Beneath us, in chest-deep water, lay a pair of befouled mooring anchors worth, give or take, four million dollars.
“I’m trying to picture what kind of truck you’ll buy Izaak for his sixteenth birthday,” Tomlinson remarked later. It was dark by then, a few days shy of the new moon. He had made a round of the bars. There was rum and weed on his breath.
I had just gotten into my own truck—the same old blue GMC. I said, “Have you checked your messages lately?”
He wrestled with his phone and took a look. “Oh crapola. Delia’s dad died. But she didn’t say . . . I don’t know, Doc. Think she wants me to—”
“Don’t offer. It’s not appropriate,” I said. “We’ll send flowers and a note from the marina. Anything else?” He looked at me blankly. “In her text, did Delia say anything else?”
I waited for him to read it again. “Uh-uh. Just that he died peacefully . . . You know, probably copied and pasted to a bunch of friends and family.”
In her text to me, the girl had added could use my guardian angel, Phil scares the hell out of me, really think I’m losing my mind.
To Tomlinson, I said, “Take a look at what she wrote to me,” and handed him my phone.
“That swine,” my friend sputtered when he finished reading. He flopped his arms and tugged his hair. “Delia never heard of something called a restraining order? Hell, husbands have filed them against me for less cause. In a way, a relief, you know? God’s way of saying, ‘Time to move along, dummy.’” He rambled on about Phil, a man he’d never met but accused of being a fraud, who used Rasputin wiles to seduce his students.
I thought, And you haven’t?
I said, “I’ll call her, then I’m staying out of it.”
“Right,” Tomlinson shot back.
No, I meant it.
* * *
—
The days that passed by unnoticed flowed into late August. Hannah and I fell into a routine that was too pleasant, too friendly, and sometimes even sweet, to feel like a rut. I had learned not to pry about the man she was dating. But me being me, I made backdoor inquiries and found out that he was a widower, a respected orthodontist, with a medical ministry that provided free care to poor kids in Central America.
Well, damn. How do you compete with a saint who drives a Jag and likes to fish? For a week, I was in a foul mood.
Florida Trend magazine ran a feature on Mack’s quirky little internet-free cottages. As a result, Playa del Temptation was booked almost solid through the holidays. The island got a nice business pop—badly needed. The ladies aboard Tiger Lilly reconciled and made up. The For Sale was taken down. Figgy somehow wangled a tryout with what turned out to be a women’s professional softball team. Results were predictable, but rejection resulted in new friendships. The marina had been populated with lithe female athletes at recent Friday-night parties.
A Thursday that month was memorable for a different reason. Delia called. We were in the habit of talking about once a week, but I’d never heard her so excited. “They caught him,” she said. “Did Tomlinson tell you? We just hung up. He’s probably on his way to your place now.”
“Caught who?” I asked. From the window I could see my pal’s little yellow dinghy puttering toward the lab.
“Deville,” she said. “It’s on the internet, his picture. His real name is . . . Hang on . . .” She had to check. “His name’s Alonso Arkham. Christ, he looks like a Viking methhead. Best part is, I don’t think—well, there’s no proof anyway—that Tomlinson is his biological father. Just that his parents probably used the same fertility lab as mine and that other freak, Jayden. Isn’t that great news?”
I’d been in the middle of trying to wrestle a dead mullet away from my dog. It took a second for my mind to reboot. A month ago, the guy who’d shot me with a speargun, Jayden F. Griffin, and two unnamed accomplices, had been indicted on five counts of murder. Terrorist bombings.
“He’s in jail?”
Delia said, “Deville—the one we call Deville—yes. Well, in the picture, he’s wearing handcuffs. The FBI caught him. Guess where? Bradenton, just across the bay from my apartment in St. Pete. Jesus Christ . . .” Her voice began shaking. “I just realized, that’s only about fifteen minutes from the marina where we’re renting the houseboat for the reunion. Doc, you don’t think . . .”
Again, I had to put it together. She and her half siblings were only a week away from a party they’d been planning for a month. Rent a luxury houseboat out of the Skyway Boat Basin and overnight off some deserted island.
I said, “The FBI would’ve contacted you,” which I believed, but was guessing, when I tried to reassure her. Told the girl she had no reason to worry, the man was in jail, relax.
It didn’t seem to help. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” she asked. This wasn’t the first time she’d mentioned the reunion, which, in the written invitation, was now being called the Family Bio Launch Mixer.
I have a horror of social gatherings where I’m trapped in a confined space. In this case, a beating was preferable to a night on a houseboat loaded with my pal’s genetic offspring. But I said, “Of course. I’ll stay as long as I can.”
“What’s that mean?”
I said, “It’s a safety issue. Tomlinson thinks—and I agree—it would be smart if I trailered my boat up there. Or rented one. A faster boat, in case someone needs to get back to shore in a hurry. I mean”—I tried to make a joke out of it—“what if you run out of beer?”
Delia didn’t laugh. “Guess I can’t argue, since he’s paying for everything. Just as long as you’re there . . . Doc?”—I felt the rubbery thud of a dinghy bang outside as she continued—“I’m starting to think you really are some kind of security ninja. I haven’t heard a peep out of Phil since you did whatever you did. Are you sure you didn’t threaten him?”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “Hey, Tomlinson’s here, gotta go.”
“Hang on! The week before Labor Day, think you could come up to St. Pete a day early? There’ll be eleven bio sibs. We’re meeting at the Vinoy Thursday night, and I’m—”
“Eleven?” I was startled by the number.
“I know, the emails keep coming in, but only four of us are doing the Friday overnight. I’m so damn nervous, I could use someone to talk to before they start showing up. Meet at the hotel on Thursday before seven?”
It seemed a minor concession. “I’ll try,” I said. “Unless something comes up.”
My dog, with the mullet still in his mouth, greeted my pal at the door by jamming the fish into his crotch. Tomlinson winced. “You damn brute . . . Geezus, it smells like a Liverpool whorehouse in here.”
“You would know,” I said. “Come on.” My pal followed me across the breezeway into the lab. “That was Delia on the phone. No way in hell I’m spending a night on that houseboat, so I told her you wanted me to trailer my boat up there. Like a crash boat, for safety reasons. When she asks, you’ve got to back me.”
“Coward,” he said. “She told you about Deville?”
The dog plopped down at my feet as I opened my laptop. “And that she’s somehow sure you and the guy aren’t related. I don’t understand how she arrived at that. How do you spell his name?”
“The most detailed story so far,” Tomlinson replied, “was in this morning’s Washington Post. An FBI sting got him and two other guys. Terrorists, anti-fertility-clinic nutjobs.”
“I don’t want to read about him, I want to see him,” I said. “How do you spell his damn name?”
We could find only three photos of Alonso Arkham, all mug shots. He was as Delia had described: blond hair, matted Rasta-style, his neck a scarf of tattoos. The man had dull, dead eyes, black slits, as if something alive was in there waiting to crawl out. The jail wall had his height at six-foot-six.
“You sure it’s the guy who jumped you at the cottages?
” I asked.
Tomlinson was sure. The deflated look of pain on his face told me what I already knew. “He’s your son, isn’t he?”
“God help me . . . afraid so,” he said. “But I didn’t lie to Delia, exactly. There’s no proof. See, the way it works is, the children of donors have a legal right to the records. Sperm donors don’t have diddly-squat. I tried to confirm it, man. I really did. Even hired an attorney, but we got nowhere. That was back when I first found out I had a bunch of test tube kids out there.”
My friend had not shared any of this with me.
I skimmed the Washington Post story. “Good. He’s in on five counts, first degree. No bond. At best, federal prison for the rest of his life. And I agree. Why upset Delia by confirming what she’s already scared shitless of?”
“Insanity,” my pal said. The words came out as a whisper. “It’s true, Doc. Insanity runs in families.”
“So does genius,” I countered, and closed the laptop. “As far as I’m concerned, this never happened. Just let it go.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It’s a way of life,” I responded.
Perhaps he thought I was referring to the mooring anchors hidden beneath the dock.
I wasn’t. And I couldn’t let it go. After an afternoon jog and rehab drills for my arm, I reviewed my research on Mensal Cryonics. This led to searches on other clinics. The practice of “confused insemination” was still being used to give fallow couples hope that both were the biological parents. Once a woman was pregnant, a more deceptive technique was to advise the woman that her blood levels showed she was probably pregnant before the procedure.
Well . . . who wouldn’t want to believe?
A kindness, it seemed, until I typed in lawsuits and found out otherwise—all thanks to the popularity of DNA testing. Children conceived through artificial or in vitro fertilization who were now adults were suing the clinics. They were also suing the donors who had fathered them and, in some cases, the parents who had raised them.
Not all who had gotten pregnant with the help of the clinics were happy about the results either. Some claimed that embryos had been switched or the sperm donor had been misrepresented. It was a No way can this child be ours reaction that had resulted in an abnormally high percentage of kids put up for adoption.
There were a lot of pissed-off people out there still numbed by the results of their DNA tests and the shock of learning the truth. The numbers were unexpected. Since the early 1980s, about sixty thousand donor-conceived children a year were born in the U.S. alone. Multiply by five decades—three million test tube babies.
Wow. The mathematical probabilities weren’t troubling, but the possibilities were.
I went back to Mensal Cryonics. I searched deeper. It was an international, multimillion-dollar company with a stable of attorneys, presumably, to block prying eyes. I wondered if they were aware that at least one of their “Ivy League matches” had produced a terrorist accused of multiple homicides?
I phoned an old and trusted source, Donald Piao Cheng. He’s a computer wizard and sometimes analyst for various intelligence agencies. He owed me a favor, which the man acknowledged when he called me back.
“How are things in D.C.?” I asked.
He wasn’t in D.C., he was in Maryland.
“Shitty,” he replied. “That’s why we’re all moving to Florida. What do you have for me?”
Donald was not a man for niceties. I referenced today’s story in the Washington Post, then Mensal Cryonics.
“I don’t think they’d want the story to go public,” I said. “Tell me what you can find out about the perp.”
Donald replied, “Front door access is asking for trouble. I’ll have to set up a gray hat conduit. When do you need it?”
I had no idea what a “gray hat conduit” was.
The sooner the better, I told him, but definitely before Labor Day weekend.
Donald asked, “How do you spell Alonso Arkham?”
TWENTY-ONE
On the first day of September, a Thursday, I dropped my boat at O’Neill’s Marina on the St. Pete side of the Skyway Basin. Two hours later, I was waiting for Delia in the lobby bar of the Vinoy Hotel. The Vinoy is a city landmark, a classic old matron, ornate with marbled history. The structure resembles an eight-story wedding cake that’s been frosted Easter egg pink. The veranda overlooks the waterfront of one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in Florida.
I wore khaki shorts and a clean polo beneath a baggy, unbuttoned fishing shirt. When Delia entered, it took me a moment to recognize the aspiring ecologist and sailor. She was elegant in a black cocktail dress, heels, and pearls. Her cherry-black hair was layered up, a waterfall of curls that spilled onto spaghetti straps and bare shoulders.
An image flashed to mind—an oil painting again. She was one of those timeless, haunted beauties from the Renaissance. It was the fragility of her eyes more than anything.
“I’ll go change,” I said. Already I was thinking, Change into what? Slacks and a different polo?
She gave me a hug, a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t bother. I just want to sit here and drink until the party starts. Have you seen Tomlinson yet?”
Their group had reserved one of the smaller ballrooms for this first meeting of the bio siblings. A buffet and an open bar. Doors opened at 8. It was now ten till 7.
I said, “He’s holed up in the Presidential Suite on the top floor.”
“Presidential? You’re kidding. That sounds extravagant for a . . . It’s hard to believe he really is a Buddhist monk.”
“The mad monk, he calls himself,” I replied. “Ordained. He really is. But the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience—I think he sees them more as loose guidelines. The suite’s got a balcony, and two bedrooms in case the party goes late. Now the dope’s worried about how to dress . . . Risk being too splashy in a tux? Or come like the boat bum he is? I told him it doesn’t matter, just not one of those damn sarongs.”
Laughing, the girl swiveled to face me. She seemed nervous, emotionally on edge and delicate. “Thanks. Thanks for being here. I feel better already.” She placed a tentative hand on my knee, then used it to inspect the bottle the bartender had just delivered. “What are you drinking?”
I had a Beck’s NA beer.
“Must be a sign,” Delia said. “Yesterday, my shrink told me to avoid alcohol. Among other things. It was a tough session. You ever do therapy?” She got a tissue from her purse and dabbed at her eyes.
I asked, “Are you okay?”
“I will be. Oh hell, no. I’ve been a mess lately, Doc. Dad’s funeral, and all the nitpicky details for this party. And that goddamn bully Phil, he’s always a worry. I don’t think the guy’s right in the head.”
“Bully? He’s still calling you?” This was unexpected. Weeks ago, in a pointed yet polite phone conversation with the man, I had referenced Tomlinson’s idea about a restraining order. After some blustering, Phil had been contrite, damn near on the verge of tears.
“That’s the weird thing,” Delia said. “Not a peep out of him, but, you know, it sorta hangs over me, the idea he could show up and make another big scene. It just adds to this thing that’s been happening to me lately. The counselor, she says they’re panic attacks. Tells me they’re harmless. But that’s impossible . . . She doesn’t understand . . . There’s no way to describe how it feels when . . . when all of a sudden, for no damn reason—”
The girl’s voice broke. Tears welled. I watched her face go pale, and she began to hyperventilate. “Is it happening now?” I asked.
She nodded rapidly. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“Come on,” I said. I signed for the beer. I also asked the bartender if I could take the pen and a blank order pad. On the way out, I put my arm around her waist. “I want you to try something for me.”
“
Can’t,” she said. “Have to walk. When it happens, it’s like a chemical . . . this feeling, my head. I can’t breathe. Like I’m dying.”
We walked Bay Shore Drive past a flotilla of yachts. The streets were alive with sunset joggers, people with pets who smiled and actually said “Hello” or “Nice day.” Could be their friendliness helped the girl. Or maybe it was what I suggested when we found a shady bench in the park across the street. I gave her the pad and pen and told her to write down a couple of math problems, then solve them.
She looked at me like I was nuts. “Can’t hurt,” I said. “Here, try this one.” I scribbled a multiplication problem that contained decimals and equivalent fractions.
“This is stupid.”
“We’ll see,” I replied.
Delia, when she concentrated, was a tongue biter. She solved the problem quickly, and I gave her another. Then a third problem, more complicated. Midway through, she paused, looked up at me. In a wedge of copper light, her eyes widened. “My god, it’s gone. That chemical sensation. Like a wave—that’s the way it feels—and I can’t even . . .” She put her hand to her breast as if checking her heartbeat. “Doc, it is gone. How’d you know?”
“I didn’t. Just that it works for me,” I said. “Sometimes, for no good reason, our fight-or-flight response kicks in. It’s a chemical thing.”
“I don’t know, man,” she said. “No way, it can’t be that simple.”
“There’s nothing simple about survival coding,” I said, then tried to explain. “When it happens, our lizard brain takes charge and gathers data from the right brain, the creative side. Usually, the data is imaginary bullshit. But the lizard brain doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction, so we’re flooded with adrenaline anyway. The reason this little trick works—when it works—is that math requires a shift to our left brain, the linear side. There’s no emotion in the left brain, no fear. The lizard brain is immediately disengaged.”
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