Antenna Syndrome

by Alan Annand

  “And the low lifes,” Boyle said as he lit up.

  I had to admit, after a close encounter with a killer spider, there was nothing like a beer and a smoke to chill out. I accepted a beer but declined to share the joint.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll puff one of my own.” I took out my vaporizer and inserted a fresh cartridge.

  “Hold on, sport.” Boyle extended a hand and waggled his fingers. “What’s in that?”

  “KavaKat.” I gave him the vaporizer.

  He popped the cartridge out and squinted at the label. “What’s that?”

  “A blend of kava-kava and catnip.”

  “What’s it for?”

  “Calm. Inner peace.”

  Boyle toyed with the vaporizer, turning it in his fingers like he was going to do a magic trick and make it disappear. “You feeling anxious about something?”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  Mundt laughed and a wet cloud of smoke erupted from his mouth. He handed the joint to his partner. Boyle took a long pull from it and gave me back my vaporizer. I turned it on and inhaled some inner peace. To each his own medicine.

  After Mundt and Boyle had passed the joint back and forth a few times, Boyle asked me to go through my story again about how I’d ended up here in Myers’s apartment.

  I omitted Harris Jordan’s name from my account. Because of his stand on police corruption, no telling what reaction it might provoke in these two. Their local command might hate or fear a political reformer like Jordan. They could turn my life upside-down just by association.

  So I told them I’d been hired by Jack and Viv Randall of East Massapequa to find their missing daughter Marielle. I mentioned she was paraplegic, partly to generate a little sympathy for me and my case, but mostly because details help make lies believable. I saw their attention dim the moment I mentioned Long Island, so far out of their jurisdiction it might as well have been Timbuktu.

  Regardless, I told them about the AC technician who might have abducted her, and the van whose plates were registered to a numbered company in Brooklyn. I had no other leads than Marielle’s astrologer and a Facebook boyfriend. I didn’t know where to find the boyfriend so I’d come to see Joey Myers in hopes that he did.

  “And then what? You guys had an argument?”

  “No. I’d just delivered a parcel from a bookstore he used to run. When he opened the book that it contained, a spider jumped out and bit him. He went into convulsions. As soon as I killed the spider, I called 911. Would I stick around if I’d done anything wrong?”

  “I’ve heard some queer stories in my day but this wins the prize,” Mundt said. “Surely you can do better than that.” He looked at his fake Rolex as if he would clock how long it took me to think up a better story.

  “Take the drain apart, you’ll find a fried spider.” But I doubted they’d find it, considering the water I’d poured down the drain.

  “I’ll take you apart if you don’t confess,” Mundt said. “Was Myers your supplier? Or the other way around? You guys argue about money? Did you stab him with a needle?”

  “I told you what happened. I’m just looking for a missing girl.”

  “Where’d you get all the cash?” Boyle said.

  “It’s my advance for this case. You know how it goes. I need grease money every which way I turn.”

  “Yeah, we know grease money, don’t we, Mundt?”

  “Sure, I’d like to get me some of that.”

  “Then keep searching Myers’s apartment. Where there’s dope, there’s got to be cash.”

  “True.” Boyle jerked his chin at Mundt, who stubbed the roach and ambled off into Myers’s bedroom. In a few moments we heard drawers being jerked open and shut, things being tossed around.

  “Anything else you need to tell me?” Boyle said.

  “Only that I’m innocent.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of everything that’s any of your business.”

  “Don’t be a smartass. If you don’t cooperate, you could end up in Rikers.”

  “I am cooperating. I’ve done everything but give you tips on how to solve this case. You want that too? Look at the book the spider came in. I never touched it. Check it for prints. Maybe you’ll turn up a felon on AFIS. And if you’re not arresting me, I’d like to leave now. But if you are, I’d like to call my lawyer.”

  “Sure. Or maybe we put you in a holding tank while we check out your alibi, maybe get distracted by another incoming, maybe forget about you for a day or two.”

  “Keep talking, I’ll tell you when I get scared.”

  Mundt entered the living room just in time to hear that. Boyle raised an eyebrow at him. Find anything? Mundt shrugged with a straight face, but he looked like the house cat that’d just eaten your pet hamster. He came to stand in front of me.

  “You want scared? I can help you there. It’s been so long since I punched a fag, I forget how mushy it feels.”

  I was trying to think of a comeback when he hit me with a cast-iron fist on the left jaw. I fell off the chair and struck my head on the floor. I lay there awhile, wondering if he’d hit me again if I got up too fast. Not that I had any options, since I felt as capable of swift and decisive action as a deep-frozen catatonic.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” Boyle said, but I didn’t know whether he meant me or Mundt.

  “Fifteen minutes, and I’ll pound the truth out of this smartass.”

  “Take it easy. He looks like he bruises easily. We can’t take him to the precinct looking like a peach that’s been used as a hockey puck.”

  “Who cares? Not the Lieutenant.”

  “He’s sitting up,” Boyle observed. “You can probably hit him again in a minute.”

  “Give me a break,” I told Mundt as he squared off in front of me. I tasted blood, ran my tongue around my mouth and counted my teeth. I took a couple of puffs off the vaporizer. The KavaKat steadied my nerves but things weren’t looking good. Once they started beating on you, it could end in the river.

  “I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought.” Mundt put his face so close to mine I winced at his turgid breath. “Were we talking grease money?”

  “Why do I need to bribe you? I could have split the moment that spider attacked Myers. I didn’t need to call 911 and stick around for a beating.”

  “We’ve got you with a fistful of dollars” Mundt said, “and a dead dealer with enough dope to get the whole neighborhood high. Looks like a falling-out among criminals.”

  I looked at Boyle, the good rational cop, the one who might save my sorry ass from his sociopathic partner. He shrugged as if to say, old movie but a good plot.

  “Myers isn’t dead,” I said, “and once he’s able to talk again, he’ll verify my story. Or you can call my clients.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “Do you do this with all your witnesses? No wonder nobody wants to get involved.”

  “Just with the smartasses, friend, just the guys who don’t know when to shut up.” Mundt hit me again, and his left hook was every bit as good as his right.

  When I picked myself up off the floor they took me down to the precinct. En route I rehearsed my story, which wasn’t hard because most of it was true, and the parts that weren’t true I repeated to myself like a mantra until it flowed like a campaign promise from a politician’s lips. They took me to an interrogation room and questioned me all over again, recording it this time. Finished, they left me locked in the room for several hours.

  In the evening, Boyle came to see me. “We accessed your file,” he said. “Private investigator’s license, college degree, no criminal record, a rented office in Hell’s Kitchen. You own a one-bedroom condo in Clinton Hill and a ten-year-old muscle car with no outstanding tickets. Your old man’s doing ten to fifteen in a country club prison for corporate fraud, and your mother died of brain cancer a decade ago. Your wife and daughter were both killed in the Brooklyn Blast. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Can I go no
w?”

  “Not until we see what happens with Myers. He’s still in a coma in Bellevue.”

  “Then I’d like to call my lawyer.”

  He gave me a phone and left the room. I called my lawyer, Damien Lutz, to see if he could bail me out. But he was on another case and would be tied up until well after midnight. In the background I heard soft music, female laughter and the tinkle of ice cubes. Lutz represented a chain of gentlemen’s clubs in Manhattan and was often required on site to negotiate contracts with suppliers. But he promised to see me first thing in the morning.

  Boyle and Mundt showed up. I returned the phone to Boyle. Mundt took me down to the cell block. It wasn’t a long walk but I managed to fall down twice and walk face-first into a wall. I would have called 911 but I’d already made that mistake today.

  TUESDAY

  Chapter 13

  Around eight in the morning my cell door banged open and an old guy with the face of a tired bloodhound delivered a cup of coffee and a wad of paper towels. I washed up in the cold water sink and drank some coffee. It tasted like something drained from the oil pan of a farm tractor.

  My jaw was still plenty sore from where Mundt had socked me yesterday. I opened my shirt and checked my ribs. After a couple of nasty falls on the way down here last night, I was lucky nothing was broken. I looked up the air shaft and saw the sun trying to pierce the smog. Looked like it might be a nice day.

  Something splashed in the toilet. A wet rat climbed out of the bowl and dropped to the floor with a splat. He circled the room with his nose along the wall, pausing now and again to look at me. He found a dead cockroach and paused to eat it.

  I felt sorry for the little guy. I searched my pockets for a stick of gum or a breath mint but found only a ketchup sachet from a takeout counter. I tossed it to him. He gnawed off a corner, laid a paw on the sachet and leaned his weight on it. Ketchup oozed out in a crimson glob and he lapped it up. Finished, he wiped his whiskers with a paw and looked at me as if to say, Where’s the hot dog that goes with that?

  A pair of boots came thumping down the hall. The rat climbed onto the toilet rim and dived into the murky bowl. I worked the flush to speed him on his way. I only wished I could have gone with him.

  “Let’s go, Savage.” A young jailer banged the cell door open and beckoned me to step out. His hands looked big enough to rip a phone book in two. He snapped cuffs on my wrists tight enough to render them numb and pushed me down a corridor past unshaven faces and black eyes peering from behind bars.

  “What’s up?” I asked on the elevator that took us upstairs. It was much too early for my lawyer. Lutz was probably still in bed.

  “Shut your face,” he said in a voice that sounded like chicken bones going through a meat grinder.

  I shut up. I kept my eyes on the floor indicator above the door, trying to ignore the red smear on the wall and the tooth shards on the floor that crunched beneath the jailer’s boots.

  We got off on the second floor and walked down a short hall toward a translucent window. The jailer pushed me into a windowless room with matte green walls and two desks, joined at waist level like Siamese twins, behind one of which sat my old pal, Mundt, he of the kind word and the gentle hand.

  ~~~

  “Morning, Savage.” It was a statement, not a greeting. Mundt didn’t look happy and it didn’t make me feel happy to see him unhappy. The jailer was gone before the pins and needles started in my hands. Mundt stared at me with a pair of eyes that could have given Dracula lessons in intensity. I stood erect and confident like a man with nothing bad on his conscience.

  “Has my lawyer arrived?” I said, just to remind him I had some legal momentum on my side.

  “No lawyer,” Mundt said.

  Boyle entered the room with three cups of coffee, leaving the door ajar. He still had bags under his eyes but his pupils were as big as dimes, and there was a nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. I guessed he’d been keeping late hours, but Dexedrine or something similar was holding him up. They each took a coffee and indicated I could have one too.

  Mundt kicked a chair out from the desk for me. I sat down and Boyle perched on the edge of the desk, swinging a leg back and forth like a metronome. We all drank our coffee and looked at each other. I wondered what was in store. Neither seemed ready to talk and the silence was getting on my nerves. Then I heard it.

  From down the hall came a high-pitched wail paced by a steady whap-whap-whap, like some crybaby getting spanked with a riot stick. Was this the waiting room for level two interrogation? I broke out in a cold sweat.

  Boyle closed the door gently, as if he didn’t want to disturb the concentration of anyone working down the hall. He turned the dead bolt to lock the door, then flicked a wall switch. From an overhead grille, a ceiling fan began to churn, sucking the stale air out of the room, taking most of my optimism with it.

  “How’re you feeling?” Mundt shook a couple of contraband cigarettes from a pack of Eagle Clouds, lit one and offered me the other. I held the cigarette up to his lighter flame and it didn’t shake much.

  “Glad to be alive,” I said, acting like I thought I’d stay that way.

  “How’s your memory this morning? Anything you want to change in your story?”

  “No.” I blew some smoke overhead and watched it get sucked up into the grille.

  “Okay. Any last words before we give you another beating?”

  It took me a few moments to say, “No.”

  “Then sign this and get the fuck out of here.” Mundt shoved a thin sheaf of stapled sheets across the desk at me. I read the transcript of yesterday’s Q&A session. It was all as I’d related, a mostly-truthful account of my first day on the case of a runaway paraplegic with a fascination for insects. No wonder they’d given me a hard time. I scarcely believed the story myself. But I signed the statement and took a last puff on the cigarette before I dropped it into my coffee dregs.

  “I’m free to go?”

  “You’re free to take a flying fuck into the Hudson,” Mundt said. “Scram before we change our minds.”

  “What happened?” I asked Boyle.

  “The toxicology unit at Bellevue confirmed Myers was bitten by some kind of Mexican jumping spider. Turns out they’re pretty common, coming in with the bananas. But ever since the Brooklyn Blast, they’re getting bigger and more hostile. Kid in Harlem got bitten last summer and died because no one sought medical attention in time. You probably saved Myers’s life.”

  “So he’s alive?”

  “They brought him around just long enough to answer a few questions,” Boyle said. “Once he confirmed your story, they let him go back to sleep.”

  “Now fade, snooper,” said Mundt, “and fade fast. I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  I could have told him the feeling was mutual but I thought I’d used up my share of luck for the day. I faded faster than a pair of cheap denims in a bucket of bleach.

  Chapter 14

  Boyle took me downstairs and left me and my paperwork with the desk sergeant. No charges filed, free to go. They gave me back my tote bag, wallet, weapons and other personal effects. I counted my money. A thousand dollars was missing. I checked the inventory form they’d filled out when they’d booked me. In the money section, a digit was missing. But what’s a digit, give or take? I decided not to make a federal case of it. Given the financial incentives for cops to fast-track felons into private prisons, I was lucky to be free again.

  I called Lutz as soon as I hit the street. As it turns out, he was already en route and just a few blocks away. I stood on the curb as he arrived in a current-model Cadillac Stratus. It looked like a shark on wheels, blue-grey with a slim dorsal fin on the roof, engine side vents, transition glass windows. The power door on the passenger side opened before I even touched the handle. I slid into the soft leather seat and the door swung shut with a reassuring thunk.

  “Have you eaten?” Lutz said.

  “Not since yesterday’s lu
nch.”

  “Turn your goggles off.”

  I powered off and put my iFocals in my tote bag. I felt naked and ineffectual, admittedly my natural state, but I still didn’t like it.

  He took me to a West Street joint owned by one of his clients where he ate free, like a high-end soup kitchen for lawyers. It was on the second floor and we got a window table looking out across the Hudson. Lighted by the morning sun, Jersey never looked better.

  A waitress in a lizard-skin outfit with high heels enquired after our breakfast appetites, although her uniform implied there might be more on the menu if only we knew what to ask for. Lutz ordered for both of us – scrambled eggs, lox, bagels, coffee and grapefruit mimosas.

  The beverages came immediately. I drained my mimosa so fast that Lutz gave me his and ordered another for himself. He watched the waitress as she headed back to the bar. “That’s one cute little lizard. I’d love to introduce her to my trouser snake.”

  Lutz wasn’t attractive, and no one but his mother would call him lovable. He was short, maybe five-foot-six, with a runty physique. He’d lost most of his hair on top, leaving him with side panels that he’d let grow, and he had eyebrows like caterpillars that had joined hands above his hatchet nose. From a distance, it looked like some raggedy-ass laurel wreath the Roman emperors used to wear.

  After a moment he remembered I was sitting across the table. He gestured with both hands open, fingers waggling to bring it on. “So, what the fuck’s your story?”

  For some reason, Lutz liked me. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I’d got in the way of a knife one night in a Brooklyn bar, taking one in the ribs intended for him. Or that I’d kicked an ounce of coke under the table and into the next booth just as four undercover cops showed up to arrest the dealer sitting with us, and the dealer had assumed Lutz had turned from customer to rat.

  Maybe it had something to do with knowing each other since high school when we’d been chess buddies, studying games by Fischer and Spassky, attending tournaments in Manhattan where we always got eliminated in the first round.