Sisterhood (34 page)

Peggy set the letter on top of the other without reading it. “Susan will listen to reason,” she said evenly, weighing the possibility of doctoring the half-dozen tapes of Susan’s that were locked in her basement vault. Without any reference to The Sisterhood of Life, the tapes would constitute a chilling confession. “She’s far too ambitious a woman not to listen to reason.” Peggy unraveled the square of linen and absently rubbed it between her fingertips.

Barbara Littlejohn, appearing gray and drawn despite her carefully applied makeup, passed across the third letter. “This is the one that upset me the most,” she said. “It’s from Sara.”

Damn! The expletive was thought more than spoken.

“She says that she will reconsider her resignation if we conduct a careful investigation into involvement of The Sisterhood or its members in the deaths of John Chapman and Senator Cormier—both at this hospital. Peggy, we didn’t have anything to do with—”

“Of course not,” Peggy said. “John Chapman was a friend of Sara’s. She’s just upset. Senator Cormier was autopsied and has already been thoroughly discussed at a death conference. I made it a point to attend. He had
extensive coronary artery disease and simply had a fatal heart attack during surgery. That’s all there is to that.”

“I’m glad.” There was genuine relief in Barbara’s face and voice. “Peggy, I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been available to discuss this. Everything seemed to be coming apart.”

“Nonsense. You’re doing a wonderful job. Our Sisterhood has not only survived for forty years, it has grown. A situation like this Shelton business may dent our solidarity, but it won’t break it. Just leave these letters with me. By day’s end I’ll have the whole matter under control.”

“Thank you,” Barbara said, taking Peggy’s hand. “Thank you.” She let herself out.

“The pillow, baby. Just set it over my face and lean on it as hard as you can. It won’t take long.”
They’re trying to destroy me, mama. They’re trying to destroy our Sisterhood. Margaret Armstrong’s eyes were closed even before the outside door of her office clicked shut behind Barbara. The sense of that evening so many years ago, of the hospital room, of the pain on her mother’s face—suddenly they were real once again.

“Mama, I …
Please, mama. Please don’t make me do it.”

“I love you. If you love me too, you won’t let me hurt so anymore. They all say it’s hopeless.… Don’t let me hurt so anymore.…”

“I love you, Mama. I love you.”
Peggy Donner whispered the words over and over again as Margaret Armstrong watched and listened, the piece of linen gliding continuously across her fingertips.

“I love you, Mama
 …” Peggy said as she placed the pillow over the narrow face and leaned on it with all the strength she could manage.

Margaret watched the movement beneath the sheet lessen, then stop. She was shaking as the girl replaced
the pillow and kissed her dead mother’s lips. She looked at the square of fabric as if discovering it for the first time.

Once again, the ordeal was over.

John Dockerty paced from one side of the cluttered back room of Marcus Quigg’s pharmacy to the other. Off to one side, Ted Ulansky watched, his broad face an expressionless mask. They had been grilling Quigg for nearly two hours, after finding enough improprieties in his records at least to have his license suspended. Dockerty’s hunch had been right. There was no need to manufacture evidence against the squirrelly pharmacist. In just a few hours of work, checking his prescriptions and calling a few doctors, they had gained the kind of clout that should have brought Quigg to his knees begging for some kind of a deal. However, the little man had proved surprisingly resistant—or frightened.

“Mr. Quigg,” Dockerty said irritably, “let’s start all over again.” The detective snapped a small stack of Quigg’s bogus prescriptions against the palm of his hand. He and Ulansky had agreed ahead of time that Dockerty would assume the role of tough, threatening villain during the interrogation and Ulansky would wait until he felt the tension was right, then ride to Quigg’s defense like a knight errant.

“Whatever you say,” Quigg mumbled. He was maintaining what composure he had left by chain-smoking and avoiding any eye contact. However, from his vantage point, Ted Ulansky noticed that, for the first time, Quigg’s hand was shaking. It would not be long.

“I’ve laid it all out for you,” Dockerty spat. “These prescriptions tell me that you are at least a crook. At worst, you’re a fucking dope pusher who is putting bread on his table by dealing pills to kids. Now either you tell us what we want to know, either you tell us who paid you to finger David Shelton, or I’ll see to it
that your pharmacy license is chopped up and stuffed down your throat as your first prison meal. Got that?”

Quigg bit at his lower lip. The shaking increased.

From the corner of his eye Dockerty saw Ulansky nod. Time for the finale. He tightened his jaw and spoke through clenched teeth. “I want a name, Quigg, and I want it now. Otherwise there’s a cell waiting for you at Walpole. And believe me, a cute little fellow like you is dog meat to those guys. After a week, your asshole is going to be so wide from getting screwed that you’ll shit in your pants every time you take a step.” His voice was booming now. “The name, Quigg—I want the name.”

“Enough!” Ulansky cracked the word like a whip. Quigg’s ashen face spun toward him. The narcotics investigator inserted himself between the two men like the referee in a prizefight. He put a calming hand on Dockerty’s chest, only to have it slapped aside. For an instant he wasn’t certain the Irishman was acting. “John, calm down. Just calm down. That temper of yours has gotten you in enough hot water with Internal Affairs as is, so just get a hold of yourself.” He turned benevolently to Quigg, noting with satisfaction that a trace of color had returned to the man’s cheeks.

“Marcus, I want to help you out, I really do,” he said, reassurance flowing from every word. “But you’ve got to realize what you’re up against. You’re sitting here balancing your career, your freedom, and your health against a name. Just a name. That’s all the lieutenant is asking for. I know you’re frightened about what will happen if you give it to us, but just think about what will happen to you if you don’t. At least the detective here can offer you some hope. Can the name we want offer you that?”

Ulansky scrutinized the man’s face. He saw fear and uncertainty, but not defeat—not the capitulation he had
expected by now. He looked at Dockerty and shook his head.

“I … I want to speak to my lawyer,” Quigg said.

Dockerty shot across the room, grabbed the man by his lapels, and pulled him to his feet. “You get nothing until I get some answers.” Reluctantly, he released his grip. “We’re taking you with us, Quigg,” he said. “I want you to see firsthand what jail is all about. We still have business, you and me. Come on, creep, let’s go.”

Marcus Quigg felt the knifelike pain beneath his breastbone and thought for a moment that it was all going to end right there. The wafer-thin aneurysm that had replaced much of the muscle of his heart was stretching. He had wanted to tell them at the outset that he was no crook. He wanted to tell them now that the illegal prescriptions were strictly nickel-and-dime stuff—Band-Aids to try and hold together his failing business and his failing health and his wife, terrified of being left alone with four children. He wanted to tell them, but he couldn’t.

What difference did it make anyway? He asked himself the question over and over as Dockerty snapped handcuffs on him and led him from the store. So this Shelton was in trouble because of what he was doing. Well, he was in trouble, too. Big trouble. The goddamn balloon in his chest was stretching and his doctor had said it could be a year or a month … or an hour. She had said there was nothing that could be done for him. Would Dockerty understand? Would he understand that, after a whole life of trying to do what was right, all he had to show for it was a frightened wife, four kids who needed to eat, and a ball of blood in his chest that could explode at any time?

Quigg felt the knot in his gut and tasted acid percolating in his throat. He wanted to tell them and just go home to his own bed. But he knew what would happen. He knew the money would stop. He knew the additional
thousands of dollars he had been promised when the whole mess was over would never come.

As he was shoved into the back seat of the detective’s car, Marcus Quigg silently cursed Dr. Margaret Armstrong and the misery she had brought him.

A pot of coffee, a shower together, and suddenly the evening had passed into crystal night. A birch log fire had transformed Joey’s living room into a musty womb. Stretched on the couch, David and Christine alternated brief conversation with prolonged gazes at the velvet sky,

“Red silk,” David said, fingering the robe he had borrowed from Rosetti’s closet. “I never thought of myself as the silk dressing gown type, but it sure do feel fine.”

Christine sat up, then pulled an edge of her robe across her lap. “David, I want you to know how much this day has meant to me.” His eyes narrowed. “You know I didn’t plan it this way, don’t you?” He nodded. She saw the tightness in his face and the moist film over his eyes. “All of a sudden I feel … sort of selfish—even cruel.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“No, it’s not. I’ve allowed this to happen, knowing every minute it was going to end.”

“You haven’t exactly been alone,” he said huskily.

“No, I guess not.…” Her voice trailed away. “David,” she said at last, “I’m going back in the morning.”

“One more day.” His response was so quick that they both knew the thought had already been in his mind.

Christine shook her head. “I don’t think that would be fair—to either of us. I know what you’re feeling. I’ve been feeling it too. All day. My mind keeps flip-flopping from fantasies of what I want to have happen to the reality of what I know is going to. Staying here—even
another day—will only make it hurt more when I go. I’ve caused you enough pain already.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” He was battling the truth in what she had said. He knew it. Still, he was unable to stem the torrent of words. “It … it just isn’t safe. Joey told you that last night. Vincent is loose somewhere in Boston. He’s looking for me, and, as likely as not, he’s looking for you, too. If we go back, we’d have to go straight to Dockerty. And what would we tell him? We can’t go back yet. Hell, Chris, we don’t have to go back ever. We could take off. Right now. Tonight. We could go to Canada or … or to Mexico. I speak some Spanish. Maybe we could open a little clinic somewhere. Practice together. What good would it possibly do to go back now?”

She kissed him lightly. “It wouldn’t work, David. You know that as well as I do. My Sisterhood has done some terrible things. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to stop them. I only hope I can find a way to do it without hurting all those nurses like me who believed—”

“Dammit, there must be another way!” David stiffened, then muttered an apology for the outburst and sank into the cushion. She was right. The rational, logical part of him understood that. If their circumstances were reversed, he knew, he would be saying the same things. But at the moment the rational, logical part of him was not controlling his tongue.

“Look,” he said, “maybe there is another way. Maybe we could go off somewhere safe and you could send what information you have to Dockerty or … or to Dr. Armstrong. Sure, that’s it—Dr. Armstrong. She’s been a friend and a help to me since this whole nightmare started. If anyone could help us convince the authorities about The Sisterhood’s existence, she could.” In spite of himself, the idea actually began to take hold. “Chris, the woman would be perfect. You heard it
yourself that night on Four South. She’s absolutely set against euthanasia. For all we know, if someone of Dr. Armstrong’s stature comes out against them, the Sisterhood people might decide it was time to fold up the organization all together. We could write to her and she could—”

“David, please. Don’t do this.”

“No, wait, hear me out. Just let me finish. Charlotte Thomas wanted to die. As far as we can tell, she was going to die no matter what. Oh, maybe another day of misery or a few agonizing weeks, but she was going to die.” Inside, David’s mental voice began begging him to listen to the thoughtlessness of what he was saying, to the pressure he was putting on her. The pleas went unheeded. “From what you know of the woman, do you think she would want you, want us, to have our chance together snuffed out because you helped her accomplish what she simply didn’t have the strength to do herself? Just another day or two to think things over. That’s all I’m asking. We’ll find another way, or we’ll go back and face things together. At least let’s wait until we hear from Joey. Maybe he’ll find out Vincent’s in jail somewhere after all.”

She closed her eyes and held him with all her strength. In the silence that followed, the scene David had started to paint grew in her thoughts. It was a dusty village nestled in a horseshoe of craggy mountains. She even saw their clinic—a white clay building at the end of a sunbaked dirt street. She could feel the warmth and serenity of their life. She sensed the peace that would come from devoting herself to such a place and such a man.

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.