Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

By now, Margaret has retreated to the prosecution’s table, where she is huddling with her team. They’re showing her something in a manila folder, whispering to her feverishly. Finally she looks up at me. “Your phone was smashed in the bedroom,” she says. “Destroyed. Nothing could be recovered from the physical phone. Right?”

“Right.”

“You’re aware that we tried very hard to penetrate that phone and couldn’t.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t have one of those save-to-the-cloud functions, did you? The platform that allows you to store records in cyberspace?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m pretty clueless when it comes to those phones. If it wasn’t for the icon Patti installed, I never could have recorded anything.”

“So this…this recording you tell us about…it wasn’t recovered from your physical phone, and it’s not on any cloud.”

“Correct.”

“So once again, Mr. Harney,” says the prosecutor, fully recovered, her arms out in a theatrical gesture, “we have only your word to take for these claims you’ve made here today.”

I look three rows back in the gallery and make eye contact with Stewart’s daughter, Grace, who was kind enough to show up today after I called her this morning. Grace gives me a sweet smile. Her father, my good friend Stewart, had died by the time I made the recording in Amy’s bedroom. With Stewart deceased, and with my having no memory of recording what happened in the bedroom, nobody else in the world would have bothered to check that private Facebook page that Stewart and I shared, the one to which I uploaded all my jokes and comedy routines with one click of an icon. I certainly wouldn’t. Why would I want to listen to a bunch of my old jokes? And Grace wouldn’t; there were no memories of her father on that page—just a bunch of one-liners and humorous observations and sometimes a few minutes of stand-up at the Hole in the Wall. It was between Stewart and me, nobody else.

All this time, the audio recording was posted right there on that private Facebook page.

I think Grace enjoys the fact that, even after his death, Stewart was able to lend me a hand in my moment of need. I do, too. I feel his presence now, the man who comforted me while my daughter was dying, the man who was more of a father to me in the short time I knew him than my real father ever was.

The courtroom erupts when I mention my smartphone’s automatic link to Stewart’s Facebook page—when the reporters and jurors realize that sometime soon they are going to get hold of that recording and be able to listen to what transpired, blow by blow, in that bedroom.

Needless to say, Margaret Olson, Goldie, and my father don’t take the news very well.

One Hundred Seven

“WITH 27 percent of the precincts reporting in the special mayoral election, WGN News is now projecting that County Commissioner Estefan Morales will become the first Latino mayor of Chicago…”

As we stand in my family room watching the TV, we four Harney kids clink our beer bottles together and take a congratulatory swig. We don’t quite smile at one another. We haven’t done a lot of smiling in these last three weeks. We’ve cried, argued, denied, and questioned. We’ve mourned, accused, and hugged. And we’ve drunk enough beer to fill a small reservoir.

“…the tremendous fall of Margaret Olson, the Cook County state’s attorney and onetime favorite in the race, finishing in a disappointing sixth place…”

It’s not exactly a huge shock that Margaret didn’t win. The polls were suggesting as much. I mean, it’s kind of hard to run a campaign with the slogan “I didn’t kill or blackmail anyone, I swear!” You have to admire Margaret for having the brass to continue the campaign at all after my trial and the release of the audio recording.

“…wasn’t just the contents of that audio recording, Mark. I think what really did Olson in was that she didn’t act on it over the last three weeks since it surfaced. She didn’t file charges against the officers implicated on that recording.”

“…agree with Linda, Mark. I think voters thought Margaret Olson was dragging out any further investigation until today, hoping that her denials would be enough to get her through this election.”

“Let’s turn to the newest member of our team, Kim Beans. Kim, no reporter was closer to this scandal than you. Your thoughts?”

Kim Beans, looking well scrubbed and beautiful, having benefited mightily from the suffering of many, looks into the camera.

“I think you’re all correct to an extent,” she says. “I do think Margaret Olson still had a hope of pulling out this election. But the real reason she did basically nothing about this audio recording over the last three weeks? More than anything else, what was the real reason?”

“She wanted Pop and Goldie to run,” I say.

“I think Margaret was hoping that Officers Daniel Harney and Michael Goldberger would run,” she says. “She wanted them to flee the jurisdiction, which they were perfectly free to do as long as they hadn’t been charged with a crime. She wanted them to run so there was no evidence against her other than a vague audio recording. She didn’t just want to win an election. She wants to stay out of prison.”

Patti runs a hand through her hair and blows out air like she’s inflating a balloon. Dark circles prominent under her eyes. Our sister was particularly crushed by our father’s betrayal. Aiden and Brendan had never had as close a relationship to Pop, and they didn’t follow in his footsteps as a cop or even stay in Chicago. Whatever grief they’re feeling they’ve channeled into helping Patti. It’s like when your first parent dies and all focus shifts to the surviving parent.

So we’ve made Patti our project. Aiden, the musclehead, always trying to tussle with her or lift her off her feet, which makes her laugh only because it’s so juvenile, or maybe because it reminds her of our childhood; Brendan, with the off-color humor that Patti always enjoyed. The three of us have made an unspoken pact over these last three weeks to stay near her, one of us always keeping an eye on her. It’s been our assignment. The distraction has been helpful. It’s easier to focus on someone else’s grief than cope with your own.

I put my hand on her shoulder and lower my head, look directly into her eyes. I want to tell her We’ll get through this or It’s gonna be okay, but I don’t have to say the words. It’s a twins thing—that’s about the only way I can put it.

My sister kept a lot of secrets and did a lot of things, all to protect me. Did she enjoy it, on some level, being the strong one for once? Being the one to help me instead of the other way around? I’m sure she did. But it doesn’t change the fact that she was there for me. She thought I was the dirty cop, the “Harney” in the little black book, and she thought I was guilty of four murders—but she still stood by me. We are family, and we always will be.

“Where do you think they went?” she whispers under her breath, words intended only for me, not Aiden or Brendan.

I shrug. “Does it matter?”

The audio recording I had made—which, by the way, has now received more than three million hits on the Facebook page put up by my lawyer, Stilson—should have been all Margaret needed to arrest both Pop and Goldie. But she dragged her feet, refusing to comment, citing the old “ongoing investigation” excuse. Kim Beans, on television just now, was spot-on about that: Margaret dragged her feet to give Pop and Goldie a chance to run. It would be hard to make a case against Margaret based only on that audio recording; if the star witnesses were sunning themselves on a beach in South America, she could probably avoid being prosecuted.