Antenna Syndrome

by Alan Annand

  “You won’t put my name in the papers, will you?”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  She took a breath and let it out in a quick recap. “Ron and I were making out. Somebody started messing with his door. He put his pants on and went to see who it was.

  “A voice said, ‘Where’s the flash drive?’ and Ron said he didn’t know what the guy was talking about and told him to leave. They started shoving each other around. I heard Ron’s pigeon squawk, and Ron swore and then there was a bang and everything was quiet.

  “I hid in the closet. The bedroom door opened and I heard someone standing there breathing. It was creepy and I was scared. Then the buzzer rang and the person left the room. I was just thinking it was safe to come out when you showed up. Are you sure someone’s not still here?”

  “I’ve already searched the apartment. We’re alone.”

  “Good.” She took her purse from the chair. “I’ll give you a thousand bucks to leave my name out of this.”

  She still believed I was Det-Sgt Boyle. But who else but a hooker or drug dealer carried that much cash? I could let her buy me off. Hard times brought out the worst in me. I could get her name too and leverage that to squeeze even more out of her down the road.

  But she was genuinely scared. Maybe her being here at the time of LeVeen’s murder was purely accidental. But if she fell into the hands of Boyle and Mundt, they’d find a gun of the right caliber and charge her with murder. If she had real money, they’d make her pay and pay...

  “Sit here and don’t move,” I said. “I need to look at LeVeen again and then we’ll talk.”

  I returned to the living room and found LeVeen’s phone in his pocket. I checked his call log and saw dozens of incoming and outgoing today, mine among them. Deleting it would scarcely cover my tracks, since his call history would remain with the service provider. If the police checked, my deleted record might actually draw attention to me.

  Meanwhile, there were all these other calls. Was the killer’s number among them? I didn’t dare send his call log to my anonymous account as I’d done with Jack’s. The police would examine LeVeen’s phone, and they had the resources to scrutinize the timeline during which anyone had accessed it. I couldn’t risk their discovering I’d been here.

  Instead, I tapped my goggles and turned on the video recorder. I scrolled through his call log, copying the last few days of activity for later review. I put his phone back in his pocket where I’d found it.

  I returned to the bedroom but the door was locked. I banged on it and told her to open up. When she didn’t, I jimmied it with a shim to get in. The room was empty, the window open. Outside was a fire escape. I realized I hadn’t even got her name. Hopefully she’d believed I was a cop, else Boyle and Mundt would come after me with a vengeance. Now I had to scram too.

  I took LeVeen’s bag of weed and the USPS envelope, soggy tissue and all, and got out of there.

  Chapter 32

  En route to my office, I kept an eye out for pay phones, a rare commodity. I found one at Houston and Sixth, near a basketball court where kids played in the evening smog. Conscious of CCTV cameras, I put on my eMask before I left the car.

  I made a quick 911 call. “There’s been a shooting at 113 Delancey, apartment 505.” I got back in my car and headed up Sixth to 33rd.

  I entered my office building via the rear. Major and Werewolf were camped as usual in their command post. Major was reading The Economist and Werewolf was gnawing on what looked like a human thigh bone.

  “The police are looking for you.”

  “They were here?”

  “Showed me a picture of a native American. Dark-eyed, big-nosed, long-jawed mug. Chief Sitting Bull with a good haircut. Wanted to know if I’d seen him with you.”

  Shit. Walker’s description. How’d they make the connection? Had Jenner filed a complaint about the beating he’d got from Walker? Was I implicated by association?

  “They still around?”

  “Nope. One went upstairs to see if you were home while the other quizzed me.”

  “You gave them the key to my office?”

  “No warrant, no way. But the dick that went upstairs put a snake under your office door.” Major tapped his keyboard and clicked his mouse.

  One of his monitors replayed the feed from a third-floor hall camera. I saw Mundt slide a mini-cam on a flexi-cable under my office door and look around with a handheld viewer attached to the camera snake.

  “Is that legal?” I said.

  Major shrugged. “Once they’d confirmed you weren’t on-site, they scrambled out of here like they were late for happy hour. I told them I thought you’d left town.”

  “Nice touch. Where’d I go?”

  “West Coast, I thought.” Major coughed to clear his throat. “Anyway, cheap bastards didn’t even offer a cash incentive. Otherwise, I might have given them a call next time you showed.” He winked at me. “We all need a little help, right?”

  That was a hint if I ever heard one, but I appreciated loyalty even if I had to pay for it. “Please accept this as a token of my gratitude.” I gave him the weed I’d lifted from LeVeen’s place.

  Major opened the baggie and gave it an appreciative sniff. “Mm-hm. That’s the teen spirit.”

  “The cops didn’t leave any bugs, did they?”

  “Not that I saw. And I had eyes on them both all the time they were here.”

  “And they’re not still hanging in the ‘hood?”

  “I saw them drive away. I’ve been checking the perimeter, but they haven’t even returned for a drive-by.” He clicked his mouse. All four monitors went to exterior views of the street and alley.

  I saw some pedestrian and vehicular traffic, but nothing that suggested stakeout activity.

  “I’m not sure they bought my story, though,” Major said. “They might be back.”

  I went up to my office. Nothing was disturbed. Equally important, there was nothing incriminating lying around for the camera snake to have seen.

  I took the bagged tissue from the USPS envelope, pulled on a pair of latex gloves and opened it on my desk. I used a pair of chopsticks to partially unfold the tissue. When I saw something that looked like mucus with a smear of blood, I stopped and sealed it up again.

  I put the baggie in the fridge. I didn’t know what it was, but someone had taken the trouble to mail it to Crabner, and I didn’t think it was a prank. Maybe the missing flash drive could explain it, but until then I’d leave it in cold storage.

  I booted up my office laptop and opened the anonymous email account to which I’d sent Jack’s phone activity log. I dumped the whole thing into a spreadsheet and saved it onto the cloud.

  I sorted the data, first by time of call, then by number. Mid-morning Jack had received a call from someone called Tatiana, a call lasting a few minutes. Just before noon, he’d made a return call, a few seconds. Shortly after he’d returned to East Massapequa, while I was still there, he’d texted her.

  I saw a story there: Tatiana had invited Jack for a visit; later he’d announced his arrival at her place; end of day he’d warned her I’d asked about their relationship. Not so much a story as a shaky hypothesis.

  Tracking LeVeen’s phone calls took more time. I transferred my video of his activity log from iFocals to cloud, then used character recognition to convert it to data.

  I looked for repeats in LeVeen’s phone activity. There were a handful of calls between him and CBX-TV, with whom he’d had an appointment today. There were also a couple between him and someone called Dale. The rest were all one-of-a-kind.

  None of those unique numbers rang a bell with anyone I knew – my client, the Randalls, nor anyone else I’d dealt with in this case. But I didn’t dare call any of them. The police might eventually match phone records and tag me as a potential suspect for LeVeen’s murder.

  But one number turned up in both files. In Jack’s call log, it was “Tatiana”, but on LeVeen’s, the caller was �
��T. Borodin”. Late afternoon, one call from Tatiana to LeVeen. When I compared timelines, it was just minutes after Jack had texted her.

  I could think of no possible story line to make sense of that. But there was some kind of connection. Marielle knew Crabner, and Crabner had been LeVeen’s roommate. Tatiana knew both Jack and LeVeen, which meant she might have known Crabner, and known about Marielle. I needed to find out who Tatiana Borodin was...

  I locked up and went back downstairs. In his smoke-filled office, Major was rolling a joint. “That shit is really good. I’m higher’n a satellite.” He offered the fresh joint to me. “Want a taste?”

  What the hell. I was stymied on how Jack and LeVeen were connected though Tatiana. Maybe a little rearrangement of my logical neurons would illuminate something. I lit the joint, took one good draught and handed it back to Major. After a moment, I released it in a slow plume of smoke that seemed to take all my tension with it.

  Major took two more hits and stubbed the joint to save for later.

  I stared absently at Werewolf as he gnawed his bone. His eyes were closed and drool hung from his lower lip. He and that bone were one. I was starting to drool a little myself. Maybe I needed a bone to chew on. Or maybe I just needed something to eat. I decided to head home to scare up some dinner.

  Chapter 33

  Since I had nothing in my fridge but food whose best-before date was months old, I stopped at a supermarket on my way home. I filled a small cart with all the basics a bachelor required. I wasn’t eating as well as when Gwen and I lived together, but much better than a year ago when I subsisted on beer and pizza.

  I was scanning my purchases in the checkout line when I got a call from Nick Walker.

  “What’s up, chief?”

  “You tell me, motherfucker. I just spent two hours in interrogation with an electrical skullcap strapped to my head. What did you tell the cops?”

  “I heard they’re looking for me. What’d they want with you?”

  “Nothing, except as a way to find you.”

  “Don’t say any more. Where are you?”

  “Midtown.”

  “You know Clinton Park?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll meet you there in an hour. Make sure you’re not followed.”

  “I could be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ve got things to do.”

  “Okay, see you then.”

  I paid for my groceries and left. Back in my apartment, I threw out the spoiled food and restocked my fridge. I ate some freshly-roasted chicken with home fries, and drank a glass of red wine. I watched the news but saw nothing that implicated me. Then I must have dozed off.

  I awoke from a brief dream in which a giant hornet had landed on my head, gripped my scalp with all six legs and attempted liftoff. Fucking bugs were everywhere.

  I grabbed my helmet and went down to my storage unit to get my bike. The eight-by-eight unit held spare rims for the Charger, some camping gear I hadn’t used in years, and my BMW motorcycle, a red Concept 90 I’d bought a few years ago in an estate sale.

  I headed over to Clinton Park. It was close enough I should have walked for the exercise, but I had a healthy paranoia for the police. They’d made me their guest last night, and imposed electro-cranial interrogation on Walker this afternoon. If they were lurking in Clinton Park awaiting our rendezvous, I’d give them a run for their money.

  I circled the park until I spotted Walker sitting in his Camaro on 52nd. I pulled up next to him and gestured for him to climb aboard.

  “I don’t have a helmet.”

  “We’re not going far.”

  He locked his car and climbed on. I drove slowly through the park and crossed Joe DiMaggio to the Hudson River Greenway. There was a riverside park between 54th and 57th where only pedestrians and bicyclists were allowed, but I went anyway. I parked adjacent some picnic tables at the river’s edge with a clear view so nobody could sneak up on us.

  Walker shook a couple of cigarettes out of his pack. After we’d had a few puffs, I asked him, “What’d you tell the cops about me?”

  “Everything I know,” Walker said, “which is next to nothing.”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “I met you at the bookstore this morning where I’d interviewed an individual in a case of mistaken identity....”

  “Interviewed? You’re a reporter now?”

  “Well, I couldn’t say I’d assaulted the guy.”

  “Sure. And then...?”

  “You showed up, looking for the ex-owner of this bookstore, who used to know a missing girl you were trying to find.”

  “And then...?”

  “I hadn’t seen you since.”

  “Right.”

  “Were you out on Long Island today?” Walker asked.

  Instead of lying, I stalled. “Why do you ask?”

  “The cops asked me if I’d been to Ronkonkoma Lake.”

  “What’s out there?”

  “That’s what they wanted to know.”

  “Weird.” It was weird, but not for the same reasons Walker might think. It seems the Russian kidnappers knew Detectives Boyle and Mundt. Apparently they’d noted my plates and told the police, who’d speculated Walker had accompanied me to Ronkonkoma Lake in my car.

  “What kind of shit are you in?” Walker said.

  “I’m not sure,” I said, and that was no lie.

  Walker gave me a canny look. “You said maybe I could help you. There’d be something in it for me.”

  “I’ve been trying to manage on my own.”

  “How’s that working for you?”

  I shrugged. Truth was, I was getting nowhere fast with this case. I didn’t know if I needed help so much as commiseration. That payout for completion was starting to look doubtful, never mind the bonus for speedy resolution.

  “How do you know Jack?”

  “We used to be bouncers at the Hustler Club.”

  I recognized the name. A high-end strip joint popular with nouveau riche gangstas. “Used to…?”

  “I tossed a guy onto the sidewalk one night. He didn’t bounce so well.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Nah. He just never woke up.”

  Okay, whatever. “Do you know any of Jack’s friends?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Any Russians?”

  “There used to be a few regulars at the club. They’d swill vodka and swing their dicks around. Lap dancers liked them because they tipped like no tomorrow. Girls who went home with them didn’t get off so easily. Lots of bruises, sometimes a doctor’s visit, maybe a few days rest.”

  “You think Jack has connections?”

  “With the Russians? I don’t know. They weren’t my kind of people. Or maybe it was the other way around. Why do you ask?”

  “This case I’m working has a Russian element, but I don’t know the extent of it. The fact the cops ID’d you, and put you through the wringer, isn’t a good leading indicator of your long-term wellbeing. Less you know, the better.”

  Walker shook his head. “I can’t work like that.”

  “I understand.”

  He stood up. “I can walk back to my car.”

  “Wait. There’s something you could do. And it’s not dangerous.”

  He sat down again. “Tell me.”

  “Jack’s starting to look a little bent to me. This afternoon while I was riding shotgun on a ransom drop with his wife, someone stole all of his kidnapped daughter’s paintings.”

  “You think Russians were behind both things?”

  “Just a hunch. But the daughter has an art agent in the Village.” I used my goggles to retrieve the address Vivien had given me for the Schiller Gallery on Greenwich Avenue.

  “Want me to stake out the gallery? See if anyone shows up with a truckload of paintings?”

  “That’s a luxury I can’t afford. Not to mention, a long shot.”

  Speaking of long shots, I’d begun to wonder if Jack w
asn’t a bit of a dark horse in this race. There was something about him that I didn’t trust. He was obviously cheating on Vivien with this Tatiana babe. She had a Russian name and Jack used to work at a club frequented by Russians. The kidnapper had a Russian accent. And although Jack had been out of the house when Marielle’s paintings were stolen, when he’d heard about it, there’d been something forced about his outrage. Could he have masterminded this whole sequence of events to steal the paintings?

  To dispose of them, Jack might handle it himself. But would he deal with Schiller or another agent? Schiller knew Marielle’s market value, but no way he’d handle her stolen art. Plus which, he’d be the first one to be visited by the police. So Jack would have to deal with another agent or a private buyer. I briefly explained this to Walker.

  I gave him the gallery address anyway, but it was Jack I wanted under surveillance. “Get out to East Massapequa as soon as you can, and follow him if he leaves the house. If he’s involved, he’ll want to unload those paintings as fast as he can.”

  I took a roll of bills from my pocket and gave him half. “I’ll be busy for an hour or two this evening, but call me if you see anything that looks like a deal going down.”

  He thumbed through the bills. “This’ll only buy you until midnight. After that, it’s time-and-a-half.”

  “Deal.”

  We shook on it and I dropped him off at his car.

  Chapter 34

  After leaving Walker, I stopped at an internet café and made a cyber call to the number I’d found on both Jack’s and LeVeen’s phones. A woman with a soft Russian accent answered.

  “Tatiana Borodin?” I said.

  “Who is this?”

  “I’m a friend of Jack Randall.”

  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

  “You also know Ron LeVeen. I know you spoke to both of them by phone today. Given LeVeen’s death, the police will be interested to know about your relationship.”

  “Who are you and what do you want?”

  “My name’s Keith Savage. I’m looking for a missing girl named Marielle. She may have been kidnapped, or just run away.”