The Black Book Read online

  The crowd roared in response. Everyone except Amy. Oh, she allowed for a smile, but it wasn’t the raunchy humor that held her attention. It was the person delivering it.

  By then Patti had moved close to Amy. She felt her body shaking. She approached the table but didn’t speak.

  Billy, on stage, picked up his phone and clicked a button, the button that Patti set up for him to allow him to upload his stand-up routines to that Facebook page he shared with his friend Stewart. Billy wouldn’t know how to work that phone if you put a gun to his head. He needed Patti for that. He needed Patti for a lot of things. Even if he didn’t know it.

  With Billy’s set over, Amy finally realized that Patti was standing next to her.

  “Do you know who I am?” Patti asked.

  Amy, taken aback, shook her head. “I’m sorry; I don’t.”

  “I’m Patti,” she said. “Patti Harney. Billy’s sister.”

  “Oh, okay.” Amy put out her hand. Patti didn’t shake it.

  “His twin sister,” Patti said.

  Amy drew back her hand with a questioning look.

  “Billy’s been through the wringer,” said Patti. “Do you know his history?”

  “I—I’m sorry…what is this—”

  “You do, don’t you? You probably know all about him. Because you’re investigating him. You know what happened to him, his family?”

  Amy didn’t respond, but Patti could see the defensive shield go up.

  “Can I help you with something, Patti?”

  “You sure can, Amy. You can stay away from my brother. That will help me a lot.”

  By that time Amy had had the chance to readjust from casual-greeting mode to hostile-conversation mode. “Is that any business of yours?”

  “It sure as hell is, Amy. And you better know I’m serious.”

  “Oh, that much I can tell.”

  “You ever have a pissed-off cop on your ass, Amy?”

  Amy stepped off her chair and faced Patti. “No, as a matter of fact I haven’t. Have you ever had a pissed-off prosecutor on yours?”

  Patti let a smile play out across her face. Amy, for her part, held her stare.

  “Stay away,” said Patti, drawing out the words, “from my brother.”

  Thirty-Eight

  “I’LL BE here all week,” I said before I clicked off the mike and placed it on the stand. I grabbed my phone, punched the icon to upload the routine onto Stewart’s Facebook page, and stepped off the stage.

  The bartender had a shot of bourbon and a beer chaser waiting for me, his little way of thanking me. He seemed to think my comedy drew people into the place. I didn’t know if that was true. I usually did my routines to vent, to go off on something that bothered me, kind of the observational-humor thing. Other times, when I was less in the mood but felt some obligation to get up on stage, I went on autopilot and just drew from the reserve of jokes I’d accumulated over the years. My brain worked that way. Ask me my online password for my bank account, and I need to look it up every time. Ask me about a joke that Richie Stetsafannis told me in fourth grade, and I can recite it verbatim.

  I downed the shot and chased it with the beer. A couple of guys I used to serve with on patrol were near the stage, and they pulled me to their table. I didn’t really feel like talking to them, but my mother raised a polite boy. We traded stories about our days in patrol, stories that had changed significantly with the passage of time, allowing us to remember ourselves as brave and daring and decisive instead of the scared puppies we really were, praying that we wouldn’t embarrass ourselves or, God forbid, shoot somebody.

  I found a break in the conversation and told them I had to take a piss, which was a lie but the easiest way to break free. My eyes quickly moved to the table where Amy Lentini and her boyfriend had been sitting. The table was empty.

  I looked over at the bar but didn’t see her there, either.

  I deflated. I couldn’t deny my disappointment. I didn’t understand it, but it was there. I was like a jealous schoolboy.

  I had tied on a pretty healthy buzz, and I had a big day ahead of me tomorrow. According to the note I had scribbled on the fly and left in the bank-teller slot, I was going to meet somebody at a subway station tomorrow night, and I had to get this right—I had to flush out my tail, who surely would be there.

  So I decided to skip out. I didn’t have my car. I had dropped it off and taken a cab to the Hole. When I pushed through the door, the wind smacked me. It was so cold outside that a lawyer would have his hands in his own pockets. But it felt good. It woke me up. I decided to walk a few blocks and see how that went.

  I made another decision, too. I pulled out my phone and, before I could talk myself out of it, dialed Amy Lentini’s number.

  She answered on the third ring.

  “Well, well,” she said.

  My spirits lifted. She had me on caller ID. She had taken the time to input my name into her phone. I know, I know—I felt like I was in grade school. Next up I was going to pass her friend a note saying Do you think she likes me?

  “Hope I didn’t wake you,” I said.

  “No, I’m good.”

  I couldn’t get much from her words. She wasn’t out of breath, so at least she wasn’t in the middle of mind-altering sex with the Chippendales dancer.

  “I heard your routine tonight,” she said.

  “Yeah, I was gonna stop over, but you were gone. Too much excitement for one night?”

  “Hey, I’m just a small-town Wisconsin girl. I have to get up early to milk the cows.”

  Yeah, right. But I liked that she downplayed herself that way, even if we both knew it.

  “Your boyfriend seemed nice,” I said.

  I couldn’t believe I said that. It was the half dozen shots of bourbon talking.

  You should hang up right now, you moron. Cut your losses.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said.

  “No? Does he know that?”

  “He does now.”

  He shoots, he scores!

  But I didn’t say anything in response. I’d already made an ass out of myself, bringing up her date in the first place.

  “Are you calling to confess, Billy? To admit that you stole the little black book?”

  I crossed an intersection without noticing that a car was coming right toward me. The driver didn’t even slow down. He just honked his horn and expected me to jog out of the way. He must have been born and raised here.

  “No,” I said. “I think I’m going to exercise my right to remain silent.”

  “And yet you called me.”

  She was a lawyer, all right. And she had a point. I’d called her. And I didn’t know why. Or maybe I did but didn’t want to admit it to anybody, including myself.

  “You ever eat?” I asked, feeling my pulse jack up, putting it all out there.

  “I—yes, I’ve been known to on occasion.”

  She wasn’t going to make this easy, was she?

  “Are you asking me to dinner?” she said.

  “No. I’m just taking a survey on people’s daily routines.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “But if you wanted to have dinner with me, that would be fine.”

  She seemed to like that, a cute little chuckle. “Well played, Detective. So now I’m asking you out.”

  “And I accept,” I said. “I mean, since you insist.”

  I punched off the phone to the sound of her laughter. I figured I should quit while I was ahead. I felt a little steam in my stride. The wind felt like a balmy ocean breeze.

  You don’t have the slightest clue what you’re getting yourself into, I thought to myself. But it will be fun finding out.

  Thirty-Nine

  THE NEXT morning was not so fun. I walked into the station feeling like I was carrying sand in my feet, like tiny anvils were hammering at the back of my eyes.

  Kate was already there, looking alert and fresh. She sensed me before she saw me. Her head moved s
lowly in my direction.

  When she looked at me, it was like we’d never met.

  For a moment, that is, and then she nodded at me.

  We hadn’t parted on good terms yesterday, to say the least. We had all but accused each other of stealing the little black book, of not trusting each other. But she was saying, with her nod, that we still had a job to do, and we would do it.

  So I nodded back. It was enough for now.

  The day passed slowly. We had a murder on the South Side, which apparently started as a robbery and turned lethal when one of the three suspects pulled out a knife. We had a dead body and vague descriptions. Forensics would take a few days and might get us somewhere; there was a lot of blood spilled, not all of it the victim’s, so if any of the offenders had records, we might have their DNA on file.

  We started with interviews in the morning. When it comes to most murders on the South Side, the word interview means “nobody saw nothing, nobody knows nothing.” It’s not that people don’t give a shit. They do. Most people in any neighborhood, no matter how rough, want the criminals to go to prison so the good people can live peaceably. The problem is that the gangs have these neighborhoods so wired that people who talk to the police have to spend the rest of their days looking over their shoulders. I had a murder one time near Cicero and 79th that happened on the street just outside a 7-Eleven. A security camera inside the store caught some good footage, and the manager turned it over to the police. Three days later, the store was torched, burned completely to the ground, and the street gang’s name had been scratched into the metal door to the back alley with a knife.

  Plus, as you may have heard, some people don’t trust the police.

  Put fear and loathing together, and it’s tough to get eyewitness testimony out here. So it was a tough day for us. By five o’clock, we shut it down. I would visit the victim’s family tomorrow to see if they had any information.

  “See you tomorrow,” I said to Kate—without looking at her—as we split up. She might have waved but didn’t say a word.

  When she was gone, I checked my phone again—the picture I’d taken of the note I had dumped in the teller’s window slot: Tomorrow, 6 p.m. Red Line, Jackson stop, northbound platform. Bring it with you.

  I’d chosen the subway platform for this bogus meeting because it was hard to follow me there without giving yourself away. Whoever was tailing me couldn’t hide in the darkness of a car with the headlights blazing, couldn’t watch from a safe distance with binoculars. No, if this person wanted to know whom I was supposedly meeting with, he’d have to get himself on that damn platform. And for all he knew, I might jump onto an arriving train and he’d have to follow.

  I picked six o’clock because it would be busy; if it was too late in the evening, the platform would be empty, and he’d be afraid to follow me down there because he’d feel exposed. At six, he’d feel comfortable in the knowledge that he could blend into a crowd while watching me and my supposed meeting partner.

  The catch in my plan? There was no actual meeting, obviously, and nobody was bringing me anything. That part I had to improvise.

  That’s what friends are for. And my only friend was Goldie.

  I made it to the platform at ten minutes to six. I went to the south end. I wanted to be conspicuous. I stood in the corner and faced north, so I could see the other people on the train platform. I could also see everyone across the tracks on the opposite platform—the people who were taking southbound trains.

  The problem was that it was hard to actually see them. We were in the depths of a Chicago winter. Everyone was dressed for it, bundled up in hats and scarves, jackets zipped up to their chins. I couldn’t get a good look at anyone’s face. The lighting was pretty good, but you can’t see someone hiding behind all that clothing.

  Goldie wasn’t going to come himself. He was going to send somebody. He said I wouldn’t know the guy, but I should expect a tall African American man in a camel-colored overcoat.

  At five minutes to six, a southbound train arrived, hissing to a stop. That meant everyone on the platform opposite me would get on. Anyone who didn’t—well, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? The only reason people were supposed to be on the platform was to take that train.

  When the train doors opened, a number of passengers got off, and the people waiting on the platform got on. Or at least it looked like that. It was a big crowd of people, and the train itself was between me and the passengers.

  When the train sputtered forward again with a heavy sigh and grunt, I scanned the platform. Almost everyone was moving toward the exit.

  Almost everyone.

  One man hung back. Wearing a brown stocking cap and a thick, chocolate-brown coat with the collar zipped high. His back turned to me. I hadn’t seen him on the platform previously. He’d just gotten off the train.

  And he wasn’t moving toward the exit. He was staying put.

  I pulled out my phone and pretended to talk on it. That was my crutch; I could look at someone but pretend that I was doing so absently, that my focus was on the conversation.

  In my peripheral vision, I saw someone moving toward me. I looked over and saw a big guy, African American, wearing a camel-colored overcoat and a colorful scarf. He made eye contact with me and nodded. He was my contact, the guy Goldie sent.

  Then I looked back at the guy across the platform, the stocking cap and chocolate coat. I watched him pull back his sleeve to look at his watch. His head crept up for just a moment, and his head turned in my direction.

  I looked away just before he caught my eye. “I know,” I said into the phone, my fake conversation. “I couldn’t believe it, either.”

  The guy across the platform didn’t see me looking at him, I was pretty sure. But I got a good look at his face in that nanosecond before I averted my eyes.

  I knew him. He was my boss.

  The man watching me from across the platform was Lieutenant Paul Wizniewski.

  Forty

  MY HEART started pounding. The Wiz, my boss, was the one tailing me.

  Did he know? Did he know I was Internal Affairs? Did he know that I was more than just a homicide detective, that I was working undercover for Goldie and BIA?

  Did he know that he was one of the main targets of my undercover investigation?

  The tall African American guy, he of the camel coat and colorful scarf, was making his way toward me now. Goldie had sent him, so he was almost surely BIA.

  The man walked up and stood next to me as though he didn’t know me—just another guy waiting to take a northbound train.

  I kept up my bogus conversation on my phone. I shook my head as I spoke, like something in the conversation was frustrating me.

  Yep, two guys just waiting for a train.

  I mean, we had to make it look like we were trying to be surreptitious, right? My tail—whom I now knew was the Wiz—would expect nothing less.

  As casually as I could, I turned around so my back was to the platform and, more important, so that I was facing away from Wizniewski. I wanted it to be easy for the Wiz to watch me, and if I had my back to him, he could stare all he wanted. He could even snap photos with his phone if he was so inclined.

  Now it was time for the guy next to me, Mr. Camel Coat, to sneeze.

  He did. Faking a sneeze isn’t hard, especially when the person you’re trying to fake out is across the train tracks from you. After he did so, Mr. Camel Coat turned away, an instinctive, polite thing to do, so he could blow his nose. He reached into his coat as he turned. He produced a handkerchief and a manila envelope, one large enough to hold a set of glossy eight-by-ten photographs.

  At this point we both had our backs to the Wiz, and we made a point of keeping a small distance between us so the Wiz could clearly see the envelope pass from Camel Coat to me.

  Camel Coat, without missing a beat, blew his nose, or pretended to, then folded up his handkerchief and turned around to face the platform again. He was good. I caught
a whiff of his aftershave as he turned. But I never looked directly at him.

  I stuffed the envelope into my coat and pretended to end my phone conversation. I turned around so that I, too, was facing the opposite platform again.

  Just two guys waiting for a train. Eyes cast casually downward, in a fog after a long day of work.

  Now that we were both facing the platform again and the Wiz could see our faces, it was time for Camel Coat to speak, just one word.

  “When?” he said.

  He enunciated the word sharply, so it would be easy to read his lips.

  Now it was my turn to utter one word, and I did it the same way, pretending to be casual but making sure the word would be easy to read off my lips, as though I were serving it on a silver platter to Lieutenant Paul Wizniewski.

  I said, “Soon.”

  Forty-One

  I MADE it back to my town house, stripped off my winter garb, dropped the manila envelope that Mr. Camel Coat had given me on the kitchen table, and poured myself a few inches of bourbon.

  To summarize: my boss was surveilling me, my sister was secretly meeting with the manager of the brownstone brothel, and my partner distrusted and probably despised me. And a prosecutor whom I found incredibly attractive, and whom I could not stop thinking about, wanted to put me in prison.

  Other than that, things were looking up.

  I carried my drink and the manila envelope up the stairs. I was anxious to put everything together, but I’d learned over the years that you can’t always force these things. Sometimes you have to sit still and let everything move around you until the pieces lock into place.

  My undercover investigation was a good example. I had stumbled over it, really. Nobody assigned me to it. It was just something that came my way when I wasn’t looking.

  Here’s what happened: around eighteen months ago, I was investigating a homicide in Greektown, some oily Mediterranean type who took a bullet in the wee hours of the night out on Adams Street near all the restaurants. You know—the ones with lots of white stucco, blue accents, flaming cheese, and waiters chanting Opa!