American Outrage Read online

  “Any idea what happened to Martha Van Buren after the funeral?” Jake asked, sipping from the big ceramic mug.

  Judy spooned up the teabag and choked it on its own string, extracting the flavor. “Funny, I never thought about it. I have no idea.”

  Sam’s eyes were glued to the certificate, his head tilted so that his shaggy hair shielded their expression. “Did you know Clinton Eg-gers was from Kansas?”

  “Nothing at all?” Jake asked. “Not even a guess? Some family vacation home? A flat in London or something?”

  “I told you,” Judy said, “she was, not a black sheep, but a little, I guess, on the edge of the family circle.”

  She watched Sam.

  “You can hang on to that,” Judy said.

  Sam clenched the copy of the death certificate in his hands and stared out the window as they drove from the bakery back to their hotel.

  “You okay?” Jake asked as he pulled up in front of their hotel.

  Sam nodded.

  They went up to the room, and Sam plugged the computer into the cable for a faster connection.

  “Square one,” Jake said.

  He sat down and punched in his AutoTRAK log-on name. He was denied. He tried again.

  “They shut me down,” Jake said.

  “Don’t you know anyone else’s code?” Sam asked him.

  “Never needed it.”

  “Slide over,” Sam said, taking the seat at the desk and looking at the screen. “Are all the log-on names like this? First initial and the last name?”

  “Probably.”

  “What’s that Muldoon guy’s first name?”

  “Conrad?”

  Sam started typing.

  “Yeah, but you need the password,” Jake said.

  “A lot of people just use their log-on name for their password,” Sam said, typing, then frowning and shaking his head before typing again. “Or their first name or their initials. Sometimes a number, like Conrad One. Mostly people use one.”

  Jake watched all Sam’s attempts get rejected and said, “You don’t just guess someone’s password, Sam. That’s why they’re passwords.”

  “Doesn’t Muldoon drive some old Cadillac convertible?” Sam asked, looking up at him. “That big brown El Dorado thing I saw when you met him that day at Shea Stadium?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s got something goofy on the license plate, right? Assman or something?”

  “Newsman,” Jake said, chuckling. “He spells it N-W-Z-M-A-N. You were close. Assman would be good for him.”

  Sam turned to the keyboard and pounded something out, then hit return. He looked up at Jake with a grin.

  “We’re in.”

  Jake laughed and shook his head.

  “I told you, you need me,” Sam said, without looking up from the computer.

  He typed for a few minutes, then said, “There’s three Martha Eggers in the entire country. One is eighty-seven, one is sixty, and the third is my age.”

  “So, try Martha Van Buren,” Jake said.

  Sam typed, waited, then said, “There’s a bunch. The closest are three in New York and one in Connecticut.”

  “No Van Buren-Eggers?”

  “No,” Sam said after another attempt.

  “Her birth date should be somewhere around 1974 or five,” Jake said. “That would make her eighteen when you were born.”

  “Here, 1974,” Sam said. “Here’s her address. Two-thirty-six East Seventy-second Street. What’s this, Dad?”

  Jake looked where he was pointing and said, “Associated addresses are like where someone works or has some kind of business. A place they’re at a lot other than their residence.”

  “So we’ll take that, too,” Sam said, writing down 165 EAST 69TH STREET.

  “One thing you know,” Jake said, “either she’s not doing too bad or the family is still taking care of her. The real estate on the Upper East Side isn’t cheap.”

  “Can we go?” Sam asked.

  “Yeah, but this part of it I need to handle,” Jake said.

  “We’re partners on this,” Sam said.

  “And partners share the load,” Jake said. “Sometimes one partner has to step up and the other steps back.”

  “She’s my mom,” Sam said.

  “We don’t know anything, Sam,” Jake said. “We need to go slow. We can’t walk in there and say, ‘Here’s the baby you thought was gone.’ I don’t want to put you in that situation either.”

  “What situation?”

  “I’ve seen things,” Jake said. “People are strange sometimes. It’s just better.”

  “What things? I want to go.”

  “You can’t,” Jake said.

  Sam glowered at him while they packed and the whole ride down the Thruway to Manhattan. They found a garage near the Seventy-second Street address. There was a Starbucks on the corner and Jake set Sam up there with a hot chocolate, a piece of marble cake, and a copy of the Post someone left behind.

  “I’ll be back,” he said.

  “Thrills,” Sam said, snapping open the paper and taking a bite of cake without looking up.

  Jake sighed and headed out.

  The doorman at Martha’s building recognized Jake from the show, but wouldn’t tell him anything more than that Martha wasn’t home.

  “Can you just tell me when she’s likely to come back, so I can check in?” Jake asked. “Come on. Help me here. It’s nothing bad.”

  The man clamped his mouth shut and shook his head.

  “So much for notoriety, right?” Jake said, and walked out.

  The Sixty-ninth Street address was an old brownstone without any signs or nameplates other than a brass placard that had the street number next to a call box with a small round button that rang a buzzer inside. Jake looked up at the camera mounted in the corner above the door and a woman’s voice came out of the call box asking whom he was there to see. Jake said Martha Van Buren.

  “Of course. Please come in,” she said and the lock buzzed.

  Jake swung open the door and stepped into a small foyer with a small Oriental rug, a coatrack, an umbrella stand, and a light fixture hanging from a chain. There was a sterile aura to the place that Jake couldn’t figure. To the left was a set of white marble stairs. Ahead, down a short hall, was a wooden door that led to a small waiting room with four wingback leather chairs and some magazines. Behind the glass partition over a counter was a young woman in glasses and a tight hair bun. She slid open the glass as Jake approached and said, “Hi, I’m Jodi. Welcome to Llewellyn House.”

  She handed him a clipboard, asking him to sign in and provide a picture ID.

  Jake checked himself from asking what kind of place it was and began filling out the form. When it came to the part where he was to state his relationship to the patient, he put down COUSIN. The woman took the clipboard back, checked Jake’s driver’s license, and came out into the waiting room with a warm smile.

  “I thought I recognized your name,” she said. “I’ve heard you on NPR, right?”

  “You used to,” Jake said, returning her smile.

  She led him through another door and into a room with a couch, two chairs, a coffee table, and a fireplace. It was the front room, and the window looked out onto the street through beveled glass and decorative black iron bars.

  “Martha will be with you in a few minutes,” the woman said. “Can I get something? Evian? Coffee?”

  Jake thanked her but said he was fine. She smiled and left.

  Jake went to the window and drew the curtain aside. He looked out through the bars at the leafy branches of the tree guarding the brownstone and the people walking past. The door opened and Jake spun around.

  Martha Van Buren was pale and thin, giving her big dark eyes center stage in her appearance. She wore designer jeans, closed-toed Birkenstocks, and a thin, dark green sweater. Her dark hair was pulled into the same tight bun that the receptionist wore, only several wisps had escaped and they pestered Ma
rtha so that she had to sweep them back several times a minute.

  She sat in one of the chairs facing the couch and said, “Hello.”

  She neither smiled nor frowned, but looked expectantly at Jake while she battled back her hair.

  “Martha, I’m Jake Carlson.”

  “Hello,” she said, again.

  “I know how unusual this is, but I wanted to talk with you about Ridgewood.”

  She looked away as if he’d flipped on a harsh spotlight. Her back was rigid and her hands gripped the arms of her chair so that her knuckles went white.

  “Martha?” Jake said, but she didn’t respond.

  Jake looked around the room and decided to wait. After a few minutes, he tried again.

  “I’m sorry to ask, Martha,” Jake said softly. “I’m not doing this for me. I have a son. I’m trying to help him.”

  “Did they tell you to come?” she said bitterly, still looking away.

  “No one told me,” Jake said. “It’s just me.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that place.”

  “Did something bad happen? Is that why?”

  She shook her head. Jake waited again.

  “Are you happy here?” Jake asked.

  “Yes,” she said quietly.

  “You’re lucky,” Jake said.

  “Now, maybe.”

  “I used to be lucky,” Jake said. “I had a wife and I used to tell people she was the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  A car passing by outside gave a friendly beep to someone. The ventilation kicked on and Jake felt the air move. Martha remained still, and Jake was getting ready to make his last run at her when she cleared her throat.

  “I had that,” she said, and Jake let it linger in the air for a moment.

  “If you just let me tell you my story,” Jake said, “I won’t ask you questions. If you just listen and then you want to tell me something, you can. If you don’t, I promise I’ll leave.”

  Martha turned his way, her face coiled with anxiety. She looked at him briefly before staring at her feet. It was several minutes before she said, “All right.”

  “Martha,” Jake said, edging forward in his seat and softening his voice even more, “my wife and I adopted a baby boy thirteen years ago. My wife recently—my wife is gone now and Sam—that’s my boy—wanted to find out where he came from. I’m an investigative journalist, you might have seen the show American Outrage? So, I’ve found people before and I told him I’d help. I have no idea if you’re connected to my son in any way, and I hate to bring up things from the past that you don’t want to think about. I know. I’ve got my own things and I know what it’s like when you just want to bury them.

  “But I wanted to ask you about the baby you had.”

  Martha looked up at him, her big eyes shimmering like water down a well.

  “I don’t know,” Jake said, raising his hands and splaying his fingers, “but I think there’s a possibility that your baby might not have died.”

  Martha’s lips trembled and she rose to her feet. She took two steps and dropped to her knees.

  “My baby,” she said, shuddering with pent rage.

  Then she reached out and gripped Jake’s knees with a sob.

  “They never let me see him,” she said between gasps. “They said he was dead, but I wanted to see him. No one would listen. They called me an addict, but they gave me drugs, too. Their painkillers. When I married Clinton, he said he’d disinherit me. Clinton didn’t care.”

  She pulled free from Jake, still clenching fistfuls of his pant legs.

  “He loved me.”

  She said it as if he might doubt its truth, then she began to wail.

  47

  SAM SHOVED THE REST OF THE CAKE into his mouth and licked his fingers. He took a swig of hot chocolate and swished it around in his mouth to clean the cake off his braces, then dumped the rest of it in the trash before slipping out the door. His head jerked this way and that, scanning the street ahead for any sign of his father. He stepped into a crosswalk and a cab blared its horn, nearly clipping him.

  People stared, and Sam tucked his chin and plowed ahead. When he reached the apartment building on Seventy-second, he scanned the lobby from across the street. The doorman was a tall black man in red-and-gray livery. A woman walked inside with a shopping bag and stopped for a word before disappearing into the lobby. Sam searched up and down, then jogged through a break in the traffic and huffed up to the door.

  The doorman swung it open for him, but Sam pulled up short and said, “Was that Jake Carlson who was just in here?”

  The doorman looked up and down the sidewalk and said, “He was, five, ten minutes ago.”

  “’Cause I wanted his autograph,” Sam said.

  The doorman puckered his lips and tilted his head.

  “See you,” Sam said, and jogged off down the sidewalk toward the second address.

  Now he was less careful about looking around, knowing that he was several minutes behind Jake, and not wanting to miss anything. He tripped on a crack, but caught himself and wove his way through a crowd at the crosswalk on Third Avenue. Rancid warm air from the subway wafted up through a grate and he held his breath. When he reached the brownstone, he kept to the opposite side of the street, walking by it before doubling back and ducking behind a Volvo wagon. Through the car window, he studied the brownstone. When Jake appeared at the front window, Sam dropped down. When his heart settled, he peeked up and saw nothing but the curtain.

  He took a trembling breath and crossed between cars, mounted the steps, and buzzed in. He patted his back pocket and removed the passport when he went through the next door and saw the receptionist’s smile.

  “Hi,” Sam said, ambling up to the desk and angling his head at the floor as he held out the passport. “My dad’s here, right? Jake Carlson?”

  “Well,” the woman said, taking the passport, “yes, he is.”

  “But don’t say anything,” Sam said. “If you could just show me where they are. He said if I could make it to just have me wait outside the door. I know he’s with Martha Van Buren. He said outside the door until he comes out to get me.”

  “All right,” she said, stepping out into the waiting room and opening an adjacent door. “They’re in there.”

  48

  THE SIDE DOOR SWUNG OPEN and a man with a young face, but gray hair at the temples, came in. Jake started to rise, but Martha was wrapped around his knees, groaning. The man knelt down with his arm around Martha and talked soothingly to her, softly murmuring into her ear as a horse trainer will do with his charge. He set a small black case on the table and opened it with his slender fingers. Jake saw several syringes and a bottle of clear liquid.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked Martha gently. “Let me give you this. Are you okay?”

  Martha looked up, red-eyed, from the case to the man. She shut her eyes and nodded emphatically.

  “Good,” the man said, petting her arm and preparing his shot.

  Martha kept crying, but she looked away when the man injected her arm. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. The man stood and nodded and helped her back to her chair. Jake shifted in his seat and brushed at the tearstains.

  “I’m Steve Warren,” the man said, extending a hand to Jake. “I’m one of the doctors. Jodi heard her and called me. We’ve found that when something like this happens with Martha, we’re better off nipping it in the bud.”

  “Yes,” Jake said, nodding, “thank you.”

  “I hope you were comfortable with that,” the doctor said, zipping up his bag. “As you see, it helped.”

  “What was that?” Jake asked.

  “Thorazine. I’ve seen you before. Are you her brother?”

  “No,” Jake said. “We’re related. Cousins. It’s a long story.”

  The doctor held up his hand. “None of my business. I’m happy you’re here to see her. We encourage our clients to have visitors, but Martha’s not that outgoin
g. I hope this doesn’t dissuade you. It’s important for her.”

  “Did, did the family, our family, put her here?”

  The doctor smiled and reached for the door.

  “Everyone who’s here is here because they want to be. Treatment is entirely up to the patient. We only recommend things. We never force any kind of treatment or any length of stay. Our clients come to us when they need us. It’s the way Llewellyn House has operated for fifty years. It’s refreshing, believe me, when you’ve seen the alternative.”

  “Can you tell me what’s wrong with her?”

  Warren gave him a funny look.

  “Is she getting better, I mean. Do you think?”

  “Treatment gets better all the time,” Warren said. “But we’re kind of swimming upstream because schizophrenia tends to get worse with age.”

  “She, like, hears voices?” Jake asked, lowering his voice.

  “No,” Warren said, glancing her way, “Martha’s functional. It’s not like that. But sometimes people with mild schizophrenia are worse off. It’s not unusual to go undiagnosed for years.”

  He stooped over Martha and in the patient voice people use to talk with Alzheimer’s patients, he asked, “Are you okay? You’re all right? Okay. Good. I’m going, but you call me if you need me.”

  Warren looked at him with an easy smile. “She’s okay.”

  Jake waited for the doctor to leave before he sat back down and asked, “Do you want to talk?”

  Even against the power of the drug, her face twisted with agony. She took several deep breaths and Jake thought the interview was over. Then she began to speak.

  “When Clinton died, I didn’t have anyplace to go. So, I went home.”

  Martha locked her glassy eyes on him. She no longer swept away the random wisps of hair and they hung limp down her forehead.

  “They hated Clinton,” she said. Her eyes shifted to the window and the waving dappled sunshine that fell through the leaves. “So, he did some drugs, but he loved me and I was pregnant. My father, he said they could fix that, like it was a disease. After that I didn’t speak to him until it was too late for him to make me do something. Clinton was dead and I went home.”