Keeper (19 page)

The trigger had gone back before I had realized I was pulling it. The hammer had fallen before I knew what I had done. And when the pistol had dry-fired, all I had thought of was racking the slide and trying again.

What I wanted to do was be sick, to vomit in the dirty, cramped bathroom at the back of this tacky diner. I wanted to throw up and get whatever was inside me out. I gagged over the sink, spitting sticky strands of saliva, but succeeded only in getting stomach cramps that pinched me from diaphragm to groin. Nothing came up; it wouldn’t let go.

After a while I ran some cold water and splashed my face, melting the tears away. Then I cleaned my glasses and left.

The walk to the clinic was short, the rain tapering from downpour to downtrickle, and I came to the comer of 135th and Amsterdam in time to see protest become pandemonium.

The rain had done nothing to the crowd of protesters. A few had tried to cover up, pulling windbreakers over their heads to shield themselves, but that was all the consideration the weather warranted, except to an elderly woman on the east side of Amsterdam. Holding a sheaf of sodden photocopies in one hand, she tilted her head back and called out something about the cleansing power of God. Her and Robert De Niro.

People were screaming at each other. A chorus of antiabortionists had started a chant of “Two, four, eight, ten, All you women want to be men.” NARAL and the Feminist Majority had trained countertroops, mostly women, from their teens to their forties, arms locked, an immobile line. They countered with, “Two, four, eight, ten, Why are your leaders always men?”

A corps of police officers in riot gear were pushing people back across their perimeter line, their face shields still up, waiting for the order. The actual court-designated property line for the clinic was somewhere in the middle of the street, as arbitrary now as it had ever been. Both groups ignored it freely. The antis had rushed hard and strong, and now were being driven back. Both factions had crossed the line, where the officers held it, looking grim.

Watching the bodies twist and press against each other, I realized how angry I was, and I felt the weight of the holster on my hip.

And I knew I couldn’t trust myself.

Parked up on the sidewalk was a large yellow Ryder truck, and I stepped around it, trying to get a look in the back. It was open and empty but for a young man sitting with his legs dangling over the edge. He had a compact two-way radio on his belt. He gestured to the sky and said, “Out of nowhere, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“You fall back?”

I nodded.

“You should get back in there. Crowell’s coming.” 

“Really?”

“You bet.”

I didn’t move for a moment, and the young man continued to watch me. His face was small and soft, and his posture vaguely confrontational. He pulled the radio off his belt and held it against his thigh.

“You’re not with us, are you?” he asked.

“Depends. Who are you?”

“Sword of the Silent.”

“Ah, no, I’m not with you, then.”

“You condone the murder of babies?” He asked it evenly enough.

“There’s some debate about that. Calling them babies, I mean.”

“All life is sacred. Only God has the right to take life. Baby murderers are no better than common criminals, protected by a godless president who promotes godless laws.”

I was tempted to ask him if he was a vegetarian, but instead said, “Crowell teach you that?”

“Our Lord taught me that. He died teaching us all that.”

I said, “Actually, I’m Jewish.”

He didn’t even blink. “Of course. I should have known. And you complain about the Holocaust, while another happens under your nose.”

“Been nice talking to you,” I said.

“I’ll pray for your soul,” he told me as I walked away.

A car horn started barking, coming closer, and several people lowered their “Stop the Murder” signs and headed toward the source, the white Cadillac that Rich had driven up outside Crowell’s building. It parked illegally just long enough to let Crowell out. The rain had picked up again, and I tried to wipe my glasses off again but gave up and looked past the water drops. I couldn’t see either Bridgett or her car anywhere on the street.

The arrival had an obvious effect. Both sides got louder. A lot louder. Crowell emerged from the Caddy, waving nonchalantly, like a movie star at a premiere. Other than a raincoat, he was dressed just as before. The moderates began backing to the opposite side of the street, trying to distance themselves from SOS. Crowell leaned back inside the car and brought out a bullhorn, then slammed the door. As the Cadillac pulled away, he began to speak.

“Dr. Romero,” he said, his voice low and crackling. “Dr. Romero, can you hear me? What would you do if you had only five minutes left to live?”

The crowd went nuts.

Son of a bitch, I thought. He knows she isn’t here and he pulls this. Her daughter dead hardly eight hours, and he pulls this.

Son of a bitch.

The noise dulled to a low roar, then Crowell said, “Listen to me, now,” and the SOS crowd went silent. “Listen to me, now,” he said again. “Please, in the name of God and all that Jesus holds holy, please, do not murder any more babies. Stop your slaughter of those silent innocents who die beyond your doors. Your own child today joined the ranks of the fallen, and yet you continue. Oh, dear God, please stop, please do not let her kill any more babies, do not let her murder any more women or their children. Please ... oh, please.”

Everyone was listening and everyone was still. Along the pro-choice line I caught a rustle of movement, some bowed heads speaking to one another, but that was all. The moderates had regrouped at the comer, and were watching the proceedings sadly.

“Beloved, my Christian friends, we are now at a time where our resolve will be most surely tested.

“We all have heard what has happened today. We all know the events visited upon Dr. Romero this morning.” Some people actually cheered. But then Crowell raised his left hand and they again fell silent. Raindrops beaded and dripped from the end of his bullhorn.

“We do not rejoice in this,” he said. “As the Lord said to the Israelites on the shores of the Red Sea, these too are my children, and you will find no glory in their deaths.

“We find no glory in the Lord’s punishments. Yet we must remain strong, our resolve must not falter. We have all heard of Common Ground. We have heard of the promise of peace through compromise. The events of this day surely speak to such a reconciliation, seductively draw us to more mainstream protests.

“But it is a lie! There can be no common ground, there can be no rest, no peace, no reconciliation. This is a war of absolutes. We cannot just save half a baby, rescue only some of the preborn. It is all or nothing, all or nothing, and what has been visited upon Dr. Felice Romero this day, that is her punishment, and not ours!”

This earned him more cheers and, finally, some aggressive booing and heckling. Crowell didn’t seem to mind either reaction. I could see movement at the second floor windows of the clinic, several scared and bewildered faces looking out of the waiting room above.

“This is a house of sin, of horror and torture, of women trapped and bound, held helpless where their children are tom from them. Bloody and broken, these infants come from their screaming mothers. We must never forget this.

“This ‘surgery,’ ” Crowell shouted, and he made the word drip with scorn, “this, ‘elective and ambulatory procedure’ is murder, bloody, calculated, state-sanctioned murder! It is barbarism, and it is, most of all, a crime against God! And we must never, ever, stop our fight! In the name of God and Our Lord Jesus Christ, we must fight on!”

Crowell’s declaration echoed. A counterchant started, not quite on time, and instead of clear words it sounded like garbled tape, chewed and tom.

This was just what his people wanted to hear. They were soaking up every word, assenting, nodding. Crowell wiped rain out of his eyes and said, at first softly, then louder and louder, “No common ground. No common ground. No common ground,” until the crowd picked up the cadence of the words, and began chanting them with him. The volume swelled, thunderously loud suddenly, swallowing up the counterchant of
“Choice, choice, choice.”
Then Crowell waved his hand once and silenced them again.

“The Lord is vengeful,” he shouted. “The Lord is strong. The Lord will destroy that which offends Him. With fire and cleansing wrath, will the Lord purify this place.”

Cries from everyone, Amens and Praise Gods and Go to Hells. Men and women exhorted Jesus to right now descend from heaven and smite everyone inside the building. And the crowd was moving suddenly, a great surge toward the clinic doors. I took a step forward.

A window on the ground floor broke and inside the building, someone screamed. Another window shattered, then several, simultaneously. A woman shrieked and fell back, dropping her NARAL sign, blood on her forehead.

During a portion of the Gulf War I had been assigned to coordinate the protection of a general, and we had been in Tel Aviv when Hussein started dropping SCUDs on Israel. They came at night, the few times they came at all, and they came out of a stillness and silence suddenly pierced by air-raid sirens and people desperate for their lives. There would be nothing, then the sirens, and then immediate movement, people frantically trying to bring loved ones to safety, to save themselves. It was a crowd mentality I had never seen before, people moving ferociously for one reason.

This was worse. This wasn’t for survival. These people wanted blood.

Everything I was wanted to move, everything I had ever learned told me to act, to do something. But I stood in the rainfall, on the sidewalk, inadequate, fighting the cold irrational rage of the mob. Lists of options presented themselves to me, courses of action and protection and security, and instead of doing what I was meant to do, what I was trained to do, I dropped anchor and just let myself be beaten upon by the rain.

Crowell was climbing back into the Cadillac, his head low. Police tried to reach him, failing, pinned in by the rushing crowd.

It was as if Crowell’s troops had spurs driving them. They threw themselves against the opposing line, the cops, and the clinic building like amphetamine-keyed lemmings. Young kids, just children, were pushed forward into the crowd by their parents, urged to rush the clinic, and some were crying, clinging to their mothers or fathers. Another first-floor window broke.

The doors were holding, nobody was getting inside. The pro-choice line had regrouped and reformed, and was now forging a reinforced cordon, pressing the antis away from the building. With their success, the police seemed to get the upper hand, too, and the massive push turned into fractured fits and starts, kamikaze missions flown by apathetic pilots.

The Cadillac had pulled away, now replaced by emergency vehicles, police cars, an EMS rig. The initial threat was gone, already, but it had been replaced by the death rattle of the assault. Some still resisted passively, and some seemed not to have been involved at all, serenely holding their signs and repeating their rain-soaked litany of hope and salvation.

Entering the clinic was out of the question. Thirty or forty people were still crushed against the door or on the stairs leading to the entrance. I tried to spot faces, again seeing the bushy beard, now ex-bushy beard, as he was dragged by two uniformed officers to the first paddy wagon.

“Hey, stud, can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

Bridgett Logan was beside me. Her hair had been flattened by the rain, and it clung to her face, making her skin seem almost alabaster pale, and her eyes vividly blue. She smiled at my reaction to her, holding the cup out.

The heat from the cup warmed my hands. My fingers looked like flesh-colored raisins, and they began to hurt as I popped the tab on the cover, sipping. The coffee was hot and sweet, a lot of sugar, no cream.

“You like it?”

“It’s awful sweet.”

“You’re a sweetie.” She was drinking hers black, the top off the cup, and side by side we surveyed the street together. After a while she said, “How long you been here?”

“Little before Crowell arrived. You?”

“Little after him. Lost him, figured that meant he’d be coming here, booked back. I’m parked at the back of the clinic. Missed Crowell’s speech, though. Made it just in time for the floor show.”

“You should have heard the monologue. He managed to remove any guilt the SOS crowd might have had about protesting the same day that Katie Romero died.”

“Oooh,” she moaned, wiping raindrops from her face. “That man just makes my knees go to water.”

She drained her cup and crumpled it, and we walked back on the sidewalk, getting against a doorway for shelter. Looking over at the stairs, I saw what the problem was with the entrance. Six people had chained themselves together, wrapping links about their necks, then looping the ends around the banisters on either side and locking them with the standard Kryptonite locks. Bolt cutters just don’t work on those things. A couple of uniforms were talking to the group, trying to persuade them to surrender the keys. Then one of the officers went to get the bolt cutters anyway, probably to use on the chains.

“How’d you get here?” Bridgett asked. I told her. I even told her about Barry. When I was finished she asked, “You knew that he hadn’t chambered that round, right?” 

“No.”

She bit her lower lip, eyes narrowing. She shook her head, once, then said, “Where are the letters?”

“Stuck to the sidewalk by that diner. They were a writeoff anyway.”

“With the rain, yeah. I’ll call Lozano, straighten him out,” she said. She dropped her crumpled cup in the trash can on the comer. “So, you figure that Crowell’s friend Clarence was going to call somebody with that radio of his after he made his bomb threat and tell them exactly when to rush?”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure. The attempted break-in last night was probably to make the threat more serious.” 

“They would have gotten inside while everyone was trying to get out. Nice job, fighting the good fight.”