Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

I felt safe, for the first time I could remember.

When it happened, when I couldn’t hold back any longer, I fought off the urge to push the pace. Instead I let it happen on its own, allowed it to slowly release from me. I heard myself cry out while Amy did the same. It was less like we were engaged in sexual intercourse than like we were hanging on tight while the roller coaster plunged downward, out of control.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered when it was over.

We didn’t get a lot of practice in that afternoon or evening. We were ready for their best shot, Amy told me, and she was probably right. Instead we ordered Chinese food and ate kung pao chicken and noodles on her couch. We talked about things other than the trial, about music and literature and travel. I learned that she was once a concert violinist, that she spent a year studying abroad in Florence, that her younger brother qualified for the Olympics in speed skating, that she didn’t know how to swim and was too embarrassed, at her age, to take lessons.

It was the best afternoon I’d had in a long time.

We had another go-round in bed, this time less tentative, more familiar, but very different, more confident, more animal aggressive. I had the distinct feeling that every sexual encounter with Amy Lentini would be an experience all its own, every one unique, like a snowflake.

We decided it was better not to spend the night together. We had to be ready bright and early the next day for the hearing, so we made plans to meet at the courthouse at 26th and Cal an hour beforehand.

I drove back to my town house, a song on my lips, my limbs rubbery, feeling weightless. Something felt different now. It felt like maybe I had “turned the corner” that everybody, with good intentions, had promised me I would turn sooner or later.

When I got home, I pulled my mail from the slot. Perched against my door was an envelope, the full-size, eight-and-a-half-by-eleven kind. Blank, nothing written on the outside.

I set down the mail and slid my finger under the envelope’s flap. Inside was a single glossy photograph. It didn’t take me long to recognize the brownstone and the steps leading up to it. It was another one of those scandalous pics, the ones I’d seen previously under Kim Beans’s byline. The individual in the photograph was trying to be discreet, head down, coat collar pulled up high, not wanting to be seen or noticed.

But the camera wouldn’t be denied. The photographer got a nice zoomed-in shot of the person’s face.

There was no denying who it was.

The person in the photograph, taking her first step up the stairs of the brownstone brothel, was none other than Amy Lentini.

The Present

Sixty-Three

“HERE. EAT.”

I glance at the bowl of pasta Patti sets in front of me. I nod at her but don’t reach for the food. She’s trying to distract me, more than anything, from what I’m seeing on television.

Margaret Olson, front-runner for the race for mayor, before a bank of microphones, the white and blue stripes and red six-pointed stars of the city’s flag behind her. She looks like a pro, scrubbed and coiffed, her blue suit impeccable, trying for the perfect combination of serious crime fighter and chief executive.

“While my candidacy for mayor will continue in full force,” she says, “my job as the Cook County state’s attorney has not ended, and I won’t allow politics to get in the way of my duty. The crimes committed by Detective Harney strike at the heart of the problems in this city. When a sworn police officer not only breaches the trust of our citizens but also kills to cover up that breach—I can think of no greater crime. I have vowed to stop this kind of corruption.”

“Why don’t you vow to stop your mouth from running?” Patti says to the screen.

“For this reason, I will be personally prosecuting the case against Detective William Harney,” says Margaret Olson.

Her words zap through my family room, a quick flash of lightning, and then there is nothing but silence for a palpable beat, even from the TV, as though she were talking directly to me and wanted the words to sink in. I’m coming for you, Harney. You’re mine.

“William,” Patti sneers, like that’s the most intriguing part of what she just heard. “Who the hell ever called you William?”

The press has taken to using my formal name, too. Even Kim Beans, whose career has rebounded nicely since the night of the sex-club raid, who now has a spot as a crime reporter on the local NBC station, whom I’ve known for several years and who has always called me Billy, now refers to me as Detective William Harney . Sometimes I prefer it that way, as if it’s happening to someone else, not me. William Harney? No, I’m Billy. That must be another guy who’s charged with killing four people and facing life in prison.

“Mom called me William,” I say. “When she was pissed.”

“At you? Mom was never pissed at you. You were her little angel.”

It was supposed to come out as a compliment, a supportive boost, but her comment turned sideways at the end. Patti always thought I spent my life gliding along a smooth, paved road, as if my feet barely touched the ground, while she struggled to traverse a path of potholes and sharp curves. I never really figured it. We had the same life. We did the same stuff.

“That’s not a good development,” says my father, just walking into my family room, leaning against the wall. Leave it to Pop to shoot straight, never to mince words.

Patti waves him off. “What does Margaret fucking Olson know from trying cases? She’s a politician. She’s not a trial lawyer.”

Pop doesn’t bother arguing. Quibbling with Patti can be exhausting. When she gets an idea in her head, she won’t let go. The more unreasonable her position, the tighter she clings to it.

And on one level, she’s right. Margaret Olson isn’t some veteran trial lawyer. She was an alderwoman who was elected the county’s top prosecutor. She’s no Clarence Darrow. But that’s not Pop’s point. His point is that if she’s putting herself out there front and center, she can’t lose the case. She can’t . She’ll be putting her entire candidacy for mayor on the line. If she loses my case, she’ll look like an amateur, not the trusted corruption buster who will “Save. This. City!”

Pop casts a look in Patti’s direction but can’t summon any anger or frustration. All of us are pretty beaten down. It’s been a rough seven weeks since I was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. I was released on a million-dollar bond, which was the only good news, because a lot of murder suspects are denied any bond at all. The best thing I had going for me, ironically, was my physical condition—the fact that I was still in recovery from a gunshot wound to the head. The county lockup ain’t exactly the Mayo Clinic, and one of my doctors told the judge that I still needed weekly therapy.

Anyway, Pop put up his house for bond and got me out. For the first couple of weeks afterward, I was hunkered down in my house or his, reporters waiting to pounce at any sight of me. Getting the mail every day was an exercise in stealth and misdirection.

Now, nearly two months since my arrest, things have died down a bit; they are on to their next set of stories: another weekend of double-digit homicides in the city, the city’s pension crisis threatening to strangle the government, and God knows the mayoral race is a daily headline—one candidate made a stupid comment, another candidate stepped in a pile of doo-doo. But they know that my trial isn’t far away, just a few short weeks, and soon they’ll have the chance to gorge on the feast once more.

“How’s it going with the shrink?” Pop asks me.