16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)

Billy inserted himself between Katie and the woman, now on the floor. “Get some air,” he said to Katie.

“I’ll fucking sue!” Ramona cried. “I’ll sue your slut ass!”

Billy offered his hand to the woman. She gave him a long glare before she took it and got back in the chair. “Ramona,” he said, “we can tear this place apart looking for it, or you can tell us where it is and we won’t have to. Now, I know you have a boss. You think he’s gonna be happy with you if you make us break through walls and rip up carpets?”

A little good cop, bad cop. It was only a cliché because it was true.

Ramona, still smarting from the slap, a sizable welt on her cheek, shook her head as if exhausted. “You’re not gonna find a little black book,” she said.

“We’ll search your house next. We’ll have no choice.”

“I want a lawyer,” she said.

Et voilà! Thus endeth the conversation.

“Keep the uniforms here until they find it,” said Billy to Sosh. “Let’s find a judge and get a warrant for her house. We’ll find that little black book sooner or later.”

A BIG BUST, so a big night out to follow. Billy and Kate went to the Hole in the Wall, a cop bar off Rockwell near the Brown Line stop. A couple of retired coppers bought the Hole ten years ago, cleaned it up, got word out about giving cops discounts on drinks, and the place thrived from day one. A few years ago they set up a stage in the corner and put up a microphone and sponsored an open-mike night that was so popular it turned into a regular thing. Now the place drew more than cops and the badge bunnies who followed them; some people came for the comedy. A lot of people, Billy included, thought this place rivaled the comedy clubs on Wells Street.

When Kate and Billy walked in, they were greeted like royalty. The two of them were quickly separated in the rugby scrum, everyone grabbing Billy, slapping him on the back, putting him in a headlock, lifting him off his feet with bear hugs, messing up his hair, shoving shots of bourbon or tequila in front of hi

m—which he accepted, of course, because he wouldn’t want to be rude. By the time he and Kate had found a table, he was half drunk, his hair was mussed like a little kid’s, and he was pretty sure he’d pulled a muscle or two.

“I think they heard about the arrests,” he said to Kate, who was similarly disheveled.

Two pints of ale appeared in front of them on the tall table, with a stern direction that their money was “no good here tonight.” Billy raised the pint and took a long swig, savored it. Yeah, it was a big night. The reporters were all over it. The archbishop? The mayor of Chicago? Too big for anyone to pass up. Half the cops in the joint right now were passing around smartphones, reading news articles and Facebook and Twitter posts. The mayor hadn’t been friendly to the cops’ union or to their pensions, so nobody was shedding a tear over his downfall. The archbishop—that was another story. Some people were upset, especially the devout Catholics on the force, of whom there were many, while others used the opportunity to rain some cynical sarcasm down on the Church, some of which bordered on the politically incorrect. Several cops noted that at least this time, a priest was caught with a female, not an altar boy.

Kate was enjoying herself. She was an action junkie, much more so than Billy. If you gave that woman a desk job, she’d put a gun to her head within the hour. She enjoyed detective work, but she really enjoyed the busts, the confrontations, the thrill of the moment. She became a cop for the right reasons, the good-versus-evil thing, but it was more than that for her. It was a contact sport.

He looked at her standing by the table they’d secured, her eyes up on the TV screen in the corner, which was running constant coverage of the arrests. She was wearing a thin, low-cut sweater and tight blue jeans. She cut quite a figure. She’d been a volleyball star at SIU and, more than ten years later, still had her athletic physique. The tae kwon do and boxing classes she took probably helped, too. So did the half marathons she ran. Sometimes Billy got tired just thinking about all the stuff Kate did.

But not tonight. He wasn’t tired. He was buzzing, like Kate, from the arrests. He always told himself that one arrest was like another—do your job, regardless—but he couldn’t deny himself a small thrill after the action tonight.

People kept coming up to him, offering their congrats and their jokes about the mayor and archbishop, which grew cruder as the booze continued to flow. At one point he turned toward Kate and saw Wizniewski, the Wiz, with his arm around her and whispering into her ear. Kate had a smile planted on her face, but Billy knew her as well as anyone did. He could see from her stiff body language and forced grin that she would sooner have an enema than deal with the Wiz’s flirtation.

Oh, the Wiz. The same guy who tried to talk Billy down from executing the arrests in the first place, the politician who was afraid that this bust might upset the status quo, who turned around and took full credit with the deputy superintendent, and here he was yucking it up with the brass as if he were just one of the guys.

“There you are. The man of the hour.”

Mike Goldberger—Goldie—in the flesh. Goldie was a pretty low-key guy who, unlike Billy and his pals, didn’t do a lot of drinking and carousing, so it was unusual to see him at the Hole.

“Don’t get too drunk,” he said, wagging a finger at Billy. “You could be part of a presser tomorrow.”

It had occurred to Billy that the press conferences would continue over the next few days, but he was pretty sure Wizniewski would be the one standing behind the police superintendent, not him.

“How you feelin’ about everything?” Goldie asked. “Tonight. The bust go okay?”

Billy nodded. “I think so. Pretty by-the-book. No question I had PC.”

“Okay.” Goldie didn’t seem surprised. Probable cause to search was a low barrier. “Nothing unusual?”

“The mayor tried to bribe me.”

Goldie recoiled. “Seriously?”

“Well, he was on his way to it. He said maybe we could work on that pension problem we have. Maybe, if I let him walk out the back door, he’d change his mind on cutting our cost-of-living adjustments.”

“You shoulda said yes,” Goldie said with a straight face.