Right to Die

lecture?”
    “Sanders Theater.”
    “In Cambridge ?”
    “Yes. Part of the Harvard Law School Forum.”
    “Harvard invites a professor from another law school to come talk?”
    “Yes. Rather daring of them, but it’s more a students’ speaker series, really.” She checked the digital clock on her desk. “Manolo ought to have gotten the Benz by now. Let me gather myself, and I’ll see you downstairs.”
    “We going to wait for your husband?”
    “No. Tuck said to go on without him.”
    In the foyer, Inés Roja and I made small talk until Maisy Andrus joined us. In a full-length fur with matching hat. Sensible against the cold, but I started to hope that there wouldn’t be any animal rights folks at the speech.
    I helped Roja into her coat, then pulled on mine. The secretary opened the front door, me moving across the threshold and out to the sidewalk. Cars were pushed up on the curb to park and yet allow a lane wide enough for traffic to pass. No sign of Manolo and the Mercedes.
    As Roja closed the door behind the three of us, Andrus stepped by me, hugging herself against the night wind. Tugging on my gloves, I heard a flat crack and, just over my head, a sound like someone whistling in water.
    Glass shattered as I tackled Andrus, shoving her behind the engine block of the closest car. Roja was already crawling behind me as another flat crack came from across the street and high. The mailbox next to the front door of the house clanged on its screws. The first bullet had gotten the imitation gas lamp over the doorway.
    Andrus pushed herself to her knees and said, “What the hell is—”
    “Shut up and stay down.”
    Roja said shakily, “We are being shot.”
    The rooflines across the street seemed even and empty. No silhouette, no muzzle flash.
    I took a quick look at Roja, but didn’t see any blood. “Inés, are you all right?”
    She shifted her weight, one leg on a snowbank, the other on the icy cement. “Yes. Can you see anything?”
    “No.”
    Andrus said very quietly, “Are you going to shoot back?”
    Looking down at the revolver in my bare right hand, I couldn’t recall taking off my glove or drawing the gun. “Not from this angle. I might go through a window or throw one high and over to another street or building.” Andrus faced her house. “Shouldn’t we call the police?” Eight feet separated us from the locked door. “Not till I’m sure we’d get to the phone.”
    Five or six minutes passed. I was thinking about the shooter’s aim when a powerful engine approached, charging hard. Brakes squealed on the other side of the parked cars. A door was flung open, creaking on its hinges, and Manolo squeezed himself between two bumpers.
    I motioned for him to get down, but he was signing frantically to Inés Roja. When there were no more shots, I let out a breath.
    Manolo rushed over to Andrus, helped her up, and reverently brushed the snow off her coat.
    Roja said to me, “Manolo was caught in traffic, behind a truck that stalled or something. He saw us from the corner”—she pointed behind her—“and was afraid for us.”
    I watched Manolo, who seemed awfully agitated. Almost theatrically so.
    Then I moved toward the mailbox. My shoes crunched shards of glass from the light over the door. There was a perfectly round hole in the front of the box, off center but not by much. I put my right glove back on. Using a pen, I lifted the lid of the box and looked in.
    Andrus said, “What are you doing?”
    I coaxed out the folded white paper, undamaged from the shot. At the bottom of the box, bits of brick from the exit hole on the back wall lay around a flattened slug.
    I unfolded the paper. Headline-sized words again, but twice as big as the snips from the earlier notes.
    “ALL BAD THINGS COME TO AN END CU-NT.”
    I doubted Roja could read what it said, but she certainly could see what it was. The secretary began to cry.

= 24 =

    “So what made you check the mailbox?”
    Neely had a pad and pen on his lap, actually taking notes once in a while. Slouching on the parlor sofa of the Andrus mansion, he’d visited a new barber since I’d seen him last. The currycomb cut made him look like a lowland gorilla.
    I said, “The shooter threw the second one high after the first slug already wrecked the lamp over the doorway. Seemed kind of coincidental that he’d happen to hit the mailbox after my client had been getting threatening notes.”
    Neely used the pen to scratch behind his ear,