The Cold Room Read Online Free PDF Page B

pedigree was at least as important as the job you did on the street. That was a given. But if there was nothing to be done about a system that consistently rewarded second- and third-generation cops, at least one variable was still in play. If I couldn’t out-influence my competitors, I could definitely outwork them. And that’s what I did, collaring so many bad guys in the next ten months that the Precinct union delegate finally told me to lay off.
    â€˜You’re makin’ the rest of us look bad,’ he’d explained.
    Adele’s hand tightened on my shoulder at that point and I swiveled my chair in a half-circle to face her. Although we’d been working for two hours and were both drenched with sweat, I wasn’t thinking of a shower at that moment. My mood having instantly turned, I was thinking about the slippery texture of Adele’s inner thigh, how her skin would feel beneath my fingers should I slide them from her left knee into the shadow beneath the leg of her gym shorts. I knew that if I lifted her t-shirt just a few inches, I’d discover a tiny drop of salty water trapped in her navel. I wanted to taste that drop on my tongue, to let it roll down into my throat. I wanted to absorb Adele the way the skin of a submerged amphibian absorbs oxygen.
    Aroused by death? By violent death, by death undeserved? Looking back, I don’t think so. I think I somehow separated the chase from the event that set the chase in motion. But murder was, undeniably, a necessary precondition to the erotic recklessness I felt at that moment. And I knew it, even at the time. I reached out to place my hands on Adele’s hips, to draw her close, but she was one step ahead of me, as usual. She slid away, then yanked off her T-shirt, smiling that naughty, little-girl smile reserved for me alone. Adele’s breasts are small and hard, her nipples like thimbles. That my eyes were drawn to them came as no surprise to either of us.
    â€˜Corbin,’ she asked, ‘what do you think would happen if I stood in front of the air conditioner for a moment or two?’
    I don’t remember what I answered, or what I imagined, the end result being at least as grand as any fantasy I could muster. Her nipples became as hard as bullets, her breasts pimpled with little goose bumps that smoothed beneath my tongue. Prior to Adele, my adult relationships had been limited to a series of impulsive affairs that cooled as fast as they began. The pattern was so consistent that I’d pretty much resigned myself to a hit-and-run sex life. Meanwhile, after nine months with Adele, I was as infatuated as ever.
    We made love in a frenzy, in a blur of manipulations. Adele is a very fit woman, but I’m also very fit and much larger. Toward the end, when I pinned her wrists to the bed, her legs circled my hips and tightened, commanding me forward, locking me into an arc of no more than a few inches. She was looking directly into my eyes then, her breath coming in short heaves, her mouth curled into a defiant grimace. When I bent forward to cover that mouth with my own, a shudder ran through her body, from the base of her spine up into her skull, and her eyes fluttered momentarily before closing. A moment later, I exploded inside her.
    Pillow talk. After the showers and the changing of the sheets, as we lay side by side watching NY1, the cable news station, Adele laid her hand on my thigh and cleared her throat. They were doing the subway derailment on the little screen: the eight people dead, the ninety-seven injured, the EDP, the plain-clothes cop whose every move was now being judged by a media as anxious as its audience to cast blame. Predictably, the job was acting with caution. No details would be forthcoming until after a preliminary investigation was completed sometime within the next few days.
    â€˜Corbin,’ Adele said, ‘the perp in the case I’ve been working decided to plead out today. It came as a