Book Thirteen

Ten Thirty-Seven

2006

A photograph of the main concourse of Grand Central in golden morning light, with shafts of sun slanting down from three great arched windows onto the marble floor: commuters cross in every direction, a woman in a grey coat walks alone with a small bag, the brass information booth with its four-faced clock stands in the middle, and in the foreground two police constables in dark uniforms and peaked caps stand with their backs to us, looking out across the floor, under a green ceiling painted with gold constellations. Crown on the Potomac Ten Thirty-Seven Book Thirteen 2006

April 2006. Tom Keane is twenty-six, four years on in the City's police, and walks the concourse at Grand Central with his partner, Teresa Moran: a newsstand woman who saves him a paper, a Red Cap with bad knees, a shoeshine man who calls him officer with a straight face, a boy with a fiddle and four tunes, and now and then a woman in a grey coat on her own with a bag the size of a sandwich, who is the Lieutenant-Governor of New York. His brother Frank, an apprentice ironworker and a steward of the Brooklyn column, has not spoken to him properly since he joined the force.

Ten Thirty-Seven follows the week before, the first of May from before six in the morning to dawn the next day, and the six weeks after: the concourse at twenty-three minutes to eleven, a federal tape round the City's floor, a junction at the foot of the bridge where two columns of the Union March meet at a quarter past twelve, an hour worked in silence, seven hours in which two brothers are each missing to the other, a mother who finds her son by his hands, a King who walks the concourse and says nothing, a shop on a corner in Bay Ridge, a file nobody opened, and a question nobody answers.

Each chapter opens with a short extract from the Universal Register, the encyclopedia of the world the book is set in. The extracts are quoted from the Register as it stands; the chapters show what happened in the rooms it was not in.

Begin reading: Chapter One, The Concourse → Characters

Part One: The Week (24 to 30 April 2006)

  1. 1 The Concourse Tom Keane. 15 min.
  2. 2 No Detail Tom Keane. 9 min.
  3. 3 The Rota Tom Keane. 13 min.
  4. 4 Sunday Tom Keane. 15 min.

Part Two: The Day (1 and 2 May 2006)

  1. 5 Sunnyside Tom Keane. 9 min.
  2. 6 Roll Call Tom Keane. 9 min.
  3. 7 Rush Tom Keane. 11 min.
  4. 8 Track Tom Keane. 10 min.
  5. 9 Ten Thirty-Seven Tom Keane. 11 min.
  6. 10 Vanderbilt Tom Keane. 12 min.
  7. 11 Federal Tape Tom Keane. 11 min.
  8. 12 Kennedy Tom Keane. 12 min.
  9. 13 Downtown Tom Keane. 11 min.
  10. 14 Twelve Fifteen Tom Keane. 10 min.
  11. 15 Banner Poles Tom Keane. 12 min.
  12. 16 Moran Tom Keane. 11 min.
  13. 17 The Pause Tom Keane. 12 min.
  14. 18 Two Nineteen Tom Keane. 8 min.
  15. 19 Ears Tom Keane. 9 min.
  16. 20 Missing Tom Keane. 12 min.
  17. 21 Moving Them Out Tom Keane. 11 min.
  18. 22 Corridor Tom Keane. 11 min.
  19. 23 Hands Tom Keane. 9 min.
  20. 24 Written Down Tom Keane. 10 min.
  21. 25 Brooklyn Tom Keane. 12 min.
  22. 26 Caught Tom Keane. 9 min.
  23. 27 Corner Tom Keane. 8 min.
  24. 28 Tuesday Tom Keane. 11 min.

Part Three: The Weeks (3 May to 11 June 2006)

  1. 29 Back Tom Keane. 13 min.
  2. 30 Friday Tom Keane. 13 min.
  3. 31 Funerals Tom Keane. 13 min.
  4. 32 The Door Tom Keane. 14 min.
  5. 33 Frank Tom Keane. 10 min.
  6. 34 The File Tom Keane. 11 min.
  7. 35 Confidence Tom Keane. 12 min.
  8. 36 Ten Thirty-Seven Tom Keane. 10 min.