12 Ant-Man Natural Enemy

by Jason Starr

  As they neared the corner of Seventy-Ninth Street and First Avenue, Scott said to the driver, “Right over here’s fine.” He nudged Cassie awake and said, “We’re here, honey.”

  They got out of the cab and walked down First.

  “I’m so tired, Daddy,” Cassie said.

  Scott was exhausted, too. He wished it were a normal night—that he could get into bed and fall asleep reading, knowing that Cassie was safe in her bedroom. But when they turned onto Seventy-Eighth Street, and saw the news trucks and police cars and law-enforcement personnel near his apartment building, he knew the next round of chaos was about to begin.

  IN THE living area of Scott’s apartment, Agent Warren and Agent James had been questioning Scott and Cassie for at least two hours. Cassie had been examined by EMTs, who determined that she’d suffered no physical injuries during the abduction, although they suggested a psychiatric eval to help her deal with the effects of her experience. Now, as far as Scott was concerned, the questioning by the FBI was causing more trauma for her.

  At first Scott had done most of the talking. Then Cassie had given her version of the events, and then Warren and James had gone back and forth asking Scott and Cassie questions—sometimes the same questions. It reminded Scott of the times he’d been arrested and interrogated by the police, except this time the questioners weren’t trying to catch him in a lie. They had no suspicion at all that Scott and Cassie were lying about anything; they just wanted to make sure they had all the facts straight so they could close their case on Willie Dugan. Cassie had given the agents the address of the house in which she’d been held in Wallkill, and the Feds had already gotten word that local police had discovered the three bodies there.

  “Let’s run this through one more time,” Warren said to Scott, possibly unaware that he’d used the “one more time” line about a half hour earlier. “When did you get the call from Cassie?”

  “Is this really necessary?” Scott asked. “My daughter’s exhausted, and she’s had a difficult day—obviously. And she has to go to school tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” James said.

  “Oh, that’s right.” Scott had lost track of the days.

  “My poor dad,” Cassie said. She smiled; it was good to see her smile again.

  “This is the last time,” James said. “I promise.”

  After a deep breath, Scott said, “About four-thirty this afternoon.”

  “Walk us through what happened after that,” Warren said, “and be as detailed as you possibly can.”

  James, as he’d been throughout the questioning, was taking notes on an iPad.

  “There isn’t any more detail,” Scott said. “I got the call from Cassie that she had escaped from the house. I asked her where she was, and she said Wallkill, New York, and that she’d gone to a coffee bar in town and borrowed a woman’s phone to call me. I told her to wait where she was, and then I rented a Zipcar and went to Wallkill. I picked her up, and we drove back to the city. I didn’t tell the police about the call because Cassie told me the men had warned her that if the police showed up, she’d be killed. At the time I didn’t know the exact situation, so I went up there, picked her up, and drove her back to the city. Oh yeah, and we stopped at a McDonald’s, where I called my wife—you can check on that—and I had two Filet-O-Fishes and a vanilla shake, and Cassie had a grilled southwest chicken wrap with a vanilla shake and onion rings. You said you wanted details, right?”

  Scott smiled, but the FBI agents didn’t seem to enjoy the sarcasm.

  “Are you sure you’re covering all of the relevant details?” Warren asked.

  “Yes, that’s all of it,” Scott said.

  Scott knew there were many details in this story that wouldn’t pass a good fact-checking. For example, if Scott had rented a Zipcar, that should show up on a check of his credit-card records. And if Cassie had called him in distress, where was the evidence of the phone call? Scott was hoping that the Feds wouldn’t dig into his account too deeply—that they’d be content that Dugan and his crew were dead, off the board, and assume that another associate of Dugan’s killed them. As long as the Feds didn’t know this had anything to do with Ant-Man, Scott would be happy.

  The first time he’d told this story, Agent Warren had lectured him for not reporting the distress call, saying that he could have jeopardized his safety and his daughter’s safety—yadda, yadda, yadda. Scott had apologized profusely for his “lapse,” claiming that he’d been in shock about the kidnapping and had acted impulsively. He apologized for any trouble he’d caused the police or the FBI.

  Yeah, he’d sucked it up big time.

  “There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Warren said.

  Uh-oh.

  “And what’s that?” Scott asked, bracing for another lecture.

  “Carlos Torres, the federal marshal, said you went up to your apartment a little before you got the call from Cassie,” Warren said. “How did you get out of the apartment building without him seeing you?”

  Warren hadn’t asked this question yet, and Scott paused, wanting to be careful with his words. “I have no idea. I just walked out the front door.”

  Scott felt bad for putting Carlos in the awkward position of explaining to his superiors how he’d let Scott slip away.

  “The way you and your daughter have been disappearing, you’d think you two were ghosts, or something.”

  “Ha ha,” Scott said nervously. “So are we through with the questioning yet?”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t forget to let you know when we’re through,” Warren said in the pompous, controlling tone he must have perfected in interrogation training at Quantico. He looked at Cassie and said, “And can you tell me what happened to you one last time?”

  Cassie looked exhausted, her eyes bloodshot.

  “Come on,” Scott said, “is this really necessary?”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Cassie said.

  For the umpteenth time, Cassie explained to Warren and James how she was abducted on First Avenue between Seventy-sixth and Seventy-seventh Street. She described the two kidnappers, as well as she could remember them—the big guy had bushy eyebrows; the short guy was balding.

  “Did you see the driver of the car?” Warren asked.

  “No, I told you,” Cassie said. “It was happening too fast.”

  “Okay,” Warren said. “Continue.”

  Cassie explained how she was bound and gagged in the car, how they switched cars a few times, and how she’d been taken to the house upstate. She retold an anecdote about a Sherlock Holmes story she’d read in school and said she hadn’t known where she was, but thought she was a couple of hours or so from Manhattan. She described being gagged, and the other man who had come to talk to her. This was a part of the story that Scott and Cassie had rehearsed while driving back to the city earlier. Scott had told Cassie it was fine to mention that a third man had come in to speak to her, but that she couldn’t say anything about his Ant-Man questions. As in the earlier round of interrogation, Cassie didn’t mention anything she wasn’t supposed to mention.

  Finally, Cassie told the agents about how she’d heard the gunshots in the house, and how terrified she’d been. She was getting visibly upset—shaking, her voice trembling as she spoke.

  Angry that Cassie had to be put through retelling this again, for the third or fourth time, Scott cut in with, “There’s no reason to make her do this again. Come on.”

  “He’s right,” James said.

  “Okay, fine,” Warren agreed grudgingly. “What about any other people in the house?”

  “I told you, I only know about the three men.”

  “But you said you heard someone leaving? In a car.”

  “I heard the car, that’s it.”

  “Is there any distinctive smell you remember?”

  “The house smelled like Mexican food,” Cassie said.

  “I mean the odor of a person.”

  “I told you, I r
emember how two of the guys smelled. One had strong cologne. The other one smelled like he’d just came back from the gym.”

  Scott listened, proud of Cassie for answering the questions exactly the way he’d instructed her to answer them, despite her fatigue and how shaken up she was. He’d told her not to mention anything about the fourth guy in the house because he himself didn’t understand exactly what had happened to him today—how he had been temporarily paralyzed, and for that purpose. He still didn’t believe any of it had been coincidental. Dugan, the two other dead men, and maybe one more person had lured him to the house under the suspicion that Scott was Ant-Man. There might have been some dispute before Scott arrived; in any case, the three men had been killed, perhaps by the same guy who had paralyzed Scott. Or the fourth guy might have arrived later and had nothing to do with the murders.

  Scott had no idea what the killer or killers wanted from him, or what the point of paralyzing him was. But if it involved the Ant-Man technology, he had to find out the answer before the Feds did. While Scott knew this could be pure paranoia—that the strange events might have nothing to do with Ant-Man—there was basis for his concern. There had been attempts to steal his technology in the past; in the wrong hands it could be used as a dangerous weapon. What if a drug lord got hold of the tech? Or what if the leader of a rogue country created an army of ant-sized soldiers? The possibilities were practically endless.

  There were already reporters camped out in front of the apartment, and the kidnapping and Cassie’s dramatic escape was the top news story in New York—maybe all over the country. If the Feds discovered that Ant-Man was involved, and it came out that Scott was Ant-Man, there would be an even bigger media circus—and more disruption in Scott and Cassie’s lives.

  Finally content with the information they’d obtained, Warren and James said goodnight, and left Scott and Cassie alone.

  The drama wasn’t over. Scott knew that tomorrow there would be more questioning from the Feds, and maybe the NYPD, as additional info about the case came out and the search for Dugan’s killer, or killers, progressed. Worse, there would be an onslaught from the media about the case. Those reporters camped out in front of the building hadn’t had access to Scott and Cassie yet.

  That said, after all of the drama and craziness of the day, it was nice to be alone with Cassie in the apartment.

  “So, did I lie well for you?”

  Scratch that. Cassie sounded angry, bitter.

  Scott listened at the door to make sure the agents were gone, then said, “Come on, don’t think of it as lying.”

  “Oh really? Then what do you call it?”

  Scott hesitated, then said, “Being not entirely forthcoming.”

  “That’s your logic,” Cassie said. “That’s really how you think. When you were stealing, did you say, ‘It’s not really stealing because I only steal from bad people, or from people who deserve it,’ or whatever you could think of to make yourself feel better?”

  “Okay, Cassie, you’re tired,” Scott said. “I get it, but you’re going to have to stop all this now and—”

  “Your secrets almost got me killed today,” Cassie said.

  “What?” Scott said. “You’re not making any—”

  “The whole reason we had to be protected was because that crazy guy, Willie Dugan, was out to get you. And why was he out to get you? Because of the other big secret me and Mom have been keeping for you, and I’m sick of it, totally sick of it. There’s always another secret, and another one after that—it’s neverending with you. There’s always something new I can’t do, or can’t tell anybody. Why’s it always about you and your secrets, anyway? What about me? When do I get to have a life?”

  Scott knew this wasn’t just teenage melodrama. He’d messed up as a husband and as a father, and she had a right to be upset with him.

  “I hear you, Bear,” he said, “and I’ve been trying to settle down, make things more stable for you.”

  “Don’t call me Bear!” She was raising her voice. “You call this stable? I got kidnapped today, I was questioned by the FBI. Everybody in the world, not only in school, knows about me now. You know how embarrassing this is? How humiliating?”

  Scott was going to remind her that her stealing the Ant-Man suit had caused some of her “instability” lately. But he caught himself, knowing this argument wouldn’t hold up since it was his suit.

  “I’m trying to change things for you,” Scott said. “I really am trying.”

  Cassie glared at him for several seconds, then went into her bedroom and locked the door.

  Not surprisingly, the story about the Upper East Side kidnapping and Cassie Lang’s dramatic escape from captivity in Wallkill, New York—where the bodies of three men, including one of the country’s most wanted fugitives, had been discovered—was the lead story on every major newscast. There was also a report on how the dead man in Louisiana had been identified as Lawrence Mulligan, the retired New York judge who had presided over Dugan’s murder trial.

  “Great detective work there,” Scott said. “Bravo for the FBI.”

  Lying in bed, in the dark, Scott watched a couple of the network stories. Then he turned to CNN for the more extensive coverage, including repeated footage of the location—and of the law-enforcement personnel, news crews, and curiosity seekers in front of Scott’s building. Scott’s apartment faced the back, so he couldn’t see out to the street at the moment, but he could still hear the commotion.

  He fell asleep with the TV on. In the morning, the coverage of the kidnapping was still the big news story. New York 1, the local news station, was showing live footage of the front of Scott’s building. It looked to Scott like there were more reporters out there than the night before. This was worse than protective custody—now they were prisoners.

  As if on cue, a text arrived from Tony Stark:

  Well done my brother

  Scott could tell the text was leaking sarcasm. He texted back:

  It’s not done yet

  And he got from Tony:

  Seriously, thrilled Cassie is home safe. If you need anything I’m always here for you. You know that.

  Scott texted back:

  Thanks man! Appreciated!

  There was no sarcasm on Scott’s part. It gave him a great sense of security to know that as bad as things got in his life, he was never alone; his friends always had his back.

  At around eleven a.m., he got a call on his landline from a blocked number.

  He picked up and said, “Yeah?”

  “Hope you got some rest. It’s Agent Warren.”

  “What’s going on?” Scott asked.

  “You’ll be happy to know the order of protection has been lifted,” he said. “You’re a free man.”

  “So you caught the killer from upstate?” Scott asked, wondering why he hadn’t heard anything about this on the news yet.

  “No, that investigation is ongoing,” Warren said. “But the protection order was related to the threat from William Dugan, and that threat has been eliminated.”

  “Hold up, I’m not following,” Scott said. “A killer’s out there, somebody who has seen my daughter, may have even been involved in her abduction, and might fear my daughter can ID her. And you say the threat has been eliminated?”

  Of course, Scott didn’t mention that the killer had probably seen him, as well—and, worse, knew he was Ant-Man.

  “Yes, that’s the situation,” Warren said. “But I’m surprised you’re upset, given how ambivalent you were initially.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Scott said. “This was never about protecting me or my family. This was about you, the FBI.”

  “Excuse me, but one of our men took a bullet trying to protect your family.”

  “No, he took a bullet trying to protect your job. You took serious heat when Dugan whacked those guys on your watch, and you didn’t want it to happen again.”

  “So what’re you saying?” Warren said. “You want protection now?�
��

  Scott wasn’t sure what he wanted from the FBI now.

  “I just want my daughter to be safe,” he said. “How’s she supposed to go to school? How she’s supposed to go anywhere on her own?”

  “As of right now, we don’t have any reason to believe you or your family is in danger. If that situation changes, we’ll let you know immediately. But for all we know, the murders upstate are an isolated incident that has nothing to do with you or your family. Unfortunately, we can’t spend government resources on assumptions. We can only act on facts.”

  Scott realized that even if the FBI did continue protection of Cassie, that might not help. After all, these people were brazen enough to kidnap Cassie in broad daylight and shoot a federal marshal. If somebody wanted to come after her, putting another marshal on duty wouldn’t exactly guarantee her safety.

  “I understand the situation. Thanks for everything,” Scott said.

  He spent the rest of the morning in his tiny apartment, feeling something he hadn’t felt in years—like a prisoner at Rykers Island. That had been the darkest time of Scott’s life. Being holed up in an apartment on the Upper East Side wasn’t exactly like the nightmare of day-to-day life in prison, but he hated the feeling of being trapped, restrained. Since prison, he had often had recurring nightmares of being bound, or confined in small places. One of his favorite things about being Ant-Man was he could never be trapped. It was like his ex-prisoner’s fantasy had come to fruition—there was practically no space that could hold him.

  But at the moment, Ant-Man wasn’t an option. While Scott could easily shrink down and bypass the throngs outside, he couldn’t go anywhere without Cassie. He couldn’t leave her home alone, unprotected, with a killer possibly after her. And if he left the building with her, they would be swarmed by reporters.

  The TV repeated the same news reports about the kidnapping and murders, but there was no mention of any breakthrough in the search for the killer. That didn’t mean anything, of course. Even if the cops were closing in on a suspect, the information might not be public yet. Scott was concerned that if the cops captured the killer, the killer would reveal his Ant-Man identity. The bigger issue, though, was what else the killer might reveal. What if there had been an ulterior motive for the kidnapping? Scott thought again of the possibility that the killer wanted the Ant-Man tech. Either way, Scott needed to find the murder suspect before the police did.