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

about him? He’s a bully and a thug. Why? Has he attacked someone?”
    â€œOther way around, ma’am,” Oliver said. “We need to ask you a few questions about the fight you had with him this morning.”
    â€œFight?” Adari repeated as if it were a foreign word she’d never heard. “I don’t fight with people. If Culver is claiming that, then you can be sure he’s lying.”
    â€œNot what we heard, ma’am. We heard you were the last person seen with him. And that you attacked him.”
    â€œDo you mean he’s dead?” Adari said sharply.
    â€œWhy would you think that?” Oliver said.
    â€œHas he disappeared then? I certainly did not attack him. He used one of his children to hand me a disgusting flier, which I threw in Arnie’s face, but I don’t think that constitutes an attack. Not compared to his assaults on my clinic and on my staff, which the police have paid no attention to.”
    One of Adari’s tablemates put a hand on the doctor’s arm. “Take it easy, Nina. Wait until you know what they want before you tell them what you know.”
    The buzz started through the dining room at once—Arnie, Jr. was dead. He’d been murdered. He’d been run over by a car. No, the police had found him floating in the harbor. It was amazing how fast a room full of people could turn a single fact into a labyrinth of conspiracy. Liz heard someone at a nearby table ask, with a nervous snigger, how late-term was a forty-seven-year-old abortion?
    When the people near Adari realized the police were taking her with them, they crowded around her, protesting about Adari’s rights, and her innocence.
    â€œShe’s not under arrest, just coming with us to answer some questions, right, ma’am?” Oliver said.
    The group pulled back, murmuring uncertainly. One advantage to picking up older white women at fundraisers instead of gang-bangers in drug houses, Liz thought—they and their friends weren’t usually combative. On the other hand, the room was lousy with lawyers, and three of them, a man and two women, were at Adari’s side when the cops walked from the room with her.
    â€œAre you charging her?” one of the women lawyers asked.
    Liz squinted to read her name badge: Leydon Ashford. Only the hyper-privileged walk around with two last names. Liz tried not to get her hackles up, but she really did not want some snot of a lawyer in the interrogation room with her.
    â€œNot right now. We want to talk to her,” Oliver answered, his easy smile in place. He used his smile like a cook with a sugar sifter, knowing just how much he needed to sweeten the pastry.
    The three lawyers rode down the escalator with Adari and the cops. They all offered to come to the station with her.
    â€œShe doesn’t need a lawyer,” Liz said. “We just want to ask her a few questions.”
    â€œEveryone needs an attorney,” Leydon Ashford responded. “I’ll just ride over with you, Nina. See that they dot all their ‘i’s and so on”

    The crowds began to gather outside the station long before the detectives arrived with their “person of interest.” Adults with rosaries and angry signs—
Abort the Baby Murderers; Stop America’s Holocaust/Protect the Unborn
and the ubiquitous blow-ups of bloody body parts—were kneeling on the walks right up to the edge of the driveway. They’d brought children with them, children who should be in school, Liz thought, not camped in front of a police station to hear their parents scream curses at a squad car.
    â€œDrive around to the back,” Oliver said. “We don’t want them attacking the car.”
    Liz drove past the front gates without slowing. “What are they thinking, involving their children in something like this? This isn’t a TV set.”
    â€œYes, it is,” Oliver Billings peered in the wing mirror as