Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

The woman, middle-aged and tired, dressed in a waitress outfit, looks up from her purse and sizes us up, one eyebrow lifting. “Is there gonna be trouble?” she asks.

“No, ma’am. Just a routine inspection. Not your apartment, of course.”

“Mm-hmm.” She eyes the battering ram Sosh is holding at his side, which he named Betsy after his first wife. She walks back up the steps, finds the right key on an impressive ring, and lets us through the outside door.

Carla radios to Bostwick to watch the alley; we’re heading up. We take the stairs as gently as four people can take stairs that creak and moan with every step. No matter. As we hit the third floor—the top floor—we hear music, some poppy dance stuff.

“Prince Valentine? Chicago police detectives.” I stand to the side and pound on the door.

Footfalls from within the apartment. The probation reports say Prince lives alone. No children, no spouse.

“Just wanna ask you some questions, Prince!”

My three partners have their guns drawn but down while I stand at the door.

“Hang on,” he calls out from within the apartment, yelling over the music.

Then more noise: a whining noise, then a crash of wood on wood, then a body in motion, feet pounding. But not on the floor.

I draw my weapon and wave to Sosh, already hoisting Betsy.

“Fuckin’ told ya,” he murmurs.

Chapter 26

SOSH RAMS Betsy against the door. The door splinters, but the hit wasn’t square, so it busted the door but not the lock. Sosh cusses and rears back, slams the ram against the door with more violence, this time hitting the target, busting through the lock, the door swinging open.

I go through first, shouting “Police!” into the empty apartment. Turn to my right, the bedroom window, closed and secure. To my left: a ladder, coming down from the ceiling. He has roof access from inside the apartment. And a head start.

Carla calling in to Bostwick, “He’s on the roof!”

I bound up the ladder, pause before popping my head through the open skylight, then peek out. Yep, a big head start.

I jump onto the gravel roof.

“He’s got a weapon!” Carla relays. Someone on the ground must’ve seen it.

Prince Valentine is in full sprint, heading south toward the other end of the building. I call out “Police!” again, as if that wasn’t the whole reason he’s running. “We just want to talk to you!” I yell, as I hold my weapon down, running as fast as I can, which is not as fast as Prince can.

He doesn’t break stride as he runs toward the other end of the roof. What’s his play here? Any second, he’s going to have to stop, turn around, his brain overtaking his instinct to run, and realize he has nowhere to go. I have to be ready when he realizes that.

But he doesn’t stop. He jumps off the ledge, like a long jumper, hands and legs making wide circles, and disappears from sight.

What the—

I keep running, and I see him. He jumped onto the neighbors’ roof, a two-story building. He’s coming out of his landing now, recovering, jumping to his feet and running again.

I don’t think. I don’t stop. Knowing that it might be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I holster my weapon as I speed up, moving as fast as my legs will take me, plant my foot on the ledge, sail into the air, a narrow alley beneath me—that sickening feeling of being airborne with nothing but a hard alley pavement three stories below—and land hard on the other roof, fifteen feet below, my weight pitching forward, my hands scraping against blacktop and a thin layer of pebbles. Flat on my stomach. The wind knocked out of me. I look up, see the suspect slow down, pivot, and turn to his left, past an AC condenser and toward a small roofed enclosure.

He had an escape planned out. He’s going to go through a door down into the building.

I get to my feet, draw my weapon, and jog in the direction he fled. I clear a wide circle to improve my angle and keep my weapon up, just in case—

He pops out from behind the condenser, a one-handed grip on his weapon, aiming it where he expects me to be, to my left, quickly adjusting but giving me that split second of time—

A flash from his weapon as I rip off one, two, three shots, a force hitting my torso so hard that I’m thrust backward, falling to my back, a blue sky, the sun hitting my eyes.

A sound behind me, a body landing, scrambling. “Harney! You okay?” Carla sweeps past me, her weapon trained forward. “You okay?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I roll to my side, see Carla move toward the suspect, lying motionless on the ground. She approaches him with caution, kicks the weapon far from his body, reaches down, and feels for his pulse.

Another body landing on the roof behind me. “Suspect is down!” Rodriguez calls. “Officer is down!”

Chapter 27

BY THE time I sit up, my legs out in front of me, the roof of the building next door to Prince Valentine’s apartment is littered with uniformed officers. Carla has holstered her weapon and walks over to me. “We need to get you to an emergency room,” she says.

I shake my head. I’m fine. I put three bullets into Prince’s chest; he put one in my ribs. I was wearing a bulletproof vest; he wasn’t. I’m alive; he’s dead.

“Anything hurt?” she asks.

“Only when I breathe.” An old joke, but I’m not kidding. Ribs aren’t broken, though, just a little sore. I also hit my head pretty hard on the fall and got a good ringer to show for it.

The aftershock is just now hitting me, the adrenaline rush, as I consider in hindsight what happened so fast at the time.

Starting with the beginning: if we’d surprised him, rammed the door without notice, Prince Valentine would probably still be alive.

Soscia appears on the roof, the last of our four-person team. He wipes his sleeve against his forehead. It’s only then I become aware of the intense heat, the sun on my face.

He comes over, stops, appraises me, nods his head. “Welcome back to the force, Detective Harney.”

“You took the stairs, I see.”

“Don’t want to overextend myself,” he says. “Doctor said to cut down on roof jumping.”

Sosh was the last one through Prince’s door—his weapon wasn’t drawn because he used the battering ram—and the last one in secures the apartment. Not that Sosh would have been able to clear that alleyway space between the two buildings anyway. If he’d tried, we’d have two officers down, one of them on the pavement of the alley.

Sosh squats down, looks me in the eyes, cups a hand around my neck. I swear I catch some mist in his eyes. The guy’s a teddy bear at heart.

“You did good here, Billy. Real good.”

I’m not sure that’s true. “If we surprised him, like you said—”

“You don’t know what woulda happened.” An emphatic shake of the head. “Guy could’ve had the gun on him. Probably did. We surprise, he starts blasting at us inside the tiny apartment. Instead, you gave him time to run. Shit, the guy was probably hopped up anyway after the shooting drew so much attention.”

“Assuming he was the shooter,” I say.

Sosh winks at me. “Guess what we found in a false floor in his closet?”

“Tell me.”

“Heroin,” he says. “About fifty bags.”

I nod. Not what I was hoping for. “That could be why he ran.”

“Maybe,” says Sosh, holding back a grin. “Or maybe he ran because of the SIG pistol and suppressor we found under his mattress.”

Chapter 28

LIFE IS good again. Disco soaks up every word on his phone.

The online Sun-Times says, POLICE NAB SHOOTERS.

According to the Tribune, LATISHA MORELAND SHOOTERS CAPTURED, KILLED.

The story: Damien “Junior” Peppers and Prince Valentine, known enforcers for the Imperial Gangster Nation, performed the shooting in K-Town that claimed the life of LaTisha Moreland and three others. Prince then killed Junior, worried about the intense police manhunt, worried that Junior might implicate him. The police raided Prince’s apartment, where Prince ultimately died after a shoot-out with police.