Read Online Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! by Gary Phillips, Andrea Gibbons - Free Book Online

Billings’ partner, rookie detective Liz Marchek.
    When Marchek and Billings reached the lakefront, they found the body easily, despite the fog: at least five patrol cars were flashing their blue-and-whites near the Monroe Street intersection. When one patrol sees something interesting, most nearby units join in, partly to protect their buddies, in case a situation turns ugly, partly for something to do.
    Oliver, sticking a hand into the victim’s jacket pockets, found the wallet with his ID. Arnold Culver.
    â€œCulver?” Pacheco blurted. “I just saw him outside the harbor where the baby killers are meeting. He had a bunch of kids, and some lady attacked him there, but he was alive.”
    â€œBaby killers?” Liz asked. “We’ve got baby killers meeting openly on the lakefront and we’re just letting them go about their business?”
    â€œHe means abortionists, rookie,” Oliver said. “Some kind of fund-raiser—the boss mentioned it at roll call.”
    Liz batted her eyes at her partner. “Thanks, Ollie, the technical language confuses me some times.”
    The evidence team joined them, and Liz went back to the body with the criminalists. “Blows look like they came from above,” one of the techs said. “The ME may be able to say how tall the assailant was, but looks like anyone could have done it—they wouldn’t have to be big, just damned angry.”
    Anyone who followed the abortion controversy in America knew that Culver had made plenty of people angry. Depending on your perspective he was either an innovator in ways to stop abortions, or a perverse maniac who didn’t respect boundaries of person or property. At any time he faced dozens of lawsuits, but he also had the deep pockets of the nation’s anti-abortion churches behind him, so he continued to do things like drop explosives from helicopters onto freestanding clinics, stalk the children of clinic workers, or egg his followers into shooting doctors.
    Liz went back to her partner, who was stepping Pacheco through the attack on Culver he’d witnessed earlier.
    The mist had been so heavy earlier that you could hardly see cars until they were on top of you, Pacheco said. “Me and Mueller, we were standing outside the harbor, and suddenly one of those holes opened in the fog, and I saw Culver. He had four kids with him, two maybe were teenagers, the other two probably seven, eight, something like that.”
    Culver had been giving fliers to the kids, and seemed to be giving them instructions. When a white-haired woman in a dark rain coat got out of a cab, Culver sent one of the smaller children toward her with a flier.
    Over the noise of traffic and water, Pacheco couldn’t hear what the woman said. “But she was plenty mad, detective, the way she moved—she grabbed the paper, rolled it up, threw it at Culver as hard as she could.”
    â€œDoesn’t sound like much of an attack,” Liz objected. “He hit her or anything?”
    â€œThe fog covered them up. I walked over, to see if they needed, you know, separating, but the woman was already on the gangway to the boat.”
    Culver had vanished in the mist with two of the children; the other two, one of the teens with one of the little ones, remained at the mouth of the drive with a stack of fliers. Every time a car stopped, they chanted in shrill unison, “Thank you for not murdering us!”
    Pacheco told Oliver he was pretty sure he’d know the lady if he saw her, so they walked on up to the yacht. The last speech was just ending when they got into the dining room.
    The cops circled the room and Pacheco found the woman sitting near the podium. Liz recognized her at once: Dr. Nina Adari, who performed abortions at a Loop clinic.
    Dr. Adari was so stunned when Oliver and Pacheco bent over her, asking what she knew about Arnie Culver, that she didn’t look at Liz.
    â€œWhat do I know