The Black Book Read online

NO, I thought to myself when I got home. I was pacing the floor in my bedroom. Impossible. Amy wouldn’t have told anybody about my surveillance. But then how did the source know I was tailing Kim?

  Wasn’t I careful? Discreet? I was good at surveillance. It was my specialty.

  But I must have blown it somehow. That was the only explanation. I wasn’t careful enough. Kim’s source did some reconnaissance of his own—or her own—and somehow made me and ditched out.

  I blew it. And I wouldn’t get another chance.

  Yes, I thought to myself. That must be it. It wasn’t Amy. It was my own negligence.

  I checked my text messages. Nothing more from Kate since this afternoon, when I promised her I’d be in touch soon. No more pornographic photos. No more guns to her head. No more angry, flirtatious, unstable messages.

  Dread suddenly filled me. One reason I hadn’t heard from Kate could be a very, very bad reason. A reason that had something to do with putting a gun to her head.

  Screw text messages. I dialed my phone and rang Kate.

  Four rings before it went to voice mail. “Just checking in with you,” I said. “Please call.”

  Then I added a text message for good measure: How are you doing?

  I paced the floor with more urgency, like it was some kind of Olympic event, wondering if I should jump in my car and head over to Kate’s. But it was almost two in the morning. That was crazy. Still, if she was thinking of harming herself, if by some chance she’d actually been serious when she sent me that photo with the gun—

  Let me know you’re ok, I texted.

  —and then the panic began to rise in my chest, and I suddenly blamed myself, feeling guilty that I didn’t take her more seriously when I first got that photo this afternoon, that maybe it was a cry for help and I was so caught up in my surveillance that I didn’t pay sufficient attention—

  —again, for the second time in my life, I didn’t see the warning signs—

  —call back, Kate, please call back—

  I threw my coat back on and grabbed my car keys off the table by the front door. I went into the garage and popped open the garage door, a wave of chilly wind sweeping in, then I jumped in my car and started the ignition.

  And my phone buzzed. I grabbed for it with such intensity that I fumbled it, the phone falling to the floorboard in my car. I reached down and grabbed it, read the face of it. It was a text message from Kate.

  Fuck u

  I breathed out. Never in my life had I been so glad to have someone tell me to fuck off. At least Kate hadn’t…done the unthinkable.

  I wiped sweat from my forehead, put my head against the steering wheel.

  I typed a response into my phone. Do you want me to come over?

  I wasn’t sure if that was a good idea, so I added the words Just to talk. Then I hit Send and heard my message swoosh to Kate.

  Within seconds, another buzz of my phone, then one more, another rat-a-tat-tat of messages from Kate.

  Yeah I get that its just to talk u made it clear u aren’t interested I don’t have to be hit over the head

  I don’t need to talk to u

  You had your chance. Remember that I gave u the chance

  So now she didn’t want to see me? Over the last two days, she was desperate for my company, trying everything in her power to woo me, and now she didn’t want anything to do with me. What had suddenly changed?

  Well, one thing had changed: I had just stopped tailing Kim Beans.

  My body went cold. It felt like everything in the world skidded to a halt.

  I killed the engine. Let the garage light go off. Sat in darkness inside the car.

  Only Amy knew I was tailing Kim. She knew I was doing it, and she knew how long it would last. She knew specifically when it ended.

  Kate had gone to rather considerable lengths to get me to pay her a visit over the course of that surveillance, from come-hither notes to angry words, from pornographic messages to suicidal references. Anything to get my attention. And then, the moment the surveillance was over, I was like a pariah to her, about as welcome as a case of the shingles.

  In the long, dark, heavy silence of the car, I let out a chuckle. Because it was so implausible that it merited a good, hearty, mocking laugh.

  There was absolutely, positively no way Amy and Kate were in on this together.

  Seventy-Seven

  I HEADED to work feeling hungover, though I hadn’t had a sip of booze last night. Instead I’d spent the night trying to work it all out, trying to remain objective and logical, but hitting a brick wall at every turn.

  It was time to talk to Kate once and for all. It was time to lock all this down.

  On the drive in, at a stoplight, I pulled up ChicagoPC on my phone and found Kim Beans’s weekly column. Sure enough, there was no photograph today, the first time in memory that Kim’s column didn’t contain a snapshot of somebody approaching that brownstone. Kim began her column with this:

  No pic today! Sorry! But hopefully absence makes the heart grow fonder!

  Making a joke of it. Sounding cute and whimsical. She didn’t look so carefree last night, when her source stood her up.

  I wasn’t feeling so carefree, either.

  When I got to work, I found Kate’s desk neat and orderly as always, the desk lamp turned off, her coat absent from her spot on the coatrack. She wasn’t in yet. I checked my watch. I was a little late, which made Kate even later. Kate was never late.

  “There he is.”

  I heard Soscia’s voice.

  “The big cop who won the big trial. Now he thinks he doesn’t have to come in to work anymore.”

  Sosh was by his desk with my favorite lieutenant, Paul Wizniewski, both of them huddled over Sosh’s computer.

  “Where’s Kate?” I asked, taking off my jacket.

  “What, you guys don’t ever talk anymore? She’s taking a few days off.”

  Of course she was.

  “Nice of you to show up,” said the Wiz, nodding.

  I had overtime up to my chin and hadn’t taken any vacation all year. I had all kinds of time built up. But I didn’t respond. Wizniewski would like nothing more than to write me up for insubordination.

  “What’s got your attention?” I asked, nodding to them as they focused on Sosh’s computer. “Is there a new episode of My Little Pony today?”

  “Nah,” said Sosh out of the corner of his mouth. “We’re all about to hear our favorite congressman tell us that he’s going to do us the honor of becoming our next mayor.”

  Oh, right. Congressman John Tedesco, the presumed favorite in the upcoming mayoral race to replace Francis Delaney. Since the mayor’s conviction and removal from office three days ago, the congressman had been saying he was “exploring” the possibility of running for mayor and “talking to constituents,” all the bullshit things candidates say before they take the plunge.

  I walked over to join them, getting a nice pungent whiff of cigar for my trouble. Wizniewski didn’t even look in my direction, which was fine by me.

  I was just in time. The video was live-streamed, and Congressman Tedesco, silver-haired and handsome, had just approached the lectern, which was studded with microphones from various media outlets.

  “I scheduled today’s press conference to make an announcement about my intentions for the upcoming mayoral race,” said the congressman. “Over these many weeks, I’ve spoken with many of you around this fine city…”

  “Oh, fuck yourself. Just come out with it,” said Soscia.

  “But over the last few days, I have come to a different conclusion. I have looked at the state of this city, and I’ve decided it needs a clean sweep. It needs someone from a different generation. It needs someone who isn’t afraid to make the tough decisions, to crack down on the corruption that plagues this city.”

  I held my breath. Tedesco wasn’t running?

  “This city needs Margaret Olson, the Cook County state’s attorney.”

  No. What?


  “Get the fuck outta Dodge,” Soscia mumbled.

  Congressman Tedesco held out his arm in invitation. Then Margaret Olson approached the bank of microphones and gave the congressman a warm embrace.

  “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me,” said Sosh. “Maximum Margaret?”

  I couldn’t believe it, either. Margaret Olson was running for mayor?

  I looked at the Wiz, who didn’t say a word. Didn’t seem all that surprised, either.

  “I am humbled beyond words,” Olson said into the microphones.

  “Looks like you did her dirty work for her,” Wizniewski said to me. “You knocked the mayor out of office so she could take his job. What did she promise you?”

  I didn’t take the bait from the Wiz. In other circumstances, I might have, but I was still too stunned to speak.

  “When Congressman Tedesco approached me about running, my first instinct was to decline,” said Olson into the camera. “But then I thought about this city and its problems and whether I could be the one to clean it up.”

  “You’re a fuckin’ shark,” Sosh said to the screen.

  A shark. The same thing Kate said about Amy. The same Amy who swore to me, up and down, cross her heart, hope to die, that Margaret Olson wasn’t prosecuting the mayor for political reasons and that Olson would never, ever run for mayor.

  I felt something sink inside me—that feeling again, cascading through my chest, burning my throat, that I didn’t have the entire story.

  That feeling, again, that I didn’t know which way was up.

  Seventy-Eight

  AMY LENTINI got off the elevator at the Daley Center after hours, after darkness had long been settled over the city. Her eyes were down, intent, something on her mind, the weight of the world on her shoulders. She moved so swiftly that she almost didn’t notice Patti.

  Patti shifted so that she was blocking Amy’s path.

  Amy looked up, startled, and stopped in her tracks.

  “Patti,” she said simply.

  “Amy, I’ve told you this before.” Patti drew the words out. “I want you to stay away from my brother.”

  Amy snapped out of her fog. Eyes narrowed. Whatever had been bothering her before she saw Patti seemed to combine with this confrontation, and the mixture was toxic. Amy looked to be at a boiling point, at her wit’s end.

  Patti said, “Did you know that three years ago, his little girl died of a stroke? Did he tell you that? I’ll bet he didn’t. He doesn’t like to—”

  “He didn’t tell me,” said Amy, “but I knew. I looked into his history.”

  “And did you know that his wife, Valerie, couldn’t handle it? Did you know that while Billy literally lived at the hospital for weeks on end waiting for his daughter to come out of that coma, his wife stayed away? Drank herself nearly to death?”

  Amy studied Patti, shifted the bag on her shoulder. “I know most of that. I know she committed suicide afterward.”

  “Right afterward,” said Patti. “Immediately afterward. Billy came home from the hospital, having just lost his baby girl, and found his wife dead in the bathroom.”

  “Patti—”

  “She took Billy’s service weapon out of their safe, walked into the bathroom, and blew her brains out with it.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “So on top of losing his little baby, on top of literally living in the hospital for weeks, just on the off chance that his daughter might open her eyes one time, he also got the privilege of feeling guilty for doing that, for not taking better care of his wife.”

  Amy didn’t answer.

  “He’s broken, Amy. It snapped him in half. He plays it like he’s okay; he jokes around and does his job, he’s everybody’s friend, but he’s not okay.”

  Amy stepped back from Patti. “So he can never have another relationship? Ever again?”

  “Not with you,” she said. “Not with someone who’s using him.”

  The fire flared in Amy’s eyes. Patti could feel the heat coming off of her.

  “I’m using him?”

  “You’re investigating him,” said Patti. “You always have been. Now your boss wants to be mayor? And I suppose there’ll be a nice job in it for you, now that you did your part and cleared the path for her.”

  “Patti, listen to me—”

  “I see that Congressman Tedesco stepped out of the way this morning,” Patti interrupted. “How nice of him. How convenient. The clear front-runner decides that the job he’s always wanted, mayor of Chicago—suddenly he doesn’t want it so much after all. Oh, and he thinks Margaret Olson would be the perfect candidate!”

  Amy didn’t respond. Patti stepped closer to her, so tight they could feel each other’s breath. “So how’d that work, Amy? What did you guys have on him? Was Congressman Tedesco in the little black book? Did you threaten to publicly expose him if he didn’t step aside and endorse Margaret? Is that what all those photographs in Kim Beans’s column were for? Threats to Tedesco? Weekly taunts? You could be next, Congressman. You could be in next week’s photo. Is that what you really want?”

  Amy, up close, so close Patti couldn’t accurately gauge her expression, went cold, frozen like a statue.

  “How’m I doing so far, Amy? Am I getting warm? Blazing hot?”

  Amy still didn’t speak, remained motionless. Her eyes avoided Patti’s, looked off in the distance, but not a hazy stare—an intense focus, like she was trying to locate a fixed point far away.

  You’re wondering how I figured it out, Patti thought. Maybe dumb little Patti, the little girl everyone had to coddle, the one who didn’t quite measure up to her twin brother, the black sheep of the family, ain’t so dumb after all.

  Patti grabbed her arm. They locked eyes. Amy could see it. Patti was sure of it. Amy could see that Patti was no longer joking, was no longer issuing a friendly warning.

  “Stay away from my brother,” she hissed. “It’s the last time I’ll say it.”

  Patti turned and left the building. She walked through the plaza, the brutal cold, the whipping wind. Then she stopped and turned back, looked through the large glass windows of the Daley Center.

  Amy was still standing in the lobby, but now she was looking back at the elevator she had just gotten out of. She stood there a long moment, staring at that elevator.

  Finally Amy started moving again. But she didn’t leave the building. Instead she turned and disappeared back into the elevator, went up to her office, long past the time that everyone else had gone home.

  It was too cold outside to wait. So Patti retreated to her car, drove it back around so she was parked alongside Daley Plaza.

  And she waited. Two hours passed. Even longer.

  It wasn’t until close to ten o’clock, when downtown was frozen and desolate, that Amy Lentini appeared once again, walking quickly through the lobby, hailing a cab outside and jumping in.

  Patti considered following Amy home, but she didn’t bother. She already knew where Amy lived.

  Seventy-Nine

  IT WASN’T as hard as Patti thought it might be.

  Amy Lentini left for work the next morning at seven—quite the early morning riser, but Patti wasn’t surprised. Amy was the kind of person who always put in the extra effort, determined and ambitious and single-minded as she was. First to arrive at the office, last to leave—as Amy demonstrated last night, leaving near ten o’clock.

  Getting past the locked front door of Amy’s apartment building would be hard, but it just required the right timing and a few precautions. The timing part wasn’t difficult. The apartment building housed young professionals on a budget as well as students from city colleges who kept irregular hours. People were coming and going at all times of day.

  She waited until noon, accepting the fact that there would never be a perfect time to break into Amy’s apartment. There was no such thing as perfect.

  She screwed up her courage and got out of her car. The wind slapped her face, and the cold immedi
ately penetrated her outer layers and chilled her skin.

  But it only took a few minutes before someone came out of the front door. A student, presumably—a young, squirrelly kid with a goatee and nose ring, a backpack over one shoulder.

  Patti made sure she was there to catch the door. That was the timing part.

  The precaution part: she was wheeling a carry-on suitcase behind her. Looking the part of a young professional returning from a trip. Looking nothing like someone breaking into an apartment.

  And she held her phone up to her ear with her other hand, talking into it, saying, “I’m finally home! What a nightmare of a trip!”

  Those things together, the suitcase and phantom phone conversation—and, yes, the fact that she was a woman—meant that she did not present the slightest hint of a threat to the college kid, who barely paid her any notice at all as he held the door open for her.

  And then she was inside!

  She kept up the ruse with the fake phone call, laughing into the phone—“You’re kidding! She said that?”—in case anyone else was in the lobby.

  But nobody else was. She was all alone. Her eyes scanned the spacious room. First she looked for security cameras—none. Shame on them, but good for her.

  One wall was filled with locked mailboxes that looked like safe-deposit boxes at a bank. Some newspapers—the Tribune, the Sun-Times, and the Wall Street Journal—on the floor, wrapped in clear plastic.

  A door to the left. Was it locked? Didn’t hurt to try, not as long as the lobby remained empty. It might lead to something good.

  It wasn’t locked. And it led to something wonderful—a stairwell, the perfect way to get up to the sixth floor. Elevators were no good. There could be a security camera inside, and anyway it was cramped, confined, too easy to notice other people. The stairwell was far better. She picked up her suitcase by the handle—it was almost empty—and climbed the stairs.

  She paused when she hit the sixth floor. Listened. Didn’t hear anything. Opened the door and stepped onto the cheap carpeting. A long corridor.

  She oriented herself, realized that Amy’s apartment was right by the stairwell.