Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(17)

“There you go,” Tremanty said. “I’ve started a file on him; not much in it—yet. I’ll send it to you, with the files on Martin Keller or Martin Lawrence.”

Bob: “Back to the suites?”


THEY GATHERED in Lucas’s room and looked over his shoulder as he paged through the incoming FBI files.

Martin Keller/Lawrence’s real name was Marion Beauchamps. He was first arrested for armed robbery in New Orleans in the early 2000s. He spent two years in the C. Paul Phelps Correctional Center, released a year early for good behavior. He never showed with his parole officer, and a brief investigation indicated that he’d gone to Los Angeles. Louisiana put a hold on him with the Los Angeles police, but he was never picked up.

He was arrested in Los Angeles in 2010 on a robbery charge under the name Raymond Carter, but was released on bail before his true identity was determined, and he never showed for trial.

He was arrested again in 2014 under the name of Martin Keller after he was badly beaten in a fight at a nightclub, which he’d apparently started, a serious miscalculation on his part. When he was transported in an ambulance, he was found to be holding an ounce of cocaine. Through a processing error at Los Angeles County–USC Medical Center, he was not confined to a secure ward and walked out of the hospital on his own, again before his real identity had been established.

A note in his file said “Contact LuAnne Rocha, Los Angeles Police Department, Robbery Special Section.”

“Nobody’s heard from him in years,” Rae said. “He could be anywhere. He could be dead.”

“Maybe LuAnne Rocha knows,” Bob said.


THE PHONE NUMBER that Smith had provided went to a bar in Venice, California, called Flower Child’s. Lucas had been both in Marina del Rey and Venice. “They’re on the coast, right next to each other, and right there in LA,” he told Bob and Rae. “Smith might even have been telling the truth about some of this.”


LUCAS CALLED LuAnne Rocha, identified himself.

“We’re looking for a guy named Marion Beauchamps, who you guys have arrested under the names Raymond Carter and Martin Keller, but you might also know him as Martin Lawrence . . .”

“I mostly believe you, but how do I know for sure you’re not actually Beauchamps calling to find out what I know?” Rocha asked.

Lucas routed Rocha through the U.S. Marshals Service to Russell Forte, who confirmed Lucas’s identity, and Rocha called back. She had a sweet soprano voice that might have belonged to a young kindergarten teacher. “If you find him, let me know. That asshole has caused me more trouble than any other ten guys I can think of,” she said sweetly.

“He’s still in LA?”

“Almost for sure. I hadn’t heard that Lawrence name, though. Where did you get that?” she asked.

“We’ve been asking around here in New Orleans. We’re actually looking for his brother, a man named Clayton Deese,” Lucas said. “He’s the guy who killed and buried all those people we’re digging up in Louisiana. We think he might have run out there, looking for help from Beauchamps.”

“Jesus, must have had great family gatherings, huh?” Rocha said. “Sit around and bullshit about mugging techniques.”

“Why’s Beauchamps so high on your list?” Lucas asked.

“Because he’s involved in home invasions in Beverly Hills, Brentwood . . . uh, one in Pacific Palisades, two in Malibu, a couple in the Hollywood Hills . . . Like that,” Rocha said. “We picked up his prints on a pen we found in a driveway of one of the homes his gang hit, probably fell out of the door of their van. They’ve got a regular pattern: four guys, masked, driving a fake service vehicle—a plumber’s or an electrician’s, or maybe cable TV.”

“Same van, not stolen?”

“No, probably not stolen, as far as we know, but really common: a white Ford Transit. We think they’ve got magnetic license plates, or some other way, to get them on and off in a hurry. When they get to the house, we can see the Transit, but they’ve pulled the plates, so they’re not recorded on security cameras. There are a billion vans exactly like it in LA.”

“Interesting,” Lucas said.

“Yeah. They’ve thought about it, how to do it. They do their research, they know how many people are in the house, never hit anybody with a huge profile—no movie stars, nothing like that. The victims are always way rich, always have at least a few hundred million, and a couple were legitimate billionaires. Houses are always secluded, behind electronic gates. We think they use a code reader to pick up the signals between a victim’s car and the gates. They go in immediately after the owners come back from a night out. They pull in, close the gates, drive up to the front door, hit the door with a battering ram cut from a telephone pole—the victims have seen it; it’s one of their signature techniques—and they are all over the victims in a matter of a minute or so.”

“Anybody get killed?”

“Not yet, but they go in with guns, and they’ve beaten a few people pretty badly. They’ll kill somebody, sooner or later. They threaten to rape the wives or daughters, if they’re around. They loot the house. They don’t just take cash, they take watches, jewelry, coin collections, anything valuable that can be broken down and sold. No easily identifiable artworks, like paintings,” Rocha said. “Their net, believe it or not, is close to a million bucks a hit. They probably only clear two hundred thousand or so, but still. And no taxes. The people they hit are always very rich couples, and the wives usually have a pound of diamonds stuck in a bedroom safe,” Rocha said.