Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (29 page)

He swung around, out of the path of the knife, and grabbed his attacker's left arm with his right hand, while his left fist smashed into the other man's chin with an uppercut. The assailant's head rocked backwards, but he kept his grip on the knife until Blackstone followed through with a rabbit punch to his Adam's apple.

The man hit the ground, gasping for breath, yet hardly aware of where he was. Blackstone stamped down on his right hand with the heel of his boot, and then ground until he could feel the bones breaking.

‘I did warn you what I'd do,' he said.

He turned and walked away.

You chose to fight back again, didn't you? asked a voice in his head.

Yes, I do appear to have done, Blackstone agreed.

TWENTY-SIX

T
he sun had been up for less than an hour when Timmy Tyler and his dog, Skipper, entered the woods that surrounded Ocean Heights. To Timmy, the woods were a magical place, where he could give free rein to all the adventures which were constantly playing in his head, without any grown-ups around to tell him he was being stupid. And since he'd had Skipper, it had been even better. The big black Labrador loved to run and chase and hide, and if he had any objections to being cast in the role of grizzly bear or wild stallion in one of Timmy's stories, then he certainly didn't show it.

That early morning, they had not been in the woods long when Skipper came to a sudden halt in a small clearing, and began to growl at the ground.

‘Come on, Skip!' Timmy urged him, dashing between the trees in the direction of home.

But turning around, he saw that, though the dog should have been at his heel, it was still in the clearing.

Timmy walked back to the animal.

‘Look what I've got, Skip,' he said, holding up a twig he had broken off on the way.

Timmy knew what should happen next. The stick should become the centre of the Labrador's whole world. He should focus on it with excited eyes, while tensing his muscles so that when Timmy threw it, he could be off after it like a shot.

The dog showed no interest.

‘Stick!' Timmy said, in case, for some reason, the dog had failed to recognize this particular piece of wood for what it was.

He feigned throwing the stick, an action which would usually heighten the dog's excitement, but that had no effect, and when he finally released it, Skipper could not have cared less.

‘What's the matter with you, Skipper, boy?' Timmy asked. ‘Are you feeling ill?'

The dog barked vigorously, which his owner took to indicate that this was one of stupidest questions he had ever heard.

‘Then if it's not
that
, I honestly don't know what it is,' the boy confessed helplessly.

The dog looked quizzical for a moment, then – apparently deciding that his owner would never get the point without a practical demonstration – began to dig up the ground with his paws.

Now
Timmy understood!

In his mind's eye, he saw a bunch of olden-day pirates, rowing away from their ship.

They moor in the shallows close to Ocean Heights – although, of course, there is no Ocean Heights there at that time – and wade ashore carrying a large wooden chest. The head pirate – who has a big black beard and a patch over one eye – looks around him, and points a hooked hand towards the woods. The buccaneers carry the chest into the woods, dig a hole, and put the chest into it. They intend to come back for it later – but they never do!

The dog was still digging furiously.

‘Good boy!' Timmy said.

There would be all kinds of wonderful things in that chest!

Gold coins and bracelets!

Ancient pistols and bottles of rum!

Once he had uncovered the chest, he would go home and tell his parents all about it. And they would laugh at him, his father saying it was time he grew up, his mother cooing that he was still such a sweet little thing. But they wouldn't laugh when he put his hand in his pocket and laid some pieces of eight on the table, would they? No, they wouldn't be laughing then!

Skipper was still determinedly digging.

‘Let me give you a hand, boy,' Timmy suggested.

The Labrador did not seem particularly enthused by the idea, but he knew his place in the hierarchy of things, and when Timmy knelt down beside him and edged him out of the way, he withdrew gracefully.

It was much easier to scoop out the hole than Timmy had thought it would be, and it did occur to him, as he worked, that any soil hiding a hundred-year-old treasure chest should have been more tightly packed.

It also occurred to him, when his fingers brushed against something solid which was definitely
not
earth, that the pirates had made a pretty sloppy job of things, and should really have buried their treasure
much
deeper.

And it was at that point that he cleared a little more of the earth away and saw a pair of dead eyes staring blankly up at him.

Blackstone lay on his bed, in his ratty hotel room, watching the El railway thunder past his window as it carried people with some purpose in their lives towards their destination.

He lit a cigarette, and reviewed his own situation. His fate was in the hands of Assistant Commissioner Todd, and until Todd decided what that fate would be, he was still officially on secondment to the NYPD. So there was nothing – in theory – to stop him going to the Mulberry Street police headquarters that morning.

Nothing in
theory
!

But in
practice
, what was the point?

‘The point is that young Alex will be there,' he said softly, answering his own question.

Meade would be there – because Meade was ever the conscientious policeman – and when the news came through that Holt's body had been found, and his own career was in ashes, he would need the support of a good friend.

Hauling himself reluctantly off the bed, Blackstone accepted that he would have
to play
at being a policeman for just a while longer.

Despite her excitement at being in New York, Ellie Carr had slept like a log during the first few nights of her stay there, but the previous night – after her meal with Blackstone – had proved to be an exception to the rule.

She had tossed and turned for hours, and had woken up once in a hot sweat and once in a cold one. It was probably a fever, she thought, as she dropped off into an uneasy doze, but when she woke up and took her temperature, everything appeared to be normal.

‘So it must be that I'm concerned about Sam,' she told herself, as she dressed. ‘Yes, that's who's knocking me off balance – bloody Sam Blackstone!'

She was not even sure she had any
right
to be worried about him, she argued, as she made her way down to the street – and certainly proud, independent Sam wouldn't
thank
her for worrying. But there it was – this unsought worry – quite clearly at the centre of her being, so she supposed she was stuck with it.

She reached the City Morgue at half past eight and presented her credentials, and ten minutes later she already had the post-mortem file which she'd requested in her hand.

The office he shared with Meade was empty, though Meade's straw boater on the hat stand was proof that the detective sergeant was somewhere in the building.

Blackstone sat down at his desk, and waited.

The phone rang.

‘We got a woman on the line called Mary Turner who wants to talk to you,' the operator said. ‘You want me to put her through?'

He really didn't need someone informing him about the overwhelming goodness of Almighty God, Blackstone thought.

‘No, tell her I'm out,' he said.

And, almost immediately, he felt ashamed of himself.

The woman had lost her husband, and if it brought her some comfort to talk about eternal certainties to some almost-stranger who believed in no such thing, then who was he to deny her the opportunity?

‘Are you still there?' he asked the switchboard operator.

‘Sure.'

‘I've changed my mind. Put her through.'

The phone clicked, and then a new voice – which he recognized as belonging to Mary Turner – said, ‘Inspector Blackstone? I have some very important information for you.'

‘Go ahead,' he said, waiting to be told that salvation was his for the taking, if only he would abandon his sinful ways.

‘Have you heard of a place called the Blue Light Club?'

‘I can't say that I have.'

‘It is a wicked, sinful place, and you must close it down immediately.'

Blackstone sighed. ‘I really don't have the power to do that, Mrs Turner.'

‘Then talk to someone who does,' the woman urged him. ‘For it is an abhorrent place – a modern Sodom – and it must be destroyed.'

‘How do you even know about this club?' Blackstone wondered.

‘I learned of it from my dear husband's journal. It is this Blue Light Club – I can barely force myself to utter the name – which took Joseph to the city, and it was his dearest wish that it should be obliterated from the face of the earth.'

The wheels began to turn in Blackstone's head. Joseph Turner had been on duty the night one of the prostitutes had visited Holt in his bunker, he recalled. And that had had such an effect on Turner that he had abandoned his work with the whores of Coney Island, and devoted himself to this new mission.

‘Tell me more,' he said.

The style and nature of a post-mortem report could often tell the experienced reader almost as much about the writer as the subject he was writing about, Ellie Carr thought, as she studied the report on Arthur Rudge.

In this case, she guessed, it had been written by an eager young doctor who had not yet had the time or experience to develop the cavalier attitude so often displayed by more hardened professionals. He had been careful. He had been thorough. And he had produced a very credible report, considering the material he had had to work with.

There was no doubt that Rudge had been very badly burned. Large sections of his hypodermis had been destroyed, sometimes down to the bone – but at least the bones themselves hadn't been turned to ash.

What exactly was she looking for? she asked herself, as she pored over the report.

Something that would help pull Sam out of the shit, she answered.

And while she had no idea what that
something
might be, she hoped she would recognize it when she saw it.

If Rudge had been murdered, as Blackstone suspected, then he must either have been knocked unconscious before the fire was started, or else tied up so that he could not escape from it. If the latter had occurred, then any evidence of it would have been burned away. But if it was the former, it would have been noted in the section of the report dealing with the skull.

The young doctor had found no signs of any damage to Rudge's cranium. The only injury he commented on at all was a slight chipping of the right scapula – but that could have happened long before Rudge met his death.

‘This isn't going to help, Sam,' she sighed.

And you were an optimistic fool to ever think it would, she added silently.

It was as she was reading about the pelvis that she began to feel a slight, familiar tingle, and by the time she had reached the description of the fibula, it had become a positive itch.

If she'd listened correctly to what Sam had had to say about Rudge, then she was definitely on to something, she told herself.

But what if she'd misheard or misunderstood, which was always possible?

There was only one way to find out for sure – and that was to ring Sam.

But when she placed the call through to the Mulberry Street police headquarters, the switchboard operator told her that the inspector's line was engaged.

Except for the times when Blackstone interrupted her with a question, Mrs Turner talked solidly for another five minutes. She did not always keep to the point. Sometimes she spoke with the voice which imitated an evangelic preacher's. At others she would suddenly transform herself into the poor lonely widow she actually was. But sandwiched between the righteous fire of indignation and the tragic expression of loss there were words which – to an investigator – were pure gold.

When Blackstone hung up the phone, there was a smile on his face. He could never remember a case in which one piece of information had made so much difference – in which one single fact could change the whole way he looked at the investigation and provided him with the answers he had been so desperately searching for.

He thought about Inspector Flynn and his theory.

Flynn had said that the kidnapping had been faked – and he had been quite right.

Flynn had said that the
reason
it had needed to be faked was that William Holt was about to be subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury – and he had been quite right about that, too.

There was just one thing that Flynn had been wrong about. But it was a
huge
thing – a
gigantic
thing!

The office door opened, and Alex Meade entered. His shoulders were slumped and he looked utterly defeated.

‘A body's been discovered in the woods near Ocean Heights,' he said miserably. ‘The Coney Island police haven't identified it yet, but there's no doubt that when they do, they'll find that it's Big Bill Holt.'

‘It's
not
Holt,' Blackstone said.

‘How can you possibly say that?'

‘Because I know who it
actually
is.'

‘Have you lost your mind?' Meade wondered aloud.