Escape by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-06-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 62

“HARNEY,” LIEUTENANT WIZNIEWSKI calls out, waving me to his office.

When I walk in, I see an African American woman sitting across from him. She looks as hard-ass as she means to, with her hair buzzed on the sides, shit-kicker boots, and a tight shirt revealing chiseled arms.

“Detective Harney, Detective Regina Turner.”

“Hey, Gina,” I say.

“Hey, Billy.”

She doesn’t smile. I’ve actually never seen her smile. Not that I know her all that well. I saw her at Carla’s funeral, where nobody was smiling, but I’ve only worked with Gina Turner once, when she was a rookie. We were part of a stack that took rear entry on a drug bust. She disarmed a drug dealer with a judo kick to the stomach that put him in an ambulance. Never even drew her gun. I made a mental note never to get on her wrong side.

She knew Carla from Undercover. Carla worked one of the Latino gangs, while Gina, like a lot of young African American cops, got assigned as UC on one of the Black street gangs. Carla flat-out said that Gina was the best cop she ever knew.

“As you know,” says the Wiz, “Detective Turner was just assigned to SOS. And as Detective Turner now knows, Detective Harney has requested that you join his, um, elite squad.”

“Yeah,” I say, “I want you on my team, if you want.”

“I have a choice?”

“Of course.”

Gina nods, not as a yes but considering.

I don’t know Gina well, but I do know her file. She grew up in the Henry Horner Homes, a housing project best known for violence and gangs. She lost one of her brothers to a drug overdose and the other to the Gangster Disciples, where he served as an enforcer until he was convicted of murder and sent away for sixty years. But Gina kept on the straight and narrow, graduated from high school, and put herself through NIU.

Her record as a cop is stellar, but what really caught my eye, beyond my experience with her on that drug bust, and besides Carla’s glowing opinion of her, is that two years ago, she jumped into the Cal-Sag Channel to save a little boy who had fallen in. That’s heroic enough, but come to find out, Gina performed the rescue without ever having learned how to swim.

“Mostly we focus on the West Side street gangs,” I say. “We also have that case with the billionaire who killed his wife.”

“But primarily the street gangs,” says the Wiz.

“Lieutenant Wizniewski wanted me to focus only on the gangs. But we collared the billionaire, and that made our superintendent very happy, so I got kept on that case. It’s a sensitive thing for Lew, so I don’t bring it up that often.”

“I’m still sitting here,” says the Wiz.

“So what do you say, Gina?” I ask. “It comes with a car and driver, expense account, and free membership to the East Bank Club.”

That actually makes her smile. A little.

“Okay, it comes with none of those things. But the hours are long and irregular, and the pay sucks.

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