The Black Book Read online

No, we would stick to the important stuff. Major crimes. Big-time corruption.

  As far as I knew, nobody but Goldie and I knew that I was undercover. Not even my sister, Patti, or my father knew. Nor did Kate. It felt odd not telling those people closest to me, but really, I was doing them a favor. I was working on something that could be pretty explosive, and if my role came out, a lot of shit would hit a lot of fans. My family and Kate would be better off claiming, truthfully, that they never knew a thing about it.

  We sat at the bar and ordered corned-beef sandwiches. The bartender put a wicker basket of popcorn in front of us. We dove into it, stuffing handfuls into our mouths.

  “I had two weeks sitting on my suspended ass, doing nothing but thinking about this,” I said. “And all I could think was, this whole thing with the little black book isn’t about a little black book at all. It’s about me. Somebody made me. Somebody knows I’m undercover. Somebody knows what I’m investigating. And whoever it is wants to stop me.”

  “Nobody knows what you’re investigating. Nobody but me. Your name isn’t anywhere.” Goldie looked over at me. “You told me you never told anyone. Not your sister, not your partner—”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then nobody knows but you and me. You’re a ghost, as far as that’s concerned.” He whacked my arm with the back of his hand. “How’d your meeting go with the prosecutor?”

  I drew back. “What, you know everything I do now?”

  “Kid, I know what you had for breakfast today.”

  That was Goldie. Eyes and ears everywhere. I couldn’t have a better person looking out for me.

  “This trial’s gonna be a bitch,” I said. “She’s afraid they’re gonna punt the whole thing on probable cause.”

  “Translation: it would be your fault,” Goldie said, cutting right to the chase.

  “No fuckin’ foolin’.”

  “Ride it out,” he said. “You never know when the winds might shift.”

  I looked at him. Goldie never opened his mouth without a reason.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  He shrugged. “I’m just sayin’—the state’s attorney’s golden girl, Lentini, the one who two weeks ago was trying to make you for stealing the ledger.”

  “The little black book.”

  “Right. Now she’s the one trying the brownstone case. Now she needs you. That strike you as odd?”

  It did, actually. “What do you think it means?”

  “Maybe our good state’s attorney is recalculating. Maybe Maximum Margaret is taking a lay of the land and seeing things different.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, her first reaction was, you took down the mayor, and the mayor’s her Chinaman, right? He’s the reason she became state’s attorney. So she was trying to smear you.”

  “For sure.”

  “But now?” Goldie threw up his hands. “Maybe she’s thinking, hell, the mayor doesn’t have a prayer now—he’s going down for this thing. So she might as well make the best of it.” Goldie looked at me. “Somebody’s gotta take the mayor’s place, right?”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “Maximum” Margaret Olson could be the next mayor. Sure. Of course.

  “This Amy Lentini,” Goldie went on. “She’s their ace. She was a federal prosecutor up in Wisconsin. You remember a couple years back, that US senator up there went down for taking a bribe?”

  “She did that case?”

  “Yep. She’s the real deal.”

  “Wisconsin. Huh.”

  “Yep. Born in Appleton, went to Madison for undergrad, Harvard Law.”

  Our sandwiches arrived: corned beef piled high on rye, a huge spear of a pickle, and thick potato chips.

  “Why am I not surprised that you know all about her?” I said.

  “It’s my job.” Goldie took a massive bite of his sandwich. I did the same. “The situation’s fluid, is all I’m sayin’,” he went on. “Nobody knows which side to be on. So just ride it out for now.”

  That sounded about right.

  “Stay close to Amy Lentini,” he said. “Keep an eye on her.”

  That wouldn’t be hard. I didn’t really have a choice, anyway.

  “But more important than any of that, solve your problem,” Goldie said, running his tongue over his teeth. “Find that little black book. That’s the key to everything for you. You find that thing, your problems are solved.”

  Damn straight. Now that I was back on the force, that would be my priority.

  “How’s our thing going, by the way?” he asked.

  My undercover investigation, he meant. The one that only Goldie and I knew about. The one that, if it came out the way I thought it might, would turn the Chicago Police Department upside down.

  “I’m close,” I said.

  “How close?”

  “Soon,” I said. “Very soon.”

  Thirty-One

  “WELCOME BACK, sport.” Soscia smacked me on the back as he passed by my desk.

  “You miss me?”

  “I got no one to talk to. My new partner, he doesn’t like hockey. How do you not like hockey?”

  He meant Reynolds, his partner, the rookie in the detectives’ bureau.

  The cops with me on the raid that night were Detectives Lanny Soscia, Rick Reynolds, Matt Crowley, and Brian Benson.

  But it was hard to imagine Sosh, whom I’d known since we were cadets in the academy, doing anything like that. Reynolds was so green I wasn’t sure he was even toilet trained yet. Nice kid, but he didn’t know detective work from needlepoint. Crowley? The guy was pushing retirement. I was pretty sure he was in adult diapers by this point. And Benson? I mean, a great guy, good for a laugh, and he’d have your back when it got sticky out there, but he didn’t have an original thought in his brain.

  And really, none of those four detectives had volunteered for the assignment. I asked them to come along only because I had a hunch that busting into a Gold Coast brownstone might get a little messy. I didn’t realize how messy, but the point is that none of these guys had any idea I’d ask them to come along until earlier that day.

  Whoever took that little black book didn’t do it on the spur of the moment. He was thinking things through. He had a plan.

  He or she, that is.

  As if on cue, Kate walked in, throwing her bag down on her desk without a word to me or even a glance in my direction. I felt the temperature plummet.

  “Harney.” Lieutenant Wizniewski—the Wiz—my supervisor, wiggled his fingers at me.

  The Wiz was there that night, too. He tried to talk me out of the bust.

  It felt like an old-school Agatha Christie novel: One of the people in this room is the thief! One of you took that little black book.

  The corned-beef sandwich sat like a brick in my stomach. I needed some coffee. The coffeemaker, a glass container that was probably purchased during the Eisenhower administration, held only a trace of burned sludge at this point in the day, and I didn’t feel like going to the effort of making more, so I passed it without stopping.

  “Yeah, Lew,” I said, leaning against the doorway of Lieutenant Wizniewski’s office.

  Wizniewski’s desk looked like a hoarder’s paradise, with piles of paper threatening to topple over. The place reeked of cigar smoke, and he had a half-smoked stogie resting on the corner of the table.

  “No smoking, boss,” I said. “Maybe you hadn’t heard.”

  “You see me smoking it?”

  Wizniewski was a politician first, a cop second. If what Goldie said was right, and nobody was sure which way all this was going to play out, the Wiz must have been reading tarot cards at night.

  If that was all I could say about the Wiz, I could live with him. There are politicians in every police force, ass kissers, suck-ups. But word was that the Wiz was a dirty cop.

  And he was on my radar in the undercover investigation I was doing. He just didn’t know it yet. I was very much looking forward to the day he did.

 
“I just wanted to give you some friendly advice,” he said to me.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Don’t fuck up again.”

  “That’s good advice, Lew. Hang on.” I patted my pockets. “You get a pen and paper? I wanna write that down before I forget it.”

  The top of his head turned red. It always did when you got a rise out of him, which wasn’t hard.

  “Always the comedian, this one.” He seemed like he was looking for something amid the clutter on his desk. He couldn’t find something on that desk if it were set on fire.

  “I’m gonna find that black book,” I said, staring at him.

  He stopped what he was doing and looked up at me. “Yeah? Why you telling me that?”

  “I just thought you’d want to know.”

  Seemed like he took it for the accusation it was. I didn’t think that forehead could get any redder.

  “Best of luck with that,” he said evenly.

  Thirty-Two

  RAMONA DILLAVOU walked out of her house just past seven. She looked like the wealthy woman she was, wearing an expensive long fur coat and matching hat, her bleached-blond hair hanging down in a stylish bob, her head held high, a confident strut to her walk. She didn’t go far. There was a car waiting for her outside, an average-looking Chevy sedan. Uber, probably, or maybe someone she knew.

  I was in my car, so I followed behind. Parking in Lincoln Park is tricky, so this could pose a problem for me; if she was in an Uber car, as I suspected, she could just be dropped off, and I’d have to park my unmarked vehicle somewhere.

  Ramona Dillavou was released on bond after her arrest two weeks ago at the brownstone. As the manager of the brownstone brothel, she was the best lead to the little black book. That night she denied its existence in a profanity-laden tirade that took some of the polish off her sophisticated veneer, but the point was that she didn’t tell us squat. She lawyered up almost immediately and refused to answer our questions at the police station, too. The five thousand dollars she had to come up with to get sprung was probably chump change to her.

  I didn’t have much to go on. She had a record consisting of two priors—one for prostitution and one for promoting it. She had graduated into the big time with the brownstone brothel and its exclusive clientele, but I didn’t know much else about her. All I knew for sure was that we had put her brothel out of business and she’d be looking for another way to make some money.

  The car dropped her off in the Gold Coast, south of Lincoln Park, on Rush Street. Tyson’s was a high-end restaurant with a bar where on occasion one might find an aging, unattractive man with an uncommonly beautiful woman on his arm.

  I double-parked my car and took my time crossing the street. I had no idea what I was going to find. More than likely she was just meeting someone for dinner and drinks, in which case I’d strike out—just as I’d struck out the other times I had followed her over the last two weeks. So far no luck, but a Boy Scout keeps trying.

  The place was packed, the circle of people around the bar three deep at least, all sorts of merriment and chatting. The lighting was dim, and there was some kind of jazz-swing music coming over the speakers. Loud and crowded was a good thing. It made it easier for me to disappear.

  I pulled out my phone for a couple of reasons. One, if I needed to duck my head quickly to avoid detection, I’d have an excuse for staring downward. And two, I might need the camera on the device.

  I looked around the place and didn’t see her on a first pass. She could be in the dining area, which would be harder for me. She was wearing a fur coat, though she might have taken it off by now.

  That reminded me of a joke, and I hadn’t sent my friend Stewart anything for a week or so, so I put my iPhone camera on the video setting and spoke into it.

  “A guy named Jerry gets out of the shower at his country club,” I said. “The cell phone by his locker is ringing, and he answers it. ‘Honey,’ the woman on the other end says. ‘I just saw a fur coat I’ve been dying to buy. It’s five thousand dollars.’ Jerry says, ‘Wow. Five thousand for a coat—that’s a lot. But go ahead; it’s okay.’ She says, ‘Well, since you’re in a good mood, I just passed a Mercedes dealership, and there’s a new model I just love. But it’s a hundred and fifty thousand.’ Jerry says, ‘A hundred and fifty grand for a car? Jeez, I guess so. Sure, go ahead.’ She says, ‘You’re the best, honey,’ and hangs up. Jerry hangs up the phone and puts it down. His buddies at the gym say, ‘Jerry, we had no idea you had that kind of cash.’ Jerry says, ‘I don’t. I’m flat broke. By the way, any of you know whose cell phone this is?’”

  I punched the Facebook icon next to the Video button on my iPhone, which transfers the video immediately to the Facebook page I share with Stewart. My sister, Patti, who understands these contraptions better than anyone I know, somehow configured that Facebook button onto my camera so I could automatically upload videos. Otherwise I’d be clueless as to how to do it.

  I hadn’t visited Stewart in his nursing home for months. I met him at Children’s Memorial Hospital three years ago, when we both sat in the ICU for weeks. For Stewart, it was his grandson, who’d been hit by a car and was clinging to life. Making him laugh at my corny jokes was the only thing that got me through it all.

  Somehow sending him my stand-up routines at the Hole in the Wall and posting the occasional joke like this made me feel like I was doing a good deed. His granddaughter once told me that he checked that Facebook page every single day, first thing in the morning.

  I looked up from my phone and immediately looked down again, having caught a glimpse of Ramona Dillavou’s shiny blond hair. So she was in the bar area, seated on the opposite end from me. I turned away and moved between two businessmen, which wasn’t hard in this rugby scrum, so I could get another look from a hidden vantage point.

  I raised my eyes and saw enough to see Ramona turned to her left, talking to someone. She seemed to be keeping her voice down, showing some discretion.

  But I couldn’t see the person next to her because the bar was wrapped around the liquor station in the middle, the bottles of booze obscuring my view.

  So I moved to my left to get a better angle, to see the person with whom she was conversing. I was hoping that it would be a man—that Ramona Dillavou, now out of a job as the manager of the brownstone brothel, was returning to her previous calling as a prostitute; that I could catch her in the act and make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Tell me where the black book is or violate your bond and go back in the clink.

  I positioned myself behind some people and shot another look across the bar at Ramona.

  I peeked and looked back down at my phone.

  Then I peeked again.

  My heart kicked into overdrive. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

  Maybe, I told myself, it was the dim lighting. Maybe I just didn’t get a good look.

  I looked again, holding my stare. Even though I might be recognized. Even though I knew what I’d seen.

  Dim lighting or not, I hadn’t made a mistake.

  Ramona Dillavou wasn’t talking to a man. She was talking to a woman.

  A woman I knew very well.

  Thirty-Three

  “PATTI,” I mumbled to myself.

  I worked my way through the crowd and out the door into a throng of people. I pulled up my collar as I walked down the wind tunnel that was Rush Street, the question buzzing through my head.

  What was my sister doing with Ramona Dillavou, the manager of the brownstone brothel? I couldn’t make it fit. It just…didn’t make sense.

  I pivoted suddenly and turned back toward the restaurant, almost colliding with a couple right behind me who didn’t appreciate my sudden stop. I stepped back and looked toward the restaurant, as though if I stared at it long enough, something would change. I considered returning to the bar and taking yet another look, but of course that made no sense, either. I’d seen what I’d seen.

  What the hell are you doing
, Patti?

  I continued south toward my car, navigating through the crowd of lively pedestrians, the sounds of car horns blaring and drivers yelling and tipsy people laughing and chatting.

  I pulled out my car keys, a natural thing to do, since I was heading toward my car. I bumped into a man coming toward me on my right and let my keys fall behind me. I mumbled an apology and bent down, creating a small space as people navigated around me.

  “Excuse me, excuse me,” I said. “Sorry.”

  I grabbed my keys off the wet sidewalk, righted myself, turned back, and headed to my car.

  It was double-parked on Rush. It was a small miracle that it was still there. I had pushed my luck.

  I was hoping that I had a little bit of luck left. Because I was going to need it.

  Or so I thought. It’s a cliché for a cop to talk about his gut, his hunch, but clichés aren’t always wrong. It’s part experience and part intuition. It didn’t hurt that I’d been working undercover with BIA for the last three years, either. It helped me know how to pick up the signs.

  It’s not hard to do. If you’re in that mode, it’s almost automatic. You stop and glance over your shoulder when a pretty woman passes. Or you stop at a corner, waiting for the traffic light to change, and turn back.

  Or you allow yourself to bump into someone and pretend to drop your keys.

  Any excuse to take a look behind you. You don’t look directly at any one person. You don’t make eye contact. No, you just take in the crowd. You look for any tickling of a sensation that someone is moving as you move, stopping as you stop, shadowing your movements.

  I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t swear to it. But I had a pretty good idea that somebody was tailing me.

  And now I had to decide what to do about it.

  Thirty-Four

  I GOT in my car and drove north, the only direction I could go. I made a quick left and then another onto State Street, now heading south, navigating potholes and death-defying pedestrians who zigzagged through traffic to cross the street. (In Chicago, obeying Don’t Walk signs is usually considered optional.)