Keeper (23 page)

She took her notepad from her jacket pocket, pulled out a folded sheet, and handed it to me. “You’ll need this. It’s the convention schedule.”

I glanced over the sheet. It listed panels and talks by title, but didn’t tell where the events were going to be held in the hotel. “When’d you pick this up?”

“Couple days ago,” she said. “Romero had a stack of them at the clinic. When you’re done with the walkthrough, give me a list of the changes you’ll want and I’ll make sure my father gets them done.”

“It’d be easier if you came along.”

“Maybe,” Natalie said. “But one of us should stay on the principal from now until the conference is over, and it’d be better if that’s me.”

“Yeah?”

“Felice is starting to rely a little too heavily on you,” she said. “And you know how that can affect the op. She can’t forget that there are other guards around her.”

It took me a second to recognize how correct she was. “I wasn’t seeing it,” I said. “But you’re right.” 

“Transference is normal, Atticus, you know that. It’s one of the by-products of our job. Yesterday she hated you, today you’re her salvation.”

“I thought it was because I’m so roguishly handsome,” I said.

“And witty,” Natalie said. “It’s not too bad yet, but we might want to head it off.”

“Sort of flattering, really.”

“I wouldn’t rely on it as a method of meeting women,” she said.

Bridgett’s apartment was in a small brownstone in Chelsea on the fifth floor. The building was recently renovated, clean, and the stairs didn’t creak. Natalie knocked on the door, saying, “It’s us.”

Several locks turned and Rubin pulled the door back, letting us through. The door opened into a hall that ran to the left to a tiny living room. After Rubin locked up he led us down the hall.

It was a comfortable, if cramped, apartment, with photographs framed on the walls and a lot of old, perhaps antique, wooden furniture. There was a lumpy easy chair and a faded sofa arranged facing one wall in the living room, a small television and VCR unit that sat on an oak bureau. The television was tuned to CNN.

Dr. Romero was on the couch, her briefcase open beside her, a legal pad on her lap. She said, “Atticus,” when I came in, and tried a smile that almost worked, but never reached her eyes. Dale rose from where he was filling the easy chair.

“You’re feeling better?” I asked Dr. Romero.

“Showered and had some food,” she said. “Working on the funeral preparations. It’ll be Monday, the day after the conference. It’s keeping my mind busy, you see.”

“Good.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry about the apartment.”

“That’s nothing you should apologize for,” I told her.

“If you say so.”

“I do,” I said. I looked around at everyone. “Let’s have a powwow.”

Natalie and Rubin joined Felice on the couch, and I motioned Dale back to the easy chair. Bridgett came in from another hall, past the kitchen. She was wearing a black T-shirt and tom black jeans today, flashing skin at thighs and knees, and she said, “Hey, stud. This private?”

“No, stay. You should hear this, too.”

“Bitchin’,” she said, and leaned against the door frame.

“The conference is tomorrow,” I said. “And the threat is still active. It may come from SOS, it may come from another quarter entirely, but I think everyone can agree that an attempt will probably be made. Security for the conference will be good, but that is no guarantee; it never is.

“Do you still plan to attend?” I asked Felice.

She capped her pen and set it on her legal pad. “I’ve got to go,” she said. “They killed my little girl trying to keep me quiet, trying to keep me still. They’ve won enough off me; I won’t give them another victory.”

Bridgett shook her head. “Excuse me, but if they kill you, isn’t that their final victory? At least in this battle?”

“If they kill me,” Felice said.

Bridgett pulled the tin of Altoids from her hip pocket and popped a mint, offering the container around. Natalie and Rubin each took one.

“I’m going to attend,” Felice said. “Damn them.”

“All right,” I said. “Then you will do the following, to the letter, until after the conference. From now until tomorrow night, you go nowhere, do nothing, without at least one other guard with you at all times. This means everything, from sleeping to showering to eating.” I looked at my crew. “This means one of you is on her at all times, no excuses.”

“When are we going hot?” Rubin asked.

“The conference starts at ten-hundred tomorrow morning,” Natalie said. She pulled her notepad out of her jacket pocket and flipped a couple of pages, then found the entry she wanted. “It’s scheduled to run until twenty-hundred.” She asked Dr. Romero, “When do you plan to arrive?” 

“I’m speaking at the opening with Veronica,” Felice said. “Then I’m scheduled for a panel at noon and a talk at three. The talk should finish by five.”

“Do you know the locations of those talks?” I asked her.

“The panel will be in the Imperial Ballroom, and my talk is to be held in the New York Room,” she said. As she spoke, Natalie wrote this new information down. “I believe that Veronica and I are to speak in the Imperial, as well.”

Natalie tore the sheet from her pad and handed it to me. I folded it and put it in my pocket next to the schedule. “We’re going to need a general briefing with all the agencies involved,” I said. “And the only time I see when we’ll have a chance to do that is before the conference itself starts. Figure we’ll go hot at oh-seven-hundred. Transport at oh-seven-thirty, and we place Dr. Romero in the command post by oh-eight-hundred. We’ll hold the general briefing there at oh-eight-thirty. Egress at seventeen-hundred if possible. We return to normal coverage only after Dr. Romero is secured at the safe apartment tomorrow night.” While I was speaking, my pager went off, and I silenced it, then checked the number.

“How are we covering in the hot zone?” Dale asked.

“When Dr. Romero is speaking or in any group, all of us. Otherwise I’ll be on the principal unless needed elsewhere, in which case one of you will sub in. Dale, you’ll be responsible for evac and exits,” I said. “Rubin will cover entrances, and Natalie will be the floater. As always, the chain of command will run from me to Natalie to Dale to Rubin.”

“Joy,” Rubin said.

“Understood?” I asked.

Everyone gave me a nod, even Bridgett.

“Good,” I said, and checked my watch. It was almost twelve-thirty. “I’m going to head over to the Elysium now, do the walk-through, and plan the routes.”

Bridgett pushed off the door frame and said, “You need a phone? Use the one in my office.”

I followed her down the hall. The floor was hardwood, highly polished. She guided me through a door on her right into a small office with an oak desk in a comer. The desk was huge, and I wondered how she had fit it into the room. Its surface was covered with papers, a Macintosh computer stuck in one comer, cables, running from it to the printer on the floor. She pointed me to the chair in front of it, pulling a seat for herself from the comer. Both of the chairs were backless, the kind where you rested your knees on pads below the seat. I picked up the phone and dialed.

“Who you calling?” she asked.

“Fowler,” I said.

She made a face, then said, “I’ve got a friend, a reporter. Did some digging for me. You know that Veronica Selby has published four books about abortion and how to protest it?”

“She’d mentioned as much to me.”

“Lectures, articles—she’s very busy.”

“And?”

“She and Crowell were at one point engaged.”

Fowler answered his phone before I could respond further, and Bridgett just grinned at my shock.

“Got a preliminary report on the letter,” Scott told me. “It reads: ‘Dear Butcher Bitch, two down, one to go. Not twins, not triplets. Murdered babies, punished mothers. I will have justice.’ That’s it.”

“Read it again,” I said, and grabbed a pen and one of the scraps of paper on Bridgett’s desk. Fowler read the letter again and I copied it down, then handed it to her to read, saying to Scott, “Did you find anything on the letter?”

“That’s the good news,” he said. “The lab pulled fiber traces from the envelope, blue. Could have been carried inside a coat pocket or something. It’s not a lot, but it’s progress. I’m still waiting for the lab to finish.”

“Not a mail carrier’s jacket?” I asked.

“No, definitely not. That was the first check we ran. What do you make of the letter, that ‘two down’ business?”

“No idea.”

“Sounds like the writer is Katie’s murderer,” Fowler said.

“Then who’s the second victim?”

“That’s a good question. Felice have any other children, anything like that?”

“No.”

“Maybe Katie was pregnant?”

“Are you kidding? Absolutely not,” I said. “Besides, she was having her period when she was shot.”

Bridgett’s eyebrows rose. I shrugged at her.

“I’m just theorizing,” Fowler said.

“Well, trash that particular theory. Is that it?”

“No, there’s one other thing. Barry is out on bail.” Twice the bastard had been caught dead to rights, and twice he had been set free. “How?” I fought to keep my voice level.

“He made bail, Atticus. All he was charged with was aggravated harassment for the phone call and criminal possession of a weapon for the gun. The call itself is only a misdemeanor, it’s the CPW charge that’s a felony. He walked on fifty thousand, cash or bond.”

“Where’d the money come from?”

“Crowell.”

“Barry needs to be in custody,” I said. “He’s our prime suspect, Scott, and the conference is tomorrow.”

“I know. NYPD has been following him since he got out. They’ll pull him back in if he gives them cause.” 

“They better not lose him.”

“I know.”

“I mean it, Scott.”

“Watch your tone, Atticus,” he said. “Everybody’s doing the best they can.”

“Bullshit,” I said, and hung up.

Bridgett was looking at me, expectant.

“Barry got out,” I told her. “That motherfucker is walking the streets again.”

“Tough break, stud,” she said.

“Would you stop with that?”

“You don’t like being called stud?”

“Not particularly, no.”

“Too bad . . . stud,” she said, and popped another Altoid.

I got up and headed back into the hall, mostly hoping to find a safe outlet for my anger. And I was angry now, could feel it rumbling. I was having a hard enough time trying to protect Romero as it was without legal loopholes, incompetents, and liars getting in my way.

“Where you going?” Bridgett asked, coming after me. “Out. I’ve got to do the walk-through.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Can I stop you?”

“Maybe with your gun, but I don’t think you’re that kind of boy,” she said.

“You have no idea what kind of boy I am,” I said.

“But I’m learning.”

We entered the living room. “Bridgett and I are going out. We’ll be back about four for the transport,” I told Natalie.

“We’ll be ready.”

Bridgett grabbed her leather jacket from the counter between the living room and the kitchen, slipping into it. Felice stopped what she was doing with her papers to watch us go, and when her eyes found me I discovered that I couldn’t look at her. I went to the front door, out of sight, to wait.

No, Felice didn’t hate me today. Maybe she didn’t even blame me. Natalie was probably correct; I had gone from failure to savior in under twenty-four hours, and as I watched Bridgett Logan come down the hall, her car keys in her hand, I wasn’t certain which position I liked better.

We got into Bridgett’s Porsche, and I told her we were going to Park Avenue first.    .

“The Elysium’s on Fifty-third, isn’t it? Between Sixth and Seventh?”

“We’re making a stop. Unless you’re unwilling, in which case I’ll just take a cab,” I said.

“Whoa, easy, stud. We can make a stop first, sure. So, where am I headed?” I told her to drive uptown and she nodded and ran the Porsche like a demon. “So, whose place are we going to?”

“Veronica Selby’s.”

The doorman who looked like a royal guard stopped us from entering, and gave us the evil eye while he called Selby on the house phone. He said my last name like it was a disease. It didn’t help my mood.