Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

“She did that case?”

“Yep. She’s the real deal.”

“Wisconsin. Huh.”

“Yep. Born in Appleton, went to Madison for undergrad, Harvard Law.”

Our sandwiches arrived: corned beef piled high on rye, a huge spear of a pickle, and thick potato chips.

“Why am I not surprised that you know all about her?” I said.

“It’s my job.” Goldie took a massive bite of his sandwich. I did the same. “The situation’s fluid, is all I’m sayin’,” he went on. “Nobody knows which side to be on. So just ride it out for now.”

That sounded about right.

“Stay close to Amy Lentini,” he said. “Keep an eye on her.”

That wouldn’t be hard. I didn’t really have a choice, anyway.

“But more important than any of that, solve your problem,” Goldie said, running his tongue over his teeth. “Find that little black book. That’s the key to everything for you. You find that thing, your problems are solved.”

Damn straight. Now that I was back on the force, that would be my priority.

“How’s our thing going, by the way?” he asked.

My undercover investigation, he meant. The one that only Goldie and I knew about. The one that, if it came out the way I thought it might, would turn the Chicago Police Department upside down.

“I’m close,” I said.

“How close?”

“Soon,” I said. “Very soon.”

Thirty-One

“WELCOME BACK, sport.” Soscia smacked me on the back as he passed by my desk.

“You miss me?”

“I got no one to talk to. My new partner, he doesn’t like hockey. How do you not like hockey? ”

He meant Reynolds, his partner, the rookie in the detectives’ bureau.

The cops with me on the raid that night were Detectives Lanny Soscia, Rick Reynolds, Matt Crowley, and Brian Benson.

But it was hard to imagine Sosh, whom I’d known since we were cadets in the academy, doing anything like that. Reynolds was so green I wasn’t sure he was even toilet trained yet. Nice kid, but he didn’t know detective work from needlepoint. Crowley? The guy was pushing retirement. I was pretty sure he was in adult diapers by this point. And Benson? I mean, a great guy, good for a laugh, and he’d have your back when it got sticky out there, but he didn’t have an original thought in his brain.

And really, none of those four detectives had volunteered for the assignment. I asked them to come along only because I had a hunch that busting into a Gold Coast brownstone might get a little messy. I didn’t realize how messy, but the point is that none of these guys had any idea I’d ask them to come along until earlier that day.

Whoever took that little black book didn’t do it on the spur of the moment. He was thinking things through. He had a plan.

He or she, that is.

As if on cue, Kate walked in, throwing her bag down on her desk without a word to me or even a glance in my direction. I felt the temperature plummet.

“Harney.” Lieutenant Wizniewski—the Wiz—my supervisor, wiggled his fingers at me.

The Wiz was there that night, too. He tried to talk me out of the bust.

It felt like an old-school Agatha Christie novel: One of the people in this room is the thief! One of you took that little black book.

The corned-beef sandwich sat like a brick in my stomach. I needed some coffee. The coffeemaker, a glass container that was probably purchased during the Eisenhower administration, held only a trace of burned sludge at this point in the day, and I didn’t feel like going to the effort of making more, so I passed it without stopping.

“Yeah, Lew,” I said, leaning against the doorway of Lieutenant Wizniewski’s office.

Wizniewski’s desk looked like a hoarder’s paradise, with piles of paper threatening to topple over. The place reeked of cigar smoke, and he had a half-smoked stogie resting on the corner of the table.

“No smoking, boss,” I said. “Maybe you hadn’t heard.”

“You see me smoking it?”

Wizniewski was a politician first, a cop second. If what Goldie said was right, and nobody was sure which way all this was going to play out, the Wiz must have been reading tarot cards at night.

If that was all I could say about the Wiz, I could live with him. There are politicians in every police force, ass kissers, suck-ups. But word was that the Wiz was a dirty cop.

And he was on my radar in the undercover investigation I was doing. He just didn’t know it yet. I was very much looking forward to the day he did.

“I just wanted to give you some friendly advice,” he said to me.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Don’t fuck up again.”

“That’s good advice, Lew. Hang on.” I patted my pockets. “You get a pen and paper? I wanna write that down before I forget it.”

The top of his head turned red. It always did when you got a rise out of him, which wasn’t hard.

“Always the comedian, this one.” He seemed like he was looking for something amid the clutter on his desk. He couldn’t find something on that desk if it were set on fire.

“I’m gonna find that black book,” I said, staring at him.

He stopped what he was doing and looked up at me. “Yeah? Why you telling me that?”

“I just thought you’d want to know.”

Seemed like he took it for the accusation it was. I didn’t think that forehead could get any redder.

“Best of luck with that,” he said evenly.

Thirty-Two

RAMONA DILLAVOU walked out of her house just past seven. She looked like the wealthy woman she was, wearing an expensive long fur coat and matching hat, her bleached-blond hair hanging down in a stylish bob, her head held high, a confident strut to her walk. She didn’t go far. There was a car waiting for her outside, an average-looking Chevy sedan. Uber, probably, or maybe someone she knew.

I was in my car, so I followed behind. Parking in Lincoln Park is tricky, so this could pose a problem for me; if she was in an Uber car, as I suspected, she could just be dropped off, and I’d have to park my unmarked vehicle somewhere.

Ramona Dillavou was released on bond after her arrest two weeks ago at the brownstone. As the manager of the brownstone brothel, she was the best lead to the little black book. That night she denied its existence in a profanity-laden tirade that took some of the polish off her sophisticated veneer, but the point was that she didn’t tell us squat. She lawyered up almost immediately and refused to answer our questions at the police station, too. The five thousand dollars she had to come up with to get sprung was probably chump change to her.

I didn’t have much to go on. She had a record consisting of two priors—one for prostitution and one for promoting it. She had graduated into the big time with the brownstone brothel and its exclusive clientele, but I didn’t know much else about her. All I knew for sure was that we had put her brothel out of business and she’d be looking for another way to make some money.

The car dropped her off in the Gold Coast, south of Lincoln Park, on Rush Street. Tyson’s was a high-end restaurant with a bar where on occasion one might find an aging, unattractive man with an uncommonly beautiful woman on his arm.

I double-parked my car and took my time crossing the street. I had no idea what I was going to find. More than likely she was just meeting someone for dinner and drinks, in which case I’d strike out—just as I’d struck out the other times I had followed her over the last two weeks. So far no luck, but a Boy Scout keeps trying.

The place was packed, the circle of people around the bar three deep at least, all sorts of merriment and chatting. The lighting was dim, and there was some kind of jazz-swing music coming over the speakers. Loud and crowded was a good thing. It made it easier for me to disappear.