Ukulele of Death, page 14
The automaton in the surgical garb didn’t talk, but there was a voice that came over what was clearly a very efficient audio system in the room. No static. Very clean sound, but the voice was being distorted electronically. And the person speaking was oddly not standing next to the gurney. ‘The police aren’t coming.’ Male voice. Not familiar. ‘No one is coming.’
‘Yeah?’ I was reduced now to arguing with the ceiling because that’s from where the voice was emanating. ‘You underestimate me, and that’s your mistake. Now why don’t you come in here, tell me who you are and why you kidnapped me, and then we can have a reasonable discussion before I tear your head off.’
‘We can have any discussion you like right now,’ the disembodied voice said. Calm as could be. Cool as a cucumber, assuming all cucumbers are cool. My mind was wandering. I was feeling the need for a charge more since the shock of waking up. It was probably a bad plan to ask the anonymous being in all the HazMat gear next to me, now attaching a blood-pressure cuff to my left bicep, to plug me in for an hour or so. ‘For example, you can tell me exactly where the people who constructed you might be found.’
It’s not that I didn’t suspect all this sci-fi melodrama was connected to my own bizarre origin story. It’s not that I thought this man, hiding behind walls and electronic devices, didn’t know there was something odd about me more than the obvious, that I was tall and strong. But hearing The Voice say that, so matter-of-factly, sent an actual chill up my spine. Turns out that’s really a thing. I think, to my eternal embarrassment, that I gasped audibly.
I tried to cover for it. ‘It’s hard to breathe with all this stuff tying me down,’ I said, like that made any sense. ‘What are you talking about?’
Having finished taking my vitals, the person in the head-to-toes PPC removed the cuff and hung it back up on the monitor. He/she/they turned toward the badly disguised one-way mirror (and it should be noted that all mirrors are one-way mirrors; this one simply had a window on one side) and held up a hand making the ‘OK’ sign. Whoever it was did not speak and the voice of my tormentor didn’t address any comment to them. But there must have been some kind of communication device included in the hood because the person inside it nodded. Clearly it is best to spend the extra money on your evil equipment because you get the optional features.
There was no way I could get myself out of these restraints. Pulling with all my might had just tired me and not weakened the wrist or shin cuffs (not ankle, which was odd I thought) at all. But if the medical assistant made the move I wanted them to I might at least have a chance to see the evil genius – we were in that territory, let’s be real – in person. That would be something, anyway.
But I needed that human (an assumption, but at least a likely one) to move to my right and that hadn’t happened yet.
It was a very narrow room made narrower by the tons of equipment. You had to wonder what the landlord must have thought when all that stuff was being moved in. I despaired for the fact that my captor might lose his security deposit. But the tight quarters might very well play to my advantage.
‘You know perfectly well what I mean,’ The Voice said. ‘The people who constructed you, or grew you. Where are they? Tell me and we’ll remove your restraints and send you on your way.’ This guy clearly grew up watching James Bond movies and rooting for Ernst Stavro Blofeld.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ I said. ‘If you mean my parents, they were killed in a car crash when I was little.’ I was watching my new friend the service technician, who was adjusting levels on various devices. But on the left side. I needed them on the right side.
‘Don’t insult my intelligence,’ The Voice said with a weary tone.
‘Don’t insult mine,’ I said back with what I hoped was a sneer. ‘You didn’t put a bag over my head and bring me to the crazy man’s Mayo Clinic to ask me questions about my parents. You have some medical reason for me to be here. So let’s put our cards on the table. What do you really want? Because I’ll tell you right now, what I really want is to get up off this gurney and spend five minutes in a room with you.’
I was not pleased when the medical technician reached into what appeared to be a sterile chamber of some kind (it actually looked like a microwave oven but I was willing to bet it wasn’t) and pulled out some vials and a syringe. I’d never had a blood test before and didn’t know if anything unusual would show up. Not to mention I figured I needed all the blood I had in stock.
But I was pleased when the tech did something I wouldn’t have expected: As they crossed in front of the gurney, they felt down with their foot and I could feel the front two wheels unlock. The mask was pointed directly at me, so I figured the tech was looking at my face while doing that, so it must have been deliberate. Maybe I was about to be moved, but I didn’t have to go along with their plans. The tech’s move gave me exactly the advantage I’d been hoping for, even if I couldn’t figure why the wheels had been freed up.
‘What I really want,’ The Voice said, ‘is to get the whereabouts of the people you call your parents.’
‘If you believe in heaven, I think that’s the area code you’re looking for,’ I told him. ‘So now that we’re done, how about telling your pet robot here to let me up?’
That was when the medical technician first spoke and asked exactly the question I wanted to hear. ‘Are you right handed or left handed?’ A woman’s voice. Go figure. In stupid action movies the evil minions are usually men. Except the ones the hero is going to sleep with.
I looked at her and tried to put on an expression of worry. ‘Left handed. Why?’ I was lying, but I knew why she asked and was hoping she’d react accordingly.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Then I’ll do this on your right arm.’
Oh, yes. Please do.
She held the syringe, with a newly unwrapped sterile needle attached, straight up to avoid unintentional contact. Then, nodding, she walked around the gurney and picked up a cotton swab and some alcohol from a cabinet on her way. Perfect.
She got to the right side of the gurney. Before she could even consider tying off my arm and jabbing that thing into a vein, I reached out as far as I could with my left foot.
Like I said, the room was very narrow and there was bulky equipment everywhere. I kicked as hard as I could against a heavy unmovable object, some computer equipment I couldn’t identify, on my left. The force (I was pretty strong even if I needed a charge) moved the gurney – with its front wheels unlocked – directly into the tech and pinned her against the wall without noticeably injuring her. Even better, I could still reach the computer console with my left foot (this place must have been a closet before they’d moved in half of NASA) and maintain the pressure on the woman in all the PPC. She gasped, as it caught her directly in the abdomen. She dropped the syringe.
‘What are you doing?’ The Voice demanded.
I looked the tech directly in the mask. ‘You have a choice,’ I said. ‘You can unlock my right hand or I can push a lot harder and cause internal bleeding and you can die.’
That was not much of a choice, I knew, and without speaking the tech reached over and unstrapped my right hand. She reached for my right foot but her arms just weren’t long enough.
Not a problem at this point because I had already undone the restraint on my left hand and was working on the right foot.
‘Brenda!’ The Voice scolded. ‘What did you do?’
By then I’d freed myself completely and was getting ready to jump off the gurney when the tech suddenly put her hands on my right triceps. I looked in her direction. She reached into her pocket and pulled out my cell phone, which she handed to me.
‘Run,’ she whispered.
I figured that was a pretty good idea and was at the door and through it into a corridor before The Voice could protest any further or send any extra minions in my direction. I looked back at the tech before I bolted and she was just standing where I’d left her, pushing the gurney far away enough that it wouldn’t be painful anymore.
It was as nondescript a corridor as I’d ever seen and I had no idea which way to run, so I just chose a direction and hauled ass. At the end of the hall was a doorway that led to stairs and I flew down three flights until I finally made it to the street. I’d never been so happy to be engulfed by my fellow New Yorkers.
This wasn’t a neighborhood I knew well but it’s hard to be in Manhattan and not find your way. I tried to look normal, like I wasn’t fleeing a mad scientist out to collect my blood and track down my parents, because the average NYC resident can sense that on you.
Luckily there was a subway station at the end of the second block and I blended into the usual mélange of humanity submerging themselves into the bowels of an island in the hope that they can get to their next meeting faster. I figured calling Ken or Mank or Aunt Margie (who I always wanted to talk to when I was scared) could wait until I was as far away from this building as possible. And until I could figure out what I wanted to tell Mank. Hi, I got abducted by a mad scientist who knows that I’m a freak not of nature and wants to experiment on me and find the parents I told you were dead. That didn’t seem like a great strategy no matter how good a kisser the man was.
I tapped my phone on the scanner and blended as well as someone who looks like me can blend into the crowd. There wasn’t an open seat on the train, which was kind of comforting.
At least some things were normal.
TWENTY-ONE
Aunt Margie’s apartment is laid out a lot like the one Ken and I share. This is not surprising, given that it’s one floor below and two doors down from us. She has decorated in a slightly different style than our Early Goodwill motif, with real rugs and tables bearing tablecloths as well as actual art on the walls. In our apartment we have the occasional concert poster, unframed and stuck up with masking tape, or a plant I’m in the process of killing with inattention.
I went straight to Aunt Margie’s from captivity. She’s the closest thing I have to a mom present in my life and I love her dearly. She was also an excellent crime reporter in her time and knows the things I don’t about law and its enforcement. So today, given that I (1.) needed a hug and (2.) had just been kidnapped, she was the perfect person to seek out.
I got the hug. That was first, and it was a good one that lasted a long time. Aunt Margie loves Ken and me like we were her own children, and even though we tease her about it sometimes, we know that we’d literally not be alive today without her.
Once we sat down she got out a box of Oreos and some milk because she’s Aunt Margie and knows what’s necessary, and two coffee cups because that is unquestionably the best way to dunk Oreos. I told her my whole bizarre story (the one she didn’t already know) and asked her advice.
‘I can’t call the cops,’ I said. ‘They’ll ask me questions I can’t answer. And that’s especially true now, because this must mean that the suspicions Mom and Dad had about people trying to find us were right. We have to be even more careful now. Maybe we should move.’
Aunt Margie sat back in her chair a little, seemingly stunned. ‘Move?’ she said. ‘Out of the apartment?’
‘Out of New York,’ I said. ‘If they know we’re here. It could be dangerous.’
She waved a hand to knock the idea down and squash it. ‘Dangerous. For you everything is dangerous, Frannie. But nobody’s come here to the apartment. Your home address isn’t listed anywhere. You have business cards circulating, apparently all over the place because a doctor you never met had some in his car, and yet nobody’s come to your office looking for you.’
I told her that Igavda had mentioned a middle-aged woman who’d come in and left without leaving a name.
‘That was probably a prospective client and you know it, Frannie. Let me tell you something about danger.’
‘You know danger?’ From my memory, she sat in a studio and read news copy. But it just that moment occurred to me that Aunt Margie had probably given up the more perilous aspects of being a crime reporter when it had become obvious she’d have to be taking care of two very unusual children full-time.
‘I’ve seen a bit of it,’ she said with a smile. ‘And I can tell you this: Danger is something you can run away from or you can run at. If you run at it and you look determined enough, danger tends to turn tail and run. Danger, my dear, is a bully and a coward.’
Aunt Margie took a dunk of Oreo and ate it. She has a dramatic sense.
‘So you’re saying I should welcome danger?’ This was not what I’d been taught growing up and I’d been taught by this very same woman.
‘No. You don’t seek it out. But if it comes for you, that’s when you charge it. And today, it came for you. I think you found out something about yourself today. You might have been scared …’
‘Might have been?’
‘Let me finish. But you dealt with it directly and you found a way out of the problem.’ A little milk dribbled down her chin. It’s an occupational hazard with wet Oreos. She had a napkin handy. Being prepared was what Aunt Margie was all about.
I thought about that. ‘Mostly I was rescued by the lab technician,’ I said. ‘All I did was kick the wall.’
Aunt Margie extended her index finger and shook it. ‘Now that’s interesting,’ she said. ‘You didn’t recognize this woman, you said?’
‘I said I couldn’t see this woman, at least not her face,’ I answered. ‘She was wearing so much protective gear I was starting to wonder if they’d exposed me to plutonium while I was unconscious.’
Aunt Margie leaned forward. ‘Did you recognize her voice? Think hard.’
I did as she suggested and scoured my brain for any familiar tones. ‘No. At first I was suspicious that maybe it was Dr Kendall because you said you thought you recognized her from somewhere, but I don’t think I’d ever seen or heard the tech before. Maybe she was just a kind soul who didn’t like the way I was being treated.’
‘Then she used a really lousy temp agency when she was looking for a job,’ Aunt Margie scoffed. ‘No, she was there working at something she at least didn’t have a problem with and then you showed up.’ Aunt Margie, unlike many others, doesn’t get quiet when she’s thinking. She talks everything out and makes every possible suggestion. ‘Would it do any good to stake out the building and wait for her to leave?’
I shook my head. ‘I have no idea what she looks like,’ I reminded her.
‘I thought maybe by build or the way she carries herself or something.’ She was covering for the fact that she hadn’t thought of that. Then she looked me in the eye. ‘What about letting yourself get captured again? Ken and I could be trailing you and follow.’
The thought of that absolutely turned my stomach. ‘Not a chance,’ I said. But the mention of being followed reminded me of Mank, who had left four text messages and two voicemails on my phone that I hadn’t yet answered. ‘What’s my story going to be?’
‘Your story?’ Aunt Margie was confused.
‘I’ve got to tell Ken and Mankiewicz something. I mean, I have to tell Mank because he called me and said someone was following me. And I think I have to tell Ken, because they might try again.’ That thought wasn’t doing my digestive system any good either. ‘I’ve got to call Ken.’
Aunt Margie nodded. ‘Right now,’ she said.
Ashamed of myself for waiting this long I punched in my brother’s number and he answered on the fourth ring because why not make me wait. ‘Listen,’ I said before he could tell me about how far he’d gotten with Igavda (which I was willing to bet was nowhere at all). ‘Someone kidnapped me off the street today and strapped me to a gurney.’
There was a long pause. A very long pause. ‘Wow,’ Ken said finally. ‘They got you too?’
I made him come home. This wasn’t a conversation for the telephone; it was one I wanted to have when there was a two-by-four nearby to smack Ken upside the head with if I didn’t get the answers I wanted. We have a very loving sibling relationship.
While we were waiting for him to make it home from our office I caved in and called Mankiewicz without a full story in place. I figured I’d wing it. OK, so I had no idea at all what I’d do but I knew I had to do something so Mank wouldn’t be putting out an APB on me.
‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been calling all day.’
‘Yeah, I was out of range for a while,’ I said. That didn’t actually mean anything in the English language but it was weirdly accurate in its own way. ‘You said someone was following me.’
‘And you hung up on me,’ he answered back.
‘It wasn’t intentional.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Mank said.
‘What did you mean by that? Who’s following me?’ This was no time for him to try to be cute. I mean, I’d just gotten up from a gurney and I hadn’t asked to be there. Of course Mank didn’t know that, but I didn’t see the relevance in that fact at the moment.
‘You walked by the precinct this morning and I happened to be looking out the window,’ he said, now in cop voice. ‘There was a guy definitely tailing you. He stopped when you stopped, started when you started. I’m surprised you didn’t notice him.’
I was kind of surprised by that myself. ‘What did he look like?’ I asked.
‘Medium height, but I was looking down from the second floor so it’s hard to gauge. Wearing a hat so I didn’t get to see his hair. Had on a dark coat, like a trench coat, which is weird in this weather. I only got a glance at his face. Caucasian. No facial hair. That’s the best I can do. Fran, what are you up to that somebody would want to put a tail on you?’
That was an excellent question, but the only honest answer would have required a very long conversation and probably some smelling salts for Mank. I’d also need to trust him a great deal more. He was a nice guy, but my kind of secret is just for family. And Mank wasn’t family.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ I told him. Which was at least defensibly true. I didn’t know why some guy was following me on the street. If it had been The Voice he’d been behind me the whole way to his evil lair, including the trip on the Q train. ‘I guess it could have something to do with Evelyn Bannister’s murder, but it’s not like I’m carrying classified information around with me.’ Well, it mostly wasn’t like that. Depended on how you looked at it.
