Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

And there was the same name, line after line, over the last three years, monthly payments, originally in the amount of $2,000, later doubling to $4,000, and by the end reaching $10,000 a month.

The same name on every single line, receiving every single payment.

“So Amy knows,” she whispered to the empty room. “That’s a problem.”

Patti stared at the computer until the words began to blur, until they began to move and twitch on the screen. She kept staring even as the screen saver activated, asteroids hurtling across the black screen. She stared until darkness began to hover outside the windows of Amy Lentini’s apartment.

She stared until she decided what to do.

Then she gently closed her laptop, as if it were explosive, and removed the thumb drive from the slot on the side.

She slipped the thumb drive in her pants pocket. “I think I’ll be taking this off your hands now, Amy,” she said. “Finders keepers and all that.”

She placed the laptop back in the suitcase she had brought with her and zipped the suitcase closed.

“Don’t you worry, little brother,” she said as she put her boots back on. “I’m going to clean this all up. You can thank me later.”

The Present

Eighty-Two

“DETECTIVE KATHERINE Fenton was a woman scorned,” says my lawyer, Stilson Tomita, leaning against the window ledge in his office, a view of the Chicago River and the Wells Street Bridge behind him. “A woman who wanted Billy Harney but couldn’t have him. And if she couldn’t have him, nobody could.”

Wow. That’s harsh.

“She had a brief affair with Billy, but she wanted more, and Billy didn’t. Billy, in fact, started dating another woman, Amy Lentini. Kate couldn’t handle it. So she lashed out. She tried everything. Think Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction . Except she’s a cop who lives in a world of guns and violence. So instead of boiling a bunny on the kitchen stove, her version of getting back at Billy was murder. She killed Ramona Dillavou, knowing Billy would be a suspect. She killed Joe Washington after seeing him with Billy in the subway—again, knowing Billy would be a suspect. Then she planted the murder weapons in Billy’s basement, knowing that would do him in. If he was going to ruin her life, she was going to ruin his.”

And I thought his opening lines were harsh.

“Just a few days before the shootings, she was texting Billy half-naked photos of herself, including one with a gun to her head, threatening suicide if he didn’t respond. And when he didn’t return her affection, what did she text him? ‘You had your chance. Remember that I gave you the chance.’”

I don’t remember that text message. I don’t remember those sexy photos she texted me, either. It’s part of the black hole of my memory. The only reason we know about them is that the prosecution turned them over to us in discovery.

“Two days later,” Stilson continues, “she goes to Amy Lentini’s apartment, where Billy and Amy are in bed. It’s the last straw. She draws her gun. Billy, whose gun is close by on the nightstand, reaches for it to return fire. His gun goes off, and Amy is hit by accident, in the heat of the moment, just before Kate and Billy shoot at each other.”

Stilson pulls down on his tie, works his collar open. I’ve known Stilson Tomita since I was a kid, when he and my dad were rookie cops working a beat, before he finished law school and became a prosecutor, later turning to the defense side when he needed college tuition for his four kids. Stilson is a classic melting-pot Chicagoan: his father is a first-generation Japanese American who opened a tailoring business in Lincoln Park; his mother is a hundred-and-fifty-percent Irish South Sider who had cops in her family going back to the Depression. To look at him, you see more Ireland than Asia, but his features are dark enough to make it hard to place his heritage. He used to joke that people couldn’t decide whether he was Italian, Greek, or Latino.

But regardless of nationality, he still looks like the cop he once was—the ruddy complexion, the deep-set eyes of someone who’s seen the messy sludge of the criminal justice system, its ugliness and desperation and bitterness and, ultimately, its hopelessness. He has put away people, and he’s defended them. Each side has its costs, and it shows on his weathered face.

I look around the room at the others, my trusted inner circle: my sister, Patti, my father, and Lieutenant Mike Goldberger, as close to a second father as anyone could get. Each of them is batting around what’s just been said, Stilson’s summation of my defense.

We are less than a week from trial, and the prosecution’s evidence is all in. Stilson and I have kicked around defense theories for weeks, but now the rubber has met the road. Now we know everything they have against me. Now it’s time to finalize our plan, then test it and retest it—kick the tires, so to speak, mold it like clay into the best argument we can make.

“My gun accidentally went off and shot Amy?” I say. “It was an accident?”

“Well, your gun killed Amy, not Kate’s. They can prove that.” Stilson shrugs. “If you have a better explanation, I’m all ears.”

When your best explanation sucks eggs, things aren’t looking up.

Stilson cocks his head, nods, seeing the look on my face. “We play the hand we’re dealt,” he says. “This is the best theory we have, Billy.”

“It’s the only theory,” says Patti.

“No, it’s not,” I say. “They’re saying I was a crooked cop, right? They’re saying I shook down the brothel for protection money, that the state’s attorney was investigating me, and that I killed everyone to cover it up. We could say the exact same thing about Kate. Or Wizniewski. Or both.”

“But there’s no proof of that.” Patti pushes herself off the wall, uncrosses her arms. “There’s no proof of a protection racket. There’s no little black book. It’s a fantasy.”

“There’s no little black book?” I say.

“They never found it,” she says. “As far as the jury is concerned, it doesn’t exist.”

“I agree with Patti,” says Stilson. “Listen, Billy. We start by saying the prosecution is full of shit. They can’t prove a protection racket, and therefore they can’t prove a cover-up of a protection racket. Then we give the jury a plausible alternative.” Stilson grabs blowups of the photos that Kate texted me, the sex-kitten poses. “This is a woman whose heart has been broken, who’s trying desperately to get your attention. All the jurors in that box, I guarantee you, at some point in their lives have had their hearts broken. They know the sting of rejection. They may not have committed murders and frame-ups as a result, I’ll grant you that, but they can relate to how she was feeling.”

I look at Goldie, who grimaces as he stares at the floor.

At my father, who narrows his eyes and brings a hand to his face.

At Patti, who nods in agreement.

“Kate was an unstable woman who went off the deep end,” she says. “That’s your story. There was no corruption. There was no little black book.”

Eighty-Three

PATTI RUNS north along the jogging path, violent wind slapping her skin, Lake Michigan lashing out like an insolent child to her right, the cars cruising by on Lake Shore Drive to the left. The weather is still warm, but this close to the lake it feels like a different climate altogether. It’s one of the things she’s always loved about Chicago—the ability to escape the concrete jungle and be so close to a beach and a massive body of water; the way the roiling lake waters and car traffic on the outer drive produce their own combination of sound, their unique symphony.