Antenna Syndrome (8 page)

“Only that I’m innocent.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything that’s any of your business.”

“Don’t be a smartass. If you don’t cooperate, you
could end up in Rikers.”

“I am cooperating. I’ve done everything but give you
tips on how to solve this case. You want that too? Look at the book
the spider came in. I never touched it. Check it for prints. Maybe
you’ll turn up a felon on AFIS. And if you’re not arresting me, I’d
like to leave now. But if you are, I’d like to call my lawyer.”

“Sure. Or maybe we put you in a holding tank while
we check out your alibi, maybe get distracted by another incoming,
maybe forget about you for a day or two.”

“Keep talking, I’ll tell you when I get scared.”

Mundt entered the living room just in time to hear
that. Boyle raised an eyebrow at him.
Find anything?
Mundt
shrugged with a straight face, but he looked like the house cat
that’d just eaten your pet hamster. He came to stand in front of
me.

“You want scared? I can help you there. It’s been so
long since I punched a fag, I forget how mushy it feels.”

I was trying to think of a comeback when he hit me
with a cast-iron fist on the left jaw. I fell off the chair and
struck my head on the floor. I lay there awhile, wondering if he’d
hit me again if I got up too fast. Not that I had any options,
since I felt as capable of swift and decisive action as a
deep-frozen catatonic.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Boyle said, but I
didn’t know whether he meant me or Mundt.

“Fifteen minutes, and I’ll pound the truth out of
this smartass.”

“Take it easy. He looks like he bruises easily. We
can’t take him to the precinct looking like a peach that’s been
used as a hockey puck.”

“Who cares? Not the Lieutenant.”

“He’s sitting up,” Boyle observed. “You can probably
hit him again in a minute.”

“Give me a break,” I told Mundt as he squared off in
front of me. I tasted blood, ran my tongue around my mouth and
counted my teeth. I took a couple of puffs off the vaporizer. The
KavaKat steadied my nerves but things weren’t looking good. Once
they started beating on you, it could end in the river.

“I’m sorry, I lost my train of thought.” Mundt put
his face so close to mine I winced at his turgid breath. “Were we
talking grease money?”

“Why do I need to bribe you? I could have split the
moment that spider attacked Myers. I didn’t need to call 911 and
stick around for a beating.”

“We’ve got you with a fistful of dollars” Mundt
said, “and a dead dealer with enough dope to get the whole
neighborhood high. Looks like a falling-out among criminals.”

I looked at Boyle, the good rational cop, the one
who might save my sorry ass from his sociopathic partner. He
shrugged as if to say,
old movie but a good plot
.

“
Myers isn’t dead,” I said, “and
once he’s able to talk again, he’ll verify my story. Or you can
call my clients.”

“We’ll see.”

“Do you do this with all your witnesses? No wonder
nobody wants to get involved.”

“Just with the smartasses, friend, just the guys who
don’t know when to shut up.” Mundt hit me again, and his left hook
was every bit as good as his right.

When I picked myself up off the floor they took me
down to the precinct. En route I rehearsed my story, which wasn’t
hard because most of it was true, and the parts that weren’t true I
repeated to myself like a mantra until it flowed like a campaign
promise from a politician’s lips. They took me to an interrogation
room and questioned me all over again, recording it this time.
Finished, they left me locked in the room for several hours.

In the evening, Boyle came to see me. “We accessed
your file,” he said. “Private investigator’s license, college
degree, no criminal record, a rented office in Hell’s Kitchen. You
own a one-bedroom condo in Clinton Hill and a ten-year-old muscle
car with no outstanding tickets. Your old man’s doing ten to
fifteen in a country club prison for corporate fraud, and your
mother died of brain cancer a decade ago. Your wife and daughter
were both killed in the Brooklyn Blast. I’m sorry for your
loss.”

“Can I go now?”

“Not until we see what happens with Myers. He’s
still in a coma in Bellevue.”

“Then I’d like to call my lawyer.”

He gave me a phone and left the room. I called my
lawyer, Damien Lutz, to see if he could bail me out. But he was on
another case and would be tied up until well after midnight. In the
background I heard soft music, female laughter and the tinkle of
ice cubes. Lutz represented a chain of gentlemen’s clubs in
Manhattan and was often required on site to negotiate contracts
with suppliers. But he promised to see me first thing in the
morning.

Boyle and Mundt showed up. I returned the phone to
Boyle. Mundt took me down to the cell block. It wasn’t a long walk
but I managed to fall down twice and walk face-first into a wall. I
would have called 911 but I’d already made that mistake today.

TUESDAY

Chapter 13

Around eight in the morning my cell door banged open
and an old guy with the face of a tired bloodhound delivered a cup
of coffee and a wad of paper towels. I washed up in the cold water
sink and drank some coffee. It tasted like something drained from
the oil pan of a farm tractor.

My jaw was still plenty sore from where Mundt had
socked me yesterday. I opened my shirt and checked my ribs. After a
couple of nasty falls on the way down here last night, I was lucky
nothing was broken. I looked up the air shaft and saw the sun
trying to pierce the smog. Looked like it might be a nice day.

Something splashed in the toilet. A wet rat climbed
out of the bowl and dropped to the floor with a splat. He circled
the room with his nose along the wall, pausing now and again to
look at me. He found a dead cockroach and paused to eat it.

I felt sorry for the little guy. I searched my
pockets for a stick of gum or a breath mint but found only a
ketchup sachet from a takeout counter. I tossed it to him. He
gnawed off a corner, laid a paw on the sachet and leaned his weight
on it. Ketchup oozed out in a crimson glob and he lapped it up.
Finished, he wiped his whiskers with a paw and looked at me as if
to say,
Where’s the hot dog that goes with that?

A pair of boots came thumping down the hall. The rat
climbed onto the toilet rim and dived into the murky bowl. I worked
the flush to speed him on his way. I only wished I could have gone
with him.

“Let’s go, Savage.” A young jailer banged the cell
door open and beckoned me to step out. His hands looked big enough
to rip a phone book in two. He snapped cuffs on my wrists tight
enough to render them numb and pushed me down a corridor past
unshaven faces and black eyes peering from behind bars.

“What’s up?” I asked on the elevator that took us
upstairs. It was much too early for my lawyer. Lutz was probably
still in bed.

“Shut your face,” he said in a voice that sounded
like chicken bones going through a meat grinder.

I shut up. I kept my eyes on the floor indicator
above the door, trying to ignore the red smear on the wall and the
tooth shards on the floor that crunched beneath the jailer’s
boots.

We got off on the second floor and walked down a
short hall toward a translucent window. The jailer pushed me into a
windowless room with matte green walls and two desks, joined at
waist level like Siamese twins, behind one of which sat my old pal,
Mundt, he of the kind word and the gentle hand.

~~~

“Morning, Savage.” It was a statement, not a
greeting. Mundt didn’t look happy and it didn’t make me feel happy
to see him unhappy. The jailer was gone before the pins and needles
started in my hands. Mundt stared at me with a pair of eyes that
could have given Dracula lessons in intensity. I stood erect and
confident like a man with nothing bad on his conscience.

“Has my lawyer arrived?” I said, just to remind him
I had some legal momentum on my side.

“No lawyer,” Mundt said.

Boyle entered the room with three cups of coffee,
leaving the door ajar. He still had bags under his eyes but his
pupils were as big as dimes, and there was a nervous twitch at the
corner of his mouth. I guessed he’d been keeping late hours, but
Dexedrine or something similar was holding him up. They each took a
coffee and indicated I could have one too.

Mundt kicked a chair out from the desk for me. I sat
down and Boyle perched on the edge of the desk, swinging a leg back
and forth like a metronome. We all drank our coffee and looked at
each other. I wondered what was in store. Neither seemed ready to
talk and the silence was getting on my nerves. Then I heard it.

From down the hall came a high-pitched wail paced by
a steady
whap-whap-whap,
like some crybaby getting spanked
with a riot stick. Was this the waiting room for level two
interrogation? I broke out in a cold sweat.

Boyle closed the door gently, as if he didn’t want
to disturb the concentration of anyone working down the hall. He
turned the dead bolt to lock the door, then flicked a wall switch.
From an overhead grille, a ceiling fan began to churn, sucking the
stale air out of the room, taking most of my optimism with it.

“How’re you feeling?” Mundt shook a couple of
contraband cigarettes from a pack of Eagle Clouds, lit one and
offered me the other. I held the cigarette up to his lighter flame
and it didn’t shake much.

“Glad to be alive,” I said, acting like I thought
I’d stay that way.

“How’s your memory this morning? Anything you want
to change in your story?”

“No.” I blew some smoke overhead and watched it get
sucked up into the grille.

“Okay. Any last words before we give you another
beating?”

It took me a few moments to say, “No.”

“Then sign this and get the fuck out of here.” Mundt
shoved a thin sheaf of stapled sheets across the desk at me. I read
the transcript of yesterday’s Q&A session. It was all as I’d
related, a mostly-truthful account of my first day on the case of a
runaway paraplegic with a fascination for insects. No wonder they’d
given me a hard time. I scarcely believed the story myself. But I
signed the statement and took a last puff on the cigarette before I
dropped it into my coffee dregs.

“I’m free to go?”

“You’re free to take a flying fuck into the Hudson,”
Mundt said. “Scram before we change our minds.”

“What happened?” I asked Boyle.

“The toxicology unit at Bellevue confirmed Myers was
bitten by some kind of Mexican jumping spider. Turns out they’re
pretty common, coming in with the bananas. But ever since the
Brooklyn Blast, they’re getting bigger and more hostile. Kid in
Harlem got bitten last summer and died because no one sought
medical attention in time. You probably saved Myers’s life.”

“So he’s alive?”

“They brought him around just long enough to answer
a few questions,” Boyle said. “Once he confirmed your story, they
let him go back to sleep.”

“Now fade, snooper,” said Mundt, “and fade fast. I
don’t ever want to see you again.”

I could have told him the feeling was mutual but I
thought I’d used up my share of luck for the day. I faded faster
than a pair of cheap denims in a bucket of bleach.

Chapter 14

Boyle took me downstairs and left me and my
paperwork with the desk sergeant. No charges filed, free to go.
They gave me back my tote bag, wallet, weapons and other personal
effects. I counted my money. A thousand dollars was missing. I
checked the inventory form they’d filled out when they’d booked me.
In the money section, a digit was missing. But what’s a digit, give
or take? I decided not to make a federal case of it. Given the
financial incentives for cops to fast-track felons into private
prisons, I was lucky to be free again.

I called Lutz as soon as I hit the street. As it
turns out, he was already en route and just a few blocks away. I
stood on the curb as he arrived in a current-model Cadillac
Stratus. It looked like a shark on wheels, blue-grey with a slim
dorsal fin on the roof, engine side vents, transition glass
windows. The power door on the passenger side opened before I even
touched the handle. I slid into the soft leather seat and the door
swung shut with a reassuring
thunk
.

“Have you eaten?” Lutz said.

“Not since yesterday’s lunch.”

“Turn your goggles off.”

I powered off and put my iFocals in my tote bag. I
felt naked and ineffectual, admittedly my natural state, but I
still didn’t like it.

He took me to a West Street joint owned by one of
his clients where he ate free, like a high-end soup kitchen for
lawyers. It was on the second floor and we got a window table
looking out across the Hudson. Lighted by the morning sun, Jersey
never looked better.

A waitress in a lizard-skin outfit with high heels
enquired after our breakfast appetites, although her uniform
implied there might be more on the menu if only we knew what to ask
for. Lutz ordered for both of us – scrambled eggs, lox, bagels,
coffee and grapefruit mimosas.

The beverages came immediately. I drained my mimosa
so fast that Lutz gave me his and ordered another for himself. He
watched the waitress as she headed back to the bar. “That’s one
cute little lizard. I’d love to introduce her to my trouser
snake.”

Lutz wasn’t attractive, and no one but his mother
would call him lovable. He was short, maybe five-foot-six, with a
runty physique. He’d lost most of his hair on top, leaving him with
side panels that he’d let grow, and he had eyebrows like
caterpillars that had joined hands above his hatchet nose. From a
distance, it looked like some raggedy-ass laurel wreath the Roman
emperors used to wear.