The Black Book Read online

  “Congressman Tedesco was the presumed front-runner for the mayoral job,” I say. “He had a lot of money and everyone’s support. It would’ve been his job for the taking. And suddenly he drops out and endorses the state’s attorney? I mean, c’mon.”

  “Your Honor, object to relevance and speculation,” says Margaret Olson.

  Stilson, bless his heart, does his best, even though he’s winging it. “He’s explaining the course of his investigation, Judge. He’s not saying it was true.”

  “Yes, I am,” I say.

  The judge—and Stilson—glare at me.

  “The testimony is permissible as far as it relates to what the defendant suspected and how it affected his investigation,” says the judge, a brittle old guy named Bradford Beatty. “It is not to be considered something the defendant knew for a fact. And Mr. Tomita,” the judge adds, wagging a finger, “assert some control here or I will. Even a defendant testifying to his theory of innocence has his limits.”

  “Anyway,” I say, “that’s what I was thinking. That the state’s attorney was using these photos to blackmail Congressman Tedesco. She had a photo of him. Because the congressman was a client of the brownstone brothel.”

  “Okay,” says Stilson. “So what—”

  “So I tailed the reporter, Kim Beans, in order to discover her source. For three days I stayed on her. I even saw her wait for several hours at a restaurant, the Twisted Spoke, where it sure seemed like she was waiting for someone. But nothing came of it. The source never showed.” I nod my head. “The source knew I was tailing Kim. Someone had tipped off the source. But that didn’t make sense to me. The only person in the world who knew I was tailing Kim, besides me, was Amy.”

  Stilson’s chin rises. “Okay. So what hap—”

  “So naturally, that made me suspicious of Amy,” I continue. “Because Amy was a top aide to Margaret Olson. She was her number two. Amy had sworn to me up and down that Margaret Olson had no designs on the mayoral job. And then suddenly I’m watching the state’s attorney announcing her candidacy for mayor. I…I didn’t know what to think.”

  Stilson nods, waits to see if I have anything else to say. Lawyers like to prepare well in advance, rehearse and rerehearse, for testimony like this. Stilson doesn’t have the slightest idea what will come next. He’s been relegated to asking the basic What happened next? question so many times that the jurors could ask it for him.

  “So what happened next, Billy?”

  “That day, the day that Margaret Olson announced her candidacy for mayor, nothing happened,” I say. “I was just in a fog. I didn’t know whom to trust, whom to believe, whom to suspect.”

  I nod to Stilson to indicate I’m done, a little signal we seem to have informally worked out.

  “What about the next day?”

  Stilson, and presumably the jurors, know that the next day was the day that Amy and Kate were murdered.

  “The next day,” I say, “Amy called me and asked me to come to her apartment.”

  Ninety-Six

  The Past

  I DROVE to Amy’s condo, the traffic heavy, talk radio breathlessly discussing the new revelation in the Chicago mayoral race. Congressman Tedesco had bowed out. State’s attorney Margaret Olson was now the front-runner.

  The announcement had been made yesterday, and it had thrown me just as it had thrown the media, but for different reasons. I’d wanted so badly to confront Amy about it. But I hadn’t reached out to her, not yesterday—I needed time to process it. She’d promised me that Margaret had no desire to run. And suddenly she was running—with Tedesco’s blessing, with his endorsement.

  It all pointed to Amy and Margaret from the beginning. The reason they were so sensitive about the little black book. The reason that somebody had been slipping Kim Beans those photographs of the brothel’s clientele. It had been a veiled warning to Congressman Tedesco that his photograph could be next if he didn’t behave like a good little boy.

  And if it was true, it was brilliant. They’d taken down the mayor and blackmailed his would-be replacement so that Margaret could have the job all to herself.

  I thought about it all last night. I thought about it all day today at work. It meant that the Amy I knew wasn’t the Amy I knew. It meant that the Amy I knew was capable of not only blackmail but also of murder.

  I need to talk to you, Amy had said over the phone five minutes ago. That was it. Nothing else. I’d protested, thrown out some sarcastic remark, but all she kept repeating was I need to talk to you.

  And the reason I went to her apartment? The reason I didn’t just punch off the phone or cuss at her or accuse her?

  Simple. Because I wasn’t ready to believe any of it. Because I wanted to believe that the Amy I knew really was the Amy I knew.

  I’ll be right over, I told her. It wasn’t the smart play. I had no element of surprise on my side. I didn’t know what was waiting for me at her apartment. I was falling straight into whatever trap she had set.

  I pulled up to her apartment building and walked up to her front door, under the awning outside. I knew this building well enough. There were other ways in. There was an underground parking lot serviced by an elevator that went straight up past the lobby. There was a back door by the garbage bins, too. There was a stairwell, if you wanted to avoid elevators. There were surreptitious means of access if you needed them.

  I could picture myself doing it. Slipping in one of the other entrances, picking the lock on her door, and employing at least some element of surprise. Not a lot, but a little.

  But I didn’t. Because I had made a choice. A choice to give Amy the benefit of the doubt.

  I pushed the buzzer, and her voice came through the speaker.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  The buzzer came next, the front door releasing pressure with a soft whoosh.

  I opened the door, walked through the foyer, and took the elevator up to her floor.

  I walked down the empty hallway. Reached her door. Stopped and listened.

  Then rapped my knuckles against the door.

  She opened the door a crack, those angelic eyes peering at me. And darting around, looking to see whether I was alone.

  I was alone.

  My weapon was loaded and secure, but I was alone.

  I didn’t know if I could say the same for her.

  Ninety-Seven

  AMY OPENED the door a crack and backed away from it.

  I walked in and closed the door behind me. I didn’t lock it. You never know when a quick exit might be necessary.

  I threw off my winter coat and tossed it, leaving me in my sport jacket and blue jeans—what I wore to work today.

  Amy took another step back.

  “Where is it?” she said to me, her voice trembling.

  I didn’t catch her meaning.

  “The little black book,” she said. “Where is it?”

  I shook my head. “Seems like we’re right back where we started, Amy.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Me first,” I said. “My question first.”

  She didn’t like it, narrowed her eyes. Hurt, confusion, maybe fear across her face.

  “Why didn’t Kim’s source show up this week?” I asked. “Kim went to the meeting place to get her weekly incriminating photograph. I watched her. But the source never showed. Why didn’t the source show?”

  Amy cocked her head at me. “How should I know?”

  I walked over to the breakfast bar by her small kitchen, ran my hands underneath it. Picked up the sugar bowl resting on it and looked inside it. Felt behind the photograph of Amy and her parents posing on a beach somewhere warm.

  Did the same thing in the rest of her kitchen. The counters, the coffeepot, the spice bottles, the cookbooks. Felt my hands around and inside everything, like it was foreplay.

  “What are you doing?” Amy asked.

  “Somebody tipped off Kim’s source,” I said as I ran my hand over the top of the refrig
erator. “The source knew I’d be watching.”

  Amy gave me a wide berth as I passed her and walked over to the couch, giving it a once-over with my hands, feeling the cushions and pillows, picking up the flower vase and emptying out the fake flowers, then returning them to the vase. Looking at each of the framed photographs on the coffee table, feeling each of them.

  “Oh, I get it,” said Amy. “The only person who knew you were following Kim was me. So I must have tipped off Kim’s source. Which means I knew who the source was in the first place. Which means I’m behind this whole thing.”

  I looked at Amy, saw the hurt in her eyes. The woman I loved with all my heart. The woman I wasn’t sure I could trust.

  It was like I’d stolen the wind from her. She remained silent. A long moment passed. I didn’t want to believe it. I wanted to trust her so badly my bones ached.

  Neither of us knew what to say. It was so quiet in the room that I heard the tick of the clock on the wall behind me as the minute hand inched forward.

  I turned and looked at it. An ornate little clock hanging on the wall. It had a picture of a rooster on its small porcelain face and Roman numerals in a fancy font.

  I walked over to the clock. Reached up to it with both hands, my jacket hiking up accordingly.

  “You brought your gun,” Amy said, seeing the holster.

  I pulled the clock off the wall, gently lifting the wire over the nail. A decorative piece, a French-country design that fit the decor of the place, running on a battery. I flipped it over and found it.

  A small square thingamajig. Even if it were seen—and it was never supposed to be seen—it could pass as some kind of battery compartment or something.

  A bug. A wireless recording device.

  I suddenly hated myself.

  Amy wasn’t the only one who knew I was tailing Kim. Whoever was on the other end of this eavesdropping device heard our whole conversation when we hatched the plan, right here in this room.

  That person heard a lot of other conversations, too.

  I removed the bug from the back of the clock and held it in the palm of my hand. Amy’s eyes widened when she saw it. She knew what it was. She had been a federal prosecutor for years, and the feds love these things.

  She frowned. Put a hand to her chest. The realization, dawning on her, that someone had invaded her privacy, that someone was listening to everything she said in this apartment.

  I dropped the bug on the floor and crushed it with my boot. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I should have trusted you.”

  I started toward her. I thought of touching her, embracing her, caressing her, but I could see how cold she was, how unsure. We were still negotiating a truce. I had just figured out what I came here to learn. I had answered my question. But Amy still had a question for me. She was still a few steps away from fully trusting me.

  “If you trust me now,” she said, “then why do you still need your gun?”

  I nodded, reached behind my back, and removed my firearm. Held it with my thumb and index finger, the weapon dangling upside down, and placed it on the coffee table near her.

  She looked at it, then looked at me.

  Then in one movement, she took a step backward and picked up the gun, holding it awkwardly in her hands, pointing it at me.

  “Okay, now back to my question,” she said. “Where’s the little black book?”

  Ninety-Eight

  AMY, STILL spooked by the recording device I’d found in the living room, probably worried that there was more than one in that room, motioned me toward the bedroom. She made me go first, keeping her distance, still aiming my gun at me.

  When we reached the bedroom, Amy looked around. She had the same thought I did—this room could be bugged, too. She walked over to an iPad resting on the windowsill and pushed a button. Some music came on, symphony music, strings. She turned it up—it was loud enough to run some interference but not so loud that we couldn’t talk.

  Amy fixed the gun on me again. It was time to get back to business. Though the way she held the gun made me think it might have been her first time handling a weapon.

  “I had a copy of the little black book,” she said to me.

  “You—you had a copy of it all along, and you—”

  “Not all along,” she said. “I got it yesterday. After your sister, Patti, paid me a visit at my office.”

  She laid it out for me. Yesterday, after Margaret Olson had announced her candidacy for mayor, Patti confronted Amy as she was leaving the Daley Center.

  “Patti explained her whole theory,” she said. “That Margaret was blackmailing Congressman Tedesco. That Margaret had a copy of the little black book, and it named Tedesco as a client. Maybe she even had one of those incriminating photographs of Tedesco going into the brownstone, like the other ones Kim Beans published. That the whole thing was a scheme so Margaret could remove the mayor from office and take his place, with Tedesco not only getting out of her way but also actually endorsing her and giving her his money.”

  “Sounds right to me,” I said.

  Obviously not to Amy.

  “You didn’t want to believe it,” I said, “but you couldn’t deny that it made some sense.”

  Amy nodded with reluctance. “Right. So I went back up to Margaret’s office. I have a key. There’s a safe under her desk. It’s been there since the 1970s, when whoever was state’s attorney wanted to keep some sensitive papers private or something. Anyway, nobody knew about the safe but Margaret and me.”

  “You broke into it,” I said.

  “I…I knew the combination. She opened it in front of me once. She was running late for a refinance, and the closing papers were in there. I didn’t mean to pay attention, but she sort of sang out the number to herself, and I heard it. 9-2-1-6-0; 9-2-1-6-0. It’s her sister’s date of birth, September 21, 1960.”

  The music from the iPad, violins and cellos, the notes dancing about, rising and falling in crisp, short strokes, adding a dreamlike quality to the whole thing.

  “You opened it,” I said, “and you found the little black book.”

  “I found a thumb drive. I brought it back here and booted it up on my home computer last night. And yes,” she said. “It contained a PDF of the little black book.” She swept a hand. “And now it’s gone. It was inside my desk drawer last night, and now it’s not. Somebody broke into my apartment today and stole it.”

  That was a concern, a major one. But there were more immediate concerns on my mind.

  “Amy,” I said, “was Congressman Tedesco’s name in there as a client?”

  Amy closed her eyes and nodded. “Yes.”

  “So Margaret was blackmailing him.”

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t need to.

  “Did the little black book list payoffs to cops?”

  Amy nodded, her eyes moving away from mine. “One cop,” she said. “One name, over and over, once a month, for the last three years.”

  Ninety-Nine

  I FELT something stir inside me. It was what we had thought—that the real value, and the real danger, of the little black book lay not in the names of the clients but in the name of the crooked cop who was receiving extortion payments from the brownstone.

  The name of the cop was in that book.

  “What name?” I asked. “Which cop?”

  And then I felt a buzz in my pocket.

  I pulled out my phone. It was a text message from Kate:

  Need to talk to u

  Now was definitely not the time. I texted back:

  Not now

  I lowered the phone and looked at Amy. “So whose name was it?” I asked.

  Amy didn’t want to answer.

  “Amy,” I said, “whoever’s name is in that little black book is probably the same person who bugged your apartment. It’s probably the same person who stole the little black book from your apartment today. It’s probably the same person behind all of this.”

  Amy nodded slowly, as if sh
e already had figured that out.

  “How long before they come here looking for you?” I said.

  My phone buzzed again. I raised the phone to see Kate’s next message:

  I’m right outside her door open up

  “Shit.” I lowered the phone. “It’s Kate. She’s out in the hallway right now.”

  Amy’s eyes widened in panic. “Kate’s here? You brought her here?” She backpedaled, the gun trembling in her hands. As if her worst fears had just been realized.

  “No, I didn’t. She must have followed me or something.”

  “Oh, shit. Oh, God. Oh, shit.” Amy’s eyes cast about the room. She was coming unglued. She had the gun on me, not the other way around, but she was feeling a loss of control, and her fear was overtaking her.

  “I’ll try to get rid of her.” I typed a quick response:

  You’re outside Amy’s apt?

  Her reply shot back in an instant:

  Yes open door right now

  I replied, trying to stall for time:

  Why would I do that

  But I was running out of time. Kate wasn’t going to take no for an answer. She’d break through the door. She could do it. And she’d be armed.

  “Amy, give me the gun,” I said, reaching out my hand, wiggling my fingers.

  Amy shook her head furiously, but I could see her uncertainty. Wanting to believe me, but afraid of being wrong.

  “Amy, like it or not, Kate’s coming in. And she’ll have a gun. You don’t know how to use that thing.”

  “No.” Amy’s face contorted, tears flowing, her voice thick with emotion. That gun dancing around in her hands. “No.”

  “Amy, you can trust me. You can—”

  I stopped on those words. My phone buzzed again, another text from Kate, but I didn’t look at it. I watched Amy carefully. I could see that Amy simply didn’t, couldn’t, trust me.

  “Whose name was in that black book?” I asked. “Whose name was listed as receiving the payoffs?”