Antenna Syndrome (6 page)

Despite the fallout, five years of massive clean-up
had scrubbed the city to a degree that the environment was
moderately habitable. Despite the devastated economy, for every two
jobs destroyed, a new one emerged in essential services or
infrastructure rebuilding. Some days it seemed like New York might
come back from the dead.

The youthful unemployed fended for themselves, like
feral cats living off garbage in back alleys. A journalist had done
a story on NYC street kids, dubbing them the Alleycat Cohort.

A pack of scruffy punks occupied the corner of 14th
and Seventh, many without respirators or the cheapest face masks.
Suited up in anti-pollution gear, I shook my head in dismay. New
York air was still a fog of pollutants, and some of these kids were
virtually naked. Rack it up to the arrogance of youth, thinking
they could smoke crack, have bareback sex and share needles without
Death looking over their shoulders. But Death ruled the streets
now, and he wasn’t looking the other way. If anything, their
attitude made him take notice. Death was bored too, and there was
nothing like a little street action to keep him on his game.

I was glad I’d brought my pistol, not to mention
knife and pepper spray. No telling when some kid might come to the
end of his rope and decide to go out in a blaze of meth-fueled
glory, taking out any innocent bystanders who got in his way.

Across the street, a giant screen showed two
space-age gladiators in a clash of guns, laser swords and
hand-to-hand combat. Heavy metal thundered from speakers a deaf man
might have designed to inflict pain on mankind. Atop the screen a
ribbon of blood-red light flashed
Universal Games
.

This could be it, said the not-quite-dead optimist
in me, indulging in a hope, however baseless, that I might quickly
locate Joey Myers.

Skirting some puke on the sidewalk, I entered the
arcade. The air was so thick with smoke – contraband cigarettes and
ganja – that fog lights couldn’t have penetrated the murk. I
shuddered to the sounds of heavy metal on one hand and game noise
on the other – stuttering gunfire, clanging weaponry, shrieking
metal, screaming victims. Dante should have stuck around a few more
centuries, he could have saved himself describing a hell that man
would create all on his own.

I did the circuit through the
sturm und
drang
, looking for someone of Myers’s description. At least the
demographics were right. Most gamers were guys in their 30s and
40s, typical of a generation that had never left their parents’
homes. These grown men were all strapped into chairs, 3-D helmets
over their heads, hands white-knuckled on joysticks, adrenaline
coursing through them like fire in a matchstick factory. I wondered
how many of them, sedentary and ill-nourished as they were, risked
death by heart attack while immersed in virtual realities of chaos
and peril.

At the front counter a 50-year-old guy sat at a
computer, pummeling an electronic percussion pad with drumsticks. I
cupped hands to mouth and mimed screaming through a megaphone. He
tugged his earphones off and raised an eyebrow.

“Seen Joey Myers around?” I hollered.

“Don’t know him,” he shrugged.

“Astrologer.” I gave him the physical description
the landlord had provided. “Used to run a bookstore on 22nd
Street.”

“A bookstore? People still buy books?”

“A place called
Metamorphosis
.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“If it did, would you even hear it?”

“What?”

I opened my wallet and gave him a bill. “Ask around.
If you find him, tell him to call me. I’ve got some rich clients
for him.” I wrote what he needed on a scrap of paper.

He glanced at it, nodded and put his earphones back
on to resume drumming.

~~~

Out on the street, I felt high after all that
second-hand smoke. I took out my vaporizer and inhaled some therapy
to establish a new baseline.

“Spare change, man? I got a sucker for a
fifty-dollar match on Stellar Combat. All I need’s another five to
get it on.” The kid hustling me was nineteen going on thirty, with
greasy brown hair, an alky’s nose and a big square belt buckle
whose
bas-relief
design featured a naked woman riding a
chimera. She was twisting hell out of the lion’s mane and he looked
like he loved it.

I gave the kid a ten and said, “Know a guy called
Joey Myers? Snake tat around his neck, does horoscopes?”

The kid turned and whistled. “Hey, Bambi.”

A petite blonde tossed a tangle of hair over her
shoulder and tottered up on high heels. Although surely underage,
she wore a black mesh top through which I clearly saw her pale
breasts, and a pair of jeans that some cat had used to sharpen its
claws.

“Guy’s looking for Scorpio. You know where he
lives.”

“That’s Myers’s street name – Scorpio?”

“Right.” Bambi stared at me, her mascara-encrusted
eyelids twitching like centipedes in death convulsions.

“He live around here?”

She lit a cigarette and adopted a thoughtful pose,
like she had to think about it, in reality probably just waiting
for some money to appear. “Why you want him? You a cop?”

“No. I have a package for him.” I showed her the
padded envelope.

She held out her hand. “I can give it to him next
time I see him.”

“No, you can’t,” I said. “But I can give you some
cash for his address right now.”

Her pupils flared a tad as she looked me up and
down, trying to decide if she could pump me for more.

“Right now,” I repeated, as I took out a bill and
snapped it between my fingers, “before you get greedy, and I talk
to everyone else on the strip.”

She reached for the bill but I made it disappear in
my fist.

She shrugged and pointed down 14th Street. “Eighth
Avenue. South half a block, Horatio Street. He lives in Belvedere
Towers, apartment Forty-four.”

“You sure he still lives there?”

“Did three days ago, when I delivered some… medicine
he’d asked me for.”

“He’s sick?”

“Not physically.” She shook her head. “Just
twisted.”

I gave her the money. She snatched it like a hawk
plucks a pigeon out of mid-air.

“What medicine?” The boy punched her in the
shoulder. “Pussy cream?”

She hit him back. I left them trading punches before
they started to play pass-it-on. I bruise easily.

Chapter 10

Half a block down Horatio Street, Belvedere Towers
was a five-story apartment building in white brick, the ground
level of which had turned as brown as a decayed tooth at the gum
line. Laundry fluttered like prayer flags on the railings of the
fire escapes. Many south-facing windows had tinfoil behind the
glass, testimony to a persistent urban myth that it would deflect
radiation from Brooklyn. The pigeons had left their mark on the
front steps, but I went up the stoop in two jumps without soiling
my boots. Surprisingly, the front entrance was unlocked. I checked
the lobby’s mailbox alcove and found “Scorpio” printed on cardboard
in slot 44.

Omitting a heads-up courtesy call on the intercom, I
climbed the gritty stairs to the fourth floor, terminating insect
life en route – crushing three huge cockroaches, hosing a dozen
more with DDT as they fled my approach. Slightly winded from both
the climb and the bug skirmishes, I knocked on the door of my
quarry. From down the hall came the chukka-chukka rhythms of reggae
music and the shrill laughter of a woman who was high on booze,
dope or life itself.

“Who’s there?” a man said from within.

“Keith Savage.” I sensed someone eyeballing me
through the peephole. “I’m looking for Joey Myers.”

“How’d you get this address?”

“Some street kid knows you as Scorpio.”

“Bullshit.”

“Sure, but here I am.” I held the large envelope up
to the peephole. “I’ve got some mail for you that turned up at
Metamorphosis
. Dave Jenner says hello.”

Silence. Then the clatter of a bolt withdrawn, a
lock turned. The door opened on a guy I’d have pegged as a high
school gym teacher in his late 30s or early 40s. He wore red
sneakers, tight jeans, a black T-shirt that showed his muscles, and
a pair of red glasses. He had fleshy lips and black hair cut so
short it looked like five-o’clock shadow.

“What do you want?”

“You still do astrology readings?” I looked past him
into a sparsely-furnished living room.

“Yeah.”

“Can I come in?”

He locked the door behind me, crossed the living
room and lit a stick of incense. I followed him, waiting for an
invitation to be seated. There was music on his sound system, a
heavy backbeat pumping a hypnotic dance track. I recognized it
right away. Alison Goldfrapp’s
Ride a White Horse
. It made
me nostalgic and sick all at the same time.

“You mind turning that off?” I said.

“What’s the matter, you don’t like music?”

“I love music, but I can’t listen to that.” It
brought up too many memories.

“Why not?”

“Play something else,” I yelled at him.

He gave me a worried look, wondering if he’d just
let a mental case into his apartment. He picked up the remote,
killed the song and switched to something I didn’t recognize, some
babe with a throaty R&B voice telling us how much he’d hurt
her, again and again.

I went to the window and looked outside. I couldn’t
see Brooklyn from here, but the tears came up in a wave anyway and
flooded my eyes so I couldn’t see anything anymore. Yet in my
mind’s eye I could still see Gwen in the living room, dancing
around the coffee table with Lily giggling in her arms, Goldfrapp
cranked up on the sound system. And as I watched them, I was
thinking this was one of those moments that ought to be captured on
video for Lily to see someday in the future...

...And then in a flicker of images, like cards dealt
at high speed, I saw Gwen and me on our first date in Brighton
Beach, then getting married with all our family and best friends
present, our week-long honeymoon in the Bahamas, Sunday breakfasts
in bed and making love, Lily being born, picnics in Marine Park,
taking Lily on the rides at Coney Island, kissing them each goodbye
that last morning because I had to go into the city early for a job
interview...

“Hey, man, are you all right?” Myers came up behind
me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

...Sitting in the lobby of the Century-Paramount
Hotel with a coffee while I read the paper, just killing time until
my interview for the security manager’s job, and then the announcer
interrupting the morning show to say there’d been a massive
explosion in Brighton Beach. Then they cut to a reporter in Battery
Park talking fast and furious about something that had just
happened, and over her shoulder you could see a dark mushroom cloud
rising above the skyline...

...A few of us stepped out of the hotel and there
was practically a gale force wind blowing up Eighth Avenue –
airborne newspapers, umbrellas going by like tumbleweeds, clouds of
dust – and everyone was pointing at the massive cloud spreading
over Brooklyn, casting a growing shadow on the borough, the city,
and the lives of millions of people who’d never had a clue this
would become the worst day of their lives...

“Can I get you something?” Myers was saying

I nodded my head. “I could use a shot of something,
anything – whatever you’ve got.”

There’d been many a day in the immediate aftermath
of the Brooklyn Blast that I’d considered a shot all right – a
fatal gunshot to the head with my own hand. I’d never thought I had
the courage to face the loneliness. But somehow one day blurred
into another and even after all the nightmares, waking up in a cold
sweat, crying and hugging my pillow, I was still here...

Myers went to the kitchen. I used those few moments
to wipe the tears from my eyes and take a few deep breaths. Was it
really five years ago? And yet it still seemed like
yesterday...

Chapter 11

Myers came back with a can of Miller. “Mercury
retrograde,” he said. “Like trying to drive by looking through the
rear-view mirror.”

“Tell me about it.” I turned my back on the Brooklyn
of my shattered dreams, sank into a chair, and drank half the can
in one gasp.

He studied me. “Going through a tough time? Need
some perspective, a sense of when this period will be over and you
can turn a new page?”

All true, but I shook my head. “I’m not here for a
reading. I’m looking for Marielle Jordan. Any idea where I can find
her?”

“You’re a cop?”

“Private investigator.” I showed my license. “She’s
disappeared and her family’s worried. I need to make sure she’s all
right.”

“Family offering a reward?”

“Good information’s always worth something.”

“Got cash on you?”

“I’ve got a lot of things on me,” I said obliquely.
“Be nice and you’ll get your share. Get funny, you’ll wish you had
Medicare.”

“No need to make threats. I’m an honest
citizen.”

“Maybe. But hard times make for hardened
people.”

He shrugged. “Tell the truth, I don’t know a
Marielle Jordan. Only Marielle I know is a Randall.”

Bingo! Perhaps for the sake of her father’s privacy,
Marielle had used Jack and Vivien’s surname. “How do you know
her?”

“She contacted me through my website a couple of
years ago. I’ve given her a few readings.”

“Ever meet her?”

“She had mobility issues, couldn’t come into the
city. We did her readings online.”

“How often did she consult you?”

“First time, a general reading, about two years ago.
Nine months later, another session on career. She needed to select
an agent so I helped her with that. Six months ago, a compatibility
analysis for her and some guy. Since then we’ve done another two
readings, still regarding the same guy.”