Right to Die

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