Right To Die

I shook my head and got dressed.

***

"I'm here to see the Reverend Givens?"

A black kid sat behind a table inside the entrance of All Hallowed Ground Church. He had a nose that almost touched both ears and a haircut like the front view of an aircraft carrier.

"Your name, please?"

"John Cuddy."

"Just a minute."

The kid dialed two digits. He was probably a football lineman in high school, going to fat at twenty.

Into the receiver he said, "Reverend, you expecting John Cuddy?"

He nodded at the phone and replaced the receiver. "Through the door behind me."

"Thanks."

Someone on the other side of the door threw some bolts, and a near twin of the kid at the desk pulled it open, gesturing with his head that I should enter. He wore a Boston Against Drugs, or B.A.D., T-shirt and brushed against me as I went by him. Then he caught my left wrist deftly, twisted it, and wedged me up against the wall. The desk kid came up and patted me down, finding the revolver and wrenching it from the holster.

The hammerlock was good, immobilizing me just at the edge of pain. I didn't try to resist.

Desk said to Door, "Let's take him in."

Door kept the hold on me as I was ushered before the reverend. She was already on her feet, one hand inside the center drawer of the old desk between us. There were diplomas and prints and photos framed on the walls, but no windows whatsoever. Door's grip kept me from appreciating the ceiling, if any.

Givens looked past me, I assumed to Desk palming my gun. She seemed to notice that I wasn't struggling. "Arthur, you may release the man."

My arm came free.

She kept her hand in the drawer. "And who are you, really, sir?"

"John Cuddy, like I told you on the phone."

"I made some calls. Brothers and sisters in the media, print and broadcast. They never heard of you."

"I have some identification in my left breast pocket."

"You may reach for it."

I opened my jacket and took out the ID, holding it up for Arthur or his pal to take from behind me.

A voice that didn't belong to Desk said, "Private investigator, Reverend. Want me to call 'round on him?"

"No, thank you, Arthur." She withdrew her hand from inside the drawer. "Please return Mr. Cuddy's identification but not his gun and leave us. Thanks to you both, again."

I got back my ID, heard two "Yes, Reverends" and a closing door.

Givens was in a raglan-sleeved sweater and bulging jeans that I thought might have had to be hand cut and resewn. She pointed to a chair. "Please."

We sat simultaneously as I said, "Arthur's the guy on the door?"

"That is right."

"Not just another noseguard."

"No. Lionel – the boy at the desk – started three years for Boston Latin, leading them in tackles. Arthur just returned to us from two years in the military police."

I felt a little better. "They did a nice job, suckering me in."

Givens seemed to relax a bit, dropping the formal manner. "The folks they been facing up to for me, they learned some."

"Security out front, some kind of piece in the drawer, no windows. Who're you expecting'?"

"The first drug pusher decides it's time to cross the line, kill him a preacher. So far the real bad ones just been making fun of us, telling the kids, 'What makes you feel better, what the fat woman say or what we sell you?' Sealed up the windows account of that's the way we built the storm cellars back home."

"Oklahoma."

"That's right. You ever been there?"

"Uh – uh."

"Know much about it?"

"Enough. I'm allergic to tornadoes."

"The twisters, they ain't so bad once you get used to seeing them coming. The whole sky goes green and yellow, and the clouds start moving too fast. Then there's this little band of blue sky at the horizon, and the funnel like to spinning along it, a ballerina toe-dancing her own sweet way toward you.

"I remember one day, I couldn't get home in time. So I jump into this ditch, alongside the road? Got to get yourself below ground level. Well, I feel it coming, the twister, but I don't have enough sense not to look up, and this apartment house, the top two floors, anyway, be flying over my head. I could see the plumbing pipes, even the clothes a-hanging on the bedroom doorknobs. Then dead still, like the Almighty decided against wind as one of His elements, and that big house just dropped like a stone, smashed all to pieces about a hundred feet away from me. How did you know I was from Oklahoma originally?"

Nice change of pace. "Your introduction at the debate."

"You really there?"

"That's right."

"Doing what'?"

"Protecting my client's interests."

Givens thrust her head forward to get a better look at me. "That Nazi honkie. You the one took him out."

"Just kind of laid hands on him. really."

She smiled a little. "Who's your client?"

"I'm happy to tell you, but my client would like it to remain in confidence?

Givens waved her hand to say "of course."

"I'm working for Maisy Andrus."

The eyebrows rose, but the hairdo didn't budge. "What's the problem?"

I took out the Xerox copies of the threats from my other pocket and handed them to her. She read one, tsked, and glanced at the others before handing them back.

"Anybody tries to tell people they ain't doing what they should gets these."

"Not in their mailbox at home, hand delivered."

"Oh."

I put the notes away. "There a reason why you didn't go to the bookstore after the debate'?"

"There is. You want to hear it?"

"I would."

Givens set her expression for drudgery. "I don't have no book out, Mr. Cuddy. My people are poor, but they are behind me. I go to that store, they go with me. They see other folks, white folks, buying those books, they feel they got to buy some too, support me. They can't afford that."

"One of those notes was inside a book Andrus was given to sign."

The reverend shook her head slowly. "What do you figure you got here, big-time crazy?"

"Daring. Clever. Maybe crazy, maybe not."

Givens looked skeptical. "Why you coming to me with all this?"

"You oppose Andrus on the right to die. I'm trying to talk with anybody that a real crazy might see as a kindred spirit against her." Emphatic shake of the head this time, almost dislodging the hairdo. "No. No, sir. My people, they are strong and they are tough, but they are good. They vote against what she says and march against what she says, but… She waved her hand at my pocket. "Not anything like that. Not ever."

"Nobody comes to mind?"

"None of my own."

"Meaning somebody else?"

"You already got to be counting those skinhead fools you tussled with."

"I am."

"And the police, they must have some kind of files on this like they do on everything else."

"Not much help there."

Givens looked around the room, as if reminding herself of her own jeopardy. "All right. There's this right-to-lifer. White dude in Providence, name of Steven O'Brien."

Mr. O'Brien, one of the repeaters from the threat folders. "I believe he is just plain around the bend, but… maybe."

I waited. She looked up at me.

"That's all I know."

I stood. "Thanks. By the way, why'd you leave?"

"Leave what?"

"Oklahoma."

A laugh and the gentler shake of the head. "Had me a husband, thought his thing was a battering ram and mine was a door. Knew I had to get out or I'd like to kill him."

Givens became determined, the sermon tone creeping back into her voice. "Before I turned to the Lord, I was turned on to the demon drug too. That's why I know we're going to beat cocaine and crack and what they're doing to our kids. Beat it without Professor Andrus and her just-go-to-sleep-now ideas that pretty soon catch on and seem like a perfect solution to all our ills. And we can't waste an entire generation of Arthurs and Lionels while we're doing it."