Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

The hearing wasn’t over, not technically. Amy hadn’t even had her chance to question me yet. But I could see it on the judge’s face. He wasn’t convinced. He thought I lacked probable cause. He was going to invalidate my search. He was going to toss this case.

And my career along with it.

Sixty-Nine

LIEUTENANT MIKE Goldberger closed the door gently behind him before turning to address me and Kate, who would testify tomorrow. We were in a witness interview room on the same floor as the courtroom where I had just had my head handed to me.

I stood and stretched; I’d been sitting all day. Seven hours of questioning from six defense lawyers, then Amy grilling me on every detail. Nothing seemed to make a difference. From the moment the judge addressed his questions to me, it was clear that he didn’t like our case.

Goldie said, “Okay, so that didn’t go so well,” which was like saying the Titanic ’s maiden voyage had some rough patches.

“It was a righteous search,” I said.

“Hell, I know that,” Goldie said. “But the judge isn’t with us. That’s obvious.”

I shook my head. “Some clown in a robe who hasn’t—”

“Who hasn’t spent a day on the job; I know, I know,” Goldie grumbled. “But we’re past crying in our Cheerios. Time to fix this.”

I looked up at him. Goldie didn’t say things casually.

Goldie pointed at Kate. “Detective Fenton, you guys staked out the brownstone two nights before the raid. When the stakeout ended, Billy went home. What did you do?”

Kate said, without missing a beat, “I left, too, but then I drove back to the brownstone.”

I spun around to face Kate. “Huh?”

Kate kept her eyes forward, on Goldie, avoiding my stare. “I drove back to the brownstone. I waited for the girls to leave. I followed two of them home.”

First I’d heard of this. Because it never happened.

“And what happened next?” Goldie asked as though he were a prosecutor in court, as though he already knew the answer.

Because he did know the answer. This wasn’t the first time he was hearing it.

“The girls went home to their apartment on the second floor,” said Kate. “I walked up to their building and looked at the buzzer assigned to the second floor. There were two names next to it. Sanchez and Daniels.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “This is bullshit.”

“There was a postcard lying on the walkway next to the mail slot,” Kate continued. “An advertisement, a sale at Macy’s or something. But it had a name on it. Erica Daniels.”

“So you had one woman’s full name and a partial for the second,” said Goldie. “What happened next?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “Hell, even I can finish this story.” I looked at Kate. “You went to the station and did a criminal background check. It turned out Erica Daniels had a prior for prostitution. And you did a search on Sanchez and found the same thing. Their mug shots looked like the girls you followed. And suddenly—oh, my God, wouldn’t you know?—we knew that at least two of the women who spent the evening in that brownstone were hookers.” I threw up my hands. “Hallelujah! We have probable cause!”

Goldie leaned against the wall. “Couldn’t’ve said it better, actually.”

“Yeah, except for the minor detail that none of it actually happened. Kate didn’t follow those women to their apartment.” My arms came down by my sides. “I mean, guys, what are we talking about?” I turned to Kate again. “Did Goldie talk you into this? I mean, I know he wants to protect us, but there’s a—”

“Who said it was Goldie’s idea?” she replied, as if she were insulted that I’d attribute perjury to him and not her.

Kate stood up, face-to-face with me. “If we lose this case, it’s all over,” she said. “The mayor stays in office, right? Sure he does. He goes free. And his best buddy, the superintendent he appointed, Tristan Driscoll—he stays on the job, too.”

Goldie said, “How long until the supe finds an excuse to run you off the force? Or, worse yet, he assigns you to traffic duty the rest of your career? If this case goes south, that’s your future, pal.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said.

“Yeah, well, I won’t take my chances.” Kate shoved me. “This isn’t just about you, partner. My career goes down the tubes, too. I don’t get a say in this?”

I let out air. “Katie,” I said.

“Oh, now it’s ‘Katie.’” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

I looked at Goldie. “When did this all come together? This little story of yours?”

He said, “You mean this little story that will save the careers of not one but two police officers who are among the finest cops I’ve ever known? This little story that puts the bad guys where they belong? That little story?”

I deflated. Goldie’s heart was always in the right place. He’d stand in front of a train for me. From his perspective, this was just a little gloss on the truth, a harmless twist, to prevent a miscarriage of justice—and, more important, to protect me. Always looking out for me.

“Kate,” said Goldie, “give us a minute, wouldja?”

That seemed like a fine idea to her. She grabbed her bag and walked out in a huff, barely glancing in my direction.

Goldie raised a hand. “Just shut your pie hole and listen to me one time. I don’t like this any more than you do. It wasn’t my idea. It was Kate’s. She’s a grown-up. I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to. I prayed like hell your testimony would come in solid and none of this would be necessary. But now it is. We’re out of good choices here.”

I shook my head, fuming.

“It gets us to the right result,” he said. “It’s justice. You did good cop work. Every instinct you had was correct. So why should it end up that the scumbags walk free and two good cops get knives in their stomachs? How the fuck is that justice?”

It wasn’t my first time in court, and I understood the art of presenting information in a way that favored your side, but that was spin, that was the fight. This—this was literally making up evidence. This I had never done.

As if reading my mind, Goldie said, “Never in a million years would I have asked you to say this on the witness stand. Hell, I wouldn’t have asked Kate, either. She came to me with this. I tried to talk her out of it. You ever try talking Kate out of something?”

I allowed for that. A pit bull was less stubborn than my partner.

“And listen, at the end of the day, when my head hits the pillow and I try to put right and wrong on a scale and see which side’s heavier? All in all, I think what she’s doing gets us heavier on the right than the wrong. That’s the best I can do, sport.”

I was still fuming, but there wasn’t much I could do. I was done testifying. Nobody was going to ask me anything else under oath.

“It’s not your decision; it’s not mine,” Goldie said. “Let her do it, kiddo.”

Seventy

JUDGE WALTER McCabe adjusted his eyeglasses and looked over a courtroom filled to bursting. “The court is prepared to rule,” he said.

The hearing had lasted three days. My testimony took up the first day. Kate’s filled the second day and part of the third, as defense lawyers poked and probed and came at Kate ten different ways, trying to challenge her surprising revelation that she had followed two of the prostitutes home from the brownstone one night, gathered their information, and discovered their criminal rap sheets. Why didn’t you ever document that information? they asked. Why didn’t you tell your partner, Detective Harney? Could it be that we’re hearing this for the first time, suddenly, conveniently, after Detective Harney’s testimony didn’t go so well?