Джеймс Паттерсон: The Black Book

But the thumping bass was more audible.

Billy stepped into the closet, placed his hand against the back wall, and pushed. It gave immediately. A false wall. This was the door to the garden level.

Billy motioned for some uniforms to follow him. He took the stairs down to the lower level slowly, his gun raised, the music pounding between his ears.

Wondering, Did they hear the commotion upstairs?

But he thought not. It seemed like the place was soundproofed.

The music was loud, the female singer’s voice sultry, almost a moan over the pounding bass. Billy hit the bottom stair and spun, gun raised.

The lighting was dim, a purplish glow. A stripper pole in the center of the room, a lithe, naked woman working it, upside down, her legs interlocked around the shiny steel beam. Around her on all sides, women in various stages of undress or erotic costumes—naughty nurse, Catholic schoolgirl, dominatrix—and men, some in costumes, all of them wearing masks of some kind to obscure their faces.

Caught up in their fantasies, nobody noticed him right away. The bartender, at three o’clock, was the first one, and he was a threat, obscured behind a small bar.

“Police—don’t move!” Billy shouted, his gun trained on the bartender. The bartender showed his hands as Billy shuffled toward him.

And then it was chaos—Billy’s team behind him, shouting commands, forcing everyone to the floor. The participants had nowhere to go; their only exit was cut off by the police, and none of them was in a position to challenge the authority of a half dozen cops with firearms trained on them.

Billy counted six men. Twelve had entered the brownstone.

“Crowley, how we doin’?” he called into his radio.

“Main level clear. Fenton took care of the only two goons.”

“Sosh, the top floor?”

“All clear. Only one up here’s the manager.”

Twelve men had entered the brownstone, not including the three oafs they had subdued. They weren’t upstairs or on the main floor. So where were they?

Then he noticed another door in the corner of the room.

Six

BILLY PUSHED the door open. It was thick, as was the wall—more soundproofing, he figured. It would make sense for a sex club…or whatever the hell this was.

He walked into a long hallway with three doors on each side.

Six more men to find, six bedrooms.

He signaled Sosh, Katie, and some uniforms into the hallway, everyone taking a door. Everyone with guns drawn, the detectives with their stars hanging from their necks.

Billy gave a nod, and all at once, six members of the Chicago Police Department kicked in six different doors.

“Police—don’t move!” Billy said, entering a dark room illuminated only by the glow of the street lamp outside. He saw movement on a bed. He flicked on the light and yelled his command again. Two people scrambling to cover themselves, naked, the man on top of the woman. But unarmed. They posed no threat, other than to their own dignity.

The woman looked young. Very young. Possibly underage.

The man was three times her age.

“On the floor! Both of you! Facedown on the floor.”

They complied. Billy cuffed the man behind his back. “Miss, how old are you?”

“Twenty-two,” she said, her voice shaky.

He didn’t really want to, but he cuffed her as well. “You’re twenty-two like I’m the king of Spain. And you, sir, what’s your name?”

“What?”

“What is your name, sir?”

“My name is…John Barnes.”

Billy squatted down next to him. “John Barnes, you say?”

“Yes…yes.”

“Okay. My mistake. For a minute there I thought you were Archbishop Phelan. But this city’s highest-ranking member of my church wouldn’t be soliciting a prostitute. Especially one who, it seems to me, is underage. Because that’s worse than a prostitution beef. That’s statutory rape.”

“Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, God, help me…”

“Yeah, so good thing you’re John Barnes instead.”

Billy backed up and peeked out into the hallway. By now it was filled with police. He motioned over a uniform to secure his room.

Detective Soscia, stepping out of another room, nodded to Billy. “The mayor wants to speak with the man in charge,” he said, a smile spreading across his face.

Billy popped his head inside. The mayor, Francis Delaney, was sitting upright against the bed, a sheet wrapped around his waist, his hands cuffed behind him, what remained of the hair atop his head sticking nearly straight up. His ruddy complexion was flushed, maybe from the sex but more likely from the humiliation that was quickly enveloping him.

“You’re the detective in charge?” the mayor asked.

“I am.”

“Could you close the door?”

Billy shrugged. “I could, but I won’t. You already had your jollies tonight. And no offense, but you’re not my type.”

The mayor didn’t see the humor in Billy’s remark. “This is…this is a sensitive situation.”

“For one of us it is.”

“Well—I was wondering if I could get any consideration here.”

“Consideration? I consider you a moron for putting your job in jeopardy for some cheap thrills. I consider you a selfish asswipe for betraying the people who elected you. Will that do it?”

The mayor dropped his head. “I’m a good mayor for this city. I am.”

“You mean when you’re not cutting coppers’ pensions to balance the budget?”

The mayor looked up, sensing an opening. “Maybe we should talk about that,” he said.

“Sure. Let’s grab coffee sometime.”

“No. I mean—maybe that’s something you and I could work out right now.”

Billy squatted down so he was face-to-face with the mayor. “Are you saying if I let you walk, you’ll change your position on our pensions?”

The mayor, ever the politician, his chubby, round face gaining fresh color, looked hopefully into Billy’s eyes. “Well, what if I did say that?” he asked.

“If you said that,” said Billy, “I’d arrest you for attempted bribery, too.”

Billy left the room and found Sosh, a sheen of sweat across his prominent forehead, jacked up over the night’s events. “And here I thought this would be a boring stakeout,” he said. “Wanna go meet the manager of this place? She makes Heidi Fleiss look like a Girl Scout.”

Seven

BILLY SPENT the next hour overseeing the cleanup. Making sure the scene downstairs was captured on video, getting each arrestee on camera, processing names (shockingly, several people gave false ones), and beginning the search for records inside the brownstone.

Once the arrestees were all inside the paddy wagon and the uniforms had their marching orders, Billy found himself with Sosh on the main floor.

“The manager,” Billy said. “Let’s go see her.”

Coming down the stairs, just as they were heading up, was Goldie—Lieutenant Mike Goldberger, Billy’s favorite person on the force, his “rabbi,” his confidant, one of the only people he truly trusted.

“ There you are,” Goldie said, slapping his hand into Billy’s. “Big night for you. Just wanted to say congrats. Thought you’d be up there taking the praise.”

“Up there?”

“Oh, yeah. The deputy supe’s up there.”

“He is?”

“Sure. This thing is spreading like wildfire. The Wiz is making it sound like he spearheaded the whole thing. You’d think it was a one-man show starring him.”

“What a prick,” said Sosh.

“Get up there,” said Goldie. “Get some spotlight. I tried to throw your name in there, but the Wiz has sharp elbows. Congrats, again, my boy.”

Gotta love Goldie . Billy and Sosh headed upstairs.