The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [119]
Christine pressed her lips together and nodded. “Okay. Another day. But no promises.”
“No promises.” He felt only momentary joy at his victory before he began to acknowledge what he had known all along: unless they could find a truly satisfactory option, he would never allow her to run.
They made love in soft, unhurried harmony. For nearly an hour their eyes and mouths and fingertips explored one another. At last, when it felt as if neither of them could tolerate another touch without exploding, he entered her.
Marion Anderson Cooper was tough. Not only a tough cop, although he was that, too. He was tough in ways that only boys growing up on the streets of Roxbury with a feminine-sounding name could be tough. His toughness had been forged by rat bites as he lay on the shabby mattress he shared with his two brothers and tempered by two years in the mud and death of Vietnam. It was tested again and again by situations encountered as one of the first black sergeants assigned to the Little Italy section of Boston—the North End.
In the early morning hours of October 11 Cooper was making his second pass through the largely deserted streets of his patrol. From time to time he stopped the cruiser to shine his light in the window of a store or restaurant where he sensed something out of the ordinary. Each time he identified the source of his uneasiness—a new product display or repositioned table—and moved on.
The purple Fiat, parked inconspicuously by a dumpster in one of the back alleys, had not been there on his earlier swing through the area. Cooper blocked the alley with the patrol car, flashed his spot on the license plate and radioed the dispatcher.
“This is Alpha Nine Twenty-one,” he said, “requesting stolen check and listing on a purple Fiat, Massachusetts license number three-five-three, Mike, Whiskey, Quebec. Any backup units available?
“Negative, Alpha Nine Twenty-one. Repeat license, please.”
Cooper repeated the number and waited. The car was hot—he felt certain of that. In fact, he was surprised there hadn’t been other redistributed vehicles on the first night of decent weather in over a week. If it were stolen, it was kids, not the pros. Had it been the pros, the little Fiat would have already been painted, supplied with new numbers, and on its way to fill an order in Springfield or Fall River or someplace.
The delay seemed longer than usual. Cooper drummed impatiently on the wheel. He flipped on his walkie-talkie and was stepping out of the car when the radio crackled to life.
“Alpha Nine Twenty-one, I have information on nineteen seventy-nine Fiat sedan, Massachusetts license three-five-three, Mike, Whiskey, Quebec.” The woman’s voice, sensuous and tantalizing, was one Cooper recognized as belonging to a hundred-and-seventy-pound mustachioed mother of five.
“This is Alpha Nine, Gladys,” he said. “What have you got?”
“So far the car is clean as your whistle, Alpha Nine—no wants, no warrants. Registered to Joseph Rosetti, twenty-one Damon Street, Apartment C.”
“Alpha Nine out,” Cooper said. As he entered the alley, he instinctively unsnapped the flap of his service revolver.
The driver’s side door of the Fiat was open. Cooper shined his flashlight on the seats, then the floor. Nothing. Suddenly he tensed. The thick, nauseating scent of blood—the perfume of death—filled his nostrils. Wedged behind the seats, covered by a scruffy tan blanket, was a body. He took a quick breath and pulled the blanket aside. At that moment all the toughness, all the gruesome battles in the rice paddies and the jungles and the city streets did not help at all.
Marion Anderson Cooper spun away