Джеймс Паттерсон - The Red Book

“Ready.”

Disco glances at the men in the front seat. Do we look like three dopeheads? Close enough, he figures—three white guys in casual clothes. They come in all shapes and sizes these days. Addicts wear business suits and turtleneck sweaters and trendy clothes and torn shirts and sweatpants. They are lawyers and accountants and housewives and students and homeless junkies.

Do they look too much like they’re trying to look like dopeheads? Disco, for his part, is wearing a sweatshirt he bought in a sporting goods store yesterday that he slept in last night, so it wouldn’t look too nice and fresh.

He stretches his arms, shaking out the nerves. “Okay, let’s go.”

The men in front straighten up, check their weapons. One of them kills the music. The SUV—an eight-year-old model with a dented fender—pulls off the curb and turns onto Van Buren by a convenience store littered with spray-painted graffiti. The signs advertise two-liter bottles of pop for ninety-nine cents and lotto cards and Marlboros and an ATM.

“They have lookouts past the alley by Kilpatrick, north side.”

“Okay. Boys,” Disco calls out, “say something to each other and laugh. Look like you’re not worried.”

Disco sits back, playing it calm, seeing three African American girls jumping rope on a sidewalk, eyeing the SUV as it passes. Otherwise, Van Buren is quiet this time of day, shiny and bright from the noon sun, almost tranquil in outward appearances despite the dilapidated homes, the vacant lots littered with garbage.

His partners in front are doing as he asked, joking around, trying to smile—pulling it off better than he would’ve expected—as the SUV turns north onto Kilbourn.

“Backup is ready?” Disco whispers into his earpiece.

“Ready.”

Here we go.

Disco removes his earpiece, throws it to the floorboard.

The SUV rolls northbound on Kilbourn. The men in front grow quiet. Disco’s pulse thumps like a bass drum inside him. They pass an alley, a row of brick flats, a Dumpster. The vehicle pulls over to the left side, near a two-story brick walk-up where Shiv sits on the porch with the girl. A man idles by on the sidewalk, or pretends to be idling by, in an untucked Chicago Bears jersey. He glances up at the porch, at Shiv, who nods back. Then the man ambles over to the SUV.

“Roll down your window,” Disco tells the driver, bracing himself.

“How you fellas doin’?” says the man, standing a few feet away, bent at the waist.

Disco slowly moves his head in the direction of the porch. Shiv, wearing a tight black shirt, long basketball shorts, and high-tops, sits on a step up to the porch. The girl, wearing a T-shirt too long and drooping over her shoulders, sitting next to him, arms wrapped around her knees.

Wait till the cash changes hands.

The driver hands over the cash. The man sweeps it away, tucks it into his pocket, and turns and tells them where to go, up the street and around the corner, to pick up the heroin.

While the man gestures up the street, the cash transaction already completed, Disco’s right foot lifts up, raising the AR-15 at his feet. He grabs hold of it without moving his head or shoulders, tipping off nothing. Tucks his finger under the trigger.

He rolls down the window, sticks the barrel out the window, and starts firing.

The bullets rattle the front porch, splintering the wood, ripping across the chests of Shiv and the girl before they have a chance to react, shattering the window behind them and spraying the house’s interior.

“Go! Go!” he hears himself shout as the SUV peels north.

Chapter 6

I WORK my way through the squad room, well lit, high ceilings, shiny new laptops at each station, one for each of the detectives brought in from all our twenty-five districts over the last month. There is a little bit of a first-day-of-school feel to it, as I look around and see some familiar faces. Some of them nod to me but show no inclination to do anything more. Some of them avert their eyes. A couple of them purse their lips or raise their eyebrows.

Not the warmest of receptions, but not unexpected. I’m a cop who took down other cops and exposed a scandal. Cops are a tight-knit bunch generally, an us-against-them bond that’s never been more tangible than it is now, with the press routinely questioning our practices, citizens with cell phones trying to goad us into doing something stupid for the YouTube crowd, consent decrees requiring us to fill out reams of paperwork every time we frisk someone or remove our sidearms from their holsters. It’s bad enough when the shit comes from outside our band of merry brothers and sisters, but when the damage is caused by one of us—by me—the instinct is to expel the Benedict Arnold from the circle. Or at least give him the freeze-out.

Whatever. I always lived by the motto Just do your job . Keep it simple.

“Excuse me, sir, only cops are allowed in here.”

I smile before I turn my head as Detective Lanny Soscia wraps a beefy arm around my neck and threatens to knock me over. I’ve known Sosh since we were cadets in the academy. We worked patrol together, got our first detective’s assignment in the same branch. He stood by me when all the walls came tumbling down on me. Both times, actually. First, when my wife and daughter died, four years ago, then this last year, when I got caught up in the spiderweb—nearly killed by a gunshot to the head, then charged with murder, with high-ranking officials falling like dominoes in my wake.

“Look at this detective in this elite new unit,” he says after he lets me go. “I’m referring to myself, of course. How’d you get in here?”

“I have to shine the supe’s shoes once a week,” I say.

“That all you’re shining?”

Someone calls out Sosh’s name. He gives me a forearm shiver to the chest, then points at me. “Drive the speed limit for a while, right?”

I nod. It’s good advice. I’ll watch my step around here until I get the lay of the land.

I find my desk near the back, passing other people who eyeball me before finding themselves engrossed in conversation or fascinated by their phones. The woman dropping a box on the next desk over is around my age—midthirties—with kinky dark hair stopping just short of her shoulders, dark-complected with a spray of freckles across her cheeks. Biracial, I’m thinking. Or maybe Latina? There’s no way in hell I’m going to ask her.

“Detective Harney,” she says, turning to me.

“Hey, that’s my name, too.”

She blinks, swatting away the innocuous joke. No smile. “Detective Griffin,” she says, sober as an undertaker. “Carla Griffin.”

I shake her hand. “I was just…kidding around. Call me Billy.”

“Fine,” she says.

And should I call you Carla? No? Nothing?

“I look forward to working with you,” she says with a level of enthusiasm that tells me she’d look forward to a root canal more. I’ve seen statues with more animation.

“You, too. So…where you come from?”

“The second,” she says. “Wentworth.”

“Nice.” When I see she’s not seeking any return information from me—probably because she already knows it—I clap my hands together. “Well, let’s make the most of this assignment. I think we can really make a difference out there.”

“That’s my plan,” she says. “I hope it’s yours, too.”

She holds her stare on me.

“It is,” I say. “I just said that.”

“But I hope you mean it.”

“You got some reason to think I don’t?”

Down, boy. You knew this might be the reaction.

She goes back to her box, pulling out framed photographs and supplies and placing them carefully on her desk. A young boy is prominent among the photos. No man, though. Maybe she isn’t into men. Something else I won’t ask her.