Chapter 12

The more I sat in that hotel lobby, the more hopeless I felt. And the more hopeless, the angrier. I turned to Felicity, “Lend me your car.”

“Nope, I’m going with.”

I looked to Large Marge, “Set up in our lookout spot. Felicity and I are going to try to brazen our way in. Use your judgement, call the cops if you need to.”

Some plan.

Back at the guardhouse I got out of the passenger side. The same guy, Dead Eyes, had his hand on his pistol. At least he left it in his holster. Felicity had whispered, “The back door is unlocked.”

I pulled out my mail order badge and said, “I’m private and this is personal. I went to St. Jeremy shelter in San Francisco to pick up my nephew. His mother is out of the hospital. The court says she can have him back.”

I slowed down, I was babbling.

Dead Eyes stared at me with ... well, dead eyes. Hand still poised.

“The Director, Franklin O’Leary, said Sammy, my nephew, must have been confused, gotten in the wrong car. With a man we followed here.”

Dead Eyes spoke into a shoulder mic on the epaulet of his white uniform shirt. And pulled out his pistol.

I dived into the back seat as Felicity squealed in reverse, the momentum slamming the door shut behind me. She K-turned just as two black Range Rovers with some kind of emblem on the sides turned on their sirens.

Felicity turned right, heading for the Bay Bridge. Would San Francisco be any safer? Couldn’t be much dicier. We could hear the sirens Dopplering closer when Felicity slammed on the brakes, cut across a horns-blaring line of traffic and screeched to a stop behind a State Police car.

The sirens shut off and the Range Rovers drove sedately past, both drivers and both passengers looking straight ahead.

I lied to the Highway Patrolman. First words out of my mouth. “Three guys in a green pickup. Wienie waggers. Scared the crap out of us.”

Felicity said, “I think I saw a gun. Pistol. Could have been real.” Nicely underplayed.

“I ain’t gonna study war no more Ain’t gonna study war no more I ain’t gonna study war no more”

Half Nelson: Fact of life: eunuchs live longer. Creative castration?

We regrouped back at the Four Seasons. Well, Felicity and I did. Silent Cal drove Felicity’s Audi down to San Jose and bought a month’s worth of enclosed, out-of-sight parking. Large Marge would bring him back.

I checked Felicity into another room under my name. I don’t think the guard registered ‘Winter Jennings’ in tiny type on that fake badge.

I said, “Okay, you’re blown. For the duration.” She started to object and I held up a palm. “I mean Felicity Adams is blown. You’re still part of the operation, a big part. But you can’t use your plastic. Your cell. Fuck, give it to me.”

I did the battery and smash thing, mentally adding a throwaway to our shopping list.

And shop we did. All new clothes for Felicity. Plus the necessaries.

But first I called Daddy.

He said, “A fucking pistol? He drew his pistol?”

“Yeah but he didn’t exactly point it at me.”

“I’ll call you back. Don’t leave the hotel.”

Ten minutes later Daddy said, “Stay out of sight, we’ll be in tonight.”

We?

I said, “How many rooms?”

“Two. Hank Morristown.”

I grinned at Felicity, “FBI is white-horsing into town.”

Things moved so fast. That’s what I would remember above everything else that Tuesday night.

Daddy told me not to meet him at SFO, they’d come directly to the hotel. I’d rented a car in my name, hesitated, then decided not to list Felicity as a second driver. Fuck the insurance.

Daddy, Hank Morristown and a nondescript Oakland FBI agent who looked a lot like Hank, rode in one car to the Four Seasons. Two other agents had their own car. Three Oakland PD cars with four cops each followed.

And that would be, with my addition, the convoy-order later that night when we raided Nelson-Eamons. Hoping that little boy would still be there. And any other shelter strays. But if nothing else, we’d blast into whatever was going on at that secretive lab.

Hank was operating out of town, without authorization, without warrants. Completely off the books. Oakland would get the credit. Or, Hank would take the blame.

Hank was putting it on the line, not for me, but for Daddy. They’d worked together often enough over the years to trust each other’s judgement. Plus Hank knew that once that Nelson-Eamons guard had drawn on me ... well, retired Homicide Captain Dave Jennings was going in. One way or another. Full speed.

Felicity realized she was out of her depth and didn’t complain about being left behind. I told her, “Room service. Mini bar. Trashy movie.”

She smiled wanly; she’d be with me in spirit.

Human beings, by orders of magnitude, are the most vicious animals on Mother Earth.

I was so touched.

FBI Special Agent in Charge, Hank Morristown, had brought an FBI windbreaker for me. Dark blue with those distinctive yellow letters. Nylon-lined sleeves, slash pockets, elastic cuffs.

I know you can buy replicas anywhere, but this was the real deal.

Daddy was riding shotgun in Hank’s plain-wrap borrowed from the Oakland office. Three Oakland FBI agents trailed us in another car. Which was itself followed by the three Oakland PD cars with four officers each.

Right before he pulled away from the hotel, Hank murmured into a portable phone with stubby antennas protruding. The phone was about the size of a brick and I assumed it didn’t have anything to do with bundled savings at AT&T.

I leaned forward from my backseat vista, excited beyond imagination to be going on an actual raid.

Daddy and Hank could have been heading to a ballgame, they were talking shop.

Hank said, “The criminal justice system in this country is fucked.”

“Yep.”

Hank looked in the rearview at me, “Winter, there are more black men in jail now than there were slaves in 1850.”

This, I already knew. Social media had turned the spotlight on John Legend’s Oscar speech.

Then Hank tossed out a stat I hadn’t heard, “We have about 4 or 5 percent of the world’s population. Yet America has 25 percent of all imprisoned people on the planet. One in four.”

“We’ll meet again Don’t know where Don’t know when But I know we’ll meet again Some sunny day”

Hank had glanced at the Nelson-Eamons surveillance photos I’d shown him. Obviously the wooden gate-arm was more symbolic than preventative. Psychologically, people were trained to obey traffic indicators.

I wasn’t the only girl on the team. An Oakland police officer in the last cruiser outweighed me by, oh, 60 or so pounds. And resented me by, conservatively, 60 jillion pounds. I gave her my best fuck-you stare. Then looked away. I was the only one not packing. She’s entitled to her resentment.

Speed, that’s what I remember more than anything. I slipped on a Kevlar vest, the lightest I’d seen. As we approached the entrance to Nelson-Eamons, Hank nodded to his right, south of the lab, “Snipers in place. These fuckers aren’t going anywhere.”

I said, “There are no other exits.”

Hank looked bemused, but didn’t say anything. Of course. The FBI would have satellite images, infrared, who knew what all.

Hank approached the gate-arm, then sped up. The guard, a different one, stood beside the barrier, arm raised, palm up, shouting something. I braced myself against the front seat. We smashed through the wooden arm, splintered it, and drove in about 50 feet. I looked back, the guard was on his belly, wrists already cuffed behind him.

Nelson-Eamons security sirens going ooh-auga, bells ringing inside the first building, halogen lights blazing the parking and entrance areas.

A large police officer, black, smashed in the front door of the lab. Hadn’t even checked to see if it were locked. The rest of the Oakland Police contingent swarmed in behind him.

As agreed, I waited by Hank’s car. If this ever reached the court system, no civilian muck-ups would be involved.

It was about 2 in the morning, 2:12 to be anal, but there were still 30 or so employees at work. Skeleton crew.

Daddy came right back out, carrying the little boy in his arms. The naked kid was out of it, but breathing steadily. I carried him back to the ambulance waiting just off-site, flashers doing their thing.

In fact, the entire neighborhood was bathed in strobes. People were coming out in pajamas, robes, blinking, confused, excited, curious. No gunfire, sorry you adrenaline addicts.

An overhead helicopter, rotors whirring, searchlight sweeping the Nelson-Eamons property, beat a thrumming sound into the dark Oakland night. A second chopper circled lazily around, sketching out a larger perimeter.

I went back to the parking lot. The police were handcuffing civilian workers. Every one of them. Some in lab coats, most in civvies. Men in FBI windbreakers were carrying laptops, cell phones, readers, every kind of digital device. They’d go back for the paper files on the next round.

Daddy held two more naked boys, around 13 or 14, by their arms. They were groggy, but walking. Another ambulance rolled in. I held their hands and walked them to the uniformed attendants. Like the first boy, they were erect. As were all but two of the dozens of homeless men who were led out of Nelson-Eamons. Curious.

I looked back at Daddy, “Felicity?”

“Sure. She can go to San Francisco with us.”

After months of ferrying me about, she deserves to see some of the first-hand cleanup. St. Jeremy. In what I learned was a fairly rare cooperative effort, the San Francisco police had two men stationed at the shelter, just to be sure Franklin O’Leary didn’t bolt.

Felicity and Daddy and I drove my new rental from the Sacramento Street shelter down to San Mateo. For breakfast first. Then an uncomfortable conversation with my client.

Franklin O’Leary had been shocked, then frightened. Then he started bawling. “It was just sex. Those kids were turning tricks anyway.”

Oh. Well, then. Un-cuff the misunderstood Jesuit.

O’Leary had told the truth, partly anyway. He was a failed priest. From long ago. For the past 24 years he’s been on the scuffle -- a carny huckster looking for fast money. He’d been selling shelter kids for sex ever since his phony credentials -- buried long enough to elude the Sullivan twins -- landed him at St. Jeremy.

I sort of believe him, and sort of don’t, that he didn’t know the fate of the kids he sold to Axelrod and Rodriguez. Doesn’t matter, I guess, the greedy cunt will be in durance vile for a good long time.

As two FBI agents folded the cuffed, middle-aged man into the back seat, Felicity muttered, “He walks! He talks! He crawls on his belly like a reptile!”

The priest next door, Father Rattigan, stood watching O’Leary’s arrest silently. I wondered if he knew, if he were in on it. I wouldn’t have thought so had the Church not disgraced itself so shamelessly over the years. Decades.

Last I heard, Rattigan and the Church were stonewalling, denying everything. Maybe they’re innocent. Or maybe they’ll get away with it.

Daddy ate his egg-white omelet as he did everything, neatly, precisely. Felicity and I, famished, tucked into sausages, bacon, steel cut oatmeal, eggs, bagels. I’m sure we were dignified. Country fries too.

It was only 5:30 and we woke Bobsy Atwater and Bunny Carville up. But, sleepy as they were, they read the expressions on our faces.

Bunny served instant coffee. Consistent, if nothing else.

I talked, it was my due. And duty to deliver the bad news. “Bobsy, Nelson-Eamons reopened in Oakland.”

He lit up for a moment, then, smart boy, sighed in resignation.

I said, “You were right, the rumors were right. They were experimenting on humans. Taking little boys from a homeless shelter on Sacramento Street. Little boys, Bobsy.’

He opened his mouth, probably to say something about the greater good. Saw the expression on my face and kept quiet.

His questions revolved around data. Was it preserved? Surely the FBI wouldn’t destroy it?

I looked to Daddy who said, “It’ll never see the light of day, Robert. And never should.”

‘Robert’. Daddy had simultaneously promoted and demoted Bobsy.

I handed Bunny my final bill. Which included a first class, round trip ticket to Kansas City in the name of Felicity Adams.

Bunny didn’t even glance at her boyfriend, she just opened her check ledger and filled out the receipt section on the left, then the check made out to me. For $67,655. Services rendered.

Then she wrote a second check, $18,712.36. Expenses. Itemized.

The third check, $10,000 was made out to Felicity Adams. Above and beyond.

Back when I was working on a luxury yacht case and an especially virulent synthetic opiate turned up, Daddy said, “Get the fucking drugs off the boat.”

That’s how I felt when Felicity and I watched Axelrod drive that 9-year old shelter boy into Nelson-Eamons. Get those fucking kids out.

We saved three. And were lucky to have caught the shelter-boy experiments in their early stages. Months later, Hank Morristown told Daddy that the digital records indicated that two boys hadn’t made it. Nor did an unspecified number of homeless men and women.

Full Nelson: Holy fuck.

“Bow your heads and pray (Bow your heads and pray) And I’ll be bound for glory In the morning When I go away”

Suggestion for readers: The entire editorial staff, thornfoote and Steve, rather dislike the following section. Understandable, it contains some fairly hideous and gratuitous stuff.

Forewarned and all that.

Homeland Security took over the Nelson-Eamons case and squashed it. Sat on it. Buttoned it up. There had been the initial flurry of media coverage, then nothing but speculation. No quotes, no public statements. Questions went unanswered, accusations were ignored. A black hole, gravity too intense to let even light escape.

But Hank Morristown passed along an occasional nugget to Daddy and me.

“The head of Nelson-Eamons is a man named Trevor Kincaid. He’s not a scientist, not a techie. Businessman. Came from McKinsey. The word is he’s ruthless. Fires entire executive teams. Sells off productive divisions to fund share growth.”

Remembering Gertie Oppenheimer’s financial chats with me, I thought: ‘like hedge funds do.’

Kincaid and his backer had been frustrated by the traditional, more measured pace of science. Worms to flies to mice to dogs to monkeys. They had Nelson-Eamons bypass that stately march and go directly to the ultimate experimental target -- humans.

The overall operating theory Nelson-Eamons employed was to manipulate both the hardware and its software. They believed that the human body is, in effect, a computer with data that can be overwritten and apps that can be updated.

Eternal life.

Their mantra, almost a mission statement, “If we can crack the code, we can hack the code.”

Hank told us, “Apparently Nelson-Eamons started off as a legitimate laboratory. Their backer, whoever the fuck he turns out to be, grew frustrated with the lack of progress. Started pushing. Hard. Brought Kincaid in to push harder.”

Daddy nodded, “Money talks.”

“Shouts, in this case. So Trevor Kincaid started forcing things. Cutting corners. It wasn’t until year three of their endowment that they started openly discussing using humans.”

Hank turned to me, “And that was when they bought access to Atwater’s corpus callosum patent.”

Daddy said, “And that brought Bobsy and his grandfather into the equation. Which led to Bulldog who led to Winter.”

I was to learn later on, from Hank, that not all of Nelson-Eamons professionals were involved in the illegal, immoral activities. But enough were to send the company down a hellhole search for eternal life.

The head honcho, Trevor Kincaid, set up the rogue part of the lab in a secured, and heavily guarded, area. Off limits to most of the staff. It was known as Area 51 -- named after the highly classified Air Force testing grounds in Nevada. Experimental aircraft and weapons systems. That’s the speculation anyway.

The rest of the Nelson-Eamons staff quickly learned not to ask questions about Area 51. Everything that went on behind those sally ports was on a need to know basis.

The sub rosa operatives had been in the initial stages of human experimentation. First, it was homeless people -- men and women -- lured off the streets. Throwaway folks who wouldn’t be missed by anyone in authority. Initially over 60 of them. And all were kept nude for the convenience of the lab workers.

Sort of the human equivalent of those naked mole-rats, I guess.

Area 51 started with some relatively easy stuff -- gene editing. Although in this case, the laboratory process went far beyond the basics like a $150 Crisper kit.

Gene triggers. The Area 51 scientists used a variety of techniques -- psychopharmaceuticals, electromagnetic pulses, microwaves that broadcast words and phrases into the brain -- to alter genetic dispositions.

Going in another direction ... organ transplants -- on humans -- would be a much more drastic step. For example, placing a teenage heart in the chest of a 60-year old woman.

These initial transplants were, mostly, unsuccessful. The subjects were debilitated, confused and weak. The mortality rate on organ replacements alone was almost 40%.

Nelson-Eamons, the Area 51 version, began a sidebar business -- selling harvested organs to wealthy patients on waiting lists. But that revenue was a pittance compared to the original backing from that anonymous billionaire.

The logic was ... if a lab patient dies, why not make some pin money off his organs?

The experiments on the homeless continued on several levels. Gene editing / gene mutation were less invasive although the data were too limited at this early stage to yield projectable numbers.

The scientists injected analogues of the gene for growth-hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) to stimulate the heart, kidneys and thymus. Some testosterone measurements actually did go up and eyesight improved as well. This was encouraging to the scientists; it reinforced experiments that had worked with mice.

All very promising to Nelson-Eamons. And to the still-unidentified financial backer. Who encouraged Kincaid and the scientists to go further, be bolder. And, especially, to speed things up.

The homeless men and women were given blood transfusions -- young plasma. And stem cell injections from youthful DNA. The procedures were more radical than those performed on lab animals. And the doses were considerably stronger.

It had already been determined that there wouldn’t be any consequences if an un-missed man or woman died. Once that psychological barrier had been breached, a growing sense of anything-goes began to emerge. The corporate mindset -- be bold -- began evolving at an accelerated pace. There were no legal, moral, ethical ramifications.

The familiar tech mantras -- break things, make better mistakes tomorrow -- provided subconscious reinforcement to scientists who began losing their initial moral and ethical reservations.

In another lab section of Area 51, homeless men and women were given a radically tweaked version of a generic diabetic drug, metformin. Metformin is being studied around the world. For additional applications. Some scientists believe it could -- possibly -- someday -- be instrumental in extending life; delaying the onset of cancer, heart disease, dementia.

There’s a five-year study called Targeting Aging with Metformin. Like a lot of things today, it has an acronym, TAME. And TAME will test 3,000 elderly men and women.

But Area 51 and its billionaire backer were increasingly impatient. So they adjusted the proportions of active metformin ingredients, added three experimental compounds and increased the dosage ten-fold. To date, there had been only two fatalities, so the amount of metformin given to each subject was increased every Monday morning.

Most of the subjects were too frail for many of the more vigorous trials. However, time spent in captivity without meth, pot, booze, would help. As would consistent nutrition. As they grew heartier, relatively speaking, the patients were assigned daily exercise routines. Usually nothing more than walking three or four miles on the circular track. The physical improvement was gradual, but measurable.