Day 10, Word Count: 9,728

Only a few hundred words away from the first milestone - 10,000 words! The new short term goal is 25,000 by monday at midnight, so expect big entries this holiday weekend. Read on, mates: Chapter Eleven

“So who are they, then,” Jenny asked. “What are they?”

“It started in the late-80s as sort of a support group for evangelical Christians who thought they were being persecuted for being God-fearing faithfuls. They started meeting and organizing call campaigns – calling thousands of people to support candidates that they felt had the right moral standing. They were instrumental in organizing the Summer of Mercy--”

“The pro-life march in Topeka in, what, ‘94?” Jenny asked. “That was organized by Operation Rescue and some congressman’s people. I never heard about anything like this Family being involved in that.”

“That’s exactly the point. They didn’t want their name out there, but they were the ones who put the bug in the ear of all those pro-life organizations. They’re the ones who did most of the funding and all of the rabble-rousing. But never once did they want credit for it. They wanted it so that no one knew who really started the ball rolling.”

“All right, so say I believe all this stuff, and go with you on the idea that there’s this cabal of radical Christian fundamentalists who are secretly organizing marches against Planned Parenthoods nationwide. What’s all the hush-hush about, there’s nothing new here that plenty of other right wingers are spouting off about every night on Fox News,” said Jenny.

“You’re right. If it was just organizing marchers and protests and even financial backing of conservative politicians, there wouldn’t be anything to startling about it other than the freak factor. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg with the Family. The real work of this organization is under the surface and from what I’ve learned something as big as the Titanic is about to run right into that hidden glacier.”

“Listen, McGruder, I don’t know what Weekly World News rag you’re working for this week and I don’t want to know,” Jenny said, looking right into McGruder’s eyes. “But if you don’t get to the fucking point in about thirty seconds I’m walking out of here and I do not want to hear from you ever again.”

McGruder paused, turned in his chair, went to take another sip of cold coffee, realized his mug was empty and so, turned back towards the woman he probably still loved sitting next to him in a rundown dinner on the edge of Morningside Heights.

“This Family is going to shoehorn their candidate into the Gracie Mansion in next week’s mayoral race,” he said, stone-faced. He took a deep breath, let it out in a raspy sigh and continued. “That candidate is none other than Marcus Webster. Your ex-husband.”

“Bullshit,” said Professor Jenny Garcia and stood up. She walked out the door of the diner without looking back.

Chapter Twelve

McGruder actually had to run to catch up with the tall brunette as she headed back towards Columbia’s main campus. He didn’t want to grab her and turn her around, but he saw that it was the only way that he could stop her. He reached out for her shoulder to turn her, when she whirled around, tears in her eyes and slammed in her hands into his chest.
“You’ve got some goddamn nerve, McGruder! Fuck you!” she yelled at him. A few passerby’s turned to look at the commotion, but most of them just kept walking without even a glance. “You can’t come to me after two and a half years and just lay out some whacked out conspiracy theory about crazy Christians and my husband!”

“Jen, listen, I’ve done my homework on this--”

“You always do, Terry, always!” She cut him off. “Marc’s an asshole, but he never went in for that religious bullshit. You know how I feel about him and using that to get me riled in some lame-ass attempt to win me back is just . . . just fucking juvenile, Terry! Jesus!”

She turned away from him and started to storm away. McGruder hesitated, actually wondering if she was right. Wondering for just a second if he had tied all this together like some Grassy Knoll nutjob to make the pieces fit how he wanted them to fit. But only for a second.

“Goddamnit, Jen. Just listen to me for a goddamned minute,” McGruder growled. “I’m not playing fucking games here and I think that there’s a connection to what happened with Sanders.”

That stopped the professor in her tracks. She didn’t turn completely around, but she did move her head so she could hear McGruder better. He stood where he was and said, “This Family is deep. And they have their hands in a lot of pies – finance, business, military contracts, media – you name it. One of those pies happens to be scholarships.”

Now, Jenny actually turned all the way around and faced McGruder over a distance of about fifteen feet. “What are you talking about? What do you mean they connected to scholarships?”

McGruder started walking towards the woman and said, “They bankroll all kinds of scholarships for high school kids. Most of them are for Bible School Scholars, as they call them, and under the name of organizations like the Mainstream Coalition or The Abstinence League. But then they have a whole slew of other scholarships that are disguised under names like Urban Regeneration Futures and Sunshine Scholar Embassadorships.”

“Sunshine Scholars . . .” Jenny said weakly. “But why? Why would a religious right outfit give scholarships to urban minority women?”

It had been Sunshine Scholar Embassador scholarships that McGruder and the professor had been investigating when they found out that Councilman Sanders was behind the embezzling scheme. It was the very thing that Jenny’s ex-husband had so diligently tried to prosecute and that had caused all of her and McGruder’s eventual public humiliation.

“I’m not sure, Prof,” McGruder said, unintentionally using the old pet name he had for Jenny. “But the further I looked into those damn scholarships, the more stink came off of them.”

McGruder had actually never given up his investigation of the councilman’s embezzlement or the strange circumstances behind the whole thing. Even as the prosecution raged and nearly a dozen bureaucrats, politicians, college finance officers and more went down for the scheme that Sanders had spearheaded, McGruder knew in his heart of hearts that there was more there. That everything – the prosecution most of all – stunk of a cover-up.

When his and the professor’s affair had come to light, the newspapers jumped on the sordid details and chose to write daily about that aspect of the case – the prosecutor’s wife sleeping with on of the investigation’s key figures – instead of the actual scandal of the embezzled funds themselves. Even the death of Councilman Sanders and McGruder’s cop friend Rohmer took a backseat to the sex story.

McGruder continued digging until he uncovered the Family connection, and suddenly his investigation had taken an even more bizarre turn. Knowing where the money had come from for the scholarships had opened a whole new can of worms, but he couldn’t figure out the why behind it all. At least, he couldn’t until Moynihan had called him in the middle of the night three days earlier. Then things started to fall into place.

“Look, Jen. I’m not sure what exactly is going on here. I don’t know where all the leads connect. But it’s bigger than what happened with that scholarship money. And it’s bigger than you and me,” he said. The woman continued to look at him, but said nothing. “It’s more than just a story, Jennifer. There’s something more here and I’m not smart enough to get it. I need your help.”

He was finished with his pitch. There was a hell of a lot more to say, but there was nothing left for him to say. Not yet. Not until he knew if the professor would get on board, at least for a little while. It was up to her now.

“Show me what you have,” she said.

Chapter Thirteen

Krebs had followed the girl for about six blocks, when she suddenly stopped dead in the middle of crossing 27th Street. He panicked thinking that she had somehow caught a glimpse of him following her. He started to veer towards a heavily shadowed entry to one of the many shops lining Fifth Avenue when he realized that she had only stopped to change direction.

The girl had quit her northern progress and started back across Fifth towards the west side and the southern corner of 27th. There was a boutique there called “LeMonde East” and Krebs knew right away, almost through some sort of weird precognition, that the girl was going in to buy herself something she certainly couldn’t afford.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Abraham Krebs smiled when the girl walked out with a shopping bag in one hand and a plastic covered hanger slung over her shoulder and held in her other hand. Dress and a new pair of shoes, Krebs thought.

Watching from the same alcove he had ducked into when he thought she was on to him, Krebs watched as she crossed Fifth again and began heading north before her quick jaunt in the store. The young man waited about thirty seconds and then fell back into the routine of shadowing the pretty blond. It wasn’t much of a challenge for him and if it wasn’t for the fact that he was so strongly attracted to her, he would have given up the pursuit long ago. The very fact that he was following her at all should have been disturbing to him, since it was so far out of the realm of his normal behavior, but he just couldn’t walk away.

And then thoughts of the Family entered his head and it took all of his will not to look at his watch. He knew that he wasn’t on a time clock with his superiors, but he also knew that the reason they gave him such leeway was because he had proven time and again how reliable and efficient he was. The shadow of fear started to steal over his thoughts, but he quickly pushed them back when he noticed that the girl had stopped in front of a towering apartment building on the corner of 33rd and Fifth Avenue.

Abruptly stopping himself, so as not to walk right by her, Krebs was again struck by the girl’s beauty. While inside the boutique she must have taken the time to fix her make-up and the effect was stunning. Where before she had seemed impossibly gorgeous to him with streaks of black mascara and smeared lipstick marring her face, now she was almost too much for the young man to bear witness to. Barely tearing his eyes from her face, Krebs slid under the awning of a bodega only a door or two away from the entrance to the Murray Hill Towers where the girl apparently lived.

Approaching the doorman, the girl exchanged a few brief words that Krebs could barely hear. What he did hear sent disappointment surging through him.

“ . . . home?” he heard the girl ask.

The doorman smiled and started to reply, but all Krebs heard was “ – - not yet, but here’s the extra key. Go right up Ms. Lockhart.”

With that Krebs was left conflicted – joyful at finding out her name, but devastated with the knowledge that she was apparently entering someone else’s apartment, not her own. The fact that it was a man’s apartment was even more crushing. The idea that it might have been a brother’s or a father’s or just a friend’s apartment never crossed Krebs’s mind.

Watching her disappear into the building, Krebs was completely at a loss for what to do next. Doubt started to cloud his thinking and he wasn’t even sure what he would have done if he’d found out where she actually lived. Thoughts of his commitment to the Family again entered his mind, and without the girl in sight to distract him, he found it extremely difficult to block them out. Looking one last time at the building and memorizing the address and the face of the doorman, Krebs turned south and headed back towards Union Square and the brownstone on Irving Place.