Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

She turned to stone for a moment, no movement. Breath creeping from her mouth. Her cheeks the color of cotton candy.

“I was trying to get her to give up the little black book,” she said. “Trying to help you. Is that a crime?”

“No,” I answered. “ That’s not a crime.”

“Did anyone else see me with her?” she asked.

“Just me.”

“Did you take pictures?”

I shook my head no.

Patti lunged toward me, grabbed both of my arms. “Tell me the truth—did you snap any photos with that phone you wouldn’t even know how to use if it weren’t for me?”

“Jesus, no.” I pushed her away. “But maybe I should have.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have,” she said, catching herself, the volume of her voice, and lowering it. “Maybe it’s time you start figuring out who’s on your side and who isn’t.” She emphasized the point by thrusting her index finger into my chest.

“And you’re on my side, is that it?”

She looked at me again, her eyes looking moist but her face tight, controlled. “You’re my twin brother,” she said. “You’re family. We always stick together. We don’t tell our secrets. Do we, little brother?”

I shook my head. “This goes beyond family.”

“ Nothing goes beyond family. Nothing.”

“Did you kill her, Patti?”

It was her turn to step back, just a small step, to get a better look at me.

“I come to your house late last night and find you completely unraveled, distraught, a shattered empty bottle of Maker’s Mark on the floor—looking like you’ve just been through something horrifying—and you’re asking me if I killed her?”

I nodded my head. “That’s what I’m asking,” I said.

“That’s the wrong question,” she said.

“Yeah? And what’s the right question?”

Patti looked again to her right, toward the crime scene and the gaggle of reporters.

“The right question,” she said to me, “is would you turn me in if I did?”

I started to respond, but then I heard my name being called, and we both turned and saw Kim Beans, the reporter, jogging our way with a recorder in her hand.

Patti drew close to me. “Just so you know, baby brother of mine,” she whispered, “I would never, ever, turn you in.”

She pivoted on her heels, showing me her back, and continued walking down the street.

Fifty-Five

“BILLY HARNEY.”

“Kim Beans,” I said as I watched Patti walk down the street, hustling away from the reporter, who had caught up to me. Then I turned to Kim, the beautiful former television reporter now working for the online newspaper ChicagoPC . Her mess of kinky hair was tamed by a wool headband that covered her forehead and ears. Her long black wool coat was buttoned to her chin. We were surrounded by the gray of the cold.

“So,” she said. “Ramona Dillavou. Any comment?” She held out a small recorder.

“Background only,” I said.

“Oh, come on, handsome. Something on the record. This is huge. The trial of the decade is this week, and one of your star witnesses was just murdered. I’m hearing she was tortured.”

I looked at her. “Background only,” I said. “Turn that damn thing off.”

“ You’re no fun.” But she complied, turning off the recorder and stuffing it into her pocket.

“I’ve enjoyed your photographs of all the big players parading in and out of the brownstone brothel,” I say. “Where’d you get them?”

The photos had continued to spill out online under Kim’s byline. An alderman from the West Side. The commissioner of streets and sanitation. A corporate bigwig at one of the big tech companies in Chicago. The walk of shame she had called it in her stories, the photos always showing these people approaching the brownstone in a surreptitious manner, heads down, eyes furtive. The brothel had apparently done amazing business until I came around and spoiled the party.

Leaks of the photos had slowed down in frequency; initially Kim was putting them out on a daily basis, but now it was once a week. Every week, on the day Kim’s column appeared, people all around Chicago—and the country—eagerly went online and clicked on ChicagoPC to see the latest VIP who was walking up the steps of the infamous brownstone brothel.

She gave me a coy smile. “I’m supposed to ask you the questions. You know I have to protect my source.”

“The pesky First Amendment,” I say.

“Right. But I’ll tell you this much,” she said. “The photo coming out this week? It’s gonna blow your socks off.”

Maybe. I didn’t really care, but it had definitely captured the imagination of this city. Kim had done an expert job of teasing her readers, drawing out the story to its maximum length for maximum effect—and promoting herself in the process.

“So Billy, what does this do to your case? With Ramona dead.”

I shrug. “She wasn’t going to testify anyway. She hadn’t said a damn word to us. She lawyered up and hadn’t opened her mouth. Another one of those pesky amendments—the fifth.”

Kim frowned, as though she didn’t believe me, as though I were holding back. “I’m hearing different,” she said. “I’m hearing that the prosecution offered her immunity if she’d talk. You know that hellcat prosecutor the state’s attorney put on the case? The hotshot they brought in from Wisconsin after she took down that US senator? Amy Lentini.”

I felt something stir inside me. “What about her?”

“I’m hearing she offered Ramona a get-out-of-jail-free card if she’d turn over the little black book. Total immunity.”

I gave her a blank look, or at least I hoped it was blank. But this was something new. First I’d heard of it.

“I’m hearing this whole thing, this whole case, is really just about the little black book,” Kim went on. “That this prosecutor, Lentini, went to every single one of the people who were arrested—even the mayor—and said she’d drop the charges if they could tell her about the little black book.”

I shook my head, but I wasn’t saying no. It just didn’t make sense.

But then—it did. After I arrested everyone that night at the brownstone, all that Amy Lentini wanted to know was the whereabouts of that little black book.

“Even…the mayor?” I asked. “She offered the mayor immunity?”

Kim nodded. “My sources say that that prosecutor, Lentini, told the mayor that if he could get her access to the little black book, and if he would agree to resign from office, she’d drop the charges.”

I ran my hand over my mouth but didn’t speak.

“You didn’t know,” said Kim, a conclusion, not a question. “You’re the main witness in the case, and you didn’t know.”

No, I didn’t, and it burned in my chest.

I could understand why Amy might consider the little black book important, but more important than prosecuting the people caught in the brothel? What—she hadn’t caught big enough fish? The mayor and the archbishop weren’t big enough heads to mount on her wall?

Who could possibly be bigger?

I started walking away from Kim to give myself some space, to work this through. I wasn’t sure what bothered me more—that Amy never shared this information with me or that I cared so much that she didn’t.

Kim walked along with me. “So now you owe me one,” she said. “C’mon, sport. This is the biggest story in years around here. The mayor’s blood is in the water. I’m hearing Congressman Tedesco is just waiting for the conviction before he announces he’s running. That’ll be quite a race, don’t you think? Congressman Tedesco against Maximum Margaret.”