Free Antenna Syndrome by Alan Annand

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