Life Blood Part 2

"And what happened?" It sounded too good to be true. "Did they seem . .

. in any way unusual?"

She looked at me, as though puzzled by the question. Then she shrugged it off. "Well, first they tried to get me to check into their clinic--it's this place up the Hudson--to let them see if my 'condition' could be cured somehow, using his special techniques."

"His?"

"G.o.ddard. Dr. Alex G.o.ddard. He's a kinda s.p.a.cey guy, but he's the big-shot presiding guru there." She remembered the camera and turned back to it. "I told his staff I didn't have that kind of time, and anyway nothing could be done. They were pretty insistent, so I eventually ended up talking to the man himself. He sort of mesmerizes you, but I finally said, forget it, it's adoption or nothing. So he just sent me back to the peons. Checkbook time."

I stared at her, hungry for details, but she didn't notice, just pressed on.

"The money they wanted, I have to tell you, was staggering. Sixty thousand. And believe me, they don't give revolving credit."

I thought about the figure. It was the highest I'd heard for getting a baby, but it wasn't totally off-the-wall. Terrific babies don't drop from trees.

Carly was still going strong. "It took me almost half a year to scrounge it together. A lot of credit lines got maxed. But when I finally did plunk down the loot, sure enough, I had Kevin in less than three months. I don't even know where he came from. They took care of all that, but I do know it was probably out of the country, because of the blank INS forms I signed. But then, who cares? With a deal this good, you don't press for details, right?"

Carly Grove had a mutual love affair with the camera. The footage was going to be fabulous. The only problem was, it sounded like an "infomercial" for the adoption miracle wrought by this doctor named G.o.ddard.

When the interview began to wind down, losing its punch, I suggested we call it a day. With the time pushing two o'clock, I wanted to get the film to the lab, get it developed, and take a look at the rushes. I also had a doctor's appointment, not to mention a meeting with David to bring him up to speed on what I was doing. But surely he was going to be pleased. The interview, with Carly's honest intensity, would give the picture spine and guts. Just as I'd hoped.

You could always tell by the reaction of the crew. Even Roger Drexel, who usually hid his thoughts somewhere in his scraggly beard, was letting his eyes sparkle behind his Panaflex. Scott was also grinning as he struck the lights and Cafiero ripped up the power lines, now taped to the floor. Everybody was in wrap mode, flushed with a great shoot.

I followed Carly into the kitchen, where Marcy was feeding Kevin some Gerber applesauce. The time had come, I thought, to spring the next big question, out of earshot of the crew.

"I hate to put you on the spot, but do you know any other women like you, single, who've adopted through Children of Light?" I decided to experiment with the truth. "G.o.d knows, depending on what happens in my own situation, I'm . . . I'm thinking I might even want to check them out for myself."

"What do you mean?" She gave me a quick, concerned look.

"Maybe I'd like to talk to them about adopting too." I realized I was babbling, my usual prelude to obsessing.

Carly's worried gaze eased up a bit, but she started twisting at her hair.

"Well, I might have another name. When my lawyer first told me about them, he gave me the name of another woman who'd adopted from them, and I talked to her a little about how they worked. She'd just gotten her baby, so I guess she was about six months ahead of me in the process.

Her name was . . . I think it was Pauline or Paula or something. She's probably not the kind of person who'd take their 'no disclosure' c.r.a.p all that seriously. She was adopting a girl, and she lives somewhere on the Upper West Side."

"Any idea how I could find her?"

"You know, she wrote kids' books, and I think she gave me her card. In case I ever needed somebody to do some YA copy. Let me go look in my Rolodex. I filed her card under 'Y' for Young Adult. Right. It'll just take a second."

The woman, whose name was Paula Marks, lived on West 83rd Street. The business card, a tasteful brown with a weave in the paper, described her as an author. The address included a "suite" number, which meant she worked out of her apartment.

"Mind if I take down her phone number and address? I'd really like to look her up. To see if her experience was anything remotely like yours."

Carly gazed at her fingernails a second. "Okay, but do me a favor.

Don't tell her how you got her number." She bit her lip, stalling.

"It's one thing for me to talk to you myself. It's something else entirely to go sticking my nose into other people's business."

"Look, I'll respect her privacy just as much as I respect yours." I paused, listening to what I'd just said. The promise sounded pretty lame. I'd just filmed her, or hadn't she noticed? "Look, let me call Paula, see if she'll agree to be interviewed on camera. I'll keep your name entirely out if it, I promise."

She reached down and plucked Kevin out of his high chair, kissed him on his applesauce-smeared cheek, then hugged him. "Sorry. Guess I'm being a little paranoid. I shouldn't invite you here, then give you a hard time about what you're going to do, or not do. I can't have it both ways."

In the ensuing tumult and confusion of the wrap, I did manage to get one more item from Carly Grove. The address and phone number of Children of Light. But I completely forgot the one thing I'd been meaning to ask about. That little amulet, with the strange cat's face and the lines and dots on the back. Why was Kevin wearing it? And by the time I got to the street, surrounded by the clamor of crew and equipment, it seemed too inconsequential to go back and bother with.

Chapter Two

Moving on, my next stress-point was to meet with my young boss, the afore-noted David Roth, who was CEO and First Operating Kvetcher of Applecore Productions, a kinda-s.e.xy guy whose heart was deeply engaged, often unsuccessfully, with bottom lines. The issue was, I'd done today's shoot, the interview with Carly, without troubling to secure his okay. Without, in fact, telling him zip--the reason being I was afraid he wouldn't green-light the idea. Now my next move was to try to convince him what I'd just done was brilliant.

Actually I liked David a lot, and hoped the occasional tangles we'd had over the film wouldn't stand in the way of a friendship. The truth is, you don't meet that many interesting, stable men in my line of work.

Our artistic goals weren't always in sync, but all the same, he'd done an enormous favor for somebody close to me and for that I'd vowed to walk through fire for him.

When I marched into his cluttered, dimly lit office, my mind still churning over Carly's strange adoption story, what I saw sent my problem-detector straight into the red. There, sitting across from him, was Nicholas Russo, a five-seven smoothie in a charcoal Brioni double-breasted, the gentleman David sometimes referred to as Nicky the Purse. Another land mine in my life. He operated off and on as Applecore's "banker" when cash flow got dicey and real banks got nervous. It was an arrangement of last resort, since Nicky's loans had to be serviced at two percent a week. Do the numbers: He doubled his money in a year. I knew too that putting money out to independent filmmakers was part of Nicky's attempt at a legitimate front; the real cash went onto the streets of h.e.l.l's Kitchen, just outside our door, where he got five percent a week. And Nicky's overdue notices were not sent through the mail.

He also had a piece of a video distributorship, Roma Exotics, that reputedly specialized in . . . guess what. It was all stuff I tried not to think about.

I had a strong hunch what was under discussion. The $350,000 David had borrowed to finish my picture. We'd gotten the loan three months ago, when cash was tight, and we both figured we could pay it back later in the year, after we got a backup cable deal (though I was ultimately hoping for a theatrical distribution, my first).

s.h.i.t! What did Nicky want? Were we behind on the weekly juice? I'd signed on with David partly to help his bottom line. Was I instead going to cause his ruin?

At the moment he had his back to Nicky, seemed to be meditating out the window he loved, its vista being the grimy facades that lined the far west of Fifty-eighth Street. His office, with its wide windows and forest of freshly misted trees, told you he was a plant nut. Outside it was early April, the cruelest month, but inside, with all the trees, spring was in full cry. The place also felt like a storage room, with piles of scripts stacked around every pot. The office normally smelled like a greenhouse, but now the aroma was one of high anxiety.

David revolved back and looked across the potted greenery, then broke into a relieved smile when he saw me. I could tell from his faraway stare that he was teetering on the verge of panic.

"Hey, come on in," he said. "Nicky's just put a brand-new proposition on the table."

David had a keen intelligence, causing me to sometimes wonder if he was in a line of work beneath him. (For that matter, maybe I was too.) He was dark-haired, trim, with serious gray eyes and strong cheekbones.

This morning he was wearing his trademark black sweater, jeans, and white sneakers, a picture of the serious go-for-broke New York indy-prod hustler. He'd already made and lost and made several fortunes in his youthful career. My only s.e.xual solace since Steve left was an occasional glance at his trim rear end. I also saluted his fiscal courage. His congenital shortfall, I regret to say, was in the matter of judgment. Exhibit A: Nicholas Russo's funny money.

"Nicky, you remember Morgan James, the director on this project."

"Yeah, we met. 'Bout four months back." Nicky rose and offered his manicured hand, a picture of Old World charm. His dark hair was parted down the middle and his Brioni, which probably fell off a truck somewhere in the Garment Center, had b.u.t.tons on the cuffs that actually b.u.t.toned. "How ya doing?"

"Hi." I disengaged myself as quickly as possible. The slimeball.

Again, why was he here? The way I understood it, we'd signed a legitimate, ironclad note. Nicky wasn't exactly the Chase Manhattan Bank, but I a.s.sumed he was a "man of honor," would live by any deal David had with him. "Do we have some kind of problem?"

"Nah," Nicky said, "I'm thinking of it more in the way of an opportunity. Dave, here, showed me some of your picture this morning, and it ain't too bad. Got me to thinking. You're gonna need a video distributor. So maybe I could help you out."

Oh, s.h.i.t and double-s.h.i.t. I looked at him, realizing what he had in mind. "How's that? Applecore already has a video distributor. We use--"

"Yeah, well, like I was telling Dave, I got a nose this picture's gonna do some serious business." He tried a smile. "Whenever I see one of these indy things that don't add up for me, like this one, I always know it's a winner. What I'm telling you is, I think you got something here. He says you're figuring on a cable deal, and maybe a theatrical release, but after that you gotta worry about video. I'm just thinking a way I could pitch in."

Pitch in? The last thing I needed was some skin-flick wiseguy getting his sticky hands on my picture. Forget about it.

"Well, I don't really see how. I'm shooting this one by the book. I've got a standard Screen Actors Guild contract, and everything is strictly by the rules. If we're current on the loan, then . . ." I looked at David, who appeared to be running on empty. Maybe, I thought, I didn't understand what was at stake. What had Nicky said to him? This was a man who could make people disappear with a phone call to guys nicknamed after body parts. "Look, let me talk to David about this. I don't know what--"