Treadmill (21 page)
“Is this asshole serious?” Prentiss asked.
“Of course, I’m serious. Do you want to be responsible for the death of one of America’s most distinguished public servants?”
Balancing himself with one hand on the wall, Cooper rose, wearing his sheet like a shroud.
“Are you suggesting,” Laura said, pointing to him. “That this man is garbage?”
“He would have made a helluva Nazi,” Laura said. “His father was an SS Colonel.”
“Figures,” Prentiss said.
From where he stood, Cooper could see the terrified face of Susan Haber staring back at him through the operating room window. At that moment, Kessler came rushing through the door, unsuspecting.
“I was wondering…what?” He froze, dumbfounded by what his eyes were taking in.
“There’s your man,” Laura announced. “He’s scheduled for tomorrow anyway.”
Kessler seemed uncomprehending. His eyes opened in astonishment.
“Didn’t you know that Kessler?” she said. “Your Ambassador will be wearing your ticker.”
Kessler’s face turned color, from ashen to purple. He looked at Blake strapped in the gurney.
“Bastard,” he cried, lunging at the supine Blake, squealing and struggling to loosen himself from his bonds. As Kessler reached down to attack Blake, Prentiss smashed down on his shoulder with the fist of her free hand. Kessler fell to his knees.
“It will be on your head,” Dietrich snapped.
What followed was simply too fast to register on any of them. Kessler rose from the floor, Blake’s pistol in his hand. Before anyone could move, he pointed the gun at Blake’s head and fired. Blood, bone, and brain matter spattered throughout the room. Pointing the gun at Dietrich, he fired again. But apparently, there had been only one shot in the chamber. By then, Prentiss had sprung into action, sending the butt of her pistol crashing against Kessler’s skull. He went down like a sack of potatoes.
Before any of them had time to react further, Dietrich began to push the gurney holding the obviously brain dead body of Blake toward the operating room. Laura suddenly moved to block his way.
“What does it matter? The man is dead anyway,” Dietrich said. “From the bullet’s angle, the stem is probably alive.”
Laura and Cooper exchanged glances. But it was Prentiss who took instant command.
“Let him pass,” she said, her voice booming.
With some hesitation and probably great reluctance, Laura moved aside, and Dietrich wheeled the gurney into the operating room.
Cooper jogged along the sidewalk, keeping a steady pace, his heart in perfect rhythm with his striding legs. A few cars, headlights peering into the pre-dawn darkness, tires slapping against the asphalt, sped along the empty streets.
Door to door, he would make it just under twenty minutes, give or take twenty seconds. In another eleven minutes he would be on the treadmill for his thirty-minute run working up to five miles an hour at a five percent incline. After that, he would do his weight sets for another thirty minutes, twenty more to shower and dress, then off to work.
At that hour, the exercise room was populated with regulars, members working their treadmills with deep concentration, headphones stuck on their ears, eyes glazed with determination, never acknowledging any one around them.
More than a year and half had passed since he had first joined the Bethesda Health Club. Membership seemed to have slacked off, lost to the elaborate new high tech clubs that had been built in other parts of the area. The squash players, he noted, remained the same, although he no longer had the time nor inclination to watch their games.
He still thought of Parrish, remembering how he had pounded the treadmill in silence beside him. Parrish, the stolen baby, recalled and identified indelibly in Cooper’s memory bank. Cooper had vowed to keep his image alive as a kind of permanent tribute to both the man and the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his death.
If a man were the sum of his parts
, Cooper often thought,
then Parrish would have the satisfaction of his parts never adding up
. And even if pieces of him were found, they would defy identification, and he would retain his title, in this day of labels, numbers, and computers, as the ultimate unidentified man.
Susan Haber hadn’t even mentioned Parrish in the one letter she had written Cooper from prison, full of false contrition and humble apologies. Carlton Stokes, with whom Cooper had not exchanged a single word, was also in prison, his sentence extended by two years for his theft of a heart and lung machine from the Martin Luther King Memorial Hospital.
Cooper and Laura had started a small advertising agency in Bethesda and were just beginning to turn a small profit. Laura was a natural as creative director. She had gone back to being a brunette, but still wore her ponytail, and was going with a very nice guy who was not in government.
On the treadmill beside him, the one that Parrish had used, a parade of new people came and went, most of them losing interest within a month or two. But a few weeks ago a man had arrived who appeared to be, like Parrish, deeply focused and into the discipline. He was extremely dedicated and energetic and went through his weight sets at a furious pace. He was vaguely familiar, and for days Cooper couldn’t place him. Like Parrish, too, the man rarely exchanged anything more than the barest grunt of a greeting. Even in the locker room, he kept to himself, and since Cooper avoided the sauna these days there was little chance of them ever engaging in conversation.
With Blake’s heart, Riggs Haley had become a remarkably healthy specimen. Haley convinced the court that he was completely ignorant of the terrible crimes perpetrated for his benefit, and could not be held guilty of any wrongdoing, although the resulting publicity ruined his public career.
Prentiss and Cooper had moved in together into a high-rise just inside the District line on Wisconsin Avenue, which gave him easy access to the apartment, his new agency, and the club. At first, Prentiss had been suspended both for crossing jurisdictional lines without the proper paperwork and, of course, the death of Melnechuck. When the smoke cleared, she was given a citation and promoted. She had purloined Parrish’s dog tag, and given it to Cooper for their first month’s anniversary. On it she had engraved:
If found, please return to Gail Prentiss, Sergeant, Homicide, MPD, Washington D.C.
They visited the Shamrock occasionally, but Prentiss confined her intake to two drinks maximum. Cooper was also getting her started on reading his large library of novels. The first book they read together was Thomas Mann’s,
The Magic Mountain
, mostly because she had laughed when she read the title. Cooper had called her that, the first time they had made love.
Dietrich had been deported to Germany, convicted in a trial that attracted worldwide attention. As a direct result of the trial, an international committee was created to regulate the occurrence of organ trafficking and prevention.
A month earlier, Cooper had been astonished to receive a post card from Kessler, care of the club.
Dear Cooper,
They let me out to attend the Ambassador’s funeral in Berlin. He was a very nice man, but his heart was in the wrong place.
****
Warren Adler:
Acclaimed author and playwright Warren Adler is best known for
The War of the Roses
, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce adapted first, into the Golden Globe and BAFTA nominated hit film starring Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner, and later into the internationally acclaimed staged version based on the original novel. He recently co-authored
Target Churchill
, an Amazon “Historical Fiction” bestseller, with Pulitzer nominated Winston Churchill biographer James C. Humes.
Shortly following the success of
The War of the Roses
, Adler fueled an unprecedented bidding war in a Hollywood commission for his then unpublished novel
Private Lies
. He went on to option or sell several of his works to film and television including his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series,
Random Hearts
starring Harrison Ford and Kristin Scott Thomas,
Trans-Siberian Express
,
Funny Boys
,
Madeline’s Miracles
and
The Sunset Gang
, which was adapted into a trilogy for PBS’ American Playhouse Series starring Uta Hagen, Harold Gould, Jerry Stiller and Doris Roberts who earned an Emmy nomination for her role in the “Best Supporting Actress in a Mini Series” category.
An
essayist, short-story writer and poet
, Adler’s works have been translated into 25 languages, including his staged version of
The War of the Roses
, which has opened to spectacular reviews worldwide. Adler has taught novel writing seminars at New York University, and has lectured on creative writing, motion picture adaptation and the future of e-books. He lives with his wife Sunny, a former magazine editor, in Manhattan.
More Thrillers from Warren Adler:
For complete catalogue including novels, plays and short stories visit:
www.warrenadler.com
 |  |  |  |
 | If you enjoyed this title, do leave a review on Goodreads Connect with Warren Adler on – www.facebook.com/warrenadler – www.twitter.com/warrenadler |