It was a simple exchange. Clean. So why did things go so wrong for the determined young bride?

I flew to the Caribbean on a Wednesday, and Thursday morning gave the blackmailer’s bagman a routing number to an account containing $109,000. The bagman gave me a video shot secretly at a party thrown by my goddaughter, Shay Money, for her bridesmaids.

In the sepulchre chill of a cubicle provided by the Bank of Aruba, I popped the cassette into a minicamera long enough to confirm its contents before nodding at the teller.

Yes. She could transfer the funds.

Bagman and teller conversed in patois French as I stowed the cassette in a briefcase, focusing on details to mitigate my nausea. Inside the men’s room, I filled a marble sink with water, then lathered face and hands, but the taint was subcutaneous, associative. Soap couldn’t cut it. I had helped Shay with high school homework. I’d fielded her homesick letters when she was a college freshman.

After leaving the bank, I pulled my rental around the block, waited, then followed the bagman’s Fiat to a waterfront bar. Big round man, big round head. I battled the urge to snatch him from the parking lot, then drive to a secluded place.

I’m no longer authorized to do that sort of thing.

Eight hours later, I landed at Miami International, then caught a commuter flight to Fort Myers Regional, a forty-minute drive from my home and laboratory on Sanibel Island, southwest coast of Florida. Shay, now twenty-six, with a master’s in business, was waiting.

“Did you check luggage?”

I was carrying the briefcase and a recent issue of Journal of Invertebrate Pathology.

“Never.”

“Ah… I forgot. All those research trips, studying fish in foreign countries. What’s the secret to packing light?”