The Black Book Read online

  “Which allows me to manipulate.”

  She started to respond, then opened her hand. “Exactly.”

  “How is everything here?” the waiter said, pouring the last of the wine into our glasses.

  “Great,” I said. “I’m learning a lot about myself.”

  I ordered a second bottle. Amy smiled to herself. I could imagine what she was thinking—I was trying to get her drunk.

  When the waiter left, I said to her, “If you think I stole the black book, then why are you here with me? Why would a pristine, well-credentialed attorney with a bright future want to mingle with a crooked cop?”

  Amy thought about that for a while, her eyes dancing, chewing on her bottom lip. I could see the hint of a smile, but she was forcing it down.

  “I don’t know,” she finally said. “I’ve been trying to figure that out myself.”

  Forty-Five

  I PULLED up in front of Amy’s building and threw it into park.

  “I’ll walk you to your door,” I said.

  She looked at me, an eyebrow raised.

  “Just to the door,” I said. “To be a gentleman and all that.”

  “Chivalry,” she said.

  “There you go.”

  It was cold out, but I didn’t feel it much. I was pretty charged up.

  At the security door to her building, Amy turned to me. “This was fun,” she said. “I don’t do this very—”

  Then I kissed her. The element of surprise, I guess, except I was as surprised as anyone. I couldn’t help myself. I’d been wanting to press my lips against hers from the moment I laid eyes on her, even when she was grilling me, trying to put an end to my career, trying to put me behind bars. I didn’t know why, and I was tired of trying to figure it out.

  She let me do it. Another surprise. She parted her lips only slightly, no tongue, no major make-out session outside her building. But enough to be intimate, to let me know that it was welcome, that she wanted it, too.

  She put a gloved hand to my face, and I drew her against me.

  Okay, so maybe it was a make-out session. She drew a breath and opened her mouth. I kissed her deeply. Our tongues found an easy rhythm. I ran my hands through her hair and knocked her hat askew on her face until it was about to fall between our noses, at which time she grabbed it and tossed it away. She came at me even harder, moaning softly.

  I mean, kissing like that was so intimate. I’d had a few flings over the last three years, including with Kate, but it was mostly greedy, horny, animal stuff—groping and grinding and thrusting—nothing like this, a galaxy far, far away, opening myself up again, letting someone in, surrendering to another person. I hadn’t felt like this since, well…

  Since my wife. Since Valerie died.

  The thought of her shot through me like poison. I felt myself withdraw. For a moment, I thought my heart was going to burst through my skin.

  I didn’t think Amy noticed. She probably thought I was just coming up for air. She took a long breath, too, and put her face against mine. Then she quickly drew back to get a look at me.

  “You’re…crying,” she said.

  “No.” I wiped at my cheek. “Just the cold. Just the cold.”

  She looked at me differently, like she was searching my eyes, discovering something about me.

  “Just the cold,” I said again.

  She didn’t buy it, but she didn’t challenge me, either. Both of us were surprised.

  Get hold of yourself, Harney. What’s your freakin’ problem?

  “Billy,” she whispered.

  “My eyes tear up in the cold,” I said.

  She nodded, still with that look on her face, trying to read me.

  “I…okay, look,” I said. “There’s something you don’t know about me. I used to be married. Three years ago, there was…we…”

  “I know,” she said. “I know all about it.”

  I blew out air. “Okay. So it’s a little weird for me…”

  We both took a moment to decelerate. But what had just passed between us—wow. It would take me hours to fall asleep tonight.

  She put her body against mine. “I know what happened,” she said. “And it’s none of my business. I have no right to say this. But I’m going to say it anyway. Even though I wasn’t there. I’m just going to say it anyway.”

  I was still trying to catch my breath. She drew my face to hers, as if she were going to kiss me again. But she didn’t kiss me. She just held my face in her hands and whispered the words to me.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

  She planted one last soft kiss on my lips and walked into her building.

  Forty-Six

  I DROVE back to my town house in a fog. I should have been more careful. I knew that. Wizniewski was watching me closely, and I was sure that he’d just killed Camel Coat, the guy I’d met in the subway. There was no reason he would stop there. If he was trying to put the kibosh on my investigation, I would be next.

  Still, I was so shaken by everything that had happened with Amy. It was just a harmless dinner and a good-night kiss, but—no, it wasn’t just a kiss. It was some kind of connection, something that didn’t come from a word or a gesture but from something deep inside of us, something each of us repressed, that we released in that kiss.

  Jesus, Harney, what are you—a poet all of a sudden?

  I got into my town house and dropped my keys and coat and walked upstairs like a zombie. I walked into my bedroom, saw the king-size bed, the right side of the bed (my side) rumpled, the comforter turned back, the pillow turned sideways. The left side of the bed (Valerie’s, once upon a time) immaculate.

  It wasn’t your fault, Amy said to me.

  A nice thing to say. But what did she know?

  My hand, trembling, reached for the bottle of bourbon, half full, on my bedroom dresser. I opened my throat and emptied the bottle. It was dumb, a terrible idea, but I needed this night to end.

  I dropped the empty bottle and heard it break on the floor. I took a deep breath and waited for the alcohol to kick the ever-loving shit out of me. It didn’t take long.

  I staggered down the hall to the small bedroom by the hallway bathroom. Inside was a toddler bed in the shape of a princess carriage, shades of pink and purple. A pink toy box on the floor filled with stuffed animals and princess dolls. The walls painted a light green, matching the area rug, pink with green polka dots. I remember it took me an entire afternoon at Menards to match up the wall paint to those polka dots.

  Lying on the bed was a tiny skirt, lavender and frilly, and a white T-shirt that read, in glittery purple letters, MY DADDY LOVES ME.

  I fell against the wall and dropped to the floor. I let it all out. I couldn’t stop. I made a small puddle on the floor. I cried so hard that my lungs seized up, my stomach twisted into knots.

  I cried so hard that I couldn’t breathe.

  I cried so hard that I didn’t hear the front door open.

  I did hear the footsteps, though, coming down the hallway. I recognized them. Funny that footfalls can have such a rhythm, such a sound, that you can attribute them to a person. I guess when you’ve heard them your entire life…

  Patti walked in and tucked in her lips, folded her arms.

  “Oh, my,” she said. “Okay, handsome, come on.”

  I wiped at my face with my shirt sleeve. She helped me to my feet, like a parent would for a child, and walked me to the bedroom. The half bottle of bourbon had now combined with the wine I drank at dinner to turn everything upside down.

  “Sleep is what you need,” she said as she tucked me into bed, pulling the comforter over me. “Everything’s going to be fine now.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come. I heard Patti go downstairs then come back up and sweep up the broken glass from the Maker’s Mark bottle. Then I felt her breath on my face.

  “Everything’s gonna be fine now, little brother,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay.”


  Sleep hovering over me from all directions, swatting away images that shot before my eyes—

  —a little girl in a birthday hat, blowing out a single candle on a purple cake—

  —Valerie, with tears in her eyes, showing me the first ultrasound photo—

  It wasn’t your fault

  —the whirl of police sirens—

  —my friend Stewart sitting with me in the intensive care unit, telling me to keep the faith—

  —but focusing on my sister’s words, fighting off all other images and gripping tightly to Patti’s words. Everything’s gonna be fine now.

  When I opened my eyes again, my alarm was screaming at me. Unforgiving sunlight was piercing through my window. Patti was gone.

  But the television was on. The same news channel I typically watched.

  A TV reporter, standing outside a house in Lincoln Park, with police tape behind her, police officers and Forensic Services technicians moving up and down the stairs.

  “…authorities believe she was tortured before she was killed…”

  I knew that house. I had searched that town house, top to bottom.

  It was the house that belonged to Ramona Dillavou, manager of the brownstone brothel.

  Forty-Seven

  I PULLED my car within two blocks of Ramona Dillavou’s house. It was the second morning in a row that I’d arrived at a crime scene filled with media trucks and reporters. A patrol officer was trying to direct early morning rush-hour traffic around the barricades.

  The first person I saw was Goldie. Of course he was there. The guy was everywhere. He nodded at me and waved me toward the front door.

  “The maid found her this morning,” he said. “She died sometime last night.”

  We took the stairs up to the second floor. Ramona Dillavou was staring right at me, sitting in a chair, her head lolled to the right, a hopeless grimace on her face, her eyes lifeless.

  Her mouth was bloodied. I thought maybe part of her tongue had been cut, but that was just a guess.

  She was wearing a silk blouse that was unbuttoned. Her bra had been removed. One of her nipples was missing, replaced with dried blood. She had cuts all over her midsection—not slashes but slow, careful, painful incisions.

  Her hands, tightly gripping the arms of the chair, had been butchered, too. Several of her long polished fingernails had been removed entirely. Her left pinkie had been cut off at the knuckle.

  But her bare feet were in the worst condition. Several of the painted nails had also been removed, and several of her toes had been smashed so hard that they looked like mashed potatoes.

  It didn’t take a whole lot of detective work to realize that Ramona Dillavou had been brutally tortured.

  “Someone went Guantánamo Bay on her,” said Goldie.

  I moved closer, taking care where I stepped. I saw ligature marks on her wrists and feet. They were thin, not wide. They’d cut through the skin.

  “He handcuffed her wrists and ankles to the chair,” I said. “Made it easier to torture her.”

  “Somebody really wanted to find that little black book,” said a voice behind me.

  My body went cold. I turned and saw Lieutenant Paul Wizniewski. He was staring directly at me, the words he’d just spoken an accusation.

  “We might have some questions for you about this,” he said, nodding toward the victim.

  Yeah? Well, I have plenty of questions for you, Wizniewski.

  And then it hit me. Maybe it was seeing the Wiz in the same room as Ramona Dillavou. But suddenly it smacked me like a roundhouse punch I should have seen coming long ago.

  I remembered the night I first met Ramona Dillavou, the raid on the brownstone brothel.

  The raid that the Wiz tried to talk me out of making.

  I wasn’t supposed to raid the brownstone that night. Nobody knew I was going to. Hell, I didn’t even know. I wasn’t a Vice cop. I was a homicide detective. I only went to that brownstone because that’s where my suspect in the University of Chicago murder had gone.

  I had accidentally stumbled upon a brothel where Chicago’s elite and powerful came to get their jollies.

  It had always struck me that it was incredibly risky for these prominent people, these millionaires and politicians, to visit a house of prostitution. But now I realized why they didn’t consider it so risky.

  They knew they wouldn’t be arrested. Because they had protection.

  And then suddenly I show up, unannounced, investigating a murder with a small band of my trusted fellow cops, and I arrest the whole lot of them.

  That’s why Wizniewski tried to stop me from raiding the place that night. When I insisted, he had no choice—too many of us had seen too much—but first he tried very hard to talk me out of it.

  We’re not Vice cops, he said to me that night. We don’t make a habit of arresting johns and hookers.

  You fuck this up, he’d warned me, it could be the last arrest you ever make. It could tarnish your father. And your sister. You could get into all kinds of hot water over this. You don’t need it, Billy. You got a bright future.

  I thought he was just being a chickenshit, trying not to ruffle feathers by arresting prominent politicians and the archbishop. I thought he was just playing it safe.

  But he wasn’t playing it safe. He was trying to help the people who were paying him for help.

  The brownstone brothel was part of his protection racket.

  Nobody knew that better than Ramona Dillavou. She knew the cops protecting her, and she knew the brothel’s clients who were being protected. She had a treasure trove of information in that brain of hers.

  And now she was dead. Now she could never talk about a protection racket. Now she could never name names.

  I stared into Wizniewski’s eyes. I knew he killed Camel Coat, the guy from the subway. No way was that a coincidence.

  And now, I realized, he probably did Ramona Dillavou, too. He was tying up all the loose ends.

  “Let’s start with this question,” said the Wiz. “When was the last time you saw the victim?”

  The last time I saw Ramona Dillavou? Well, the last time I saw her she was secretly meeting at Tyson’s, a bar on Rush Street, with my sister.

  As if on cue, as if a director had called into his headset Enter stage right, my sister, Detective Patti Harney, walked up the stairs and looked at the dead, tortured victim.

  Then she looked at me.

  Everything’s gonna be fine now, little brother, she said to me last night in my drunken, self-absorbed stupor. Everything’s going to be okay.

  No, I thought to myself. No. It couldn’t have been Patti. Not Patti.

  “I’m waiting for an answer,” said the Wiz.

  I looked at Wizniewski, then back at my sister.

  What the hell was going on?

  The Present

  Forty-Eight

  THE SMELL of bratwurst sizzling on the grill moves my stomach in a positive direction. And the sound of my brother Aiden cursing when some brat juice squirts in his eye as he hovers over the grill takes me back to a comfortable memory.

  “Almost ready,” Aiden announces, stepping off the deck into the soft grass in the backyard, wiping sweat off his forehead. “They’re gonna be perfect.” He makes an okay sign with his fingers.

  “Like brats are hard to cook,” Brendan mumbles out of the side of his mouth as he hurls a football in Aiden’s direction. “Hey, Chef Pierre, just burn the shit out of ’em and throw buns over ’em.”

  It’s my father’s sixty-first birthday. We’re keeping it low-key, just a backyard barbecue with immediate family, Brendan flying in from Dallas and Aiden driving up from Saint Louis. Pop said he wanted nothing special, as we had a big blowout for his birthday last year (the big six-oh), but I know the real reason is me. Everyone looks at me—the baby brother, the victim of a traumatic brain injury, and oh, by the way, the sole survivor of a double murder that took the lives of Detective Katherine Fenton and assistant state’s at
torney Amy Lentini—as though I were a fragile porcelain doll. Let’s not have a big party, they probably said to one another. Billy’s not ready.

  Physically I’m back to—well, maybe not normal, but decent. I can walk without assistance. I’m up to eleven push-ups. I can sleep for five hours without interruption. My appetite has returned, though I’m unable to eat vegetables, or at least that’s what I tell Patti every time she puts them in front of me.

  Mentally—that’s another story. I do miss Kate, because she was such a part of my life for so long. She was my partner, my friend, and for a brief window even a friend with benefits. I saw her almost every day for years. But things got weird near the end. Our relationship was strained. We stopped trusting each other.

  And then—Amy. The last thing I remember about her is the night we had dinner. At the end of the night, we kissed, and I felt something explode inside me, like there was electricity on her lips; I felt moved in a way I’d never felt since Valerie died. I remember that it rattled me, that it scared the shit out of me. I remember feeling like Amy felt the same way about me.

  And now all I have is a dull ache. A pain I can’t locate or identify. Is it the ache of losing someone with whom you were falling in love? Or the sting of betrayal?

  I wish I could remember.

  “We spend all winter bitching about the cold, then we can’t stand the summer heat.” My father, holding a bottle of Bud Light, wiping at his face. Even as the sun begins to disappear behind the trees in Pop’s backyard, it’s still a sweltering mid-July evening.

  That’s Pop, though, holding back. This is how he shows concern. His idea of checking in on me is to comment on the weather. It’s the Harney way. We aren’t a touchy-feely bunch.

  “How’s the investigation?” I ask.

  “Which one?” he says. As the chief of detectives, my father is involved in countless cases at the same time. He basically oversees all of them.