Black Widow df-15 Read online

On the cover was an attractive middle-aged woman, looking good in a two-piece swimsuit, hands combing her hair back as she exited the water-a candid shot.

  I don’t speak French, but I understand a little. The headlines were easily translated; the woman’s name was familiar to anyone who follows world events via shortwave radio. I do.

  The woman was Senegal Firth, a candidate for British Parliament, favored to win until she withdrew one month prior to the election. Controversial. I didn’t remember details.

  I checked the date of the magazine. Seven months old. Ms. Firth had been vacationing on Saint Arc when the photo was taken. It was an unflattering shot of a photogenic woman: late forties, interesting eyes, brown hair, very fit in a navy blue two-piece that clung.

  I flipped inside. More candid swimsuit photos. I read enough to understand that Ms. Firth was outraged by the breach of privacy and was threatening to sue.

  Sniper photographers were welcome, apparently, on Saint Arc.

  The other magazine, also French, was for orchid aficionados.

  An odd combination.

  The front of the blind looked down onto the pool, only fifty yards away, but it was insulated from the property by a sheer ledge that dropped a hundred feet onto lichen gray rocks. The ledge rimmed the mountain, so it was a quarter mile or more to the house on foot.

  As I closed the magazine, two women who’d been on the beach came into view, very tall, bony, towels over their shoulders. They were so close, I could hear bits of conversation-American women, middle-aged, Midwestern accents.

  As one of them leaned to step out of her bikini bottoms, I felt a creeping revulsion. I reached to drop a curtain that covered the viewing window. This cozy little camera blind was a nasty little place. Violence can be done in silence. I’d come to gather intel and evidence, not to ogle unsuspecting women. Let the ladies swim in private.

  I opened the cooler-several champagne bottles inside, two empty, all of them warm. A thread of spider’s silk angled from the table to the window frame. It takes a spider several hours to construct a web, but this lone thread was older-no spider in sight.

  No one here today. That might soon change. Women were renting the house, and tomorrow was Sunday. I remembered Shay telling me there was nothing going on at the nearby resort the night the men showed up-a Sunday night.

  I got busy.

  I pulled on surgical gloves. One by one, I opened the videocassettes and used a pocket knife to cut the magnetic tape where it bridged the rollers. If the camera’s computer didn’t flash an alert-media error-the cassette spools would turn, the tape would not.

  I left two cassettes intact, securing them separately in plastic bags. If the day came when I needed fingerprints, they might be useful. I also bagged several cigarette butts-DNA. A roach butt went into another baggie. If it had been infused with a synthetic drug, forensics labs could identify it.

  From a waist pack, I removed one of two tiny digital recorders I’d brought, then a remote microphone the size of a pencil eraser. The recorder was voice-activated. It had enough memory to record twelve hours of conversation.

  After several frustrating minutes, I figured out how to reduce microphone sensitivity-I wanted conversation, not twelve hours of birds chirping. I tested it, sealed it in its case, and hid the recorder under moss along the inside wall. I’d just found a spot to clip the microphone when I heard leaves rustling… the crack of a branch… another… then a muffled male voice, very close.

  Visitors.

  I knelt and parted the netting: two men coming from the north, where the road angled close to the forest. White guys, early twenties, with tangled black hair. Each carried a backpack. One also carried a tripod; the other lugged a bag of ice.

  They were twenty yards away, facing the blind’s entrance, making it impossible to leave the way I’d entered. Instead, I took a last look at the microphone, then burrowed under the netting at the south wall and crawled on my belly into some ferns.

  I gave it several seconds, then turned and faced the camera blind, pulling leaves closer for cover. I also unholstered the palm-sized Colt. 380 clipped inside the back of my pants. I confirmed there was a round in the breach, then held the pistol ready as I waited.

  I couldn’t see the men as they entered the blind, but I could hear them whispering in patois French. I caught a few words, but understood little. I heard the ice chest open; heard the measured, metallic sounds of a tripod being set up.

  Fifteen minutes later, they were joined by a third man. After that, they whispered in English-islander English, which was only slightly easier to understand than French, and almost impossible to hear.

  I was getting them on tape, but I didn’t want to wait. I decided to risk it. I left my soft spot in the ferns, crawled to the blind, and put my ear against the netting. There was the flicking sound of a lighter lighting a joint, and the clink of a bottle.

  I found a hole in the webbing wide enough for one eye, and took a look. The third man wore a red bandanna tied pirate style, blond dreadlocks spilling out from beneath. Open white shirt with cuffs, hairless chest, skin tanned butterscotch. Shay’s guy in the video. He stood smoking a cigarette while the others shared the joint and drank beer, in no hurry. The impression was they were done for the day even though there was no camera mounted on the tripod.

  They’d rolled up the canvas curtain and were watching the women. I couldn’t see the pool, but I knew what the men were seeing from their whispered jokes and laughter. I could read their facial expressions-distaste; pained locker-room grimaces at the sight of forty-year-old women swimming naked. They traded clinical assessments. Made cruel and graphic comparisons. But they watched, anyway.

  Pointless cruelty invites a violent response.

  I had the pistol in my right hand. I slipped it under the netting, then touched the gun sights experimentally to each man’s head, one by one- an adolescent demonstration that a professional wouldn’t do. Stupid. This was personal business, not an assignment. I couldn’t go running to the U.S. Consulate in Grenada if local law enforcement came after me. But it was so damn tempting.

  The three continued to joke about the women as I lowered the Colt and turned my eye away from the netting. Listening was bad enough without seeing their facial theatrics.

  It was another ten minutes before they tired of the subject and said something useful.

  I heard, “Mon, do you really ’spect me to screw them women tomorrow night? Put our hands on them ol’ ladies? I goan have to drink myself blind first.”

  Translation: I’ll have to drink myself blind first.

  In the same dialect, the man with the pirate bandanna-Bandanna Man-whispered, “Then you better start drinkin’ ’cause those ladies are the golden egg, what you’re seein’ down there. Them women are rich.”

  “Okay, man, okay. I’ll do it, but I ain’t likin’ it.” Laughter.

  The third man’s accent was more French than islander. “Then what we sittin’ here for? We’ll be seeing them too soon as ’tis. Burnin’ up all our drinkin’ time tonight don’t make no sense. Dirk?”

  “Yeah, man.”

  “Wolfie’s comin’ with the camera tomorrow. That right? You tell that pompous fool be on time. We meet him at the Green Turtle, six o’clock. You hear me?”

  “Yeah, man, doan worry. It takes a bottle of rum before I go blind and deaf.”

  They were laughing as they left, one by one-a standard security precaution that told me they’d done this before. I crawled to the edge of the camera blind and got a good look at them sneaking away through the rain forest toward the road.

  Beryl and Shay had given me descriptions of the men who’d lured them into the swimming pool. Two looked European, possibly Dutch, jet-setter Shay had told me, but they were locals with French-West In-dies accents. She’d also described the butterscotch islander with blond dreadlocks, but I would’ve recognized him, anyway. Shay’s partner.

  These were the guys. They’d be back tomorrow night.

>   So would I.

  I gave it five minutes, then took another look inside the camera blind. It was now supplied for tomorrow night’s filming. Snacks, Red Stripe beer wedged around a block of ice, the tripod, and a sleeve of three new videocassettes. Would Wolfie, the cameraman, notice broken cellophane wrappers?

  My guess: Wolfie was the bagman I’d followed from the Bank of Aruba to the waterfront bar they’d mentioned, the Green Turtle. If true, Wolfie was fifteen years older, a big, round man, wore expensive Italian sunglasses, and drove a nice car-a man competent with money and cameras. Wolfie might be a pompous fool, but he wasn’t the one who’d lugged all this gear up the mountain.

  Wolfie was the man in charge. Maybe the blackmailer. If he wasn’t, he was better connected than the other three.

  Below the blind, a third and fourth woman had joined the others. Two wore gauzy beach kaftans. One had pulled on a man-sized T-shirt, Michigan, in blue and gold. Moneyed ladies on vacation-but their faces didn’t have the glossy angularity I associate with face-lifts and wealth. They looked cheerful, full of fun, as they made a pitcher of margaritas and kibitzed about where they would go for dinner.

  Four old friends, comfortable with themselves and their age, their flaws-my read. They didn’t deserve the ambush that awaited.

  I popped the cellophane and disabled the new cassettes. If the cameraman noticed, so be it. If he carried fresh cassettes, there was nothing I could do.

  I confirmed the recorder was working, then slipped through the opening into rain forest. I scouted around until I found a good viewing platform of my own: a rock ledge to the south. If I sat on the ledge, the camera blind’s viewing window was uphill, to my right. The swimming pool was downhill to my left.

  From my pocket, I took a roll of special reflective tape. Hit it with a regular flashlight, it resembled green ribbon. Use infrared light, though, in combination with night-vision optics, it glittered. Because I might have to find this ledge at night, I tied a couple of pieces on nearby foliage, then used four-inch lengths to mark an escape route.

  I chose a trail that ran along a rock ridge. At a couple of spots, the ridge dropped off fifty or sixty feet onto rocks below-okay for a man wearing night vision; dangerous for a man who wasn’t.

  At the narrowest section, I thought about stringing a trip wire. Wrap it with the special tape-I would see it. Anyone chasing me would not. But if an innocent hiker came tromping along this path…?

  Couldn’t do it.

  I continued walking… then froze as parrots flushed from trees to my left, screaming an alert. I stood there for a long minute, searching the shadows. Something, or someone, had spooked the birds.

  I pocketed the marking tape, and slipped the Colt from the back of my pants. Slowly, I started uphill toward a grove of traveler’s palms where the parrots had been. The leaves of the palms fanned out like a green wall… but the wall was moving-something in there.

  I had the little semiautomatic palmed, not showing it but ready, when two iguanas came snaking out-miniature dragons, skin iridescent green, reptilian tongues probing. They were the size of small dogs.

  I watched, focusing on the green wall. Iguanas eat birds’ eggs, and sometimes birds. Parrots would flush at their approach and scream an alert.

  So why did I suddenly feel as if the jungle had eyes? That I was being watched?

  Ridiculous. A cliche from cowboy movies; folklore from childhood. I don’t believe in such things.

  I holstered the pistol and moved on.

  14

  The woman who’d been wearing the Michigan shirt, but was now in a sundress, tropical yellow with spaghetti straps that showed her thick tan shoulders, asked me, “Is it dangerous to swim in the lagoon? Sharks, I mean. That’s what the girls and I were wondering. We’re from the snow belt-” She shrugged, grinning to let me know it might be silly. “-and this is our first trip to the islands.”

  I told her, “Most resorts, you don’t have to worry about sharks until you’re out of the water. Probably the same on Saint Arc.”

  Big smile. “Like the Jimmy Buffett song? ’Fins.’ ” She was intrigued, not concerned.

  “Who knows the islands better?” I smiled, joking but not joking. Letting her think about it as I opened the plastic case I carry as a portable lab. It contained collecting jars, chemicals for testing water, a plastic slurp-tube for catching sea jellies and small reef fish-the dutiful biologist at work.

  I had anchored my rental boat in the shallows-a cheap tri-hull with an antique Evinrude that would do until tomorrow when I took possession of a loaner-a seventeen-foot Maverick with a one-fifty Yamaha. It was as fast and stable as my boat, just smaller.

  Tomlinson had been right about new contacts. I’d hitched a ride with Lags in his Gulfstream jet-no problem with customs at the private airport-and my friend Skip Lyshon arranged for a demo boat from the Hewes/Pathfinder dealer on Saint Lucia.

  I had decided not to phone Beryl again-even though it meant I couldn’t check in to the couples retreat that, according to Bernie, was somehow associated with the blackmailer. If Beryl agreed to join me, there would be too many questions to dodge.

  That was okay. I was playing it by ear, letting the situation pull me along until I sensed the right opening. Locate a trap and, sooner or later, the trapper will appear.

  I had found the trap. I still had six days-plenty of time to lay low and let events play out until the blackmailer revealed himself. Trouble was, this smiling woman in the yellow sundress was his prey. Her three friends, too-I waved at them now as they walked from the house, and stopped when they spotted me on the beach.

  The temptation was to tell them what to expect tomorrow night, but I couldn’t. If they contacted police, the blackmailer would know. He’d shut down the operation for a week or two, then be right back at it. Worse, it would put him on alert and make it tougher for me to locate his stash of videos. If he’d kept a copy of Shay’s tape, he probably had them all. That’s what I was after-the collection. If it didn’t work out, negotiating a private deal was a last option.

  I couldn’t tell the ladies, but I could at least plant a warning. So I had changed into jogging shorts, then waded with mask and fins to the beach, as if getting ready to dive into the lagoon. Then I’d futzed around with the portable lab until the woman struck up a conversation.

  The woman glanced at her friends now and waved them closer, still smiling at my joke about land sharks. She extended her hand. “My name’s Madeleine. But everyone calls me Mattie.”

  I said, “Marion-or Doc,” doing first names only-common at resorts-even though we’d been talking for several minutes.

  I already knew that Mattie was the mother of two college-aged children. Because she didn’t mention a husband, I assumed she was divorced, not widowed. She wasn’t exactly retired, because managing the family business took a lot of time. “Managing” was said in a way that suggested stocks, properties, and liquid assets. Wealthy-golden eggs, the guy with the pirate bandanna had called them.

  Mattie was on Saint Arc because two of her best friends were getting married. This was their private girls-only celebration before the October wedding.

  A familiar scenario.

  She was looking at her friends now as she said, “See the two tall gals? Those are the twins. Never been married before, never came close, and we’re so darn happy for them. At our age, I mean. We thought it was never gonna happen, then boom, they met the two nicest guys you could ever want. Can you guess what I’m about to tell you?”

  “The twins met twins?”

  Mattie had an easygoing familiarity not uncommon with large women. She nudged me with her shoulder, lowering her voice as her friends approached. “Yep. Identical twins, just like the gals. Farmers. Big spreads in upstate New York, and they’ve never been married, either. You’ve never seen four happier kids in your life.”

  I smiled. Kids-talking about those tall, bony women in their forties, but it fit because of their suntan glow and their
vacation faces.

  “We’re all Smithies. We’ve been through hell together.”

  I said, “Smithies?”

  “Smith College. Northampton, Mass. Our class colors are yellow and blue-” In a louder voice, she called, “Haven’t we been through hell together, gals?” The women were laughing as they joined us, all dressed for dinner in the tropics, bright scarves and sandals, frozen margaritas in their hands as they gave me the eye-Who was this big stranger with Mattie?

  Twins in blue dresses; Mattie and Carol wore yellow-Carol, another large woman, but not outgoing. Unlike Mattie, hers was the articulate syntax of Long Island wealth. She was suspicious, too. Good for her.

  After a while, Carol asked me, “Why would a marine biologist come to a resort to do research?”

  I told her, “I’m not staying on Saint Arc. I’ve got a place over there.” I looked beyond the lagoon toward Saint Lucia, four miles away. Green volcanic peaks, half a mile high, on an emerald canvas. “This lagoon looked interesting from the air, so I decided to take a look.”

  Carol was unconvinced. “Then we shouldn’t keep you… Doc, did you say? Doctor of what? And where did you get your Ph. D.?”

  I told her, adding, “My name’s North. Marion North,” aware that Carol’s attitude had alerted the others: four women with money, but smart. Had to be. Unless a sex change increases the human IQ by twenty points, there’s no possible way I would have ever been accepted at Smith College.

  Because I wanted to keep it friendly, I turned to Mattie and asked, “Do you ladies like seafood?”

  “Are you kidding? We love it. But… we already have dinner plans tonight-” She glanced at Carol, their leader. “Don’t we, girls?”

  I said, “That’s not what I meant. If you’re still around when I finish my dive, maybe I’ll bring you a present. Something for tomorrow night.”

  “A gift from the sea,” said Carol with an edge. “How nice.”

  The lagoon was a sand basin that sloped toward a precipice at the canyon’s rim. I snorkeled to the edge of the drop-off, jackknifed, and descended, kicking leisurely with my old Rocket fins.