Undeniable

by Tom Grace

  “You’re a surrogate,” Roxanne said.

  Castillo nodded. “The child I’m carrying now represents my final tuition payment. I’ll graduate from law school debt free while most of my classmates are piling up mountains of student loan debt.”

  “What you do is a scandal,” Senora Castillo declared. “It is a sin.”

  Nolan glanced at Roxanne and nodded that she should continue talking with Castillo. He then rose and moved close to where the mother stood.

  “So you’re working your way through law school as a surrogate?” Roxanne asked.

  “The pay is good. All of my medical and living expenses are covered. I even have a personal trainer and nutritionist, so I’m in the best shape of my life. It’s not easy, but it doesn’t interfere with my studies nearly as much as a regular job.”

  “Any downside,” Roxanne asked. “I’m mean other than the obvious.”

  “Giving birth is tough,” Castillo agreed, “but I’m healthy, and my body is well-suited for having babies. The other downside is my love life—who wants to date a pregnant woman? Also, my contract prohibits me from sexual activity, alcohol, drugs, and everything else that can harm the baby. I live like a nun, which is why I’m still a virgin and pulling straight As in law school.”

  “Is your contract with the parents?”

  “No. I’ve never actually met any of the parents of my babies. It’s an arms-length arrangement designed to protect the parents and me after the child is born. What you’ve told me about the boy is the first thing I’ve heard about any of the children I bore.”

  “So, who are you in contact with?”

  “The clinic and my obstetrician,” Castillo replied. “Oh, and the lawyer. He handles the business side of this arrangement with the parents and the clinic. I usually only see him at the beginning and after I have the baby.”

  “Would you have contact information for the clinic and the lawyer? It’s important that we find this boy’s biological parents.”

  “Yes.”

  As Roxanne spoke with Gloria Castillo, Nolan carefully studied the shadow boxes under Senora Castillo’s watchful gaze.

  “Were these your husband’s?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Senora Castillo replied proudly. “We lost him six years ago—heart attack. He served this country with honor.”

  “He did indeed.”

  Nolan pulled a challenge coin out of his pocket and showed it to Senora Castillo. Like many in her late husband’s collection, it bore the navy’s Special Warfare Insignia. Senora Castillo’s eyes widened, and her wariness of Nolan eased. He smiled at her and returned the coin to his pocket.

  “He always kept one of these special coins in his pocket for luck.”

  Or to avoid paying for a round of drinks with a bunch of thirsty SEALs, Nolan mused.

  “I do the same. Was he also Catholic?”

  “Yes. Very devout. He would have disapproved of what my daughter is doing.”

  “I share your faith and, like many Catholics, am conflicted over your daughter’s medical situation. As I understand the Church’s teaching, the grave sin is in interfering with the natural conception of a child inside the mother’s womb.”

  “What my daughter does is unnatural.”

  “The only thing unnatural about your daughter’s pregnancy is how the child got there,” Nolan offered. “The rest appears perfectly natural. The ethics, morality, and even legality of this kind of conception and pregnancy are still the subject of much debate, which is appropriate for something so important.”

  “But this world we live in,” Senora Castillo sighed, “that they can do such a thing.”

  “It does make one wonder.”

  THIRTY

  2:45 PM

  Peng watched and waited from behind the smoked glass of a beige van parked outside the Castillo home. For the surveillance of Kilkenny and Tao, Toccare provided Peng with the van and three men. Two occupied the front seats—Lucca behind the wheel and Sal riding shotgun. The third, Angelo, was casually approaching Kilkenny’s parked rental car. Peng sat on the third row bench. The middle row of seats was missing, leaving a large open space in the van’s center.

  Peng guessed Sal, the leader of the trio, was in his late thirties. He was a lean, wiry man with sharp-edged features who carried himself like a whip ready to crack. Lucca and Angelo were both in their twenties and, given their size, useful for feats of brute strength or sheer intimidation. All three possessed a predatory air.

  Angelo dropped into a crouch beside the rental car and placed a wireless GPS tracking device in the rear wheel well.

  “We got a signal,” Sal announced.

  Sal tipped a tablet computer toward Peng, who saw the blinking dot on the animated street map. Peng had a similar albeit time-delayed view on his smartphone that displayed the location of Kilkenny and Tao’s cell phones. The blinking dots on both screens were nestled on a residential street in the Bronx.

  Angelo returned to the van and slipped into the seat beside Peng. The van rocked with the increased load. Peng and his companions continued to scan the homes on the street until Kilkenny and Tao emerged from a duplex.

  “Find out who lives in that house,” Peng said.

  “I’m on it,” Sal replied, taping the information into the tablet.

  “Looks like they’re heading out,” Lucca said.

  Lucca waited until the rental car pulled away before restarting the van’s engine. When the car was a ways up the block but still in view, he began to follow.

  “The name listed on the address is Raul Castillo,” Sal reported. “I’ll call it in and get somebody to do a little digging to see what they can come up with.”

  What has this little house in the Bronx to do with my assignment? Peng thought as they passed the duplex. What has drawn Kilkenny and Tao here?

  THIRTY-ONE

  ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN

  3:20 PM

  “That’s all I have, people,” Grin said to the staff of the MARC Computer Center. “You’re all doing a great job. Keep it up.”

  Grin remained at the end of the long oval conference table as his crew returned to their offices, cubicles, and workstations. For the biweekly all-hands meeting, he wore a vintage brocade vest over a white button down oxford shirt with a bolo tie, his least distressed pair of blue jeans, and a custom pair of Chuck Taylor high top sneakers. It was as corporate as Grin would ever look.

  He was as pleased with them as he was in the job he’d done for MARC since its inception. Information was the consortium’s lifeblood, and the supercomputers and networks that he and his crew managed were the heart, arteries, and veins of this intellectual organism. With his schedule of short, medium, and long-term goals in the hands of those entrusted to accomplish them, Grin returned to his office to resume his off-the-book research.

  Starting with the New York State’s division of corporate records, Grin investigated the structure of Walter Jamison’s professional law practice. He then visited the state’s office of court administration to review the status of Jamison’s law license. Dun and Bradstreet provided a glimpse of his firm’s financial soundness, and the major credit reporting agencies did the same with Jamison’s personal creditworthiness. Bit by bit, he built a picture of Jamison’s life from his electronic footprints.

  Grin deftly delved into the corporate bank accounts of the Jamison Law Office and discovered a $2.5 million deposit from an escrow account matching the timeframe of Sean Kilkenny’s one-time paternity payout. Tapping into the escrow bank’s records, he found the five million dollar wire transfer from Sean Kilkenny that opened the escrow account and a record of the two equal electronic payouts that closed it. Grin already knew where one of the payouts ended up. The other he soon learned went into the account of an entity called Nulla Holding.

  Like a Russian nesting doll, Grin discovered that Nulla Holding was the first in a string of shell companies that held onto half of Sean Kilkenny’s settlement just long enough to pass it on again.
The money electronically flowed in and out of a series of bank accounts, fracturing into smaller and smaller amounts until each piece disappeared into an overseas bank. Not one to let foreign banking secrecy laws derail his search, Grin cracked his knuckles and tunneled under the digital walls in dogged pursuit of the money. Fully laundered, the money returned to the United States in very small pieces distributed among another series of dummy corporations where it evaporated as petty cash.

  “Somebody went to a lot of trouble to distance themselves from Jamison,” Grin mused.

  Before parsing into the ownership of the last line of dummy corporations, Grin returned to the accounting records of Jamison’s legal practice. Jamison’s share of the Kilkenny settlement entered his firm’s accounts as a contingency fee won by Jamison. He noted several other fee payments in the firm’s books, all similarly tied to a specific client account number. Grin accessed the client account record tied to the Kilkenny payment and discovered only the name Jane Doe. He found nothing in the account that linked Jane Doe to the woman identified as the birth mother on Zeke Oakley’s pre-adoption birth certificate.

  Against the settlement, Grin found Jamison’s billable time and expenses and a single payment of a quarter-million dollars to The Hawthorne Fertility Clinic for expert medical consultation.

  “I can’t imagine what kind of consultation would justify that kind of juice,” Grin opined, “but clearly I’m in the wrong business.”

  A quick search of the firm’s vendor accounts revealed eight additional payments of the same amount over the past four years. Though tied to different account numbers, Grin discovered that the firm billed each of the payments to the clinic against a settlement won for a mystery client named Jane Doe. Drilling into each of the settlements revealed a pattern of similar payments from escrow accounts.

  Grin’s smartphone buzzed in the pocket of his vest. It was Roxanne.

  “I was just thinking about you two,” Grin said.

  “I’m putting you on speaker,” she said. “Nolan and I are driving back into Manhattan.”

  “Don’t let him hold the phone—the fine for driving and yacking in the Big Apple is pretty steep. You check out that name I gave you?”

  “We did,” Nolan replied. “And she wasn’t at all what we expected.”

  “Not your dad’s type?”

  “Oh, she was cute enough, but even my dad would draw the line at dating someone younger than his kids.”

  “There may be snow on the roof . . . ”

  “This is my father we’re talking about,” Nolan interjected.

  “The birth mother is a surrogate,” Roxanne said. “She’s not biologically related to Zeke Oakley.”

  “So that kind of kills the idea that baby Zeke’s conception was the result of in flagrante delicto.”

  “She also seemed quite surprised to learn that her name was on the birth certificate,” she continued. “She claimed that her contract specified only the biological parents were to be listed. The baby’s subsequent adoption also came as a shock.”

  “Could she be lying?” Grin asked.

  “It’s possible, but I don’t think so,” Nolan replied. “She’s got another bun in the oven now and says surrogacy is paying her way through law school. I didn’t see even a piece of my dad’s five million in the Castillo household.”

  “Makes sense,” Grin said. “I didn’t see a dime disbursed in her direction from the lawyer, not unless she’s hiding behind shell companies and foreign banks to protect her cut.”

  “You traced the money?” Roxanne asked.

  “You sound surprised. I’m hurt. Yes, I traced the money, or at least half of it. Jamison went fifty-fifty with your dad’s settlement. I don’t know who got the other half, but there’s a monetary laundromat between Jamison and whomever he’s working with on this scam. I’m talking high-speed spin and rinse, fluff and fold.”

  “Jamison is tied to Castillo,” Nolan continued. “She named him as the birth parents’ representative. The surrogate was essentially a vendor contracted by the fertility clinic for the pregnancy.”

  “A place called Hawthorne?” Grin asked.

  “Yes,” Roxanne replied. “They handled all four of Castillo’s surrogate pregnancies.”

  “I’ve found eight of these settlements so far, including Sean’s,” Grin offered. “Hawthorne has grossed two million in consulting fees from Jamison’s firm.”

  “Then that’s our next stop,” Nolan said. “Get us everything you can on Hawthorne while Roxanne and I figure out how to make our next move.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  5:20 PM

  “That’s the last one,” Deena Hawthorne sighed.

  Her final appointment of the day—a nervous couple just days from the procedure that would place viable young embryos into the woman’s womb—had departed the clinic and were riding the elevator down. She stood near the reception desk, tapping the last few notes from the woman’s examination into her tablet computer. The woman had had a scare from an incidental exposure to a child with a virus, but had thankfully remained symptom free well past the incubation period of the illness.

  “How is Mrs. Klein?” the receptionist asked as Hawthorne handed her the tablet.

  “Perfectly healthy.”

  “I thought so. She looked very relieved as they left.”

  “And with any luck, she’ll soon be very pregnant.”

  “I’ll upload your exam notes before I leave,” the receptionist said. “Are you done for the day or working late again?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you work too much sometimes and that you are in dire need of a frozen margarita or three.”

  “You’re right,” she admitted, “but the babies in my lab can’t be kept waiting. Close up on your way out. I’ll be here a while.”

  Hawthorne changed into a clean set of scrubs in the locker room and headed into her lab. Like the rest of her clinic suite, the lab was clean, modern, and highly efficient. Every bench, every piece of equipment, every fixture was placed precisely where she needed it to be. She logged into the lab computer and tapped into a streaming feed from her favorite radio station. A few seconds later, the seductive voice of the late Eva Cassidy singing “Fields of Gold” emanated from the ceiling-mounted speakers.

  Of the two samples she had received from Jamison, the blood was more difficult to process. Thawing the oocytes was a delicate but fairly straightforward procedure that balanced time, chemistry, and temperature. What the maternal half of this couple had contributed was something she dealt with every day, and she expected no surprises. She opened the stainless steel container holding the whole blood samples and unsealed the inner chamber. Then she set a timer for fifteen minutes, donned protective gloves, carefully extracted the six tubes and set them into a thirty-seven degree Celsius water bath.

  Unlike the gamete cells used for reproduction, the white blood cells and those differentiated cells found elsewhere in the human body all contain twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, half provided by each parent. In producing genetic offspring from a cell containing both sets, the trick is to separate each of the twenty-three pairs. Performing this procedure on blood provided by a male would result in one set that would produce a female offspring and one that would produce a male.

  Once thawed, Hawthorne removed the tubes from the water bath, placed them in a centrifuge and set the device in motion. The centrifuge quickly spun up to the desired revolutions per minute, generating a centripetal acceleration equivalent to two thousand times the force of Earth’s gravity. Under such a force, the types of particles separated into three distinct layers within the tube—an upper layer of plasma, a lower layer of red blood cells and a thin intermediate layer containing the precious white blood cells.

  As the blood samples spun, she began prepping other equipment for extraction and sequencing. As miraculous as her process of augmenting fertility was, she could not boast about her accomplish
ments, and the money she earned went into her business accounts as consultation fees. Her techniques danced around the edges of human cloning and eugenics, racing well beyond the moral and ethical debates of the day. Hawthorne’s elite clientele paid dearly for the privilege of these exclusive services, and discretion on the part of both physician and patient was a necessity. After all, what parent would want their child labeled a Frankenbaby?

  For her part, Hawthorne only provided the conception and surrogate implantation for her clandestine clients—the harvesting and pregnancy care were handled elsewhere.

  The hum from the centrifuge altered in pitch as the device spun down, its fifteen-minute cycle at an end. Hawthorne removed the first of the sealed tubes and held it up to the light. The fluid inside was distinctly stratified. She removed the top layer of clear fluid with a pipette and discarded it. Next lay the treasure she sought—the thin buffy coat that held the DNA-bearing white blood cells. Barely one percent of the blood sample, the buffy coat floated like a film atop the dense layer of red blood cells.

  Hawthorne siphoned off the buffy coat and began the process of DNA extraction. She ruptured the white blood cells by mixing them in a test tube with a lysing agent. Then she ran the fluid through a series of spin and rinse cycles to remove the cellular debris, leaving only the prospective father’s chromosomes suspended in a clear protective fluid.

  Left to their own devices, DNA strands twist and coil tightly into tangled bundles. Aside from the tiny Y chromosome, the remaining chromosomes are difficult to identify visually, especially in a sample containing the loose genetic contents of many cells. At this point, Hawthorne moved beyond even the most sophisticated genetic laboratories in the high-speed reading of DNA molecules.

  She loaded the DNA sample into a square of clear plastic. Capillary action drew the fluid into the maze-like interior of the device, filling the tiny pathways that had been sealed in a sterile environment under vacuum. Nestled in the center of the testing square was the heart of the device—a tiny chip smaller than the nail of her pinky finger. She gently placed the testing square into a custom-built DNA sequencer and initiated processing.