The Black Book Read online

  Well, aren’t you a piece of work? Using every trick in your bag tonight, aren’t you?

  “So you think I’ve been videotaping that brothel to blackmail people,” Billy said.

  That dangerous mouth curved into another smile.

  “Why would I do in the mayor? And the archbishop? See, Amy, once you arrest them, you can’t really blackmail them anymore. How does that help me?”

  “Okay,” she said. “Play it your way. And I never said it was you, Detective. Definitely a cop, though.”

  “Well, I’d like to catch the guy as much as you.”

  “Who said it was a guy?”

  He didn’t have an answer for that one. He wouldn’t give her one, anyway. She was trying to turn him against his partner, Kate. She was trying to fuck with his mind.

  She was enjoying herself, too, with that mischievous smile. What the hell was her angle? She couldn’t possibly expect him to up and confess—not that he had anything to confess, but still. What was she hoping for tonight? Those were bedroom eyes she was flashing at him.

  He felt heat come to his face. She was good.

  He leaned into her ear. Her hair smelled like berries.

  “This flirtation thing you’re doing, it’s not working,” he said. “It’s not gonna happen, and we both know it.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Billy, don’t be such a pessimist.”

  He drew back from her. What was with this lady?

  “You like to live dangerously, is that it?”

  “Same as you,” she said, holding eye contact.

  “You think I’m bent.”

  “I know you’re bent. And you know what the best part is?”

  “Tell me, Amy.”

  “The best part is you’re going to admit it to me. Forty-eight hours, tops, you’re going to be spilling everything to me. Either you or Kate. One of you’s going to be begging me for mercy. That’s a race you don’t want to finish second in, Billy.”

  Billy had given a variation of that speech a hundred times to suspects. The first one to talk gets the sweetheart deal.

  “You don’t know me very well,” said Billy.

  “Oh, I know you better than you think. There’s not a move you can make that I won’t see coming.”

  “You sure about that?” Billy backpedaled, winking at her as he made his way through the crowd. He grabbed his coat and went outside. The air actually felt good, at least temporarily. He stomped his feet and stuffed his hands in his pockets and waited. It wouldn’t take long.

  A moment later, Amy Lentini came bursting out of the Hole, looking around urgently until she saw Billy. “Okay,” she said. “Where is it?”

  “Where’s what, Amy?”

  “My badge,” she said. “It was in my purse. Now it’s not.”

  “Well, I did see a prosecutor’s badge over there in that puddle. Could that be what you mean?”

  She gave him a hard look, then bent down and fished her badge, encased in leather, out of the slush, holding it up with two fingers. “I’m going to enjoy sending you to Stateville,” she said.

  “I hear Joliet’s nice this time of year.” Billy flagged a cab turning onto Rockwell. “Say, Amy,” he called to her as she headed back inside.

  She turned back to him.

  “If you’re gonna hit me, you better hit hard,” he said.

  “And why’s that?”

  “Because I hit back,” he said before climbing into the cab.

  Seventeen

  BILLY NAVIGATED the winding streets of Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago campus. The U of C was a beacon of prestige, a globally renowned institution with state-of-the-art facilities surrounded by one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city. Some of the world’s finest minds came here to teach and study, to probe the limits of science and mathematics and law and medicine, but they required security escorts back to their cars so they wouldn’t get mugged.

  Billy and Kate were still investigating the death of the sophomore who was strangled not four blocks from where they were driving. Billy was trying to re-create her whereabouts on the day of her murder, and they’d made a visit out here to talk to one of the faculty members in the biology department who had sent a few ambiguous text messages to the victim in the week leading up to her death.

  It hadn’t led them to anything, and they were driving back empty-handed. Kate was still distracted, playing on her phone, pulling up story after story about the sex scandal that threatened to take down the administration of Mayor Francis Delaney, rock the Catholic Church, and oh, by the way, end the careers of Detectives Billy Harney and Katherine Fenton.

  “You’re gonna go crazy reading that shit,” said Billy.

  “How can the mayor not resign?” she said, her eyes on her phone.

  “He’s doing the Bill Clinton shuffle. ‘It’s just a sex thing. People elected me to do a job, and I’m not gonna let ’em down.’ Like he’s doing it for us.”

  “I guess.”

  “Hey, long as we’re down here, let’s hit Morry’s. I’m so hungry I could eat the crotch out of a leper’s undies.”

  “Morry’s? So you can get a Polish?” Kate, consistent with her psychopathic workout regimen, didn’t eat fast food if she could help it. The body’s a temple and all that.

  “For your information, Detective,” he said, “I wasn’t going to order a Polish sausage.”

  “No? Then what? A chef salad? A yogurt parfait?”

  “I was thinking a double Polish.”

  “I don’t know how you can think about food, anyway.” Kate’s knees were bobbing, her feet playing a constant beat in the footwell of the Tahoe. She was nervous. She couldn’t get this stuff out of her head.

  “I gotta keep up my strength so I can vigilantly fight crime,” said Billy.

  “Doesn’t anything ever get to you?”

  Billy looked over at her. He knew Kate pretty well, but he wasn’t used to seeing this side of her. She was an ass kicker, an adrenaline junkie, and a damn fine-looking one at that. The vulnerable thing played on her a lot differently. For some reason, it seemed to flip a switch inside Billy, make him view her as a completely different person.

  Don’t start, Harney. Don’t even start. That was one time.

  “We’re gonna be fine,” he said. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She let out a bitter laugh. There was a lot in that single grunt, maybe more than he could read. It wasn’t always that simple, she was saying. It didn’t always matter that you were right. You could still be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Kate. No bullshit. That’s a promise.”

  She turned to him. They made eye contact. It was brief—Billy didn’t want to lose control of the Tahoe on these brutal streets—but meaningful.

  Not again, Harney. That was one time.

  It was pretty great, sure, but it was one time.

  He looked at her again. She was still eyeing him, this time with a lot in her stare.

  Okay, the sex was mind-blowing, I admit.

  “We keep our secrets, don’t we, partner?” she said.

  Billy nodded.

  “I didn’t enjoy seeing those eyes that prosecutor was throwing your way last night. I got a little jealous.”

  “She’s a shark.”

  “Yeah, but last I checked, you like swimming in deep water.”

  “A little danger can be fun,” he said.

  “It can be,” she said. “Especially over the lunch hour. Before we’re expected back.”

  No, Harney. Absolutely, positively not.

  “Take our mind off things,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “Therapeutic and such.”

  “Exactly. You up for a little therapy?”

  Billy changed course, found Lake Shore Drive, sped the Tahoe up toward the Belmont exit.

  Kate owned a condo in a building off Lake Shore Drive in the Lakeview neighborhood. It was no more than seven hund
red square feet, but it had a killer view of the lake. Today the view was probably beautiful, the lake so serene and majestic—but how would Billy know? He didn’t look out the window. They were at it the moment they entered the apartment. He threw off her body armor, pulled up her sweater, unbuttoned her blouse, and ran his hands inside, feeling lace.

  Then she was naked, that hard athletic body, her skin radiating heat, sweat on her face, her tongue violent inside his mouth, her breath a powerful mint. She took over from there, her mouth on his nipple, sucking so hard it hurt, then lowering herself to her knees and removing his underwear with her teeth. She didn’t need to rev him up any more than he already was—his rpm’s were well into the red—but she spent some time down there anyway, her hand caressing the undercarriage, her mouth working the throttle, and goddamn it, he was out of car analogies—

  He pulled her to her feet, spun her around, and threw her against the back of the leather couch. It was how they taught him to do an emergency takedown at the academy. She liked it, being bent over the couch, pushing her rear end up against him with an approving, kittenish hum. “Gee, Officer, whatever are you going to do to me?”

  This wasn’t normally Billy’s thing, but what the hell. He landed his open hand on her butt, a good smack.

  “Is that the best you can do?” she said. “I’ve been a very bad girl.”

  Well, okay—in for a penny, in for a pound. He spanked her again, harder.

  “Spank me again.”

  That sounded like a good idea, so he complied.

  “I’m placing you under arrest,” he said.

  “Then I better spread my legs. So you can check for concealed contraband on my person.”

  Well, sure, that would be standard protocol.

  So he checked, probing between her legs as she let out a low moan like none he’d ever heard.

  Dear Penthouse: I never thought this would happen to me…

  For good measure, he bent down to make doubly sure she wasn’t concealing a weapon. She liked that even more, breathing like an animal in heat as he worked his tongue. At this point, she wasn’t concealing a single thing.

  “Officer,” she said, “I think you need to fuck me now.”

  Eighteen

  WELL, THAT was interesting.

  Billy looked up at the ceiling in Kate’s bedroom. He was so drained and sore that he wasn’t sure he could even get out of bed. He knew Kate was a volleyball player and martial-arts aficionada, but he had no idea she was an amateur gymnast, too.

  And he got to be the pommel horse.

  “Just this one time,” she said to him.

  “Definitely. Never again.”

  “Makes things too complicated.”

  “No question about it. Glad we agree on that.”

  He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither of them kept a straight face.

  “Seriously,” he said.

  “I’m serious, too.”

  And then the simultaneous buzzing of their cell phones, an unwelcome alert. Last time they got text messages at the same time, they were being hauled into the state’s attorney’s office.

  Billy checked his phone. Fuck, he thought.

  “We are so fucked,” said Kate, reading her phone.

  “Now partner, don’t leap to the worst-case—”

  “We’ve been summoned to the supe’s office, Harney. You think this is good news?”

  He didn’t. All the way on the drive, Kate threw out one theory after another, rehashed the whole incident, tried to discern the various motives of the various players in the story. Billy didn’t bite. Whatever it was going to be, it was going to be, whether they predicted it accurately or not. He’d learned long ago that when bad news was going to come, it was going to come.

  They waited inside the superintendent’s suite while Mr. Big Shot was in his office behind a closed door. When the door opened, Amy Lentini peered out.

  “The superintendent will see you now,” she said, not even pretending that she didn’t enjoy it.

  Superintendent Tristan Driscoll was in uniform—God only knew why; maybe he wanted to pretend he was a real cop today—and seated behind his desk.

  “Detective Harney, Detective Fenton.”

  He didn’t ask them to sit, so they didn’t.

  “You’re being placed on administrative leave with pay, pending the completion of the state’s attorney’s investigation.”

  Kate dropped her head. Billy didn’t move.

  “Surrender your badges.”

  Kate seemed to be waiting for Billy.

  “It was my arrest,” said Billy. “Not Kate’s. Take my badge. Don’t take hers.”

  Driscoll peered at him, his eyes narrowed. “Surrender your badges,” he said.

  “I’ll surrender it to a cop,” he said.

  The superintendent turned his head, as though he didn’t hear right. “Are you suggesting that I’m not a cop, Detective?”

  “I’m not suggesting anything,” said Billy. “I’m saying it outright.”

  The blood rushed to Driscoll’s face so fast it was like his head had been placed in a microwave. “You want to go for unpaid leave, Detective?”

  “You don’t have cause to put me on unpaid. If you could’ve, you would’ve. You try to do that, you’ll be embarrassed. We both know it.” Billy stepped forward, put his hands on the supe’s desk. “You’re a politician trying to save his own ass. If the mayor goes down, you’re out of a job, too. You’re no cop. You’re a fucking coward.”

  Billy dropped his badge down on the desk so hard it popped off the desk and fell to the floor. He watched Kate painfully surrender hers, too, without a word.

  “Let me know when you’re ready to talk,” said Amy Lentini with a gleam in her eye, having the time of her life.

  “Oh, I’ll be in touch, Amy,” he said on his way out. “You can count on that.”

  Nineteen

  BILLY STOOD inside the coffee shop on Ohio Street, staring at the storefront real estate agency across the street. In the window was a picture of a smiling racially mixed family, the father shaking hands with the agent who just sold them a home with a nice white picket fence, the family about to live happily ever after.

  He remembered happily ever after. It didn’t end so happily.

  Goldie passed by the window, walking carefully on the treacherous sidewalk, still slick with ice, his breath trailing behind him like smoke from an engine.

  He walked into the coffee shop and sidled up to Billy without a word.

  “Rough day,” he said. “Sorry for your troubles.”

  “It’s okay. I’ve been meaning to catch up on my needlepoint.”

  “You talk to your pop yet?” he asked.

  Billy shook his head. “Four voice mails from him.”

  “He’s worried sick about you. You should call him back.”

  Maybe. Billy’s father, Daniel Harney, the chief of detectives, prided himself on two things—that two of his kids were cops and that neither of them used nepotism to get there. Everything you earn, you earn on merit, not because your dad’s a superior.

  That was fine. Billy wouldn’t want it any other way. But sometimes Pop took it too far—his desire to avoid favoritism at all costs created a distance, a canyon between them. When Billy made the big arrest earlier this week, every cop he knew showered him with praise, either at the Hole or in text messages, phone calls, shout-outs—everyone except his father.

  “Anyway,” said Billy. “You got anything for me?”

  Goldie blew out a sigh, which meant no. “The place is tighter than a nun’s legs right now. Best I can tell, it’s what we’ve been thinking. The supe is trying to save the mayor, and the only way he knows how is to cook you and Kate.”

  “I don’t even get that,” said Billy. “Even if I did steal some little black book, it doesn’t change the fact that the mayor had his dick where it didn’t belong.”

  Goldie didn’t answer. Didn’t even draw a breath. Billy looked at him.


  “Even if,” Goldie mimicked. “You mean, like, hypothetically.”

  Billy resumed his stare out the window. People bundled thoroughly from head to toe, shoulders tight, heads down, like they were under attack from the elements.

  “Even if you stole a little black book,” Goldie said.

  Lieutenant Mike Goldberger was the smartest man he knew.

  “Let me ask you something,” said Goldie. “How well do you know Kate?”

  “Better than she knows herself.”

  “You trust her?”

  “Yeah.” Billy thought more about that, nodded. “Yeah, I do.”

  “You don’t like her for this black book?”

  “No. I don’t see her taking it.”

  “She had opportunity. She handled the search, right?”

  That was true. Billy remembered seeing Kate in the office upstairs in the brownstone, going through the cabinets and drawers.

  “I don’t see it,” said Billy.

  “How well does she know you?”

  Billy shrugged.

  “You know what I’m asking,” Goldie said.

  “She doesn’t know about me.” Billy shook his head. “Nobody knows. Nobody but you and me.”

  Outside, on Ohio Street, a cab screeched to a halt just short of the truck in front of it.

  “You sure about that?” Goldie asked.

  “Yeah, Goldie. I think I would remember if I’d told my partner that I work undercover for Internal Affairs. I think that would, y’know, stand out in my mind.”

  “Okay, okay.” Goldie put a hand on Billy’s shoulder, gripped it tight. “What about your sister?”

  “No,” he said. “Patti doesn’t know.”

  “Your pop?”

  “You tell me, Goldilocks.”

  Goldie drew back. “If your father knew that you were my guy inside the detectives’ bureau, he’d string my undies up on a coat hook.”

  Billy looked at Goldie. “You think that’s what this is all about, though? You think someone knows I’m with you? You think this thing with the mayor is just an excuse to stop me?”

  That, of course, was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Goldie returned a poker face.