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 anyone around them.
More than a year and a 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, Jr. 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.
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