Black Widow df-15

by Randy Wayne White

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see anyone in my life.” The girl ran the last few steps, and let me swing her off the ground as we hugged. She laughed, smiled… her smile faded.

  “Beryl told you about Corey?”

  “Yes. Was it a blood clot?”

  “That’s what the doctors finally decided. But what really killed her was this island. What happened here. Feels real strange to be back. Feels like it was five years ago, not just a few weeks.”

  I noticed that remnants of her Southern accent had returned. Ds softened or changed to Ts; the nasal emphasis on strange.

  “Ritchie showed up tonight. They tell you?”

  I said patiently, “Yes. That’s why I keep asking where he is.”

  “I’m trying to tell you, okay? Beryl had this plan, a way to get revenge. At first, it seemed… I don’t know, exciting. When we talked about it, it was like we were actresses, seeing it on a movie screen. But that’s not how it was. It got real. Then it got too real. We decided, screw it, we’re leaving tonight. But then they showed up. Ritchie and the other guy. While we were packing.” Shay cleared her throat. “Doc? You mind if we walk along the beach? It’s nice by the water.”

  I said, “Okay,” watching her pull a pack of cigarettes from her back pocket, then light one. She hadn’t smoked since she was a teen, living in Dexter Money’s home.

  Shay tossed the match away and said, “That’s how it started. Beryl wanted to even the score, after all the hurt they caused us. Plus, for her, I think it was a way to get back at the man who kidnapped her when she was a girl. I’m guessing. She never really said. Does that make sense?”

  I nodded, thinking about Beryl back there with Clovis, his hands belted behind him. What would Senegal do if Beryl asked for the gun?

  Shay said, “When Corey died, that made up my mind. Revenge, hell yes. I asked Eddie, the Italian guy at Dinkin’s Bay, if he’d fly me down. He’s always had a thing for me. When we told him we were pulling out tonight, staying on Saint Lucia, he went to get the plane ready. That’s where he is now, waiting for us.”

  I looked at my wrist-no watch-and hoped that Eddie would get Sir James to the hospital in time to save his hand. Maybe save his life.

  I told her, “Forget about revenge. There’s no need for it now. I have your video. The original. I stole it-along with the money you paid out. You can get on with your life now, so stop worrying-”

  “You got our money back? Doc, that’s great! How’d you manage… ? No, tell me later when we have more time. My God, I can certainly use it. All hundred and nine thousand?”

  I said, “Plus interest. And something extra for Corey’s family.”

  Odd. The video no longer seemed important to her.

  The girl clapped her hands together. “You are the most amazing man I’ve ever met! I knew my luck had to change. Beryl probably couldn’t wait to tell you what happened between Michael and me. We ended it for good, the day after Corey died. Getting our money back-that’s the best news I’ve heard for a while.”

  “Beryl didn’t tell me. The wedding’s off?”

  “Yes, thank God.”

  “Why?”

  “I found out the damn truth, that’s why. Monday afternoon, Michael calls me and says Ida-you remember his witch of a mother?-he tells me Ida has somehow gotten ahold of photos of me with that slimeball, Ritchie. I tell him bullshit, his mother’s making it up. I tell him it’s impossible-and it should’ve been impossible. I still had four days to pay the people here. And you had the only other copy of the video.”

  But it was possible, Shay told me. To prove it, Michael brought the photos to her apartment. Graphic shots lifted from the video.

  I said, “So he ended it.”

  “No!” she said, offended I’d made the assumption. “He thought the pictures were sexy-that’s how freaky he is. I ended it! I ended it because I thought it through logically, just like you’d do. I even went to your lab and sat on the dock. Plus, I got your e-mail with those questions. Did Michael’s family have other business connections in the Caribbean? Who recommended Saint Arc? What’s Ida’s maiden name?

  “So I started asking Michael questions even before he pulled out the pictures. He got very nervous, because he knew. That witch set me up, and the whole time, he knew. Fucking Ritchie sent her those prints- Ritchie or some other contact she has down here. Ruining my life wasn’t enough for his mother. She wanted to bleed my bank account dry, too.

  “I’m going to have children one day, Doc. You think I want Michael’s blood in my babies? His sick genes? No way.”

  Shay didn’t know about Michael’s aunt, Isabelle Toussaint. That was okay. Shay had already made her decision. She’d figured it out on her own. I smiled. I admired the girl’s unemotional approach. I’d assembled her caricature to mirror my own conceits.

  Shay reached, pressed her breasts against my arm… then was amused when I jumped at what sounded like a distant gunshot.

  “It’s only fireworks,” she told me. “Must be a holiday or something.” She released my arm, and walked to the water’s edge where the sand looked gray at the lagoon’s black rim and where, two days before, I’d seen jellyfish adrift, and wrestled lobsters from a cave.

  I watched her. I could see the glow of her cigarette. It strobed a nervous rhythm, out of place on this dark night with stars, and the steady percussion of waves beaching themselves outside the lagoon. After taking a last drag, she tossed the butt away without looking to see where it fell.

  I joined her, and Shay turned to face me. Maybe it was the way she was dressed-jeans, shirt knotted at the belly button-or maybe it was the deceptive properties of tropical starlight, but Shay looked less like a business exec and more like the plain-faced teen I’d met years before. She stood looking up at me, her cheek still swollen from the accident, nose a little too thick, lips too thin, and a body that, at another time and place, might have radiated a buxom, Southern, pheromone sensuality. But not tonight.

  I said, “You were going to tell me about Ritchie.”

  Shay looked at the sand, nodded. “He killed Corey. That’s the way I’m thinking of it. And he did things to me that night in the swimming pool I didn’t tell you. Things he kept doing even when I told him to stop.”

  I said, “You have every right to be mad. But we’re talking about tonight. How mad did you get?”

  “I was telling you about this plan Beryl had-”

  “Shay!” I took her hand and squeezed. “Stop evading. What happened? I know Ritchie tried to force you, I know you pretended to be interested, I know you two came here, to the beach. So, for the last time, where’s-”

  “I brought a gun,” Shay interrupted, pulling away. She turned her back to me and looked at the sky where there were stars… and also a plane climbing skyward, green and white lights blinking.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey! That’s Eddie’s plane. I’m supposed to fly back to Saint Lucia with-”

  “I’m taking you by boat,” I said. “You were telling me about the gun.”

  “Oh. Yeah. That’s one of the good things about flying with Eddie. You can carry anything you want on a private plane. The gun, it made me feel safe when I was out here with Ritchie. He probably wondered where I got all the courage when I started screaming at him about Corey. I told him he was nothing but low-life trash, and how much I hate bullies. Then…”

  I waited for a few seconds before I pressed, “And then…?” wondering if she was editing her story. She often did.

  “And then I took out the gun and pointed it at Ritchie’s smug damn face. He tried to bullshit his way out of it. But when I pulled the hammer back, I wish you could’ve seen his expression. He was like, Jesus Christ, this woman’s got the balls to really do it. I told him, ‘Ritchie, you little prick, you’ve got five seconds to run.’ Then I started counting. And… that’s all that happened.”

  I said, “What do you mean?” It was like we were in her convertible again, returning from the air
port, the stories slippery in her mouth.

  “I mean he ran-the coward. And so I… fired a couple of shots into the sand. To scare the hell out of him. Because of the fireworks, no one would’ve noticed.” She made a sound that resembled laughter. “Ritchie won’t be back, I promise you that.”

  I looped my arm around her waist, then slid my hand up her ribs and rested it on her neck. The gun wasn’t in her pockets; wasn’t in a shoulder holster. I asked, “Are you telling me the truth about the gun?” Though I knew the answer.

  Shay sighed-a mewing sound of nostalgia or amusement-a sound like that. “It was a little Blackhawk. 22. Daddy gave it to me when I was ten. I learned to shoot, Doc. I learned to pull the trigger. That’s a phrase Dexter used. It meant someone it came naturally to.”

  I said, “Almost sounds like you miss the man.”

  Shay thought that was funny. Said, “Hah!” and scratched at something on her arm. “I’ll despise him forever. But Daddy knew guns-that’s all I’m saying. Which is why it got so he distrusted me as much as I disliked him.”

  I shook my head, confused. What?

  “I told you I ran away from home?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That was a lie. I didn’t run away. Daddy made me leave. I may be the only person who ever scared Dexter Money. He was afraid I was gonna kill him, so one of us had to go.”

  The girl looked up at me. “I was out here thinking about it. How would I feel if I’d really shot him-Ritchie. Would I have a guilty conscience? Or break down crying, or go screaming and yelling to Beryl, begging her to help me cover up what I’d done?”

  I said, “What did you decide?”

  Shay’s eyes brightened for an instant, a feral reaction to starlight. “I decided I wouldn’t do any of those things. If I killed trash like Ritchie, I guess I’d feel… indifferent. Does that sound cold-blooded, Doc?”

  I cupped the back of Shay’s neck and pulled her close, so my lips were next to her ear. I said, “That asshole, Ritchie, stole my watch, Shanay. My old Rolex. Now… where’s his body?”

  Back at the beach house, I found my belt near the pool, and the little Colt. 380, one round fired, the brass casing on the deck. I’d known it was no fireworks.

  No blood trail. No Clovis. Beryl had missed. Or was it Senegal?

  “Pulling the trigger isn’t the same as pulling the trigger,” Shay told me, huddled close for warmth, as we boated toward the lights of Saint Lucia.

  She was cold and I was freezing. The wind had cut like a knife as Shay had stood guard on the beach, while I put Ritchie in the cave.

  EPILOGUE

  On a silver, squall-blustery morning, July 24th, I rode my bike to the Sanibel Post Office on Tarpon Bay Road, and found a familiar postal key in my box that opened a larger box, from which I extracted one bulky manila envelope. I also found one reinforced box, carefully wrapped, very thin-made for sending valuable papers or photographs.

  The envelope was from Sir James Montbard, Bluestone, Saint Lucia. It would contain articles and proofs and copies of maps related to the man’s theory of Relentless Human Motion. Sir James wanted me to join him on an expedition to the mangrove jungles of Central America’s Caribbean Coast. “There are Olmec ruins there unknown to outsiders-protected for centuries by native Miskito Indians,” he had told me. “The few real Miskito, the traditional ones, are damn suspicious of interlopers. It would be useful to have you along-an extra hand, you might say.”

  The Englishman had laughed when he said that.

  “The final proof we’re looking for may well be there, somewhere among the vines and mosquitoes. It’s not a trip for the faint of heart. You’ve had some experience in that part of the world, haven’t you, old boy?”

  “I’ve been there a few times, Hooker,” I’d told him, amused that his Relentless Motion theory was now “ours.”

  Montbard said he’d finance the trip with his cut of the money I’d taken from Isabelle Toussaint’s safe.

  The second package was from General Forensics Laboratories, White Plains, New York. Using infrared luminescence and digital enhancement imaging, experts there had reconstructed portions of the letter from the late Merlin Starkey, the letter that might reveal the name of my parents’ murderer.

  The box would also contain General Forensics’s bill. Expensive. That was okay. I could afford it.

  I put box and envelope in my backpack, and pedaled the easy half a mile back to my lab. Squall cells were dispersing, I noted, skies turning from silver to Gulf Stream blue.

  It was going to be a hot one.

  Late that afternoon, Tomlinson and I exited our local rum bar into rain-forest heat and, on the three-mile bike ride to the marina, he decided it was so wonderfully, humidly, oppressively hot, that residents of Sanibel Island, and neighboring islands, would be eager to participate in our annual Summer Christmas Snowflake Fiesta.

  I responded, “What do you mean, annual? We’ve never hosted a Christmas fiesta before. We’ve never celebrated Christmas in summer before. How do you come up with this stuff?” The man had been drinking.

  Tomlinson watched a trio of adolescent raccoons ramble hunch-backed across the bike path, before he said, “Just because we’ve never done something, doesn’t mean it hasn’t already happened. Think about it. The timing’s perfect. You weren’t listening to Big Dan and Greg, and Marty at the bar? This is National Single Working Women’s Week.”

  Yes, I’d listened, and I’d made the mistake of doubting. The guys summoned Mark, who produced a laptop computer. He went to the Internet and proved that National Single Working Women’s Week does exist. More than a hundred female members had booked rooms at the nearby Island Inn.

  Tomlinson blinked his eyes for a moment, smiling. “I’m picturing a dozen bored and overheated single working women, from states with lots of vowels, wearing nothing but Santa hats on Coach Mike’s Sea Ray-”

  I said, “Here we go.”

  “-and a big Christmas tree, with stars and shells and angel hair. And presents. Lots of presents. We suddenly have a surplus of cold, hard cash, man-”

  I interrupted. “What do you mean, ‘we’? I don’t remember opening a joint bank account.” Why were people using royal pronouns to include me in things lately?

  Tomlinson said, “I was the one who signed for the package when the embassy courier knocked on the door. Brought it inside the lab; put it in a nice safe place while you were out disposing of all those weird creepy crawlers. Poison shrimp-gad!-although I do kinda miss the high-voltage jellyfish.”

  I said, “For that, you’re entitled to half?”

  “No. I’m not greedy. Just a cut. I could’ve run, you know. Or jumped over the railing and swam for it-almost did when I saw the Fed was wearing a badge. But I stood my ground, man. It gives me a communal interest. Why is it you capitalists can’t understand the whole beautiful concept of sharing wealth?” He gave it several deadpan beats before laughing, letting me know he was doing his flaky, harmless hippie bit.

  The hippie disappeared, and I listened to the real Tomlinson say, "I’m thinking of Javier Castillo’s wife, Anita, and the two girls. Since Javier was killed, I hear they’re struggling like hell to get by.”

  Javier had been one of the area’s top fishing guides, and a trusted friend. A good cause.

  “There are a couple of other families around-mullet fishermen; some of the illegals on Pine Island-who could use a boost. So yeah, throw a summer Christmas party. Why not? We all kick in cash, and maybe have a lottery drawing. That way, when Javier’s wife draws the winning ticket, it won’t feel like charity.”

  I said, “Let me guess. You’ll use your paranormal powers to make sure she wins.”

  “I probably could,” he said seriously, scratching at his thigh. “My mojo is back, big-time. No, what I’m saying is, we rig the whole deal. Fast Eddie’s an expert. Getting him involved might give him a boost, too-an emotional boost, I mean.”

  The last few days, Eddie DeAntoni had been moping aro
und the marina, despondent. Two nights before, very late, I’d strolled the docks and actually found the tough guy weeping, dimples and all. He’d had a couple of passionate evenings with Beryl Woodward, but now things weren’t going well. She didn’t return his calls. Beryl would make a date, but not show up.

  “She’s killing me,” he’d moaned, then was understandably confused when I assured him that that was one of the few things Beryl would not do.

  I said to Tomlinson, “Christmas in July. Why not? You’re sure Eddie knows how to rig it?”

  Tomlinson said, “Are you kidding? How do you think he won that lottery in Jersey?”

  It was true I now had a bundle of unreported, untaxed cash on my hands. Slightly less than a quarter million, after I’d split the take with Sir James and Norma, and sent an anonymous money order to Corey’s family.

  The Midnight Star, I kept for myself. Expenses.

  Because U.S. Customs is suspicious of citizens carrying large sums, I’d had Eddie drop me on the nearby island of Grenada before he and the girls returned to Fort Lauderdale in his leased, jet-fast TBM-850 airplane.

  I spent six days on Grenada making phone calls to old contacts and making new friends at the U.S. embassy. Turned out I had some old friends on the island, too. Grenada had changed a lot since the invasion.

  My old friends proved helpful. So did my old boss, Hal Harringtononce I applied the right kind of pressure. I was now in possession of a video that compromised a powerful member of the U.S. Senate. But I’m not an extortionist. I didn’t use the video; didn’t mention it-although I did contact the senator who, understandably, was suspicious despite glowing character references from my old friends. The senator and I began a careful dialogue that gradually became genial, and was now friendly.

  For Hal Harrington, though, a call from Sir James Montbard was pressure enough.

  “Do you know who he is?” Harrington-a man not easily impressedhad asked.

  I’d told him, “No, but I’m starting to figure it out.”

  Because I already had everything arranged at the embassy, and it was Saturday, I had returned to Saint Lucia for the weekend. Had dinner at Bluestone with Sir James, Senegal, and Norma, too. Sir James was out of the hospital after a successful surgery, and as upbeat as ever-despite a loss that would be debilitating to most men.