Antenna Syndrome

by Alan Annand

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “Sure have. Want a hit?”

  “Go away. I’m busy.”

  “Busy, huh? You’re just sitting around in your underwear.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “I won’t hurt you, baby. Just wanna make you feel good.”

  “Take your hands off me. I’ll scream.”

  “Scream your head off. Viv’s not around.”

  The girl screamed so loudly that distortion came through my headset.

  “Oh yeah, I love a screamer. Let me take off your T-shirt. Yeah, go ahead and holler all you want. Mm-hm, what a lovely pair. Now let’s see what the rest of you looks like.”

  The girl screamed and screamed.

  “Mm-hm, looking good, baby. And tasty too. Now you’re all wet. Just wait till I get my pants off.”

  The scream became a cry of pain.

  “Yeah, you’re tight, baby, but Uncle Jack’s coming in just the same. Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh baby...”

  Then there was just the rhythmic groaning of the girl in the background. Then, after a few minutes...

  “Okay, baby, I’ve got to run. Viv’s coming home soon. You’re not going to tell on Uncle Jack, are you? No, I don’t think so, ‘cause I’ll kill you if you do. And I’ll do your sister too. Goodnight, baby. Sweet dreams.”

  A door opened and closed. The girl cried. Then the recording ended.

  “Weird, huh?” Finder said.

  “Okay, thanks, bro. You caught me in the middle of something, but I’ll settle up with you later, okay?” I broke off the call before Finder could say anything more.

  “Kinky little scene,” Mundt said. “What’s that all about, snooper?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Mundt came off the desk and seized my throat with a hand that could have throttled a gorilla. As the blood pounded in my ears, he jammed his gun into my eye. “Don’t clam up on us, friend. Last time, we were gentle. Start talking or we’ll put you through a routine that’ll make the Inquisition look like a loan interview at your neighborhood bank.”

  “Hssst,” Boyle said. “There’s somebody outside.”

  “See who it is,” Mundt growled over his shoulder as he maintained the pressure of his gun muzzle in my bulging eyeball.

  Boyle drew his gun and held it against his leg as he opened the door. In the hallway stood a tall skinny guy in a pair of coveralls and wrap-around sunglasses. Globik’s bodyguard, Buzz. His long arms were bent at the elbows, his hands pressed together in front of his chest as if in prayer. He looked past Boyle to Mundt and me clinched behind the desk.

  “Looking for someone?” Boyle said.

  Nothing happened for a moment, then everything happened at once. Buzz snapped his arms straight out, seized Boyle’s shoulders and jerked him forward with the swift precision of a machine. Boyle’s gun fired a slug into the floor.

  Buzz’s face split open in a line across his chin. Two bony appendages the size of butcher knives came out of his mouth and severed Boyle’s neck the way garden shears snip rose stems. His arms snapped back out again. Boyle’s body, a fountain of blood pulsing from the neck, crumpled to the floor. His head rolled under the desk and hit my feet.

  Buzz entered the room. Mundt released me and turned his gun on the more obvious threat. Buzz and I went into action at the same time. Lucky for me Mundt was in between us. I snatched the flash drive from the laptop, threw my arms in front of my face and dived through the window. I heard Mundt’s gun bark once before he made a terrible scream.

  Amid a shower of broken glass I landed in the dumpster below, cushioned from death by bags of shredded paper. I heard another scream, or maybe it was still the same one. I didn’t stick around to listen for more. I vaulted out of the dumpster and ran for Mr. Kim’s, the flash drive still clutched in my fist.

  Chapter 46

  I stood inside Mr. Kim’s office, still panting after my run. From behind barred windows I watched my building to see if Globik’s bodyguard would come looking for me. Buzz had killed Boyle and Mundt without a moment’s hesitation. I knew he’d like to nip me in the bud too.

  “Everything okay, Mistuh Savage?” Mr. Kim asked from behind his desk.

  “Do you have a handgun I could borrow?”

  He laughed. “I am in parking business, not shooting business.”

  Up the block, a tall skinny figure emerged from my building. Buzz stood there a moment, entirely motionless. He moved to the middle of the street and did a 360-degree scan. Seeing nothing, he crossed the street and got into the parked blue van.

  I opened Mr. Kim’s door and put half an eyeball around the corner. The blue van drove away.

  My phone rang. It was Vivien, coming on like a banshee. “Mr. Savage, have you lost your mind? If you don’t return Marielle’s paintings immediately, I’ll call the police.”

  “What are you talking about? I was with you yesterday afternoon when they were stolen.”

  “You knew Jack and I’d be out half the day. You tipped your pal Walker to steal Marielle’s paintings while we were gone.”

  “Walker? How do you know about him?”

  “Jack told me. You and Walker are partners in crime. Blackmail, burglary, drugs, extortion, whatever...”

  “You’ve got it backwards, Vivien. Jack knows Walker from when they both worked at the Hustler Club. Jack sent him to rough up Myers, the astrologer, because he was jealous, or afraid he’d advise you to divorce him.”

  “Jack said you’d lie to protect yourself, and accuse him too.”

  “Did he tell you Walker was dead?”

  “He saw it in the news this morning. That’s what freaked him out. He confided his fears in me.”

  I knew Jack had lied about seeing it in the news because the police had withheld Walker’s name pending contact with surviving family. Jack knew about it because he’d been at Pier 57 when Walker was killed. Ignoring that for the moment, I picked up where Vivien had left off. “What fears?”

  “He said you killed Walker. That you’d threatened to kill him too.”

  “When? I was there yesterday afternoon. We parted on good terms.”

  “You called him last night, warned him to destroy the security video showing Walker breaking into the house.”

  “That wasn’t Walker on the video. It was someone from Dr. Globik’s organization.”

  “Globik?”

  “I told you about him. He runs a medical clinic in Tribeca specializing in prosthetics. It’s where I think Marielle’s being kept.”

  “You think? What proof do you have?”

  “Let me talk to Jack.”

  “He’s not here. He left half an hour ago.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He said he might have to leave town for his own safety. Because of your threats.”

  “Why would I threaten Jack?”

  “Because he knows what you did.”

  I sighed. “Jack’s a liar and worse. Did he actually delete that video?”

  “He said he did.”

  I cursed under my breath. Jack had probably deleted the security video to conceal any connection he had with whoever had stolen the paintings. Likely his Russian friends. He’d planted spyware on Jordan’s phone, possibly bugged Tatiana’s apartment for pillow talk. If I had time, I’d probably find the entire house in East Massapequa was wired too, keeping the Russians one step ahead of Jordan’s political strategy.

  This was worrisome. It now looked like Jack, Tatiana and Rossikoff all worked for the bratva. While I’d been with Tatiana last night, Jack had transferred the paintings to Rossikoff at Pier 57. When Walker had tried to get their plate numbers, they’d killed him. Now Jack was in the wind, and Tatiana might soon follow.

  I regretted not having called the cops when I’d discovered the Bobcat in her possession, the gun that had likely killed LeVeen. Ironically, I’d feared Boyle and Mundt might pin it on me. Now it was worse. They’d been killed in my office. I might as wel
l have died with them, given my chances now of a fair hearing from the police.

  I couldn’t return to the Realistik Gallery for the painting I’d left a deposit on. Possession would make me party to the theft, as Jack had told Vivien. And if Jack warned Rossikoff, the art dealer would move the paintings elsewhere, and deny he’d sold me anything. I was going to get screwed, and I didn’t like it.

  “Jack arranged to have Marielle’s paintings stolen while we were out,” I told Vivien. “He owed a fortune to the Russian mob for gambling debts.”

  “He’s not in debt. He stopped gambling seven years ago.”

  “Not according to what his Russian girlfriend told me.”

  “What girlfriend?”

  “Tatiana. She was in on it. She’s the one who screamed in that phone call from the kidnappers.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’ve got a nose for dirt, and I’m discovering lots of it. If you weren’t in denial, you’d admit you had suspicions too. You know Jack’s a sick man, you just don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Go up to Marielle’s suite. I need you to look for something.”

  “Okay, I’m going.”

  “On the way, consider this. Within the last few months, did you notice any change in Marielle’s behavior? Loss of appetite, reluctance to socialize, excessive sleeping...”

  “She did seem tired lately. She usually had breakfast with me but in the past month, she was sleeping until almost noon. When I asked her if she felt okay, she said she had a cold. It made sense because when I cleaned her room, her wastebasket was always full of used tissues.” A door opened and closed. “Okay, I’m in her suite. Now what?”

  “Start her computer.”

  “It’s already on.”

  I got her to search Marielle’s directory for a file called ‘Ladybug Blues’. She found it but couldn’t open it. Password-protected. I put her on hold, called Finder and got the password from him. Back to Vivien.

  “About a month ago,” I said, “Marielle asked you to mail an envelope for her, am I right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  I gave her the high-level view. Marielle had addressed the envelope to Crabner at the Avatar Clinic where he’d been living ever since his surgery. But someone there, unwilling to admit Crabner’s residency, had rejected the package and given it back to the USPS carrier with Crabner’s last-known address, LeVeen’s apartment.

  “Who’s LeVeen?”

  “An investigative journalist. He was working on a story involving corrupt city officials.”

  “What’s that got to do with Marielle?”

  “Nothing. But up until last year, Crabner was LeVeen’s roommate. And by coincidence, LeVeen’s research may have uncovered some dirt that led back to Jordan.”

  “What was in that envelope?”

  “A flash drive containing an audiofile, and a tissue with DNA evidence of a crime.”

  “How could Marielle have been involved in a crime?”

  “She was a victim.”

  “Of what?”

  Abused and threatened by Jack, Marielle had been too afraid or embarrassed to tell Vivien. But she’d probably collected some post-rape evidence in a tissue, a mix of her own DNA and Jack’s, and mailed it to Crabner along with the audio. Although it would have been smarter to mail it to the police, maybe she’d feared bad publicity for her father. So she’d confided in Crabner, who’d enlisted Buzz to help her escape.

  “You’ll understand after you listen to that MP3. You won’t like what you hear, but it’ll explain Marielle’s disappearance.” I told Vivien the password. “I’ll give you some time alone, then call you back. Make sure you pick up. We need to finish this conversation.”

  I borrowed Mr. Kim’s key to the rooftop door, jogged up three flights and went out onto the roof. I switched my goggles to binocular mode. From a corner of the rooftop, I looked up and down the intersection, two blocks in either direction. No sign of the blue van.

  I called Vivien back. She picked up after three rings, but said nothing. I heard muffled sobs. They seemed to come from a great distance away. I was glad to be doing this over the phone. I didn’t like to make women cry and I liked even less to see it.

  “Vivien, are you there?”

  “Yes,” she said in a voice choked with emotion.

  “Did you know?”

  “I saw something in her bedding back in June that made me suspicious. I knew what Jack was like when he drank. I was afraid to say anything, but I suspected the worst. Over the past month Marielle had become more withdrawn. I used to be a nurse, you know, and I’ve seen a few rape victims. I guess she was desperate for a way out of here, and when her friendship with Crabner blossomed, she must have decided it was time to escape. I just didn’t want to believe the man I was married to could do such a thing.”

  “Would Jordan have allowed her to move out on her own?”

  “Never.”

  “So she may have faked her own abduction?”

  “I thought of that.”

  “Then why’d you lead me on to think it was a kidnapping?”

  “I wasn’t sure. And we couldn’t just do nothing. Jordan would have fired us if he’d come home and found her gone. It just happened that Natalie was in town that weekend. When I told her what happened, she arranged to hire you.”

  “But if you suspected she’d run away rather than been kidnapped, why’d you pay a ransom?”

  “The ransom demand came as a surprise. It made me doubt what I thought had really happened. But I had no way to get in touch with Marielle and confirm she was all right, so I had to pay it. I still don’t know if she was really kidnapped, or whether the ransom was to pay off the people who helped her escape.”

  “Chances are, Jack was behind it.”

  “But right from the first, he’d insisted she’d just run off.”

  “That was just his line, but he knew she had reasons to leave. Except after a few days, he probably saw her disappearance as an opportunity of a lifetime. Between the ransom demand and the sale of the paintings, he could pay off the Russian mob and pocket something for himself.”

  “But what about Marielle? Where is she?”

  “Mixed up with some very weird people. But I hope to find her tonight.”

  “Please bring her back home. She’ll be safe here now that Jack’s gone. I’ll take care of her.”

  Chapter 47

  Feeling naked without my pistol, I dashed across the street faster than a cockroach. I entered an alley and approached my building from the rear. Major sat outside the back door, getting some Vitamin D from the sun angling between buildings. He was wearing sunglasses but his only concession to air quality was a pair of nose-plug filters.

  Werewolf lay a few feet away, but he’d already heard, smelled or sensed my approach, because his head was up and his ears erect, a growl muttering deep in his throat.

  Major raised the shotgun that lay across his knees. The barrel swung in my direction.

  “Friendly,” I called out. The sun was in Major’s eyes and I didn’t know how well he could see my face from behind his sunglasses. “Savage requesting permission to land.”

  “Granted.” Major pointed the barrel at the sky and waved me in.

  I squatted a few feet away. Werewolf studied me a moment, sighed and went back to sleep.

  Major had his shirt off, revealing his battle scars: a star-burst gunshot wound below the left shoulder, a knife slash across the ribs, and a speckled midriff from a shotgun blast too distant to have penetrated his thick hide. I was glad he was on my side, not on my trail.

  “You’re lookin’ kind of wasted.” Major pushed his sunglasses down and studied me. “Been out shaggin’ all night again?”

  He laughed, but it was more of a joke on me, seeing as I hadn’t had sex in a long while.

  “Just having a bad day.”

  “Didn’t I see you on the hall camera, going into your office
half an hour ago?” Major said. “I went to the john right after, but while I was in there, I thought I heard gunshots. But maybe it was those punks over there.” Behind the alley was a derelict building whose occupants were mostly transient. The police were in there every week, looking for missing persons or stolen goods.

  I said nothing. Maybe it had just been a bad dream. I couldn’t be sure until I went back to my office for a reality check.

  “Can I borrow your sidearm a few minutes?” I asked Major.

  “What’s up?”

  I shrugged. “You’re familiar with the term, plausible deniability?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, I’m invoking it for your protection.” I held out my hand.

  He drew his Beretta M9 from his leg holster and passed it to me handgrip first. “Please don’t kill nobody,” he said but, as a scholar, his use of the double negative was his way of saying, do what you gotta do.

  I stuck the pistol in my waistband and took the stairs to the third floor. I racked a load and checked the safety. I went down the hall on the balls of my feet and tried my office door. Locked. With key in one hand, M9 in the other, I unlocked the door and looked inside. Boyle and Mundt’s bodies lay on the floor, blood pooled beneath truncated necks. Their heads lay several feet away.

  Stifling my gag reflex, I fetched what I’d come for. I found my pistol in Boyle’s jacket pocket. I left the baggie of rape evidence in the fridge but opened my floor safe and retrieved the rest of the down payment Natalie Jordan had given me. When the forensics team eventually showed up, they’d take this place apart looking for evidence. Money tended to shrink, if not completely disappear.

  I stuffed my spilled gear back into my tote bag. I debated what to do about the blue-metal Bobcat that lay on my desk. It hadn’t killed LeVeen and I’d never touched it, so maybe it was safe to leave behind. On the other hand, Mundt had brought it along to frame me. For all I knew, it may have been used in another crime of which I wasn’t aware. I put on a latex glove and picked up the gun.

  I went to my broken window just in time to see a truck coming down the street, its open box half-full of broken concrete from some tear-down in the neighborhood. I threw the gun into its box as the truck passed. Bye-bye, Bobcat.