Antenna Syndrome (16 page)

“Now you’ve opened it, you might as well see what’s
on the flash drive.”

“What if it contains a virus? I’ve got investigative
research and original scripts on my laptop, not to mention personal
information. I’m not putting all that at risk.”

“Don’t you have anti-virus software?”

“Forget it. I’m not opening an unknown flash drive.
You want to see what’s on it, stick it in your own computer.”

“Okay, I’ll be right over.”

“Not now. I was literally on my way out the door
when USPS arrived. I’ve got a meeting uptown with the production
head of CBX, a new cable network. Only reason I phoned is because I
thought this’d be a 30-second call. My taxi’s here and I’ve gotta
go.”

“When are you back?”

“End of day. Call me later.”

“Put that flash drive somewhere safe,” I said but I
don’t know if he even heard me as he hung up.

Fuck. Double fuck and a half twist. I pounded my
forehead on the steering wheel. It felt good but it did no good. I
put the car in gear and entered the queue for the bridge.

Once on the Brooklyn side, I called Vivien to update
my ETA. No answer so I left a message saying I’d been delayed but
was back on track.

I headed out the Long Island Expressway, frustrated
by the speed limit. Ever since they’d put in automated speed traps
to identify our rides with VIN-tagged transponders, there was no
way to beat a speeding ticket. And with so many speed monitors, I’d
have run up a thousand bucks worth of fines on the way to East
Massapequa.

I’d just switched to southbound Seaford & Oyster
Bay Expressway when another call came in.

It was Vivien. “Sorry I missed your call. I was at
the bank.”

“What?” I made no effort to keep the annoyance out
of my voice. “I told you not to move until I got there.”

“Things are under control. I’ve got a gun. I’ve got
the money. I have to pay Marielle’s ransom. Otherwise, they’ll kill
her.”

“Are you nuts? That money’s just a test of faith.
Once you’ve paid without notifying the police, they’ll ask for a
second installment. Maybe even a third. You won’t get Marielle back
that easily.”

“You’re so cynical.”

“In my business, you suspect everyone.”

“Everyone?”

“Don’t take it personally.”

“I’m sorry you think paying for her release is
naive. It’s just that I’m responsible. I’m so worried for her.
Where are you?”

“About fifteen minutes away. Lock the doors and stay
inside. I’ll be there soon.”

Chapter 27

I turned off the Sunrise Highway and took Lincoln
Avenue into East Massapequa. When I entered the Jordan driveway, I
saw the Volvo but no Tesla. Hansel and Gretel started pawing my car
as soon as I parked. I lowered the window a few inches and talked
to them until they settled down. After a few minutes I took my
chances and put my hand out. Hansel licked it. I got out and rang
the front door bell.

Vivien opened the door with a pistol in hand. It was
a SIG Sauer P232, a .32-caliber designed more for defense than
offense. But I had a great respect for bullets, no matter what
their size. She waved me inside and locked the door.

“Is this how you greet a friend and ally?” I said,
nodding at the gun.

“Would you have preferred me with a martini in
hand?”

“As a matter of fact, I would.”

“Maybe later, once this is over.”

This will never be over, I thought, but it was a
pleasant illusion in which I indulged myself a moment. I followed
her into the kitchen where she laid the pistol on the counter.
“Where’s the money?” I said.

She opened a shopping bag. Inside were bundles of
fifty-dollar bills.

“You said this might be just a first installment,”
she said. “But for most people, it’s a lot of money. Maybe they’ll
be happy with that.”

“Maybe.” But hard times or not, desperate people
would kill others for a fraction of this. I wanted to make sure she
didn’t end up on the wrong side of that American dream.

“What are our alternatives? Did you talk to Myers or
Crabner?”

I had to admit, good leads were scarcer than honesty
at a used car dealership. “I talked to Myers.” I told her how he’d
ended up in the toxicology ward of Bellevue. “Crabner’s still in
the wind.”

“Hmph.” She seemed disappointed with my
performance.

“Where’s Jack?”

“He’d left before I got that phone call. He had
business in the city.”

“Did you tell him about the ransom demand?”

“You heard him the other day. He doesn’t think it’s
a kidnapping. He thinks Marielle just ran away.”

“He could still be right.”

“Anyway, there’s no way he’d let me make that
payment.”

“I’m advising against it too.”

“If Marielle ends up dead, I’d never forgive myself.
I’m sure she’d want me to do this.”

“Easy to say when it’s her money.”

“She never cared about money anyway.”

I wished I could spend more time hanging out with
people who didn’t care about money. Maybe some of their money would
rub off on me.

“Split a beer?” she said. “I need a drink but…”

“Sure.”

She took a Stella Artois from the fridge and split
it between two glasses. We sat at the kitchen counter and nursed
our beers. I often drank with clients, usually angry businessmen
who’d been stiffed in some deal and wanted me to collect money on
their behalf. This was nicer.

The telephone rang. I signaled for her to wait. I
tapped my iFocals to turn on the recorder and leaned over the
counter. She pressed the button to put the phone on speaker.

“Hello,” she said.

“Mrs. Randall?” I heard what sounded like a Russian
accent, from a man who appeared to have a head cold speaking
through a drainpipe.

“Speaking.”

“You have money?”

“Yes. Where’s Marielle? Let me speak to her.”

There was a pause. Then a shrill scream that seemed
to last longer than it would normally take to empty a pair of
lungs.

Vivien’s face went white. She brought both hands to
her mouth, perhaps to stifle her own scream.

“She is not well, but alive,” the man said.

“You bastard,” Vivien said. “Don’t hurt her.”

“Listen to me. You know Lake Ronkonkoma?”

“Yes.”

I knew it too. It was in the middle of Long Island,
less than an hour’s drive from Massapequa.

“Bring money. At north end of lake is boat club.
Park there and wait. I will call you. Leave now.”

Vivien put her gun in her purse and picked up the
bag with the money. At the front door she whistled for the dogs.
She put them inside, armed the alarm system and locked up. We got
into my car, buckled up and headed out.

“Who else besides Jack knew about Marielle’s
disappearance? Her agent?”

“I didn’t tell him yet. If he knew, he’d raise the
prices on her paintings. Unless she’s really dead, that wouldn’t be
right.”

“But it’d mean a lot of money for you, wouldn’t it?
I counted more than a dozen paintings in her studio.”

“I don’t care about the money. I love Marielle like
a daughter and I need her back home safe and sound. Just help me
deliver this ransom. Don’t do anything that might jeopardize her
safety.”

I chewed on my tongue. Despite her professed love
for Marielle, I had doubts about Vivien. She’d withheld information
about Myers and Crabner. She’d insisted Marielle was happy at home
despite a prison-like environment most people would have wanted to
escape. She had access to Marielle’s bank account. And she was much
too calm for someone now dealing with criminals.

Chapter 28

We arrived in Ronkonkoma at 1:30 PM and followed a
country road to the north end of the lake. There were big houses
hidden in the trees, and other lots where construction was
underway. After many hurricanes, seaside property values had been
beaten to their knees. Lakefront properties were now the favored
real estate investment.

The Ronkonkoma Boat Club was a two-story building
with a deck overlooking a small marina, and a parking lot with two
cars. We sat in the car and waited.

After fifteen minutes, Vivien’s phone rang. She
waited for me to turn on my recorder. She answered the call and put
it on speaker. “Hello.”

“Who is your friend?” said the same Russian voice as
before.

Shit! We were being watched. I scanned the area but
saw no one. I lowered the sun visor and turned my face away from
the windows.

“Sorry,” Vivien said, “but I wasn’t going to drive
way out here alone with this kind of money. What’s it matter? He’s
not a cop.”

There was silence at the other end.

Vivien said, “Hello?” a few times, thinking she’d
lost the connection.

“Rent boat. Take money. Go to middle of lake. I will
call you.” Something about his diction seemed false to me. Like
someone faking a Russian accent.

I put on sunglasses and a cap. I locked the car and
we went into the boat club.

The place was pretty near dead. There was a small
wood-paneled lounge with a laminate countertop bar, and a door
through which I could see an equipment room. It looked like the
owner hadn’t spent any money on it in decades, probably waiting for
an offer to sell out and retire. It was a great location. Any day
now, a developer would tear it down and build a proper boat club
here with condos for people who liked sailboats but were afraid of
the open sea.

We passed through the lounge. Out on the deck, two
men were playing cards at a table. They had drinks, and one of them
had a cigarette going.

I stuck my head out the door. “Who’s minding the
store?”

The pair didn’t pay me any attention, too busy
pegging points on a cribbage board. One guy was short and plump,
with wrinkles in his brow that went up his forehead and over his
bald dome. The other guy had a white-haired crew cut and tattoos
with naked women and snakes writhing up his muscled arms.

I approached their table. “I want to rent a
boat.”

“Motorboat or sailboat?” Muscles said.

“Motor.”

“Let’s go see what’s floating.”

We followed Muscles back to the rental counter, and
completed a transaction for a minimum run of an hour in a
motorboat. He walked us down to the dock and boarded a
fifteen-footer. The motor started promptly, farting gaseous
bubbles. It was pretty self-evident but he showed me how to handle
the controls. He climbed back onto the dock and gave us a salute.
“Bon voyage.”

I steadied Vivien as she boarded. We belted on
lifejackets. I cast off the mooring line and opened the throttle.
It only took five minutes to reach the middle of the lake. I cut
the engine and we waited.

In the distance I saw what looked like a pair of
low-flying ducks approaching from the south end of the lake, but
then they swung wide and circled north of us. Vivien’s phone rang.
She answered it on speakerphone.

“Place money loose in bundles on deck,” the faux
Russian said. “Then wait.”

Vivien stood and leaned over the windshield. She
opened the shopping bag and laid the many bundles of money on the
foredeck.

We shifted aft to the rear seats and waited. I kept
looking around, expecting a speedboat to make the pickup, but there
wasn’t another craft on the water.

I tapped the stem of my iFocals and toggled my way
through a utilities menu. The v8.3 incorporated the digital
equivalent of a Fresnel lens. Microscopic bands of each lens were
temporarily “tinted” to create a diffraction grid that magnified
images, at a distance like binoculars, or up close like a
microscope.

I scanned the horizon in binocular mode. Summer
cottages lined the shore but the only boats I saw were moored. I
saw people lounging on their docks and in their yards, but no one
coming our way. I wondered if a scuba diver might make the pickup,
but that seemed unlikely.

Although maybe not as unlikely as what actually
happened...

They came skimming across the lake, a few feet above
the water. At first I thought they were the ducks I’d seen earlier.
As they got closer, I saw they were giant hornets, banded black and
yellow, with huge iridescent eyes and rainbow-blurred cellophane
wings.

They slowed as they approached our boat and paused
to hover off the bow about ten feet away. Something blinked between
the compound eyes of the leader. A thin ray of light quickly
scanned the bundles of money on the foredeck.

The pair rose six feet and hovered in place, as if
they were waiting for something.

In a moment I saw the rest of the swarm coming. They
came in single file, low to the water, approaching swiftly until
they were twenty yards away. There were about two dozen of them.
They halted as a group and hovered in place, as if awaiting some
kind of signal from the two scouts.

Again, a brief ray of light from the leader. One of
the hornets darted forward and with its six legs clasped a bundle
of money to its abdomen. It rose and flew off on a southerly
heading. In a minute the other hornets picked up the rest of the
money and headed across the lake.

Only the two scouts remained. Again, a ray of light
from the leader scanned the deck. Nothing remained. The two hornets
rose six feet and shot off southwards.

I watched them fly to the far end of the lake, where
there was a public park with picnic tables. The hornets disappeared
behind the rooftop bubble of a dark blue van.

Vivien’s phone rang. She put it on speaker mode.
“Wait there,” the Russian said.

“In the middle of the lake? How long?”

“Half an hour.”

“We paid your ransom. Where’s Marielle?”

“You wait. I will call you.” A dial tone hummed.

All this time, I’d kept my eye on the van in the
park across the lake. But a glare on its windshield prevented me
from seeing who was in the van. In a few moments, it drove
away.