Keeper Read Free Page A

“SOS?”
    “Cute, isn’t it?” Dr. Romero stuck the cigarette back in her mouth and began searching through the papers on her desk again. “They’ve been around for over a week now, ever since the conference was announced.”
    I was starting to feel exceptionally dim. “Conference?” She stopped shuffling papers and stared at me. “You don’t know? It’s being called the Common Ground Conference, to be held downtown at the Manhattan Elysium Hotel in two weeks. Pro-choice and pro-life attendees, lectures, seminars, panels, all designed to stop the escalating violence. I’m one of the organizers.” When I still looked blank she added, “Local media has been giving us fairly heavy coverage.”
    “I’ve been out of the country,” I said.
    “Really? Where?”
    “I was on a job in England,” I said. She seemed to expect me to elaborate, but I didn’t. In my work, you don’t talk about your clients.
    After a second she asked, “How old are you, exactly?” 
    “Twenty-eight.”
    “Is that young for your profession?”
    “Younger than many, older than some.”
    “What exactly does a bodyguard do?”
    “Personal protection. I came out of the Army’s Executive Protection program, served some time in the CID. I’ve been out about three years. I’m the real thing, doctor, not the kind that gets hired to break the kneecaps of Olympic hopefuls, in case you’re wondering.”
    She laughed curtly and said, “You understand why I’m asking?”
    “I understand how you could be confused,” I told her. “How much do you charge?”
    “Depends on who I’m protecting and from what. It’s rated against the kind of coverage and how many other people are needed. Solo, I charge one hundred and fifty an hour for fieldwork plus expenses, eighty an hour for consultation. But alone I can’t do much. Real protection requires more bodyguards.”
    “If you were protecting two people, twenty-four hours a day?”
    “I’d need to know what I was protecting them from before I could plan a detail,” I said.
    She nodded and handed me a sheet of paper, saying, “That came yesterday.”
    It was a photocopy of a letter, typed. It read:
     
To the Murdering Cunt Wetback Doctor —
Hell is waiting for you, bitch. I’ll send you there myself, my hands ripping the life out of your cum-filled fucking throat. I’ll crack your spic skull, it’ll look like the babies you break and pull screaming from their trapped mommas. I know what you do, you fucking bitch. Talk all you want, lie all you want, I know and you’ll pay.
I’m going to do it to you. Tie your fucking spic ass down and fucking rip your cunt in two, ram a Hoover all the way in you till you scream for me to stop.
Open your mouth and I’ll shut it for you, bitch. And it won’t be murder, when I kill you, slut. It’s going to be self-defense.
Hell is waiting for you. I’m going to send you there.
     
    It was signed with the same cross-and-barbed-wire crest that currently graced several of the placards outside. “Who has the original?” I asked.
    “The FBI. You’re holding a federal offense.” She said the last grimly, without mirth. “The NYPD has seen it, too. Detective Lozano at the Twenty-sixth Precinct.”
    “Is this the only one?”
    In response she shoved a stack of paper in my direction. It was easily three hundred pages. “These have all come since the first of the year. We receive them every day. Some are short and to the point—the burn-in-hell variety—others are longer, more passionate and considered monologues urging us to stop our work here. Twenty-three letters in the last two weeks, and I haven’t seen today’s mail yet. It’s gotten considerably worse since my involvement with Common Ground was announced.”
    “Are they all like this?” I looked back at the letter. It had been typed neatly, no blurs or smudges from correction fluid. Maybe off a computer.
    “Content-wise? No. Some are better; some, believe it or not, are actually