Keeper (27 page)

She nodded and grinned. “My people. And yours?” 

“I’m a mutt. Some Czech, some Russian, some Polish.” Our food arrived and we bent to the task. The stew was substantial, and it came with a basket of soda bread that made for perfect company. I cleaned out my bowl and sat back, finishing my stout. “Good choice,” I said.

“You want some of this?”

“No, thanks.”

She pushed her greens around some more, then set down her fork and knife and pulled out another mint. “So?” she asked. “You want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know, actually.”

“Fair enough.”

Shannon returned and shook her head at Bridgett’s bowl. “You’ll waste into nothing,” she said as she cleared the table. Then she returned and gave us each a cup of coffee.

“Were you going to belt that cop?” Bridgett asked me. “I might’ve.”

“Dumb.”

“I know.”

She tapped the side of her cup with a fingernail. Her nails were short, but clean and unpainted. I wondered if she went for manicures.

“Have you ever had an abortion?” I asked her.

“No,” Bridgett said. “No, never an abortion.”

“The woman I was seeing, she had one. That’s how I met Romero.”

“Alison?”

“That’s her,” I said. “We’ve been seeing each other for about seven months, and she called me when I got in last night, told me that I wasn’t the man she wanted to grow old with.”

Bridgett raised her eyebrows.

“Not in those words,” I amended. “Close, but not those words.”

“Her timing is for shit.”

“I told her that.”

Shannon returned and refilled our coffee cups. Bridgett waited until she was gone, then said, “This because of her abortion?”

“I think in part. If nothing else, it made her take another look at me. And I hadn’t been around—I wasn’t super supportive after the fact. I was working for Romero.” 

“You don’t sound too certain about the decision.”

“No, it was the right thing to do, I really believe that. I can’t be a father yet, and Alison sure as hell didn’t want to be a mother. It’s just that working for Romero, in a way it was an easy excuse. Made the abortion something I didn’t have to deal with.”

“Not anymore.”

“No,” I said. “And Katie’s dead, and that is so wrong and it makes me so angry . . . shouldn’t our child mean the same thing?” I toyed with my coffee cup, watching the way the liquid sloshed along the sides. It made me think of the bloody water pouring from the toilet in Romero’s bathroom. “I look at people like Veronica Selby, even Crowell, for God’s sake, and I wonder.”

“Don’t give Crowell that much credit. He doesn’t see sanctity of life, he sees a road to attention.”

“I think he’s a son of a bitch, don’t worry. I can’t imagine what would be left of him if I got him alone in an alley for a few minutes.”

“Him or Barry?”

“Both,” I said.

“Romero’s still alive.”

“Tell me that tomorrow night,” I said.

“It’s a date,” she said as Shannon slipped the check onto the table. Bridgett picked it up before I could, saying, “It’s on me.”

“Next one’s mine,” I told her.

“Then I’ll pick somewhere extremely expensive tomorrow night,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you, Atticus. You’re not necessarily talking to the right person, here. I respect Selby, everything I know about her. But I disagree with her fundamental argument. This sounds harsh, but that fetus Alison aborted wasn’t anything more than a parasite. It could never have survived without a host, and it was giving nothing in return. Equating that to the murder of Katie Romero, that’s only going to fuck with your head, because they are absolutely two different things. Katie Romero, even if she suffered from Down’s syndrome, was never a parasite. Her potential was realized, and continued to grow.

“A bastard with a rifle cut that short.”

She put some bills on the table and we stood up, stopping to say good night to Chris on the way out. “Don’t be gone so long next time,” he said to Bridgett. “We’ve been missing you.”

“Promise,” she said.

We walked back to her car.

“Get in, stud,” Bridgett said. “I’ll take you home.”

We drove in silence, each of us thinking, I’m sure, about what exactly she and I were doing, and, perhaps, were going to do back at my apartment. She was very attractive to me that night, we both knew it. But if Bridgett came upstairs, I wouldn’t want her to stay, and part of me was preparing what I wanted to say to her if it came to that.

When we reached Thompson, Bridgett couldn’t find a place to park. Even the illegal spaces were taken, including the red zone right in front of the hydrant by my building. “You can just drop me off.”

“Let me walk you home.”

“You’re a perfect gentleman,” I told her.

“A foxy chick like yourself shouldn’t be walking the streets alone this time of night.”

She parked on MacDougal, and together we walked back toward Thompson. It was well after one: Bleecker had few people on it and Thompson was empty. We went into the little entrance cubicle to my lobby, and I unlocked the interior door, and held it open so Bridgett could slide past. I shut the door and she waited for me to get back in front of her, since the hallway was too tight to walk comfortably side by side.

He was waiting on the stairs, and I guess he was expecting only me. As I put my foot on the first step he came around the landing above, and then I was forced back off the steps and into the wall, a baseball bat pressed horizontally against my throat. It was a good hard press, and I couldn’t breathe. Barry finished the move by bringing his face close to mine, saying, “Motherfucker, this time I’ll make you piss your pants, motherfucker.” ‘

Which was a mistake, because Bridgett put her pistol to his temple and said, “Drop it, shithead.” She cocked the Sig for emphasis.

He debated the decision for a moment; it was clearly in his eyes as they moved from me to his left, trying to see her. His pressure didn’t let up, and my vision began to cloud with dots moving in from the periphery.

“Now,” Bridgett said. “Or I’ll paint the wall in Early Neanderthal Brain. That means you, Clarence.”

Barry looked back in my eyes, the same mad-hatred look he had pointed at me when Lozano led him away, and then took a step back. Bridgett let the barrel leave his temple, but kept the gun trained on him. As the bat cleared my chin, I brought my head down and began coughing, trying to find my breath.

“Drop the bat,” Bridgett said.

Barry was still looking at me, the bat now at waist level, held lengthwise with both hands. “Fucker lost me my job,” he said. “Fucker ruining my life, thinks he can make me some faggot pussy, making people laugh at me.” 

“Drop the fucking bat now, Clarence,” Bridgett said. 

“Yeah, I’ll drop it, cunt,” he said, and then he jabbed the bat sharply to his left, catching her hard in the chest with the end. Bridgett staggered, losing her aim, and went down on one knee. Barry brought the bat up again and around, zeroing once more on me. This time I was ready for it, and blocked his arm with my left forearm, shunting his swing off to the side. As the blow came down I snapped my forehead into his nose, felt it give, and pulled back to grab the bat. He brought his free hand up to my face, clawing my glasses off, and we both went back against the wall again. I got a second hand on the bat, twisted, and slammed his wrist against the banister. He dropped the bat, and caught me with a backhand that made my head ring. I lost my grip on him entirely, and staggered back into Bridgett.

Barry took a look at Bridgett where she was coming back up with her gun, then turned and went out the side door into the alley.

“Bastards never finish what they start,” Bridgett said as she pushed me after him. Her voice was breathy and strained from the blow. I took the short stairs out to the alley in one jump, landing in time to hear garbage cans ahead of us clang and fall. Bridgett came out right behind me, her gun in her right hand, and we turned in time to see Barry start over the fence.

“Stop or I’ll shoot,” Bridgett shouted at him, bringing her weapon up.

Barry didn’t stop and he didn’t look back and she brought the gun back down as I tried to make it to the fence. I jumped at the last moment, and my ankle wailed in pain. Barry pulled his foot clear, and I got a handful of nothing, scrabbling at the blurred chain links on the fence. Barry dropped and sprinted through the common courtyard between buildings, then out the alley onto MacDou-gal.

“This has not been a good night for chases,” Bridgett said.

I went back to get my glasses.

——

Barry hadn’t bothered with my apartment. Rubin had reconnected the phone in the kitchen while he had been home, so, while Bridgett dumped her coat and holster on the floor, then headed to the bathroom, I called Fowler’s cellular and told him the good news.

“So he didn’t leave town,” Fowler said.

“Very astute of you,” I told him, sitting on the windowsill and trying to work my sneaker off without causing my ankle any more damage.

“You want somebody to come by?”

“And do what?” I said. My ankle stabbed a pain up my leg and I decided trying to remove the shoe was probably a bad idea for now. “Bridgett and I both saw him. You pick him up, we’ll identify him. There’s no point. He’s not coming back tonight.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“He’s not that dumb,” I said. “He’s crazy, but not dumb. I’m here, Bridgett’s here, we’ve both got guns. He’d have to be absolutely insane to want to risk it.”

“Logan’s spending the night?”

“Shut up,” I told him.

“You could be receiving other visitors,” Fowler said. “If Barry found you, it can’t be that Hard for anyone else. You’ve been seen around the clinic.”

“If somebody else was planning on coming by, they would have done it a while ago, Scott,” I said. “My exgirlfriend and I were photographed going into and out of the clinic on our first visit. I’m sure there’s a file on each of us somewhere.”

“With your names, addresses, so on.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“Why’s Barry after you?” Fowler asked. “Romero I understand, you don’t make much sense.”

“I embarrassed him,” I said.

“You embarrass a lot of people.”

“Thank you, Scott. I know you mean that in the nicest possible way.”

“What did you do to him, particularly?”

“I scared him,” I said as Bridgett came out of the hallway from the bathroom. She was pulling on her shirt, and I saw another ring, this one through the top of her navel. The ring reflected with the same deep emerald green of her bra, making her skin seem delicate and radiant. I looked out onto the alley before I could see anything else.

“You scared him enough to make him come after you?” Fowler asked.

“The impression I get is that he’s blaming me for losing his job.”

Fowler was quiet for a moment, and I risked looking back at Bridgett. She had finished with her shirt and was opening the refrigerator. “Beer?” she asked.

I nodded.

Fowler said, “Hate to say this, but if he’s after you, maybe that’s a good thing. That means he’s got less time for Romero.”

“That still leaves the gentleman from earlier this evening.”

“We’re running the prints. We should have something by tomorrow.”

We said our good-byes, and Bridgett handed me a bottle of Anchor Steam, taking one for herself. I had some of the beer, then put the bottle on the table and tried again to get my sneaker off. It was easier to do with two hands and no phone. Then I limped to the sink and grabbed a dish towel. With ice from the freezer I made a pack, then went back to the table.

“Elevate your foot,” Bridgett told me.

I grunted and swung my leg onto the table, and she took the ice pack and set it around my ankle. I put the beer bottle against my left cheek, where Barry had connected below my eye.

Bridgett slid her chair back against the wall, stretching her legs out in front of her.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“The bat caught me smack in the middle of the breastbone,” Bridgett said, and indicated the spot between her breasts. “Missed my tits, which is good, but it’s going to be a lovely bruise. Nicer than the one you’re going to have.”

“This will be a mighty fine bruise,” I told her, pulling the bottle back to give her a look.

“Amateur stuff.”

We finished our beers, and Bridgett said, “I should go. We’ve both got an early day tomorrow.”

“You going to come by the conference?”

“I’m going to the clinic first, look at those inactive files. I’ll try to come by in the early afternoon. Will you have any time if I find something out?”

“Probably not, but we’ll see.”

She rose and put her holster back on, not bothering to stabilize it to her belt. As she slipped into her leather jacket I got my leg off the table and stood up, then went with her to the door.

“Be careful on your way home,” I told her.

She gave me a look and then it softened, and she said, “Don’t worry about me, stud.”

We looked at each other a moment longer, and I got that rush in my stomach, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation.

“Good night,” Bridgett said, and she remained in the doorway.