Black Widow df-15 Read online

  “Well, almost anything. I love her. She’s one hard-ass girl. But she won’t be happy if she finds out what we did tonight.”

  I said, “Why? We didn’t do anything wrong. You told me about Saint Arc. I made notes. We looked up some things on the Internet. Nothing wrong with that.”

  “You know what I mean. It was innocent, but she’d still be jealous.”

  I knew what she meant.

  We’d been out in my skiff. No wind tonight, and the bay was a bio-luminescent soup, bright as emerald paint when disturbed. Beryl had stripped to bra and panties and jumped overboard-“Like jumping into a cloud of fireflies!” she told me when she surfaced. “A billion stars explode. You’ve got to try it.”

  That’s why she was showering when Shay called. That’s why I was wearing nothing but running shorts and sandals.

  Beryl touched a finger to the aquarium, tracing the path of a sea jelly as it descended. “I shouldn’t talk that way about Shay. You two are close. But she should be more understanding about your feelings and mine. After two years with Elliot-Mister Perfect-it’s nice to be with a guy like you.”

  I said, “I’m anything but perfect. The rumors are true.”

  “Are they?”

  “That I’m not perfect? Yes.”

  She smiled, watching the sea jellies. “It wasn’t a cut. It was a compliment. I like it here, Ford. Everything neat and orderly. It has a nice smell-sort of like living in a tree house.” She turned. “And I like you. A lot.”

  I said, “You’re welcome here anytime.”

  “True?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you’re not going to change your mind about me going to Saint Arc.”

  “No.”

  There was a towel next to the computer. I put it over my shoulder as I tapped the monitor, eager to change the subject. “I found this while you were outside. It’s about party drugs.”

  She smiled. “I’ve heard of them.” Said it as if I was the naive one, not her.

  “Well, maybe there’s one you haven’t heard of. A friend told me about an amphetamine derivative that’s popular at resorts in Jamaica.”

  “The tall hippie-looking guy?”

  “That’s him. Guys slip it into girls’ drinks. Or they soak marijuana in it. The medical abbreviation is MDA-methylenedioxyamphetamine. It could explain your behavior that night.”

  “They drugged us? I kind of suspected it. More than just the grass, I mean.” Beryl crossed the room and put her hand on my bicep, pivoting behind me so she could see the screen. I could feel the heat of her fingertips. I watched her breathing change as she read, chest moving beneath the towel.

  “Unlike most stimulants, MDA does not increase motor activity. It suppresses it in a remarkable way. Inhibitions normally present in group situations are reduced(although it can have an opposite effect on a small percentage of users, causing paranoia).

  “In group MDA experiences, people typically want to explore mutual touching and the pleasures of physical closeness. Even a group of strangers may feel very loving toward one another. They describe a ‘warm glow’ that radiates gradually into the penis or clitoris, but the experience is not always explicitly sexual because MDA tends to decrease the desire for orgasm.

  "Some subjects, however, feel it heightens the sexual experience because pleasurablesensations do not end abruptly with orgasm…”

  After several seconds, Beryl said, “My God, that describes exactly the way I felt. Sort of dreamy and unreal. I loved everybody. And the part about people in groups, the way they behave…” She hesitated. “Did you tell Shay about this?”

  “I’ll print it out. I may drop it at the hospital tomorrow-or you can give it to her. We need to make sure she’s strong enough.”

  Beryl read the article again. “Those damn little manipulators. I suspected, but it’s so obvious now. You know what’s most humiliating? That night in the swimming pool, with this guy-a stranger. A sort of weaselly kid, really. For the first time, I… I-” She turned away, then shook her head and made a growling sound. “-I’m too mad to talk about it.”

  “No need.”

  She said it again. “They drugged us.”

  “I think it’s probable.”

  “It would explain a lot. In the pool, it was never like that with Elliot. It was always routine with him, more like exercise. Never really… exciting. And all because of some damn drug?” Now she sounded unconvinced. Or disappointed.

  I said, “My friend, the hippie-looking guy, he says a drug can’t give you anything you didn’t bring to the party. You felt what you felt.”

  “But they used me-all four of us. Like those sick blow-up dolls they sell at sex shops. If that was all they did, it wouldn’t bother me so much. But now they’re making a small fortune off us, too, while they ruin our lives. Ford? They’re not going to get away this. I won’t let them get away with it. You have to let me help.”

  Her hand was on my shoulder now. I put my hand on hers-comforting, but also to free myself. “You already have. Get dressed while I shower. It’s late.”

  As I opened the screen door, Beryl stopped me, saying, “Can I ask you something? The video-where is it?”

  Before I could answer, she added, “What I’m thinking is, it would be smart to watch it-for information. You’ll know what the guys look like instead of just descriptions. And personally? I’d like to find out if we really were drugged, or just drunk and high. I’ll know from the way we act.”

  I said, “Even if you were serious, I don’t have a TV.”

  “If it’s a cassette tape, won’t it play through a video camera? I have a little Sony in the car that we use at the resort. It plugs into a computer monitor.”

  I looked at her until she added, “I am serious. I’m willing to watch. We’re both adults, for God’s sake, and if we can learn something, isn’t it kind of adolescent not to have a look?”

  Her breathing had changed again. Mine, too, as I watched her combing fingers through wet hair, head back, neck exposed. Blue eyes brighter now as her skin flushed.

  Instead of asking, Without permission from the other girls?, I heard myself reply, “Maybe. Think it over while I shower-” But then I stopped when I heard a distinctive bong-bong-bong chiming in the next room.

  A phone was ringing. My government-issue satellite phone. Someone had reactivated it.

  When I answered, a male voice said, “Don’t talk, just listen. I’m doing this for a dear, departed lady, not for you.” He sounded like a robot that had inhaled helium because the voice was digitally scrambled.

  It was Bernie Yager. By referring to his sister, Eve, he sent a message that also confirmed his identity.

  The computerized voice said, “There’s a place nearby that’s safer. Go now. Order a drink. Five minutes.”

  He hung up.

  I stood for a moment, looking dumbly at the phone. Did he mean the 7-Eleven on Tarpon Bay Road? I’d used the pay phone there before. No. ..

  Order a drink.

  No… he meant Sanibel Grille. It was closer than the 7-Eleven, only a couple hundred yards from the marina entrance. The bar was open until 1 a.m. The year before, I’d called him from there. Bernie would’ve saved the number.

  I pulled on a shirt, traded sandals for boat shoes, then poked my head into the lab. Beryl smiled from the computer desk until I told her, “I’ve got to go-but I won’t be long. Fifteen minutes. Twenty-five at the most.”

  Her smile faded. “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s a business emergency-sort of.”

  She stood, reknotting the towel. “Was it Shay? I bet it was Shay-”

  “No. It’s business. That’s the truth. Twenty minutes-I promise. I’ve got to go.”

  I heard Beryl say, “Marine biologist. Right,” as I went down the steps.

  Exactly four minutes later, I was reaching for the door at Sanibel Grille when Matt, the owner, came out with the portable phone, and said, “So you are here. It’s some guy asking for y
ou.”

  I took the phone to a private spot on the balcony before putting it to my ear. “Bernie?”

  “No. Just listen.”

  It was Bernie. His real voice now.

  I listened to him say, “The trouble your friends are having can be traced to a health resort on the island you mentioned. The Hooded Orchid Retreat and Spa. Got that? Don’t answer.”

  He repeated the name twice, before adding, “Take a lot of money ’cause it’s expensive. Exclusive, too-the place is booked way in advance. Which is why someone took the liberty of pulling some strings and holding a reservation. If you think it’s the right move, check-in’s Tuesday morning. You’re booked through Sunday. But don’t be surprised if they’re a little confused because of a glitch in their computer system.”

  I could guess what that meant, but I said, “I can’t wait until Tuesday-”

  “Then work it out for yourself. Or cancel. Understand what I’m telling you-Dr. North?”

  One of my bogus passports identifies me as Marion W. North. The middle initial had once been significant. It defined my operative boundaries. The W stood for world, as in World License.

  I said, “I understand,” and noticed car lights on the marina’s shell road. A Volvo convertible.

  “This place, I don’t even want to guess what they pretend to heal. It’s couples only. So you’ve got to take a girlfriend. You’ve also got to take a dinner jacket, ’cause it’s fancy.”

  I said slowly, “A girlfriend,” watching the car. It was at the four-way stop now, brights on, no turn signal even though it turned left, tires kicking shell, then squealing as they hit asphalt.

  Bernie said, “Yes, a girlfriend or a wife-unless you changed teams all of a sudden, ’cause it’s gotta be you and a partner. No singles without special permission. One more thing, Dr. North-the instrument that was deactivated. Get rid of it. The thing has ears-understand?”

  The satellite phone. It was a passive monitor. Not that anyone could’ve heard much, locked away in the floor. Still…

  As I watched Beryl speed away in her Volvo, top down, I said, “Thanks. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

  Bernie was already gone.

  A beautiful predator…

  That’s what I was thinking-about sea jellies, not about Beryl, although maybe it applied. Same for Kathleen Rhodes and Shay. A secret predaceous creature lives within us all-A voice that whispers, Shay described it. Women mask it more expertly than men because fifty thousand years of misogyny have encoded patience.

  I called Beryl’s cell. No answer. I didn’t leave a message. While waiting to try again, I was looking at the jellyfish where the woman’s finger had streaked the aquarium glass.

  Interesting creatures, jellyfish. These were tiny animals-the size of a quarter. Uncomplicated. No brain, no heart, no hearing. Simplex nervous systems that responded to light and odor. Pursue. Attack. Feed. Reproduce.

  Tentacles trolled beneath them, lures to fish or zooplankton. Passive but not benign. Each was coated with an arsenal of microscopic projectiles. Hair triggers, cnidocils. They fired darts attached to coiled thread. Harpoon cannon, a human equivalent, were slow in comparison and not as deadly.

  After penetration, each nematocyst injected its ordnance of poison. Feeding became a leisurely process.

  In Australia, these tiny jellies and their basketball-sized relative, box jellyfish, had killed dozens of people. They were feared, like crocodiles. Yet their corporeal form was an illusion. Their bodies were ninety-eight percent saltwater, two percent living cells.

  That morning, I’d written in my lab journal:

  Jellyfish are as close as evolution has come to producing intelligence unconstrained by tissue.

  Predatory drifters… delicate as flower blossoms. Jellyfish were killers without conscience.

  I was raising Carukia as an experiment in bioterrorism. If I could raise lethal sea jellies in a Florida lab, terrorists could, too. Difference was, I wasn’t going to sneak them into vacation ecosystems at South Beach, Key West, Fort Lauderdale, and Sarasota. They spawned by the millions.

  Poisonous shrimp-another project. They were housed in a plastic drum attached to hoses, filters, and pumps. The drum was kept locked. A viewing window had been installed.

  Inside were several hundred shrimp, feet fanning water for steerage. They were the same variety served in restaurants, but these had been raised on toxic feed. I made the stuff from fish that contained a poisonous dinoflagellate, ciguatera.

  Ciguatera is commonly found in reef fish, and in the predators that eat them. That’s why you don’t see barracuda on a restaurant menu.

  Shrimp were unfazed by the toxin, but their flesh absorbed it like sponges. Half a dozen, eaten even after being shelled, boiled, or fried, would paralyze a healthy man. Maybe kill him.

  Shrimp served in chain restaurants are commonly raised in Central American ponds. Ciguatera poisoning is associated with eating fish, never shrimp. If the Red Lobster crowd started dropping in the streets, there would be panic and economic calamity before the Centers for Disease Control figured it out.

  Margaret Holderness and her underlings had been impressed.

  Anticipate tactics-that was my task. An enemy loses more than a battle if he finds you waiting at his ambush spot.

  It’s something I’m good at.

  Before signing the new contract, I’d operated on the dark side of the fence, a phrase used by State Department types. Marine biology was a cover, not an assignment. Now, ironically, it was my research that was classified.

  At first, I welcomed the change. I no longer had to switch passports after border crossings. Didn’t have to ship weaponry to prearranged destinations. Didn’t have to blend in, studying local sea life while also tracking assigned targets.

  Sometimes, people just disappear.

  I was good at that, too.

  I was working regular hours, staying home instead of jetting off on fictional research trips. I ate, slept, and socialized like a normal American professional. And… the lifestyle was suffocating me.

  I had been unmasked by the truth, and I was growing impatient with the lie I’d been living.

  I turned from the aquarium and dialed Beryl’s number again. No answer.

  This time, I left a message. “There’s a health spa on the island we discussed that might have something to do with your problem. The Hooded Orchid. I may book a room. Your family’s in the spa business-find out what you can about the place, and give me a call.”

  Beryl didn’t call that night. The next morning, I left a similar message before leaving to catch my plane.

  13

  SATURDAY, JUNE 22ND

  Shortly after landing at a private airstrip on Saint Lucia, two hundred miles off the South American coast, I rented a boat and made the short water crossing to Saint Arc.

  Now I was working my way down a rain-forest mountainside toward the rental house where Shay and her bridesmaids had stayed. Occasionally, I got a glimpse of the place through trees alive with orchids and canoe-sized leaves.

  Shay had picked it as the ideal spot for a women’s getaway. As I got closer, I understood the appeal.

  It was a Tahitian-style house on stilts, built of tropical wood so rich with natural oils it glowed amber in the lavender afternoon light. The house sat among coconut palms, overlooking a lagoon on its own little cusp of beach. A wicked beach for topless sunbathing, Shay had described it.

  There were people on the beach now. Four stretched out on towels. Women, probably, but I was too far away to be sure.

  Palms and a rock ridge screened the house from a longer beach and a resort hotel a quarter mile away-a busy place with umbrellas and Jet Skis. Here, though, the house and lagoon were quiet, a private island on a larger island. It looked idyllic, safe. An inviting rental-also an alluring trap for blackmail.

  I spent another five minutes descending the hillside, the forest floor spongy underfoot as parrots and macaws quarreled in a tree canopy tha
t filtered sunlight, so it was a little like being underwater-darker, cooler, until I stepped into a clearing a hundred yards above the beach.

  Yes… women. All topless; two of them nude. Seen from above, their bodies mimicked the curvature of wind sculptures; skin dark against white sand that edged the lagoon. I’d studied the nautical charts. The lagoon formed the upper basin of a canyon that descended to the sea bottom several hundred feet below. Water was Jell-O blue in the shallows, then dropped vertically in black shafts of light.

  I stood for a moment, feeling uneasy and ridiculous-a reluctant voyeur unaccustomed to imposing on the privacy of women. I hadn’t known the house was occupied.

  I ducked into the forest, moving quietly downward. Soon, I was close enough to see the swimming pool behind the house. The pool was kidney-shaped with an adjoining Jacuzzi built into a stone deck. There was patio furniture, a grill, and a bar. The area was unscreened, but hedged by bougainvilleas in pale yellow bloom. Hedges gave the illusion of privacy, but they were trimmed low, so my view was unobstructed.

  It had to be close-the place where a cameraman had set up equipment and filmed Shay, Beryl, Liz, and Corey with the islanders. If the girls were random victims, there wouldn’t be much to find. But if the rental house was designed for blackmail, there would be a fixed place for filming.

  I found it. The camera blind was so well-camouflaged with netting and branches that I nearly passed it. The netting covered a structure built of bamboo and lumber, open on all sides, and roofed with palm thatching. Like a hunter’s blind.

  The entrance was a slit in the netting. I found a stick, broke it, then used it as a probe to check for booby traps. I tossed the stick away, then stepped through the opening.

  It was a cozy little place: two folding chairs; an Igloo cooler beneath a table where there was an ashtray, and a plastic box-the kind you burp to seal. Inside were a couple of French magazines, a crumpled blue pack of Gauloise cigarettes, and several minicassettes, unopened. Panasonic DVM-60s-like the one used to film the girls.

  I picked up a magazine. Paris Match, logo in red.