WfW ~ the men in black...

I am writing with Words for Wednesday, which can be found here.

The goal of WfW is to take given prompts, be they words, phrases, photos, colors, or music and create a story from them. 

 This week's words and color of the month are in bold italics. 

 If you visit the Elephant's Child blog, you can also read and cheer on the other writers participating in this weekly fun.

This is a continuing WfW story that started here on April 5th.

I left off on the 21st with the story of a five-generation counterfeit and con game about to catch up with someone...

  Jack looked over his shoulder, his right hand clawing a little at his left wrist as though he had an itch he couldn't quite scratch.

  "Yeah.  The men in black.  About them.  Unfortunately for us, they work for the government, and that little stunt we pulled back at the Chuck E Cheese might have gotten us in a bit of hot water."

  "What do you mean, 'hot water?'"

  Jack put on his sunglasses and purveyed the landscape around us as if looking for something.

  "Well, they work for the Treasury Department and have been on the trail of that drop hammer and family for quite some time.  Especially since it has become an international issue when a particular Grandee Ferreira from Portugal was conned out of a couple million dollars worth of anodyne when the escudo used to purchase it turned out to be fake."

  "I'm lost now.  I thought we were just dealing with fake coins from the future.  And ano who?"

  "Anodyne.  A pain relieving medication used to reduce the brain's sensitivity.  Not so much a popular name for them now, but they act like an analgesic.  Except that in large doses, and mixed with certain illegal narcotics, they can become so much more.  There is more resilience in the brain to not become addicted in a way that causes people to become hopeless."

  "But still addicted?"

  "Yes, but it's not like the opioid addicts.  These new addicts can be totally functional, and unaware that they are even addicted.  That is until they haven't taken any in a week or so.  The pain goes away, they stop taking it, then the pain starts to come back worse than before.  It reaches a point where it is the pain itself that makes them hopeless and unable to function.  It is a new luxury drug that is so far only available to the elite in this country.  For now, it's not one that is going to become affordable to the people who could probably benefit from it the most.  Those who are truly in pain with little or no health insurance."

  "Is it even available with health insurance?"

  "Oh no.  It is completely illegal because it hasn't been fully tested at all, and most of the time, the users don't even know what it has been mixed with."

  "That doesn't sound like it falls under the Treasury Department's slice of the jurisdiction pie."

  "Imagine if you will all of the fingers of the Justice Department getting involved in this one little con of fake coins.  You've got drug trafficking.  Murder.  Counterfeiting.  Money laundering.  Just a rainbow of laws broken here and abroad.  There isn't an agency in the world that doesn't have this family on their radar."

  "You know, Jack, it might be high time we get out of the private detective business and do something normal for a change.  Maybe find a little beachfront bar in the Bahamas.  Get a deep-sea fishing boat we could name The Coriander and just spend a little time fishing and drinking margaritas."

  "Why on earth would you want to name a boat after cilantro, Simon?  That is the stupidest name I've ever heard for a boat."

  "After Cori Ann.  You know.  That woman I was falling in love with that I met at the art exhibit?  Remember?  About 15 years ago when we were doing that job trying to catch a guy cheating on his wife?  Cori Ann made these amazing portraits where she painted with dry spice and used herbs so that you didn't even realize it was made with actual plants.  They looked like photographs."

  "Didn't you two date for a few years? What happened with that?"

  "Sage.  Sage happened, and it broke me.  I just couldn't deal with it at the time, and I wasn't there for her when she needed me.  She left."