Randy White - Black Widow

The offer was not unexpected. A man named Kal Wilson had asked me to say yes if the agency came knocking. When a former president of the U.S. asks a favor from his deathbed, how can you refuse?

So I’d signed the contract. Tomorrow morning, three supervisors were coming to inspect my work, and to discuss my PATEE-Personnel Attitude and Task Efficiency Evaluation.

I dreaded it. There was a lot of paperwork to finish before they arrived at 10 a.m.

“How was the trip?” Tomlinson was looking at the briefcase, eyebrows raised. He’d been in the lab four nights earlier when Shay asked me to fly to Saint Arc. Fly to Saint Lucia, actually, and then take the ferry four miles to Saint Arc.

I told him, “Smoother than I’d hoped. They’re pros. But instead of helping her, I think I only dug the hole deeper.”

“You mean we dug the hole deeper.” He was shaking his head, instantly mad at himself. “A Zen master’s supposed to have balls, man. Lately, I couldn’t find mine with a magnifying glass and a hammer.”

I said, "Huh?” After a moment, I said, “Oh.”

Tomlinson had tried to resist. He had warned Shay about deception and negative energy. I’d warned her that negotiating with an extortionist was like asking a cannibal to change the menu. Yet, she’d won us both over.

“Shay’s persuasive.”

“No. Shay’s a steamroller. She didn’t give us time to think it through. Start her marriage with a lie? It put me in such a karmic spin, I’ve already started the grunt research because I know the kimchi’s gonna hit the fan.” I followed his gaze to the office computer where he’d stacked articles on the desk. “Did she finally tell you why she’s being blackmailed?”

I nodded. “The basics. But it’s up to her to decide-”

“I’m not asking. I figured it out on my own. Caribbean islands aren’t exactly free with their crime stats, but I mixed Google with some of my old psychic-viewing techniques. Take a look.”

I went to the desk. For all his recreational excesses, chemical and otherwise, Tomlinson is an academic at heart. The research was methodical. He’d compiled stats and articles on Caribbean crime, along with figures from the wedding industry-average costs, median costs-all unrelated data until I picked up the yellow legal pad where he’d made notes.

Tomlinson’s handwriting is an eloquent dance of loops and swirlsSpenserian script, he calls it. He credits it to his former life as a shipping clerk in eighteenth-century London.

I read:

On the Island of Saint Joan of Arc, in the Caribbean, where crime against tourists is seldom prosecuted, someone may have created a niche industry by targeting women for blackmail.

Statistically, victims are U.S. citizens, eighteen to sixty, women traveling alone or with other women…

Preferred targets are engaged to be married, and on holiday during the chaotic weeks prior to their wedding. These women are easy prey because: 1.) They are emotional wrecks. 2.) They have access to bank accounts that can be emptied quickly. 3.) Their wedding day adds the fear of public humiliationto the risk of personal humiliation…

Women in this demographic are viewed as raw product by the industry- not unlike harp seals in the fur industry. Entrapment using corrupt police, drugs, sex, hidden cameras, staged events, and phony arrests are likely methods.

I looked away from the legal pad. Tomlinson was adjusting the squelch on the radio. “How’d you come up with the connection between blackmail and wedding bank accounts?”

The best guess he and I had mustered was that Shay had pissed off some government official, and I was traveling to Saint Arc to pay off the cops.

He said, “Intuitive reasoning. It’s no secret I haven’t been at peak strength, but my paranormal powers aren’t completely on the fritz. So I gave it a shot.”

“It’s shrewd. Maybe brilliant.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

He appeared pleased and surprised. I could also tell that he was very stoned. “Well, the data provided indicators. Behavioral patterns can be predicted even if statistical interactions are vague. A statistical etching appeared, but I let Universal Mind fill the blanks. Universal Mind is all-knowing energy that-” He drifted. His focus shifted. “Are you stroking my ego? Or do you really think I’m right?”

Tomlinson had suffered a loss of confidence in the last few months. It happens.

“I think you nailed it. Shay’s a perfect candidate. It’s possible they started tracking her the day she made reservations.” I was reviewing the figures. “These numbers are accurate? It’s insane what people spend on weddings.”

“Spoken like a determined bachelor-outrage mixed with secret relief. I agree, even though, prorated, my own wedding cost about a hundred bucks a week. Unless you tally the pounds of flesh taken by that Japanese succubus I married-”

I stopped him before he could get going. “You were telling me how you made the connection.”

“Oh… yeah. The concept just came to me, man. The vision flowed into my consciousness the way things used to before I lost my cosmic rhythm. So maybe I’m getting my chops back. Or it could’ve been a lucky guess. Hey-Saint Arc isn’t far from Venezuela. South America is your old stomping grounds. You have lots of special contacts. Why not have one of your spook pals check out the island, see if I’m right?”

I said, “I’m not sure if my special contacts talk to me anymore,” referring to my recent change of employers.

Tomlinson considered that for a few seconds. “Ironic, huh? Your contacts in the jungle dried up at the same time my contacts in the cosmos took a powder. I can tell you exactly when it happened, too.”

I shrugged. Tell me.

“It was when, after all those years of dealing with guilt-wham-we were both set free. Pardoned. You know what I’m talking about.”

I nodded. Yes, I knew.

“But it’s not like I thought it would be. Free to live like so-called average citizens? Safe little nine-to-five lives? That’s a statistical trap, man, not freedom. Let me remind you that the average American citizen has one testicle, one breast, a three-inch clitoris, and watches football every fourteen days. I wasn’t born to be average …”

Tomlinson stopped and looked at the radio, then changed subjects. “That’s her. Listen.”

A woman’s voice was calling, “Hello? Are you there? I’m trying to contact the man…” But then her voice faded.

He made a face, frustrated. “Damn, she keeps switching channels, so I get nothing but skip or bleed, then she’s gone before I can catch her.”

He pressed the transmit button. “This is base station Sanibel Biological Supply. I read you. Say again, please.”

After a few seconds, he hailed her once more. I realized he was staring, interested in my reaction, as he said into the microphone, “I’m attempting recontact with the vessel that reported sharks attacking the beach. I say again: The vessel reporting sharks attacking the beach, are you standing by, channel sixty-eight?”

I echoed, “Sharks attacking the beach?”

His expression replied: See? I told you. Weird.

Tomlinson wears baseball uniforms almost as often as he wears sarongs, but he’d actually played a game earlier, I realized. His pin-striped pants were stained orange from sliding, one thigh a strawberry blotch of blood. As we waited for the woman to respond, he mouthed the words, I pitched today.

I was interested. “You win?”

He shook his head. No fucking defense.

I smiled. “It should be on tombstones. Every pitcher’s epitaph.” Aloud, he shot back, “Not just pitchers, man. Position players, too. It’s the universal condition.”