Blackstone and the New World (10 page)

‘It probably is,’ Mary O’Brien agreed. She shook her head sadly from side to side. ‘She’ll have to go, of course – the poor little thing. I simply can’t afford to keep her on now that we won’t be receiving Patrick’s salary any more. I’m not even sure the
rest of us
will be able to go on living here.’

Meade coughed. ‘I’d . . . I’d be more than prepared to loan you some money,’ he said.

‘I couldn’t take it,’ Mary said immediately.

‘Why ever not?’

‘Because I have no means of ever paying you back.’

‘I wouldn’t
want
you to pay me back.’

Mary O’Brien fixed Meade with a penetrating gaze. ‘You offered to give Patrick that same kind of loan, didn’t you, Alex?’ she asked.

Meade squirmed like a bug under a microscope. ‘I’m a rich man,’ he said. ‘And I so admired what your husband was doing that I wanted to free him from the daily concerns of having to—’

‘But Patrick wouldn’t accept that kind of loan from you, would he?’ Mary said, in a voice which would not be denied an honest answer.

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Meade admitted, like a guilty schoolboy who has realized there is nowhere left to hide.

‘If Patrick wouldn’t accept it, then neither can I.’ Mary lifted the teapot. ‘I’d better pour the tea before it goes cold.’

‘I know you said that your husband always worked on several cases at once,’ Blackstone said, ‘but I was wondering if there was one case that he was giving special attention to.’

‘Patrick never talked about his work at home,’ Mary said. ‘I think he was trying to protect me from the seedier side of life.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Why is it, Mr Blackstone, that all men – even a thoughtful, understanding man like my Patrick – so underestimate the characters of their women that they are forever trying to shield them? Some women don’t
want
to be shielded.’

‘No,’ Blackstone agreed, thinking of one of
his
women – Dr Ellie Carr – with whom he had once hoped to make a life. ‘Some women don’t.’

‘I do know, if this is of any help to you, that Patrick has been spending a great deal of his time recently in the Lower East Side,’ Mary O’Brien said. ‘But the person who you should really be talking to about Patrick’s investigations is his partner, Sergeant Saddler.’

There was another moment’s awkward silence, then Alex Meade said, ‘That’s true. But the problem is, you see, no one at police headquarters seems to know where he is.’

‘They wouldn’t,’ Mary O’Brien replied.

‘What makes you say that?’ Blackstone asked.

‘When Sergeant Saddler heard the news about my husband’s murder, he was naturally terrified that exactly the same fate was in store for him, and so he went into hiding.’

‘How do you know that?’ Meade asked.

‘He rang me.’

‘To tell you he’d gone into hiding?’

‘To offer me his condolences. And to tell me that if I needed him, he would come to me – at whatever the risk to himself.’

‘So you know where he is?’ Blackstone asked.

‘No, he thought it would be putting me in too much danger to know that. But he did give me a telephone number at which he could be reached.’

‘And may we have that number?’ Meade asked.

‘Of course,’ Mary O’Brien said.

NINE

I
n his soldiering days, Blackstone had never thought of the platform on an Indian railway station as merely a place to wait for the arrival of a train. Instead, he had seen it as a vast stage, on which the drama of Indian life – with all its colour, diversity and sheer bloody confusion – had been enacted on a daily basis.

The cast – and the action – was almost invariably the same, wherever the stage happened to be located. Hours before the train was due to arrive, the platform would begin to fill up with its actors, and by the time the locomotive actually chugged slowly into the station, there would not be even a square inch of space free. Peasants, with sacks over their shoulders, would jostle for position. Low-level clerks, in sweat-sodden wing collars, would scowl their disapproval of such disorderly manoeuvres, while indulging in those same manoeuvres themselves. Fathers carried small children above their heads to avoid them being crushed, wives held on to their husbands to stop being swept away in a sea of souls. And even before the train had fully come to a halt, the scramble for a seat on it – or simply a place to stand – had begun.

The station platform of the Third Avenue ‘El’ at Chatham Square reminded him of those times. It was true there were no brown faces on this platform, that the men were wearing overalls rather than loose white jackets, and that instead of being poked in the eye with the edge of a bag of rice, he ran the risk of being barked on the shin by a bag of workman’s tools. But for all that, the crush was the same, the jockeying for position was the same, and the smell of sweat – while not
exactly
the same – was equally unpleasant.

‘We could have taken a cab, but it would probably have been slower,’ Meade said. ‘Anyway, I thought travelling on the “El” was something you should experience at least once.’

‘It was very thoughtful of you to give me the opportunity,’ Blackstone said, as a shift of bodies behind him almost pushed him on to the track.

‘Chicago’s “El” is a very different world,’ Meade said. ‘The trains are pleasanter, and they’ve electrified the track there, but the people like J.P. Morgan – who own the New York “El” – don’t see the point in making any improvements while it’s still a moneymaking machine just as it is.’

The train appeared, its engine belching out smoke and cinders, and the moment the doors had opened, the people on the platform surged forward, pushing those passengers who had intended to disembark at this station further back into the carriages.

After an almost indecently short wait, the train set off again. Its journey took it within a few feet of second- and third-floor apartments, and as it passed them, the windows shook and rattled. Through those windows, Blackstone saw the people inside the apartments – men in shirtsleeves, women sewing, a child playing with wooden horses on wheels.

‘Guess why there’s no “El” running up Fifth Avenue,’ Meade said, shouting to be heard over the noise of the rattling train.

‘Because that’s where the rich live,’ Blackstone shouted back.

‘Because that’s where the rich live,’ Meade agreed.

They reached 59th Street, and through a combination of luck and elbowing managed to reach the platform before the train pulled out again.

On foot, they cut across town to Central Park, where they had arranged to meet Inspector O’Brien’s partner, Sergeant Saddler.

‘Why was he so insistent on meeting in the park?’ Blackstone asked, as they walked.

‘Because he knows he’s safe from the Lower East Side gangs there,’ Meade told him.

Blackstone nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ he said. ‘Even a hot-headed kid sent out to prove himself isn’t going to attempt to kill Saddler with so many potential witnesses around.’

‘It’s nothing to do with potential witnesses,’ Meade told him. ‘Saddler will be safe from the gangs in Central Park because he knows that no gang members will
be
in Central Park.’

‘He
knows
that, does he?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.

‘Yes.’

‘For a fact?’

‘Certainly.’

‘How can he be so sure?’

‘He can be sure,’ Mead said, ‘because Central Park is
not
in the Lower East Side.’

‘So what’s to stop one of these gang members taking the “El”, just like we did?’ Blackstone asked.

‘In theory, there’s nothing at all to stop it,’ Meade replied. ‘But it just doesn’t happen.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because they never even see it as an option. Their world is bounded by a few city blocks. It’s all they know about, and all they care about. They’re born there, live there, and die there – and they’d never dream of leaving it, even for a day. Their existence down on the Lower East Side is a violent one, right enough, but they’re not afraid of violence and they’re not afraid of an early death – it’s the unknown which scares the shit out of them.’

They entered the park on the south-eastern side, and stood with their backs to the Pond.

‘The first superintendent of this park was a man called Olmsted,’ Meade said. ‘He was high-minded, upright and honest. He refused to be bribed or to give bribes, but even a good man like him couldn’t stop Tammany Hall using the park’s construction to its own advantage.’

‘Is that right?’ asked Blackstone, who was getting used to playing the role of hayseed stooge to Meade’s smart city boy – and was even starting to enjoy it. ‘And just how did Tammany Hall manage that?’

‘It was easy,’ Meade said. ‘Tammany provided the labour for the works, so just by the act of giving men jobs which hadn’t existed before, it was already buying their votes. But that wasn’t enough for Boss Tweed, who was running the machine at the time. He came up with the brilliant idea of having not just one gang of labourers working on the job, but
two
.’

‘Why did he need two gangs?’ Blackstone asked, as he knew he was supposed to.

‘Because one gang planted the trees in the daytime, and the other dug them up at night,’ Meade said. ‘Then the next day, the first crew would plant them again, and the next night, the second crew would dig them up again. So instead of giving a hundred men ten days’ work, Tweed was giving two hundred men work for as long as he wanted to. And, of course, that raised the cost of the project – which meant there was more money for Boss Tweed to skim off.’

A large man in a tired blue suit appeared at the entrance to the park. He seemed edgy, and even from a distance Blackstone could tell that he was sweating heavily.

‘Is that him?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Yes, that’s Sergeant Saddler,’ Meade agreed, and immediately turned around to face the water.

Meade was in charge, and Blackstone was more than prepared to follow his lead, but as he turned himself, he said, ‘Why are we giving the sergeant the cold shoulder, Alex?’

‘We’re not. He knows we’re here, and when he’s made sure we’re not being watched, he’ll come over and talk to us.’

‘I thought you told me the Lower East Side gangs wouldn’t operate in Central Park,’ Blackstone said.

‘The gangs aren’t the only killers in New York,’ Meade replied.

They stood staring into the water for perhaps three minutes before Saddler decided it was safe to sidle up to them, and even then he said, ‘Don’t look at me. Look at the Pond.’

‘Is there somebody here?’ Meade asked.

‘I don’t think so,’ Saddler replied, in a voice which seemed half-strangled. ‘But when you’re in my situation – when your boss has just been murdered – you don’t want to take any chances.’

‘Before we start talking about Patrick, why don’t you tell Mr Blackstone about the extent of police corruption in New York City?’ Meade suggested.

‘Can’t you tell him yourself?’ Saddler asked.

‘I
have
told him myself,’ Meade replied. ‘But I don’t think he quite believes it’s as bad as I say it is. And I can understand that, because if I came here from the outside, I don’t think
I’d
quite believe it was that bad, either.’

From out of the corner of his eye, Blackstone saw Sergeant Saddler give a slight shrug.

‘The whole thing stinks,’ the sergeant said. ‘Saloons are supposed to close at one o’clock in the morning. and stay shut all day Sunday, but that’s bad for business, so instead they pay their local precinct twenty dollars a month and stay open. Then there are the brothels. They pay fifty dollars a month for protection. But that ain’t the end of it – not by a long way. Sometimes the whores steal from their clients, and
sometimes
the clients complain about it to the police. It don’t get them nowhere. The police never arrest the whores.’

‘Why not?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Because the patrolmen get their cut of what’s been stolen,’ Saddler said. ‘Then there’s the supply racket.’

‘What supply racket?’

‘Brothels need all kinds of stuff to keep running. Booze, cigarettes, food, medicine, linen. But since the brothels are illegal, the precinct captains don’t allow any of the legitimate businesses to sell them anything.’

‘So where do they get what they need?’

Saddler laughed, though there was not much evidence of humour in it. ‘They get their supplies from the
police
. The captains buy the stuff from the legitimate supplier and sell it on to the brothels for a profit.’

‘Jesus!’ Blackstone said.

‘Then there are the opium dens – there are ten thousand of them in New York, and they all have to pay a bribe. Pushcart pedlars give patrolmen three dollars a week to stay in business. The sail makers on South Street pay just to hang out the canvas banners advertising their wares. The inspectors and captains take the biggest cut of the money, but everybody gets their share.’

‘Is that why you joined the Detective Bureau?’ Blackstone asked. ‘To get away from all that?’

Saddler laughed again. ‘Hell, no, Mr Blackstone! The reason that I joined the Detective Bureau was because there was
even more
money to be made there than there was in uniform.’

‘How?’

‘By working the rich areas, rather than the poor. See, Inspector Byrnes, who was the first Chief of Detectives—’

‘Mr Blackstone knows who he was,’ Meade interrupted.

‘Inspector Byrnes figured out that the people who really needed protection – by which he meant the people who could really
afford
protection – were the bankers and stockbrokers in the Wall Street area. So one of the first things he did after he was appointed was to ask the brokers if they’d give him an office right there in the Stock Exchange – and seeing how that could work to their advantage, they agreed immediately. The next thing the inspector did was draw an invisible line around the area and send the word out on to the streets that no criminals would be allowed to operate inside it.’