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brought the grand total to seventeen since I’d begun the job a week ago. Today’s batch was relatively tame. Only one threatened Romero’s life. The author wrote that he or she would “butcher every doctor” who performed an abortion.
    Lozano looked at the stack and made a face, then put them on his desk. “I’ll get these to Fowler.”
    “Anything else on Ms. Werthin?” I asked.
    “We put a call in to the SOS offices, and she is a dues-paying member. Doesn’t prove jack-shit but it’s a connection.”
    “They collect dues?”
    “How do you think Crowell affords his suits?” Lozano shrugged. “Son of a bitch has more money than I do, that’s for certain. That’s not saying much, admittedly.” He scratched his jaw with a chewed fingernail, wiped his forehead again. “Too fucking hot,” he mumbled.
    “The Feds have anything on her?”
    “Fowler is running it, but I doubt they’ll find anything. You could go talk to him.”
    “Where’s he at?”
    “How should I know? Goddamn feebies. I’ll keep you informed,” Lozano said.
    I took that as my exit cue and headed back to the street, and ultimately back to the clinic.
    Lozano had the unenviable assignment of watching the clinic and the protesters on both sides of the line. Special Agent Fowler had pretty much the same assignment, but on a federal level, and the LifeCare clinic was only one of several he was concerned with. Fowler and Lozano didn’t get along for a number of reasons, but I supposed the major one was simply that Fowler was FBI and thirty-two, and Lozano was NYPD and late forties. There’s a long and distinguished history spiced with plenty of animosity between the FBI and the NYPD. The NYPD looks upon the FBI as meddling, arrogant busybodies who can’t use a toilet without executive authorization from Washington, D.C. Conversely, most of the special agents I’ve met think that NYPD detectives are arrogant, stuck-up bullies who believe an interrogation is simply Twenty Questions played with a baseball bat.
    Every threat Dr. Romero or the clinic received got forwarded to Fowler as a matter of course, to be processed by the Bureau labs in D.C. Then the document would be copied and sent to the NYPD. Lozano had told me that this sometimes took a week or more. The FBI kept the originals. Today’s letters would be no exception. Lozano didn’t like being second, and since it was he who was most frequently on site, I had to grant him the point. Unlike Fowler, Lozano made a point of coming on scene when he heard that something was going down. He had been watching the day I first arrived at the clinic with Alison. Fowler worked out of the Bureau offices, and visited only when necessary.
     
    Dale went for the car at five-thirty. I gave him the extra hour before we had to move Dr. Romero, so he could double-check the vehicle. Dale knows cars; he took the Crash Course when we were at Spec War together. I went from the Executive Protection Squad to the CID, sort of a sideways transfer, but Dale stayed EPS from the ground up. We were renting a vehicle from Natalie’s father, a souped-up Ford that Sentinel reserved for “high risk” clients.
    I doubted we would need the bulletproof glass or the solid rubber tires. For that matter, I doubted that someone had wired a bomb to the ignition, but Romero was paying me to be certain.
    Dale backed the gray Ford into the alley behind the clinic at six twenty-five, by which time Natalie and 1 had Romero ready to go. We walked her downstairs, waited while she said good night to the few staff members who were still around. While she did this, I went out to check the alley and talk to Dale.
    “Clear,” he told me.
    I gave the surrounding rooftops one last survey, then unlocked the back car door nearest the clinic. “Two minutes,” I told Dale, and went back inside. Dr. Romero had finished her good nights, and was now putting on her Kevlar vest with Natalie’s assistance. For some reason, watching the two