Sunday, August 26
1700 hours
Manhattan
Of all the brass-balled things that Sonny Beauchamp had ever done in his thirty-six years on the planet, sitting around in this forest-green suite of rooms in the United Nations Plaza Hotel was about the brassiest. Now it was Sunday afternoon and he was lying on the king-sized bed in what he still thought of as Lyle’s room, surrounded by a litter of room-service dishes and glasses, little plastic scotch bottles from the mini-bar, about sixteen pounds of the Sunday Times all over the room, the big Sony Trinitron all lit up in the corner, watching a Jacques Cousteau special about sharks, thinking, Okay, Sonny, one more day being Mr. Paul Dennison and then it’s checkout time.
It had been a hard twenty-four hours, trying not to think about Lyle too much, listening to the sirens going whoop-whoop up and down the avenues and cross streets, expecting that special police bam-bam-ba-bam at the door any minute, with a canvas bag full of stolen coins and stamps in the hall closet and his stainless .357 Smith on his chest like the family cat, warm from the heat of his body, covered with potato-chip crumbs and Frito dust.
There hadn’t been anything else to do. He had to assume that they had an ID on Lyle now. They’d be looking for him. Every rookie cop and part-time security guard would be driving around Manhattan with a black-and-white glossy of Sonny Beauchamp out there on the passenger seat beside him. Sonny had depended on staff changes to keep him anonymous; he’d stayed in his room and made it a point to be in the bathroom when the room-service waiter came up with another ice bucket full of beer or a tray of back ribs.
He’d listened to the news last night, and mercy, did this town love its news shows—had to be a good four hours of early news, news breaks, news briefs, new news, Live at Five news, Eyewitness News, twenty-four-hour news, cable news, midday news, and late news and midnight news and sunrise news roundup and noon news and … nothing ever seemed to happen in any of it; it just promised you that any minute now something was about to happen or that wowie, it just happened, you poor bastards, and you missed it because you were in there in that marble-and-glass bathroom taking care of nature and whoops, there it goes again, and you missed that too, but okay, don’t worry, we’ll have film at eleven. And at the end of all of that, Sonny still hadn’t heard any more than that the brave NYPD SWAT cops had cornered a pack of crazed desperados in a midtown apartment and had, at great risk to life and limb, brought them to speedy justice, at the terrible cost of a brave policeman’s life. They ran this cop’s photograph about every fifteen minutes most of Saturday night. That had been hard to take.
He was a black guy, with deep-set eyes and a thin wry mouth. He was smiling up into a camera at what looked like a nightclub or something, holding a trumpet up in one long-fingered and oddly delicate hand. His name was Arnold Sumter Sayles, single, twenty-seven years old, a graduate of Fordham University, holder of several NYPD ribbons and citations. There was to be a funeral for him at Cypress Hills on Tuesday. Sayles was, according to the news reports, the third policeman to die in the line of duty in New York City in the last fourteen days. One of the talking heads, a black woman with drop-forged hair, kept referring to “a season of blood,” dropping her voice a couple of floors and pausing a few heartbeats at the end of the phrase to telegraph her spontaneous and deeply felt personal anguish and then going on to promise more film of the bloodstains in the front hall of the Saltell apartment.…
Another news break. A photograph of a ruddy-faced Irish-looking cop with a trim salt-and-pepper moustache, and the type under it read cop SOUGHT IN KILLING.
Sonny plucked up the remote from the mess on the bedspread and shut off the MUTE button. A blast of sound came at him and he lowered the volume.
“… are not giving out much information other than to say that this officer, a decorated gold shield detective with nineteen years’ service, is being sought by authorities in connection with the death of a fellow officer earlier in the week. No information has been released about the death of this officer, but sources close to the Commissioner told Eyewitness News that there is evidence linking this officer’s death to the man now being pursued.”
There was a confusing succession of images: video clips of the outside of a hospital somewhere, squad cars parked with their lights flashing, a stretcher being hurried into a coroner’s wagon, and then another press scrimmage inside some place called One Police Plaza, a barren brick hall with uniformed cops in the background and a harried-looking plainclothes cop, huge and black and full of resentment, blinking into the floodlights as a gaggle of TV reporters pushed their mikes into his cheeks.
“No, we haven’t charged anyone in this matter. We are trying to get in touch with Detective Keogh. We believe he can assist us in our inquiries.” This was said with a ghost of a grin, the classic Scotland Yard line.
Keogh? What the hell …?
“Is this a murder investigation, Sergeant Parrot?”
“Hell, yes. What’d I just say?”
“Detective Keogh is wanted for murder, Sergeant?”
“Detective Keogh is wanted for questioning, I said!”
“How did he kill the other policeman? Was it a grudge killing? Was it about money? Is it true drugs were involved? Is it true they were fighting over drug money?”
The big black cop was being backed up into the hall with questions—mikes sticking in his face, little tape recorders coming over his shoulders, sweat on his forehead, the questions flying around him like scraps of paper in a windstorm.
“No, it wasn’t about drugs. No, there weren’t drugs involved! What do you mean, is that an official denial? What am I denying? I’m not denying anything, I’m telling you—”
“Then you don’t deny it was about drugs?”
“How big a problem is police corruption, Sergeant?”
“Is it true that Frank Keogh was on the take?”
“What’s the name of the cop Keogh killed?”
“Is it true Keogh was using cocaine?”
“Have you contacted the FBI yet?”
“Yes, the FBI is involved.”
“Do you know where Frank Keogh is now?”
“Not at the moment. We expect to hear from him momentarily, though. No, I can’t say any more. That’s all. That’s it. No more comments. I said no comments—can’t you hear what I’m telling you?”
They kept at him like jackals, thought Sonny, feeling a little sorry for the guy. The cop was trying to get through them. A hot floodlight brushed his cheek and then his arm came around, there was a blurred sequence of tilted images, feet, heads, faces open … somebody saying, Hey, you can’t do that, I’m a—
They brought the photo of that cop back, the black Irish cop with the salt-and-pepper moustache. It was a color shot. There was something odd about the guy’s eyes. Mac was intoning on the voice-over.
“To recap tonight’s top story: City and state authorities are currently seeking this New York City Police detective. His name is Frank Keogh. He is considered armed and dangerous and he is wanted in connection with the murder of a fellow police officer in what may have been a fight over illegal drug money.”
The screen filled up with a cartoon of elderly men and women stumbling around on a giant diaper looking worried, and then a pair of disembodied hands poured a cup of blue liquid into a paper bowl and Sonny shut the damned thing off.
Keogh. Frank Keogh. Wanted for questioning in the death of a policeman? Drugs? How many Frank Keoghs could there be? How many worked for the SWAT team in this city?
And the eyes. He had one blue eye and one green eye. How hard could he be to find, with a mark like that on him? And now he was out of the club, over here on the far side of the street, where Sonny Beauchamp lived and where Sonny knew all the rules.
Mercy.