Keeper Read online

  For a moment, he stood there on the roof of the big white Cadillac, surveying the crowd. Even from the window, I could see he was smiling.

  “Oh, no! It’s the Loud Man,” Katie told me. “He’s the Loud Man.”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Very loud he’s very very loud, ’Cus. Mommy doesn’t like him.”

  I was about to ask where her mother was, when the Loud Man raised his megaphone and began to speak.

  “I speak to you of murder,” he said.

  The crowd murmured.

  “Murder again and bloody murder more,” the man said. “Bodies upon bodies, broken and tom, filling their trash cans, their Dumpsters, their sinks. Cold metal, sharp metal, the coldest, sharpest things they have ever felt, their second feeling, pulling them from their mothers, from their safety, and warmth, and home.”

  He stopped, watching the mob soak up his words. In the summer heat, he only made them hotter. When he spoke, his pauses were perfectly placed for emphasis, the whole speech well rehearsed.

  He pointed up at our window and bellowed, “Felice Romero, queen butcher of this abortuary, are you listening to me? Every murder is on your hands, every death is on your head, every soul is anchored to yours, and they weigh you, dragging you down to the Pit. Fire, Dr. Romero. Pain, the same pain you inflict on those helpless souls you tear screaming from their mothers’ wombs every day!”

  He stopped again, bowing his head and dropping the accusatory finger. Softly, nearly in tears, he added, “I give you Ezekiel 16:21, Dr. Romero: ‘Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, that thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?’ ”

  His head came up again and the crowd made more noise, apparently pleased with his scriptural choice.

  “Your daughter, your own daughter. She is precisely the kind of child you would destroy. You dare call yourself a mother? Dr. Romero, your hypocrisy knows no bounds.

  “We remember,” he said. “We are witness to your crimes, to every murder committed behind your walls. For the mothers are guilty, surely, that they let you kill in them what the Lord himself has placed. But you prey on that, and your bodies continue to mount.

  “We remember each and every unborn child you murder, Dr. Romero. We remember each and every life you destroy. We are the Lord’s eyes in this, and we know what you do. We will be the Lord’s hands, and we will seek justice.

  “We know what you do. And we will have justice!”

  I turned away from the window, went back to the couch. Some of the others in the waiting room had gone to the window as well, and they continued to watch. Several looked shaken, and the nurses moved from person to person, speaking softly. If they were trying to reassure, it didn’t look like they were doing a good job.

  Katie sat back down beside me.

  “He’s very loud,” she told me.

  “Yes, he is,” I agreed. “Is your mommy Dr. Romero?”

  Katie smiled proudly. “My mommy is a doctor and she helps people. My mommy’s smart.” Then she put the headphones over her ears and pressed the “play” button, and it was as if nothing was happening outside of her at all. She sang along with whatever tune was being piped into her brain. She sang badly, toneless and inarticulate, but without self-consciousness, and when people in the room glanced at her, Katie ignored them, swaying on the couch. While singing, she took my hand and placed it between hers, patting it.

  The door beside the partition opened and a young black woman called, “Mr. Kodiak?”

  I stood up, slipping my hand out of Katie’s. She didn’t seem to notice, and continued to sing. I said, “Yes?”

  “Dr. Romero would like to speak to you. Would you follow me?”

  I started cataloging all the traumas that could have occurred, and in the seconds it took me to move from Katie to the door I compiled a pretty impressive list. The waiver and release forms were in my back pocket, and 1 found that my recall of all the potential complications was very clear. Alison was in trouble. Alison was in shock. Alison was being taken to the hospital. Alison’s uterus had been punctured. Alison hadn’t been completely evacuated. Alison was hemorrhaging. Alison had a heart attack. Alison had an aneurysm, a stroke, a seizure.

  “This way,” the woman said, and I followed her through the door, my heart seriously starting to knock about in my chest. The door swung shut behind us and the nurse led me down the corridor.

  “What’s happened?”

  “Dr. Romero would like to speak with you,” she repeated. She wore a cream-colored name tag over her left breast, “Delfleur, R.N.” printed on it in blue letters.

  The fact that my question had gone unanswered did nothing for my growing anxiety.

  The hall ended with doors to my right and left. The right door was marked “Bathroom.” The left door was marked “Dr. F. Romero, Administrator.” The nurse knocked on the door then said, “Go on in.” She turned and headed back to the waiting room.

  I took a second, trying to stay calm. Then I opened the door.

  It was a cramped office, with a window looking out at another building across the alley. A densely packed bookshelf ran along the opposite wall. A filing cabinet stood in a comer beside a trash can. Two chairs covered in pale orange fabric were placed in front of a metal desk; on the desk were papers, a typewriter, and a telephone. Framed degrees hung over the bookshelf, one from Columbia, another from Cornell. The room smelled of paper and stale cigarette smoke.

  Behind the desk, speaking into the phone, sat a Hispanic woman in her late forties, her short black hair streaked silver. She had a narrow face and dark eyes behind blackframed glasses, and she was marking a paper on her desk with one hand, holding the phone with the other. She pointed her pen at me and made a horizontal swing, back and forth, and for a moment I had no idea what she wanted me to do. Then I turned and shut the door behind me. When I looked back she nodded and pointed the pen at one of the chairs in front of her desk. I sat.

  “Yes, I think it’s serious enough,” she was saying. “No, more than that. . . . Yes . . . that’s what I’m trying to do right now ... the board should cover at least half. ... I don’t know. When I find out I’ll call you back. . . . Yes.”

  She hung up the phone, then rose, extending her hand. “Mr. Kodiak? I’m Felice Romero.”

  I shook her hand and said, “Is Alison all right?”

  She lit a cigarette and sat back down. “Alison’s in recovery right now, completely evacuated. She should be ready to leave by the time we’re finished.”

  I exhaled long, and tried to dry my palms on my jeans. “I thought something had gone wrong,” I said.

  Moving papers around on her desk, Dr. Romero uncovered an empty ashtray. She tipped it into the trash can anyway, saying, “I apologize. Lynn should have said something. No, she’s fine. She’ll be sore for a while and you two shouldn’t engage in intercourse for at least sixty days, but you know that, you already filled out the release forms. I’d recommend reevaluating your method of birth control. Other than that, there were no complications. She was a model patient.”

  “I see.”

  Dr. Romero knocked ash into the tray and pushed her chair back, openly studying me. I adjusted my glasses. She took two drags on the cigarette, blowing smoke out of the side of her mouth.

  “It’s procedure here to ask the patient if they still want to have the abortion before we get started,” she told me. “I wanted to know if Ms. Wallace might be having second thoughts, especially considering the crowd outside. She told me that you are a bodyguard and had kept the nuts outside away from her. Is that correct—you are a professional bodyguard?”

  “What is this about?”

  “I’m sorry, I’m on a schedule and there’s been a lot of pressure here with Sword of the Silent out front.”

  “Sword of the Silent?” I remembered the signs bobbing in the street, their bloody crosses and barbed wire. “SOS?”

  “Cute, isn’t it?” Dr. Romero stu
ck the cigarette back in her mouth and began searching through the papers on her desk again. “They’ve been around for over a week now, ever since the conference was announced.”

  I was starting to feel exceptionally dim. “Conference?” She stopped shuffling papers and stared at me. “You don’t know? It’s being called the Common Ground Conference, to be held downtown at the Manhattan Elysium Hotel in two weeks. Pro-choice and pro-life attendees, lectures, seminars, panels, all designed to stop the escalating violence. I’m one of the organizers.” When I still looked blank she added, “Local media has been giving us fairly heavy coverage.”

  “I’ve been out of the country,” I said.

  “Really? Where?”

  “I was on a job in England,” I said. She seemed to expect me to elaborate, but I didn’t. In my work, you don’t talk about your clients.

  After a second she asked, “How old are you, exactly?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “Is that young for your profession?”

  “Younger than many, older than some.”

  “What exactly does a bodyguard do?”

  “Personal protection. I came out of the Army’s Executive Protection program, served some time in the CID. I’ve been out about three years. I’m the real thing, doctor, not the kind that gets hired to break the kneecaps of Olympic hopefuls, in case you’re wondering.”

  She laughed curtly and said, “You understand why I’m asking?”

  “I understand how you could be confused,” I told her. “How much do you charge?”

  “Depends on who I’m protecting and from what. It’s rated against the kind of coverage and how many other people are needed. Solo, I charge one hundred and fifty an hour for fieldwork plus expenses, eighty an hour for consultation. But alone I can’t do much. Real protection requires more bodyguards.”

  “If you were protecting two people, twenty-four hours a day?”

  “I’d need to know what I was protecting them from before I could plan a detail,” I said.

  She nodded and handed me a sheet of paper, saying, “That came yesterday.”

  It was a photocopy of a letter, typed. It read:

  To the Murdering Cunt Wetback Doctor—

  Hell is waiting for you, bitch. I’ll send you there myself, my hands ripping the life out of your cum-filled fucking throat. I’ll crack your spic skull, it’ll look like the babies you break and pull screaming from their trapped mommas. I know what you do, you fucking bitch. Talk all you want, lie all you want, I know and you’ll pay.

  I’m going to do it to you. Tie your fucking spic ass down and fucking rip your cunt in two, ram a Hoover all the way in you till you scream for me to stop.

  Open your mouth and I’ll shut it for you, bitch. And it won’t be murder, when I kill you, slut. It’s going to be self-defense.

  Hell is waiting for you. I’m going to send you there.

  It was signed with the same cross-and-barbed-wire crest that currently graced several of the placards outside. “Who has the original?” I asked.

  “The FBI. You’re holding a federal offense.” She said the last grimly, without mirth. “The NYPD has seen it, too. Detective Lozano at the Twenty-sixth Precinct.”

  “Is this the only one?”

  In response she shoved a stack of paper in my direction. It was easily three hundred pages. “These have all come since the first of the year. We receive them every day. Some are short and to the point—the burn-in-hell variety—others are longer, more passionate and considered monologues urging us to stop our work here. Twenty-three letters in the last two weeks, and I haven’t seen today’s mail yet. It’s gotten considerably worse since my involvement with Common Ground was announced.”

  “Are they all like this?” I looked back at the letter. It had been typed neatly, no blurs or smudges from correction fluid. Maybe off a computer.

  “Content-wise? No. Some are better; some, believe it or not, are actually worse. Especially the more recent ones.”

  “You have any idea where they are coming from?”

  “Sword of the Silent,” she said. “Jonathan Crowell. If he isn’t writing them, he knows who is.”

  “Jonathan Crowell? Tall white guy with a megaphone?”

  “That’s him. Very much of the Pensacola crowd. Following in the footsteps of John Burt, Randal Terry, Paul Hill, those people.”

  “I’ve heard of him. I tend to ignore radicals.”

  “Crowell’s not a radical, Mr. Kodiak. He is a demagogue. He’s an evil man who’s trying to overcome a mediocre life by preaching hate and intolerance disguised with the name of Jesus Christ.” Romero crushed out her cigarette. “That’s the only reason to target this clinic. Rarely has a white man been so concerned about the reproductive rights available to blacks and Hispanics. But Crowell has targeted this clinic quite specifically. We serve the university, but mostly we serve the rest of Harlem. Single mothers are our stock-in-trade. We deal with reproductive services and education here. Abortions are a very small part of what we do. And for Crowell to target us is Crowell targeting nonwhites.”

  “He’s that clearly a racist?” I asked.

  “I’m certain he doesn’t think of himself as one,” Dr. Romero said. “But I believe he is, yes.” She gestured toward the letter in my hands. “Do you think that is a serious threat?”

  “Frankly, no. This sounds more like terrorism than the precursor to an attempt on your life.”

  “I’m used to terrorism, Mr. Kodiak,” Dr. Romero said flatly.

  “Who’s doing the conference security?” I asked.

  “I really don’t know. A friend of mine, Veronica Selby, is handling that end of things. Veronica’s the primary organizer of the conference, and she’s assured me that security will be good.”

  For Dr. Romero’s sake, I hoped she was right. A lot of self-proclaimed security firms are nothing more than fly-by-nights that hand out badges for minimum wage.

  She took the letter back from me and looked it over again. “I’ve lived with letters threatening me, degrading and demeaning me for a long time now,” she said. “But this one frightens me.”

  “I can see why.”

  Dr. Romero leaned forward, resting her elbows on the desk. “I’d like to hire you. I want protection for myself and my daughter, here and at home.”

  “How old is Katie?”

  She was surprised only for a moment. “Sixteen. You’ve met her?”

  “In the waiting room.”

  “What do you think of her?”

  “She’s very sweet,” I said. “She talks to herself a lot.”

  “Imaginary friends,” Dr. Romero said. “It makes sense, when you think about it. Very few people actually talk to Katie rather than at her, and she finds communication with them quite difficult, too, I think. The people she speaks to understand her completely.”

  “I think you’d be better off with official protection,” I said.

  “I don’t trust the police. I’ve known too many officers who believe abortion is murder. Detective Lozano himself is antichoice.”

  “There’s the FBI,” I said. “Federal marshals, too.”

  She sighed, leaned back in her chair, and went for another cigarette. I wondered if she had always smoked, or if it was a habit she had adopted in response to her work.

  “The agent who’s been assigned to us, Special Agent Fowler, is only interested in pursuing the terrorism approach at this time,” Dr. Romero said. “He is unconvinced that Crowell or Sword of the Silent is after me. Special Agent Fowler does not like conspiracies.” She watched the flame from her lighter for a moment, then set it down on the desk without lighting the cigarette. “Our requests for federal marshals have been turned down, too. We’re told they’re needed more at clinics outside of New York.” Felice Romero reached for the light again, used it, then said, “I want you to do it.”

  “The protection you want is expensive,” I said.

  “Give me a figure and I’ll call our board of d
irectors. They’ll put up at least half. I’ll cover the rest. I have money.”

  I thought about it, making rough calculations in my head. “If I were to do it,” I said, “we’d be talking three thousand dollars a week. You can get security guards and rent-a-cops for less, but it won’t be the protection you want.”

  “For that much money, what do I get?”

  “Complete coverage, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  She drew on the cigarette thoughtfully, then asked, “When can you start?”

  I shook my head. “I recommend trying Sentinel Guards. Ask for Natalie Trent, tell her you talked to me. She can put everything together for you. They’re a great firm. Her father runs it, and he’s ex-Secret Service.”

  “Mr. Kodiak, you don’t seem to be listening. I want you.”

  “I am listening, Doctor. But right now I’ve got other things on my plate.”

  She dropped ash on her desk, looked at it for a moment, then brushed it into the ashtray with her palm, smearing it across her desk. After she set the ashtray back down, she said:

  “Many of the men who come in here with their girlfriends, when they do come, aren’t exactly supportive. Most would have seen the mob out front and turned tail. Others would simply wait, bored. Others would wait, concerned. Many wait and grow angry. Sometimes they take that anger out on the women they came in with.” She watched the smoke from her cigarette curling toward the ceiling vent.

  I could hear the SOS protesters chanting outside. There was no question that Dr. Romero heard it, too.

  She said, “Abortion is an emotional issue, not a cerebral one, Mr. Kodiak. It is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t decision, and it’s a decision impossible to make in this society without hurting someone. This is why no consensus has been reached on the subject and why people are now murdering doctors. It’s why Common Ground is so important, because it’s a chance for all the voices to be heard, and to be heard without threats or screaming. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re pro-choice or antiabortion, Mr. Kodiak. I don’t want some apathetic ex-cop with a beer gut. I don’t want lean SWAT team professionals. I want someone who understands that no matter what side of the line you’re on, someone always gets hurt. What matters is that you know what it’s like to cross that line.” She ground out her cigarette and locked eyes on me.