Keeper (8 page)

“You know why retards make good bitches?” he asked his friends. “It’s ’cause they’re real easy to train, you know?”

Rubin looked for a cue off me. I didn’t give him anything, just kept my look on the Alpha.

Katie had gone silent again.

“That one’s too fucking fat, though,” the Alpha added, inspired.

“You don’t want to start anything,” I told him. “You really don’t want to start anything. Walk away.”

“Fuck you, bud. You think I’m scared of you, of some fucking retards?”

Felice spun, said, “Young man, don’t you have a store to rob somewhere?”

He looked indignant, bobbing his head back like an ostrich. He took a couple of steps forward, saying, “You talking to me?”

“Stupid and deaf,” Felice said, and then she turned her back to him.

Here we go, I thought.

The Alpha looked at his crew and saw that they were watching him, looked back at us, and gauged the situation. He took another two steps forward, saying, “I’ll fucking show you, stupid bitch.” Then he started to reach into his jacket with his right, and that’s when I went.

It took one long stride to get in his face, my right going to his, locking his arm against his body. I put my left hand behind his head, took a handful of hair, and then spun him so he was facing his crew. I yanked back hard with my left, pulling his arm out of his jacket with my right, and then I hopped up, right knee in his back, and drove him to the sidewalk. He hit it hard, his right arm immobilized and his left too busy reaching for me. He smelled like a Laundromat, and I knew why. In his right hand, still held tightly, was a squirt gun, one of the nice, new, pneumatic kinds with a big reservoir. The kind that can squirt twenty feet or so on a good day.

He had loaded it with bleach. One shot to the eyes, and you’d be blind.

The pack started to back up, and then they broke and ran and I looked over my shoulder to see that Rubin had opened his coat to show them his gun.

Alpha was swearing a blue streak, so I pulled back harder on his hair and put more of my weight on my knee and said, “Quiet.”

Rubin came around and took the squirt gun from his hand, sniffing at it. “Nasty toy,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

“Fucker, let me up you motherfucker.”

Rubin pointed the barrel of the squirt gun at his face. He said, “Excuse me?”

Alpha shut up.

I leaned my head next to his right ear and whispered, “Okay, asshole, here’s the deal. I’m going to let you go. But don’t try this shit again on anyone, or you’ll end up with a bleach enema, got it?”

He didn’t say anything.

“Got it?” I asked again, twisting his hair.

“Got it,” he said.

“Good. Now we’re going to stand up, and if you try anything, I’ll break your neck.”

We stood and he didn’t try anything.

“Felice, will you and Katie come over here?” I called.

Rubin raised an eyebrow at me. I grinned.

Felice came around, holding Katie’s hand, stopping next to Rubin. Natalie was right with them, grinning.

“Apologize,” I told Alpha.

“What?”

“Stupid
and
deaf,” I said. “Apologize.”

He wavered, then took a deep breath and said, to Felice, “Lady, I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology,” she said.

I turned his head to Katie. “Again,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered.

“No, once more with feeling,” I said.

“I’m really sorry, I’m really sorry, please accept my apology.”

Katie just looked up at him, and it was impossible to see what she was thinking, what she felt. Then she smiled, and said, “Okay, you’re mean. I don’t like you, you’re mean. Go away.”

I let him go, and we watched him run down the street.

Dale returned with the car, and we all went for ice cream before going back to the apartment.

The bottle flew on a frozen rope, a hell of a throw, shattering against the brick clinic wall two inches from where Dr. Romero’s head had been, sending green Heineken slivers dancing to the sidewalk. The glass broke clear and loud, and all the noise, all the people on both sides of the line fell quiet.

Dale had caught the arm movement before the release and shouted, “Bottle——left,” and I had taken Dr. Romero down, butting the back of her right knee with mine, collapsing her like an aluminum can. She went down to her knees, her hands coming around to shield her head, with me wrapped about her body for extra protection. Coming back up, I caught sight of the thrower, a squat white man, yelling in victory, his hand raised in triumph.

Natalie spun to cover us, all red hair and motion, and together we half dragged, half carried Dr. Romero to the clinic door where Sheldon thrust out his hand and helped pull her inside. He propelled her efficiently past the security gate, and Natalie followed before he blocked the entrance with his body. I was off the steps and already running across the street past Dale, shouting for him to follow me.

The lines seemed still stunned, little movement and little noise, snagged in the tar of the action. Some of the prolifers were backing away, disgusted with their radical cousins. A cluster of people holding NARAL signs were starting to move, but the uniformed police held them back, trying desperately to keep the two groups separate. Throwing the bottle had changed the tenor of the crowd, starting a countdown to contact, and everyone was wearing their anger and indignation like clothes soaked in gasoline. All it would take was a match.

Then I saw the thrower being congratulated by a big blond man in a Columbia University sweatshirt, property of the athletics department, saw the thrower basking in the attention, and I threw the match myself, leaping over the line and into the crowd.

I took the thrower in the side and rode him into the pavement. I heard his skull hit the street, felt the shock of impact rush through him. University was stunned, involuntarily half-stepping back with a gasp. Coming up, I twisted the thrower’s arm around his back, heard him cry out, then used that as a handle to pull him upright. University reached in to bear-hug me, and I pivoted the thrower between us and began backing up, shouting at him to keep his distance. University took two steps toward me but the thrower shouted, “Do it!” and that stopped the other man. Dale had a hand on my back, clearing the path behind us.

The police were wading into the crowd, trying to get to us and not gaining much ground. Behind them a news crew circled for position. The mounted spot on the cameraman’s unit flashed on, and he pressed in to get a good shot, the reporter with him on point, but both were repelled by a gray-haired woman who thrust a NARAL sign at the camera. An Asian cop took a punch on his shoulder and responded by putting the teenage offender in a head lock. Someone was screaming that she had been assaulted.

“You’re in the shit,” I shouted in the thrower’s ear.

“Fuck my ass, cockbreath,” he snarled back.

I twisted his arm until he made a noise, still backing toward the sidewalk. “Fucking coward. You been pregnant?” Someone grabbed my shoulder and I heard Dale grunt and then the touch was gone. “Self-righteous bastard,” I said to the thrower. “Who gave you the right? Who gave you the fucking right?”

I felt the curb against my left heel and stepped up smoothly, yanking the man after me. “You’re under citizen’s arrest,” I told the thrower.

“Natalie got a cop,” Dale shouted in my ear. “Get him inside.”

The news crew made us, then, the cameraman just behind the reporter, and they forced their way to the steps as Dale and I tried to manhandle the thrower through the door. The thrower chose this moment to start resisting again, as the reporter, a white woman with blond hair and pale brown lipstick, leaned forward and started to shout a question at us. The thrower lashed his right foot out before we could react, and Dale almost lost him. The reporter recoiled and dropped her microphone, then swore and tried to take a swing at him but I beat her to it, taking a handful of the thrower’s hair and yanking hard back. He yelped like a dog whose tail has been stepped on. Dale fixed his grip on the thrower and we managed him through the door.

The cop was waiting, and without any preamble he spun the thrower back around, pressed him to a wall, and slapped the cuffs on him. I got a good look at his face while the cop patted him down, and then placed him.

“You’re Crowell’s driver,” I said.

The thrower jerked his head toward me, alarmed, then went back to staring at the wall.

“You’re shorter in person,” I said.

That must have hit a nerve, because he let loose with a torrent of profanity that nearly drowned out the noise from the street.

“Big words for such a little guy,” I said.

He tried to go for me; the cop slammed him hard back against the wall and read him his rights. While the officer called for a sector car, the thrower said, “I’ll get you, cock-sucker.”

“Taller men have tried,” I told him. Then I turned to Dale and asked, “Where’s the principal?”

“Secured. She’s okay, no scrapes, not a thing.”

“Good.”

Through the barred window I could see the police restraining and separating the protesters, running a gauntlet of SOS signs and NARAL banners. Another naked baby doll fell in the street, red paint on its too-pink skin. Feet quickly broke the doll off the coat hanger it had been impaled on.

There were sirens now, but in Manhattan there are always sirens. Placards were falling into the street, forgotten in the melee. Any trace of civility had gone the way of the dodo, and the police were starting to get angry, shouting as incoherently as everyone else.

“What are you charging him with?” I asked the cop, gesturing at the thrower.

“Inciting, felonious assault.”

“Tack on attempted murder. He’s a member of SOS, and they’ve been threatening the doctor’s life.”

The cop blinked at me.

“I’ll follow you to the precinct,” I told him. “Two-six, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

I shook my head and told Dale to stay put, then went to find Romero. The thrower never took his eyes off me.

——

Felice slumped in a chair in the lounge on the first floor, drinking a cup of tea with both hands around the mug. Natalie stood by the door as I entered.

“Dr. Romero?”

“Two times,” she said. “How long have you been working for me, now? Ten days?”

“Ten days,” Natalie confirmed.

“And this is the second time someone has attacked me.” She looked up from the mug at Natalie and me. “Did you get him?”

“He’s under arrest now. I’m going to follow him to the Two-six and talk to Lozano.”

“If that had hit my head,” Felice said, then stopped. “If it had hit my head and broken, I could be blind.”

We didn’t say anything.

“My hands won’t stop shaking,” Felice said.

I looked at Natalie, who said, softly, “I put a lot of honey in the tea.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours,” I told her. “I should be in radio range, if there’s an emergency.. Otherwise I’ll be at the Two-six.”

I closed the door quietly when I left.

As far as interrogation rooms went, the one they put the thrower in was pretty run-of-the-mill. One table, bolted down. Two chairs, bolted down. One one-way glass window, dirty. One detective, frustrated.

Lozano worked on him for over an hour, with me watching from behind the smudged glass, and we learned next to nothing except the man’s name, and that had come from the computer, not from the suspect.

Clarence Jesse Barry, thirty-three years old, and sporting a yellow-sheet that detailed crimes from criminal possession to attempted rape. It made me wonder if all Sword of the Silent members had such checkered pasts.

The only honest thing Mr. Barry said was, “Get me my lawyer.” He said that after Lozano showed him the three photocopied wanted posters for Romero that had been taken from Barry’s person before he went into holding. Lozano went after him hard on the posters, and after he’d tried being smart for a while Lozano must have gotten to him, because Clarence played his lawyer card.

At which point Lozano rose and left the interrogation room, circling back to where I stood. He arrived with two paper cups of that awful coffee. We looked through the glass together at Barry. Barry looked at the window and smiled. He didn’t look at the wanted posters arrayed on the table before him.