Three Marys Read online

  In the car, Gottlieb told his wife that when they got home, they should get comfortable and sit on the patio for a while listening to the waves. The gated house had a tree-lined driveway leading up to a large shingled house. Entering through the garage, he deactivated the alarm and set his keys on a kitchen counter. It was his wife who noticed that something was wrong.

  ‘Steve, look.’

  In the butler’s pantry, the door to the liquor cabinet was wide open and two bottles of brandy were smashed and spilled on the tile floor.

  ‘You didn’t do this before you left, did you?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’ he said. ‘Come on. We’re leaving and calling the police.’

  A pair of detectives from the Greenwich police department arrived after a uniformed officer did a sweep through the house.

  One of them told Gottlieb, ‘We need you to do a thorough walk-through to see if anything’s missing. You got any safes?’

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘One in the bedroom, one in my office.’

  ‘Check those. Check everything. We see you’ve got cameras outside. Any inside?’

  ‘Only exterior,’ he said.

  ‘While you’re looking around, we want to check your video DVR.’

  While his wife sat at the kitchen table composing herself with a cup of green tea, Gottlieb began methodically checking the property. His wife kept her expensive jewelry in a bedroom safe alongside his collection of pricey wrist watches and a couple of firearms. He tried the safe door. It was locked. Her less expensive pieces were in a chest in her dressing room. They were all there. He covered every room. All the paintings and objets d’art were in place. His collection of rare first editions was intact in the library. The silver was in the dining room and nothing was amiss in the wine cellar. He checked his office last. His office safe kept some work and home documents and a little cash. He tried the door. It was locked. That left his desk. There was one highly sensitive draft contract he’d left out. Shuffling papers, looking for it, a newspaper clipping fluttered to the floor. He found the contract where he’d left it and went looking for the detectives, leaving the clipped New York Times article on the rug with its photo of Calvin Donovan.

  Gottlieb reported back on his inspection.

  The detectives told him the video feed didn’t show anything but advised him that there were a few blind spots he might want to address.

  ‘You sure the alarm was on when you came in?’ one of the detectives asked.

  ‘It was on. I deactivated it.’

  ‘Was it set for home or away?’

  ‘Away mode. We don’t have pets.’

  ‘Have there been any malfunctions?’

  ‘The alarm’s been perfect,’ Gottlieb said.

  ‘You positive the alarm was on?’ the other detective asked.

  Gottlieb’s temper was getting short. ‘Look, I’ll show you.’

  He had an app on his phone that showed the system history. The detectives passed the phone between themselves.

  ‘Does anyone else have the alarm code? Cleaners, handymen?’

  ‘No, and besides, the history shows all the activations and deactivations. No one but me entered codes today.’

  ‘This is a new one on me,’ one of the detectives said. ‘We’ll dust for prints but I suggest you contact your security company and see what they think. This seems to be more along the line of a prank than a burglary, what with the brandy bottles and all. Anyone you can think of who’d pull a stunt like this? Your kids, their friends?’

  ‘No, nobody,’ Gottlieb said.

  ‘We don’t have children,’ his wife said.

  Gottlieb’s mood turned darker after that night. He missed work the next day waiting for the security company technician to arrive. After the fellow declared that the system was operating correctly he said he couldn’t offer any explanation for how someone could have pulled off the break-in. Gottlieb threw a fit and demanded the chief technician make an appearance. The security company was a local smart-home outfit that Gottlieb had paid a small fortune to fit out his house so they obliged him quickly. The head man came over in the afternoon and spent a couple of hours troubleshooting with his laptop computer.

  ‘Your system is A-OK, Mr Gottlieb. There isn’t a single fault.’

  ‘How the hell did this happen then?’ Gottlieb said. ‘My wife and I don’t feel safe. If this is a result of shoddy work by you guys, I swear I’ll light you up with a lawsuit. I’ll be getting another company in to check your work.’

  The technician, an older fellow who gave the impression of having been around the block a few times, said evenly, ‘You know, the only thing I can think of is radio waves.’

  ‘Radio waves?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve never seen it but I’ve read about it. It’s theoretically possible to generate the right frequencies of radio interference to jam the system and trick it not to trigger to an open door or window sensor-circuit or a glass-break sensor. It wouldn’t show up in the system history files because none of the sensors would have fired. For a top-of-the-shelf system like yours it’s not something a coked-up neighbor kid is going to be able to pull off or even a professional burglary crew up from the city. It’s real black-hat stuff. Government agencies can probably do it. Sophisticated hackers. You need a lot of hardware and software.’

  Gottlieb frowned and sat down ungainly on the nearest chair.

  ‘You OK?’ the technician asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

  ‘You can get other people in to look at your system, Mr Gottlieb, but no one in the area knows more about this shit than me.’

  Gottlieb began drinking more and sleeping less. When he did go to bed he transferred a revolver from the bedroom safe to the top drawer of his night table. He spent another thirty grand getting a second security company to install a redundant alarm system, beefing up the coverage of the exterior cameras and adding interior ones. His wife told him he wasn’t looking well and asked why he was taking the intrusion even harder than she was. He told her that he was fine but she didn’t believe him.

  Five days after the break in Gottlieb was working at home. He’d drunk half a bottle of scotch the night before and was too hungover to slog his way into the city. Besides, he had a telephone board meeting with one of his west-coast portfolio companies and whether he did the call from his home rather than his office made no difference. He had been at his desk in his home office for an hour, multitasking on his computer, listening to the call on speaker mode and chipping in comments from time to time. He’d been vaguely aware of something out of the ordinary – something olfactory – and as the call progressed he became more convinced that something was giving off a bad smell.

  With the company’s VP of accounting droning on in the background, Gottlieb got up and started sniffing like a blood hound. He convinced himself that the foul odor was strongest at the bookcase wall and he kept sniffing until he was standing in front of the wall safe, hidden behind a section of books. He shifted an armful out of the way, entered the digital code, and opened the door.

  ‘Fucking hell!’ he shouted, falling backwards on his ass.

  He heard some board members asking over the line whether he was all right.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ he said, ‘but something’s come up. I’ve got to sign off for a while.’

  He ended the call and crept toward the safe again. The smell was putrid, gagging. There was something in there but it took the flashlight from his phone to see what it was.

  The exterminator held it with a gloved hand by its long, gray tail.

  ‘How do you figure it got in there?’

  Gottlieb was holding a wash cloth over his mouth and nose. Through it he said, ‘No idea. What is it?’

  ‘It’s a possum. There’s plenty of them around. I see them getting into a house every so often but I’ve never seen one crawl up into a safe and close the door behind it.’ He looked over his glasses for a reaction but got none. ‘This one’s been in there a while. She’s p
retty ripe.’

  Gottlieb looked strung out. ‘Can you get it out of the house, please.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ he said dropping it into a canvas bag. ‘One thing’s kind of interesting about this one. She’s pregnant as hell.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Two months later

  Maria Aquino was a tough little cookie but Sue could tell she was scared. Up to the moment of her first contraction she’d been the phlegmatic one. She had handled her protruding belly and changing physiology without the drama of the other girls. She never missed a language lesson. She took her dishes and silverware to the kitchen and her dirty clothes to the laundry room without complaining and obliged the female staff whenever they wanted to reverently touch her abdomen. Sue called her the trooper.

  But when that first contraction came she winced hard, moaned, then went quiet and fearful.

  It was nighttime and the girls were in their lounge watching a video. Mary Riordan and Maria Mollo noticed her changed behavior and Mary knocked on Sue’s bedroom door.

  ‘I think something’s happening with Maria.’ Lily the bulldog was with her, excited to see Sue.

  ‘Which one?’ Sue asked, slipping on shoes.

  ‘The Minion.’ She had the big eyes and glasses. Mary’s nickname for Maria Mollo was Eeyore, the depressed donkey from Winnie the Pooh. Sue had once asked what the Marias called her and Mary had said, ‘Don’t know. Her Royal Highness most likely.’

  Sue stayed up with Maria after the other girls went to bed. She didn’t bother to put her up in stirrups. An exam would come later. A quick palpation of her belly while she reclined on the sofa was enough for the experienced midwife. The next contraction was the real deal, real enough for Sue to wake up Mrs Simpauco. Maria’s English was coming along but Sue wanted communications to be perfect. After telling the girl what the next several hours would be like, Sue let Mrs Simpauco return to bed until needed again.

  Maria spent the interval between contractions quiet and tight-lipped, arms folded over her tight abdomen. The girl had seen her mother birthing her brother and it had traumatized her – the screaming and crying and pushing and groaning and all the bodily fluids.

  The third contraction came an hour later and with that, her lip began to quiver and her eyes welled up.

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetie pie,’ Sue said, stroking her hair. ‘Tama lang. It’s OK.’

  Six hours later, in the wee hours, her water broke and the girl briefly lost it and became hysterical. Sue thought it was as good a time as any to bring her into the delivery room to clean her up and do a pelvic examination. She had been planning for this moment from her early days of work for Miracle Ranch LLC, the name of her employer that appeared on her paycheck. Although she had learned her craft in modern hospitals, she worked in people’s homes and the idea of clinic-level facilities in a private setting was something different.

  She calmed Maria down, got her into a gown festooned with teddy bears and cleaned her with a sponge and warm water. When she was comfortable on the table Sue called down to Mrs Simpauco’s room and told her it was time.

  When the woman arrived, Sue got Maria into stirrups and inserted a speculum. Previous exams had obliterated her virginal hymen. She was dilated only a centimeter. It was going to be a long haul.

  ‘Let’s check on the baby,’ she said via the translator.

  She had already introduced the girls to all the gear in the room so they wouldn’t be frightened come the day. External fetal monitoring required two belts wrapped around the abdomen, one to detect the baby’s heart rate, the other to measure the contractions. Maria tensed as Sue strapped her in but nodded solemnly when she was told the baby’s heart was good and strong.

  ‘You see that number – a hundred and twenty-four? That’s how many times your baby’s heart is beating every minute,’ Sue said. ‘He can’t wait to meet you.’

  The girl was too scared to smile.

  It was dawn and the sky was pink when the contractions came every five minutes. Sue made a call on her mobile to Dr Lopez.

  ‘Maria Aquino is at four centimeters. The fetal heart rate is good, no decelerations.’

  ‘Be there in an hour,’ the pediatrician said. ‘Think I’ve got time for a Starbucks?’

  It was a joke between them. There weren’t any Starbucks in these parts.

  ‘You’ve got time to roast your own beans.’

  Mrs Torres stuck her head in after breakfast and greeted the pediatrician in Spanish. Maria was listless and drained, sucking on the straw of a juice box being held by Mrs Simpauco. Torres wanted to know where they stood and when Sue told her she thought the baby would crown within the hour the woman said something that caught Sue off guard.

  ‘I’ll have the videographer get set up.’

  Sue stared at her for a moment then asked to speak outside the room.

  ‘What do you mean, videographer?’

  ‘They want the delivery recorded. Didn’t you know?’

  Sue had to work hard to control her temper. Of course she didn’t know because Torres had never mentioned it.

  ‘Who wants it recorded?’

  ‘They do. The people paying for all this. Your employer.’

  ‘Why do they want to do it?’

  ‘It’s not my place to ask.’

  ‘You can’t just record people without their permission.’

  Torres was prepared. Her omnipresent clipboard had release forms for Sue and for Lopez.

  ‘What if we don’t want to give permission?’

  ‘Dr Lopez is good with it. I already talked to him.’

  ‘What if I’m not good with it?’

  Torres gave her one of her passive-aggressive smiles. ‘Then I guess Maria will have to have the baby on her own.’

  ‘For Pete’s sake,’ Sue said.

  ‘Don’t worry, no one will know it’s you. They want you and Lopez wearing surgical masks. They don’t want anyone recognizing and contacting you.’

  Sue threw this development on the smoldering bonfire of all the reasons she disliked this boss of hers.

  While she was signing the release she said, ‘What about Maria? Doesn’t she have a say in whether she’s taped?’

  ‘She’s a minor. I’m signing for her.’

  It turned out the videographer was a man in his fifties who Sue already knew. He had joined the staff a month earlier and had spent his time closeted away in a basement room near the security office. One day, over lunch, when Sue asked what he did, the guy looked a bit guilty and had said, in a rehearsed way before excusing herself, that he’d been hired to do special projects.

  Maria was too spent to pay the videographer any notice but while he was setting up a tripods and lights at both ends of the birthing table, Sue said, ‘Special projects?’

  The man shrugged. ‘That’s what I was told to say. Sorry.’

  ‘Film a lot of deliveries?’ Sue asked.

  ‘Only my own – my wife’s I mean – but it was a long time ago. Shot it on film. That dates it.’ He pointed at Maria. ‘She’s young.’

  ‘I’ve got to go back to work now. Stay out of my way, please.’

  When the contractions were coming every two minutes and eliciting ever-high-pitched yelps, Sue had her pull up her knees to have a look.

  ‘OK, she’s fully dilated. I can see the head. Tell her I can see the baby’s head.’

  The translator told her and the girl gave a single eyes-closed nod.

  ‘Is it show time?’ the videographer said.

  ‘No, it’s delivery time,’ Sue replied icily.

  ‘Masks on, please. And you, translator lady, I need you out of the shot. Just scoot your chair back a little more, little more. OK, good.’

  Sue donned her mask and got back to it. ‘Maria, I want you to start pushing.’ She put her hand over her lower abdomen. ‘Push from there really hard when I tell you to. OK? We’ll begin with the next contraction.’

  The contraction started and the girl did her first push, a go
od effort but not what Sue wanted out of her. Over the next several cycles Maria got more effective but she was tiring rapidly and that had Sue worried.

  ‘She’s so loud,’ the cameraman complained. ‘It’s blowing out my sound levels. Are you going to give her something for the pain?’

  Sue turned to him and said, ‘Will you please shut the fuck up?’

  Maria recognized the word – Mary Riordan had taught her all the good ones – and she giggled for the first time that night.

  ‘OK, kiddo,’ Sue said, ‘time for a big fucking push.’

  Maria yelled and bore down hard.

  ‘That’s it, that-a-girl, you’re crowning. Mrs S, tell her to stop pushing! I don’t want her to tear herself.’

  Tufts of brown scalp hair poked out of the dilated birth canal. Maria’s sweat-drenched head slumped to one side of the pillow.

  ‘OK, honey, the next push is going to be the golden one. Tell her that.’

  And Sue was right. One more contraction, one more push, and the baby slipped out smoothly into Sue’s gloved hands. The placenta followed a few seconds later and Sue laid the infant on Maria’s bare belly.

  ‘Here’s your baby boy, baby girl,’ she said.

  Maria looked down on it, her eyes really as big as a Minion’s, her lips parted in awe.

  ‘OK if I let the cord pulse for a while, Doctor?’ Sue said.

  Dr Lopez shrugged. ‘Cut immediately. Wait a few minutes. I’m nothing but flexible on the subject,’ he said, watching the baby take its first breaths. ‘Looks like a nice, healthy baby. Easily seven pounds. Nice job, mom. Nice job, midwife.’

  When Sue was ready, she told the girl to hold the baby while she milked the cord, clamped and cut it. Untethered, Maria pulled the baby higher, on to her chest.

  The videographer had a hand-held camera for the occasion. He came in tight and before Sue could stop him from almost poking the baby with his lens, he asked a question which Mrs Simpauco immediately translated.

  ‘What will you call him?’

  Maria looked into the camera then at the wriggling infant and said in English, ‘His name Jesus Ruperto. Ruperto is name my father. Jesus is name my savior.’