Antenna Syndrome (25 page)

“I’m not with Mr. London’s office.” As soon as I saw
the mockup, I’d realized who he was talking about. Ariel London was
an avant-garde playwright whose work, even in fringe theatre, had
aroused both derision and ridicule for its campy emphasis on sex
and violence.

He looked at me. “You’re not the set construction
coordinator?”

“A private investigator.” I gave him one of my real
cards.

He stared at it. “Is this about Ron?”

“Yes. Did the police visit you?”

“Yesterday evening. They wanted to know what he was
mixed up in that got him killed. But I couldn’t help them. Ron was
a writer, and he lived a somewhat edgy life, but he never ran with
a criminal crowd.”

I looked beyond the workstation. On the window ledge
outside was a wooden platform with a small coop and a pair of
dowel-rod perches. Scattered seed and bird droppings suggested I
was on the right track.

“You have a pet bird?”

“A carrier pigeon. It was a hobby with me and
Ron.”

“Really? What do you do with them?”

“Send messages back and forth.”

“Really? With so many other technological
alternatives?”

He chewed his lip, trying to come up with a logical
response.

“The birds deliver something else, right?” I said.
“Drugs? I’m not a cop, so I don’t care. I just want to know what
happened to your brother.”

“The guy down the hall is a small-time dealer,” he
shrugged. “Whenever Ron needed a little blow, I’d buy it and the
birds delivered. Saved him the trip.”

“Where’s your bird now?”

“Lindy? He was here earlier. Then Hermes dropped by
and they took off together.”

“Hermes. Ron’s bird? Did you notice if he was
carrying anything?”

“Yeah, but he flew away before I could coax him
inside to remove it. Usually it’s a canister with a ring attached
to his leg. This time it was something else, looked like a flash
drive, a red one.”

Another flash drive? “Did Ron tell you he was
sending it?”

“No, I hadn’t spoken to him in a week. What’s on
it?”

“I don’t know, but someone wanted it badly enough
they may have killed Ron trying to get it.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, but I’m trying to find out.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do I know it’s not you?”

“Would I tell you my name if I was the killer?”

“All you gave me was a business card.”

I showed him a few pieces of photo ID. “Satisfied?
Will you help me?”

“Shouldn’t the police handle this?”

“Sure. If they had the time and resources.” I let
that sink in a minute. “If Hermes and Lindy aren’t here, where’d
they go?”

“Carrier pigeons are predictable. They’d be at Ron’s
place, or en route.”

“What if Ron’s window was closed and Hermes couldn’t
get back in?”

“He’d probably be up on the roof.”

“Does Hermes have a favorite food?”

“Rice crackers.”

“What kind?”

“I’ll give you some.” He got a bag of rice crackers
from the kitchen cupboard. “You can coax him to come like this.” He
made a fluttering sound with his tongue in the back of his
throat.

“Thanks.” I put the crackers in my bag. “If the cops
check in again, which I’m sure they have no time to do, can you
keep this between us for a day or so?”

We looked at each other for a minute. His eyes
rimmed with tears, and then he blinked and nodded.

“
I’m sorry for your loss.” I gave
him a hug. “If I find out who killed him, the police can take it
from there.”

“Thank you.” He walked me to the door. “And good
luck.”

Chapter 44

I drove across town to the Lower East Side. I went
around Ron LeVeen’s block a few times, looking for unmarked cars,
but saw nothing. I parked the car and shouldered my tote bag.
Although this morning’s weather report had included a low pollution
index, I pulled on my eMask. The threat of contaminated air was a
perfect excuse for face concealment. It frustrated the NYPD but the
public had a right to protect themselves. In a world where the
state couldn’t ban the
burqa
, what chance did they have
against the respirator?

I walked up Delancey opposite LeVeen’s apartment
building. I didn’t see any plainclothes stakeout. I crossed the
street and passed the entrance to circle around back. The building
sharing the alley was industrial, and not a single window looked
onto LeVeen’s building.

I saw no security camera. A zig-zag pattern of
ladders and platforms climbed the back wall, allowing fire escape
from each apartment. The lowest platform was 15 feet above me, with
a counter-weighted ladder that could be lowered by a person’s
weight.

From my tote bag I took out a boating line with a
grappling hook. I give it a few twirls, pitched it up and hooked
on. I pulled the ladder down and climbed up. The ladder rose behind
me, its counterweight returning to its original position. I went
all the way up the fire escape, slithered onto the rooftop and lay
motionless a few moments to assess the layout.

On the roof a small superstructure with a door gave
access to the interior stairway. A wooden patio had been built
around it. A cluster of lawn chairs and tables with umbrellas
fanned out from a BBQ unit.

I stood and walked to the patio. I’d just stepped
onto the wooden deck when two pigeons took off from the table where
they’d been sitting. They ascended in a half-circle and landed on
the roof of the superstructure.

I looked up at the pair of them. “Hermes and Lindy,
I presume?”

They looked at me. One of them cocked his head.

I made a throaty pigeon cooing sound. The other
pigeon cocked his head. I thought I sounded pretty good. I cooed
again, walked to the nearest table and sat down.

I looked up at them. They looked down at me. I took
out the rice crackers. They were salty, sesame-flavored and crisp.
I loudly crunched a couple and made happy cooing sounds as I ate. I
looked up at the pigeons. They watched me.

I crumpled a couple of crackers in my fist and
tossed them onto the deck. “Hermie, Lindy,” I cooed.

A minute later, they were on the patio deck, pecking
up cracker crumbs like nobody’s business. The larger of the two
pigeons had a beautiful mantle of purple feathers, and clipped to
his leg was a red flash drive.

Now it all came into focus. After cloning Jordan’s
phone, Jack had learned that a DMV informant was sending a data
stick to LeVeen containing evidence of collusion between corrupt
city officials and Russian mafia. Tipped off by Jack, Tatiana had
come to retrieve the DMV data stick before LeVeen could write his
story. But when she’d asked him to surrender it, probably at
gunpoint, LeVeen gave her the blue flash drive instead, the one
Marielle had mailed to Crabner the month before. And somehow he’d
managed to clip the red DMV drive onto Hermie before things got
ugly and Tatiana shot him…

I crushed another two crackers, and tossed them onto
the table beside me. In a minute both pigeons were up on the table.
I cooed some more and offered bits of cracker directly from my
hand. By now we were friends, and when I reached out to stroke
Hermie’s back, he didn’t flinch.

I picked him up and cradled him in my lap. In a
moment I had the ring unclasped, and the red flash drive in my
hand. I released him and he stayed there a moment, not budging
until I stood up.

I took the fire escape down to the ground. Five
minutes later I was back in my car with the doors locked. I didn’t
have a device in the car to access what was on the flash drive, so
I headed straight to my office.

As I drove up Fourth Avenue, I noticed I was being
tailed by a dark blue van, the same one that had tried to follow me
from Globik’s clinic. I veered off into Chelsea and ran a zig-zag
path toward Midtown but the van stuck with me at every turn. Except
for when I turned onto a one-way street, mounted the sidewalk and
scared the shit out of fifty pedestrians. My escapade left an irate
cop at the intersection blowing his frustration out on a whistle.
My tail man chose not to follow me.

I parked the car at Mr. Kim’s and went to my office.
My phone had rung while I was driving, so when I got inside I
checked my voice-mail for messages. Detective Mundt had called to
tell me I was wanted for questioning in connection with Nick
Walker’s death and I should turn myself in. Sure. I’d like to turn
myself into the Invisible Man. For the time being, I settled for
locking the door.

I powered up my laptop and plugged the flash drive
into the USB port. There were only four files on the drive – a
JPEG, an XLS, and two MP3 files.

I opened the JPEG first. A detailed map of the five
boroughs showed a spider’s web of colored lines, and multiple nexus
points where they met. I scrolled around, trying to make sense of
it. There was no legend so it was impossible to know what either
the lines or nexus points represented.

I opened the XLS file, and saw more than a thousand
rows of data. A header line indicated each record contained: a
17-digit VIN, make of vehicle, model and year; registrant name,
license plate and address; a date and time for an originating
address; date and time for a waypoint address; date and time for a
destination address; total elapsed time and mileage.

Several pages in the XLS file appeared to be
summaries on people in the main data set. I recognized a few names,
all politicians within the five boroughs, Harris Jordan among them.
I also saw a lot of Russian names, but none I recognized. There
were graphs for each of the summaries, showing which of the
politicos and Russians were most connected to other members of the
data set.

Other summary pages seemed to focus on locations.
Some were restaurants and bars, others were public parks, some
service stations at major intersections. Again, a series of graphs
indicated which locations were most frequented by people in the
data set, and similarly, which locations were favored by key
people.

I opened the smaller of the MP3 files. A man’s voice
spoke haltingly with a metallic intonation. He sounded like someone
who’d lost his larynx to cigarette smoking and had to speak through
a throat mike, although probably it was just a filter to disguise
his identity.

“These two files contain... everything you need...
to write your story. The data set represents... two years of
activity...”

I heard heavy footsteps coming down the hall. I
clicked pause on the media player and held my breath.

Chapter 45

A key turned in the lock and the door banged open.
Detective-Sergeants Boyle and Mundt charged in, guns in hand,
panting like feral dogs who’d just cornered a cat. Boyle closed the
door behind them. Mundt came around the desk, lifted me from my
chair and threw me face-first against the wall. I turned around
slowly. He wagged his gun at me to keep me in place.

Boyle plucked my iFocals from my face and tossed
them on the desk. He frisked me and took my pistol. He yanked my
chair away from the desk and thrust me into it, putting the laptop
out of my reach. He looked at the screen where the media player had
paused over a background of spreadsheet data. “What’s that?”

I felt my nose, which was bleeding after its
encounter with the wall. I took out a tissue and staunched the
ooze. “I want to call my lawyer.”

Mundt emptied my tote bag onto the desk. He pawed
among my various tools and accessories, spreading them out to
isolate a Beretta Bobcat in the midst of it all. He pointed it out
to Boyle.

“Twenty-five caliber, same as the gun that killed
LeVeen.” Mundt leaned in over the desk, and made a show of sniffing
the muzzle. “Been fired recently too.”

“That’s not my gun,” I said, realizing how lame the
truth sounded in this situation.

But better yet, it wasn’t Tatiana’s gun either. This
one had a blue-grey finish with a black plastic hand-grip. Mundt
had obviously brought it along to frame me, and slipped it into the
mix when he dumped the contents of my tote bag.

Not that being framed was a cheery scenario, but
assuming I even lived to make it into court, Lutz should be able to
dismiss this particular smoking gun. I hadn’t seen a warrant
yet.

“You’re up to your eyeballs in shit, snooper,” Mundt
told me. “Someone saw you in Ron LeVeen’s apartment building
yesterday.”

“Let’s see what’s on this laptop,” Boyle said.

He clicked the play button and moved the MP3 slider
back to the beginning. Mr. Metal-Vox, the deep throat of the DMV,
resumed his robotic account of what was contained on the flash
drive.

“These two files contain everything you need to
write your story. The data set represents two years of activity,
specifically the movements of city officials throughout the five
boroughs, and known members of the Russian mafia. The map shows
their most common meeting spots over the same time span. The
spreadsheet contains all the raw data downloaded from the DMV’s GPS
database, while several pages contain...”

The narration continued for another minute. The gist
of it was, the files on the flash drive provided evidence of
regular, if not systemic, meetings between New York area
bureaucrats with known members of the Russian mafia over the
previous two years. Although it was impossible to know whether
money or information had been exchanged, the sheer frequency of
clandestine meetings would be enough to launch a criminal
investigation into influence peddling, with all the financial
forensics that would accompany such an inquiry.

Obviously, heads would roll and careers would crash
and burn. Virtually everyone in the database was a valid suspect to
have killed LeVeen. No wonder the DMV informant was keeping his
identity secret.

“Jackpot,” Mundt said. “I think we just found our
retirement plan, Boyle.”