Whirlwind

by Rick Mofina

  Korzun pulled out a chair for Yanna.

  “Yuri,” Gromov said, “this is Yanna Petrova. She was a very good friend of my youngest boy, Fyodor. She’s like a daughter to me and has agreed to help me here in America.”

  Barely concealing her animosity, Yanna managed to smile at Korzun.

  “Yanna,” Gromov said, “Yuri Korzun and I knew each other as teenagers working here on the docks.”

  “Welcome to New York, Yanna. It’s unfortunate you cannot both stay longer and see more of the city.”

  “Yes, unfortunate,” she said with a bite in her voice.

  Over dinner the men caught up on each other’s lives and those of people they’d known while Yanna took in the view of the Chrysler Building and tried to comprehend her surreal predicament. As the meal wound down over drinks, the men discussed Gromov’s case.

  “Your friends in this country would be honored to help you with anything you need at any time. Just contact me,” Korzun said.

  Gromov nodded in appreciation.

  “We’ve alerted our people in Justice, State, Immigration and other departments,” Korzun said. “We can provide you with the necessary documentation when you’re ready to leave the country with your grandson, Pavel.”

  “Thank you, Yuri.”

  Korzun reached into his inside jacket pocket, first for bifocals then for a few pages folded together. He reviewed them quickly before passing them to Gromov.

  He nodded and looked at them.

  “Her name is Remy Toxton,” Korzun said. “Her boyfriend is Mason Varno. He’s an ex-convict and two-bit drug dealer. He drives a pickup truck and works as a carpenter. Here’s their latest information.”

  Yanna moved her chair to look over Gromov’s shoulder at photos of Remy and Mason. The woman who’d carried Fyodor’s child looked so young. Gromov studied the pictures and documents the way a grand master contemplates an opening strategy.

  “Pavel, I’m curious,” Korzun said. “Why not have us go to these baby sellers and deal with them directly to find the girl? We can be very persuasive.”

  “I want to go directly to the mother without warning so there’s no possibility of complications. I’ll make it fast and uncompromising. Nothing will stand in the way of me finding her and my grandson. Like you, I can be persuasive.”

  Korzun smiled. “A Delta flight direct to Houston leaves from LaGuardia in the morning.”

  24

  Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

  Caleb Cooper was screaming.

  One-hundred-decibel, nerve-shredding wailing.

  Remy tried everything to make him stop, but Mason was the one who needed calming. He was causing the upheaval, rampaging through their belongings again, looking for dope or reasons to stay pissed off at her.

  His fit of rage was a repeat of yesterday’s explosion after their brush with death on the freeway. Mason had lost his mind, took the baby and stomped into the field to do God knows what. It was all that Remy could do to talk him down, persuade him to give up the baby and get back in the truck.

  The incident had not only shaken them, it had intensified Mason’s cravings and inflamed his fears that they were being pursued, to the point that Remy’s brain began throbbing with the onset of a spell.

  “Mason, I swear if you don’t stop it my head is going to explode!”

  Remy was cradling the baby, but in her agitated state her attempts to rock him turned into rigid bouncing, which worsened matters.

  Mason had ransacked her clothes and the baby things. Then he grabbed the bigger suitcase they’d packed from their apartment. Zippers whizzed, he opened it and rifled through it.

  “Mason. Mason, listen to me— Shh-shh.” Remy raised her voice over the baby, punctuating her sentences with attempts to stop Caleb’s screeching. “I don’t have your stuff. Shh-shh. Did you check the truck?”

  Mason ignored her and went to the window.

  Last night, to assuage his suspicions, they’d packed up, with Remy grabbing extra soap and shampoo, then moved from their motel and into this fleabag dump, the Tumbleweed Dreams Motel, on the west side of the Metroplex. Standing at the window taking inventory of the parking lot, Mason rubbed his lips then ran his hands through his hair, tugging at it when he’d reached a decision.

  He marched to Remy’s night table and seized her purse.

  “What the fu— Mason! What’s wrong with you?” Remy stood, baby in her arms, and shot out one hand to reclaim her bag.

  Mason turned, dumped the contents on the second bed, pushing Remy off until he found the card for the surrogate agency with penned names and cell numbers. He held it before Remy’s face.

  “Call them now!”

  Remy snatched the card back. Mason surrendered her bag and with one hand Remy began scooping her things back into it.

  “I told you I will call them when it’s time.”

  “What the hell are you waiting for?”

  “For the idiot mother to stop searching for her baby.”

  “She’s never going to stop. What mother would? We’re running out of time. Call the agency, close the deal and we’re done.”

  “I will do this my way. It’s been working so far, hasn’t it?”

  “The longer we wait, the riskier it gets. We’re running out of time and money. The agency’s likely got people looking for us ever since we left. You signed a contract with them, took a lot of money then disappeared without delivering a baby. And there’s a chance that police are looking for this baby, too, since it’s been in the news.”

  It was all true, but Remy pursed her lips.

  “And,” Mason added, “how the hell are you going to pass off this five-month-old baby as a one-month-old? Even the doctor at the shelter thought he was big for three months.”

  “Stop being so negative, Mason. It’s all going to work out,” Remy said. “We just need to wait a little bit, then we’ll have our money, then we’ll start the life we’ve been dreaming of, the life we deserve. Trust me, babe.”

  “I can’t wait a little bit. Things are slipping away. I just want to get our cash and get the hell out of here.”

  “We just need a bit longer.”

  “You know what I think, Remy? I think the truth is you don’t want to give this baby up.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “I think that after losing your baby, you’re going through something. You’re getting attached to this one and you’re delaying things because deep down you want to keep him.”

  “That’s not true.”

  Mason got his gun from his bag, pulled the slide back and released it. The gun clicked as it chambered a round from the magazine into the barrel.

  “It’s not going to happen.” Mason pointed his gun at the baby.

  “Mason, no!”

  “We’re not keeping that kid under any circumstances, Remy. Is that clear?”

  “Put the gun down, Mason! Stop being an asshole!” Without blinking Remy shoved the gun aside. “If we lose this child, we lose everything.”

  Mason stood there for several seconds until he cooled down, then he lowered his hand, removed the magazine and the round, tossing them with the gun on the bed.

  The baby’s crying forced Remy to shift her attention. She put him on the bed and started preparing a bottle for him when there was a knock on the motel room door.

  The chain was up and the door was bolted. Mason went to the peephole. A fish-eyed view of the manager in his stained T-shirt filled it.

  “What is it?” Mason asked.

  “You gotta keep it down in there—people are complaining. If I get any more shit, I’m calling the police.”

  Mason shook his head.

  “Yeah, we got it. Sorry, buddy,” he said.

  M
ason went to the bed, collected his gun and magazine.

  “Mason, wait. What are you going to do?”

  “Something I should’ve done a long time ago. I’m taking charge of our situation.”

  “Mason!”

  “Don’t do anything or call anybody. I’ll be back.”

  He waited at the window for the manager to clear the front walk then, ignoring Remy’s pleas, he left her alone with the baby.

  25

  Chicago, Illinois

  Lake Michigan stretched north against a crystal sky, but Hedda Knight was blind to the view from her seventy-fifth-floor law office in the Aon Center.

  All she saw was a sea of problems.

  One of her mothers had disappeared weeks before she was due to deliver, jeopardizing Hedda’s biggest deal.

  Tapping her pen to her desk she pressed her phone to her ear as Ed Bascom, the senior agent with the private investigative agency she’d hired, gave her an update.

  “We’ve confirmed that an ambulance was dispatched to Remy Toxton’s residence in Texas and that she was taken to hospital.”

  “Where is she?”

  “We obtained a new lead that she was transported out of state.”

  “Where?”

  “Arkansas.”

  “Arkansas? What’d you find out in Arkansas?”

  “Nothing, our investigation there dead-ended. We don’t know what hospital or which city. We suspect we were fed bad information by the church people supporting her boyfriend, Mason Varno. They’re protective.”

  “I don’t care. Did Remy have the baby or not?”

  “We haven’t confirmed it.”

  “Why not? What’re we paying you for?”

  “Did you ever consider that they could’ve been victims of the tornadoes?”

  “Yes, but they live in Lufkin and from my read of the news Lufkin was not touched by the storms.”

  “What if they happened to take a trip to Dallas the day the storm hit?’

  “That’s your job to find out.”

  “Can your nurse who was assigned to their case recall anything more?” Bascom asked.

  “No! She’s told you everything. She went to the apartment and they were gone. Remy didn’t answer her phone, her emails. They left no forwarding address, no contact information, nothing. We’ve been over this.”

  “They’ve covered their tracks,” Bascom said. “We still have no credit card or banking trail on Toxton or Varno.”

  “Damn it, Ed, you’re no closer to finding them than when you started looking. Is there anything you can do, or should I hire someone else?”

  “We’re working on another lead. Varno’s an ex-con.”

  “An ex-con. Oh, that’s great.”

  “He’s got a meeting with his parole officer coming up. We’ll surveil the office for him and he’ll lead us to Toxton.”

  “Do that. I want that baby. But find Remy quietly. We don’t want anyone going public on this, or to the police. You got that?”

  Hedda heard muttering.

  “Ed? You got that?”

  “Yeah, I got that.”

  Hedda hung up, tossed her pen on her desk, turned to her computer screen and studied the file showing the photographs of Remy Toxton and Fyodor Gromov, the biological parents of a Caucasian baby.

  Where’s Remy?

  Hedda knew the likely scenarios. Remy could’ve lost the baby, grown fearful and fled to pocket the remainder of her fifteen-thousand-dollar signing payment. She could have changed her mind and decided to keep the child. Or she might be working with another agency for more money.

  Hedda didn’t care. If that baby was alive, she wanted it. Needed it.

  Calm down. Be careful, she told herself.

  She had to remember her own rules. Never pressure the girls. Each case was delicate. Each case had its own complications. No two were ever the same. Most ended well but when it was time to deliver, you could not predict how some mothers would react. A few became emotional. But Hedda always worked things out. She kept the mothers happy so that they wouldn’t even consider going to the authorities. Hedda could never let that happen, especially now when she was on the brink of taking her surrogacy and baby adoption enterprise to a mind-blowingly lucrative level.

  Thinking back, Hedda remembered a different time when her life was guided by a different dream.

  She’d grown up in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. Her parents were both federal lawyers. Hedda, a high achiever, studied law at Yale, where she met her future husband. As young, rising stars they joined firms in New York. When Hedda began talking about starting a family, her husband confessed that he’d fallen in love with another woman.

  Hedda’s dream died.

  Her marriage over, she quit the firm, left New York and drifted to Los Angeles, where she found work specializing in adoptions. She became an expert in the adoption and surrogacy laws of every U.S. state, and most countries around the world. She knew the nuances, the gaps, the loopholes and the murky zones.

  Moreover, Hedda knew that there were more parents seeking healthy babies than babies to meet the demand. Recognizing an opportunity, she set up her own firm in a low-rent strip mall in Long Beach, where she worked tirelessly to build a network of contacts across the country and around the world.

  Hedda’s agency advertised a range of adoption and surrogacy services to people desperate for a baby. At the same time, she advertised online for surrogates. Candidates were university grads, supermarket cashiers, hairdressers and stay-at-home moms.

  Hedda explained to them how her agency did things a bit differently because of its international connections. After recruits signed a surrogacy agreement, they would undergo an embryo transfer or insemination in Europe because her agency had arrangements with leading specialists there.

  Hedda assured the candidates that everything was in accordance with all laws, that all costs were covered and that she would provide a medical team to monitor the pregnancy. The surrogates would never have to meet the parents. Hedda’s policy was unconditional on that front.

  Each surrogate would receive a total $60,000—$15,000 on signing then $45,000 upon delivery. The payments were conditional to certain terms, chief among them being delivery of a healthy baby. However, payments would not be made if the pregnancy was unsuccessful, and Hedda always hinted that under certain conditions, the surrogate might be required to return a portion of any advance payment—although Hedda would never dare enforce that aspect out of fear a surrogate would go to authorities. She only hinted at it as psychological leverage for the women who might change their minds.

  Again, Hedda would stress that the entire enterprise was all legal.

  But it wasn’t.

  In order to circumvent various state surrogacy and adoption laws, Hedda would mislead the surrogates and the expectant parents about the circumstances of the parties involved. She would seek out hopeful parents and guarantee them the baby of their dreams, a newborn girl or boy of nearly any race. Then she would create fraudulent documentation that made the arrangements appear to be in accordance with adoption or surrogacy laws. But what Hedda had really done was create an illegal process of making and selling babies. She was hiring women to get pregnant for the sole purpose of selling the baby to those who could afford her price.

  She was now getting $200,000 for each baby.

  As Hedda’s business grew, she moved to Chicago, to be more central. And she was careful to manage any risk or exposure to scrutiny. At the same time, she was driven by a desire to find wealthier clients, to become the number one, albeit black market, baby broker in the world. Hedda knew that there were people who would give any amount of money for a healthy baby.

  And Remy’s baby was the ticket to a client list that would pay more.


  So much hinged on this deal.

  Normally, Hedda would have another baby available but with this case she’d encountered one problem after another.

  So what the hell happened?

  It was going well until Remy disappeared. I can’t go to another mother for a baby to fulfill this critical order. It’s already overdue and I have no other suitable babies available. Two of my other surrogates just lost theirs. Two. I’ve got no Caucasian boys coming for over two months. Everything depends on Remy’s baby.

  Hedda clicked her mouse and reread the email from her client.

  Chelsea Drew-Flynn, forty-nine-year-old heiress to a gold-mining empire who lived in Denver. She wrote:

  What’s the status on delivery, Hedda? Did she have the baby? We’ve surpassed the delivery date range.

  Now, after consulting Ed Bascom, after absorbing the circumstances and the stakes, Hedda crafted a response.

  Some routine medical issues are delaying delivery a little bit. I assure that everything is fine.

  Hedda pressed Send then gazed at the lake, weighing all the stakes. Everything was riding on this one. Chelsea Drew-Flynn was going to exceed Hedda’s rate by paying $250,000 for a baby boy. But this deal held an even greater value. Chelsea had indicated to Hedda that she knew women, wealthy women, in her social circles around the world, who would be interested in using a surrogacy agency. Hedda interpreted that to mean that if all went well with Chelsea’s baby boy, she would introduce Hedda to a whole new level of potential clientele.

  Hedda’s computer chimed with a response.

  Just so we understand each other, Hedda. I trusted you to deliver my baby to me as promised. Heaven knows how I might react if you break that promise.

  Hedda cursed to herself and looked out at the vast lake.

  I’ve got to find that baby.

  26

  Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas

  Kate’s Chevy Cobalt drove westbound on Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway.