Keeper

by Greg Rucka

  I stood about four feet behind Romero, a little to the left. This time, my view of the room was unobstructed, and I could see just about everything. Again Dale and Rubin were covering the exit and entrance, and again, Natalie was floating outside.

  The room was packed. People stood at the back and sat on the floor in front of the platform. Before we had started, two Sentinel uniforms had walked through at our request and made certain all the aisles were clear. So far, they had remained that way, and the crowd was remarkably still, paying careful attention.

  The dispatcher came over my radio shortly after Romero was seated, saying, “Mr. Kodiak. be advised we have confirmation of one Sean Rich at the west entrance. ”

  “What’s he doing?” I said.

  There was a pause, then the dispatcher came back on. “Working with the protesters. NYPD is watching him. Detective Lozano is here with me. He says Rich appears to be alone. ”

  “Keep me informed,” I said.

  “Ten-four.”

  “All guards,” I said. “Confirm receipt of last conversation.”

  Natalie, Rubin, and Dale called in order, each saving they had heard.

  “Be on the lookout,” I said.

  “Like we’re not already?” Rubin said. He said it softly enough that the mike almost didn’t pick it up.

  “Rubin, repeat please?”

  There was a pause. “Uh, negative, Atticus. Was just giving some guy directions. I’m clear. ”

  Forty minutes into the panel, when Madeline was taking questions from the audience, a man in the sixth row suddenly struck the person in the seat next to him.

  “Fight,” I said to my mike, and moved directly behind Romero’s seat.

  “Got it,” said Rubin.

  The dispatcher came on, “Units responding. ”

  Natalie appeared in the doorway, then started working her way down the aisle. Two Sentinel units followed her in about three seconds later, converging on where the two men were grappling. The people on either side of them had risen and recoiled. No one left the room.

  “Gentlemen!” Madeline said. “Gentlemen, stop it!”

  Not surprisingly, the two men continued to pummel and tear at each other and then they were being pulled apart by the guards, Natalie supervising. I heard her tell the uniforms to eject the men from the conference.

  “NYPD responding,” the dispatcher said in my ear.

  From my left I saw the door behind Dale open and I brought my hands down onto Felice’s shoulders, preparing to sweep the chair out from under her with my foot. Rich with a gun, I thought. Perfect.

  “Dale, door,” I said.

  He turned and his right hand started back for his gun before he realized he was looking at a cop.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I heard him say.

  The police officer said he was responding to the fight.

  “Not through this door you don’t,” Dale told him. He jerked the cop into the room, then slammed the door. “Nothing, ” he told me.

  “I see,” I said.

  “Going to have to chat with the guards in the hallway,” he said.

  “After Pogo’s secure.”

  “Of course.”

  I watched the policeman meet up with the two Sentinel uniforms and their angry charges. Spontaneous applause broke out in the audience when they were evicted from the room.

  “It’s unfortunate,” Madeline told the crowd. “I think we were all hoping we could make it through this day without any violence. Let’s hope that’s all we’ll have to worry about.”

  I let my hands slide off Felice and took two steps back, resuming my position.

  Rubin, Dale, and I were walking Felice back to the command post when Natalie came over my radio.

  “Atticus, be advised that I’ve been informed by NYPD that Rich left the premises over an hour ago. ”

  “Why the hell wasn’t I notified?”

  “Lozano just found out,” Natalie said. “Apparently some sergeant on the ground thought that his arrival was the only important thing. ”

  “Wonderful.”

  We entered the CP, and I walked Felice to the bedroom, where she poured herself a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. Fowler followed us in from the main room.

  Dale said, “I’m going to go yell at the guards.”

  “You do that.”

  Rubin said, “I’m going to watch him yell at the guards.”

  “You do that, too.”

  They both left, and I sat on the sofa and removed my glasses. I got myself a glass of water from the room service cart, pulled four ibuprofen from my coat, and swallowed them. Shortly after the two pugilists had been dragged from the room, I’d felt the beginnings of a headache start at each of my temples. The ache had slid its way to my forehead by the time we were ready to remove Dr. Romero, and now it was enough to distract me from my sore ankle.

  “How you holding up?” Fowler asked me.

  I made a face.

  He took his notepad out of a pocket and flipped it open, then waited for me to put my glasses back on. He said, “The prints on the stairwell came back. I’ve got an identification for you. Name is Paul Grant. No record, found his prints through the California DMV. Twenty years old, six feet three, two hundred and fourteen pounds. Blue eyes, blond hair. They’re faxing a picture.”

  “I don’t know the name,” I said. “Sounds like the right guy, though.”

  “There’s no record of a Grant with SOS. We’re looking for other information, and the Bureau office in Los Angeles is sending someone out to his home in Irvine to talk to his parents. Should have more information by the end of the day.”

  I nodded and rubbed my temples, thinking. Then I said, “Can you make sure that description gets passed to all the guards, everybody, along with the previous one?”

  Fowler nodded. “I’ll do that now.”

  “Crowell never showed?” I asked him.

  “Not as far as I know. Guess he backed down.”

  I didn’t like that. Crowell not showing worried me. Felice’s analysis of his personality had seemed correct. If he was missing as great an opportunity as this, there had to be a good reason. And for Crowell, it seemed to me, a good reason and self-preservation would be identical.

  Something was going to come down, I was certain. Grant or no, Bridgett’s theories about SOS aside, Crowell wasn’t going to let this convention end without leaving his mark on it somehow.

  Fowler asked, “That all?”

  “For now. Thanks.”

  He stopped at the door. “You’re almost through this thing,” he said. “Try to relax.”

  I didn’t bother to respond.

  “. . . simply, a woman’s right to reproductive services. In the deluge of media attention the abortion issue has attracted since Roe v. Wade, many of us have lost sight of this core point,” Dr. Romero said. “The clinic I run provides a full range of family planning services, from education and counseling to medical services and AIDS testing. “Yes, we perform abortions.

  “As we also provide a full range of birth control methods, prenatal care, Pap smears, STD testing, pregnancy planning . . .”

  We were in the New York Room now, Dr. Romero on the platform, leaning intently toward the microphone. Her speech was in front of her on the speaker’s podium, but she was hardly referring to it, glancing down at the yellow legal sheets occasionally only for reference. She spoke clearly, committed to having her words heard and understood.

  And again, I was on the platform, four feet back from her, off to the right, listening to Natalie’s hot wash in my ear, letting my eyes scan the crowd. Of the five hundred seats that had been set up, all of them were filled, and again people stood at the back of the room and sat on the floor, away from the aisles. The metal cover to the light switches I’d noticed the day before had been replaced, and Rubin stood beside it at his post by the entrance.

  This crowd had busy hands, though, many of the people taking notes. Rubin had noted four repo
rters, and, again, there were multiple photographers. Veronica Selby was in the audience, also, her chair parked on the outside of the second row on my right, the side nearest the entrance.

  “Looks like the SOS protest is breaking up outside,” Natalie said in my ear.

  “Confirmed,” I said. ‘

  “I’m working back to the second floor, ” she said. “First floor clear. ”

  “Black coat, black tie, ninth row, near the aisle,” Dale said. “Reaching in bag ...”

  I shifted my gaze, saw the man Dale meant. He was young, blond hair, but not big enough to be Grant and too big to be Barry.

  “Photographer,” Dale said. “He’s changing lenses on his camera. ”

  I looked away, letting my eyes sweep back to the right quadrant of the room, and then saw a face I knew.

  “Mary Werthin is in the audience,” I said softly. “Fourth row, fifth from left, blue floral print dress.”

  “Looking ...” Rubin said. “Hands are clear.”

  “Confirm, hands are clear,” Dale said. “She has a purse. ”

  “Watch her,” I said. “Dispatch, advise Detective Lozano that Mary Werthin is in the audience.”

  “Will do,” the dispatcher said.

  “Want me back?” Natalie asked.

  “Negative. Continue float.”

  “Confirmed. ”

  Mary Werthin was watching Romero, but it didn’t seem that she was listening. Her hair was tied back, and she looked quite young. My immediate concern was more for Felice. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t seen Werthin yet.

  “. . . cannot say it is simply an issue of family. It is an unstable word, treacherous and constantly changing,” Dr. Romero was saying. “To maintain that the only family of merit is, by definition, one husband, one wife, and a minimum of one child is ludicrous in this day and age. More to the point, perhaps, it is impractical. The need for family planning services, then . . .”

  “Lozano’s here,” Rubin said.

  Sure enough, the detective was standing just inside the door, next to Rubin, who indicated Werthin’s position. “He wants to know if she should be removed. ”

  “No need yet,” I said.

  I watched Rubin relay that to the detective, who nodded, made brief eye contact with me. He remained by the door.

  I resumed scanning, trying to concentrate on the crowd, trying to keep tabs on Mary Werthin. She didn’t move much, barely reacting to Romero’s speech, even when the crowd applauded something. But she flinched every time Felice said the word “abortion.”

  Cute effect, I thought.

  “Atticus, ” It was Natalie. “Bridgett Logan is on her way up to the New York Room. ”

  “Confirmed.”

  “She says she needs to talk to you.”

  “It’ll have to wait.”

  “Obviously. ”

  A man seated on the floor by the front row moved suddenly, and I zeroed in on him. “Movement, floor left, front row,” I said.

  “Responding,” Rubin said, and I saw him step forward in my periphery. The man reached for a pocket and I started calculating my takedown, then stopped when I saw he had removed a handkerchief from his pocket. He blew his nose quietly, checked the cloth, then folded it again and returned it to his coat.

  “Hands clear, ” Rubin said.

  “Confirmed.”

  “Logan’s here,” he said.

  I glanced over at the door and saw Bridgett standing there, and we made eye contact and she grinned. She looked amazingly out of place, and a couple of heads turned and stared at her. After a moment, she started down the aisle to where Selby was parked.

  I went back to scanning the crowd, listening to the traffic in my ear.

  “. . . will not change. This right of self-determination will not go away,” Dr. Romero said. “It has existed for thousands of years. Abortion is only a small part of it. The battle over the right to one’s own body will continue. Making any of these services illegal, restricting them through claims of immorality or decadence, will do nothing to remove the inherent right of freedom of choice.”

  She stopped speaking. For a moment she just looked over her audience. Then she said, “That’s my talk. I want to thank you for coming, for listening with open minds. I’ve only one more thing to add.

  “The last several weeks leading up to this conference I can say, honestly, have been the most difficult of my life. Certain organizations, certain individuals, were determined that I should not speak today.

  “I do not know why I was singled out among all the doctors and clinics in Manhattan. It’s an arbitrariness that cost the life of my daughter, Katherine. It’s an arbitrariness that has revealed all the worst about the human spirit to me. Frequently in the last few days, I reconsidered my decision to attend. There hardly seemed a point.”

  Dr. Romero stopped long enough to take a drink of water from the paper cup on the podium.

  “When I resolved I would still attend today, I did so simply to spite those people who had worked so hard to keep me from coming,” she said. “I did it as an act of defiance, which I told myself was for the memory of my daughter.

  “Arriving here this morning, surrounded by policemen and bodyguards, I expected the worst.

  “When I read the first card given to me this morning, I feared what it would say. The letters I’ve received in the past have been hardly kind.

  “This card offered sympathy and condolences.

  “The card was from an organization called Christian Mothers for Life. An antiabortion group, a pro-life group, call it what you will.

  “It made me weep.

  “I had forgotten, you see? I had forgotten exactly what this conference was about. My motive in attending had changed. I did not arrive this morning wanting peace. I wanted vindication. Victory.

  “And this card made me see that I had become exactly the kind of person this conference was designed to reach out to,” Felice said. “If I can be reached, after all that has happened, if I can see moderation and hope, then we all can.

  “Thank you again.”

  “They’re going to their feet,” Rubin said in my ear.

  He needn’t have bothered with the transmission. They were up before he had finished speaking, applauding so loud that I almost lost what he was saying. I saw Veronica Selby beaming, her smile radiant, clapping with the rest of the crowd. Bridgett stood behind her, shaking her head slowly from side to side.

  And I didn’t see Mary Werthin.

  “I’ve lost sight of Werthin,” I said.

  “Can’t see her,” Dale said. “Too much traffic.”

  People were starting to push forward in the aisles, and I saw more flowers being held up, more cards. The crowd was a mass of noise, still applauding, now cheering. Felice took a step to the edge of the platform, taking someone’s offered pen and program, and she was blushing as she autographed it. I moved in closer to her, scanning like mad as too many people pushed toward us. Romero began handing me cards and bouquets, and I began dropping them in a pile behind me just as quickly.

  “Natalie, get in here,” I said.

  “Confirmed. ”

  “. . . see her,” Rubin came in. “I see her, she’s got something in her hands. ”

  “Repeat?” I said.

  “Werthin’s got something in her hands, it’s not her purse. ...”

  “I can’t see her,” Dale said.

  “What’s in her hands?” I asked Rubin.

  “. . . something, looks like a book. ...”

  “Where?” I said.

  “Just fantastic,” a young black woman was saying to Dr. Romero. “God bless you, Doctor. . . .”

  “She’s in the crush, I’ve lost her, I can’t see her,” Rubin said.

  I pulled Felice back a half step, further from the edge, but she went right back, taking another card and transfer-ing it to me, thanking the couple that handed it to her. Then she stepped off the platform, taking another offered pen and program, scribbling
her name. I dropped off after her, trying to stay tight.

  “Pogo’s off the platform,” I said.

  “. . . her,” Dale said. “Ten feet up, center aisle.”

  I couldn’t see anything in the crowd. “Hands?”

  “Can’t see them. No purse.”

  “Rubin?”

  “Nothing, boss, shit,” he said.

  “She’s moving up,” Dale said. “No, damnit, I’ve got to move in. ”

  “Hold your position,” I told him, taking another bunch of carnations and dropping them behind me.

  “Confirmed. ”

  A woman with silver hair held up a wicker basket for Romero to take, a shiny white bow on the handle. I flinched as Felice grabbed it, taking it from her as gently as I could and setting it on the platform beside me. Turning back around, I saw Mary Werthin at the front of the line, holding a pen and a hardcover book.

  Abortuaries and the Death of America, by Jonathan Crowell.

  Felice was leaning to take the book, but then she recognized Werthin and stopped long enough for me to move forward and intercept. “I’ll give it to her,” I said.

  “I want her to sign it,” Werthin said. “She has to sign it.” She pushed the book forward, trying to get it around me.

  I blocked her arm with my body, and she drew the book back. “I’ll give it to her,” I said once more. Under the edge of the cover, opposite the spine, a sliver of blue fabric jutted free. The edge looked rough and curly. I took the book with my right hand, Werthin still holding it.

  It was too heavy.

  She tried to jerk the book back, saying, “She has to sign it!”

  Then the adrenaline dumped and I thought a lot at once. Velcro, I thought. Velcro keeping the book shut and the book’s too heavy and it’s not a gun inside this book, no, it’s a bomb.