The Outlier #2: Migrants Read online

winning lottery numbers – a revelation that instantly put an end to all regional, state and national lotto and other sweepstakes games once and for all.

  Ever since then people had been sending him their problems in the hopes that somehow he could magically fix them. Bermuda was constantly amazed at the things they came up with. Sometimes it really got to her, such as the letter he received from a young girl complaining that every now and then recently she would start bleeding from her sensitive regions for apparently no reason at all.

  “What am I supposed to do about these?” Bermuda wanted to know.

  “Use your discretion,” he advised, “but when you respond personally, please use your own name and the title Senior Executive Administrator, AllDat Corporation, so it won't be coming from me.”

  “You just wouldn't answer, would you?”

  “I would not,” he agreed.

  But she would, and she did, and lately she'd been feeling more like an obvious-advice columnist than any old Executive Administrator, whatever that was.

  “What do you mean, too many migrants,” she asked Wilkins, after it had finally sunk in that he'd made that comment some minutes earlier in response to nothing in particular.

  “The spider bites,” Wilkins said. “That wasn't the only one where things were moving around, was it? There was that one about the parked cars, and the other one about the potholes, and I think there was another, wasn't there? All of that from just today. It's too many moving parts at one time. Seems kind of suspicious.”

  “You got me,” Bermuda frowned. This was the first time that Wilkins had spotted a potential matter of interest that had escaped her attention. Well, it's only been a few weeks, she thought, and I'm still pretty new at this game.

  “Let me put those together,” she said, and started looking back through the correspondence she'd already sorted that morning. She quickly found the ones he mentioned, including the “other one”, which was about a dead squirrel. It was up the road a bit one minute, then up the road a bit more the next, and so on until it had allegedly migrated more than half a block in half a day.

  “Unreliable witnesses?” Bermuda suggested later that morning, when she'd brought the stack upstairs and presented them to her boss.

  “I mean, this one thought he parked the car on Seventh Street, but when he went to look for it, he found it on Ninth instead. Doesn't that happen to everyone? He just forgot.”

  “Most likely,” Dillon agreed, “and the potholes. How could someone claim for sure it's the same exact pothole, only on the next street over, and then the next, though it's true that from the photographs they do look remarkably similar,” he mused, inspecting the attachments.

  “After all,” he concluded, “potholes are not generally known to relocate.”

  “Spider bites look the same too,” Bermuda said, “but I'm suspecting digital manipulation here. Look, she's twenty-four years old and sending half-naked pictures of herself. Could be one of those gold diggers you're always worrying about.”

  “Hmm,” Dillon considered, examining the photos in question. 'Half-naked' was an overstatement. The woman was only revealing the bites, which did in fact appear to be the same bite in different spots.

  “These are all the moving ones?” he asked.

  “That's all from today,” Bermuda nodded. “I don't remember any from yesterday and your grandfather didn't either.”

  “Very well,” he said. “Let me think about it,” and from the tone of his voice Bermuda knew it was time for her to leave. Dillon did not suffer anyone else's presence while contemplating mysteries, except for the Commander, whose presence was virtually the same as absence to him. Bermuda left the apartment and returned to her own, knowing that the rest of the day was entirely at her disposal. It was a bright, sunny and unusually warm day in San Francisco, and she had the sudden inspiration to learn something about sailing. She smiled, and although she didn't know it, her entire life was about to get even better.

  “Migrants,” Dillon said to himself, wondering why his grandfather had chosen that particular word. It wasn't a term you heard often, and when you did, it was usually a pejorative, associated with itinerant workers, exiles who traveled far and worked hard in order to send some meager earnings back to their loved ones in impoverished, dusty small towns. It certainly wasn't a word commonly associated with parked cars, spider bites, potholes or roadkill. His grandfather must have had something specific in mind, but if Dillon knew the old man, he was probably either laying out a clue of some sort, or else just spouting nonsense. In either case it wouldn't be proper to ask him directly. He and the old man had a somewhat formal relationship, respectful and seemingly cool but full of unspoken affection.

  Dillon considered the origins of the four queries, but saw nothing immediately in common among them. They had all come from different places; two from the Southeast United States, one from the Midwest and one from Greece (the spider bites). The time stamps were within a few hours, but that was always true for his daily correspondence. He received so many queries that he could only handle them on an immediate basis. Either they attracted his attention (or lately, his secretary's) or they didn't, in which case they were thrown out. He kept no records, had no filing system, maintained nothing to refer back to. He had made that a policy, so as not to get bogged down, not to make too much of a business about what after all was more of a hobby than anything else. As a billionaire dilettante, he felt quite justified in doing whatever he felt like.

  He could also go wherever and whenever he liked, and he usually preferred to inspect on-site the cases he adopted. All he required was a few words to the Commander, who then took care of everything. That morning all he gave her was a name and an address in Atlanta, Georgia, and within the hour they were off. While the Commander made the necessary arrangements, Dillon set to work on the all important wardrobe selection. This he considered to be the essence of his detective style. It wasn't a matter of “looking the part” or “fitting in” or “making a good impression” or anything like that. Dillon's outfits were specifically chosen to give him the best possible chance for the best possible outcome. He sincerely believed that what he wore was crucial to how events would unfold. He would become the very person needed to navigate each particular situation depending on his appearance, most especially his choice of hat. He had proven it over and over again, to the point of absolute certainty, that hat-wear played a far more determinative role than anyone had hitherto imagined.

  Naturally he possessed an extensive collection, occupying an entire walk-in closet in his penthouse condominium set atop fashionable Nob Hill. His clothes, on the other hand, were provided by the monthly subscription service Wearabulous, which supplied a rotating but always sufficient assortment of outfits. Dillon believed he would know precisely which set of attire would establish him as both anonymous and invisible wherever he went. He thought it crucial not to merely blend in, but to merge so completely within his environment that he was not even an afterthought to others in the vicinity. The disguises would give him an appearance of necessity, as if he were the essence of the place, not some mere interloper who had dropped in out of nowhere and didn't belong there at all.

  The Commander, who enjoyed her electric and hybrid vehicles, chose a compact, sky blue Advanta for the ride to the air field, where she escorted her boss onto his private plane, which she then flew most efficiently across the country, to a strip outside of Atlanta, where they transitioned into a bacterial-battery powered two-seater for the ride into town. She had called ahead and arranged to meet Miss Alison Moss, the retired bank president who had reported the apparently migratory potholes traveling about her largely residential neighborhood. Miss Moss greeted them warmly, and offered to show them around her pleasant mini-manse while providing tea and biscuits if they so desired, but Dillon was anxious to see these unusual holes, and so they set off at once, on foot, forming an odd triangular cluster in the otherwise pedestrian-free streets. Miss Moss was as tall a Dillon, whic
h was striking in an older woman, for he was six foot three. She was twice his mass and formed a rather hulking figure in her elegant emerald-green dress and crown of thick white hair tied up in a bun which made her appear an even greater height. The Commander, a foot shorter and at twice as much wider, was dressed as usual in a crisp navy blue uniform with gold buttons and black cowboy boots. Her slick, short black hair made her head look something like the outermost Russian nested doll, but the severely serious expression on her face gave more the impression of an angry Lego figurine.

  Dillon, to the Commander's great surprise, was wearing a light tan linen suit, highlighted by a coagulated-blood-red bow tie, with high-top fluorescent yellow sneakers and a knitted gray woolen cap, a wardrobe which to her mind completely undid any idea of his remaining incognito. In fact she thought he looked completely ridiculous but as was her policy, she kept her thoughts to herself. Dillon need never know her opinion about anything. She was not there to consult or advise, she was only there to do whatever needed doing. Miss Moss was talking the whole time.

  “Yesterday morning it was right here. You can see where they patched it. They use that black dirt which hardly repairs anything. They