Джеймс Паттерсон - The Black Book

And it worked. A few days after the audio recording surfaced, Pop and Goldie went adios. They picked a Friday night, when the workweek was over and they wouldn’t be missed at the office.

Smart. They were always smart.

Patti gives me a long look, takes a deep breath, and releases. Maybe it’s just another twin-intuition thing, but it seems like something has lifted off her shoulders.

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter where he went,” she says. “He’s gone either way.”

“Hey!” Aiden shouts. “Enough of the serious whispering. Time for another group hug!”

He’s big enough by himself to draw the three of us in. Patti rolls her eyes, but she enjoys it, I know.

So the four of us Harneys draw together in a tight embrace. For just that moment, it feels like we’re kids again, in our backyard, when everything was simple and the future limitless.

One Hundred Eight

“UNITED STATES versus Michael Leonard Goldberger,” the clerk calls out. “United States versus Daniel Collins Harney.”

Margaret Olson had given Pop and Goldie a head start on an escape, but there is another gang of prosecutors in town who wear federal badges. The US attorney’s office loves to prosecute local cops. No way they were going to pass on this case.

Federal agents found Pop and Goldie in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. The word is that when the marshals kicked in the door, Pop was halfway out a bathroom window, and Goldie was hiding under the bed.

From a side door, Goldie and my father appear, dressed in orange jumpsuits, escorted by federal marshals, their hands in shackles. Patti draws a quick breath. So do I.

Goldie has shaved his head altogether and grown a goatee. His eyes briefly scan the room before they move downward.

And my father. His hair is a different color, a bright red, and it’s the first time I can remember seeing a rough blanket of whiskers on his face. His eyes are so dark, it’s as if he’s wearing a mask. His shoulders are stooped, as if literally wilting under the weight of recent events.

And it goes beyond physical. His eyes remain on the floor. My father never walked into a room with his eyes down. Chief of Detectives Daniel Harney always held his chin up, the proud figure of authority and morality.

A shudder passes through me. It’s like our father is already gone, just as Patti said. I take Patti’s hand and squeeze it.

“Don’t feel sorry for him,” Patti whispers. We are both fighting that instinct. Pop brought all this on himself. He deserves the fall he has taken, the humiliation, the disgrace, every last bit of it. But he is still our father. He is still our blood. We are tied to him forever. You don’t flip a switch and turn that off.

How could you do it? I want to ask him. How could you shoot your own son?

I want so much to understand it. To see things through his eyes. I know I am dreaming of something impossible. There is no justification. I only had a child for three years, but I would have done anything for her. I would have taken a bullet for her.

Why didn’t you feel the same thing for me?

“Judge, with the obvious risk of flight and the corruption and murder charges that make the defendants eligible for the death penalty, the government requests no bond.”

One of them, if not both, will cop a plea, I assume, and they’ll give up Margaret. The feds like busting local cops, but they love getting local politicians. Whether it’s Goldie or my father or both, whatever deal they cut, they’ll still spend the rest of their lives incarcerated, but they could avoid the death penalty and might get their choice of prisons.

Pop and Goldie, standing before the judge, their backs to us, two broken, defeated men, listen as their lawyers express outrage at the notion of a no-bond order. The judge, on the other hand, doesn’t seem so bothered by the thought. With a bang of the gavel, he orders each of them held without bond.

And then, just like that, it’s over. My father and Goldie are led from the courtroom. The whole thing took less than twenty minutes. The clerk calls the next case.

The reporters rush out, one of them passing by us, already on her cell phone, calling in to her newsroom. “No bond,” she says into her phone. “Held until trial. Which means these boys will never see the light of day again.”

The way she said that, it hits both of us. Pop will spend the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary.

We are both quiet, taking that in, as everybody else files out of the courtroom, leaving Patti and me alone. The room feels odd like this, without a judge or lawyers or spectators, like a naked tree in the winter.

Then Patti says, “Well, on the bright side, it’ll save us some money on Father’s Day presents.”

I look at her, stunned. Then I burst out laughing. Don’t ask me why. There’s no script for how to handle shit like this. Patti and I will have plenty of ups and downs going forward. There will be lots of dark days. We have both changed and will never be the same. But we are still here, we are still standing, and we are still family.

One Hundred Nine

THE HOLE in the Wall, once my home away from home. Being here feels weird on many levels, one of which is that I’m here without Kate, my longtime partner, my friend, for a brief time more than that. My feelings for her, my memory of her, will always be complicated. She made life difficult for me at the end, but her heart was in the right place, even if her head was not. We never should have slept together. We never should have breached that wall. It colored everything. It made it harder for us to see what was going on around us. She deserved better.

Patti spins on her bar stool and gives me the once-over as I approach.

“How’re you doing?” she asks.

I shrug. “I’m a washed-out cop with a questionable future.”

She points a finger at me as she raises her beer. “But still a cop,” she says.

She seems happy that I’ve come out of this thing in one piece. Patti is always a mixed bag, a lot of work, but in the end, she was always looking out for me. Did she enjoy it, on some level, being the one helping me instead of the other way around? I’m sure she did. But in the end, what’s the difference? She was there for me when it counted.

Soscia, wearing a Hawks jersey, is so far into his pints that he can hardly stand. He falls into me and drapes an arm around my neck. “This guy,” he slurs to whomever is listening, which is nobody. “Best cop I know.”

“You’re a good egg, Sosh,” I say, then I catch someone else’s eye.

She walks up to me with a coy smile, her eyes down.

“Well, well, well,” I say. “Kim Beans, as I live and breathe.”

She looks up at me, the smile a bit brighter. “You heard about Margaret, I take it.”

“Of course I heard.” It was Goldie. My father is too proud to admit anything. But Goldie caved. The feds took the death penalty off the table, and he gave up Margaret. The FBI perp-walked her out of the Daley Center four hours ago.

“Congratulations,” she says.

I raise my eyebrows and smirk at her.

She nudges me with an elbow. “Ah, you’re not still sore at me, are you?”

I put a hand on my chest. “Sore? Why would I be sore? Because you were receiving those weekly photographs from Margaret Olson and forgot to mention it? Even though it would have cleared me?”

She wags a finger at me. “Just exercising my rights under the First Amendment,” she says.

“Yeah?” I lean into her. “Tell you what, Kim. Maybe someday you and I will meet in a dark alley, and I’ll exercise my rights under the Second Amendment.”

She deserves that, and she knows it. What does she care? This whole case rebuilt her career. She’s back on TV and has a great future.