Antenna Syndrome (10 page)

“Whazzup, man?”

“I had a sleepover in lockup. They may have tapped
my goggles. I need them cleaned.”

“Whatcha got?”

I showed him my goggles.

He tossed off a figure. “End of day soon
enough?”

“Fine.” I gave him the goggles and the money. “I
might also have been tagged. If so, I need an extraction ASAP.”

“Gimme a sec.” He stood and rested his elbows atop
my car roof. I heard him say something about clinic hours and
assumed he was checking an online schedule via his goggles. He
lowered his head to window level. “Can you get to 55th and Eleventh
in the next hour?”

“Sure.” It was just thirty blocks away, in my
condo’s neighborhood.

He took out a small notepad and wrote an address
with a phone number. “Get a carwash, ask for Anastasia, they’ll
take care of you.”

“What do I owe you?”

“Commission comes off the other end. See you this
evening for your goggles. Gotta go. Incoming.” He turned and walked
away. I heard him say hello to someone, then no, I’m not handling
that shit any more, but I know a guy...

I drove up Tenth to 57th, found the carwash near
Eleventh. I drove the Charger inside, told the sponge monkey to
give it a wash and a wax, and asked for Anastasia. He took a pack
of cards from his desk, checked a wall calendar and gave me the
eight of clubs. He walked me to the curb and pointed to a building
across the street.

“Apartment 808. Give Anastasia this card.”

I followed his directions. My fleeting fantasy of
some hot Russian babe evaporated the moment she opened the door and
I saw a woman who looked like a potato dumpling left out in the sun
too long. Anastasia wore an ill-fitting white nurse’s smock that
seemed to have buttons missing in all the wrong places, giving me
an unwelcome view of her deeply-trenched doughy bosom.

“So, you catch bedbugs sleeping with po-po?”

I didn’t know whether to laugh at her accent, sense
of humor, or her turn-of-the-century slang. But since I was the
supplicant here in the church of technology, I played nice.

“I need to get checked out, make sure I’m not
carrying an RFID.”

“You strip, please.”

“Right here?” I knew this was illegal, but I’d
expected something more office-like than a poorly-furnished studio
apartment. A sofa-bed and two chairs faced a wall-mounted screen,
with a long counter separating the living space from the galley
kitchen.

“You prefer bathroom?” She pointed to the door. “You
still come out naked.”

I took off my clothes and stood naked before her.
She took something from her pocket that looked like a skinny little
dildo and ran it all over my body, lingering in every location that
was hairy and offered loose folds of skin, leaving nothing to the
imagination.

“Spread legs, please.”

I did as she instructed. She wasn’t down there ten
seconds before her hand-held unit bleated.

“Okay. You got bug up your ass.” She laughed.

“Are you serious?”

She pulled a stool out from the kitchen counter. “Up
here, please.”

“Is that clean?”

She sighed, sprayed the counter with Lysol and wiped
it with a paper towel.

I mounted the counter and lay on my back with legs
spread and calves hanging off the sides. She applied a local
anesthetic to my scrotum and set a kitchen timer for five minutes.
While waiting for it to take effect, she held a finger to her lips
and showed me a number on a slip of paper. I nodded. She took my
wallet from my pants and laid it on my belly.

I gave her the cash and put my wallet under my head
for a pillow. The timer went off. She took a scalpel and tweezers
from a jar of alcohol, put on a pair of illuminated magnifying
glasses and sat on the stool at the end of the counter. It was over
in a minute. She showed me the tiny device, not much bigger than a
bedbug, that she’d removed from a small puncture beneath my
balls.

“Made in China.” She dropped the RFID in a paper cup
and put it the microwave. She gave it thirty seconds on high and I
heard a distinct pop.

“Thanks.” I dressed and left. In the lobby I met a
man heading for the elevator with a playing card. And he didn’t
look like he was on his way to a game of one-card poker.

~~~

Since I was in the neighborhood, I returned to my
condo at 55th and Tenth. Although we’d been struggling financially
even before the Brooklyn Blast, Gwen and I’d been prudent enough to
buy house and life insurance. After the radioactive dust had
settled, its payout had provided me enough money to kick-start a
new life. After the panic selling had reached its nadir, I’d bought
a condo near the bottom of the market. At least I had a place to
live, which was more than some could say.

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 kitchen,
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.”