Radiomen (21 page)

And then, suddenly, as I was leaning back against the car seat with my eyes closed, feeling exhausted as I listened to the rain continuing to pound on the windshield, an image came into my mind. That’s the only way I can explain it. Maybe there was a reason I had thought about the
TV Guide
, because it was like a screen had been turned on somewhere in some viewing theater in the back of my brain and a scene was being projected in a little bright, white square of light. The scene was made up of pixels of memory and intuition, little bits of experience and dreams and stories. It had a fire escape in it and a small dog orbiting Earth in a satellite and my uncle in his worn-out old suit, showing me how to turn the dial on a radio. Before the scene faded away, I had an idea of where Digitaria might be.

The rain was finally beginning to let up just a little as I eased the car back into the street. I left the condos and surf shops behind, heading down the peninsula on the badly torn-up road that ran between the elevated train tracks and the boardwalk—if you could call it a boardwalk, here, where many of the wooden slats were warped or missing and the beach beyond had been overrun by salt grass and tall stands of sea oats. Now, I was driving up and down the same ruined sidewalks, passing the same empty lots that I had passed by last winter. This was a no-man’s land of litter and rubble and it was going to take a long time for urban renewal to march its way down to this lonely area and reclaim it with bulldozers and backhoes. It had the look of a place that intended, almost deliberately, to continue its decline. The buried foundations of old bungalows, the piles of rotting, painted planks that used to be stairs and porches seemed more like archaeological relics than urban debris waiting to be replaced with upscale versions of what used to be.

Peering through the rain, I kept watch for the dog as I passed the remnant of each cross street, but I didn’t expect to find him yet. I just kept driving until I reached the corner where, up the block, I could see the squat brick box that was the shell of the Sunlite Apartments, framed on either side by the blackened trees that I remembered from the last time I’d been here. The rest of the landscape around me was flat, overgrown with tangled weeds.

I stopped on the edge of the road across from the Sunlite Apartments and turned off the ignition. I sat for a moment, listening to the near silence that now contained only the sharp ticking of the rain on the car’s hood and the occasional rattle of sand and pebbles as a gust of wind blew by. Then I opened the door and stepped out into the wet world.

And there he was. My dog, Digitaria. My entire self—blood, spirit, bone—felt flooded with relief.

The dog was sitting on his haunches, on what remained of the sidewalk outside the entrance to the Sunlite Apartments. Previously, I hadn’t paid much attention to the entrance of the building, but now I did notice that the front door of the building was gone. That made it possible to see inside, but because it was growing dark, from where I stood on the street, I couldn’t pick out any specific structures that might remain. Perhaps some part of the internal staircase was still standing, perhaps some of the apartments were intact, though surely long since claimed by mold and rot. It was impossible for me to know if the dog had tried to get inside, but whatever explorations he might have made were over now and he was simply sitting in the rain, looking at the building and occasionally tilting his head from side to side.

As I walked up beside him, he acknowledged me by moving closer and then leaning against my leg, the way he did at home. I picked up his leash, and wrapped it firmly around my hand. He turned his head and stared at me with those dark, glittering eyes.

I tugged on the leash but he didn’t seem to want to move. He turned back to face the building and then, suddenly, let out a loud yip—a high-pitched, disturbing sound that was something like the noise he’d made when I had come home late, but more urgent. The sound seemed to linger in the night air until the wind swept it away.

After a few more moments of staring intently at the gaping hole where the front door of the building had once been, the dog finally let me lead him back across the street to the car. He jumped in and moved over to the passenger seat. Once I slid into the driver’s side, the dog managed to maneuver his body so that he was lying flat across the seat with his head in my lap. Soon, we were driving back across the bridge and Digitaria was fast asleep. A few times as I was driving, he continued to make that yipping sound, and though it was much softer now, coming from somewhere deep in his sleep, it still made me wonder just what it was that he might be dreaming about.

~XI~

“A
pedophile?” I said to Jack. “
That’s
what they think you are? And they actually think they have some kind of evidence for this?”

“You don’t need evidence nowadays,” Jack said. “You just make accusations. And then you repeat them on some listener’s blog and before you know it—wham. Tried and convicted. Oh, yes—and did I tell you I might also be a drug dealer, a rapist and possibly the Antichrist? The Pope himself might issue an encyclical denouncing me because I promulgate degenerate theories about the sex life of the saints.”

“Well, you did have on that medium who claimed to be able to channel Joan of Arc and apparently she and one of her soldiers did not have a totally chaste relationship.”

Jack let out a long sigh. “Great,” he said. “
That
was one of the shows you tuned into.”

It was a warm Sunday night. In just a few days, the weather had shaken off its late spring chill and turned almost sultry. Jack and I were sitting at a table outside a restaurant on Seventh Avenue South, in the Village and he was telling me about his trip to Los Angeles, which clearly had not gone very well.

“But you told me they’ve been carrying your show for years. They know you. Why would they believe things like that?”

“Because there’s money involved. Blue Star Communications seems to have limitless amounts of it and they’re telling my bosses that they want to buy the company but won’t honor the contracts of anyone who’s morally unfit.”

“The Blue Awareness has an issue about morals? Maybe they can just hook you up to a Blue Box and cure you of your degenerate tendencies.”

Jack frowned at me. “Yeah, well. They didn’t offer me that remedy. All they’re going to do is buy out the rest of my contract, which just had a couple of months to run on it anyway, so they make out like bandits and I’m screwed.”

“But you’re going to sign on with World Air, right?” That’s what Jack had told me when he’d called me to arrange getting together tonight. Ostensibly, we were meeting so I could return his car to him, but I had also assumed that we were going to have a celebratory drink to toast the World Air deal. Now the situation seemed a lot less worthy of a celebration.

“I don’t have a choice,” Jack replied. “I have to say, though, I’m not as thrilled with what they’re offering as I thought I’d be. I mean, I thought they’d offer more. The deal on the table is two hours, from midnight to two
A.M.
, five nights a week, on what they call their alternative talk channel. The problem is that my listeners aren’t exactly the kind of people who subscribe to satellite radio. There’s a big difference between what comes to you free, over the air, and something you have to not only pay an annual fee for but also have to go out and buy some special equipment to even get involved in listening. Would you do that?” he challenged me.

I thought about it for a minute. “I might,” I said.

“Yeah, you might. But then, you’re a radio freak.”

“Am I?”

Finally, Jack laughed. “You don’t know that? Boy, have you got your uncle’s disease. Same as I do. Everybody else is watching TV or surfing the web, but people like you and me . . . I don’t know. There’s something about turning on that little box and hearing voices come out of the air. It’s kind of tied up with nighttime, right? And for a lot of people, with working. People driving trucks and cabs, guys working night shifts . . .”

“Bartenders,” I added.

“Exactly. Night people. Strange, angry, weird, bored, curious, sure they’re being duped by the higher-ups who really control the levers of power . . .”

Now he had me laughing. “Well, we are, aren’t we?”

“Of course. Probably since the beginning of time. What’s scary, though, is people like Raymond Gilmartin having that kind of power. What is he but a rich guy who’s running a cult empire based on a bunch of science fiction books? Just my luck, they decided to diversify into media. And then picked me as a target.”

“Maybe you should be flattered,” I suggested. “They apparently think you have some influence.”

“I doubt it, really,” Jack replied. “I don’t think Raymond Gilmartin and his Blue Awareness disciples can distinguish between who’s just an irritation and who’s a real enemy. To them, everyone who isn’t with them is an enemy.”

Now he was sounding gloomy again; his few moments of lightheartedness had quickly fled. It was surprising to me to experience this side of him. Up until now, I had thought of Jack as a kind of unrepentant optimist. But even for him, apparently, there were a limited number of bright sides of life he could find a way to look on.

We parted around nine o’clock. He went to collect his car, which I had parked a block or so away, and I headed for the subway. When I got home, Digitaria, as usual, was waiting by the door. He was used to getting a walk at night, so I obliged him, putting on his leash and leading him downstairs.

Except for the one furtive truck lurking in an alley with its running lights on, the neighborhood was deserted, almost silent. I led the dog down to the end of the block, meaning to cross the street and walk him along the chain-link fence that bordered the marshy shore of the bay.

Just as I stepped off the curb, a van came careening down the block. I heard the sound off to my right and pulled the dog, who was a few steps ahead of me, back to the safety of the sidewalk. Holding tight to his leash, I moved back a couple of feet and waited for what I assumed was some kind of crazy drunken driver to pass by.

Only, that wasn’t what happened. The van came to an abrupt halt right in front of me, deliberately blocking my path. For a moment, I still thought that what I was confronting was just an impaired driver—until two men stepped out of the back of the van.

I knew immediately that this was a very bad situation, but was frozen in one of those moments where your eyes register what’s happening but your brain refuses to respond by initiating any kind of useful action. I saw the men walking—no, running—toward me, but did nothing. The dog, however, experienced no such hesitation. He reacted before I did.

I heard a sound come out of him that was bone-chilling—a growl that ended in yet another version of his strange, high-pitched yipping. This sound was clearly meant to be interpreted as both a warning and a challenge. I felt him stiffen at the end of the leash and then, in an instant, he pulled at the strap so hard that it ripped in half. The next thing I saw was Digitaria rushing at the two men.

He stopped just before he reached them, standing straight and still, with his tail coiled behind him like a hook. He bared his teeth and continued to emit his strange warning sounds. My thin shadow of a dog suddenly seemed deadly mean.

I hadn’t noticed it before—that frozen-brain blindness, I guess—but the two men had obscured their features by wearing yellow ski goggles, which gave them a bizarre appearance. Focusing on that for just a moment, whatever part of my mind was still logically processing information sent me a question:
yellow
goggles? Couldn’t they have found some that were blue?

But logical thinking was once again overcome by the kind of panic that takes away your sense, your breath and your voice. I watched them advance toward the dog, thinking they meant to walk past him to get to me. I knew I should at least start screaming, but I couldn’t seem to remember how.

Instead of moving toward me though, the men turned to the dog. One of them was holding a rope with a loop at the end. With a quick motion, he attempted to slip it over Digitaria’s head, but he never got the chance because, in an instant, the dog went into a frenzy.

Yowling like a mad thing, he leapt at the man with the rope and locked onto his arm. Then he let go and leapt at the other man, who had a box cutter in his hand. The sudden, terrifying notion that he might actually kill my dog brought back my voice. I started to scream for help.

That must have been what summoned another pair of men, who came running from behind the truck that was parked in the alley. One had a tire chain in his hand and the other was carrying an iron crowbar.

At this point, one of the two men in the yellow goggles had gotten hold of the torn piece of Digitaria’s leash that was still attached to his collar and was trying to drag the dog into the van, but each time they pulled at him, he spun around and sank his teeth into an arm, a leg, a hand . . .

My rescuers looked like the guys I see around the airport all the time—the ones out on the runway, or in the back lots, loading cargo or driving big, dented vehicles that haul things or move them or clear them away—tough, burly guys with scraped hands and meaty faces. But they moved quickly; in an instant, it seemed, they had positioned themselves between me and the men in the ski goggles.

The confrontation between the ski-goggle guys and the men from the truck was over almost before it started. As the truckers approached, one of the goggle men weakly waved his box cutter around, but all that got him was a solid whack with the tire chain that quickly brought him to his knees. The truckers soon had both attackers pinned against the side of their van, weapons raised as if they were going to lop off their opponents’ heads in some grisly, slasher-movie fashion, using the chain and crowbar. Instead, they dragged them around to the back of the van, ripped open the doors and tossed the two men inside. Then, after slamming the doors shut, the guy with the crowbar banged on the back of the truck so hard he left a visible dent.