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Authors: Sally Spencer

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‘That does seem likely.’

‘Which means that we need to have a talk to him ourselves, every bit as much as Patrick did.’

‘That’s possibly true,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But why should
he
want to talk to
us
?’

‘For the exact same reason that he agreed to talk to Patrick O’Brien,’ Meade said, as if it was obvious to him, and he was surprised it wasn’t equally obvious to his companion.

‘Maybe it would be better if you spelled it out a little more simply for me,’ Blackstone suggested.

‘Plunkitt knows that he’s bound to fall one day – even the mighty Boss Tweed himself was eventually arrested and died in jail. And when Plunkitt does fall, he’s going to need the support of people who, if they’re not exactly on his side, are at least willing to give him the odd break. Besides, we’ve got
even more
leverage than Patrick had.’

‘Have we?’

‘Of course we have. Patrick went to see the senator, and now Patrick’s dead.’ Meade’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a pretty suspicious sequence of events, don’t you think?’

‘It’s not a sequence at all – it’s just two events,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘Besides, I’m sure there are a lot of people who’ve been to see Plunkitt in the last few days who
didn’t
end up dead.’

‘Yes, there are bound to be,’ Meade agreed, brushing the argument aside with a wave of his hand, as if it were of no consequence at all. ‘But how many of those people who’ve been to see him were New York police inspectors who had based their entire careers on investigating municipal corruption?’

‘At a rough guess, I’d say only one.’

‘
Of course
it’s only one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that Plunkitt had anything to do with Patrick’s death himself, but Plunkitt
is
bound to worry that
we’ll
try to link him to it, isn’t he? And that alone should be enough to make him want to cooperate with us, at least to the extent that he’ll tell us what it was that he told Patrick.’

There were times when Alex Meade could sound wise beyond his years, Blackstone thought. But there were also times – and this was one of them – when quite the reverse was true; when – like a small child – he seemed to believe that he could achieve anything he wanted to, simply
because
he wanted to.

And it was precisely because he was in the second kind of mood at that moment that Meade was able to paint such a rosy picture of a future meeting with Senator Plunkitt.

Certainly, Plunkitt had agreed to see O’Brien, but O’Brien had been an inspector who already had a formidable reputation, rather than an inexperienced young sergeant with an English detective, (who was still learning the rules of the game), in tow.

And even if the meeting
did
take place, Blackstone was far from convinced that Meade could use O’Brien’s death to put pressure on the Irish-born senator – because any man who had played Tammany’s game so successfully, for nearly forty years, was highly unlikely to be
that
easily intimidated.

‘So what should we do now?’ Meade asked, his enthusiasm still bubbling over. ‘I suggest we go straight down to the Lower East Side, and trace the route Inspector O’Brien took last night.’

‘Trace the route?’ repeated Blackstone, who was suddenly feeling incredibly weary.

‘That’s right.’

‘And how, exactly, do you
propose
to trace it?’

‘We’ll go around all the saloons and brothels, and ask the people there if they saw Inspector O’Brien last night. Then, by putting all the sightings together, we should be able to plot out . . .’

‘How many saloons and brothels are there on the Lower East Side?’ Blackstone asked.

Meade shrugged. ‘I’ve never actually thought about it before, but I suppose there must be thousands of them.’

‘And if we really put our backs into it, how many of them do you think we should be able to get round tonight?’

‘Two or three dozen,’ Meade said, starting to sound a little less sure of himself.

‘And do you think that most of the
people
we talk to in those two or three dozen places are going to be forthcoming?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘If they
did
see Inspector O’Brien last night, are they likely to
admit
that they did?’

‘They might admit it,’ Meade said, though he was not even convincing himself.

‘Or are they more likely to lie, in order to avoid being dragged into the middle of a police murder investigation?’ Blackstone asked.

‘They’re more likely to lie,’ Meade admitted. ‘At least, they’ll lie at first. But the more we question them, the more they’ll begin to realize that it would be better for them if they started telling the truth.’

‘And how long do you think it would
take
us to question one of these people?’

‘Two or three hours.’

‘So what you’re talking about is questioning three or four people, from each of two or three dozen saloons and brothels, for up to two or three hours per person,’ Blackstone said. ‘Have I got that right, Alex?’

Alex Meade grinned self-consciously. ‘It’s not really one night’s work, is it, Sam?’

‘No,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘It isn’t. The more you learn about police work, Sergeant Meade, the more you’ll discover that most of it is no more than a long drawn-out grind.’

‘You’re quite right, of course,’ Meade said, humbly. ‘And anyway, I shouldn’t be telling you what
I
think we should do, I should be asking what
you
think we should do. Because I do want to learn from you, Sam – I
know
I can learn from you. So what
do
you think . . .?’

‘I think you should take me to my lodgings, while I’ve still got the strength to stand up,’ Blackstone said.

The hotel was on Canal Street. It was called, as the desk sergeant had promised, the Mayfair Hotel, but with its cracked paint and peeling wallpaper, it was as different to any building in
London’s
Mayfair as it could be.

Alex Meade was mortified by the state of the place.

‘I knew that no hotel on Canal Street was ever going to be as swish as the hotels you find on Fifth Avenue,’ he said. ‘But even so, Sam . . .’

‘The department probably booked me in here because it was no more than a short walk to the Mulberry Street police station,’ Blackstone said. ‘And as far as the place itself goes, it’s perfectly fine.’

Better, in fact, than his lodgings in London, he thought, because while no Scotland Yard inspector ever lived in a grand style, most of them managed to live better than a man who donated half his salary to Dr Barnardo’s Orphanage.

‘This has nothing to do with being close to Mulberry Street,’ Meade protested. ‘Some clerk in the office booked you in here because it was
cheap
. And that’s just typical of the stuffed shirts and pen-pushers who make this kind of decision. They simply don’t have anything like enough respect for
real
policemen, but
I
do – so why don’t you let me see if I can find you a room somewhere a little classier?’

‘And who’ll pay for this classier room?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘Will it be the police department? Or will it be you?’

Meade bit his lower lip. ‘Why does no one ever seem to want to take my money?’ he asked plaintively.

‘Maybe because, since you’re offering it so willingly, they think there has to be a catch,’ Blackstone suggested.

‘And do
you
think there’s a catch, Sam?’

‘No, I don’t. But I don’t want you running around, trying to find me a classier room, either. Not when you’ve got better things to do with your time.’

‘Like what?’ Meade asked.

Blackstone suppressed a sigh. ‘Like trying to find out exactly where Inspector O’Brien went last night.’

‘But that can’t be done in one evening,’ Meade countered. ‘You said yourself that it was a long, drawn-out grind.’

‘I said it
could be
a long, drawn-out grind,’ Blackstone replied. ‘But who knows, you could get lucky.’

Meade’s eyes lit up with newly rekindled enthusiasm. ‘Do you really think I might get somewhere?’

Not a chance! Blackstone thought.

‘It’s a possibility,’ he said aloud.

Meade hesitated for a second, torn between his desire to see Blackstone treated properly and his urge to throw himself back into the investigation.

‘Well, if you’re sure you’re happy with the accommodation that has been provided . . .’ he said finally.

‘I am.’

‘Then I’ll see you first thing in the morning?’

Meade’s last words were meant to sound like a statement, but they came out as a question. As if he couldn’t quite
believe
that Blackstone would still be there in the morning. As if he feared that the magical policeman from London – from whom he hoped to learn so much – would simply melt away in the night.

‘I’ll be here,’ Blackstone promised.

‘Until tomorrow, then,’ Meade replied, sounding a little relieved.

Blackstone nodded. ‘Good hunting,’ he said.

The Third Street ‘El’ ran right past Blackstone’s hotel bedroom window, so that now, instead of being one of the travelling watchers – as he’d been earlier in the day – he had become one of the stationary watched. For several minutes, he sat looking at the faces rushing by in the elevated trains. Occasionally, he waved – though no one ever waved back.

He did not mind the noise that the ‘El’ itself produced or the rattling of window-frames it left in its wake. He was a Londoner, brought up on noise, and – in a way – he embraced it as a comforting familiarity in a land where everything else seemed strange.

He had told Meade that he was exhausted, and he had not been lying. But now he found that sleep – perversely – would not come to him, and he continued to sit on his bed, smoking and listening to the cockroaches scuttling along the floor.

And, as he sat there, his mind travelled back over the sometimes-hazardous journey which had been his life.

He had given serious consideration to coming to America when he had left the orphanage. But instead, he had joined the army and fought in a bloody war in Afghanistan – a war in which many of his comrades had died, and he had almost been killed himself.

He had had a second chance to cross the Atlantic when he left the army, but once again he had chosen a different course, and become a Metropolitan policeman – had deliberately plunged himself into a world of depravity and cruelty, where he had seen many things he would now rather forget, and had once, incidentally, saved the life of a queen.

He wondered what would have happened if he
had
decided, on either of those two occasions, to come to America.

Would he still have been the same man he was now – a man battered by life, but still able to face himself in the shaving mirror? Or would the country have changed him – for better or worse – as it seemed to have changed so many other men?

When sleep finally came, he fell almost immediately into a dream about a woman.

He
often
dreamt about the women he’d loved:

Hannah – who had loved him in return, but had betrayed him to the assassins anyway, and who had died herself in the process.

Agnes – who had betrayed him to her Russian paymaster, and who he had last seen on a lonely railway station in the middle of Central Russia.

And Dr Ellie Carr – who had not betrayed him to any
man
, but to her love of her
work
.

Sometimes only one of his women would appear in his dreams. On other occasions, though, they would
all
be there, merging into one another and then drifting apart – so he was no longer sure which of them he had truly loved, or whether he would have continued to love
any
of them, if fate had allowed him to.

But that night he did not dream of Hannah, Agnes
or
Ellie. That night – for reasons he was quite unable to explain to himself when he woke up – he dreamed of Jenny, the O’Briens’ timid parlourmaid.

ELEVEN

T
he shoeshine stand was on 13th Street, half a block from where Meade and Blackstone were standing, and the shoeshine boy was kneeling down, buffing the shoes of a large man in a frock coat and silk top hat.

‘That’s him,’ Alex Meade said. ‘That’s George Plunkitt.’

‘Did you have any trouble in getting him to agree to meet us?’ Blackstone asked.

‘None at all,’ Meade replied airily. ‘Like I told you yesterday, after Inspector O’Brien’s death he must be a worried man – though not half as worried as he’ll be after
we’ve
been talking to him for a while.’

But he didn’t look worried – at least, from a distance.

‘Do you know what was one of the first – and of the most important – things that I learned in the army?’ Blackstone asked. ‘It was to avoid the temptation to start shooting at the enemy the moment you catch sight of him.’

‘Is that right, Sam?’ Alex Meade said, though his thoughts were clearly focused much more on Senator Plunkitt than they were on Blackstone’s military experiences.

‘And believe me, it’s not an easy temptation to resist,’ Blackstone continued, speaking as if he had gained Meade’s full and enthusiastic attention. ‘You see the man charging towards you, and you know his greatest wish in life is to get close enough to you to kill you. Your own blood is racing and you desperately want to pull the trigger. But there are two very good reasons why you shouldn’t do it.’

It seemed to have finally occurred to Meade that this was more than merely idle chatter.

‘You’re making a point here, aren’t you, Sam?’ he asked.

‘I’m trying to,’ Blackstone admitted.

Meade sighed. ‘All right, what are the two reasons you shouldn’t pull the trigger?’

‘The first is that the closer he gets to you, the more you can see of him, and the bigger a target he becomes.’

BOOK: Blackstone and the New World

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