Antonia's Choice (7 page)

Something shifted in me then. Reggie found me still kneeling there, staring at Ben, when she came in with chewable tablets and a glass of apple juice.

“What's wrong, honey?” she whispered.

I held up a finger for her to wait and then roused Ben enough to get the pills and a few swallows of juice into him. He downed them placidly and curled back into a mewing little ball.

“I think you've been exaggerating about him,” Reggie whispered. “Bless his heart.”

I led her out into the foyer and leaned against a column, my eyes riveted to the ceiling, two stories up.

“Just what did your mama say, Toni?” she said.

I told her, each word as wooden and even as the teeth on the crown molding. Until I told her what had just occurred to me as I watched my son sleep. Then my voice got thick.

“Reggie,” I said, “you don't think Ben saw any of those pictures in Sid's studio, do you? I mean, I did leave him there for whole weekends.”

“Oh, honey, I don't think so. Wouldn't he have told you about something like that?”

I brought my eyes down to give her a look. “He won't even tell me what he did in kindergarten when I ask him.”

“Somethin' that disturbing, though, it sure seems like he'd say
somethin'.”

“I don't know what to think.” I tucked my hair behind my ears for probably the eightieth time that afternoon. “The problem is, I just don't know enough about this stuff to even know what we're
dealing with.” I patted my fist against my mouth. “Tell you what—while you're cooking supper, I'm going to get out my laptop and check this out on the 'Net.”

“You're braver than I am,” she said.

With the aromas of bacon grease and cornmeal wafting toward me, I set my laptop on the counter and made my way into the entrails of the Internet. What I found was in such sharp contrast to Reggie's humming and stirring and happy chopping, I wasn't sure it was real. I didn't see how it could be.

“Honey,” Reggie said to me, “you're lookin' a little green there. What does it say?”

“You sure you want to hear?”

“I told you—I don't want you going through this alone.”

“You might change your mind after this,” I said, then read from the screen: “Trafficking in children and adolescents under the age of eighteen for sexual exploitation purposes is a global market, with links to arms and drug networks, as well as to legitimate businesses through money laundering.”

“So your brother-in-law's in it for the money,” Reggie said.

“Of course he is. It only makes sense—his dot-com venture went under—he's a computer fanatic—he's always had to have expensive cameras—” I grunted. “Actually, he had to have expensive everything. They have a wine cellar—there must be five hundred bottles of wine in there, and we're not talking the kind with the twist-off cap.”

“Mercy.”

“He had a sailboat—maybe he still does—a forty-foot thing he'd take to the islands with his buddies. And the vacations he and Bobbi and the kids took—I mean, who carts their children off to Club Med?”

“He does, I take it.”

I nodded. “But I don't know, Reg. I always knew he was a jerk. I never wanted her to marry the slime bucket in the first place, but, I mean, could he possibly have sunk this low? Listen to this.”

Reggie put a lid on the chicken and joined me at the snack bar.

“The Orchid Club,” I said, referring to the screen. “That was sixteen guys who were into ‘Lollies'—that's what they call the little girls they look at, short for Lolita.”

“Oh, that is just tragic.”

“They lived in all these different countries, but each of them had a video camera attached to their screens which enabled them together to watch a ten-year-old girl being—”

“Stop.” Reggie sank onto the stool beside me. “Honey, you sure you want to read more? How much do you need to know?”

“I don't know.” I backed out of the website and closed the cover to the laptop. “I don't know what I need. I just keep wondering how my sister could have this going on in her house and not know about it. She cleans the entire place every single day. You hardly ever see her without the vacuum cleaner and a can of Pledge.”

“Yeah, but if he's the ogre you say he is, couldn't he just make that room off-limits?”

I considered that as I nibbled on my thumbnail. “I guess so. That has to be it. Bobbi is a milquetoast, but I have to believe she'd draw the line at this if she knew. You have never seen a total mother like her. Those kids are always dressed to the nines. She throws birthday parties with
themes.
She was appalled when I had Ben's last party at McDonald's.” I tried to grin at Reggie. “She would definitely have Children's Tylenol on hand.”

“Yeah, but honey, you aren't the mother who's in jail, now, are you?” Reggie got up to turn the chicken.

“You should see the scrapbooks she has for the kids,” I went on. I wasn't normally a babbler, but I felt compelled to keep talking until something made sense. “Wyndham must have five or six of them just of her by now—all done with die cuts and theme pages.”

“She's into themes.”

“The pictures are exquisite. They never took their kids to Olan Mills, because Sid's photographs are so good.”

Reggie turned from the stove as my eyes sought to meet hers.

“Some of the most beautiful pictures I have of Ben as a baby were taken by Sid,” I said.

“And look what that pervert has turned his gift into,” Reggie said. “Honey, don't you know he's going to burn in hell.”

The thoughts I was spilling out suddenly stopped, as if they'd run into something they didn't want to see, much less express.

“You know what, Reg?” I said suddenly. “I don't really feel like eating.”

Ben got restless after Reggie left, so I suggested I give him a bath, à la Nurse Nightmares advice. He didn't have the energy to pitch a fit, but he shook his head so violently I gave up on the idea. I got more juice into him and another Tylenol. When he drifted off to sleep again, I put him in my bed and crawled in beside him in my pajamas, laptop on my knees. Despite Reggie's wariness, I needed to know more.

The money angle wasn't too difficult to read about. It felt good to get my blood boiling when I found out that a pornographer could make a CD that contained twenty thousand images of children and sell it for $25. With seven thousand twisted members in one group alone, all constantly hungry for new material, no wonder Sid had been able to build a new wing onto his house.

It also gave me a certain satisfaction to discover that Internet pornography was a federal crime, and that the FBI was probably involved in this case. I liked the idea of Sid surrounded by agents in black suits, all bellowing questions at him the way he bellowed at his own kids.

But Bobbi—Bobbi wouldn't last five minutes.

What disturbed me, as represented on the Internet trail I'd taken, was that in spite of how lucrative it could be, pornography on the Internet was not primarily based on the exchange of money.

Pornography is for the purpose of stimulating sexual fantasies,
it said. I was about to explore more when Ben stirred beside me. I set the laptop on the bedside table and leaned over him.

“It's okay, Pal,” I said. “You want some more juice?”

He was still again. Sure that he was asleep, I put my hand on his back to rub it. He came up in the bed as if I'd administered a shock treatment.

“Where am I?” he cried.

“You're in my bed. It's—”

“No! I don't want to be here! Don't touch me!”

I pulled my hand back.

“I'm not touching you, Pal. I thought you were asleep.”

“Don't touch me when I'm sleeping! Don't!”

He scrunched his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them.

“Okay,” I said. “No touching. Do you want to go in your own bed?”

He nodded into his knees and let me coax him out of the fetal position and across the hall to his bedroom. But the minute he was under the covers and I turned to go, he was sitting up again. His dark eyes pleaded at me.

“Don't go, Mommy,” he said. “I'm scared.”

At the point of exasperation, I knelt down beside his bed. “I just need to feel your forehead to see if you still have a fever. It'll just take a second.”

He stiffened and sucked in his breath. I put my hand on his forehead. It was clammy. I was mystified as I pulled my hand away and got him to lie down again. I had been sure the fever was making his behavior even more bizarre, but this was something else.

“You promise you won't leave?” he said. “The whole night?”

“I'll be right here. I'm just going to go get my pillow and blanket so I can sleep on your floor.”

“No! Take mine!”

He pulled a Rugrat-dotted pillow from under his head and started to yank off his comforter.

“No, Ben,” I said. “I'm fine. You keep those.”

He stayed up on one elbow watching me, until I curled up on the rug next to his bed. Slowly he sank back down onto the pillows. In the darkness, I could hear him whispering, “Make it stop. Please make it stop,” until he fell asleep again.

Yes,
I thought as I pulled his covers up around his chin.
Whatever it is, please make it stop.

W
HEN I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING
, Ben was leaning over where I still lay on the floor like a mangled coat hanger.

“What are you doing there?” His voice was still croaky from sleep, his face puffy and soft as a two-year-old's.

“You asked me to sleep here, Pal,” I said.

“No, I didn't.”

“Yeah, you did. I wouldn't have chosen this for a bed myself, trust me.”

“No-o! I didn't make you sleep there!”

“You didn't ‘make' me—you sort of begged me.”

His head was going back and forth so fast, I was afraid he was going to slosh his brain.

“Never mind,” I said. “How about some cream of wheat for breakfast?”

“I hate cream of wheat!”

Okay—so at least he was feeling better.

But he wasn't well enough to go to school, not with his temp still at 101, a fact I gleaned after much wrestling around with the thermometer. Only when I got him to stop screaming long enough to hear that I wanted to slip it under his tongue, not into his bottom, did he finally relent.

“I haven't done that since you were six months old,” I said. “And even then I thought it was inhuman. Nana told me to stick it in your armpit—which, by the way, you thought was hilarious. You always were a ticklish little bugger.”

He shook his head, lips still clamped on the thermometer. As soon as I got him set up with Tylenol, juice, and Johnny Bravos latest episode, I called Jeffrey. He was, as always, in the office at 7:15, but he was less than pleased to hear from me.

“We agreed on
half
days at home,” he said.

I closed my eyes to keep from getting defensive with him. I would rather have died, actually. “My child is sick—he's on the mend—and I will be in tomorrow,” I said. “Meanwhile, I'll e-mail Ginny and see if there's anything I need to have immediately, and I'll work on it here.”

“You'll be in for the files, then,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“I'm sure Reggie will be glad to—”

“We can't spare Reggie.”

I let silence fall. The man could send a courier and he knew it, but I wasn't going to be the one to suggest it, not even if my entire spinal cord turned to piano wire.

“Determine first if there's anything Ginny can't handle,” he said finally. “We'll take it from there.”

“I'm certain there will be several things,” I said. “Consider the situation taken care of.”

After he hung up, I let myself seethe. Interesting how when I'd first gone to work for Faustman Financial, I'd admired Jeffrey's steely, business-like approach. A month ago I would have found his insinuation that Ginny could do my job a rather clever ploy to get me high-tailing it straight into the office. Now he suddenly had the ability to stiffen my spine as fast as Chris could—and that was saying something.

I wondered as I made a pot of coffee strong enough to walk across the street by itself if Mama had gotten in touch with Chris. She hadn't sounded thrilled with the idea when I'd suggested it. Nothing was going to do except me coming up there. It was obvious, in fact, that she wasn't going to keep me posted on what was going on with Bobbi on her own. I knew how my mother operated. The punishing silence had begun.

I hiked myself up onto a stool at the snack bar and looked at the phone.

Bobbi's my sister, for Pete's sake. I can't just sit here and let her rot in jail.

I peeked in on Ben to make sure he was engrossed in
Johnny Bravo
and used the remote to turn up the volume a little. I held my breath, but he didn't seem to notice. Then I waited for the first drips
of coffee to fall into the pot so I could fortify myself before I dialed.

Mama answered on the first ring, rasping out a hello like a cigarette alto.

“Mama?” I said. “Are you all right?”

“I've been up all night. I'm so glad you called.”

At least I had one thing going for me. I eked a little more coffee out of the pot as it continued to drip.

“What's going on?” I said. “Is it Bobbi—is she with you?”

“No.”

There was a weary silence.

“Did you ask the lawyer about bail?”

“There is no bail right now,” Mama said.

I let my mug slam to the counter. “What do you mean no bail? They can't do that!”

“The government can apparently do anything it wants. I thought this was a free country—”

“The government?” I said. And then it dawned on me. “Oh—you're talking about the FBI.”