Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

Physically I’m back to—well, maybe not normal, but decent. I can walk without assistance. I’m up to eleven push-ups. I can sleep for five hours without interruption. My appetite has returned, though I’m unable to eat vegetables, or at least that’s what I tell Patti every time she puts them in front of me.

Mentally—that’s another story. I do miss Kate, because she was such a part of my life for so long. She was my partner, my friend, and for a brief window even a friend with benefits. I saw her almost every day for years. But things got weird near the end. Our relationship was strained. We stopped trusting each other.

And then—Amy. The last thing I remember about her is the night we had dinner. At the end of the night, we kissed, and I felt something explode inside me, like there was electricity on her lips; I felt moved in a way I’d never felt since Valerie died. I remember that it rattled me, that it scared the shit out of me. I remember feeling like Amy felt the same way about me.

And now all I have is a dull ache. A pain I can’t locate or identify. Is it the ache of losing someone with whom you were falling in love? Or the sting of betrayal?

I wish I could remember.

“We spend all winter bitching about the cold, then we can’t stand the summer heat.” My father, holding a bottle of Bud Light, wiping at his face. Even as the sun begins to disappear behind the trees in Pop’s backyard, it’s still a sweltering mid-July evening.

That’s Pop, though, holding back. This is how he shows concern. His idea of checking in on me is to comment on the weather. It’s the Harney way. We aren’t a touchy-feely bunch.

“How’s the investigation?” I ask.

“Which one?” he says. As the chief of detectives, my father is involved in countless cases at the same time. He basically oversees all of them.

I give him a look. “The double murder,” I say. “You might remember it. The one where I caught a bullet in the brain.”

Pop stiffens. “Nobody tells me anything,” he says.

Since the investigation involves me, his immediate family, my father is not allowed to participate or even supervise.

“If I remember correctly,” I say, “your ears still work.”

Between Pop and Goldie, it’s hard to imagine they couldn’t snoop into the investigation if they wanted to. And they want to.

“I’m sure you’re gonna be fine,” he says, not answering the question, clearly trying to pacify me. “Me, I think the evidence looks exactly like what it is. Kate walked in on you and Amy, she went into a jealous rage, she opened fire on you, and you returned fire. Two people died in the process, and you got lucky. To me, the only one committing a crime in that room was Kate, and she’s dead. I’d close the file without charges if it were up to me.”

The hope in his voice is obvious. But he still hasn’t answered my question.

Pop looks at me like he has something to say and is trying to decide whether to say it. I wait him out while he wrestles with it.

“Ah, shit,” he says. “I didn’t want to bring this up now. Not tonight.”

“Bring what up?”

He blows out air. “They—there’s a new cop running the investigation.”

“Who?”

He shakes his head. “Wizniewski,” he says.

I take a step backward. “How—”

“He requested it. He went to the superintendent.”

“The superintendent who wants my head on a platter.”

“That one, yes.”

“He turned the investigation over to the Wiz? The guy who’s been running a protection racket? The one who tried to talk me out of raiding the brothel because he was protecting the politicians I caught? The one who killed the brothel manager so she couldn’t point the finger at him? The one who killed the cop who met me on the subway platform because I was getting too close—”

“Billy, Billy.” Pop raises a calming hand. “We don’t have proof of any of that. I know you’re right. But what I think doesn’t matter. We have to prove that Wizniewski’s dirty.”

Pop throws down his beer bottle. Luckily, it bounces on the grass instead of shattering on the porch.

“I’d quit the force the way they’ve treated you,” he says. “But how does that help you? I’m no help to you as a private citizen. Even if they’re holding me at bay, maybe there’s something I could do.”

Patti comes through the back door carrying a salad in a huge glass bowl. None of the men will eat it, unless maybe Patti draws her firearm, which is always a possibility.

“You guys are both missing the point,” she says as if she’s been part of the conversation all along. I look behind me and notice the open window into the kitchen, where she must have been listening.

“What’s the point?” I ask.

“The point,” she says, “is you have to get your memory back. Until then, you’re at the whim of Wizniewski.”

Forty-Nine

DR. JILL Jagoda narrows her eyes, peering at me in concentration. She leans back against the high-backed leather chair, crosses a leg, and removes her black-rimmed glasses. Tucks a strand of her ash-colored hair—hanging down today to her shoulders—behind her ear.

“That’s it?” she says. “That’s all you remember?”

“That’s it,” I answer.

“You had a date with Amy Lentini that stirred up a lot of emotions for you. You went home and drowned your sorrows. Your sister came over. She has a key?”

“To my house? Yeah, of course. Patti has a key.”

“And the next morning, this woman who ran the brothel, Ramona Dillavou, was found dead. Tortured.”

“Correct.”

“So over the course of two days, two people—that woman and the cop who met with you on the subway platform—were killed.”

“Right. Like someone was trying to clean up a mess.”

“And then…” She leans forward in her chair.

“And then—nothing,” I say. “I don’t remember a single thing. The curtain comes down. End of story. Hope you enjoyed the show. Thanks for coming. Drive safely.”

Her eyes drift upward. “That’s…two weeks before you were shot.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“You lost two whole weeks of memory?”

I make a fist, then flay my fingers open. “Poof.”

“You don’t even remember the sex-club trial?” she asks. “When the mayor and the archbishop and all the others caught in that brownstone were prosecuted—”

“No,” I say. “I mean, I’ve read about it since, like everybody else in the damn country. But it’s like I’m reading about another person. I don’t have the slightest memory of that trial.”

“I…okay.” The Ivy League–educated shrink bites her lower lip. Another long, sleeveless dress for her, today royal blue. She dresses up for work, I’ll say that much. Don’t see a wedding ring, either. Just basic detective work, basic instinct…it’s not like I’m interested in her in that way. Maybe under different circumstances.

“Talk to me,” I say.

“Well, it’s just—memory loss has a physiological and a psychological component,” she says. “Memory loss proximate to a traumatic injury is typically physiological. You get into a car accident but you don’t remember the collision. You were knocked unconscious and you suffer retrograde amnesia.”

“That would be the physical part.”

“Yes. Or neurological amnesia—memory loss suffered because of a brain injury. That’s physiological, too. You could lose your entire memory from something as severe as the injury you received.”

“I could,” I say, “but I didn’t.”

“Exactly. You didn’t. Your memory loss is very specific, very contained. You seem to have a strong, vivid memory that suddenly—almost violently—disappears in the snap of a finger. You go from a full-color, 3-D memory to an absolute black hole.”