= TOUGH LOVE
  By Hugh Lessig


The morning began with another black helicopter dream.  They caught me between houses this time. I don't know which houses. I didn't recognize the terrain. But I knew the helicopters would land on me, and I knew I would die when they did.

Then the phone woke me up.

The clock  said 6:23 a.m. Early morning sun slanted through a crack in the blinds and hit me right in the face.  I picked up the phone and heard the soothing growl of my editor. I heard "shooting" and "five blocks away" and " Kodak moment."

I still heard the black helicopters.

I put down the phone and rolled out of bed. I have a third floor apartment with a balcony that opens onto Jackson Street.  From there, I saw the chopper from Channel 40, the local NBC affiliate in River City. It circled lazily over my apartment and settled half a block away where two police cruisers had blocked traffic, blue lights pulsing.

I stared at the helicopter for a minute or so. It was rainbow-colored, not black, and it had a respectable name: Skywatch 40.  I returned to the phone, where my editor had been talking into the pillow. I waited a few more seconds before picking up the receiver.

"So what do think, Smith? What about the political angle, the social thing -- getting the activists in on it? Should I get another reporter out of bed?"

What the hell had happened? I told my boss I had seen the police cruisers and I'd let him know when I got there. Then I got dressed, grabbed my notebook and tape recorder and headed out the door.

The cops were at the corner of Drummer and Jackson. They had cordoned off a corner lot with yellow tape.  The house belonged to a doctor, an OB-GYN to be exact. A body was on the sidewalk, and the cops had covered most of it with a sheet. But you could see a man's hand sticking out, and the hand clutched a sign that read "Protect the Sanctity of Human Life."  My heart pounded for a few seconds as I gauged the size of the dead man.

It had to be Bob.

I didn't know his last name. He was Bob the Lonely Abortion Protester. Every few days  he marched in front of the  doctor's house, which had an office and clinic in the back. I believe the doctor did late-term abortions, or what the pro-lifers call "partial birth" abortions. Bob claimed the place was unsafe. The doctor may have had a couple of malpractice suits pending, but I had never checked on it.

I had to walk past Bob to catch the bus in the morning, and we had talked several times. He would stand at the corner, holding a sign or a placard as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Once I stood next to him as a man in a Volvo drove by and flipped him off. Bob just smiled and waved.

"Doesn't that bother you?" I asked.

He looked at me with bright blue eyes. He was bald, maybe 50. He looked like a schoolteacher. He had big, strong hands. "Not really," he said. "Didn't you ever feel strongly enough about something to hold a sign? Oh, I forget. You're a newspaper reporter."

"Don't hate me because of our editorial policy, Bob. I just write the stories. I don't take stands."

"Your paper is pro-death," he said matter-of-factly.

"Pro-choice."

"Same thing, bubba."

We talked at least once a week. Sometimes it was a  "good morning," or I would joke that he'd better keep out of trouble. We last spoke two weeks ago. He wore a Redskins cap, and I liked the Giants, and they had a game coming up on Sunday. It was Friday, and we were both in good moods. We talked decently for two minutes -- he admitted LaVar Arrington was overrated; I wasn't sure about Ron Dayne. Something passed between us, a whiff of friendship. He went to his car and came back with a videocassette. It had a piece of masking tape with the date written on it: Sept. 25, 2000. That was two weeks ago.

"Dirty movies, Bob?"

He actually blushed. "You asked how I put up with stuff -- obscene gestures, that sort of thing.  I make these tapes of my protests. I've got a record of where I stand, what I do - just in case something happens. This was a particularly rough day.  Maybe you should write a story about what abortion protesters have to put up with."

I asked why people hated him.

"You know what I think? This might sound silly, but I think they're crying out for love."

I took the tape but I never played it. Now, looking at the sheet that covered his body, the dead hand clutching the sign, I thought maybe I should. The cops were too busy anyway.

I walked back to my apartment and found the tape underneath a Godzilla marathon I had recorded from the Sci-Fi Channel. It showed Bob walking back and forth in front of the clinic -- the time on the tape was 6:42 a.m. He always liked to catch the early commuters - the ones who hit downtown before 7 a.m. to get the good parking spots. He said the workaholics needed a dose of what mattered.

I watched the tape for about five minutes and saw nothing except Bob pacing back and forth in front of the house. I  fast-forwarded it, and Bob began to move like a hyperactive duck in a shooting gallery.

I zipped past a guy who threw something. I replayed it in slow motion, but you couldn't see who it was -- just some idiot in a pickup who tossed what looked like a tomato. Bob went over to his car -- a pale blue Nissan -- and took out a flannel shirt to wipe his face.

A shadow passed in front of the camera, and suddenly I thought of this Monty Python skit:

These guys are lost in the jungle and they're cut off from civilization, all alone, ready to starve. Then they turn toward the viewer and say  "Wait a minute. Who's holding the camera?"  It keeps going like that for a few minutes. They find out who's holding the first camera, and then it's: "Well who's holding the camera now?" It's funny -- if you like Monty Python.

Bob had put the video camera across the street and down half a block; that much was clear from the angle. It didn't move an inch, so I assumed he set it on a tripod.  It wasn't on the sidewalk, either, because you see the sidewalk in the foreground.

I allowed myself to let out some string: He asks around. He puts the camera in someone's yard. Someone has to give him permission. Someone knows Bob.

I gathered my stuff and went back to the crime scene. The scrum had started to form -- early dog walkers, joggers, a few  suits with their laptop bags.  The cops had put a sheet over Bob's sign as well as his body. The pale blue Nissan was parked nearby, and a cop stood guard. Maybe they had found the camera, too.

I passed the corner and kept walking until I stood near the spot where Bob would have stuck his camera on September 25th -- the angle seemed about right looking back at the murder scene. Behind me was a vacant lot, and I cursed my luck. He might not have talked to anyone.

In the house to the left,  I caught a woman watching me through a window.

She disappeared so fast it almost made me jump. She had white hair, a pale blouse.  Her house was sturdy brick. Her front yard was guarded by gnomes.

A siren whooped behind me as an ambulance joined the fray.  A telescoping antenna began inching toward the sky from a TV truck -- this one from Channel 28.   An official media event was coalescing during rush hour. The crowd would start to grow by layers pretty soon. A police flak would soon arrive to sanitize the story, talking about a "white male victim" and "ongoing investigations."

One detective had started a canvas. He was on the opposite side of the street, knocking on doors.  A man answered the door in his bathrobe and the detective pulled out his notebook. Good, I thought. Take your time.

"Hey."

The white-haired woman stood in her doorway.

"You. Come here."

I walked past the gnomes to her door.  The screen hid her face.

"Are you with them?" She was grinding her teeth. You could see the muscles in her face as she did it.

"With the police? No ma'am. I'm a -- "

"No, no, no, no, no, no. With the abortion people. Are you with them?"

"No. Were you expecting them?"

She reached behind her and pulled out a brochure. "This is them. They're some kind of group."

She gave me a yellow brochure with black lettering. The group called itself Cease Abortion Now (CAN.) The front panel had a bad photocopy of an aborted fetus. The inside panels had longish quotes from right-to-lifers and something on the exercise of civil disobedience. The back had a telephone number and a post office box in Newport News. Bob had written his name on the back: Robert Gale Abbott.

"Ma'am, did you know the victim?"

She waved me away with her hand. "I don't truck with them people. I'm just afraid of the cops, you know?"

"Why would you be afraid of the cops?"

She acted like she didn't understand the question. Then she looked past me. "Hey. I wanna know what's going on out there."

I stepped back and let her come out of the house. She hugged herself and craned her neck toward the crime scene. She smelled of coffee and whiskey. I held the door open, and I kept it open while peering inside the house. I saw a television, a coffee table, and beyond that, a dining room table. On the table was a black videocassette.

The label had a strip of adhesive tape with some writing on it. I couldn't see the writing unless I looked hard, and I didn't want to do that.

The woman continued to stare at the cops. She wanted me to say something, but I let her stare.  Sometimes in this business it pays to shut up. People hate dead silence, and they'll say almost anything to fill it. Besides, I wanted to ask about the videocassette, and now was not the time.

"Are they going to find him or what?"

I stared with her and said nothing.

A tired teen-ager's voice came from inside the house. A girl's voice. "What's going on?"

The woman turned and her cheeks flushed red. Her voice came out in a harsh whisper -- a voice that could have come from someone else, an older, more desperate version of herself. Desperate people don't have gnomes in their yard.

"You get back in there! Up in your room and lock the door! Lock the damn door!"

The girl stood at the foot of the stairs. She had  kinky black hair, a chubby face and what I would call school clothes. She dragged one foot behind her. She looked at me with sad, tired eyes.

"You get up the stairs!" The woman acted like she didn't want the cops to hear.

I regarded the woman matter-of-factly.  "Ma'am, do you see that man over there? The one with the notebook? He is a detective. They'll be very methodical. They'll make sure they talk to everyone."

The woman's hand went to her throat. "Will they stop here?"

"Sure. And they might want to know about the video camera in the vacant lot next to your house. He filmed himself every day, didn't he? I know because he gave me one of this tapes. Maybe you talked to him at some point. Was he filming himself today?"

Her face relaxed and she seemed to lose most of her fear. "You're with the police, aren't you?"

"No ma'am." Her sudden calmness scared me. It was like she flipped a switch.

"You're some kind of advance scout."

"The police don't have advance scouts, ma'am. You're thinking of the Green Berets or something."

She got up in my face, and  I realized she wanted to push past me. I stood aside and let her go down the steps, past the gnomes, onto the sidewalk. A uniformed officer who stood half a block away began to eyeball her.

She walked down the street, away from the murder scene. She kept talking to herself and shaking her head. I stood on the porch and listened to my heart beat through a rush of adrenaline. The rush was too late. She could have shot me right there on the porch. That 7.am. whiskey breath would have been my last sensual experience.

Inside the house, the teen-ager moved out of the shadows and into the living room.

"You need to come in."

The woman turned right, around the corner. The cop talked into his shoulder mike. He watched her. He watched me.. The girl smiled and brought one hand out from behind her back. She held a video camera.

"You need to come in," she said again. "This guy -- he was a friend of yours?"

"I don't know if he was a friend or not," I answered truthfully. "A couple of weeks ago he gave me one of his tapes to look at. I figured out from the angle that the camera would have been placed somewhere around here.  Look, I need to tell you I'm a reporter. I work for The River City Blade. My name's Picasso Smith."

She nodded. "Marsha. I'm a senior at Van Buren. Poli Sci."

We stood in silence for a moment.  I looked down the street where the woman had disappeared.

"My aunt," she said. "Don't worry about her. She's not going anywhere."

"How do you know?"

" She has no guts. She can't cope. She is cope-less."

I made the mistake of looking back at the cop. He stood there with his arms folded, radar-locked on me. People make fun of cops all the time -- they're fat, they sit in diners -- but you don't mess with cops around a murder. It's like they have an extra gear in their brain.

I went inside and closed the door.  I followed the girl into the living room, where she shoved the tape in the VCR and flopped down on the couch. I took out my notebook.

"I'm glad you're from the newspaper," she said. "You need to see this."

The girl fast-forwarded the tape. It was 5:43 a.m, and the date was today. Once more, Bob skittered back and forth like a duck in a shooting gallery. It was 5:46 a.m. Then someone scooted up and shot him. Bob dropped like a stone and the person disappeared. It was almost comical, like a silent movie where everyone walks in quick-time.

"Oops. I passed it. Here. Let's try that again."

She backed it up and replayed it. The girl sitting on the couch was now on the television screen. You could tell by the kinky black hair and the school clothes. She walked up to the doctor's house and Bob said something to her. The girl said something back. The girl gestured with her hands like she was upset. Bob said something else. He held out a brochure. The girl pulled something out of her pocket and you could hear the gunshot. Bob fell and rolled over on his side.

I looked past the television to the picture window. The cop was standing in the front yard.

The girl laughed sharply, joylessly.  She looked like a wax dummy whose features had begun to melt.

"I come back in the house and I'm wacko after shooting this guy, right? I mean, it's not like I shoot people every day. My aunt, she's like -- 'where did you get that gun?' As if that matters now, right? And I'm trying to tell her about this guy. He just got to me. I mean, he's like 'Do you really want to do this?' And I'm like 'no fucking shit I want to do this.' And he's like 'Read this before you go in, for your own safety.' And I'm like 'My safety? My safety? How about your safety, you mindless fuck?'"

"Your aunt. You were saying."

The girl hiccupped a couple of sobs.  It was starting to come out. She had been calm and accepting, and now the protection that comes with shock was wearing off. I reached into my pocket and turned on my tape recorder.

"My aunt goes out and takes the video camera, right? Because she's seen the guy set it up every day. I had no fucking idea there was a camera. But then she says she's going to keep the tape and hide it from the cops, but that I have to go to college, I have to make something of myself, I have to dump my worthless boyfriend who got me pregnant. Except he's not even my boyfriend. That's how much she knows about my life. "

I tried to phrase a question, but nothing seemed real. It was like being back in bed again, hearing the helicopters.

"She's saying I have to realize my potential. She says she'll help me cover this up  because she loves me. Tough love, she says. That's so Seventies."

In television land, Bob had stopped moving.

The front door creaked open. The cop's hand was on his gun.


HUGH LESSIG, 41, is a newspaper reporter for the Daily Press in Newport News, Va. He lives in the state capital of Richmond, with his wife, Ann Marie. He writes about state government, politics and whichever elected official happens to commit news on a given day. Given his life's calling, he is a particular fan of reporter-detectives such as Frederick Nebel's "Kennedy of the Free Press."  More stories are available on his website, Frisco Foil Inc, at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/8002/.

Copyright (c) 2000 Hugh Lessig