Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

I feel removed from the whole thing, like I’m watching this happen to someone else, my family surrounding me and placing their hands on me, like they’re examining a museum object (“Go ahead, you can touch it”) or participating in some religious revival (“Touch me and you shall be healed”).

I try to speak, but nothing comes out.

Am I dead?

Everything goes black.

My eyes open again. The same people surrounding me. Patti still crying. Aiden, the musclehead with the big heart, teary-eyed.

“You’re in a hospital,” says Patti. “You were shot. But you’re gonna be fine.”

So I heard. At least the part about getting shot. If memory serves, Patti, you told Goldie I might never be the same again.

“A bullet’s not gonna keep this one down.” Brendan, my oldest brother. Always the cheerleader of the family.

Everything goes black again.

Am I dead?

Light again. My eyes adjusting. The same people in the room. Pop and my siblings, the Three Stooges plus me, the fourth. Plus Goldie. All hovering over me.

“Not yet,” Patti is saying.

“She’s right.” Brendan.

About what? I try to speak but can’t. I can think just fine—but I can’t translate it to my mouth.

“We need to know.” Pop.

“Not yet .” Patti, more firmly. “He’s just waking up.”

Aiden leans over me. “How you doing, pal?”

I can’t answer.

“Say something for me. Say this: ‘The Cubs…fucking…suck.’”

Brendan: “Say, ‘You’re under arrest.’”

Aiden: “How about ‘Kiss my white Irish fanny?’”

“Hey, I came all the way from Dallas,” Brendan says to me. “The least you can do is say hello to your big brother. Or maybe I should crack you one?”

“Don’t listen to that ingrate,” Aiden comes back. “You did him a favor. You ever been to Dallas? They wear cowboy boots and big hats.”

“Coming from a guy who wears a tank top and shorts to work.”

“Least I don’t say ‘y’all’ or ‘howdy.’”

Yeah, this is definitely my family.

“You could do us all a favor, Billy,” Patti says, “and tell your meathead brothers to shut the fuck up.”

“Who you calling a meathead?” says Brendan. “I graduated top of my class.”

“From Wesleyan,” says Aiden out of the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah? And what’s Roosevelt University? The Harvard of the Midwest?”

Definitely my family.

My lips part. Patti, watching my every move, notices it and holds out a hand for silence.

I feel like an infant whose parents are hovering over him. He’s going to speak! He’s going to say something!

And my first words come out, with all eyes on me, everyone leaning in for the big moment.

“Goo goo ga ga,” I say.

Nobody knows how to react—frozen, confused, eyebrows arched, foreheads furrowed, everyone holding their breath.

I open my mouth again. They lean in further still, as if examining the contents of a petri dish.

“Just…kidding,” I whisper.

A collective release of tension—relief and good humor sweeping the room.

“Oh, you piece of shit.” Aiden, shaking his head, bursting into tears.

“Well, you’re definitely back.” Brendan gently shakes my arm. “He’s back! The comedian’s back!”

“You did it,” Patti whispers to me, overcome with emotion. “You did it, Billy.”

Twenty-Four

IN AND out. Light and dark. I drift in and out of consciousness, no concept of the time of day or the day of the week, none of the usual sources to prompt me. My vision isn’t yet good enough to make out the digital clock on the opposite wall. I’m in an interior room in the ICU, so there is no sunlight or nightfall. I’m being fed by a tube, so it’s not like my meals vary from scrambled eggs to chicken with rice. And it’s still hard for me to summon the strength and focus to speak, so I try to reserve that effort for questions more burning than whether it’s three in the afternoon or two in the morning.

I measure the passage of time instead by my sister’s changes of clothes. Since I first opened my eyes, Patti has worn three different outfits, so either I’ve been out of the coma for three days or she likes to change up her wardrobe a whole lot.

Pop is here less often; being chief of Ds is a big job, and he can only delegate the daily duties for so long. My brothers have stuck around the hospital but spend a lot of time out in the hallway calling home or opening laptops and sending things back and forth to Dallas and Saint Louis.

The two constants have been Goldie and Patti, who have been by my bedside pretty much every time my eyes are open.

Everyone has kept it light so far. I’ve asked questions but received no answers, just a lot of evasive responses like Just focus on getting better and We can talk about that later .

I’ve asked what happened to put me here.

I’ve asked who shot me. I’ve asked who it was I shot.

But the question I ask most often is, where is Kate?

I can think in full sentences—at least I think I can. It doesn’t translate when I open my mouth. The connection between my injured brain and my mouth is like the signal I receive on my phone when I’m driving through the South Side. Sometimes it works; sometimes it’s fuzzy; sometimes it completely disconnects.

I’m not paralyzed, either. Everything works. Not well, not yet, but I’m okay.

I remember arresting the mayor now. That memory came back when my sister was wearing a green shamrock T-shirt. Today she’s wearing something brown. So I think it was yesterday. Yesterday the bust came back to me, along with the shitstorm that followed. I remember the superintendent was pissed off, and the state’s attorney appointed a woman—a real knockout—to investigate me and Kate, to look into whether I stole the little black book at the brownstone.

Every day, every change of Patti’s clothes, I remember a few more things.

I remember the name of the investigator: Amy Lentini.

I remember being suspended. Kate, too.

I remember talking to Goldie at a coffee shop, thinking that this whole thing was a lot bigger than a stupid black book, that it was an excuse to get to me. I remember thinking that someone had figured out that I worked undercover for Internal Affairs and that whoever it was used the mayor’s bust as an excuse to silence me.

Cut! That’s it. That’s where it ends in a cloud of smoke, like my memory is a car speeding away, leaving me in the dust.

My doctor, an Indian guy named Pameresh, said most things will come back to me sooner or later, but probably not the traumatic events themselves. You’ll probably never remember the shooting or the events that immediately preceded it, he said. It’s called retrograde amnesia.

Patti is working her phone, humming to herself, unaware that my eyes have opened again. She looks so tired, so pale, so wrung out.

It was hard for Patti growing up. She was mostly coddled, three brothers hovering over her, protecting her, but she never shook the insecurity that gripped her, especially when she was compared to me, her twin brother. I never knew what was so special about me, but in her mind, I exceeded her in every way—smarter, more athletic, more popular, better looking. I never understood it. Something grabbed hold of her at a young age and never let go, something that told her she wasn’t good enough.

But it never came between us. Whatever she felt about me, she never held it against me. We’ve been together during highs and lows. When everything happened three years ago, Patti took it as hard as I did; it was almost as if it had happened to her.

“Kate,” I say, not even trying to put together a string of words.