Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

My lawyer, Stilson, has forgotten his role and has listened along with the jurors, the reporters, and curious onlookers. “So Lieutenant Goldberger said, ‘You better come in here and talk some sense into him’?”

“Yes,” I answered. “He was saying it to someone not in the room. He was speaking toward the recording device in the room, wherever it was.”

Stilson, whose first instinct all morning has been to simply ask what happened next, instead cocks his head. “You said you knew at that moment that it was Patti who stole the thumb drive from Amy’s apartment?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

I looked at her, my twin sister, as still as a statue, but I could see it in the sheen of her eyes, the single tear that had fallen. I could almost see the bubble over her head saying, I’m sorry; I’m so sorry .

“Because Patti would have seen the name Harney on that page of the little black book and assumed it was me,” I said. “Her first instinct would have been to protect me, to steal the little black book and destroy it.”

Fresh tears stream down Patti’s face.

“This whole time since the shootings, while I was in a coma, when I came out and slowly recovered, as I considered how to defend myself against these charges, she’s thought I was the dirty cop. This whole time she’s been trying to protect me. Even though she was sure I was guilty, she tried to protect me.”

I choke up on those last words. Take a moment. Clear my throat.

“She loves me, and she’d do anything for me,” I say, “but she worships our father. She never in a million years would have considered the possibility that the name Harney could mean another cop. She never would have suspected that the chief of detectives, Daniel Harney, was the dirty cop.”

Patti jumps out of her seat in the front row, her mouth open, pure horror on her face. She turns to my father, whose eyes are now focused on the floor before him.

A second chance, Pop said to me the other day when he tried to persuade me to flee the jurisdiction, to escape to Mexico. You have a second chance. I have a second chance.

I’d like to think he was sincere when he said that—that he really was going to try to slip me out of the country to Playa del Carmen, then South America. That he wasn’t going to put a bullet in my brain somewhere between Chicago and the Mexican border.

I’d like to believe that he was hoping for that second chance.

But I didn’t take it. And so he sent someone to my house last night to try to kill me for the second time.

And now I’ll never know for sure. Because I will never speak another word to him.

One Hundred Four

The Past

BY THE time my father walked into the bedroom, joining Goldie, I knew that Amy would never get off that bed alive. They might think they could co-opt me into going along with a plan, but Amy? She had seen too much. She’d spent her career being a by-the-book prosecutor, straight as an arrow. And she wasn’t blood, wasn’t family. They couldn’t trust her to keep quiet. They couldn’t let her live.

“I’m so sorry I ever doubted you,” Amy whispered on a trembling breath.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, ” I said. “I love you, Amy. I love you so much.”

My father entered the bedroom then, looked down at Kate as he walked in, the way he might glance at a homeless person he passed on the street. I didn’t expect him to be surprised. He had obviously been listening to everything through the eavesdropping device planted in the room. He shook his head as if disappointed.

“Congratulations, Pop,” I said. “Let me guess. Margaret’s going to make you the superintendent. And the deputy superintendent will be Mike Goldberger.”

My father blinked several times. Always the stoic demeanor. “If you’re going to ask me to apologize for providing for my family all these years, I won’t.”

“Providing for your family through bribes and extortion?”

“Son, you don’t—”

“And last I checked, Mom’s been gone for years, and all your kids are grown up. So who the fuck have you been providing for other than yourself?”

My father wasn’t kidding; he wasn’t going to apologize. Not because he didn’t have regret. He just didn’t like to show weakness.

He put out a hand. “I…didn’t want it to turn out this way. But it’s not too late for you, son. It’s not too late for us . Goldie was right. You can have any job in the department you want. You and Amy, you can be happy together.”

He might have had more success had he left out that last sentence, the lie about Amy staying alive. But deep down, if he knew me at all, he knew I wouldn’t go along with him and Goldie. Which meant these words weren’t meant as a plea to me. They were meant as salve for his guilt, so he could tell himself, before he killed me—after he killed me, for the rest of his life—that he gave me one last chance.

I moved directly in front of Amy, put out my arms behind me to barricade her in.

“They’re going to kill me either way,” she whispered into my ear. “But they don’t want to kill you. Save yourself, Billy. Say whatever you have to say.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking so hard I could barely speak.

“Patti needs you, son,” my father said. “You know how she relies on you. She’s always leaned on you. Don’t make me do this. Get on board here.”

My eyes bored into his. I should have felt fear. Instead I felt nothing but pure hatred. “Never,” I said.

Amy’s head resting between my shoulder blades, her heartbeat pounding into my spine. Her entire body hidden behind mine, my arms behind me, trying to envelop her.

“I love you so much,” she whispered to me, the only time she’d ever said the words to me, as my father moved toward Kate and lifted her gun from her dead hand.

My father moving closer, holding Kate’s gun. Goldie next to him, holding mine.

Goldie had already laid out the plan, the jilted-lover theory. It would still work for them, I realized—Kate barging in in a jealous rage, a gunfight ensuing. But my father, holding Kate’s gun, would have to shoot me. They couldn’t sell that story if I were shot with my own weapon.

I moved one hand from Amy and reached for my phone, touched it. My father’s eyes moved to it.

“His phone,” said my father, not to me but to Goldie. A reminder that they’d have to dispose of it, take it with them or smash it to pieces.

“Move away from the girl,” my father said. “It doesn’t have to be both of you, son.”

“Never,” I said again.

“Jesus, Billy. She’s worth that much to you, huh? So much that you’re willing to die along with her?”

I looked into my father’s eyes. Had he ever known love? Love that went beyond love for himself and his own advancement? I didn’t know. I hoped so, for my mother’s sake. I never would know for sure. All I knew was that I had found Amy, and I couldn’t ever let her go. I couldn’t live without her.

“You always were the softhearted one,” Pop said to me. “I never understood it.”

Behind me, Amy scooted sideways, separating herself from me. I reached for her, grabbed her arm, tried to stop her, but she had moved out from behind me before I could. She was doing what they wanted. Making it easier for them to kill her but not me. We looked at each other for a moment, probably only one tick of the clock by any objective measure, but it felt like we held that stare forever. So much courage in her eyes, so much love.

“Shirt off, Amy,” said Goldie.

She did what they asked. It would make the story easier—we were in bed, fooling around, when Kate stormed in. I didn’t want her to help them, but we were stalling, hanging on to precious seconds. And I needed the distraction.