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Day 29, Word Count: 20,320

Well, I broke the 20,000 mark on the second to last day of this crazy old thing. I am going to try and right a little more today and tomorrow and see just how far I can actaully get, but obvoiusly, I am not going to make the 50K mark.

It's been an interesting experiment and I have had plenty of distractions over the last month. I know that some of that is excuses, but for the most part, it was just the normal demands of like that got in the way.

During this month, though, I have gotten a lot of writing and work done. Besdes this novel writing venture, I have written two articles for other e-zines (one is for the All New, All Different Forcesofgood.com which is re-launching on 12/6/04!), done two fairly big graphic design projects for my brother's band and for a local non-profit children's theatre, and I have written 15 comic book reveiws for a software company I freelance for. All in all, a lot of work in 29 days!

Anyway, I am pretty happy with the way this NaNoWriMo novel is going and I am going to continue work on it. I am committing to myself that I am going to complete the entire first draft of this novel before I move onto any other fiction projects and my goal fro doing that is 12/31/04. I figure if I can write another 70 or 80K in another month, that's a pretty decent sized novel.

So, keep checking back here for updates and my other blog, Terror Tales, for regular postings. I am going to try and get back on schedule over there, so be there at the end of the week for a new edition of the Weekly Five - Holidays Horror version!

Thanks for everyone who checked out this site while I was attempting this insance project - I appreciate the support. Keep coming back for weekly updates on the novel (more of a novella, really)
- Ryan

Day 17, Word Count: 19,334

Day 17, Word Count: 19,334

Not much progress today, but some's better than none. See you tomorrow.

Day 16, Word Count: 18,176

Not posting excerpts anymore since the news that posting on a non-password protected wedsite counts as publication, but if any of you all are looking for updated chapters or want the whole thing when it's done, email me and we can figure something out.

Anyway, up and over 18,000. May write some more tonight and if so will post the 20,000 Landmark! I am about 8400 words behind schedule, so I am going to try my damdest (sp?) to catch up this week. While it's looking less and less like I am actually going to finish this 50,000 words in 30 days challenge, I am at least going to keep going with it. I am actually relatively happy with what I am writing here and think that with a good revision (a long hard and good REVISION) I might actually have something.

So, stick around, come on back, whatever. Keep checking in and give me your support - there are still 14 days left. Maybe I can get pretty damn close. Right now, my short term goal is to be at 32,000 or more by Sunday. Not completely unreasonable!

Thanks, goodnight.

Day 12, Word Count: exactly 15,090

Another mini-milestone and this time it is an exact count - I made a copied version where I took out any chapter headings and notes I had inserted, so now I definitively know that I have 15,090 words. If I can write 9,990 by Monday midnight I will be exactly on track for actually completeing this. 3,330 words on Saturday sunday and monday? No problem! Yeah, right . . .

Read on for today's additions


“Congers shot Rohmer that night. He also killed the Councilman. Who came first I don’t know, but the way I figure it, Congers went in first, fired one into the wall to draw in Harry and then blasted away. Before anyone else could get there, he finished off Sanders. They guy was pretty feeble and it wouldn’t have been hard for Congers to make it look like a suicide.

“He had the piece he’d taken off the pimp from downtown and he just used that to do Harry and then the Councilman. He figured that no one was ever going to be able to match the ballistics from this to anything the pimp had done, since he was going to swipe the gun out of evidence anyway.

“Congers just never figured the gun would make it back into circulation and eventually fall into an actual honest cop’s hands. It was a million to one odds that it fell to someone like Moynihan who was able to put it together with what happened to Rohmer. I mean, any other cop, straight or bent, wouldn’t have even thought about the connection to Rohmer and the Councilman’s shooting. Moynihan did because he’s a gun freak and that such a unique gun had been used in his friend’s death.”

“Terry, I don’t really know what to say. I mean I think that this is big, don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely huge that the Councilman didn’t kill himself and that a fucking cop did. And the fact that it was all part of a cover up makes it even more important that you go to someone with this,” Jenny paused. “But, Terry, I mean . . . really, what’d you need to bring me into this for. This is beyond me, this Family connection, I believe you, but you have to admit it’s tenuous, at best.”

McGruder opened his mouth to reply, but the professor went on.

“And what does it have to do with Marcus and his run for mayor?” she finished.

“Yeah,” he said. He was tired. Bone tired. “I know it’s thin. It’s so fucking thin, it’s goddamn see through. But it’s there, Prof. It’s there and it’s nasty.”

“Explain it to me then,” she said. Not harshly, but the patience was starting to edge out of her voice. “Make me see it, Terry.”

“The Family scored a lot of points in the media with the takedown of all those minority thieves. Those sex-crazed, money-grubbing thieves. And they found a golden boy in the D.A. who was prosecuting the case. Your hubby.

“Now, I don’t have anything that says Webster was in with the Family before this all went down. But I’ve had this guy, photographer I know, go through all the old pics I had him taking while I was investigating the scholarship scandal. He goes through like five or six hundred negatives before he comes up with three shots of what I wanted.”

“What?” She was back on the edge of the couch now. Leaning in towards McGruder and all he wanted to do was meet that lean and hold her. But he went on instead.

“Webster,” he said, unable to keep the sneer out of his voice or off his face. “Eating at some fucking fancy Midtown French place with two known Family members. And these aren’t middle executive type members. These are two guys that are suspected of being liaisons between the mysterious council members and the foot soldiers that do all the dirty work. One named Donald Golden. The other is nameless as yet. Even the guys I got the information on the Family from don’t know his name and those guys work for one of those government acronyms, if you know what I mean.”

Jenny just nodded and made a ‘go on’ gesture with the fingers of her right hand.

“So, any other day, these pics wouldn’t have mattered. I had the kid take shots of anyone who seemed to be at the trial or the press conference on a regular basis. He happened to see each or both of these guys at nearly all of the proceedings and decided they might be worth following one day. He was as surprised by who they met for lunch as I was, but he says that he forgot to tell me about the pics back then, because they day he shot them, well . . .”

“What? Shit, Terry, why are you pausing?”

“The day Webster was eating lunch with these two Family members was the day the Post broke the story on our affair. The kid never told me, because he had to wrestle my drunk ass out of a Blarney Stone that night and by the morning, things were already hitting the fan.”

“Oh,” she said, a slight shade of crimson coloring her face. McGruder knew this was going to be the tough part. Had known it since last night when he’d finally decided he was going to go to her with the story. But he didn’t think it would be this goddamn awkward. “Yeah, you sure dealt with that one well.”

“You don’t have to tell me. And since I never said it enough then or since then: I’m sorry that it turned out that way. I’m sorry that I’m such a shit. I’m sorry I got you involved and that I didn’t protect you after that.”

“Nobody needed to protect me, Terry,” she said. “That wasn’t the fucking point! But you could have stuck with me. You’re so goddamned stubborn with everything else, but you fucking let what we had go without even the slightest fight. Don’t you get that’s why I hated you?”

Hearing her say that she hated him stung. He knew she had and he damn well he deserved her hate. But hearing it. Man.

“I know what a shit I am,” he said, soft. “But, Jen, do you see what this means? What him having lunch with the Family reps means during the fucking trial?”

She didn’t respond right away, still looking pissed about what happened three years ago and then McGruder saw the light go on. Actually saw her make the connection and her whole face change with the knowledge. At first it was excitement at figuring it out and then the color just drained out.

“Jesus,” she whispered. “He fucking knew all along. He knew that that cop Congers killed Councilman Sanders and you cop friend. He knew everything!”

McGruder gave it another minute to sink in. Then he said, “Jen, Jimmy Congers is your ex-husband’s chief of security. He’s on him, everyday, like a shadow. And in about a week’s time, if the polls are right, Marcus Webster is going to be Mayor of New York City.”

Chapter Sixteen

“My God, Terry. Nothing is ever small potatoes with you, is it?” Garcia asked as she sank backwards into the couch.

McGruder laughed. It was deep and from the gut. It was the first time in a long time that laughing had felt so natural. “I pass those stories along to the hacks,” he said.

Jenny looked up from behind her hands which she had covered her face with and actually bore a smile of her own. It lit her face like a scrubbed sunrise. McGruder was stunned by how much more beautiful that simple gesture made her.

“What do we do with all this information?” she asked. “I mean really. You have a ton of connections, here, and even some things that obviously tie together, but there are a hell of a lot of loose ends, McGruder. I mean, like, a whole roomful worth.”

McGruder thought before he responded. Thought about all the things he’d learned in the last few weeks and then about the other things he’d put together on his own after his late night call from Moynihan. He thought about everything that had happened three years ago with Councilman Sanders, the scholarships, his friend Rohmer, and the goddamn D.A., Jenny’s ex-husband, Marcus Webster. He thought about all those things and everything that he and the professor had talked about in the last three hours.

He thought about all those things and said, “Nothing.”

“What?!” Jenny nearly screamed.

“You heard me. Nothing. I walk away,” he said. He was glad that he was able to say it a second time. Just being able to say it a second time, meant that he might be able to actually do it. “This is bigger than what happened before. Bigger and a hell of a lot messier. And there are just too many factors we can’t see. Too much of an x-factor that we can’t possible play the odds and win. So, I walk away.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Terry?” she asked. “You just spent three hours laying out this - - this, I don’t know - - this fucking plot! And now you want to just say, thanks for talking, I gotta go?! This Family or whatever they are, are going to have my fucking ex-husband sitting in a very powerful position in a week’s time. Because the polls are right, Terry. Webster is going to win in a fucking landslide. And you say you’re not going to do shit to expose this? You’re going to walk away? No fucking way!”

“Listen to me. I appreciate your time. I know how hard it must be to have me sitting here. And I didn’t plan to walk away from this. Not after everything I put it. Especially not when things point towards the one sonofabitch I wanna nail more than anything. I didn’t come here to walk away,” he said. “I came here, because I needed your help. I needed you to help me set these things out in order. To give them structure--”

“And now you have that structure and you just want to walk away?” Jenny interrupted him.

“Let me finish, all right?”

She answered with a barely perceptible nod and a more than perceptible scowl.

“This . . . thing. This whole fucking conspiracy I’ve uncovered. There’s too much here. I can’t handle this and not get stuck. Or worse. Bringing to this to the cops, these Family guys aren’t going to just roll over. They killed a fucking city councilman for fuck’s sake! Do you think they are going to just surrender and come in? I mean, they don’t even have to kill me, I’m too much like the scum sticking to the bottom of their shoes – I’m easy to wipe off, without the added mess of killing me. But they fucking could, Jen. They could kill me without fucking thinking about it. And there is no way that I am bringing you into it!” he finished, just barely keeping it all under a shout.

“The fuck you aren’t,” Jenny said. “You’ve already brought me into it. What the hell did you think I was going to do once you laid this on my doorstep, Terry. Say, well, loddy-da, interesting little story, Ter, now be on your way, I have to go back to my life and ignore everything you just told me? Is that what you thought, McGruder? Is it?”

He started to respond and then stopped. He was red in the face and leaning over the table, his fisted knuckles boring into the rich wood of its surface. For her part, Jenny was tightlipped and defiant. She was like a bulldog just waiting for Terry to make his move so she could tear into him and finish him. It was what he’d always loved about her.

Still did.

“No,” he said. Honestly. “I didn’t. I hoped that you would. That you’d just let me bounce the thoughts off you so I could get them figured for myself and then tell me to fuck off for good. But I knew you wouldn’t, Jen. I know you’re too much of a warrior for that.”

“Damn right,” she said. A hint of smile creased her lips once again.

Day 11, Word Count: c. 13,110

Read on faithful friends:

Chapter Fourteen

By the time Robin got into the apartment, showered, dressed, and headed back down to the lobby, it was already quarter past six. She was supposed to have been downstairs forty-five minutes earlier. She knew that even though tonight’s dinner was supposed to be about her, it would soon become another night of her being chastised by her date.

This date, however, was someone she could tolerate a chastising from. He was rich, powerful, handsome, and he gave her pretty much whatever she wanted. Not that she ever asked fro much. She wasn’t playing this out to get things. She’d earn that on her own. This was more than that.

She supposed that there was a part of her that loved him. Maybe. What this really was, though – what he really was to her – was a key. He opened doors for her that she could never walk through on her own. Not while she was a nighttime word processor at a medium-sized midtown firm. Hell, if she had gotten the job with Zero, she might be having a totally different kind of evening and wouldn’t all be celebratory.

But she hadn’t quite succeeded on that front, had she? That had been one door (one of many if she allowed herself a little credit) that she had unlocked on her own. Through sheer force of will, she had kicked that motherfucking door in.

Getting in, however, wasn’t the end all, be all. She’d learn that lesson this morning at about 11:30 am. And now, here she was. Riding down the elevator in an apartment building where her lover had rented a two-bedroom under an assumed name, just so he could have an “illicit affair” with an office girl.

Robin knew she was more than just an office girl. She knew that “Roger” knew that as well (he’d picked the name from the phone book one night after they had had fantastic sex in the Plaza’s second best suite; the name had stuck as their personal pet name for each other.) Robin knew, in fact, that Roger was much more interested in her mind than her body. Most of the time. And, that was the power she held over him. She wasn’t some cheap gold-digging whore. They were both getting something out of this relationship and Roger knew it just as well as she did.

They’d once had a conversation about that very thing. Robin had told Roger that she was dating him and putting up with the goddamn secrecy because she expected him to give her what she wanted. At first he’d looked at her with such fear that she almost laughed, but she knew that if she did that the whole thing would be over. So she’d barreled on without giving him a chance to respond.

Robin told him that what she wanted wasn’t Cartier, Prada, or cold hard cash. What she wanted was everything that a simple girl from Long Island couldn’t get without the right connections. He’d taken a sip of his very expensive cabernet and then looked around the dark back room of the restaurant they were in. After nearly a minute, and just as Robin was about to get up and leave, thinking that she’d blown it, he turned to her and smiled.

“You’ve never been simple,” he said. And that had been the night that everything changed for the two of them.

They talked until the sun came up and by the end of that long night Robin knew things about Roger that she never could have imagined. Things that she knew he’d told only to her. And right there, right then, she knew that she was either very lucky to be where she was, or in the most dangerous position a woman her age could be in.

Now, walking through the lobby of their hideaway in the middle of the city, wearing a new dress and seven hundred dollar shoes, Robin knew she’d been smart to stick. Sticking was the thing she did best. Because when you bail, her dad (a great surfer and philosopher in his own right) told her, you missed the ride.

And oh what a ride Roger had been.

Chapter Fifteen

McGruder and Garcia were sitting in the middle of her West Side apartment. Two floor-to-ceiling windows opened the apartment to a grand view of the Hudson River below them. McGruder was finishing off his third cup of coffee since going to the diner just off campus from Columbia. Professor Garcia was sitting across from him on the wide couch, her face buried in her hands. Her chestnut brown hair fell in curls and ribbons around her shoulders and forearms.

“Well, you got me back to my apartment, Terry,” she said as she raised her head. “Now spill. Tell me everything you know about this family and their connection to the scholarship scandal. And to my husband.”

McGruder was a little surprised at how much it stung that she said husband and not ex-husband. All he said, though, was “It’s Family. Capital f.”

“Fine, Family,” Jenny said dramatically. “Who are they?”

“Well, that’s probably the first of many questions about them that I can’t answer,” McGruder responded. “There are a lot of them first of all, and some of the higher ups are actually out in the open about some of the activities that the sponsor and fund. Like a townhouse in D.C. that a few conservative Heartland congressmen and senators use as a home whenever they are in the Capital for congressional business.”

“Okay, I think I have heard something about, actually,” she said. She was leaning forward now, more involved in the conversation. McGruder was trying not to let himself feel how he wanted to. This was how it had been at the beginning of their relationship when he was still just questioning Jenny as any other expert. But he repressed that, because he knew that things now were definitely not going to progress as they had three years ago. “I’ve still never heard this Family name, but I definitely read an article in Vanity Fair or something about Christian Right congressmen sharing a home in D.C. to keep themselves together and share common values or some shit.”

“Right, that’s exactly the idea that they putout to the media and their constituents. That they’re there just to stay out of trouble, be true to their wives and kids, and all that other moral value gobblydegook they spew,” McGruder continued. He paused to finish his coffee and set the empty mug on the coffee table.

“Jesus, still a fucking slob, McGruder,” Jenny said, with the beginning of a smile creasing one corner of her mouth. “Ever hear of a coaster?”

“Ever hear of washing your mouth out with soap,” he responded. “You talk like a sailor who just got dropped back into the world from a long tour of duty.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not allowed to swear in class anymore, because one of my students complained to the student council about it. So whenever I’m out of class I tend to make up for it. In spades.”

“You serious?” McGruder asked.

“Absolutely. PC world, Terry, where the fuck’ve you been,” she snarled.

“At the goddamn New York Union-Dispatch. End of the journalism world.”

“Really,” she said, all the humor had left her voice. “You’re writing for the Dispatch?”

“Don’t sound so enthused for me, Jen,” he said, trying to bite back the venom in his voice and failing miserably. “It’s better than the fucking weeklies.”

“Not much,” she said, but so soft McGruder wasn’t sure she actually said it. “Refill on that coffee?”

Grateful for the change of subject, he answered “Maybe something stronger?”

“I think I still have a bottle of Maker’s Mark in the cabinet somewhere. Let me check.”

And with that Jenny left the room and McGruder. He sighed deep, pissed that he’d let the misery show through. Things had been going better than he could have hoped for with Jen. He’d never let himself believe that she would even talk to him, but he shouldn’t have given her so little credit. Jen was a good person. About a thousand times better than him, so he should have known that predicting how she was going to act by comparing to what he would have done in the same situation was an unworthy analysis. He was just glad she was still listening.

Jenny returned with two juice glasses filled with ice and layered with the golden brown bourbon.

“Nostrovya,” she said and knocked back half of her glass’s contents.

“Polish toasts from a Black Mexican?” McGruder said after he took his own healthy drag from the glass. Jenny had brought the bottle with her and he helped himself to it, in order to top off his glass.

“Still a fucking racsist,” Jenny said. But the biggest smile of the night crossed her face and McGruder was glad for it. “So go on, the Family. They have a public face, sounds creepy, but far from sinister. I assume you’re gonna tell me they have a dark side?”

“Right, about as dark as Vader’s Empire.”

“Star Wars reference?” she asked with a scowl. “Still a geek too, I see. . .”

“Yeah, well, times change, I don’t.”

“So what diabolical schemes does this Family Empire have in mind?” she asked.

“First of all, the public head of the Family – who are rarely heard from anyway – are nothing more than figureheads. From what I’ve learned, there is a council of ten men that run the whole operation,” McGruder went on. “And when I say operation, I mean in the criminal organization sense. These guys are like the Holy Roller version of the Syndicate. They have their hands in every pie from narcotics to weapons to immigrant slave labor. And, of course, politics.

“These guys started out like the mob and unions. They were organizing all of these political action groups out in the Midwest and directing their actions to help shutdown politicos they didn’t like. Things that weren’t as big as Operation Rescue’s Summer of Mercy, but just as scary. They’d send two or three hundred people into a school on a Monday morning and demand that the 10th grade science teacher cease and desist on that week’s lesson of evolution.

“When they saw how successful they were on the protest side – actually using the same tactics that the hippies were using in the 60s – they saw that they could apply the same principles to getting their people elected. Obviously, they knew they couldn’t openly front these guys, because they would never get the moderates’ votes, and they needed those votes to win. So they scaled back their presence, but increased their influence.

“And as they started winning seats and had more and more state government officials and elected officials in their back pocket, they saw the power they had to wheel. The favors were called in and the wheels, having already been greased with the keys to senate seats, started to turn. The Family had everyone they needed in place to move whatever they wanted to without any eyes looking their way.”

“You’re talking about the perfect criminal organization,” Jenny said. “One that has no worries about cops, since they run the people who run the cops.”

“Exactly.”

“But if these dudes are such Bible freaks, so dedicated to the glory of the Lord, what are they doing crimes for?” she asked.

“They it was told to me?” McGruder said. “These guys see it like Malcolm X. By any means necessary, they are going to put in place the things that will make this country, and eventually the world, right with God. Their God. And so, selling drugs to a bunch of liberal intellectuals and gun-toting ghetto kids means they’ll have that many fewer opponents when their bought and paid for senators and congressmen start messing with civil liberties and the laws of the land.”

“Jesus.”

“Exactly.”

McGruder paused for a minute. He could see that Jenny was twisting all he’d said through her head. He had a lot more to say, but for now, he had to let her get this processed. He finished off the drink and poured himself another. Gotta stop with this one, or I’ll end up on the couch for the night. Then he thought, Wouldn’t that be horrible?

“All right, so the Family is much closer to Cosa Nostra than you let on, but in a whole different way. Kinda-sorta. . . whatever. How’s this tie-in to Councilman Sanders and Webster,” she asked. Before McGruder could even start his answer, she went on. “If they were backing the Sunshine scholarships, why would they also have their people embezzle them? Why not just keep the money and screw the whole lot of the inner city kids who got the awards?”

“I didn’t get it at first either,” McGruder said. “Especially since all the people involved in taking the money illegally were either loyal directly to the Family or to some group controlled by the Family. But this is where that little plan was brilliant. The money they were using to dump into the scholarships was money they were making from other illegal operations they had going – drugs, guns, whatever. So putting the money in the scholarships worked as phase one of the laundering operation. Think of it as the washing part.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Right. So phase two of the laundering was drying the money and this is where the plan is brilliant. Whoever this council is have gotten a lot of minorities and otherwise moderate Republicans to take up their cause. The political consequences of doing otherwise would be devastating. But the reason they had some of these people on board, was just to discredit them.”

“What do you mean? Why let them into the organization and see the men behind the curtain, if they were just going to screw them later. Wouldn’t that have left the Family members wide open to exposure?”

“Well, yes and no. Here’s the thing: men like Councilman Sanders were in deep. They knew about the drugs and everything else. They were upper echelon. But all along, the Family moved Sanders like a chess piece. They knew his proclivities for young girls, they knew he was a greedy bastard. So they put him into play, saying they need this money to be cleaned up – do it through scholarships sponsored by one of our conservative shell companies and give the money to inner-city minorities so the world sees a bunch of evangelical Christians from the Midwest giving money out for those ‘poor black chil’un.’

“It’s good PR and we put our money through the washing machine. But knowing Sanders, they know that they have a liability on their hands, so when push comes to shove and some interfering reporter starts poking his nose in the wrong mugs, they put phase two into operation. Let Sanders and the rest of the mid-level bureaucrats – most of them minorities, by the way – take the rap. We get the money back anyway in restitution and the media goes nuts over this parasites taking money from not only hard-working kids, but the hard-working Midwestern conservatives who are only trying to make a better world.”

McGruder took a sip of his drink to let Jenny digest that last part of it. He knew what she was going to ask next, but he had to let it come from her. Let her get to the question, so that when he gave her the answer, it wouldn’t be as hard to swallow.
“But . . .” she started and paused.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“If the Family was planning on letting Sanders and the others take the fall, weren’t they worried that one of them would rat them out?” She asked in a rush. Seeing the very thing that McGruder has seen the day before and struggled over. Struggled hard over, until his call from Moynihan. “Why the hell would Sanders off himself?”

“Good girl,” McGruder said. “You’ve still got a cop’s instinct, but with double the brains.”

“Thanks. Now tell me what you’ve left out.”

“The others – all the bureaucrats, the finance officers – they got involved through Sanders and therefore didn’t know about the Family’s involvement. Sanders was the only one connected directly to the family that would have been prosecuted. So the rest of them weren’t a concern.

“But you’re right about the Councilman. Why kill yourself when you can plead out and offer up a much bigger fish. I’m sure he didn’t know everything that the Family was into, but he knew enough to take a walk.”

“Okay, so where’s the connect?” she asked, getting a little frustrated now. Not seeing it. McGruder knew the feeling.

“Remember Jimmy Congers?” he asked her.

“The fucking prick cop who talked to the media?” she spat out. “How could I forget after what . . . well you know.”

It had been Congers who had told her ex about the affair with McGruder. “Right. Well, Congers was the first one through the door the night of the raid. The night Sanders took one to the head.”

“And you’re friend died,” she said. She reached out and wrapped her hand around McGruder’s. He was surprised, but ever so thankful.

“Right, Harry. He was a good man,” McGruder finished his third drink and thought about a fourth, but decided it would be better to wait until this was finished for that one. “I got a call from another cop last night. It was late, a guy named Moynihan who’d been in the Two-Three with Harry back in the bad old days of the 70s. He’d come up with Harry and said he owed it to him to talk to me. I known Moynihan from my time at the Daily News, I’d rode along with him and we’d both talked about Harry.

“Anyway, Moynihan calls me in the middle of the night and says he’d taken down some skell was running girls down in the Meat Packing District. Real scum he’d had his eye on for a while. So, finally an undercover had gotten close to the guy and they took him down. He had two guns on him, a huge butcher’s knife, a pair of handcuffs, and a human ear in a cigar box.”

“Christ, Terry!” she said.

“Yeah. Well, Moynihan tells me they had suspected him of being involved in some missing person cases they had from the area, so the ear was a good indication they were right. He walked the guns through ballistics himself.

“Guess what he found?” he asked her. Fuck it, he thought and poured himself another glass before she could answer.

“I’ve got no fucking clue, McGruder, but what does this hav--” she started.

McGruder held his hand up in a stopping motion. He took a long pull from the glass. Coughed. “Did you know that the gun Sanders shot himself was standard police issue?”

“No.”

“Well, it was,” he said. “I bet you also don’t remember that that gun went missing a few days after the shooting. It didn’t really matter since he offed himself, they already confirmed the ballistics on it being the gun that killed him, and there was a decorated cop who swore a statement to those very facts.”

“Terry, I don--”

“Let me finish it,” he cut her off again. “One of guns that my friend Moynihan took off the pimp was the gun that killed Councilman Sanders.

“And when Moynihan pressed this scumbag for how he obtained such a notorious weapong, the piece of shit was more than happy to tell my cop friend. He said he bought it from a crooked cop he used to pay off in order to run his girls without interference.

“A cop named James Francis Congers,” McGruder said. He swallowed the rest of his drink and sighed deeply. It was good to get it out; to have said it all to someone who could understand it like he did. He was still knotted inside though. Nothing was going to change that. Rohmer was still dead and it was still his fault.

“Terry, I . . . I don’t,” the professor started.

“I don’t either,” McGruder finished.

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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.