Antenna Syndrome

by Alan Annand

  I had a one-bedroom corner unit on the 15th floor with a west-side balcony from which I could see the Hudson and the sunsets over Jersey. I’d bought all of the previous owner’s furniture. He was an older guy who’d had two cats, one of whom had used the corner of the leather sofa as a scratching post, and there was a vague smell of ammonia on humid days that I could never get rid of. It was a bachelor’s pad but, frankly, I’d never brought a woman up here.

  I made a sandwich, poured a glass of red wine and scanned the online news sites on my old tablet. Myers’s accident had rated brief mention only in The Village Speaker, but his name wasn’t mentioned, so no way Jack could put it together even if he blundered onto it. And no mention of the hero who’d pumped Myers full of antihistamines and saved his life. Fine by me. My mother hadn’t raised me to be a hero. The article concluded by warning the public to watch out for jumping spiders. Duh.

  I ran a search for the clinic that Myers said Marielle had been curious about, using keywords “reconstructive surgery”, “prosthetics” and “tribeca”. I got about a dozen hits, but on closer inspection, half were just for cosmetic surgery. Even though all of the movie stars had fled Tribeca, the people who’d rushed in to fill the vacuum obviously hadn’t left their vanity behind.

  After weeding out clinics that weren’t really offering reconstructive prosthetics, I was left with just three. One immediately jumped out at me – the Avatar Clinic – on Laight Street in Tribeca.

  According to their website, the Avatar catered to people with congenital deformities and victims of accidents involving major limb loss. Their work involved state-of-the-art reconstructive surgery and leading-edge robotic prosthetics. Avatar was a subsidiary of Voromix. The name sounded vaguely familiar so I looked it up and learned it was a Fortune 5000 company offering security systems, robotics, nano-technology and environmental management.

  Although the Avatar Clinic was an obvious lead in my search for Marielle, I faced certain obstacles. Chances were, she would fly under the radar with an assumed name. Calling the clinic and asking a receptionist over the phone if they had her as a patient would get me nowhere fast. I sighed, thinking of that bonus I might never see.

  I ran a search on Eddie Crabner, using his full name and date of birth. I didn’t find anything more than I’d turned up yesterday on the drive back in from Long Island. Maybe he was a conspiracy theorist, so paranoid about anyone looking over his shoulder that he’d shrouded his ID in false names and steered clear of social media to leave no trail.

  But people like Crabner have reason to worry, because there’s always someone who knows which rocks to look under. From cradle to grave, it’s the rare person who can avoid public education, employment, hospitals, the DMV and IRS. Unless they’re born into a totally-paranoid family and practice stealth ID from the get-go, somewhere along the line they leave a trail, and some forensic bloodhound will find them.

  I texted Finder. I gave him Crabner’s full name and DOB and said I needed everything he could get. He said he’d get back to me in an hour.

  I called Marielle’s number but got no answer, not even a voice-mail message, just an announcement the subscriber was unavailable. With nothing else to do, I stretched out on the sofa. I woke up an hour later when my tablet pinged to announce an incoming email. Finder had something for me. I made a cyber-call and he picked up.

  “That van whose plates you gave me yesterday?” he said. “Turns out that numbered company is one among half a dozen subsidiaries of a corporation called Voromix. A high-tech outfit, listed on NASDAQ.”

  “I’ve heard of them.” As I’d recently discovered, the Avatar Clinic was one of their subsidiaries too. That indicated a tenuous connection between the clinic and the AC technician who’d abducted Marielle.

  “As for Edward Xavier Crabner, he received disability welfare payments for three years, from nine months after the Brooklyn Blast until late last year. Then payments stopped for reasons unknown. But in order to receive welfare, he’d had to prove residency via an affidavit from the lease-holder whose apartment he shared. Ron LeVeen, 113 Delancey in the Bowery.” Finder read off his phone number.

  I transferred money to Finder, signed off and left the apartment. Although I could have given LeVeen a heads-up courtesy call, past experience had proven that counter-productive. I preferred the stealth approach. Maybe I’d get lucky and find Crabner at home. I’d be halfway to Marielle Jordan and payday.

  Chapter 17

  Delancey Street had seen many of its commercial buildings transformed. After the Brooklyn Blast and the mass exodus of residents, some speculators who aspired to be the Donald Trumps of this sad new era had bought Manhattan properties for cents on the dollar. They’d hacked the buildings into loft-style apartments and rented to Brooklyn refugees. Surprisingly, many folks still had jobs to cling to, or hopes they might still eke out a half-life in the “Five Boroughs Contamination Zone” as FEMA had dubbed it.

  I found an underground parking lot manned by two armed guards. I locked the car and took the stairs up and out. On the street my nostrils recoiled at the stench of uncollected garbage. I pulled on my eMask. In the alleys between buildings, garbage flowed like lava onto the sidewalk.

  I put my hand inside my tote bag to find my pistol. A posse of brown sewer rats, some the size of raccoons, foraged among eviscerated garbage bags. One lurched toward me as I passed. I pulled out the pistol and shot him. Instead of running away, his pals moved in and skinned him on the spot. It was that kind of neighborhood.

  113 Delancey was a 15-story building, one of the tallest in the neighborhood. I checked the occupant panel. LeVeen was listed as an occupant for #505. I pressed the buzzer.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying,” said the intercom.

  “I’m looking for Eddie Crabner.”

  “Doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “I want to give him some money.”

  “How much?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  He paused. I looked up at the camera.

  “You by yourself?” he said.

  I looked around the foyer, then up at the camera and gestured WTF with my palms out. “I seem to be alone. Can I come up?”

  The door buzzed open. I found the stairwell and sprinted up to the fifth floor. I never took the elevator for less than seven floors. Given the risk of a power brown-out, you never knew when you might get caught with a full bladder, a crazy passenger, or both. Besides, if it weren’t for doing stairs, I wouldn’t get any exercise.

  I removed my eMask on the way down a well-lit hallway and used my knuckles on #505. The door opened the gap of a chain, and a tall guy with a tan and a beard gave me the once-over.

  He unlatched and opened the door. I entered a living space with a high-end industrial carpet. A low couch occupied one wall, flanked by club chairs. Two bookcases framed a TV on the opposite wall, their top shelves holding a few objets d’art. A pigeon perched atop a bookcase suddenly took wing and went out a partially-open window. It crossed the airshaft and perched on a ledge one floor above.

  LeVeen opened the window louver completely. “Hermie. Come on back, man.” After some fruitless coaxing, he pulled his head back inside. “When will I learn? He doesn’t do well with strangers. He couldn’t even be in the same room with Crabner, and Eddie was here for two years.”

  “How long’s he been gone?”

  “Almost a year. The little prick was three months behind in the rent and left without notice. How much money do you owe him? Maybe we can settle debts between us.”

  “I didn’t say I owed him. I said I wanted to give him some money.”

  “What kind of answer’s that? You don’t know how much money you need to give him?”

  “Depends on what he tells me.”

  LeVeen gave me a look. “Split a beer? Toke? Snort?”

  “Beer’s fine.” I followed him into the kit
chen, glancing into the other rooms. They’d done a quick-and-dirty conversion from office to residential space, a Bauhaus effect with overhead conduits for plumbing, air conditioning and electrical. One room had a dresser and king-size bed, across which clothes were scattered. Another room had a single bed and a desk with a laptop and scattered papers. “You work here?”

  “I’m a writer.” LeVeen poured half a Sam Adams into a glass and handed it to me.

  “Screenwriter?” Everybody had a movie in them, they said.

  “Journalism, mostly.”

  “What’s your beat?”

  “The political scene. But hardly anyone gives a shit anymore, so it’s a hard way to make a living. Now I’m trying to break into TV. Reality show concepts. If that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll buy a gun and rob a bank. Or shoot myself.” LeVeen leaned in the doorway of the spare room. “Eddie renting this room helped make ends meet. Since he left, I’ve only been able to rent it a few days at a time, mostly tourists on a budget. I need a roommate with a nine-to-five job who’s out all day so I can work in peace.”

  “You’re not hard to please.”

  “That’s what I told Eddie. But the little prick got on my nerves anyway. He played guitar when I was trying to work. If I had a date over, he’d roll around on his wheelchair wearing just a bathrobe, letting his junk hang out.”

  “Crabner was handicapped?”

  “Paraplegic. He was run over by a truck the day of the Brooklyn Blast. You know what it was like, people frantic to get in or out of Brooklyn, no one stopping for traffic lights. He almost died on the operating table. His legs were totally crushed. He waited three months for prosthetics, but they were cheap, didn’t fit well and the joints kept breaking. But he got on disability welfare and qualified for experimental surgery.”

  “The Avatar Clinic ring a bell?”

  “Yeah, that’s where he was going to get the work done.”

  “Ever see the end result of his surgery?”

  “No. He was with me for two years, on their waiting list for the second half. But I don’t know what happened. I assume they accepted him, because he just disappeared.”

  “You never tried to locate him through them?”

  “After I fell behind in the rent, I called the clinic to see if they knew where he was. But they said he’d never been treated by them. I didn’t know where else to look. He was an only child and both his parents were killed in the Brooklyn Blast. All the time he stayed here, he never had a visitor.”

  “He receive any mail here?”

  “Some stuff he bought online, but that’s it. Disability welfare was direct deposit.” LeVeen opened a drawer and took out an ashtray with a joint lying in it. “Want some? I need to unwind after a day on the computer. I’m expecting a young lady in a few minutes.” LeVeen switched on the stove fan, lit the joint and exhaled his first puff into the fan intake.

  “He ever mention a girl called Marielle? They were Facebook friends.” I refused his offer of the joint but it smelled good.

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s gone missing. That’s why I need to talk to him. Her family wants her found.”

  “Is there a reward?”

  “Could be something. Not to mention, a good karma credit for your next life.”

  “Tell that to my landlord.” LeVeen took another puff. “Look, I don’t know where Eddie went and I don’t know any Marielle. But if you want to look through the stuff he left behind, feel free.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Cardboard box full of junk. Books, mostly.”

  “Let’s have a look.”

  LeVeen took me to the spare room and pulled a cardboard box from the closet. I went through it. A few music books – Learn to Play Blues Guitar, 101 Chords and Riffs, and more of the same. Plus half a dozen chess books – The Game of Kings, Think like a Grandmaster, etc – and a wooden chess set.

  I found a folder of pencil sketches – mostly long-legged women being humped by giant spiders. Pretty nasty stuff. I liked long-legged women, but spiders were definitely boner-shrinkers.

  I also found a menu flyer from Luna Deli, with a few items circled. I showed it to LeVeen.

  “Eddie followed a weird diet of oatmeal, yogurt, nuts, chick peas and sardines. Twice a week, he’d order a sandwich from that deli. Sardine paste with hummus on whole wheat, or oyster paste and Spanish onion on pumpernickel. He called them Gonad Burgers, his late-night snack.”

  “All those foods are high in Omega-3. Certainly a good diet for sexual performance.”

  “Well, he and Five-Finger Mary must have been having a great time, because he had absolutely no social life. Luna Deli let him run a tab which he paid monthly when his disability payment arrived. I even went to see them, asked if he was still ordering the same takeout, where it was being delivered, but they hadn’t heard from him in six months. Ironically, he’d paid his tab with them, but stiffed me for the rent. If I ever see him on the street, I’ll throw him under another truck, finish the job this time.”

  The door chimed a riff from the Beatles’ Paperback Writer.

  “Here comes Venus on the half-shell.” LeVeen pressed the buzzer and spoke into the intercom, “Come on up, babe.”

  “This deli still in business?” I scanned the flyer for the address.

  “Check it out. Houston and Essex, I think.”

  “You wouldn’t have a picture of Eddie, would you?”

  “No, he was like an African bushman, refused to have his picture taken.”

  “Give me a description.”

  “That’s easy. He looked just like Tom Cruise.”

  “No kidding.”

  “God’s truth. Fourth of July all over again. Except angrier.”

  I gave him some money and my coordinates. “Let me know if he turns up. Right away, night or day. There’ll be something in it for you.”

  As I passed the elevator, a leggy redhead in high heels and a slinky dress emerged and headed in the direction of #505. As I entered the stairwell I heard a female squeal “Ronneeee!”

  I put on my eMask as I descended the stairs. The only insects I saw were half a bushel of withered silverfish on the ground floor. Sweet. The place deserved a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval in my books. Dead bugs were a sign of a well-run building.

  Chapter 18

  I returned to the underground garage and recovered my ride. Except for a toxic spill of cat vomit on the front hood, the Charger was intact. I used some newspaper and windshield washer fluid to clean the mess off the car. It looked like a handful of cockroaches swimming in clotted cream.

  Between the bugs, stray cats and dogs left homeless by fleeing residents, lower Manhattan was a Darwinian experiment gone sour. Cats ate roaches and silverfish, and got sick on boric acid and DDT. Dog packs foraged for food, killing rats, pigeons and cats. Cars ran over dogs and cats, their carcasses eaten by rats. When the rats died, the roaches closed the loop on it all.

  I started the car and locked the doors. As I was leaving the underground garage, I almost ran into two derelicts hobbling crookedly down the sidewalk, holding onto each other like assigned partners in a three-legged foot race. Bowery BFFs.

  I drove up Essex to Houston and found Luna Deli. It had a big neon sign with a crescent moon in blue tubing. I parked the car in a delivery zone a few doors away, put the four-way flasher on and trotted down the sidewalk to the deli.

  The smell of smoked meat took me back. Gwen and I used to favor a deli on Neptune Avenue with a sidewalk terrace. Before Lily came along we used to go there for Saturday lunch. The sandwiches were so big we’d often split one and bag the other to eat on Sunday. We’d each have a beer and watch the neighborhood stroll by, nobody running for their lives, just a typical Saturday afternoon in the good old days.

  “If you can’t make up your mind, buddy, step back and let me serve someone else.”

  I blinked away some tears and stared at an old guy in an apron with a white cap cocked on his head like some
demented sailor.

  “Sorry. Chopped liver on rye with Swiss.”

  He buttered a slice of rye and flung a scoop of chopped liver at it.

  “You ever see a guy in here, looked like Tom Cruise in a wheelchair?” I asked him.

  “Used to. Not in a while, though.” He spread the liver and covered it with two slices of cheese.

  “This your regular shift?”

  “Days and evenings.” He slapped another slice of rye on top and knifed the sandwich in two.

  “You’re open all night, aren’t you?”

  “One of the perks of being an owner, I no longer work graveyard shift.” He wrapped the sandwich in waxed paper and handed it to me.

  I fetched a small can of Heineken from the cooler and paid. Back in the car, I drank the beer and ate half the sandwich before a delivery truck started making rude with the horn. I drove down the block until I spotted a garbage can where I ditched the beer can. The police were so busy with property crime, they scarcely bothered with traffic stops, but just in case I got pulled over, I didn’t need a suspension over a DUI.

  I went across town on Houston and down Varick into Tribeca. Normally I’d have used my travel time to gather more intel on the Avatar Clinic but, without my iFocals, I was distinctly handicapped. I’d have to go in naked.

  I idled down Laight looking for the clinic. Once upon a time, Tribeca had been industrial, but late in the 20th century its warehouses had been converted to lofts for well-heeled artists who liked the Village, or investment types who worked at the World Trade Center. After the Brooklyn Blast, the rich had decamped to less radioactive climes, but I’d no idea how the demographics had changed. Once the pop stars moved out, who’d entered in their wake?

  Most buildings were three to eight stories, many with garage doors for vehicle access. On the corner of Laight and Collister was a red-brick three-story building with a large brass plaque that read Avatar Clinic. I found a metered parking spot a block away and walked back.

  I rang the doorbell and got buzzed into the foyer. In a waiting area were four chairs around a coffee table consisted of a glass case with a display of mounted butterflies. A large picture of bees in a rose bush added color to one wall.