"Is Sal so well fixed that there's nothing he needs? Even with scholarships, I would think he could use help with college. Perhaps he needs a car, or a new computer. My client would be glad to help him with that."
At the mention of a car, Sal looked a little pleadingly at Pearson, as if to say, What's the harm. Pearson shook his head.
"Easy for you," Sal muttered. "You have a Porsche."
"Penfield is on private property. Sal will be staying here this summer, taking extra credits in math and science to help him catch up. As a courtesy, I'm going to ask that you not return here, and that you never attempt to contact Sal again. If you don't honor my request, I can make it official and obtain a restraining order."
"A restraining order? What do you think I'm going to do? Sit on him and stuff dollar bills in his pocket?"
"Sal is my ward, I am responsible for him. You're not the first disreputable person who has tried to dredge up his past. When Beale was released from prison two months ago, we actually received calls from some tabloid television show, which wanted to stage a ‘reunion.' Disgusting. They offered us money, too. Well, I'm determined that Sal's life will not be lived under the shadow of what happened five years ago."
Tess looked at the well-furnished library, at Sal Hawkings in his navy blazer, khakis, and blue Oxford cloth shirt. She thought of Treasure, his face streaked with lemon pie, squatting in a vacant house. "Sal would seem to be the one kid from Butchers Hill who's done pretty damn well for himself. Why aren't Treasure and Destiny enrolled at Penfield? Or Eldon? How come Sal's the only one deserving of your solicitous care?"
"I'm here because I'm smart," Sal said, slapping his book shut. "The others were dumb motherfuckers, but I knew enough to want to get out, even if it meant going to a sorry-ass school like this. Now excuse me, but second period is about to begin. I don't have time for shit I don't get graded on."
He left the room, taking the Kipling with him.
"You see?" Pearson said. "Any mention of Luther Beale sets him off. Trauma like that never goes away. Now please leave and be prepared to be arrested if you come back."
As it often happened, Tess was in her car and well on her way to Annapolis before she realized what she should have said in reply. It wasn't Beale's name that upset Sal, or even Donnie Moore's. It was the mention of the other children, Treasure, Destiny, and Eldon.
The legislature was long out of session, but Annapolis was busy, swarming with tourists drawn by its over-the-top quaintness. Apparently, the Gap and Banana Republic became much more exotic when fronting on narrow, cobblestone streets. Tess pulled into the public garage off Main Street, although it always hurt her to pay for parking-hence, those two tickets-and walked up the hill to the Senate office building.
She had never covered the General Assembly as a reporter, but she knew the basic civics lesson of how a bill became law. Jeff from Adoption Rights had told her that the failed bill targeting operations such as Family Planning Alternatives was Senate Bill 319, offered by a senator from Carroll County, a once-rural area now considered part of the Baltimore metro area. Tess had found it odd someone from outside the city had sponsored the bill, especially an old pro-lifer like this senator. There must be a wounded constituent somewhere in the mix. If the committee files proved useless, she could always check with the senator's office and see what kind of material he had kept. But changing the law apparently hadn't been all that important to the senator. Over the past five years, he had never attempted to reintroduce the bill.
Tess walked into the empty Senate building and climbed the broad double staircase to the third floor. The secretary who handed Tess the file seemed almost grateful for any distraction.
"What are you trying to find, anyway?" she asked.
"Looking for some folks who testified on this bill, see if they can give me any leads on the adoption agency that inspired it all." Tess pulled out the sign-in sheet that was put out before each hearing. In order to testify, one had to sign in. The list for SB 319 had just five names: the senator himself, someone from the Department of Human Resources, the state agency that oversaw all adoptions, a couple, Mr. and Mrs. John Wilson of Baltimore, and a woman, Willa Mott. The senator and DHR had filed written versions of their testimony, but there was nothing in the file from the Wilsons or Willa Mott.
"Is this everything?" Tess asked.
"If that's all there is, that's all there is. You know, I've been in this office for ten years and I've got a good memory for most of the controversial stuff that comes through, but I don't remember this one at all. What's the big deal?"
"No big deal, but I'd like to find the people who testified. I just wish I knew what they said, or where they fit into the whole debate."
The secretary shrugged. "There's always the tapes."
"Tapes?"
"Senate records every committee hearing. If you know the date and the time-and it's right there, so you do-you can go over to Legislative Reference and listen on a pair of headsets, just like it was an old radio show. Only even more boring, if you know what I mean."
"Can I do that right now?"
"Sure. But I feel sorry for someone who can't think of something better to do on a nice June day than listen to one of our hearings. Whyn't you go down to the dock, have a meal at one of the seafood places? There's this one place that serves the best crab dip. And if you're on expense account, the Cafe Normandy does a real good rockfish."
Tess, trying not to shudder too visibly at the idea of crab dip or rockfish, thanked the woman and headed across the street to Legislative Reference.
Although tempted to fast-forward through the testimony, she listened dutifully to the entire tape. The senator's dull, rambling introduction, with all its little formalities, the agency's defensive posturing-DHR didn't seem to have anything against the bill, it just wanted to make clear it was not to blame for aberrations such as Family Planning Alternatives.
The law itself, as described, was trivial, requiring that such services disclose in their advertising whether they provided abortions. The pro-lifer senator seemed to be trying a preemptive strike, offering a weak, ineffective bill that would keep the government from scrutinizing other agencies that might be pulling the kind of bait-and-switch Family Planning Alternatives had tried: luring women in with promises of abortions, then using all sorts of propaganda to talk them out of the procedure. (One woman, for example, had been told an abortion halved her probability of ever becoming pregnant again and increased her risk of gynecological cancers tenfold.)
The testimony droned on and on. Tess almost nodded off, then the tenor of the voices changed and she snapped to, rewinding the tape.
The Wilsons were a couple who had started an adoption through Family Planning, then broken off the relationship because they had been disturbed by a worker's offer of a steep discount if they would take a biracial, disabled child. "It was like she was running a tag sale, wasn't it, Mike?" the woman appealed to her husband. "‘Would you take a baby like that if we knocked a thousand dollars off the fees? How about two thousand? What if the baby isn't disabled, just biracial?'"
Again, Tess stopped the tape and played it back. Yes, the woman definitely said Mike, despite the fact that she and her husband had signed in as Mr. and Mrs. John Wilson. Unless the woman tripped up again on the tape, and gave their full names or hometown, finding them would be impossible.
Willa Mott, according to her testimony, had been a worker at the agency for ten years and now ran a day-care center in Westminster, the senator's home county. Bingo! Tess thought, writing down the name. Assuming the woman hadn't moved out of state, she'd be easy enough to find, with a name like that. In a nervous, thin voice that suited her spinsterish name, she described the scare tactics her former employers had used, and how she had finally leaked the story to a local television station. A clerical worker, she had sat in on most of the interviews and seen the files on every client.