Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

People kept coming up to him, offering their congrats and their jokes about the mayor and archbishop, which grew cruder as the booze continued to flow. At one point he turned toward Kate and saw Wizniewski, the Wiz, with his arm around her and whispering into her ear. Kate had a smile planted on her face, but Billy knew her as well as anyone did. He could see from her stiff body language and forced grin that she would sooner have an enema than deal with the Wiz’s flirtation.

Oh, the Wiz. The same guy who tried to talk Billy down from executing the arrests in the first place, the politician who was afraid that this bust might upset the status quo, who turned around and took full credit with the deputy superintendent, and here he was yucking it up with the brass as if he were just one of the guys.

“There you are. The man of the hour.”

Mike Goldberger—Goldie—in the flesh. Goldie was a pretty low-key guy who, unlike Billy and his pals, didn’t do a lot of drinking and carousing, so it was unusual to see him at the Hole.

“Don’t get too drunk,” he said, wagging a finger at Billy. “You could be part of a presser tomorrow.”

It had occurred to Billy that the press conferences would continue over the next few days, but he was pretty sure Wizniewski would be the one standing behind the police superintendent, not him.

“How you feelin’ about everything?” Goldie asked. “Tonight. The bust go okay?”

Billy nodded. “I think so. Pretty by-the-book. No question I had PC.”

“Okay.” Goldie didn’t seem surprised. Probable cause to search was a low barrier. “Nothing unusual?”

“The mayor tried to bribe me.”

Goldie recoiled. “Seriously?”

“Well, he was on his way to it. He said maybe we could work on that pension problem we have. Maybe, if I let him walk out the back door, he’d change his mind on cutting our cost-of-living adjustments.”

“You shoulda said yes,” Goldie said with a straight face.

“I tried to work in some free Hawks tickets for myself.”

“Don’t even…” Goldie drew him close. “Don’t even joke about that.”

“I know, I know.”

“I know you know, but—Billy, seriously. This could get ugly.” He lowered his chin, looked up at Billy. “Some of the city’s most powerful people got mud splashed on ’em tonight, and if you haven’t noticed, people with power don’t like to let go of it. They’ll do whatever they have to do. They’ll go after whoever they have to go after. Including the cops.”

“Fuck ’em.”

“I’m already hearing questions,” he said. “Questions about the inventory of evidence. Questions like ‘Where’s the little black book?’ How could that have disappeared?”

“We searched that house top to bottom. There isn’t—”

“Christ, I know that, Billy. I’m on your side.”

That much Billy knew. Goldie had been Billy’s guardian angel since he joined the force. Maybe Goldie was overreacting. But he had a nose for this kind of thing in the department.

“Watch yourself,” Goldie said, whispering into Billy’s ear. “From here on out, drive the speed limit. Help little old ladies across the street. Rescue drowning puppies from Lake Michigan.”

He gave Billy a firm pat on the chest.

“You’re under a magnifying glass, my friend,” he said. “Don’t give anyone a reason to burn you.”

Nine

PATTI HARNEY watched her brother Billy stumble toward the makeshift stage in the corner of the Hole in the Wall. He was the man of the hour, though he didn’t seek out the spotlight. He never did. She couldn’t remember one time in their lives when Billy tried to call attention to himself or bragged or promoted himself. The attention just seemed to come naturally. People gravitated to her twin brother in a way they never did to her.

A couple of cops practically pushed Billy to the microphone. He wasn’t at his best tonight—a half dozen shots of bourbon and a handful of beers was probably a low estimate—but everything Billy did seemed effortless. Like this, for example: grabbing a mike and telling jokes off the top of his head. Patti would be absolutely terrified of doing something like that, but Billy had a what-the-fuck attitude about the whole thing. Did they really come out of the same birth canal seven minutes apart?

“I’m Harney,” Billy said into the mike as the crowd quieted. “You know you got to laugh sometimes. Or you’ll go fucking nuts in this town. Let’s do a little laughing.”

“You the man!” said one of the cops standing just a few feet away from Billy, a patrol officer who worked the West Side, a man who looked like he doubled as a bodybuilder. Billy waved the guy up on stage. Whatever the burly officer might have been wearing when he arrived at the bar earlier tonight, he was now down to a tight white undershirt that showed off his ripped muscles and his shiny bald head.

Billy put his arm around the guy. “I’d like to thank Mr. Clean for coming tonight,” he said.

The crowd roared. Some of the younger cops probably didn’t get the reference.

“Mr.—can I call you Mr.? Mr. here has been fighting grime in this city for decades.”

How does he improvise like that? Patti wondered. She made her way through the crowd and found Detective Katherine Fenton, who was standing by a tall table, laughing and watching her partner up on stage.

“Hey, Kate,” said Patti.

Kate’s expression broke just slightly, betraying her reaction before she recovered and smiled vaguely. “Hi, Patti.”

On the surface, Katherine Fenton was a good partner for Billy. They smoothed out each other’s edges. Kate was intense and aggressive, while Billy was laid-back, less defensive, more self-assured, always searching for the humor in a situation.

But Patti and Kate—they’d never hit it off. It was hard for Patti to pin down why. Patti was always polite with Kate, never spoke a harsh word to her. She couldn’t name one thing she’d ever done that would make Kate dislike her.

This was what she figured: somehow, in some way, it had become a competition between them over Billy. Kate wanted to be closest to Billy, but she couldn’t because of his twin sister.

You’ll never know him like I do, Kate. It will never happen.

“Congrats on the big night,” she said to Kate.

“Thanks,” Kate said, her eyes still on the stage.

“I go to church at least once a month to seek absolution for my sins,” said Billy to the audience. “Tonight was the first time a priest confessed to me .”

The crowd liked that—big whoops and exaggerated groans. Everyone liked Billy. He played to the crowd well. He was playing to his phone, too, perched upright on a stool on the stage. Billy recorded his comedy routines on his phone and uploaded them to some Facebook page he shared with a guy named Stewart, whom he’d met at the hospital three years ago, back when Billy went through all that horrible stuff.

God—three years ago? It still felt fresh to her. And look at Billy, still going strong after all that shit, tragedy that would have broken most people. It would have broken her . But Billy, he just kept motoring forward with that placid expression, like the entire shitstorm that came his way just slid off him, no problems, no worries.

It changed him. It must have, in ways even Patti couldn’t understand. But you could put a gun to Billy’s head and he wouldn’t let on.

She watched Kate watching Billy and didn’t like what she saw. Kate, she had to concede, was drop-dead gorgeous, her reddish-brown hair pulled back, her large green eyes, her hard, athletic body—the kind of beauty that would render her unapproachable to most men. Billy was pretty easy on the eyes, too, tall and well built, with that killer smile that came so naturally. The thought had occurred to Patti more than once that he and Kate could be a thing. But she’d never actually seen either of them flash any sign of that until tonight, until right now, when she was looking into Kate’s eyes as she listened to Billy on stage.