Джеймс Паттерсон: The Red Book

“Personally,” I continue, “I feel kinda stupid for not giving it more thought myself. I mean, really, how did that gun safe get opened? But, in my shoes, it never remotely occurred to me that someone murdered Valerie. Never once. I walked in and found her dead, holding my gun in her hand. After everything we’d been going through, and her depression, it wasn’t exactly a huge stretch to believe the wound was self-inflicted, was it? So I never doubted suicide as the cause of death. Which meant I must have left that gun safe open, right?”

“Right,” he says.

“Sure,” I say. “At the time, it was the only reasonable conclusion. At the time.”

A little tic plays at the corner of Pop’s mouth, a trait he always had. Maybe a tell, if I was reading him, and I’ve read a lot of people in my time, but never my father. My father wasn’t someone I read. He was just my father.

“No matter how strung out I was back then, keeping vigil at the hospital,” I say, “I never would’ve left my depressed wife alone in our house with a fucking handgun. Someone got into that safe. Someone who knew that combination. And only three people in the world knew it, because we all had the same one—Mom’s birthday. Ten twelve forty-nine.”

Pop shakes his head.

“I didn’t give it up, and Patti didn’t give it up. That leaves you, Pop.”

“No,” he says.

“Don’t worry—I’m not looking to bust you. You’re spending the rest of your life in prison as it is. You’re never getting out. I’m not wasting my time on you. You’re not worth it to me. I just wanted you to know that I know. And I wanted to see if you’re man enough to admit it.”

Balled into a shell now, eyes downcast, face reddening, my father looks up at me. “You don’t know anything.”

“Tell you what, Pop. Let’s make it easy. Invoke your right to counsel.”

“What?”

“Go ahead, invoke. Say you want a lawyer. Then anything you say to me afterward is a violation of your rights, inadmissible in a court of law.”

“Billy—”

“Invoke, Pop. Protect yourself. I’m not gonna bust you. I just want to hear you admit it.”

“This is ridiculous,” he says. “If this is all you—”

“Look what I found when we were cleaning up the house, getting ready to put it on the market.” I pick up the book from my lap, the red ledger the feds never found, where Pop kept a list of the criminals he was protecting and how current they were on their payoffs.

“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” he says.

“Course not,” I say. “Someone else must have stuck it behind the water heater in the basement, tucked into that little slot where I used to keep my Playboy .”

He works his jaw, fuming.

“Parsing through these cryptic references to clients,” I say, “I couldn’t help but notice one in particular.” I flip to the page I’ve dog-eared, including this entry:

S2607R—V Disc—300

“I couldn’t help but notice,” I say, “that Vasyl Discovetsky ran a prostitution house located at 2607 Rockwell. And I’m guessing this says he paid you three hundred dollars a month for protection. Or was it three hundred dollars a week?”

“This conversation is over.”

“Speaking of conversations,” I continue, “I had a nice one with Mr. Discovetsky last night, after I caught him.”

Pop closes his eyes.

“Disco says he killed Valerie. And you gave him the combination to the safe, so he could use my gun and make the whole thing look like a suicide.”

A lie, of course, that last part. Disco’s still in a coma. So sue me.

“How could you do that, Daddy?” Patti’s voice trembles. She gets to her feet. “You had Val… killed .”

Pop’s expression breaks at Patti’s plea. He always had a soft spot for her, his princess.

We’re doing a version of good cop, bad cop, even if Patti doesn’t realize it.

“Honey, no, it wasn’t like that,” says Pop.

“Then what was it like?” I ask.

Pop, cornered, breaks eye contact. Runs a hand over his thinning, snowy hair, the shackles clanging on the table. He takes a deep breath, blows out.

“I want a lawyer,” he says.

As always: more worried about himself than anyone else.

I get to my feet. “That’s enough,” I say. “That’s all I wanted to hear. I don’t want to hear your excuses.”

“Son—”

“I’m not your son anymore. You’re nothing to me. Live with that.”

I push through the door. I don’t look back.

Chapter 112

“DETECTIVE BILLY Harney for the superintendent.”

The receptionist waves me in. Superintendent Tristan Driscoll doesn’t look happy to see me.

“Long time no see,” I say to him, because we saw each other a week ago, the day after the bust, when the superintendent, in all his resplendent glory, announced the breaking up of an international human-trafficking ring on the city’s southwest side. He sold the media some bullshit about a long-running investigation, and I didn’t bother to stop him. I was there at the presser—didn’t have a choice—but I just stood in the background, sucking in my gut.

I drop today’s Tribune on his desk. The story above the fold: US INDICTS UKRAINIANS IN SEX-TRAFFICKING SCHEME. A nice photo of General Kostyantin Boholyubov, in full military garb, back when he ran the secret police.

“Department’s gotten some nice coverage over this,” I say.

“You as well, I noticed,” he says.

“Dennis Porter, too.”

Tristan loses his smirk.

“Captain Dennis Porter, killed in the line of duty, trying to take down a sex-trafficking ring. It’s a nice story to tell. Spares you the embarrassment of having yet another crooked cop in our wonderful Bureau of Internal Affairs. Another scandal on your watch. That’d be kinda hard to explain to the mayor, I suppose.”

The superintendent sits back in his chair, crosses a leg.

“I mean, imagine if that came out, Tristan: one of the chief officers in IAB, protecting a sex-trafficking ring. A lot of us, we were surprised the new mayor didn’t toss you on your ass over the last scandal. But however you managed to survive, you wouldn’t survive another one. So Denny Porter goes out a hero.”

“Why don’t you tell me what the fuck you want?” he says, his face hardening.

“My partner, Carla Griffin,” I say. “Great cop. Done some great work for the department. But she’s got a problem she has to lick.”

“So I hear. I believe we politely refer to it as ‘substance abuse.’” He enjoys that, shows me his teeth. “Saw some very entertaining videos of her in one of Porter’s files, by the way, looking like the junkie she is.”

“Anyway,” I say, “she’s going into rehab.”

“Yes.”

“And when she gets out—”

“When she gets out,” he says, “like any other cop, she’ll be placed on an interim assignment and evaluated.” He shrugs. “Maybe someday, I’ll let her be a real cop again. Or maybe not.”

I snap my fingers. “That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Superintendent. She’s going to be reassigned to SOS as my partner. Immediately. No delay.”

He shakes his head slowly. Even smiles.

“You won’t shit-can her career over this,” I say. “She comes straight back to SOS after rehab. Or the media hears all about Captain Dennis Porter. And about how you covered it up.”

“Your word against mine.”

“You sure about that?” I say. “You sure I don’t have evidence of Porter’s crimes?”

He tries to maintain his composure, but he’s not doing a very good job.

“Carla comes back to SOS, or I fucking bury you, Tristan. That clear enough?”