Keeper

by Greg Rucka

  “And none of that has ever been tied back to Crowell?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “So he’s either very smart or very lucky.”

  “It would make me a lot happier if he was lucky,” I said.

  “I’ll bet.”

  I cringed as she shot the Porsche through a collapsing vise made by two cabs on either side of us. Somehow, we made it through the gap unscathed. Bridgett chuckled. “Car like this,” she said, “you’ve got to drive aggressively or it gets mad at you.”

  “It’s very nice,” I said.

  “Nice?” Bridgett said, her eyes going wide. “Nice? This is a Twin Turbo Porsche Carrera nine-eleven, over four hundred horses of power, all-wheel drive, the works. This animal tops out at over one hundred and eighty miles per hour, zero to sixty in three point seven seconds, and stops on a dime leaving you wanting a cigarette.

  “This car is pure sex, stud. It is not ‘nice.’ ”

  I let that sink in, looking around at the leather interior, listening to the engine growl underneath the music from the tape deck. It was an amazing car.

  “You’re a PI?” I asked.

  “That’s what the license says.”

  “How the hell can you afford a car like this? Are you crooked?”

  Bridgett grinned, flashed white teeth at me. “It’s my inheritance from my ma,” she said.

  “Your mother left you a Porsche.”

  “My mother was in coach class on a seven-thirty-seven that crashed and burned in Cincinnati,” she said. “She was well insured.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Yeah, it sucks. Two years now.” She found a new roll of Life Savers in a pocket, tore off the top with her teeth, and pulled one into her mouth. These were Wint-O-Green. “What do you know about Crowell?”

  “He’s in his early fifties, says he went to Harvard Divinity,” I said. “I doubt that but haven’t checked. Fowler says he’s got a record, an arrest in ’75 in Wichita for A and B against a woman who worked at the local CBS affiliate. Charges were dismissed. Arrested again three years later in Indiana for firebombing a clinic there. Spent three years inside. He’s written two books, both about abortion and the collapse of the American morality.”

  “A Renaissance man,” Bridgett said.

  “I suppose.”

  She didn’t say anything else until we had parked across from Crowell’s apartment building. Then she killed the engine, and looked at the folder I’d taken from the apartment. “What’s that?”

  “Copies of the threats sent to the clinic,” I said, and handed it to her. She began leafing through them as I said, “They’re in chronological order, back to when the conference was announced.”

  She nodded without looking up. “You going to let Romero go?”

  “I have to,” I said.

  Bridgett looked at me. “They didn’t get her this morning, they’ll try again, right? They’ll try for her there.”

  “Probably.”

  “Then don’t let her go.”

  “I can’t forbid her from doing anything. I can only advise her against it.”

  “Hell of a job you’ve got,” she said, and looked back at the letters. I looked across the street, watching the traffic in front of the building.

  Bridgett made small noises to herself while reading, whether of amusement or disgust, I wasn't sure. Finally, she said, “There’s no sexist like a holy sexist. How do you think these are done?” She gestured at the letters.

  “Somebody, perhaps several somebodys, sits around a keyboard and types them up. I think they’re done in committee, but I don’t know why I think that. They print it out and copy it, destroy the original, then drop the copy in the mail.”

  “They probably delete the file from the computer, too,” she said.

  I started to agree, then stopped, and looked carefully at the man entering the apartment building.

  “That’s Barry,” I said.

  Bridgett turned to look. “No shit? I wonder where he’s been.”

  “In for questioning?”

  She shook her head. “They were done with them hours ago.” She took the keys out of the ignition and opened her door. “Coming?”

  I nodded and took the file, then got out of the Porsche and followed her across the street. She led without looking for traffic, forcing a Mazda to swerve out of her way. She waited for me on the sidewalk, set the alarm on the Porsche from her remote, then slipped her arm around my waist, and said, “Let’s go, stud.”

  We walked right past the doorman, Bridgett giggling at me and saying, “You’re so nasty!” She slipped one hand under my shirt and then licked my ear. The doorman politely averted his gaze, and she clung to me while we waited for the elevator. Inside the car, she punched 14 and, when the doors closed, released me, taking the file with her. “Mind if I hold this?”

  I shrugged. “You lick well,” I told her.

  “And not only ears,” she said. “But don’t get any ideas.”

  Crowell was in 14J, and Bridgett Logan knocked on the door twice, hard. We waited patiently, side by side, as we were examined through the eyehole. Then the door opened and Clarence Barry was standing there, a film of sweat on his forehead. He still had on his windbreaker, and for a moment I thought he looked alarmed.

  Barry barely acknowledged Bridgett, working hard to intimidate me through posture and eye contact. We locked each other up and his hand drifted a fraction toward the gun on his hip, then returned to neutral at his waist.

  “Hello, cocksucker,” he said to me. “You’re a dead man.”

  “Just back from hiding the rifle?” I asked him.

  Bridgett said, “Boys, boys, not in the hall.”

  Barry ignored her. “I’m going to fucking do your ass, then I’ll waste this bitch,” he said.

  He was making a serious threat, he meant what he was saying, and the viciousness of his words surprised me. It’s frightening to be told by a man carrying a gun that he’s going to kill you. But that fear went quickly as our stares lengthened, and suddenly I couldn’t take him seriously at all, this childish petulance, the bruises on his face where he had hit the pavement with me on his back, his nose broken from that impact. He was only an ape in a suit, and it wasn’t a particularly nice suit, at that. He’d have had better luck trying to intimidate me while sitting on the toilet.

  Bridgett said, “My name’s Bridgett Logan. I was wondering if I could speak to Mr. Crowell.”

  “He’s busy.” He had an accent, hard Appalachian, and when he spoke he moved his right hand over his mouth, maybe reassuring himself that it had indeed worked. A small tattoo of a dagger, green with age, folded between his thumb and forefinger.

  “He’ll see us. We’re here from the LifeCare clinic. We want to ask him a few questions.”

  “He’s not here, bitch.”

  “Thought you said he was busy?” I said.

  “He’s busy not being here,” he said to me. Then he smiled, pleased with the inventiveness of his answer.

  “Mr. Crowell,” Bridgett called. “Can I talk to you?” For a moment we all stood in silence, waiting, then, as Barry started to close the door, a voice said, “Who else is out there?”

  “The bodyguard,” Barry said.

  “Show them in, Clarence.”

  Clarence would have preferred to show us out, preferably through the window. Somehow he restrained his baser urge and opened the door again. Bridgett went right past him into an open living room, but I waited a moment, simply smiling at Barry. The hate in his eyes was delicious; the resentment foamed inside him. He wanted so badly to hurt me and his master wouldn’t let him. I followed Bridgett.

  Jonathan Crowell stood in front of a big black leather recliner, and he motioned Bridgett and me to the big black leather sofa that sat opposite it. He gave Bridgett a good look-over before doing anything else, and she gave him one of her own.

  “I trust you’re not here to beat me up?” Crowell finally asked me.
<
br />   “Depends on what happens next, I suppose,” I said. He smiled at me, and I thought that I was wrong, that he and Felice had nothing in common at all. He sank back into his recliner and asked, “Then what can I do for you?”

  “Where’s Rich?” I sat down beside Bridgett.

  Crowell raised his eyebrows at me. “I have no idea.”

  “I got the impression at the hospital that he was your bodyguard.”

  “No, Mr. Kodiak. I have no need for anyone like you.”

  “Really? Then what does Rich do?”

  His forced gentility slipped. “He’s our Personnel Director. And before you ask, I’ll tell you exactly what I told the NYPD and the FBI. Mr. Rich, Mr. Barry, and myself were having breakfast with an SOS chapter in Yonkers this morning. None of us murdered little Katie Romero.”

  “Well, none of you pulled the trigger, at least,” I said. Bridgett shot me a look designed to drop charging elephants. I gave her my best turns-knees-into-water smile. It didn’t work. She said easily to Crowell, “We have some questions we’re hoping you can answer.”

  Barry came around from behind me, sliding around the room like an oil spill, shutting the doors and checking for traps. He moved to stand behind Crowell’s chair, trying to stare at both Bridgett and me at the same time. After a while he gave up on Bridgett and concentrated solely on me.

  “I’ve already spoken to the authorities,” Crowell said. He smoothed his tie carefully down along his chest, assuring himself that it was entirely centered. The tie was silk, striped blue and white on a green background. His shirt was ivory-white and heavily starched, with French cuffs, and tucked neatly into tan pleated pants. On crossed feet hung black leather shoes with pristine soles, as if he had never touched the ground in them. According to his manner, that was precisely what he wanted you to think.

  “This is independent,” Bridgett told him. “We’ve got some questions about the letters Dr. Romero and the clinic have received.”

  Crowell took a sip of mineral water from a bottle on the table beside his chair and said, to me, “I don’t imagine I’ll be of any more help to you than I was to that Mexican.”

  “Detective Lozano, you mean?” I asked.

  Crowell nodded and turned his head to look out the window at the view across Central Park.

  “He’s Cuban,” I said.

  He waved a hand in dismissal. The hand was clean and sported a class ring from Harvard on one finger. I wondered how much it had cost him. “I don’t know anything about the letters,” Crowell said.

  Bridgett opened the folder and set each letter out, chronologically, on the coffee table before Crowell. It took a minute and all the space on the table, and Crowell made a sour face to pass the time. Barry never moved; I’m not certain he even blinked. When Bridgett was finished Crowell looked at them briefly, then out the window. “I’ve never seen these before.”

  “Didn’t Detective Lozano show them to you?” Bridgett asked.

  He considered that, then looked at me again. “Yes, yes he did. And the FBI men, too. I meant, I’ve never seen the originals.”

  “So you have seen these before?” Bridgett pressed, the glint of a very sharp edge in her voice.

  Crowell stood and walked to the window and stood there, admiring the expensive view. At least, I thought he was admiring the view. He pointed. “The Jewish Museum is over there.” He lowered his arm and waited. When he got no response from us he waited some more, then said, “It’s all just decay down there. You do know that, don’t you? This city is only a small part of this country, but it embodies everything in this nation. Everything here can be found between Maine and Alaska. And it’s all falling apart.”

  “So you have seen these before, Mr. Crowell?” Bridgett repeated. The edge in her voice was clearer now, and the muscles in her jaw tightened after she spoke.

  Without turning Crowell said, “And it is falling apart from the heart, from the center. As this city is the center of this nation, this nation is falling apart. As the family is falling apart, so is this city, corrupted, diminished by parasites who refuse God’s law. The true values of the American family have been distorted by all those people who now live here, groups with their perverted special interests and their selfish, hedonistic concerns. They are slowly tugging the thread that built this city, unraveling it, and thus the country, leaving us a ruin that may never be repaired.”

  It was as if he spoke to a huge audience beyond the pane of glass and had forgotten we were in the room. Barry was staring at his back, probably expecting Crowell to sprout wings and a halo.

  “I’m right, you know that,” Crowell continued. “You never hear about a Christian being arrested for dealing crack. Godless is what we have become, forsaking the Word for our own petty delights. And unless we find God again, we shall be destroyed.” He turned and his eyes rested on Bridgett. “Unless our women understand their duty, we shall be destroyed.” He looked at me. “Unless our men lead the way, we shall be destroyed.”

  He turned back to the window and raised both his arms so he looked, in silhouette, like Christ on the Cross. He rolled his head back and said, nearly sobbing, “Unless each and every baby killer is stopped, each and every factory of death is dismantled, we shall all be destroyed. Unless we stop the holocaust of the unborn innocents, we shall all be destroyed. There can be no rest, no hope, no salvation for any of us, until we stop this mad butchery of our own children.”

  It was grand theater. He didn’t move, rigid in his own imagined crucifixion. Bridgett shifted on the couch, making the leather sigh, the tension coiled in her, looking for an out.

  Considering the scene Crowell was playing, his apartment was remarkably secular. Only one religious artifact, a large stainless-steel cross wrapped in barbed wire, hung on the wall over the television cabinet. He had two shelves loaded with books, a large easy chair for reading beside them. A well-shined brass lamp stood beside the chair. On the floor beside the coffee table, where Bridgett had moved them to lay out the letters, were hardcover copies of his two books, Abortuaries and the Death of America and Innocence Slaughtered. Neither copy looked to have ever been opened. I picked up one and looked at the photograph on the back. Crowell looked out sternly at the camera. I put the book back on the floor. The carpet was slate gray, as empty of feeling as the apartment.

  Clarence Barry beamed at Crowell’s back. Still no wings.

  The only emotion worth speaking of was Crowell’s, whose arms must have been aching something fierce.

  Bridgett Logan said, “So . . . your answer is no?”

  Crowell lowered his arms gracefully and spun slowly on the Italian-shod ball of his right foot to face us. “You see,” he said, “it is not that I want the blight purged from us with fire and wrath. It is simply that the blight must be purged, and if fire and wrath are the only instruments for the task, then they, of course, must be used.

  “Our Lord does not act alone. He acts through us.”

  Bridgett found her roll of Life Savers and began chewing on one.

  “No compromise?” I asked.

  He smiled thinly. “One does not bargain with God, Mr. Kodiak. If we are moved to act, then act we must and by any means at our disposal.”

  “Even if those means are murder?” Bridgett asked, looking at the roll of candy in her hand.

  “Man’s law is nothing. God’s law is supreme. Man can only mock God. Man mocks God’s laws all the time. Man means nothing if Man does not live according to God’s law,” Crowell said. He said it to me. Not once since we had started speaking had he looked at Bridgett. When he chose to answer her, he relayed the answer through me as if I were her interpreter.

  “Correct me if I’m way off base here, but isn’t murder against God’s law?” she asked.

  “That is precisely the point,” he said to me.

  Bridgett’s shoulders shifted, and I expected her to throw her roll of candy at Crowell, but she didn’t. Instead, she ate another Life Saver.

  I asked
, “You plan to attend the Common Ground summit, don’t you?”

  He hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

  “The entire purpose of the summit is to find compromise,” I said. “By attending, won’t you be participating in the mockery you’ve just so eloquently denounced?”

  “We all have a right to speak,” Crowell said to me. I think he liked it that I had called him eloquent. “I would be more than a fool if I let such an opportunity to spread my message pass me by without seizing it.”

  “And that Katie Romero’s death has made you all the more visible has nothing to do with it?” Bridgett asked.

  “I am not an opportunist,” he told me. “I am a servant of Our Lord.”

  “Your rhetoric’s lovely,” I said. “Really, it is. And the theological aspects of the debate are fascinating, too, but really immaterial, and neither answers our questions. We’re asking you if you know who is threatening Dr. Romero.”

  He returned to his seat and picked up his mineral water. “I have answered your questions, Mr. Kodiak. But, as God’s law obviously means nothing to you, I’ll explain it to you clearly. You are not a Christian, and I should know better than to try to appeal to you as one.”

  “Or to me,” Bridgett said. Crowell ignored her. She pulled a new pack of Life Savers from her pocket and began unwrapping them, dropping the foil on the carpet. Barry started at the offense, but remained in place, looking as if he’d love to snap her neck.

  “I do not know who is sending those letters,” Crowell said. “And if I did, I do not think I would tell you. I do not know who murdered Dr. Romero’s poor daughter, but if I did know that, I certainly would not tell you; I would tell the police. And as for the conference, yes, I believe Common Ground is a mockery, and it will surely fail. And that, to completely answer your previous question, is my entire reason for going. I will bring down the house by speaking the truth.”