Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

I pulled out my phone for a couple of reasons. One, if I needed to duck my head quickly to avoid detection, I’d have an excuse for staring downward. And two, I might need the camera on the device.

I looked around the place and didn’t see her on a first pass. She could be in the dining area, which would be harder for me. She was wearing a fur coat, though she might have taken it off by now.

That reminded me of a joke, and I hadn’t sent my friend Stewart anything for a week or so, so I put my iPhone camera on the video setting and spoke into it.

“A guy named Jerry gets out of the shower at his country club,” I said. “The cell phone by his locker is ringing, and he answers it. ‘Honey,’ the woman on the other end says. ‘I just saw a fur coat I’ve been dying to buy. It’s five thousand dollars.’ Jerry says, ‘Wow. Five thousand for a coat—that’s a lot. But go ahead; it’s okay.’ She says, ‘Well, since you’re in a good mood, I just passed a Mercedes dealership, and there’s a new model I just love. But it’s a hundred and fifty thousand.’ Jerry says, ‘A hundred and fifty grand for a car? Jeez, I guess so. Sure, go ahead.’ She says, ‘You’re the best, honey,’ and hangs up. Jerry hangs up the phone and puts it down. His buddies at the gym say, ‘Jerry, we had no idea you had that kind of cash.’ Jerry says, ‘I don’t. I’m flat broke. By the way, any of you know whose cell phone this is?’”

I punched the Facebook icon next to the Video button on my iPhone, which transfers the video immediately to the Facebook page I share with Stewart. My sister, Patti, who understands these contraptions better than anyone I know, somehow configured that Facebook button onto my camera so I could automatically upload videos. Otherwise I’d be clueless as to how to do it.

I hadn’t visited Stewart in his nursing home for months. I met him at Children’s Memorial Hospital three years ago, when we both sat in the ICU for weeks. For Stewart, it was his grandson, who’d been hit by a car and was clinging to life. Making him laugh at my corny jokes was the only thing that got me through it all.

Somehow sending him my stand-up routines at the Hole in the Wall and posting the occasional joke like this made me feel like I was doing a good deed. His granddaughter once told me that he checked that Facebook page every single day, first thing in the morning.

I looked up from my phone and immediately looked down again, having caught a glimpse of Ramona Dillavou’s shiny blond hair. So she was in the bar area, seated on the opposite end from me. I turned away and moved between two businessmen, which wasn’t hard in this rugby scrum, so I could get another look from a hidden vantage point.

I raised my eyes and saw enough to see Ramona turned to her left, talking to someone. She seemed to be keeping her voice down, showing some discretion.

But I couldn’t see the person next to her because the bar was wrapped around the liquor station in the middle, the bottles of booze obscuring my view.

So I moved to my left to get a better angle, to see the person with whom she was conversing. I was hoping that it would be a man—that Ramona Dillavou, now out of a job as the manager of the brownstone brothel, was returning to her previous calling as a prostitute; that I could catch her in the act and make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Tell me where the black book is or violate your bond and go back in the clink.

I positioned myself behind some people and shot another look across the bar at Ramona.

I peeked and looked back down at my phone.

Then I peeked again.

My heart kicked into overdrive. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

Maybe, I told myself, it was the dim lighting. Maybe I just didn’t get a good look.

I looked again, holding my stare. Even though I might be recognized. Even though I knew what I’d seen.

Dim lighting or not, I hadn’t made a mistake.

Ramona Dillavou wasn’t talking to a man. She was talking to a woman.

A woman I knew very well.

Thirty-Three

“PATTI,” I mumbled to myself.

I worked my way through the crowd and out the door into a throng of people. I pulled up my collar as I walked down the wind tunnel that was Rush Street, the question buzzing through my head.

What was my sister doing with Ramona Dillavou, the manager of the brownstone brothel? I couldn’t make it fit. It just…didn’t make sense.

I pivoted suddenly and turned back toward the restaurant, almost colliding with a couple right behind me who didn’t appreciate my sudden stop. I stepped back and looked toward the restaurant, as though if I stared at it long enough, something would change. I considered returning to the bar and taking yet another look, but of course that made no sense, either. I’d seen what I’d seen.

What the hell are you doing, Patti?

I continued south toward my car, navigating through the crowd of lively pedestrians, the sounds of car horns blaring and drivers yelling and tipsy people laughing and chatting.

I pulled out my car keys, a natural thing to do, since I was heading toward my car. I bumped into a man coming toward me on my right and let my keys fall behind me. I mumbled an apology and bent down, creating a small space as people navigated around me.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” I said. “Sorry.”

I grabbed my keys off the wet sidewalk, righted myself, turned back, and headed to my car.

It was double-parked on Rush. It was a small miracle that it was still there. I had pushed my luck.

I was hoping that I had a little bit of luck left. Because I was going to need it.

Or so I thought. It’s a cliché for a cop to talk about his gut, his hunch, but clichés aren’t always wrong. It’s part experience and part intuition. It didn’t hurt that I’d been working undercover with BIA for the last three years, either. It helped me know how to pick up the signs.

It’s not hard to do. If you’re in that mode, it’s almost automatic. You stop and glance over your shoulder when a pretty woman passes. Or you stop at a corner, waiting for the traffic light to change, and turn back.

Or you allow yourself to bump into someone and pretend to drop your keys.

Any excuse to take a look behind you. You don’t look directly at any one person. You don’t make eye contact. No, you just take in the crowd. You look for any tickling of a sensation that someone is moving as you move, stopping as you stop, shadowing your movements.

I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t swear to it. But I had a pretty good idea that somebody was tailing me.

And now I had to decide what to do about it.

Thirty-Four

I GOT in my car and drove north, the only direction I could go. I made a quick left and then another onto State Street, now heading south, navigating potholes and death-defying pedestrians who zigzagged through traffic to cross the street. (In Chicago, obeying Don’t Walk signs is usually considered optional.)

The distractions forced me to train my focus forward, on the road, though my eyes continually shot into the rearview mirror to see what was happening behind me. Traffic was thick, and in the dark it was all headlights behind me. That helped when I was following Ramona Dillavou. She never could have made me for a tail. But apparently it hindered me, too, because I didn’t notice at the time that somebody was following me .

And the traffic hindered me now, too. I couldn’t make out the colors or even the makes of cars in my rearview mirror, much less see their occupants. But that was okay. There was more than one way to sniff out a tail.

Traffic behind me dissipated as I moved west and south, away from the Gold Coast, but it was still pretty heavy, giving my tail sufficient cover.