I bought the bottles and formula at a Duane Reade pharmacy.
Sondra felt a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she turned to see the concerned face of a somewhat plump, redheaded woman of about sixty. “You need help, Sondra,” Alvirah said gently. “And I’m the one to give it to you.”
They took a cab back to Central Park South. Once in the apartment, Alvirah made a pot of tea and popped bread in the toaster.
“I’ll bet you haven’t had a bite to eat today,” she said.
Once again close to tears, Sondra nodded in agreement. She felt a kind of unreality, coupled with a great sense of relief. Now that she was in this strange apartment with this strange woman, she felt comfortable.
She knew she was going to tell Alvirah Meehan about the baby, and she sensed just from Alvirah’s presence that Alvirah would somehow find a way to help her.
Twenty minutes later, Alvirah told her firmly, “Now listen, Sondra, the first thing you’ve got to do is to stop beating up on yourself. That was seven years ago; you were a kid. You didn’t have a mother. You felt responsible to your grandfather. You had your baby all by yourself, but you planned for it and you planned well. You had clothes and formula and bottles all ready, and you saved every nickel so the baby would be born in New York because you knew you wanted to live here someday. You dressed the baby and put her, nice and warm and safe, in a stroller on the stoop of the church rectory. You had chosen the church that had saved your grandfather when he knew his arthritis was robbing him of the gift he had as a violinist. You phoned the rectory less than five minutes later, and you thought the baby had been found by someone there.”
“Yes,” Sondra said, “but suppose some kids just pushed the stroller away as a joke. Suppose the baby froze to death, and when someone found her, they didn’t want to be blamed… Suppose-”
“Suppose some good people found her and she’s now the light of their lives,” Alvirah said with a conviction she didn’t feel. Good people would have called the police and then tried to adopt her, she thought. They wouldn’t have kept quiet about it all these years.
“I can’t ask more than that,” Sondra said. “I don’t deserve more than that, because I just don’t know..”
“You deserve a lot more than you think you do. Give yourself credit,” Alvirah told her briskly. “Now you’ve jot to get on with your violin practice and give New York music lovers a treat. You leave the detecting to me.” Then, spontaneously, she added, “Sondra, do you know how beautiful you are when you smile? You’ve got to do more of that, hear me?”
