Antenna Syndrome (7 page)

“Remember his name?”

“Eddie.”

“How’d they look together?”

“In my opinion, not good.”

“An abusive relationship?”

“Not really. As far as I saw, they were attracted to
each other. But sometimes, no matter what the chemistry, a
relationship spells bad karma. Mix charcoal, sulfur and saltpeter,
it’ll blow up.”

“Did you tell Marielle that?”

“You know people when they’re infatuated. They just
want you to endorse what they’re already into, like it was all in
the stars. Between you and me, I think she was already half in love
with him.”

“What do you do in a case like that, just go with
the flow?” In my experience, therapists almost never advocate any
particular action. They just lay out options and consequences, and
encourage you to make your own decisions.

“No. I have my ethics. If I start giving readings
just to tell people what they want to hear, I’m finished. If I
don’t respect the gift God gave me, I could lose it like that.” He
snapped his fingers.

“You could also lose a client.”

“So it goes. I wished her luck in finding love and
happiness. I just didn’t think she’d find it with him. I urged her
not to commit, but to wait for something better. Eddie might make a
good platonic friend, but he had too many issues to make a good
partner.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s pissed off at the world, ready to pick a fight
with anyone. She’s sensitive, needs love and compassion. They’re an
example of that old saying – misery loves company – but it’s not
going anywhere good.”

“Can you check her file, see if there’s anything I
can use to find him?”

“What’s in this for me?”

“Good karma?”

“Money talks, bullshit walks.”

I ignored that for the moment. “I also need her
coordinates.”

“You didn’t get that from the family?”

“I’m gathering up loose ends in case she had secret
email accounts, extra phones, that sort of thing.”

“Sure. We’re all coming unraveled, struggling to
keep it together, know what I mean?” He rubbed his thumb and first
finger together.

“Sure. Get her coordinates and whatever you’ve got
on Eddie. I’ll pay your hourly fee for the information.”

“Two pieces of information. Two hours worth.”

“Okay.” I took out my wallet. I was starting to feel
like Santa Claus and it was a long haul to Christmas. Thank God I
had cash in hand.

He left the room and came back with a printout of
her coordinates, plus the name of Edward Xavier Crabner and his
birth date. The first was old news, the same as Vivien had given
me, but the latter might prove useful. If there was more than one
Edward Crabner in town, a middle initial and a birth date would
single him out.

I gave Myers the money. He held the notes up to the
light to check their holographs. Satisfied as to their
authenticity, he stuffed the bills into his pocket.

“Aside from her career and her love life, did
Marielle have any other questions? Health, finance, whatever…?”

“Now that you mention it, in her last consultation
she asked me whether it’d be a good time – astrologically speaking
– for her to get fitted with prosthetics. She’d heard about some
clinic in Tribeca that specialized in leading-edge prosthetic limb
technology.”

“Do you recall the name of the clinic?” I was ready
to give him more money for the name of the place.

“It’ll come to me.”

“While you’re thinking about it, here’s your mail.”
I handed him the padded envelope that had recently arrived at the
bookstore. “Why’d you give Jenner and your landlord a phony
forwarding address?”

“I was so far behind in my rent I was ready to
declare bankruptcy. I had to drop off the radar just to avoid
collection agencies. Not to mention some other shit I can’t
discuss…”

He opened the large envelope and drew out a thick
hardcover book. He ran his fingers over the cover. “Linda Goodman’s
Sun Signs
. Pop astrology but she made a million off it,
right?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

He opened the book at random and recoiled in horror.
A red spider the size of a large grape catapulted out of the book
and landed on his neck. He screamed, swatted it away and hurled
himself off the sofa.

The spider jumped halfway across the living room. I
leaped from my chair, adrenaline kicking in for fight-or-flight. I
swung my tote bag at the spider as it sprang at me. I’d never seen
a spider move so fast. It scared the shit out of me. I knocked it
to the floor but before I could stomp on it, the damn thing jumped
again and landed on the bookcase.

Myers fell thrashing to the floor, gagging as pink
foam gushed from his mouth.

I pulled out my DDT spray and tried to hose the
spider. Missed. For a minute, we chased each other around the
living room. Then it leaped halfway down the hall. I went after it,
swinging my bag like a maniac. Another jump carried it into the
bathroom. I appeared in the door just in time to see it squiggle
down the bathtub drain.

I flung open the medicine cabinet, grabbed a bottle
of rubbing alcohol and poured it down the drain. Fumbling a
matchbook from my pocket, I dropped it alight into the tub. A tower
of invisible heat erupted from the drain, melting a strip of shower
curtain. The air suddenly stank of burned plastic. A small cloud of
scorched hair hovered over the drain. I turned on the faucet and
left it running while I puked in the toilet.

I hurried back to the living room and knelt beside
Myers. An ugly welt had risen around a puncture wound on his neck.
I felt for a pulse and got a weak signal.

I phoned 911. A dispatcher transferred me to a
paramedic and I granted him access to my iFocals so he could
examine Myers. He was alarmed at the swelling that had already
emerged around the spider bite and told me what to do for Myers
until the ambulance arrived.

I found some antihistamines in the medicine cabinet,
opened two capsules and spilled the contents into a glass of water.
I propped Myers up and poured most of it into him. I got an ice
cube tray from the fridge, emptied it into a plastic bag and draped
it over his throat.

Having done all I could, I took advantage of what
little time I had before the ambulance showed up. First, I killed
the feed to the 911 paramedic, because I didn’t want anyone looking
through my iFocals.

Pulling on a pair of latex gloves, I quickly
searched Myers’s office. On his desk were an old computer, some
astrology books, and a few loose file folders with astrological
charts and notes. Nothing relevant to my case.

A cabinet contained folders filed alphabetically. I
thumbed through the ‘J’ section, didn’t find ‘Jordan’, then
remembered what Myers had said and looked through the ‘R’ section
to find ‘Randall’. The file contained several charts – Marielle,
Eddie Crabner, Jack and Viv Randall, Harris Jordan and Natalie
Dunning – and several pages of notes.

I took pictures and transferred them all to virtual
storage under a false name in the cloud. I covered my digital
tracks as best as I could. If they wanted, the NSA or the IRS could
follow this, but why would they bother?

I checked on Myers, who was still breathing. I
finished my beer and waited for the ambulance. In hindsight, I
should have split, but I was afraid he might go into convulsions
and, with no one to help, might choke on his vomit and die. I had
enough on my conscience already, I didn’t need that.

Warily, I picked up the book from the envelope.
Someone had cut a three-inch square hole in the bulk of the book’s
pages, large enough to hold a spider. So this was no accident, but
a booby-trap... I put the book back on the floor where Myers had
dropped it, and put away my gloves.

The paramedics arrived minutes later. They gave
Myers an injection and rushed him out on a gurney. One of them told
me to stay put, the police were on their way up, and they’d want to
talk to me.

No problem, I said.

Big mistake.

Chapter 12

The plainclothes cops were both in their forties.
Mundt was a big blond with a pair of shoulders Atlas would have
traded the world for. He had a tanned face the color of fresh clay,
but flattened as if someone had hit it with a shovel. His partner
Boyle was a skinny little guy with bags under his eyes and black
hair tucked wetly behind his ears.

The first thing they did was confiscate my iFocals.
They both had goggles of their own, but theirs were SeeWorlds, a
Chinese knockoff of the Google Glass 8, a clunky predecessor of
more compact designs that had hit the market.

After examining my ID, they made me empty my pockets
and bag. Boyle found the wad of cash I was carrying and took a
minute to count it, his lips moving as he thumbed his way through
it like a blackjack dealer on speed.

I gave them an abbreviated version of why I was
here. They poked around Myers’s apartment and found half a kilo of
weed in the kitchen pantry. They kept looking until they found a
100 ml bottle of amyl nitrite in the fridge. Mundt took three cans
of beer from the fridge and we sat together in the living room
while Boyle rolled a joint.

I recalled what Bambi had said at the games arcade,
about delivering some “medicine” to Myers. More likely it was the
other way around, or she was a courier for his product.

I wasn’t worried about the weed. Marijuana was now
legal and the police didn’t give a shit about that anymore. But a
controlled substance like amyl nitrite could earn someone a heavy
fine, and now it was my problem as much as Myers’s.

I wondered about these cops. They were much too
casual for the situation and it worried the hell out of me. My
imagination spun out various scenarios. If Myers died, they could
pin his death on me to give their crime resolution stats a bump.
Not to mention, hasten me to the nearest private prison, where
profit-minded wardens offered cash incentives for any felons the
police steered their way.

“Here’s to the High Life.” Mundt slurped from his
can.

“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.