Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

The Wiz nods. “See, when you pull old arrest reports, it generates a record. You have to sign them in and out. It’s right there on the jacket of the file. You have to put your name and star number next to each request. And you can see who else has made a request.”

“You can see all previous requests?”

“Yeah, of course. You can see the entire list of people who have requested these records before you.”

Olson nods. So do several jurors, for whom the picture is becoming clearer.

“I believe Detective Harney was pulling these reports to see if anybody else had been pulling those reports,” says the Wiz. “He wanted to know if anybody was on to him.”

Brilliant. I can’t deny it. My teeth grinding together, my hands in fists, sitting in a courtroom having to stay composed while fireworks go off inside me.

But—brilliant. Wizniewski is using my undercover investigation against me, to make me look like the guilty party.

Stilson leans in to me, out of character for him. “You have got to keep a lid on yourself,” he whispers, each word like a dart.

“Did you report your suspicions to the higher-ups?” Olson asks.

“I did, sort of,” he says. “I had a conversation with the head of Internal Affairs, Lieutenant Michael Goldberger.”

I turn back to the Wiz, catch my breath.

“Internal Affairs? Is that in your chain of command?”

He lifts his shoulders. “From time to time I’ve passed on information, let’s put it that way. I didn’t officially work for IA, if that’s what you mean.”

“All right. So did you go to Lieutenant Goldberger’s office?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. We were at one of the copper bars. The Hole in the Wall, off Rockwell.”

“Tell us about the conversation.”

The Wiz says, “I threw it out there. I said I’d been wondering about Billy Harney, why he always seemed to disappear on the job and seemed to be nosing around in places where his nose didn’t belong, nothing to do with solving murders.”

“And what did Lieutenant Goldberger say, if anything?”

“Oh, he shut me down right away. He told me Billy Harney was a righteous cop. He said he’s known him his whole life, and Billy was straight as an arrow.”

That’s my Goldie.

But Olson doesn’t want the image of me as a good cop lingering for too long.

“Lieutenant Goldberger has known the defendant his whole life?”

“Yeah. Thick as thieves, those two. Like a second father. So I knew right then that Goldberger would be no help to me. He was biased.”

Olson opens her hands. “So what did you do?”

“I went to the only place I could,” he says. “I went to the state’s attorney’s office.”

He went to…he went to the—

“I was Amy Lentini’s confidential informant,” he says.

Ninety-One

THE SCREEN comes alive, a fuzzy black-and-white video of the subway tunnel.

“This individual here,” says Wizniewski, standing away from the witness stand and using a pointer, “is Billy Harney.”

It shows me acting like I’m waiting for the subway, like everyone else.

“And this gentleman approaching, in the beige coat—”

I prefer Camel Coat.

“—is Detective Joe Washington.”

“And where were you, Lieutenant, at the time?”

“I was across the tracks, on the other side. Trying to conceal my face. Trying to watch them without them knowing.”

“You followed the defendant to this location?”

“Yes, I did.”

“So what happened next?”

“Well, as you can see…”

Wizniewski narrates for the written record, but the jury doesn’t need his words. They can see it for themselves. The screen shows Camel Coat approaching me and stopping, without any acknowledgment between us. Just two guys waiting for the train. I’m on the phone—a fake phone call—and then I turn my back to the camera and to Camel Coat.

Then, as we had rehearsed ahead of time, Camel Coat sneezes, and he, too, turns his back to Wizniewski and the camera. Both our backs turned.

Then an envelope passing from Camel Coat to me.

Olson freezes the screen there, so that the image sticks with the jury. Wizniewski returns to the witness stand.

“Do you know what information Detective Washington passed to the defendant?” asks Margaret Olson.

“No. I very much wanted to know. I already suspected that Harney was covering his tracks, and now he was secretly meeting with someone from Internal Affairs.”

Right, because we were trying to flush you out, Wizniewski. We were trying to flush out my tail, the person who’d been following me.

The whole thing in the subway was a ruse, intended to look like a surreptitious meeting so we could catch my tail. But to the jury, it looks like I really was meeting secretly with Camel Coat.

Once again, the Wiz has turned my undercover work against me, making me look guilty instead of him.

He has played this brilliantly.

“Lieutenant, did you ever find out what was inside the envelope that Detective Washington handed the defendant on that subway platform?”

“No, I did not.”

“Why not?”

“Because later that night, Joe Washington was murdered.” He turns and looks at me, an icy stare. “By a gun we later found in Billy Harney’s basement.”

I return his stare.

I still don’t remember what happened the night that Kate and Amy and I were shot. Or for two weeks before that time. But I don’t need to. Not anymore.

He knew I was investigating him. He needed to stop me. What better way than to turn the tables? He became Amy Lentini’s confidential informant. He got them to start investigating me . And then he set me up for murder.

It was Wizniewski, all along. All of it.

But I can’t prove it. And now it’s too late.

“Your Honor,” says Margaret Olson, “the prosecution rests.”

Ninety-Two

I LIE in bed, curtains pulled tightly closed, dark as ink in my bedroom.

Squeezing my eyes shut, begging for sleep, pleading for peace, praying that the demons will quiet their devious cries, that the dread filling my chest will ease, that my breathing will return to normal. My body utterly depleted, desperate for rest, but my brain malfunctioning, as though wires have been crossed, thoughts still careening about, memories and fantasies, flashbacks and concoctions, fact and fiction, the past rushing forward to the present and mixing together like dirt and water, an indiscernible sludge—

She knows about you and so do I.

You had your chance. Remember that I gave you the chance.

Stewart, patting my shoulder in the ICU.

Amy laughing, a ghoulish, clownish expression. You shot me, Billy!

You killed me, and you don’t even remember!

Wizniewski, talking me out of raiding the brothel. You fuck this up, it could be the last arrest you ever make.

I was Amy Lentini’s confidential informant.

The knife found in my basement, used to kill Ramona Dillavou. The gun found in my basement, used to kill Camel Coat.

A door opening, a soft click, a release of pressure like a gentle sigh.

Kate’s head whipping to the right, surprised, then not surprised. Nodding.

What are you doing here?

A door opening, a soft click.

Kate’s head whipping to the right.

A door opening. A soft click. The whiny groan of an old door. A door my wife thought was charming when we first moved in but that she later begged me to replace because of all the noise it made.

The back door of my town house.

My eyes open now. No more dreams.

Now reality: somebody is in my house.