Antenna Syndrome

By Alan Annand

Ever since the Brooklyn Blast in 2021, the human bedbugs and cockroaches of a traumatized society have crawled out of the woodwork. Cash-strapped and struggling with his own PTSD, New York investigator and exterminator-for-hire Keith Savage suddenly catches a case.

A beautiful LA journalist wants him to retrieve a younger sister who’s vanished from their Long Island home. Runaway or kidnapped, there’s a huge find-and-return fee to get Marielle back home before the weekend when her father, who’s running for mayor, returns from a strategy retreat to launch his anti-corruption campaign.

But it’s complicated. Marielle is paraplegic, a reclusive artist whose in-demand paintings feature insects. The housekeepers on whose watch she disappeared are an odd couple with a hidden agenda. Her only online friends are an astrologer and an angry young chess devotee, a paraplegic who recently underwent experimental limb replacement.

New York in 2026 is nasty and brutish. Between the toxic environment, turf wars between corrupt police and Russian mobsters, and a semi-deranged populace swinging from shakedown to breakdown, Savage is bitten and stung everywhere he turns. Within a day, he stirs up a wasp’s nest of trouble. From poisonous jumping spiders to a swarm of giant Asian hornets, the trail of insects leads to a clinic where a radical entomologist is pushing the frontiers of science and ethics by using 3D printing to build human limbs with insect tissue.

Savage’s mission: extract Marielle from the web that binds her before she submits to a metamorphosis of no return.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Annand
• Release date: Apr 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780986920684

Alan Annand

ALAN ANNAND is a writer of crime fiction, offering an intriguing blend of mystery, suspense, thriller and occult genres. When he’s not dreaming up ingenious ways to kill people and thrill readers, he occasionally finds therapy in writing humor, short stories and faux book reviews.Before becoming a full-time writer and astrologer, he worked as a technical writer for the railway industry, a corporate writer for private and public sectors, a human resources manager and an underground surveyor.Currently, he divides his time between writing in the AM, astrology in the PM, and meditation on the OM. For those who care, he’s an Aries with a dash of Scorpio.ALAN ANNAND:- Writer of mystery suspense novels, and astrology books- Astrologer/palmist, trained in Western/Vedic astrology.- Amateur musician, agent provocateur and infomaniac.Websites:- Writing: www.sextile.com- Astrology: www.navamsa.comFiction available at online retailers:- Al-Quebeca (police procedural mystery thriller)- Antenna Syndrome (hard-boiled sci-fi mystery thriller)- Felonious Monk (New Age Noir mystery thriller #2)- Harm’s Way (hard-boiled mystery thriller)- Hide in Plain Sight (psychological mystery suspense)- Scorpio Rising (New Age Noir mystery thriller #1)- Soma County (New Age Noir mystery thriller #3)- Specimen and Other Stories (short fiction)Non-fiction available at online retailers:- The Draconic Bowl (western astrology reference)- Kala Sarpa (Vedic astrology reference)- Mutual Reception (western astrology reference)- Parivartana Yoga (Vedic astrology reference)- Stellar Astrology Vol.1 (essays in Vedic astrology)- Stellar Astrology Vol.2 (essays in Vedic astrology)Education:- BA, English Lit- BSc, Math & Physics- Diploma, British Faculty of Astrological Studies- Diploma, American College of Vedic Astrology

Book preview

Chapter 1

I was sitting in my office late Monday morning, nursing the mother of all hangovers with aspirin, electrolytes and lots of water. For lack of something better to do, I was watching BBC World News on my iFocals. Frankly, I was fed up with local bad news and wanted to share in some foreign suffering too.

Last Friday had been the fifth anniversary of the Brooklyn Blast. Over the weekend all of the major networks had run documentaries on it, as if any of us needed reminding of an event that had been tattooed onto the skin of our collective soul, never to be erased. Ads for liquor and medications had run heavily throughout the weekend.

Brighton Beach had been ground zero for the homemade nuclear bomb that had gone off on September 11, 2021, five years ago. But it had taken the CIA, the FBI and Homeland Security over six months to figure out what had happened, because the instant death toll in the vicinity of Neptune Avenue and Brighton 7th Street hadn’t left any neighbors to tell any authorities about any suspicious characters leading up to the event.

Eventually, the NSA had delivered. A spider’s-web of emails and phone conversations had finally patched together a murky plot. It had involved two cousins from Azerbaijan who’d come to the USA on scholarships to study physics at MIT. Somehow they’d ended up spending weekends at an uncle’s house in Little Odessa, building a nuclear bomb to celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11. Apparently it had gone off accidentally before they could deliver it to downtown Manhattan that fateful day.

Brighton Beach had been reduced to a wasteland. Declaring a national emergency, FEMA had ordered total evacuation of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Of their own accord, half the population of Queens and many in Manhattan and the Bronx had decided life was too short for this shit, and it was time to relocate. Almost overnight, New York’s mushroom cloud of disaster had turned into a bonanza for Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, whose real estate was snapped up in a frenzy of bidding wars.

For those of us who’d remained, nursing chronic hangovers, today was just another of those days – no business, no agenda, and no prospects. As some great blues man had once sung, If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all. As for work, I hadn’t had any in weeks, and was thinking I’d soon have to start selling the furniture to cover the rent.

There wasn’t much to sell. Two filing cabinets contained my case files and twenty years worth of old Rolling Stone magazines I was holding onto, waiting for them to become collectibles. A mini-fridge held some energy bars and protein drinks. My modest library of police procedure manuals, law books and true crime filled a small bookcase. I also had an old oak desk the size of a coffin, its rim scarred with cigarette burns from a previous owner.

Outside, a gaggle of low-hanging clouds hung over midtown Manhattan, like a street gang of Chernobyl orphans with head colds, weeping a fine drizzle of radioactive mucus, diesel fumes and coal dust. My third floor office on 33rd Street looked out over the Amtrak rail yard where trains coupled with noisy frequency all day long, like honeymooners deaf to the world around them.

On the sidewalk below my window was a dumpster full of office trash, its huge transparent bags of shredded paper evidence of another business gone bust. Even when I sometimes felt like hurling myself out that window, it’d be just my luck those bags of shredded paper would cushion my fall and save my ass to suffer another day.

The intercom buzzed and I went into yellow alert. It was probably the landlord looking for the rent. I toggled my iFocals from TV to lobby view. The scene changed from riots in Beijing to a woman in red latex jumpsuit and motorcycle helmet looking up at the camera. I knew she was a woman because she had more curves than a mountain road.

I couldn’t guess her age because, even though her visor was up, she had a scarf wrapped across the lower half of her face. Respiratory scarves were the new fashion accessories, consisting of brightly-colored micro-fibers sewn in layers, knotted behind the neck or held in place with Velcro panels. If you had to live here, they were practically standard issue these days for anyone who walked the streets of the greater New York area.

I tapped the stem of my iFocals to activate the built-in microphone. Can I help you?

"Is this the right number for Centaur Investigations?" She had a vaguely mid-Atlantic accent, although it could have been Ivy League and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

Yes.

Will you buzz me in?

What do you want?

I have a job for you.

That piqued my interest but, being the naturally suspicious type, I rarely took things at face value. I cued the lobby camera to pan. As far as the lens could see, there was only wall-to-wall boric acid, a thick carpet of it to thwart invasion by giant cockroaches, rumors of which were no longer urban legend but grim reality. I saw no ruffians lurking behind pillars.

Show your face.

She tugged her scarf below chin level. I saw an attractive young woman whose face triggered no memory of mug shots nor gave any indication she might be a murderous psycho, of which there were many in New York. Like a lot of us these days, she wore a pair of barely-visible lenses – data goggles – for mobile access to GPS, breaking news, security alerts and so on.

Carrying any weapons? I asked.

Pepper spray. She took a dispenser from her shoulder bag and held it up to the camera.

Is that all?

Yes.

There’s a scanner when you enter the elevator, I warned her. If you’re concealing anything else, I’ll seal you inside the elevator and send you to the basement with the rats and the cockroaches. It was true about the scanner, which I’d acquired for the super on the black market from a guy who knew a guy who used to work at LaGuardia. The rest was bravado.

I’m not armed, she said, and you’re totally paranoid.

Welcome to my world, I said. Third floor. Suite 311.

I pressed the buzzer to open the elevator door. She stepped inside and I toggled the camera from lobby to elevator.

Don’t touch anything you don’t have to, I cautioned her. They hose the elevators down with DDT every month. Once banned, DDT was unofficially back in vogue, driven by the need to suppress insect infestation throughout the greater New York area, especially Manhattan.

She pressed 3 on the control panel. She gave the camera one more brief look and turned her attention to the door, which opened moments later on the third floor.

I switched cameras and watched her come down the hall in a quick staccato march that seemed almost military in its pace. I had to admit, I was a little excited by her impending arrival. It had been a dull day and a cash-strapped month. The prospect of an attractive woman with a loaded purse had accelerated my heartbeat to a steady flutter in my ears.

Chapter 2

I took my pistol, a 9mm USP Tactical Heckler & Koch, from my desk drawer. It was a retro model, but sufficient for my needs. I rarely had to shoot anything bigger than a sewer rat, although many times I’d been tempted to use it on squeegee punks. I stuck the pistol behind my belt and opened the door for my prospective client.

She scanned the room as she walked in and, seeing nothing more threatening than poor housekeeping, went to the window to inspect the air scrubber. A white patina of boric powder clung to the ankles of her knee-high boots. She took a small device from her bag, waved it around and checked the readout. Assured the air was clean, she removed her gloves and helmet, and shook out her blonde hair.

Her latex jumpsuit was the color of fresh blood, with a waist I could have spanned with two hands. She unzipped it just enough to reveal a modest show of tanned cleavage. She wasn’t wearing much makeup and yet her face was pretty much flawless, so I guessed she was in her late twenties, maybe thirty. Her eyes behind the data goggles were slate green.

Have a seat. I offered my hand. My name’s Keith Savage.

Natalie Jordan. She gave my hand a quick swipe, just enough to say we’d made contact. She remained standing. My father is Harris Jordan.

"The Harris Jordan? Who’s running for mayor?"

Yes.

How can I help you?

She sat in one of the club chairs opposite my desk. I want you to find my sister, Marielle. She’s twenty and she disappeared two days ago.

Happens all the time with twenty-year-olds. What makes you think she’s not coming back?

We tried all weekend to reach her, but no response. We’re worried she’s in danger. Has she been kidnapped, or just run away? Even if it’s just the latter, she may need help returning. She’s paraplegic.

Accidental?

Congenital. Born with vestigial stumps for legs.

Have you notified the police?

No. It’s complicated. Are you aware of my father’s position on law enforcement?

I recall a sound bite from one of his speeches. Something like, the NYPD’s like a rotten log hosting a colony of termite ants?

A comment taken out of context. All he meant was, the police force needs a shakeup, a greater degree of transparency, a return to the values of law and order that made New York what it is.

A crumbling city-state bordering on social, financial and infrastructure collapse?

Are you this cynical with all your clients?

No matter how cynical, it's never enough to keep up.

Now you sound like some of my father’s opponents.

There’s a lot to cope with these days. On the streets, an openly-hostile environment gave any sane person pause for debate each morning, whether to seize the day or stay in bed. But the police are usually discreet, especially in a kidnapping...

No. Somewhere in the chain of command, we’d encounter someone who hates my father. All it takes is one phone call to a reporter. If the media got wind of this story, they could jeopardize his chances for election.

What story, exactly?

It’s just an expression. All I meant was, our family drama shouldn’t be dragged into the spotlight.

It’s a drama if she ran away. If she’s been kidnapped, it’s a crime.

But we don’t know which. That’s why I want to hire you.

Why me? I gestured around my office. I assume you have money but let’s face it, I’m not exactly high end. There are plenty of first class agencies out there.

I looked at their websites. But I liked your face. You look like an honest guy. It’s that simple. I followed my gut and here I am.

Who was I to dispute her intuition? On most mornings I liked my face too. And I was an honest guy. Desperate some times, but honest all the time. And I liked her face too.

Okay, tell me what happened.

Late Saturday morning a service repairman came to the house. It wasn’t until later in the day that anyone noticed Marielle was gone. We assume she left with him.

What repairman?

Air-conditioning. The property manager will give you details.

Where’s your father in all this?

He doesn’t even know about it. He’s in the Catskills, working on his campaign platform. We hope you can find Marielle before he returns next weekend.

So, besides you, who else knows about this?

Only my father’s personal staff – a housekeeping couple.

And they’re okay with keeping him in the dark?

She disappeared on their watch. Their jobs are at stake.

And you care about them?

I’m just trying to help. My father can’t afford any major distractions, never mind bad publicity, right now.

Where was Marielle living?

Long Island. My father’s main house in East Massapequa.

Who else lives there?

Aside from my father and Marielle, just the housekeepers.

Names, address, phone numbers...?

Jack and Vivien Randall. She gave me all the coordinates.

You live on Long Island too?

"No. I’m in between things. I took a job in LA six months ago. I still haven’t decided if I’ll stick it out there or not. My father wants me to come back here and work with him. For him, if he gets elected."

So you came back just to find your sister?

I came here Friday on separate business. But I can’t stay. I’m due back in LA tonight.

So if and when I find her, I take her back to East Massapequa and the Randalls?

No. Install her in a hotel with good security. Don’t worry about expenses, you’ll be reimbursed.

Something wrong with the Randalls?

Let’s just say, I don’t totally trust them.

Because…?

Personal reasons. Her lips tightened. Go out there and meet them, learn what you can to find Marielle. But you don’t need to inform them of your progress. You work for me, and report to me alone. Right?

Sure. The client had the money, and the money was always right.

Just find her and keep her safe until I return.

I’ll need a way to get in touch.

She used her goggles to share her contact coordinates.

Do you have a picture of Marielle?

She transferred me a couple of pictures. Marielle was a pretty girl with dark hair in bangs, dimpled cheeks and a cute nose. A nice figure filled out a cashmere sweater. But she had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. What did I know? Her photos revealed nothing below the waist.

Any data that might help in a search? Date of birth, social insurance number, credit card numbers...?

Birth date is June 17, 2006. The housekeeper has that other information.

What do you know about her routine?

Very little, but Vivien will tell you. She paused. I left home five years ago. I don’t want to get into it, but let’s just say it was no longer a healthy environment and I needed to move on.

Lots of people left after the Brooklyn Blast. An understatement. A third of the five boroughs population had fled in panic.

True. She didn’t offer any personal reason for leaving New York, as if escaping a contaminated zone wasn’t rationale enough.

And you moved to LA?

Miami. Although we’re sisters, Marielle and I were never that close. Truth is, we’re half sisters. Different mothers, but that’s another story.

Could she be with her mother?

No. She died years ago. She paused a moment, gauging the gap between my need-to-know and my nice-to-know. After I left, we didn’t stay in touch the way we should have, and I blame myself. That’s why I don’t know much about her day-to-day life. She’s a talented artist but a recluse. Home-schooled, she’s had virtually no friends. I think this is the first time she’s ever left the house.

Excuse me for sounding judgmental, but that sounds almost inhumane.

Tell me about it.

Your father’s idea?

She bit her lip. "You know that Facebook line about relationships? It’s complicated."

I see. This was going to be complicated too.

Believe it or not, that’s all I know. The Randalls will tell you more.

Okay.

So you’ll take the job?

I made a shrug of helplessness. There’s little here to go on.

I’ll double your fee if you find her before next weekend.

That erased most doubts I had about the case. Alright, I’ll give it my best shot. But I need half up front.

She opened her bag and gave me some operating capital. A small wad of American bills. Some Canadian. A handful of GoldChip cards, ranging in size from five to 10 grams. And an electronic transfer of DollarCoin, the now-ubiquitous digital currency of choice. I added it up and gave her a receipt.

She stood and pulled on her helmet. I’ll be back on Friday. If you find her before that, let me know immediately.

Wish me luck? I watched her pull on her gloves.

Do this quickly, Mr. Savage, and you’ll get a handsome bonus. She closed her visor and left my office.

Chapter 3

I watched her on camera until she’d left the building. In the office below me a piece of equipment – possibly a money counter – rattled with machinegun intensity. Based on the traffic to and from the second floor, I’d long suspected that Pharma4U sold FDA-unapproved drugs promising relief from radiation sickness, for which there was a large black market. Thus far I had no need for their product. But many sufferers did.

Chinatown, recognizing an opportunity of a lifetime, had almost overnight created a market for traditional herbal medicines with a patch-based delivery. City buses carried posters showing a demographic array of New Yorkers wearing medicinal patches on their arms. Anxiety, bulimia, depression, diarrhea, incontinence, indigestion, insomnia, loss of libido, neuralgia, vertigo, etc, ad nauseam – There’s a patch for that! Unfortunately, there was no patch for chronic insolvency, from which I did suffer.

I used my iFocals to plug everything Natalie Jordan had given me – name, phone numbers, CyberCall coordinates – into a search engine, then ran a few reverse lookups to fill in some blanks. After about fifteen minutes of surfing and sifting, I found something linking her to The Confidant, a national content provider of dubious repute based in LA. Just as The Huffington Post had become the aggregator of choice for liberal left-wing news and opinion, The Confidant apparently aspired to be its dumpster-diving cousin, feeding the public’s insatiable appetite for sex, scandal and sensationalism.

I trolled through their website and discovered a staff writer named Natalie Dunning who looked just like my client. I gathered a few facts: Dartmouth graduate, brief stint at the Sacramento Bee, registered Democrat, Sierra Club life member, stock car driver, yoga enthusiast, NRA member – a girl of some contradictions. Not to mention, possibly, a liar.

As for Harris Jordan, I already knew the public persona that had emerged in the run-up to the New York City mayoralty campaign. He was divorced, but no one really cared about that any more. His appeal lay in his simple platform – fight the tsunami of crime and corruption that had swamped the five boroughs, especially Brooklyn, in the aftermath of the Blast.

Law and order were at their nadir. Upstanding citizens of means had fled the area by the millions, leaving bottom feeders in their wake. Street gangs ruled whole neighborhoods, their turf wars fought with automatic weapons. Drugs were sold openly, prostitution was epidemic. Property crime was through the roof, houses and buildings being pillaged on an industrial scale by teams of day-strippers who broke into properties and gutted their plumbing and wiring. Urban copper mining was the gold rush of the day.

Bureaucratic corruption was rife. It cost a fortune in bribes to do anything legal, leaving rational people no choice but to circumvent laws and ordinances on a routine basis. Harris Jordan wanted to end all that, to pull New York back from the brink of a failed Soviet state, crush the criminal gangs that were bleeding the five boroughs, and give people hope in the form of honest administration and tough-love justice.

Harris Jordan was especially vocal about the Russian mafia, which he’d characterized as bedbugs of modern society. They were sucking the blood out of everyone, and no district or level of society was immune. There was only one response to infestation, Jordan warned, and that was total extermination.

He had my vote. But for the present, what really gave me hope for the future was cash in hand and the promise of a matching amount, maybe even a bonus, if I could find his missing daughter by the weekend.

I rolled the fridge aside and stashed most of the money in my floor safe, keeping some on me for operating funds. I turned off the lights to save electricity and dialed the air scrubber down to a low whisper. Pocketing my pistol, I shouldered my tote bag and locked the office.

These days, everyone carried a man-purse, because there was no telling when, where or why your foray into the city could take a wrong turn and leave you stranded with no resources but your own. In my bag I carried spare ammo, a knife, first aid kit, energy bars, water, vaporizer refills, flashlight, rope, pry-bar, DDT spray, hand-cranked generator, environmental protection and, of course, a roll of duct tape.

As I rode the elevator down, a dazed cockroach the size of a small mouse fell out of the overhead vent. I stomped on it fast and hard, crushing it under my heel. I hated bugs, and now they were everywhere. Ever since the Brooklyn Blast, the little bastards seemed to have come forth and multiplied with a vengeance.

Entomologists speculated that the low-level radiation which was causing neurological disorders and all kinds of cancers in humans had had almost the opposite effect on insects, stimulating both their activity, growth and reproductive cycle. We the people didn’t understand it and we sure as hell didn’t like it.

Before I left the elevator I put on my eMask, a micro-fiber balaclava fitted with goggles, nasal respirators and mouth filter. As I walked through the lobby, I tried not to kick up a dust storm of boric acid. It was still drizzling outside but, with both a gun and a fistful of dollars in my pocket, I felt better than I had in a long time. Nothing like a job to take a man’s mind off his worries, of which I had many.

~~~

I walked down the block to a parking compound run by a Korean family. These days nobody left their car on the street, for fear it’d be towed, stripped or vandalized. My 2016 Dodge Charger was a beast for gas but I’d got it hybridized five years ago when gas rationing kicked in, so now it ran on electricity, hydrogen or compressed natural gas.

Mr. Kim also had a sweet deal on some black market farm fuel, and kept my tank full in case I had to make a midnight run to some godforsaken place where service stations declined to operate. I banged on his door and raised the eMask so his security camera could see my face.

Good day, Mistuh Savage. Mr. Kim buzzed me in. A pump shotgun stood propped behind his desk. He punched an intercom and barked something Korean, in the middle of which I heard Charguh.

A minute later, my ride squealed to a halt in the passage outside his office. One of his sons got out and beckoned to me. I climbed into the Charger, locked the doors and headed up Tenth Avenue.

I’d installed an air scrubber in the car so it was safe to remove my eMask so long as I kept the windows rolled up. Traffic was a fraction of what it used to be, but there were still people on the streets, most with face masks and respirators, some with radiation burns and twitchy limbs. Life went on, as it had in other times and places. Berlin, London, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had all pulled themselves out of the wreckage. Now it was New York’s turn.

After the Brooklyn Blast, despite the panic, evacuations and radiation effects, some people had actually clung to their neighborhoods, refusing to let the city die. I passed a Greek restaurant with a terrace where some old guys were playing backgammon, wearing nothing more