Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

The crowd seemed to like that. Billy took a drink from his pint and set it down, careful not to block his phone, perched on the opposite chair, recording his routine. “Nah—actually, I just came from a cemetery. I was paying my respects to an old friend. On the way back to my car, I saw a tombstone that said, ‘Here lies a lawyer and an honest gentleman.’ And I thought, y’know, that’s really great. I didn’t know they could fit two people in one grave.”

Lawyer jokes: it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

“I should be nicer,” he said. “You can hurt people’s feelings. This morning, I yelled at one of the prosecutors at 26th and Cal outside court. I said, ‘All lawyers are assholes!’ This other guy comes up to me and says, ‘Hey, that comment really offended me.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry. You’re a lawyer?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m an asshole.’”

He could feel his tongue getting furry and his words becoming syrupy, so he put down the mike. He picked up his phone and hit the button that would instantly upload the video to the Facebook page he shared with Stewart.

Stewart, the old man who stayed with him at the hospital all those nights three years ago. It was no time for laughing back then, but later, Billy started visiting Stewart at his nursing home and had him in stitches the whole time. He started uploading all his routines onto their shared Facebook page, which Stewart’s granddaughter had taught Stewart to access. She once told Billy that the first thing the old man did every morning was check his computer for a new video.

He got off the stage, his eyesight adjusting again, and found himself heading toward Amy Lentini’s table.

“You lost or something?” he said on approach. “Or just slummin’ it?”

She smiled. It wasn’t a warm smile, but at least it wasn’t as cold as the temperature outside.

“I heard there was good comedy here,” she said.

He shrugged. “Should I have a lawyer present, Amy?”

“I’m a lawyer,” she said. “One’s plenty.”

“One too many.”

“Yeah, I got that drift from your monologue. Very funny, by the way. Your reputation is well deserved.” She leaned closer to him. “We don’t have to be enemies,” she said. “I just want the truth.”

Oh, you’re gonna “good cop, bad cop” me, Amy? I fucking invented that game.

“And you’re sure you know what the truth is?”

“Pretty sure,” she said. She put her mouth over the straw in her drink, something colorful, flavored.

That mouth was nice. It was the first time in Billy’s life that he wished he were a straw.

She was dressed to kill, too. Overdressed, in fact, for this place.

“Are you checking to see if I’m wearing a wire, Detective?” she asked.

He blinked and looked away. Better not answer that one.

She got off her stool, her purse over her shoulder, her arms out. “Would you like to pat me down?”

Well, aren’t you a piece of work? Using every trick in your bag tonight, aren’t you?

“So you think I’ve been videotaping that brothel to blackmail people,” Billy said.

That dangerous mouth curved into another smile.

“Why would I do in the mayor? And the archbishop? See, Amy, once you arrest them, you can’t really blackmail them anymore. How does that help me?”

“Okay,” she said. “Play it your way. And I never said it was you, Detective. Definitely a cop, though.”

“Well, I’d like to catch the guy as much as you.”

“Who said it was a guy?”

He didn’t have an answer for that one. He wouldn’t give her one, anyway. She was trying to turn him against his partner, Kate. She was trying to fuck with his mind.

She was enjoying herself, too, with that mischievous smile. What the hell was her angle? She couldn’t possibly expect him to up and confess—not that he had anything to confess, but still. What was she hoping for tonight? Those were bedroom eyes she was flashing at him.

He felt heat come to his face. She was good.

He leaned into her ear. Her hair smelled like berries.

“This flirtation thing you’re doing, it’s not working,” he said. “It’s not gonna happen, and we both know it.”

“Oh, c’mon, Billy, don’t be such a pessimist.”

He drew back from her. What was with this lady?

“You like to live dangerously, is that it?”

“Same as you,” she said, holding eye contact.

“You think I’m bent.”

“I know you’re bent. And you know what the best part is?”

“Tell me, Amy.”

“The best part is you’re going to admit it to me. Forty-eight hours, tops, you’re going to be spilling everything to me. Either you or Kate. One of you’s going to be begging me for mercy. That’s a race you don’t want to finish second in, Billy.”

Billy had given a variation of that speech a hundred times to suspects. The first one to talk gets the sweetheart deal.

“You don’t know me very well,” said Billy.

“Oh, I know you better than you think. There’s not a move you can make that I won’t see coming.”

“You sure about that?” Billy backpedaled, winking at her as he made his way through the crowd. He grabbed his coat and went outside. The air actually felt good, at least temporarily. He stomped his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. It wouldn’t take long.

A moment later, Amy Lentini came bursting out of the Hole, looking around urgently until she saw Billy. “Okay,” she said. “Where is it?”

“Where’s what, Amy?”

“My badge,” she said. “It was in my purse. Now it’s not.”

“Well, I did see a prosecutor’s badge over there in that puddle. Could that be what you mean?”

She gave him a hard look, then bent down and fished her badge, encased in leather, out of the slush, holding it up with two fingers. “I’m going to enjoy sending you to Stateville,” she said.

“I hear Joliet’s nice this time of year.” Billy flagged a cab turning onto Rockwell. “Say, Amy,” he called to her as she headed back inside.

She turned back to him.

“If you’re gonna hit me, you better hit hard,” he said.

“And why’s that?”

“Because I hit back,” he said before climbing into the cab.

Seventeen

BILLY NAVIGATED the winding streets of Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago campus. The U of C was a beacon of prestige, a globally renowned institution with state-of-the-art facilities surrounded by one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. Some of the world’s finest minds came here to teach and study, to probe the limits of science and mathematics and law and medicine, but they required security escorts back to their cars so they wouldn’t get mugged.

Billy and Kate were still investigating the death of the sophomore who was strangled not four blocks from where they were driving. Billy was trying to re-create her whereabouts on the day of her murder, and they’d made a visit out here to talk to one of the faculty members in the biology department who had sent a few ambiguous text messages to the victim in the week leading up to her death.

It hadn’t led them to anything, and they were driving back empty-handed. Kate was still distracted, playing on her phone, pulling up story after story about the sex scandal that threatened to take down the administration of Mayor Francis Delaney, rock the Catholic Church, and oh, by the way, end the careers of Detectives Billy Harney and Katherine Fenton.

“You’re gonna go crazy reading that shit,” said Billy.

“How can the mayor not resign?” she said, her eyes on her phone.

“He’s doing the Bill Clinton shuffle. ‘It’s just a sex thing. People elected me to do a job, and I’m not gonna let ’em down.’ Like he’s doing it for us.”