Black Widow df-15

by Randy Wayne White

“Seven-thirty, but I used bloody egg timers-all I could manage-so it’s not exact.”

  I said, “Screw the videos, we’ve got to get down to the beach. There’s too much at risk.”

  Montbard remained matter-of-fact. “Yes, there’s some risk, I agree. But there’s even more risk if we don’t get the tapes, not only for Senegal and your friends, but for dozens-maybe hundreds-of others. We’ll never get this opportunity again.”

  I thought about it. Damn. I hated that he was right. I said, “Okay. Then let’s make it quick.”

  “Of course! The entire operation should take less than an hour. I suggest we move to the back garden and wait for the fireworks. When the old girl rushes out to save her precious orchids, we’ll have a solid block of time to search the house.”

  I took the flashlight from my bag and shined it on the wall where I’d been prying rock with my fingers. “No need to wait. I found one of your passageways. I think it leads into the basement of Toussaint’s house.”

  The Englishman went to the opening, knelt, and levered another rock free. “By God, you’re right.” He shined his light into the hole, then stood and removed his blazer. “Doesn’t look more than a few meters to where it exits. Rather narrow, though. A damn tight squeeze.”

  I told him, “Heretics were smaller in those days-” then paused, head tilted, hearing men’s voices again, and the choleric rasp of a dog. Waited for several seconds, expecting to hear the jangle of keys. Instead, the voices faded, moving toward the front of the chateau. I continued, “Can you figure out a way to jam the door, so they can’t open it from the outside?”

  He nudged the door closed with his knee. There was a metallic click. “Already done.”

  I said, “Then let’s move. Isabelle will be sending someone for me soon.”

  “Isabelle? On a first-name basis, are we?”

  I told him, “I’ll explain later,” as I got down on hands and knees and pulled away more rock so my shoulders would fit through the opening.

  34

  The Maji Blanc’s chateau was built over the ruins of what Sir James Montbard believed was the original monastery. He said the architecture was older than the ruins where previous monks had lived and died. Told me this after scrutinizing masonry and twin columns that bordered steps leading up to a stone landing. He had also brought his grandfather’s journal-yellowed pages bound in leather.

  The hidden entrance inside the chateau, I guessed, was just above the landing, where stairs disappeared into a modern section of basement. The modern section was walled off with brick and sealed with a steel door.

  I’d already checked the door. Snapped on surgical gloves before I tested the knob. It wasn’t locked, but I didn’t open it.

  Montbard wanted to search the oldest section first. We used flashlights. We whispered. Sometimes, we heard heavy footsteps overhead, and the occasional tap-shoe scrabble of a dog’s claws on a hardwood floor. Maybe Toussaint was up there stomping around, restless, moving from room to room. She sounded heavier than I would’ve guessed.

  The western section of the monastery was intact. Montbard panned his flashlight slowly along the walls and remnants of two doorways before whispering, “The pointed arches… the tracery, everything-the way it’s laid out-all typical Gothic architecture. The dry stone masonry could be older. Just as Grandfather described it.”

  I wanted to locate the tapes and run, not talk, but the man had switched into archaeology mode. “The Gothic dates from the Middle Ages-twelfth century to the early fifteen hundreds. Remember the rhyme about Columbus sailing the ocean blue? Work on this monastery could have begun before 1492. A hundred years or more.”

  I thought, Uh-oh, thinking about the article on the Templars, their missing ships and treasure. I said, “Hooker, let’s stick to business.”

  Montbard was standing between the twin columns, using his flashlight, scanning ornate carvings of monks praying, sheaves of wheat… a cross with four equal arms. He held the light on the cross for a moment, then moved it to the base of the column. He whispered, “This is what I’m talking about. Have a look.”

  I knelt and used my own flashlight, seeing monks… oak clusters… a carpenter’s square… a silver-dollar-sized seal etched in rock, so worn I couldn’t be sure, but it might have been a skull and bones, the eyes oddly misaligned.

  “It’s similar to my ring.”

  “Maybe.”

  “My grandfather gave this to me. His grandfather gave it to him. There’s only one other place I’ve seen that symbol carved in stone-in this hemisphere, anyway. An ancestor of ours was among the first-”

  “He was a Templar,” I said. "I read the article. But I didn’t come here to prove your theory of relentless motion.”

  “Quite right. Just five minutes. That’s all I ask. This stairway-” He used his flashlight to show rock steps concave from centuries of wear. “-I know without looking there are three flights. Three steps, five steps, then seven steps. Those numbers are significant.” As if reciting by rote, he added, “Between two brazen pillars… a door strongly guarded,” whispering to himself.

  I said, “Is there something in that journal you’re not telling me about? What the hell are you after?”

  “History,” he said. “The truth.”

  I told him, “Good luck. Take five minutes, take five hours. I’m not following you.”

  He sound chastened, not relieved, saying, “I won’t let you down. Promise. We’ll search separately-might be for the best. Remember our signals. Use the flashlight.”

  I said, “I remember,” and left as Montbard started up the steps.

  I opened the steel door just enough to peek into the basement’s modern section: well-lit office, air-conditioned, a desk, file cabinets, a computer, paintings of orchids on every wall. The room was small enough. I could read the signature of the artist: Georgia O’Keeffe. There was another stairway, and a wooden door-maybe a bathroom, maybe a closet, or an adjoining room. The door was closed.

  On the desk was an ashtray full of black stubs, the smell of tobacco strong. Toussaint had either just gone up the stairs or she was on the other side of the wooden door. I waited, still hearing footsteps overhead, then I slipped into the office and used a book to block the steel door from closing.

  Yes… the woman had just left. She’d been working, very busy. A drawer was open, papers scattered on the desk. Receipts and bills, letters addressed to her post-office box. A book, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Oncidium, lay open next to the computer.

  One of the envelopes caught my eye. It was addressed by hand. On the upper left corner, the return address read: Mrs. Ida Jonquil/Cape Coral, FLA.

  I looked in the envelope. Empty.

  Ida and Isabelle: two sisters staying in touch, looking out for the welfare of the family’s good name, and their saintly progeny, Michael.

  Near the desk was a wall safe, door open. Big-almost as large as the painting that had covered it but was now on the floor. From where I stood, the safe looked stuffed with blocks of cash. I glanced inside as I passed: euros and U.S. dollars, not the Monopoly bills of the Eastern Caribbean. Tomlinson had nailed it: Blackmail was a boutique industry on the island, and business was booming.

  Covering most of the opposite wall was a rotating file made of aluminum and steel. It was unlocked, doors open, like the safe. The file reminded me of a Ferris wheel. Its contents were efficiently organized, alphabetized with names and dates. The contents illustrated changes in technology over two decades. There were reels of 8 mm film. There were full-sized cassettes. There were minicassettes like the one Wolfie had given me. The woman had been in the blackmail business a long time.

  I looked at the wooden door, ears alert, checked the stairway, then began to flip through the rotating racks. Tapes were stored like books, spines out. I recognized a few names: the wife of a former French president, the South African industrialist Sir James had mentioned, an actress, a rock star. There were a couple of surprises: an evangelist who was often
in the news, and a popular member of the U.S. Senate.

  Toussaint had said there was power in purity, but she’d proven the opposite. Each video represented money and power. And the woman was shrewd enough to be selective. There were fewer than five dozen tapes.

  I dropped the senator’s video and the French first lady’s video into my backpack and continued searching.

  Shay’s video was labeled: Money/FloridaGirls/Michael’s Jezebel. Jezebel, the biblical whore. It explained why Toussaint, who preyed on the super-rich, had bothered to entrap a redneck girl attempting to marry above her class.

  There was nothing filed under the last names of Beryl, Liz, or Corey, but I found Senegal’s video under F. It was cross-referenced: Politics/U.K.

  I was thinking about the desk computer-how could I destroy its memory files?-when I heard a banging, thumping commotion overhead. Sounded as if someone was moving furniture. Then, a dog began barking. Deep, wolfish roars. I stopped and listened… listened until the dog went silent and the thumping stopped. I happened to be standing near the wall safe. This time, I took a closer look.

  Inside were stacks of hundreds and fifties banded into four-inch bricks of $10,000 and $5,000, bank notations on the wrappers. Bricks were layered five high, five wide, from the front to the safe’s back wall. Half a million cash. No… more.

  Toussaint owed Shay and the girls money. I dropped eleven blocks of bills into my backpack-$110,000. Hesitated, then took another. Expenses.

  There were two steel storage trays in the safe. One contained legal documents: deeds, the woman’s birth certificate (Isabelle Marie Raousset-Boulbon), her Catholic confirmation papers, a faded marriage certificate- something touching about that combination. I shut the drawer and opened the second. There were gold coins in plastic sleeves, and several black velvet boxes-jewelry. I opened the most ornate box and saw a sapphire the size of a robin’s egg. The Midnight Star.

  I removed the necklace and held it to the light, thinking that maybe Shay deserved a special wedding present-if she still wanted to marry Michael after learning the truth about his vicious family. The sapphire glittered, revealing a blue-black world within. Reminded me of a lighted aquarium, with crystal walls that isolated; a weightless space where beautiful predators might drift. Tempting.

  On those nights when Tomlinson and I discuss-debate, really-matters of spirituality, he is quick to remind me that my rigid, Darwinist’s view of the world does not explain my own moral compass. It’s irritating because he’s right. So I’ve come to accept conscience as yet another of my irrational conceits. I have to live with myself.

  I returned the necklace to its box, returned the box to the safe, and closed the drawer.

  I wanted to take or destroy all the videos and film, along with the woman’s computer. There was a lot of misery in that rotating file, but I couldn’t fit all of the cassettes plus the money into my backpack. Moral compass or not, I sure as hell wasn’t going to leave the money. I needed another bag.

  I was looking at the wooden door, wondering if it was a storage closet or a bathroom when, for the first time, I heard a banging noise coming from the other side. I placed the pack on the floor and I drew my gun. Heard the noise again, and reconsidered: Maybe the smart thing to do was grab my backpack and run.

  But it was an unusual, muted sound, familiar on some basic level. Panic muted by constriction-like that. Reminded me of the thumping sound a rabbit might make while succumbing to the patient jaws of a snake.

  I walked to the door and put my ear against it. The cries of a person who’s been gagged also register on a primal level, and that’s what I heard. I cracked the door… then pulled it wide, gun raised

  … and I nearly squeezed the trigger when a woman lunged at me with a knife.

  I backpedaled as she charged me. Then slapped her strong arms aside, hearing the knife clatter on tile, and swung her against the wall, gun to her temple. She stopped struggling as I looked into her eyes-liquid amber eyes, glazed with fear.

  Slowly, I lowered the gun.

  “Norma?”

  I said the name again as her eyes cleared with recognition. “Norma!”

  The woman stood looking at me, stunned. Then she pushed away as if ashamed, crying, “I couldn’t do it, I just couldn’t do it. Thank God it’s you, because I need help. I just can’t make myself stab her.”

  Behind Norma, on the bathroom floor, next to an antique tub, was Isabelle Toussaint. She lay with her ankles, hands, and mouth bound with duct tape, her white gown pulled up above her chest, panties gone. The sight of her made me wince, and I looked away. Norma had surprised the woman while she was using the toilet.

  “Paul, she killed my Paul,” Norma sobbed. She stepped toward me, and I let her bury her face against my chest. “That poor boy only came up the mountain to tell me his father died. But this bitch put the dogs on him, anyway. Used the same dogs to kill my son that took my husband’s legs, and made him a beggar.”

  Her son? Not her nephew? Now things became clearer.

  Toussaint recognized me. She began to grunt as she inch-wormed across the tile, pleading with wild, wide eyes. Did she really expect me to help her?

  I knelt, retrieved the knife, and told Norma, “Fill that tub with water.” When I said it, Toussaint made a sound that resembled a scream.

  It was while lugging the computer tower into the bathroom that I remembered what Norma had said about having her mouth taped. They could’ve drowned me, easy. She was explaining the heightened fear that accompanied vulnerability.

  Not a bad idea. Drown Toussaint.

  I put the computer into the tub and popped the cover. Positioned it under the spigot; noticed what might have been a memory board and ripped it free before I forced myself to look down at the woman.

  It was painful, the sight of her. Not only because of her body, but because she was terrified. It was in her eyes.

  I felt an irrational twinge of sympathy, but it passed quickly. Fabron and Wolfie had suffered ultimate terror at my hands, yet I didn’t feel remorse. I felt a clinical indifference. Norma had described Toussaint looking into her eyes, hoping to see fear. How many faces had Toussaint searched with the same sick need? Being a hermaphrodite didn’t give her license to make life hell for others.

  Toussaint watched me as I looked at the bathtub, opened both valves full, then looked at her. “The four girls from Florida you blackmailed- one of them’s dead because of you.”

  The woman shook her head and grunted, breathing faster.

  I reached into the tub. The computer tower made a gurgling sound of displaced air when I turned it over. “Did you ever see The Wizard of Oz? The scene where Dorothy throws water on the witch?”

  I could tell by Toussaint’s frantic reaction that she had.

  “What does the witch say as she’s melting? Something about ‘all my beautiful evil.’ You’re a witch, Isabelle. If I put you in this tub, would you melt?”

  She made the grunting, screaming noise again, and began to snake-crawl on her back, inching toward the door.

  I stepped over her and blocked her way. “But I’m not goin’ to drown you. Instead, I’m sending you to hell.”

  She looked at me, her eyes intent.

  “I’ve got your tapes, Isabelle. Your political connections won’t save you. One of them is of the French president’s wife. Even if your island cops don’t care, the French cops will.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “French law overrules Saint Arc law-but I guess you know that. You’re going to prison. For someone like you-” It took an effort not to glance at her genitals. “-prison will be worse than hell.”

  I knelt and picked up the white robe, ignoring her muffled screams and her lunging attempt to bite me through the tape. I covered the Maji Blanc more carefully than she deserved, and closed the bathroom door behind me.

  Sir James came into the office as I stood at the safe, dropping more bricks of cash into my backpack. His face was grimy, smudged w
ith blood, his ascot gone. What the hell had he been doing? Looked like his bag was already full, too, but I said, “If you’re not too busy, clean out that file. There’re about twenty more videos.” I would tell him about Toussaint later.

  Norma was exhausted, sitting limp in a chair, and gave me a lookWho the hell’s he? I winked, telling her it was okay as Montbard said, “You’ve already found the tapes? And also made a beautiful new friend, I see.”

  I was on adrenal overload, and not in the mood for his chivalrous bullshit.

  “Yeah, I have them-no thanks to you. So get busy. Whoever’s banging around upstairs could come down any second, or send one of those damn dogs-”

  “Temper, temper,” Montbard interrupted, an odd, sweaty smile on his face. “I was the one banging around up there. And the gentleman who required my attention is now tied and gagged, locked in a closet. Called me an ‘old man,’ the cheeky bastard. And his damn dog is deadbut at a price.” He held up his left hand. Fingers and wrist were wrapped in a bloody handkerchief. Looked like the sleeve of his jacket was soaked, too.

  “I haven’t been totally useless, you see. I also have the keys to the man’s vehicle-although I have no idea where it’s parked.” He went silent for a moment. Lifted the handkerchief gently and checked his watch-a little pool of blood had already collected at his feet. “Hmm, my diversion’s two minutes late. I do apologize for that.”

  Sounding dazed and exhausted, Norma said, “We don’t need his car. I came in a van from staff housing. It’s outside.”

  I had twenty-six more bricks of cash in my pack. Norma could never return to Saint Arc, and she would need money. Corey’s family deserved an extra cut, too.

  Before zipping the bag closed, I opened the steel drawer and added the Midnight Star.

  Expenses.

  I asked the Englishman, “Do we use the tunnel, or is it safe to go through the house?” I felt an overwhelming sense of dread. We had to get to the beach house. We had to find Shay and Beryl.

  Applying pressure to his bloody hand, Montbard said, “We’ll use the front door, of course. But try to ignore the mess.”