12 Ant-Man Natural Enemy

by Jason Starr

  At noon, Cassie was still sleeping. That was good—Scott was glad she was resting. He decided this would be a good time to suss out the situation with the reporters.

  As he approached the vestibule, he was surprised by the sheer volume of people outside. There seemed to be dozens of reporters. When he was spotted, the crowd started calling out his name.

  “Hey.” George, the super, had approached Scott from behind, startling him. Maybe Scott was suffering post-traumatic stress after being ambushed from behind yesterday.

  “This is crazy, huh?” Scott said.

  “Maybe you should go away, on vacation,” George said. “This is no good for the neighbors.”

  Sending Cassie away for several days, maybe to Oregon with Peggy, wouldn’t have been a bad idea if her safety were guaranteed. But with the protection order ending, Scott couldn’t take that risk. And he wasn’t going anywhere himself until he found out what exactly had happened to him upstate.

  “Sorry for all this,” Scott said. “I’m sure it will die down soon.”

  “It’s not dying down, it’s getting worse,” George said. “This is a violation of your lease. I’m reporting you to the management company. If you don’t do something, go away, you’re getting evicted.”

  George’s enraged face was bright pink and veins were visible on his forehead. He returned to his apartment and slammed the door.

  Scott knew it wouldn’t be easy to evict him, but the possibility wasn’t so farfetched. Thanks to Willie Dugan, Scott’s daughter had been kidnapped, his job was in jeopardy, and he might have to find a new place to live. Scott hadn’t exactly done a great job providing stability for Cassie.

  Fed up, Scott opened the front door. Reporters rushed forward, holding up microphones and shouting his name and questions. Several TV cameras also were aimed at him.

  “Okay, chill,” Scott said. “Everybody just chill. I’m going to make one statement and one statement only.”

  The crowd quieted.

  Then Scott said, “I’m thrilled and relieved to have my daughter back home safe. This has been an extremely difficult and taxing time for our family, and I ask that you please respect our privacy. Thank you.”

  The reporters were shouting questions as Scott went back inside the building. He didn’t think that his brief, generic statement would deter the media for very long, but it was worth a shot.

  When he arrived back at the apartment, Cassie was awake and at the dining table, having a bowl of cereal and looking at her cell phone. After the hell of yesterday, it was great to see her back to a normal morning routine.

  Scott went over to her, kissed her on top of her head the way he’d been doing since she was a baby, and said, “Morning, Sweetie, how did you sleep?”

  “Okay,” she said, “had a few nightmares.”

  “You can see that trauma expert they suggested,” Scott said. “I’ll make an appointment for you.”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll live.”

  She took a few last quick bites of cereal, then got up and said, “I gotta get ready.”

  “Ready?” Scott asked.

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “I’m gonna go out. You said I could buy a new phone today, right?”

  They’d had the conversation about a new phone during the car ride back from upstate.

  “I’m afraid going out’s impossible right now,” Scott said.

  “What do you mean?” Cassie asked. “Why?”

  He explained the situation with the reporters outside.

  “So?” she said. “That doesn’t mean I have to stay inside all day.”

  “It’s not a good idea to go out there and deal with all that,” Scott said, “especially after what you went through yesterday. We can hang out inside today, and hopefully tonight the crowd will thin out.”

  “That’s crazy,” she said. “I’m fine, and I want to see my boyfriend.”

  “I’m sorry, your who?”

  “His name’s Tucker,” she said.

  “Oh right, Tucker McKenzie, how could I forget? But since when is he your boyfriend?” Scott wondered, Did Peggy know about this? “And I thought kids in school don’t have boyfriends and girlfriends.”

  “What?” She was acting lost. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “No, that’s right—you said nobody dates anymore. But I guess that’s different from having boyfriends and girlfriends.”

  “Yeah, it’s totally different,” she said.

  “When did this all happen?” Scott asked. “You’ve had Roger shadowing you—and trust me, I know what that’s like.” Now Scott was thinking about his coffee date with Jennifer.

  “What difference does it make?” Cassie asked. “It happened, and he wants to meet up with me at Sixteen Handles later.” Sixteen Handles was a frozen-yogurt place.

  “First of all, I have to meet Tucker McKenzie, or any boy you go out with,” Scott said. “Second, I told you, today’s a bad day for this. And you probably won’t be able to go anywhere alone for a while.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  Scott explained that the protection order had been lifted—but as far as Scott was concerned, it wasn’t safe for Cassie to be alone with a killer loose.

  “But the FBI thinks it’s safe,” Cassie said, “or they would still want to keep protecting me, right?”

  “Not necessarily,” Scott said.

  “What do you mean? So now you think you know more than the FBI?”

  “Hey, watch it,” he said.

  “I think it’s just because you don’t want me to go out with Tucker,” she said. “It has nothing to do with wanting me to be safe. If you wanted me to be safe, you would’ve been protecting me yourself yesterday instead of having the FBI protecting me.”

  “I saved you,” he said.

  “Yeah, and I wouldn’t’ve needed to be saved if you weren’t Ant-Man, if you were just a normal dad,” she said. “It’s all your fault, it’s always your fault, and I’m always getting punished for it.”

  “Cassie, come on,” Scott said, “I know you’re upset right now, but—”

  “I hate you,” she said. “I hate this.”

  She marched into her room and slammed the door. After George, this door-slamming thing seemed to be becoming a trend in Scott’s life.

  Scott was angry at himself for snapping at Cassie, for losing control. Sometimes he thought he was doomed to make the same mistakes again and again.

  The intercom buzzed—someone was in the vestibule. Scott ignored it, figuring it was a reporter trying to get him to come down. More buzzing. After a few minutes of this, Scott’s cell rang—a restricted number.

  “Yeah?” Scott said into the phone.

  “Hey, it’s Carlos.”

  “Hey,” Scott said.

  “How come you’re not answering the buzzer?”

  “I thought it was a reporter.”

  “Lemme up,” Carlos said. “It’s urgent.”

  SITTING across from Carlos at the dining table, Scott looked at Carlos’s iPad. It showed a picture, extracted from surveillance video, of Scott and the woman with whom he’d had coffee, taken when they were walking together along First Avenue.

  “Her name’s not Jennifer,” Carlos said. “It’s Monica. Monica Rappaccini. I checked her out, just on a hunch. Do you know anything about her?”

  “Only what she told me at the diner,” Scott said. “She moved here from Hoboken, has a daughter.”

  “All lies,” Carlos said. “She has a long rap sheet, and has been associated with several crime organizations, including Hydra and A.I.M.”

  Scott’s first thought: An ex-con—no wonder I fell for her. Ex-cons had a way of finding each other, the way alcoholics had a way of finding each other. But he knew this woman’s criminal associations had much greater implications.

  “I had no idea who she was,” Scott said. “What made you look into her?”

  “Just seemed suspicious,” Carlos said, “her showing
up right before your daughter gets kidnapped. Facial recog came up a perfect match.” Carlos reached over and thumbed through a few other photos of Scott and Monica, as well as a couple of close-ups of her.

  In his head, a montage of the coffee date with Monica un-spooled, including all of the questions about ants. Was this proof that she was working with Dugan and maybe had killed him and the other men?

  “Well, that’s pretty weird,” Scott said. “But what does it have to do with me?”

  “You wanna tell me?” Carlos said.

  This wasn’t “nice Carlos,” the federal marshal who’d invited Scott out to the Bronx sometime. This was “hard-ass Carlos” who wanted answers from Scott, not questions.

  “Well, it shows that I have really bad judgment in women,” Scott said.

  Scott smiled, but Carlos wasn’t going there.

  “Tell me the truth, man,” Carlos said. “I’m not playin’ right now. I’m already catching heat for letting you out of your apartment building to go upstate. Still don’t know how you pulled that off. What are you, some kind of Houdini?”

  Scott smirked.

  “Seriously,” Carlos said. “Did you know about this woman’s background?”

  “Of course I didn’t know that,” Scott said. “I thought her name was Jennifer. This is all news to me.”

  “You don’t have any idea why she gave you a fake name?”

  “No,” Scott said, but he had a hunch. Maybe Jennifer—Monica—had given him a fake name because she’d been trying to figure out whether he was Ant-Man, so she could lure him upstate. Maybe she was the one who’d killed Dugan and zapped him.

  But if this were true, what was her motive?

  “It’s kind of a coincidence,” Carlos said, “that she approached you under an alias a couple of days before your daughter was abducted.”

  “I guess coincidences happen,” Scott said.

  “Not very often,” Carlos said. “Do you think it’s possible Monica Rappaccini had anything to do with kidnapping Cassie?”

  “I don’t know,” Scott said.

  Carlos was staring at him, as if trying to tell whether he was lying. Scott was trying to keep a straight face, to look innocent—but it didn’t help that he was lying. Well, partly lying.

  “Monica Rappaccini is dangerous,” Carlos said. “She’s a free agent, has no loyalty, works for whoever’s willing to pay her the most. She’s a scientist, but we believe she’s worked as a thief, smuggler, even an assassin. Basically if anybody’s willing to pay her enough for a job, she’ll do it.”

  Scott remembered how he’d been so enthralled with her, even thinking she might be “the one.”

  “A damn good actor, too,” Scott said.

  “Did you know about any connection she had to Willie Dugan?” Carlos asked.

  “Wait.” Scott stared at Carlos, getting upset. “Are you seriously asking me that question?”

  Carlos didn’t say anything, which meant: yes.

  Scott started whispering, so Cassie wouldn’t hear in the next room. “My daughter was kidnapped yesterday. If I knew this woman had a connection to Willie Dugan, do you really think I would have had coffee with her and kept it a secret from you?”

  “I don’t know what you’d do and wouldn’t do,” Carlos said. “All I know is you’re an ex-con, and you used to be friends with Willie Dugan.”

  “Not friends,” Scott said. “I just worked with the guy. And what’s that supposed to mean?”

  Scott couldn’t believe he’d actually been starting to like this guy.

  “Maybe she met with you to send you a message from Dugan, something you didn’t want me to know about.”

  “And I did this knowing I’d put my daughter in danger?”

  “Maybe you didn’t know about that part,” Carlos said. “Maybe they made you some offer, and you turned it down.”

  “Think about that—just think about that for a second,” Scott said. “Why would I do that?”

  “So you really didn’t know anything about her background?”

  “I didn’t even know her real name before you came in here and told me.”

  Carlos shook his head, then got up and started pacing the room.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” he said. His voice sounded weaker, like he was losing conviction, as if he was realizing that his conspiracy theory about Scott didn’t make any sense.

  Then it hit Scott what was really going on here.

  “Wait, I get it now,” Scott said. “I get why you’re so upset, accusing me of working with Dugan, and why you’re coming here on your own. Why wouldn’t Warren and James be here if you were supposed to be questioning me? You’re here alone because you were already under fire for how I snuck out of the apartment. If your bosses find out you let a known criminal approach me on the street under your watch, it’ll cost you your job. So you come in here and throw a Hail Mary, accuse me of working with her, in the hope you can go back to your bosses with a big score and uncover some kind of conspiracy. But it’s just a prayer—you don’t even believe it yourself.”

  Carlos stopped pacing and said, “Okay, look—you’re right, man, my ass is on the line big time, and you gotta be straight with me now. What did you talk about at that diner?”

  Recalling their conversation, mainly about ants, Scott said, “Nothing in particular. Just, uh, small talk.”

  “Small talk about what?”

  “Our work. She told me she’s a photographer and lived in Hoboken, but was moving to the Upper East Side.”

  “What else?”

  “We talked about our kids. She said she has a teenage daughter and—wait, she asked me what school Cassie goes to and said her daughter’s going to the same school. If she was working with Dugan, maybe that’s how she knew where to wait for Cassie after school.”

  “So you think Monica Rappaccini was in the car with the kidnappers?” Carlos asked.

  “No idea,” Scott said. “Cassie didn’t say she was, but she could’ve been driving. Cassie couldn’t see who was driving the car.”

  Carlos stared at Scott and said, “Are you hiding something from me, man? You better tell me right now. If these people kidnapped your daughter once, who knows what they’ll try next time.”

  “What’re you talking about?” Cassie asked.

  She had entered the room without Scott noticing.

  “It’s nothing, Sweetie,” Scott said.

  “He said somebody’s going to try to kidnap me again,” Cassie said.

  “That isn’t true,” Scott said.

  “But that’s what he said,” Cassie said. “I want to know what’s going on. I have a right to know what’s going on.”

  Cassie was losing it—shaking, panic in her eyes.

  “Okay, just calm down,” Scott said.

  From there, things went from bad to worse, with Cassie screaming and crying.

  At one point, Carlos said, “I’ll wait out in the hallway.”

  Finally, Scott was able to soothe Cassie’s fears, convince her that she wasn’t in any immediate danger. She went back to her room.

  Scott went out to the hallway and stage-whispered to Carlos, “Look, I’ve answered all your questions. This order of protection is over, so officially you have no reason to be here.”

  “Sorry your daughter heard that,” Carlos said. “I know you had nothing to do with Dugan, and that you didn’t know who that woman was. You’re a good guy, you love your daughter. But I also know you’re not telling me something.”

  “If I knew something, I’d tell you.” Scott hoped he sounded sincere, convincing. He continued, whispering, “Look, maybe it was all just a coincidence. Okay, she lied about her name, and it turned out she has a past, but does that mean she has anything to do with Dugan? She could’ve lied because she was having coffee with me and didn’t want to reveal something about herself. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman lied to me on a date. One time a woman told me she was single, and I saw her the next day in the park
with her husband and kids.” Scott knew he was stretching it with this analogy, but he went on, “I’m sure it’s just like that. I know you’re paranoid about something bigger going on, and it being on you. I’ll tell you what—if this Monica gets in touch with me, you’ll be the first call I make. I’m not expecting that to happen, though. I think I met a woman, she blew me off, and I’ll never hear from her again. Hey, that wouldn’t be the first time, either.”

  Carlos didn’t laugh, or even smile, but Scott didn’t expect him to. Carlos had to accept the situation—he didn’t have any choice.

  “Okay,” he said. “I appreciate that. Let’s stay in touch, man. And don’t worry, I won’t come over here again uninvited. I promise.”

  Back in his apartment, Scott felt relieved, but he knew he had to find Monica Rappaccini before Carlos, or anyone at the FBI, did. Otherwise his Ant-Man identity would be revealed, and maybe the technology would be sold to the highest bidder. While Scott wasn’t sure whether Monica had been the one who’d zapped him at the house, everything was pointing in her direction.

  Just for the hell of it, he went online on his iPad and Googled “Monica Rappaccini” and “criminal.” He didn’t find anything useful. But when he typed in just “Monica Rappaccini” to Google Images, several photos of her appeared. One was from a high-school reunion in California, taken a few years ago; another was a photo of her and several other women on a beach; the other two seemed to be from a wedding. There was nothing in any of the pictures to indicate that she was living a double life. She seemed so benign in the photos that Scott would have believed Carlos had gotten something wrong, that she wasn’t involved with Hydra and A.I.M. at all—if she hadn’t told him that photographer-in-Hoboken story the other day. Scott didn’t need any proof that Monica Rappaccini was a liar and a scammer—he’d seen the evidence in person.