Cheated By Death Read online

  “I don’t know. But he wants you to call him.” Richard reached into his pocket and withdrew a slip of paper.

  Spidery handwriting noted my father’s name, address and phone number.

  “He said he goes to bed around nine-thirty, so if it isn’t convenient tonight you can call him after eight tomorrow morning.”

  I didn’t know if I wanted to call him, let alone when.

  I stuffed the paper in my pocket and turned my attention to the pizza on my plate. Too many things crowded my brain. Too many conflicting emotions threatened to choke me.

  Richard and Brenda ate in awkward silence for a minute or two. I sipped my beer and tried not to think. Finally, Richard broke the quiet. “Peterson is out for the next six weeks. They asked me to cover for him.”

  Brenda looked up. “Oh, hell.”

  “Who’s Peterson?” I asked.

  “One of the clinic doctors. He broke his leg rollerblading with his son over the weekend.” He looked at Brenda. “I’m going to need some serious time off by Christmas. How about a trip?”

  “The Quebec Winter Carnival is in January,” she said.

  He nodded. “Maybe.”

  Despite talk of vacation plans, the tension seemed to grow. I pretended not to notice.

  “Jeffy,” Brenda said casually. “Can you drive me to the clinic tomorrow?”

  I swallowed. “Sure. Is the car acting up?”

  She shook her head. “I’d just feel better if I didn’t park it in the lot for a while. There’s been some trouble.”

  Richard looked up. “Oh?”

  “The protesters,” she said offhandedly, and got up to refill her glass, but even across the room I could feel her anxiety rise.

  “I thought things were better,” Richard said. He turned his attention to me. “Eat.”

  “I thought so, too,” she said, “but they’re hanging in there. Today they started chanting like monks. It’s unnerving,” she said, not facing him.

  The two of them had started out volunteering together at the hospital’s clinic, but since mid-summer Brenda had worked several days a week at a women’s health center where the occasional abortion was performed. That didn’t set well with some of the area’s religious zealots. For Brenda to even mention it meant she was concerned.

  Though there hadn’t been a major incident in Buffalo in the years since Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered, Amherst still seemed to be the focus of the pro-life movement in this part of the state.

  “We’ve talked about this before. It’s time you quit,” Richard said.

  “What I do is important.”

  He let out a long breath, and I wished I wasn’t sitting in the middle of a discussion I’d heard too many times.

  “Yes, it is,” Richard agreed. “But you don’t need the money, or the aggravation—especially now.”

  She looked away. “It’s only until they find someone to replace me.”

  “Do you promise?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  They both looked at me expectantly. “Sure, I’ll take you to work. You’ll be safe with me.”

  “Thanks,” Brenda said, sat down again, and took another slice of pizza. I wasn’t even half way through my first piece. “Eat up,” she said, “it’s getting cold.” The food could never get as cold as the frost generated by that conversation.

  I thought about the slip of paper in my pocket and felt colder still.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Brenda and I are more in sync than either of us care to admit. Even without touching her, I could sense her radiating an assortment of emotions: trepidation, anxiety, and dread. I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She glanced at me then looked away. “Sure. Just a little nervous.”

  “You didn’t tell us everything yesterday, did you?”

  Her voice was small. “No.”

  I waited, and she exhaled loudly. “Somebody egged my windshield last week. I had to pay extra at the carwash to get it off.”

  “Was it only your car?”

  She shook her head. “Other cars in the lot got it, too.”

  “And?”

  “And a couple of days later it was lipstick, only that was on the doors and across the trunk.”

  “What was the message?”

  “Death monger, among others.”

  “Is that it?” I asked, knowing it wasn’t.

  Her mouth tightened. “I think somebody followed me home the other night.”

  Brenda wasn’t the paranoid type. My fingers gripped the wheel. “What kind of car?”

  “I don’t know, but it was blue.”

  “Have you seen it again?”

  “No, but I reported it to the heath center’s security. They said to be careful. That’s why you’re driving me to work. Did you call your father?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Richard thinks you should. So does Maggie.”

  “How about you?”

  She shrugged. “You have to do what you have to do.” I braked for slowing traffic and she looked at me with wry amusement. “Do I detect a little hostility here?”

  “After thirty-two years of indifference from him . . . yeah, I’d say I feel hostile.”

  Those thoughts evaporated as we approached the Williamsville Women’s Health Center, and I could see why Brenda was nervous. Ten or more men and women marched up and down in front of the parking lot across the street—more than the requisite fifteen feet from the drab, one-story brick building, just as the law demanded. The first amendment allowed them to “sidewalk counsel” anyone who passed by. Each carried a placard: No More Slaughtered Babies; Pro-Choice = Death For Babies; Baby Butcher Shop. Other signs bore grisly color photos of bloodied, mangled fetuses.

  I pulled my car into an empty space along the curb and watched as a Toyota Prius approached the lot. The protesters broke formation only long enough to let it in. The driver got out of her car, briskly crossed the picket line, ignoring the protesters’ haranguing voices. She hurried up the concrete steps and yanked open the plate glass door and escaped inside.

  “Why hasn’t this been on the news?” I asked Brenda.

  She glanced at the crowd. “Because they’ve been at it for weeks. But it’s still upsetting.”

  “Why didn’t you say something about this sooner?”

  “I didn’t want Richard to worry. He’s . . . .” She caught herself, seemed to think better of telling me. “He’s got a lot on his mind right now.”

  I let her words sink in. Something besides his next blood test? “Anything I should know about?”

  “No. Not right now.” She pawed in her purse for her office keys. “He keeps trying to talk me into quitting. And I can’t. Not yet.”

  She’d sidestepped my question. Okay. Richard had had a couple of bad days at the clinic. What else could be bothering him?

  I eyed the protesters’ angry faces and got a flash of something: Panicked protesters and clinic security, running footsteps, a bloodied hand.

  “I gotta agree with Rich on this one. It doesn’t look—or feel—safe to me. And if you want to give the poor guy a break—”

  “You’re a man. You can’t possibly understand. Women deserve control over their own bodies, their destinies, without being dictated to by a bunch of—”

  “Hey, you don’t have to convince me,” I said, jerking a thumb at myself.

  She looked back at the crowd. “We don’t even do that many abortions. We’re a women’s health center—for all aspects of women’s health.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why you feel you have to be here.”

  She stared at the dashboard. “Women used to die from back alley abortions.”

  “Tell me something I don’t already know,” I said, losing patience.

  The glare she turned on me could’ve blistered paint. “My Aunt Vonni
e died from massive infection after her football playing, big-man-on-campus boyfriend took her to some jerk with a rusty coat hanger.”

  The venom in her voice made me wince. “When was this?”

  “A year before Roe vs. Wade. She was almost sixteen.” Brenda looked away, but I saw her lower lip tremble. “I wasn’t even born. I only know about her because her sisters loved her and kept her alive with their words—their memories. But she’s dead—and it’s only her family who cared.”

  “I’m sorry, Brenda.”

  “Yeah, me, too. For all the Vonnies—past, and future, if these damned protesters get their way.” She reached for the door handle. “I have to go.”

  I touched her shoulder. “I’ll pick you up at four.” She nodded gratefully. “Want me to walk you to the door?” I added.

  She shook her head. “I won’t let them intimidate me. See you tonight.” She got out the car and hurried past the crowd of protesters, never making eye contact, ignoring the jeers and taunts. I waited until she made it safely inside the building.

  She wouldn’t admit it, but she was already intimidated.

  I studied the odd assortment of people marching up and down the sidewalk, wanting to memorize each face, and realizing the futility. But I could photograph them. I’d use black and white, grainy film. Catch them in the act of grimacing, sneezing, anything embarrassing. How childish of me.

  One three-point-turn later, I was on my way back home to get my Nikon. Maybe none of these protesters were violent, but plenty of their counterparts in other cities were. The idea both sickened and fascinated me.

  Arriving home, I took the steps to my loft apartment two at a time. I changed into a dark, hooded sweatshirt to insure anonymity, grabbed my camera, film, the zoom lens, and started back for the health center.

  I parked a couple of blocks away and hoofed it, staying across the street and keeping well away from the protesters. No way did I want their wrath turned on me. Then I snapped away for nearly half an hour.

  Later, I fed a sheet of photographic paper into the enlarger grid, exposed it, then plopped it into the developer. Agitating the tray, I watched under the orange glow of the safelight as the image appeared: a skinny woman with stringy hair—her mouth wide open, exposing crooked teeth, her lips curled in an epithet. Not exactly a poster child for the right-to-life movement.

  Print after print was the same. There was a story there and I hadn’t captured it. But I did have half a brick of film. I’d have to go back and try again. This time I’d take photos of the women entering the clinic, too. And maybe I could make a few bucks from this little exercise. I knew just where to go to do it, too.

  The next day, I called the newsroom at The Buffalo News. Sam Nielsen, my former schoolmate, told me to meet him at the paper’s lobby at precisely noon. Naturally, he was twenty minutes late.

  Sam and I go way back—if you count being taunted by Mr. Campus for being a basketball-playing geek back in high school as going way back. Anyway, we buried the hatchet earlier in the year when I gave him an exclusive interview after I’d beaten up a killer in church. And he’d helped me on another case since then, but that’s another story . . . .

  Sam was now one of the best reporters on staff and I had no qualms about pressing him for a favor.

  “Hey, Resnick!” he called, entering the lobby from an outside door.

  He held a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a Burger King bag in the other. Though still tall and lanky, he’d lost his dark, wavy hair. His now-balding pate shone under the newsroom’s fluorescent lights.

  “Damn,” I said. “If I’d known, you could’ve brought me a bacon cheeseburger.”

  “Get your own,” he said without rancor. He got me a visitor’s pass and I followed him up to his office, where he yanked out the chair and sat down at his desk. He waved a hand at the visitor’s chair in front of his desk. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “I want to show you some photos.”

  He looked unimpressed. “Not a bunch of kids at the beach or any of that crap, I hope.”

  “Give me some credit.” I opened my portfolio case and withdrew the photos, tossed them at him, just missing his burger and fries. I scrutinized his face as he shuffled through the ten or so prints and decided he’d probably be a pretty good poker player.

  “Not bad, but what’s with the black-and-white shots? When are you going to enter the twenty-first century and buy a digital camera?”

  “Give me a break. Most of my stuff is black-and-white art shots. If you buy enough of these prints, I might be able to afford a digital camera.”

  He shook his head. “What else have you got?”

  “I brought other samples, but these are the ones that count. I want you to do a story on the pro-life protesters at the Williamsville Women’s Health Center.”

  He spread the prints out across the litter covering his desk. “What’s the hook?”

  “I think the women who go there are in danger.”

  He frowned, restacked the photos. “You’ve got some interesting pictures here, Jeff, but you’ve got no story.”

  “You mean someone needs to be shot or the place has to be firebombed before the paper shows interest?”

  He handed me the photos. “That’s about the size of it.”

  I put the pictures back in the envelope, trying, without much success, to hide my disappointment. “Your burger’s getting cold. Thanks for your time.” I was on my feet, and started walking away when his voice stopped me.

  “Why are these women in danger?”

  I turned. “A couple of these protesters are certifiable.”

  He shook his head. “Not good enough.”

  “My sister-in-law has to face these jerks every day.”

  “So hire a guard.”

  “I’m her guard.”

  “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  How could I? Eggs and lipstick were messy and inconvenient, but not particularly lethal.

  He sipped his coffee. “This isn’t like last time, ya know. As far as you know, there’s been vandalism, but nothing concrete—like a dead body. I don’t see the threat.”

  “Why does someone have to die to pique your interest?”

  His piercing gaze appraised me. “Okay, I get it. This is something you feel strongly about or you wouldn’t be here.”

  I stared right back. “You’re damned right.”

  “Go to the cops, Jeff.”

  “Like you, they don’t want to waste their time until someone gets hurt. I want to prevent that.”

  “Can you?”

  I had no answer.

  He studied me for a few moments before he grabbed a pad and a pen, scratched down a few notes. “All right. I’ll look into it.” He nodded toward my portfolio. “Can I hang onto them?”

  “Sure.” I handed him the envelope.

  He took out the prints again, studying them. “This guy,” he pointed, “is Robert Linden. Head of the Erie Country Assembly of Life. He emerged as the local pro-life superstar after the Spring of Life protests way back when. Years ago he broke away from Operation Rescue and that ilk.”

  “Is he dangerous?”

  “He can inflame a crowd with his rhetoric. But we haven’t had any incidents of note in a very long time.”

  I studied the photo. Dressed conservatively in a business suit and overcoat, Linden looked like the stereotypical fire-and-brimstone preacher. His short-cropped silver hair stood up to the brisk wind. His expression, in a face hardened by the years, was one of puritanical self-righteousness. The unease in my gut swelled, telling me to pay attention.

  Sam looked at his calendar. “Unless something comes up, I can give you an hour or two on Wednesday. Would that be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Bring your gear and a notepad. I’ll put you to work getting names for the photos. That is, if you’re willing to sell.”

  “I’m always open to negotiation.”

  On my way home,
I drove past my father’s house. The leaden sky did nothing to enhance the shabby little Cape Cod or the rest of the drab, lower middle-class neighborhood.

  I didn’t tell Richard or Brenda I’d been driving past Chet’s house. I didn’t tell them about my little photographic project, either. They had their own concerns.

  But driving by on a daily basis was stupid. What was I hoping for, anyway? To catch a glimpse of the old man? To stake him out? Richard said he seemed to know an awful lot about me. How?

  More than once I’d been tempted to pull in the drive, knock on the door, meet the old man—just to get it over with. Was I too chicken-shit scared of what I might learn, or that my anger might cause me to pick a fight with a man who could no longer defend himself?

  Perhaps the best response was to just forget about him—as he’d forgotten about me for thirty-two long years.

  I turned onto Kenmore Avenue, drove straight home, and spent the rest of the day contemplating the situation as I worked in the solitude of my darkroom.

  “You really don’t have to do this. I don’t know why I made such a fuss the other day,” Brenda said as we pulled out of the drive the next morning, but I could tell her bravado was all show.

  “I don’t mind. It’s an excuse to get my lazy ass out of bed. Besides, I’m on stake-out duty today. It’ll be just like old times.”

  “Old times?” she asked in disbelief. “You worked in a stuffy old insurance office.”

  “I was a field agent for almost four years,” I reminded her. “I had my share of peeing in soup cans.”

  She scowled. I don’t think she believed me.

  Like before, we pulled into a parking space half a block from the Women’s Health Center. I turned off the engine and we sat in silence for a few moments, studying the picketers. A new face had appeared in the crowd. He didn’t look like the usual pro-life advocate—more like an aging hippie or biker. Clad in jeans and a grubby cord jacket, he had a gray-streaked, wiry beard, and his long hair was captured in a pony tail. His eyes burned—religious zeal or a drug-crazed glow, I wasn’t sure which.

  Getting out of the car, I placed myself between Brenda and the protesters across the street.