The Black Book Read online

  I looked up at him. Goldie didn’t say things casually.

  Goldie pointed at Kate. “Detective Fenton, you guys staked out the brownstone two nights before the raid. When the stakeout ended, Billy went home. What did you do?”

  Kate said, without missing a beat, “I left, too, but then I drove back to the brownstone.”

  I spun around to face Kate. “Huh?”

  Kate kept her eyes forward, on Goldie, avoiding my stare. “I drove back to the brownstone. I waited for the girls to leave. I followed two of them home.”

  First I’d heard of this. Because it never happened.

  “And what happened next?” Goldie asked as though he were a prosecutor in court, as though he already knew the answer.

  Because he did know the answer. This wasn’t the first time he was hearing it.

  “The girls went home to their apartment on the second floor,” said Kate. “I walked up to their building and looked at the buzzer assigned to the second floor. There were two names next to it. Sanchez and Daniels.”

  “Bullshit,” I said. “This is bullshit.”

  “There was a postcard lying on the walkway next to the mail slot,” Kate continued. “An advertisement, a sale at Macy’s or something. But it had a name on it. Erica Daniels.”

  “So you had one woman’s full name and a partial for the second,” said Goldie. “What happened next?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “Hell, even I can finish this story.” I looked at Kate. “You went to the station and did a criminal background check. It turned out Erica Daniels had a prior for prostitution. And you did a search on Sanchez and found the same thing. Their mug shots looked like the girls you followed. And suddenly—oh, my God, wouldn’t you know?—we knew that at least two of the women who spent the evening in that brownstone were hookers.” I threw up my hands. “Hallelujah! We have probable cause!”

  Goldie leaned against the wall. “Couldn’t’ve said it better, actually.”

  “Yeah, except for the minor detail that none of it actually happened. Kate didn’t follow those women to their apartment.” My arms came down by my sides. “I mean, guys, what are we talking about?” I turned to Kate again. “Did Goldie talk you into this? I mean, I know he wants to protect us, but there’s a—”

  “Who said it was Goldie’s idea?” she replied, as if she were insulted that I’d attribute perjury to him and not her.

  Kate stood up, face-to-face with me. “If we lose this case, it’s all over,” she said. “The mayor stays in office, right? Sure he does. He goes free. And his best buddy, the superintendent he appointed, Tristan Driscoll—he stays on the job, too.”

  Goldie said, “How long until the supe finds an excuse to run you off the force? Or, worse yet, he assigns you to traffic duty the rest of your career? If this case goes south, that’s your future, pal.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I won’t take my chances.” Kate shoved me. “This isn’t just about you, partner. My career goes down the tubes, too. I don’t get a say in this?”

  I let out air. “Katie,” I said.

  “Oh, now it’s ‘Katie.’” She made quotation marks with her fingers.

  I looked at Goldie. “When did this all come together? This little story of yours?”

  He said, “You mean this little story that will save the careers of not one but two police officers who are among the finest cops I’ve ever known? This little story that puts the bad guys where they belong? That little story?”

  I deflated. Goldie’s heart was always in the right place. He’d stand in front of a train for me. From his perspective, this was just a little gloss on the truth, a harmless twist, to prevent a miscarriage of justice—and, more important, to protect me. Always looking out for me.

  “Kate,” said Goldie, “give us a minute, wouldja?”

  That seemed like a fine idea to her. She grabbed her bag and walked out in a huff, barely glancing in my direction.

  Goldie raised a hand. “Just shut your pie hole and listen to me one time. I don’t like this any more than you do. It wasn’t my idea. It was Kate’s. She’s a grown-up. I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to. I prayed like hell your testimony would come in solid and none of this would be necessary. But now it is. We’re out of good choices here.”

  I shook my head, fuming.

  “It gets us to the right result,” he said. “It’s justice. You did good cop work. Every instinct you had was correct. So why should it end up that the scumbags walk free and two good cops get knives in their stomachs? How the fuck is that justice?”

  It wasn’t my first time in court, and I understood the art of presenting information in a way that favored your side, but that was spin, that was the fight. This—this was literally making up evidence. This I had never done.

  As if reading my mind, Goldie said, “Never in a million years would I have asked you to say this on the witness stand. Hell, I wouldn’t have asked Kate, either. She came to me with this. I tried to talk her out of it. You ever try talking Kate out of something?”

  I allowed for that. A pit bull was less stubborn than my partner.

  “And listen, at the end of the day, when my head hits the pillow and I try to put right and wrong on a scale and see which side’s heavier? All in all, I think what she’s doing gets us heavier on the right than the wrong. That’s the best I can do, sport.”

  I was still fuming, but there wasn’t much I could do. I was done testifying. Nobody was going to ask me anything else under oath.

  “It’s not your decision; it’s not mine,” Goldie said. “Let her do it, kiddo.”

  Seventy

  JUDGE WALTER McCabe adjusted his eyeglasses and looked over a courtroom filled to bursting. “The court is prepared to rule,” he said.

  The hearing had lasted three days. My testimony took up the first day. Kate’s filled the second day and part of the third, as defense lawyers poked and probed and came at Kate ten different ways, trying to challenge her surprising revelation that she had followed two of the prostitutes home from the brownstone one night, gathered their information, and discovered their criminal rap sheets. Why didn’t you ever document that information? they asked. Why didn’t you tell your partner, Detective Harney? Could it be that we’re hearing this for the first time, suddenly, conveniently, after Detective Harney’s testimony didn’t go so well?

  The courtroom was still. I heard the static ringing in the air that silence often produces. Or maybe that ringing was inside my head. The judge’s ruling would determine the rest of my career.

  “The court finds that the search of the brownstone was valid,” said the judge, reading from prepared text.

  I released a long breath.

  “The detectives’ surveillance gave them some reason to suspect that the brownstone was not a residence but a brothel, a house of prostitution. More important, Detective Fenton’s testimony—that she surveilled two of the women working at the brownstone, ran background checks, and determined that they were prostitutes—was credible, and it was sufficient to establish probable cause. On the night of the raid, the officers had probable cause to believe a crime was in progress, and they had reason to believe that, in the time it would have taken to secure a warrant, those men would have been gone and the evidence of the crime, so to speak, would have been destroyed. The court finds probable cause, coupled with exigent circumstances. The defense’s motion to suppress is hereby denied. State?”

  Amy Lentini rose from her seat. “State stands ready for trial, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. DeCremer?” the judge asked the mayor’s lawyer, who seemed to be the de facto leader of the defense team.

  Shaw DeCremer stood up. “Could we put off the jury selection until tomorrow, Your Honor?”

  The judge gave a slow nod. He understood. So did Amy. There wasn’t going to be a trial. They took their shot on a legal technicality and lost. If they went to trial, a dozen cops and a dozen prostitutes—all of who
m had been granted immunity for their testimony—would take the stand and publicly reveal every little detail of what happened that night behind closed bedroom doors. Kinky, humiliating details. The embarrassment far outweighed the minuscule chance for an acquittal. Every one of them would plead guilty.

  Already, Shaw DeCremer had approached Amy, followed by other defense lawyers. They were lined up like customers outside a Toys“R”Us on Black Friday, hoping to get their hands on the newest version of the Xbox.

  “The mayor will be pleading guilty,” said DeCremer, keeping his voice low, though I was sitting in the front row of the courtroom, so I could hear him whisper to Amy.

  “I’ll draw up the papers,” she said, shaking his hand. She might as well have called out, Next? It happened one after the other, all these lawyers who had drawn their knives and tried to slash me to bits copping their pleas and hoping for mercy from the prosecutor on an agreed disposition.

  I looked behind me at Kate, who got to her feet and mouthed two words at me.

  You’re welcome.

  I should have enjoyed this more. The eyes of the nation were on this courtroom, and we had won. Maybe the path we took was a little rocky, but I had told nothing but the truth, and Goldie was right—justice prevailed.

  But I still had my briefcase at my feet, and it still contained an eight-by-ten photograph of Amy Lentini walking up the steps of the brownstone. I hadn’t yet said a word to Amy, because all our focus had to be on this hearing, but now the hearing was over, and I felt something in the pit of my stomach, splashing and simmering.

  When the last of the lawyers had given his notice to Amy and the courtroom was otherwise empty, Amy looked at me, relieved but not satisfied. “I’d give anything to know how Kate’s testimony came about,” she said.

  “I don’t think you would,” I said.

  Her eyebrows twitched. “She swore to me it was true.”

  “I know she did. She swore under oath, too.”

  When Kate first told Amy what she planned to say under oath, Amy didn’t take it well. She pressed Kate over and over. She told Kate she would not suborn perjury; she would not let Kate testify falsely. But Kate never backed down. She swore it was the truth. They went back and forth like that for more than an hour, and Amy was clearly skeptical, but she didn’t—and couldn’t possibly—know that Kate was lying.

  Amy even pulled me aside and asked me if Kate was lying. But Kate, quite skillfully, had kept me out of it by saying that she never told me about her surveillance of those two women. So I didn’t have to lie. I told Amy the truth: it sounded like bullshit to me; I was pretty sure she was lying, but I wasn’t there. I’d gone home. I couldn’t say for certain what Kate did or didn’t do once I went home after the stakeout.

  Amy ultimately decided to accept Kate’s testimony. She didn’t really have a choice.

  From the look on her face, Amy had a pretty strong feeling that the card game she’d just won was played with a stacked deck, but she didn’t know it for sure, and so she played the hand she was dealt.

  “Well,” she said, warming up to her victory, letting it wash over her. “Should we celebrate?”

  I looked around the courtroom to ensure that we were alone. Then I reached into my briefcase, pulled out the manila envelope, and produced the glossy photo of Amy walking up the steps of the brownstone. I held it up for her to see, but when she reached for it, I drew it back. It was my only copy.

  Her expression dropped, her posture stiffened. “Where did you—”

  “Where did I get this photo? It’s hardly the most important question. Hell, it’s not even in the top ten.”

  Amy blinked hard and took a step back. Her eyes worked along the floor, but finally, after a long moment while my heart drummed so hard in my throat that I doubted I could speak, Amy’s eyes drifted up to mine.

  Her voice flat, her eyes hooded, she whispered to me.

  “Not here,” she said.

  Seventy-One

  I FOLLOWED Amy from the criminal courts building at 26th and Cal to her condo in Wrigleyville. I played talk radio in my car as I drove. With our split-second news cycle, everyone was already talking about the outcome of the hearing. Mayor Francis Delaney had announced, outside the courtroom, that he would be resigning today.

  And just like that they were already talking about who would succeed him. A number of aldermen and county commissioners were interested in running for the mayor’s seat, but the presumed front-runner would be Congressman John Tedesco.

  All because of my case. I should have felt adrenaline, some sense of power or awe, but instead I felt dread.

  We both found parking at the curb, went under the awning and through the downstairs door, took the elevator up to the sixth floor, and walked down the hallway to her apartment. All in silence, not a word spoken. We’d spent days, weeks, preparing for a case that we had just won, but we looked like we were attending a funeral.

  It made me think of my friend Stewart, now freshly buried, reunited with his wife in heaven. What he used to say about reaching the point in life when you’re sick of the bullshit and only want what’s real.

  But I didn’t feel that way. At that moment, as the two of us walked in grim silence to her apartment, I didn’t want real. I wanted the fairy tale. I wanted what Amy and I were building together. At that moment, I wished I’d never seen that photograph of her outside the brownstone. I wanted to will it out of my brain, pretend I never saw it, and we would live happily ever after—cue the music and roll the credits.

  Amy entered the apartment and hung up her coat. She walked into the center of her living room and turned. Without any hint of remorse or embarrassment, she said to me, “I want to know where you got that photograph.”

  “No,” I said. “It’s my turn to ask questions. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

  Amy gestured toward my briefcase, where I had put the photograph. “That’s a crime,” she said.

  “Tell me about it. I think we just convicted a dozen people for it.”

  Her eyebrows wrinkled, forehead creased. “That’s not what I’m talking about. You think—what? You think that photograph shows me about to have sex with a prostitute? Really?”

  I didn’t have an answer. The truth was, I didn’t have any idea what to make of this photograph.

  “I’m talking about obstruction,” she said. “Whoever gave you that photo is guilty of obstruction of justice.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in. “What are you telling me? This was part of an investigation?”

  Amy dropped her head, placed her hands on her hips. Took a breath. Made a decision.

  “Billy,” she said, raising her head, “did you ever wonder why I was so hell-bent on finding the little black book? From the first moment after the bust, when we hauled you and Kate into Margaret’s office, all we cared about was the little black book. Did that ever strike you as odd?”

  “It did,” I answered. “But I figured you were trying to smear us. To protect the mayor. Margaret Olson and Superintendent Driscoll—both of them had their jobs thanks to the mayor. They wanted to keep him in power so they’d stay in power.”

  She listened to all that and made a sour face, like those political shenanigans were beneath her. Then her expression broke, and her eyebrows raised. “Wow,” she said. “You must have had a really low opinion of me.”

  And she of me. But we had gotten past that. We had sailed those treacherous waters and found something on the other side, something warm and soothing, something that made my heart go pitter-patter like a schoolboy kissing a girl for the first time. I couldn’t deny it. I was all in. I was in love with Amy Lentini.

  “Talk to me,” I said.

  She nodded, took another breath, confirmed her decision. “For the last year or so,” she said, “the state’s attorney’s office has been conducting an investigation. We have reason to believe that Chicago police officers have been running a protection racket. Taking bribes to let people wa
lk.”

  I didn’t move. Didn’t show a thing. Didn’t mention the fact that I had been investigating the same thing as an undercover officer for Internal Affairs.

  Two different law enforcement agencies investigating the same damn thing, not saying a word to each other.

  “And this brownstone was front and center in our investigation,” she said. “Powerful people, with a place to go to get their jollies, indulge their fantasies, whatever—but it needs to be a safe place, right? They can’t be caught publicly. The shame would be too intense. A woman like Ramona Dillavou knows that. She’s not going to draw the rich and famous to her club if they’re afraid of a police raid, right?”

  “Right,” I managed.

  “Ramona Dillavou was paying off cops. Protection money.”

  “Who?” I asked. “What cops?”

  She looked at me dead-on. Held perfectly still. Like a breathtaking portrait, my Italian beauty, my work of art. All that was missing was the gold frame and the artist’s signature in the corner.

  “Who was Ramona paying off?” I tried again.

  The longer Amy paused, stood frozen, the harder my heart pumped.

  “Kate,” she said. “Detective Katherine Fenton.”

  Seventy-Two

  I FELT a No reach my lips but didn’t say it. “Kate?” I mumbled. My brain tried to keep pace with my racing heart, tried to connect the dots. “Are you sure?”

  “I can’t prove it, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “Process of elimination. It has to be her.”

  I brought a hand to my face. The woman with whom I’d partnered, shared so much over the years—she was on the take and I didn’t know it?

  “We were just about to find out,” she said. “We’d been tracking Ramona’s bank accounts, her cash withdrawals. We were about to close in. I was literally in the process of drafting a complaint for a search warrant. We were no more than days away from raiding the brownstone.”

  I slowly nodded. “But then I raided the place first.”