Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

“I hope to get out of here, period,” I say. “No offense. But I don’t need a shrink.”

“Why don’t you think you need a shrink?”

I look at her. “Do you just ask questions? Do you ever make affirmative statements?”

“Do you want me to?” She allows a small curve of a smile, her face otherwise deadpan. At least that time she was joking.

“What kinda name is Jagoda?”

She sits back in her chair, crosses her legs. “Polish,” she says.

“You know how many Poles it takes to screw in a lightbulb?” I ask. “Three. One to hold the bulb and two to rotate the chair he’s standing on.”

“You know how many cops it takes?” she replies. “Three. One to screw it in and two to violate the civil rights of a black guy standing nearby.”

Well played. “You wanna know the thinnest book ever written? The Complete List of Polish War Heroes .”

“Oh, but the Irish have made a real contribution to the world.”

I could mention beer and potatoes, but I don’t.

“How about you just give me a diagnosis and send me on my way?” I say. “Let’s go with post-traumatic stress disorder. Write me up a prescription, and I’ll promise to take my meds.”

She cocks her head. “I’m good at what I do, Detective, but somehow I don’t think I’m prepared to make a full diagnosis after meeting you for five minutes and simply reading your file.”

“I’ll settle for a partial diagnosis, then.”

“Oh, a partial one? That’s easy,” she says. “You’re batshit crazy.”

I actually let out a laugh. The first one I can remember. Okay, she’s good for a chuckle or two, but this is still a waste of time.

I get out of my chair. “See you around, Doc,” I say.

“You’re extremely intelligent,” she says as I’m headed for the door. “Far more so than you’re willing to let on. You’re emotionally wounded, probably from what happened three years ago as well as what just happened, but you bury it all underneath this facade of being the smartass, the comedian. Humor is your shield. You’re hiding. You’ve probably been hiding for so long that you don’t even realize it anymore.”

I don’t respond. I don’t move.

She turns and looks at me, eyebrows raised. I break eye contact.

“You’re broken,” she says. “You know it, and I know it. But I can help put you back together. Who knows? I might even help you get your memory back.”

I look at the door, even reach for it with my hand.

“Go ahead and walk if you want. I won’t stop you. Make a decision, Billy.”

I draw my hand back from the door. I slowly swivel around and look at the shrink. Then I return to the chair and sit down.

“You can get my memory back?”

“No guarantee,” she says. “But I’m your only shot.”

The Past

Twenty-Seven

“MORE BAD news for us,” said Kate as she drove the Tahoe with me in the passenger seat. I pulled up the website on my phone and immediately spotted it. Another story from the online rag ChicagoPC, once again courtesy of Kim Beans, the formerly disgraced TV reporter making a spirited comeback with the photographs she obtained from the brownstone brothel.

The heading of the article read PEEKABOO, FRANCIS! The photo captured Mayor Francis Delaney walking up the steps of the now infamous brownstone, only he wasn’t bundled up; he was in a light jacket and wearing a baseball cap. It was taken in warm weather, in other words—not during the night two weeks ago when we made the bust. The point being that the night I caught the mayor of Chicago with his pants at his ankles was not the first time he’d visited the brownstone.

“You’re right: this is absolutely outrageous,” I said. “How could the mayor wear a Cubs cap?”

Kate shot me a look. Not funny.

See, Kate considered this photo of the mayor bad news because she considered anything in the news about this story to be bad. And she was right. In the two weeks that had passed since we arrested the mayor and everyone else at the brownstone, the national media had caught wind of this story, and once it did, it held on like a pit bull on a mailman’s leg. When the 24-7 news outlets—CNN, Fox, MSNBC, Bloomberg, whatever—sink their teeth into a story, they demand further juicy details and gobble up every little nugget, big or small, verified or unverified. It turns up the heat on everyone under the microscope.

Consider, for example, our state’s attorney, Margaret Olson. Last week a reporter from CNN looked at her campaign-contribution reports and realized that she owed her election as the top prosecutor to Mayor Delaney, who provided her with significant financial support. Under a news segment entitled “Conflict of Interest?,” the anchor questioned whether Maximum Margaret would go easy on the mayor because of all he’d done for her.

That prompted the state’s attorney to hold a news conference in which she announced that she would be accepting no plea bargains for any defendant accused of soliciting prostitutes that night in the brownstone, whether that person was someone of prominence (read: Mayor Delaney or Archbishop Phelan or the Green Bay Packers QB) or an ordinary Joe. And she would be seeking maximum sentences for all of them.

The sex-club case was headed to trial soon, and everyone involved was hunkering down, bracing for the next splashy revelation to emerge, hoping that it wouldn’t be their ox that got gored.

And every news outlet, every reporter covering this case, was looking for the little black book that mysteriously disappeared from the brownstone that night.

So things were tense, but Kate needed to look on the bright side, too; there’d been some good news. The disciplinary board that oversees police-officer cases ordered that Kate and I be reinstated to duty while we waited for the hearing on our alleged misconduct. The police superintendent, Tristan Driscoll, had suspended us immediately, on the spot, but the board said we got to remain on duty until he proved his case against us.

So after taking an unplanned two-week vacation, I was a cop again—at least for now—and so was Kate.

“I can’t believe we have to go and play nice with that bitch,” she mumbled.

Amy Lentini, she meant—the special investigator assigned to the sex-club case, who’d been trying to prove for the last two weeks that either Kate or I or both of us stole the little black book naming customers at the brownstone brothel. Since Kate and I were the arresting officers, we would be required to testify at the trial and prepare for it with Lentini in advance. Personally, I’d rather have my wisdom teeth pulled without Novocain, but nobody asked me my opinion.

“It won’t be so bad,” I said.

“Oh, I’m sure you won’t mind.” Another look shot in my direction. “The Italian beauty, fluttering those eyes at you.”

“That’s not fair at all, and you know it,” I said. “It’s her ass I like the most.”

“This isn’t a joke, Billy.”

There it was again, that jealousy thing. Kate and I had been partners for years, and I never seriously considered anything between us. Then it flared up after the brownstone arrests, and I admit it was pretty great—crazy and kinkier than I was used to, but great. But then we were suspended, and though we talked every day for those two weeks, nothing else happened. It was like the suspension of our official relationship pushed the Pause button on the sex part, too. Now that we were back together as cops, I wondered if we would hit the Play button again. And I couldn’t decide if it was a good idea or not.

“Amy Lentini is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kate. “She’ll draw you in nice and close, then stick in the knife.”