Saturday, August 25
0200 hours
The South Bronx
Keogh and Butler were sitting in the back booth at the B and V Steakhouse a couple of hours after the King James go-round, drinking Stolis and working their way through a platter of ribs. Custer was on the floor under the table. They could hear him cracking down on a beef bone. The bar was almost empty. Maria had been closing it for the night when they had pulled up in the Plymouth, Butler using all his charm to get her to stay open and feed them. When they told her another policeman had been killed this evening, she pulled the doors open and went back to the kitchen to do something special for them.
Neither of them felt much like going home. Keogh had called his house on City Island. He stood there in the booth waiting for somebody to answer. Nobody did. He could picture the phone ringing on the wall above the microwave. The night light would be on over the sink. But he was pretty sure there was no sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil waiting for him on the counter top.
It had taken a while for the harness cops at the 17th to get things straightened out again. The citizens got back into their apartments by midnight. Benson Saltell hadn’t bothered to fly back from Washington. His lawyer had come by, poked around through the destruction, shaking his head, scuffing at the broken glass with the toe of his Mauris, saying “goodness” and “well well” and looking at the ESU cops as if they had done it all on purpose.
Homicide cops from the Midtown South Task Force had come over to write up the PD-424–151’s and work out just how it was that Lyle and Myron and Patrolman Arnie Sayles had died in this place. Some spooks from Internal Affairs rode along with them, but it was all fairly routine. Nobody was too proud of the operation, and this killing brought the total to four police officers killed in the last eleven days, three line-of-duty—Laputa, Paznakaitis, and Sayles—and one homicide, Art Pike, killed by person-or-persons-unknown.
Pulaski and the Commanding Officer for the 17th had to stay around to wrap up the paperwork for the Zone Commander. The Commissioner was supposed to be coming over from a fund-raiser in White Plains, and there were camera trucks and press people all over the landscape, so Pulaski sent the rest of Charlie Section home. There wasn’t going to be much of a post-op cool-off anyway. They were all sick of not looking at each other. It would be easier to go home and not look at themselves. Moxie and Pepsi had already asked Pulaski for transfers out of the Emergency Service Unit and back to Patrol.
Keogh had been on the phone to Myra’s house, trying to tell her that he wouldn’t be coming back there to get his bag, he’d drop over in the morning. Some guy had answered, saying Myra was busy and who was on the line?
Keogh slammed the phone down, thinking, well, that goes to show you, Frank. You’re not as unforgettable as you think you are. Butler was watching him from the car and that’s when he said, Frank, let’s go to the B and V. They’d ridden over in silence. Nine Stolis later, Butler pushed the plate away and patted his belly, sighing.
“So … where the hell was the big guy—what’s his name? Sonny?”
Keogh had been wondering about that. He drained his glass, wincing at the vodka burn. “Beats the hell out of me. I talked to that cop who got the shots off in the lobby and he made a positive ID from CATCH. The guy he shot at was Sonny Beauchamp. Hit him three times—says he saw the dust coming off the overalls.”
“So how come no blood?”
“Easy,” said Keogh, patting his own ribs. “Second Chance Kevlar vest.”
“Yeah. So where was he?”
“You want to know what I think? I think we fucked up. I think we must have run right by him. That’s a hell of a big place—he could have been hiding somewhere.”
“Frank, two sergeants and ten cops went over the place after the assault. He wasn’t there.”
“Yeah … tricky fellow. Hard to kill.”
There was silence for a while. Keogh saw Butler checking his watch under the table.
“Hey, Pat. I’m keeping you up. Why don’t you turn in? I’ll be fine. We have to do a complete report by noon tomorrow … today.”
Butler kept his eyes down on his wristwatch. When he looked up, Keogh had the feeling that something had been showing in Butler’s eyes, but now he had it under control again. “Pat … about Arnie. If it was a safe job, everybody would be doing it.”
“I’m gonna miss that stupid trumpet playing at the unit racket this year. He was just getting good.”
“No, he wasn’t. We were just getting used to him.”
Another silence. What was there to say?
“Frank … where you planning to sleep tonight?”
Not at Myra’s, thought Keogh, remembering the man’s voice on the phone, a rough, hard voice. Not somebody who would take kindly to a guy showing up at the door at four in the morning with a smile and a hard-on.
“I don’t know. Probably at the Thunderbird up in Yonkers. They’ll let me take the furball into the room with me. Then I guess I’m looking for a place.”
Butler’s eyes were down again. “You not going to see Myra again? I figured you and Myra were kind of an item.”
“Why’d you figure that?”
“Way she lit up when Ruthie and I brought you in.”
“Yeah? Well, you know … once they’ve had Keogh—”
“How could they go back to a full-sized guy.”
“Well, tell you the truth, Pat, I don’t really want to torque the marriage. This stuff, I don’t know where it comes from. It seems I just have a flair for putting the blocks to anything good in my life.”
“It’s been a rough season. I was going over the book for June, July, and … what’s this? The twenty-fifth of August. Almost the end of the summer? Charlie Section rolled on an average of one thirty-three every thirty-six hours. Plus the Joint Task Force thing with those peckerwoods from Albany in the spring. What a crock that was. And now it looks like Moxie and Pepsi are throwing it in.”
Keogh ordered up two more Stolis and a pitcher of Red Stripe in honor of the memory of Art Pike and Arnie Sayles, Arnie being from Jamaica originally. Drunk looked like as good a place to be as any tonight. He looked over at Butler. Butler looked like hell.
“Hey, Pat. Fuck it. Moxie and Pepsi been talking about walking from Charlie Section for a year now. They’ll get over it. They always do.”
“Maybe. What about you? You staying?”
“Hah? Where would I go? The CIA’s only taking Mormons this week. I’m too old to become a real cop. I get out of here, I’d try for First Grade and go work Major Crimes on a task force. Nice brainy work, like Zeke and Butch. Wear those Midtown suits, punch out every day at four.”
“You’ve been a good cop, Frank.”
“What’s that? That sounds like an obituary.”
Butler’s uneasiness was getting more obvious. Keogh was suddenly aware that Butler was trying to work himself up to saying something he didn’t want to say.
“No. I don’t mean it like that. It’s just, some guys, they dogged it their whole careers. Not you. First time I saw you, back in seventy-two, three? You were on that PEP thing, chasing the dealers around Jefferson Park. You brought Speedo into the station, had him stuffed into the icebox of that pushcart. You remember?”
“I remember. I was out of cuffs, I had to put him somewhere. Speedo ate three Drumsicles and a Polar Bar. Best meal he had in weeks he said.”
“Yeah … You ever miss it? Miss those days?”
“Yeah. Sometimes, Pat. Things … seemed clearer then. You had your shits and your cops and your citizens. A citizen was just a shit who was still in the larva stage. Life was pretty simple.”
“I know what you mean. Take tonight. One way you could look at it, those guys were quietly going about their business, stealing gold coins from some uptown fixer who probably did things to get them would make a weasel go running into the bathroom with a paw over his mouth. The guy had insurance up the ying-yang. Nobody was getting hurt except the insurance firms, and fuck them.”
“I’ll drink to that,” said Keogh.
“Yeah … so along we come, full metal jacket, brass balls, and all. Stun grenades, automatic weapons. You and me out there on the terrace, waiting to blow some poor hopeless dipshit out of his Reeboks. What worries me is, who was doing the escalating, you know?”
“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from … what’d Zeke call you? Botched Casualties?”
“And the Some-Dunce Kid? I think he got that out of Mad magazine. That’s too good for Zeke.”
“Point is, it’s not about stealing. Society is real clear about stealing. They’ve set up all kinds of ways to steal from other people legally. You can raid their pension funds on a legal pretext. You can arrange a stock market ‘correction’ and scoop a billion or two. You can vote yourself a pay raise if you’re a congressman. You can see to it that your buddies get all the great contracts. You can charge the government six hundred bucks for a hammer. I don’t give a damn about the stealing. It’s the guns that bug me. These guys tonight—you saw that Smith the guy was carrying. And how about that trooper back in Lawton? Is he supposed to die because some hammerhead wants to get something for nothing?”
“Frank—” Butler stopped. It was clear to Keogh that his partner had slammed a lid on something he was about to say.
“What? Get it out, Pat.”
Butler’s hands were tightly interlocked on the table between them.
“Jesus, Pat. Loosen up.”
“Okay. You’re saying it’s about guns and stealing. How about us? You and me? The Department?”
“You’re talking about the pad?” said Keogh.
“I’m talking about having to pay off that cockroach sergeant at the Two-Five to get off the street and into a patrol car. Fifty bucks a month from each man in the platoon. I’m talking about the humps down on Mott Street and the little packages we used to pick up, take them over to the captain. I’m talking about grease. There are cops in this town, not so far from where we’re sitting, they get so much grease it takes them half a block just to change direction.”
“You got a point here?”
“Yeah … Who are we to do what we’re doing?”
“Civil servants, that’s who. You know that.”
“Sure. Poor motherfucker tonight, he comes running out onto that terrace like a bull into the ring. Waving that picture around. I had him in the Starlite. So did you.”
Keogh was silent for a long time.
“I couldn’t see what he was holding. I thought we had the green light.”
Butler slammed a fist onto the table top. Custer jumped out from under the table and stared up at the men.
“You thought? Fuck you, you thought! You got the balls to tell me, you maybe heard the green? And you couldn’t see what that poor mope was carrying?”
Keogh said nothing. He played the thing out in his mind, a green movie, the man running out, stumbling, that black thing in his hands, and the rifle kicking, and the image jumping as the recoil took it, the man jerking like a piece of meat when the dogs get it. What had he seen? Was there a green? What had he felt?
Good—that’s what he had felt. It was good to pull on a target. How was that wrong? The green was irrelevant. Wouldn’t it be worse to feel nothing?
“What’s the point, Pat? What’s the point of all this?”
“The point, Frank, the goddammed point is, how much is left of us after we go on the pad, after we do shit like you did to Roberto? After we take down poor dumb shits like that guy tonight? What gives us the right?”
“Pat … nobody …”
“Man, I can’t get by that thing with Roberto, buddy. I just can’t get by it. It worries me.”
“This is horse shit, Pat.… Come on, buddy. You’re pissed. You’re tired.”
Butler’s eyes were bright and liquid. He was crying. Butler was crying. Keogh felt the shock go through him.
“Pat …”
“Know what sucks, Frank? What sucks is, we used to be about something. Both of us. Now …” He made a large sweeping gesture, taking in the wreck of the B and V, the Bronx, New York. “Now what the fuck are we? Killers, Frank. This is the city of the Big Fix—the whole fucking place is on the pad. How the fuck you blame somebody for doing what he can to get his own in a game that’s fixed, and I mean fixed, from the start?”
“I don’t blame them. That’s not what I do. I get paid to stop them. I stop whoever they aim me at. You got your head stuffed full of … What’s the word?”
“The truth. The whole truth.”
“Fuck the truth. Cop work isn’t about the truth. It’s not about just being a good guy and wearing the good-guy hat. You and me, we’re grunts, foot soldiers. We’re expendable. In the war they had this thing they called dee-ross. Date of estimated return overseas. It was supposed to be like a promise from the army to all the mothers: Don’t worry, your kid will be back in exactly one year. Like it was a big favor they were doing, sending the troops back in exactly one year. But the trick was, the joke was, after a year in combat you were useless anyway. They figured: Most a guy ever was useful for in a combat zone was about sixteen months. They were burned-out units. Expended. Empty as a used round.”
“So … what’s the point?”
“Point point point. No point. Say a war zone is ten times more fucked-up than a cop zone. So if a grunt wears out in a year and a half …?”
“A cop’ll wear out in—”
“Fifteen years. They know that, downtown. They send you out, figure they’ll get you to do the shit that has to be done. Figure it’ll either kill you or it’ll make you another sick hairbag. Important thing is, Pat, that the Job gets done. That’s what we do. We do the Job and you know what, Pat, you know the fuck what?”
“What the fuck what?”
Keogh took a long pull from the glass.
“The fuck what is, you have ta stop talking to this stress guy and going to his … sessions, and sitting around taking apart your life so you can see how truly fucked-up you are. All those guys—the shrinks. Burke Owens—all he’s going to do is break up your rhythm. Most things in life, thinking won’t help you. It’s a dance, and you can’t dance while you’re thinking about dancing. You follow?”
Butler was pulling back. “If you had any sense at all, you’d have taken Burke up on it, gone to some of those meetings. Okay, yes, I go. Okay, yes, I didn’t tell you, and the reason is this here now. I have ta sit and listen to you give me this cop shit. Other guys in Charlie go. Not just me.”
“Other guys? Who?”
“Slick Ryan. Moxie was going.”
“Slick. Slick?”
“Hey. There’s more to Slick than you know, Frank. More than just the song and the smile. He’s been fucking up too. If you could pull your head outa your own ass, you’da seen that.”
“What’s happening to Slick?”
“Ah, shit. Never mind.”
“No. I want to know.”
“You know those nights he says he’s always out porking some chick? Supposed to have porked Finn even?”
“Yeah. So Slick’s a swordsman. People say that about you, too, Pat.”
“Yeah. Only he isn’t.”
“Isn’t what?”
“You know Hardesty?”
“Hardesty? Jimmy Hardesty? He’s with Armory, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. He was out at the Neck last week, way late. Past midnight. He was gonna check out those parabellums we were gonna get. Guess who was out there all night long, down on the two-hundred-yard range?”
“Slick?”
“Slick. Hardesty says the range boss checked the log, and Slick goes out to Rodman’s Neck every night. Know what he’s shooting? Wanna know?”
“So tell me.”
“Remington. Three-oh-eight. Big Leupold.”
“That’s not his weapon. He’s on the entry teams. They use shotguns and the M-sixteens.”
“That’s right, Frank.”
“The Remington … That’s us, Pat.”
“Yeah.”
“So … he’s got ambition.”
There was a long silence. Custer rolled over under the table and settled down with a low groan.
Finally Frank shook it off.
“So what? So what about all of it? It’s just the Job. You ask life for too much and you might piss it off. We might wake it up, get its attention. We don’t want to do that, do we?”
“No,” said Butler, leaning back into the booth. “We wouldn’t want to wake up anything that ugly. We had a good time, though—right, Frank? Some good times were had by all. Here’s to that black bastard and his horn.”
“To Arnie,” said Frank. “And Art.”
“And here’s to Myra, Frank.”
“Myra? Pat, I don’t even want to think about Myra.”
“No? Well …” He drank it down. “You better start, my friend. Because everybody else is thinking about her.”
“Myra? Why?”
“Because she’s dead, Frank. That’s why.”
Frank was looking at his glass. It came in and out of focus. It seemed to complete something. He felt like a man at the edge of great revelation, seeing movement in the deep water.
“How? How is Myra dead?”
Butler’s face showed three or four warring emotions.
“She was stabbed, but that didn’t do it. That was just to keep her busy. No, Frank … she was strangled.”
Pike. Myra. Keogh wanted to get up and go to the phone and call Tricia, wanted to hear her voice and know that she was alive. But he couldn’t move.
“Strangled with a thin red cord, Frank. Like the thin red cord you don’t know dick about.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, buddy. Ask Zeke Parrot.”
“Who was the guy at Myra’s, Pat?”
Butler seemed surprised by that. “You called, huh? Probably Boo Blanchette.”
Boo Blanchette worked Homicide with Zeke Parrot and Butch Johnson at the Four-Eight D.A.T.F. Now he got it, got the picture of the room, maybe Myra’s body on that bed, or somewhere on the floor, Myra dead and white except where the blood had settled, where there’d be a stain like a red-wine spill under her skin, and her face puffed and stunned-looking.
“You think I did it, Pat? Why do you think that?”
“I think a lot of things when my partner pulls on an unarmed guy. When he does things like you did to Roberto. When a guy fucks up his marriage like you are. We been trying to get you into counseling for a month, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Who’s we?”
“All of us. Pulaski. Junie and me.”
“Tricia too?”
Butler said nothing.
He pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. It was a long white business envelope. Butler dropped it on the table between them.
There was an FBI logo on the upper left-hand corner of the envelope. It was addressed to:
DETECTIVE SERGEANT EZEKIEL PARROT
BRONX DETECTIVE AREA TASK FORCE
48 PRECINCT NYPD
BRONX, NEW YORK 10456
“Took a hell of a chance getting this. Zeke’s got a copy. You better read this, Frank. It’s a bitch.”
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
Tenth and Pennsylvania NW
Washington DC 20535
REPORT EXTRACT
BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE UNIT
FBI ACADEMY
QUANTICO VIRGINIA
——————
NYPD FILE NUMBER 19–779 08/24/90
FBI FILE NUMBER 88–217698 FAX MAIL
LIGATURE CASE NUMBER K-537 13/11/59
TO: Det. Sgt. E. Parrot
Bronx Detective Area Task Force
48 Precinct NYPD
Bronx, New York 10456
RE: ARTHUR RANDALL PIKE
LINCOLN HOSPITAL
BRONX NEW YORK
08/22/90
LIGATURE HOMICIDE
REFERENCE: Federal Express Courier Package
Telephone Requisition Chief of Detectives
SPECIMEN: Red fiber rope one meter in length
Six scale color photos of ligature in situ
Tissue samples to laboratory
As per the request of the Chief of Detective’s Office, Priority Four telephone request, an immediate computer search of our Criminal Incident Index File was undertaken by staff members under the supervision of Technician Aaron Friedlander and Reba Jannsons, Director of the Department of Justice Computer Analysis Unit.
The ligature was received with knots and stresses intact, as per your accompanying photos showing the ligature in place on the victim’s neck. The Medical Examiner’s Report was also received. The search parameters were confined to ligature homicides investigated by law enforcement agencies in the continental United States and Canada, accessing shared computer data banks of the RCMP in Ottawa.
The red fiber rope was examined by technicians at the FBI Laboratory in Washington. The material of the rope was cotton. The three-part interlocking spiral braid is typical of cords produced at the Matsukazi Dojo School in Kyoto, Japan. It was imported by six distributors in the U.S. (see appendix list) but importation of this particular cord type was suspended in 1966, when supplies of the Madras dye were interrupted by internal political disorder in India, at which time a substitute dye was obtained from sources within Japan. The specimen cord supplied by your department is of the older type of Madras dye, and has been unavailable in the United States for 22 years.
The ligature knots were examined by forensic experts and compared with all known knot styles. The knots are consistent with knots used by the Thugs, a cadre of ritual killers operating in India in the nineteenth century. The method and location of the cord on the victim’s neck, the duration and pattern of impressions and contusions are all consistent with a ritual Thug strangulation methodology.
A search of the Criminal Index Files generated eighteen similar Thug-style ligature homicides in the past forty years. Of the eighteen cases isolated, seven of them involved the use of Thug-style strangulation techniques identical to this homicide, but in two of the cases, the ligature in situ was not consistent in fiber, dye analysis, or braid style with the ligature specimen provided.
The five homicides which were isolated as being similar in ligature, fiber content, and methodology to this ligature homicide are:
Queens NY 11/13/59 CARUSO, JULIA WF aged 9 years.
Queens NY 11/27/59 CADMAN, DONALD WM aged 5 years.
Brooklyn NY 12/25/59 DOUEY, BRUCE BM aged 10 years.
Bronx NY 02/24/61 BENKO, GRAZIELLA WF aged 3 years.
Manhattan NY 08/04/61 VIGODA, BIANCA WF aged 13 years.
One homicide which was identified as identical in style, ligature, and method, but dissimilar in cord fiber content and color, was:
Flagstaff AZ 05/13/60 CHUNG, KEIKO OF aged 2 years.
An arrest and disposition was made in these cases, with the exception of the CHUNG homicide, in which charges were never laid, although connections were posited by the investigating officer. KENT, MICHAEL D’ARCY WM/DOB 11/11/45 was arrested by the supervising investigator in this case, Detective John Keogh (GS#604) of the NYPD Seven Zone Homicide Squad.
KENT was examined on Monday, April 15, 1962, by the Bronx County Juvenile Offender Board. Defendant was confined to the State Psychiatric Hospital for an indefinite period at the discretion of the Board.
Periodic reviews of KENT, MICHAEL D’ARCY were carried out by psychiatrists appointed by the Board of Examiners and it was the considered opinion of each examiner that KENT, MICHAEL D’ARCY was suffering from a LATENT SCHIZOPHRENIA that constituted a permanent psychiatric disorder under the terms of the related statutes of New York Penal Law.
KENT, MICHAEL D’ARCY is currently being held in secure custody at the State Psychiatric Hospital in Albany, New York.
Detective John Keogh (GS#604/NYPD Ret.)
ADDRESS:
Bahia Azul Marina
Slip 14
Matecumbe Key, FL 33036
Should you desire the assistance of one of the FBI’s Computer Analysis experts, or the ligature specialists, we should be notified in ample time to permit the necessary arrangements. This report should be used, however, if legal considerations permit, in lieu of the appearance of our expert in any pretrial action such as a preliminary hearing or a grand jury presentation. Our representative cannot be made available to testify if any other forensic ligature expert is to present testimony on the same point, namely that this ligature is identical to the ligatures used in the above-cited homicides.
The ligature provided and the other enclosures are being sent to you by registered parcel delivery.
LIGATURE CASE K-537
Sincerely,
Warren Kite
Special Agent in Charge
FBI Laboratories
WASHINGTON DC 20535
Butler watched his partner read the letter in silence. Out on Hunts Point Avenue a car accelerated down the slope with a sound like a chopper going by. Angry voices came in on a wind smelling of smoke and rubber. Maria was standing in the kitchen door in her street coat, shoulders bent, leaning against the frame. Under the table, Custer whimpered in his sleep.
Keogh put the letter down. He looked at Butler.
“Pat … I swear to you, Dad never said a thing about this case. I never heard a word about it.”
“Never? Frank, this had to be one of the biggest cases your father ever caught. Look at it—shit, serial killer, looks like six children dead. All over town and maybe one in Flagstaff, which would have brought in the Feds. It had to be all over the papers at the time. And you don’t know about it?”
“What was I, fourteen, thirteen? This is twenty-eight years ago, Pat.”
“Your father never said a word? Your mother?”
“Not a word … Anyway, you know my father. We … we didn’t talk. By the time I was fourteen, I hated the man’s guts.”
Butler knew the story. John Keogh had been a Homicide star, one of the top cops in the NYPD. As with a lot of career cops, his home life was a disaster. Junie and Tricia had talked about it, about the contempt Frank’s father had shown for his son. Butler and Keogh never talked about it. It was something men don’t have a vocabulary for.
“So … so what you’re saying is, you’re telling the truth to Zeke and Butch? About the knots? The rope?”
“Yeah … yes, I am. For all the fucking good it’s gonna do me, I’m telling the truth.”
“They’re gonna call your dad on this. Probably have already.”
Jesus, thought Keogh. His father. Down in the Keys, his father had receded into a bitter memory. Frank hadn’t seen the man or talked to him since one miserable vacation with the family, shortly after his father’s retirement in 1975.
“So … what it is … is that Zeke has me figured for Pike and … for Myra too?”
“I don’t know, Frank. No charges yet. But, man, it doesn’t look good. You get into a fight with Art. He dies. You spend the night with Myra. She buys it. You don’t know dick about the most famous case your father ever had. You never heard of the murder weapon. It looks bad. I think they got you figured for some kind of stress thing.”
Keogh had nothing left to say. Butler looked at him, and for the first time in the long night, there was something in Butler’s face that looked like sympathy. Like belief.
“Man,” said Butler, smiling at Frank, “what was that you said? About not fucking around with the universe. Waking it up?”
Keogh remembered it.
“Well, Frank … I think we did. I think we woke up something. I think we got the attention of something ugly.”