Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

‘Don’t worry, Sam, you’ll soon catch up with us,’ Meade said, in a kindly tone.

And they probably would, Blackstone thought. Give it a few years, and staid Southend-on-Sea would probably look just like Coney Island.

The streetcar juddered to a halt, and the conductor announced they had reached the terminus.

‘There’s our ride,’ Meade said, and pointed to a black police department carriage which had a white-haired uniformed police sergeant standing next to it.

The sergeant said his name was Walter Jones. He immediately reminded Blackstone of the wise old sergeants he had known back in London, and when Jones informed him, as they were getting into the carriage, that he’d been policing Coney Island for a long, long time, the Englishman was not in the least surprised.

‘It was no more than a village when I started out,’ Jones said, as the carriage left the shops, the bars, the vaudeville houses and the amusement parks behind it. ‘Kinda peaceful and slow.’

‘And then the railroad and the streetcars arrived,’ Meade said.

Jones nodded. ‘And everything changed for ever,’ he said, with just a hint of sadness in his voice. ‘The railroad came in ’89, the first amusement park — Captain Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park — opened in ’95, and now it seems like the whole world wants to spend its money on Coney Island.’

‘When did William Holt buy his house here?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Must have been 1893,’ Jones answered.

Blackstone and Meade exchanged a knowing glance- that was the same year Holt decided to became a hermit, the glance said.

‘Tell us about it,’ Meade suggested.

‘Well, Mr Holt bought the house — it’s called Ocean Heights — from the van Ryans. They were a real old Coney Island family, and very well-liked. But, it has to be said, they’d let the place go to rack and ruin. So the first thing Mr Holt did was to have it ripped apart.’

‘Ripped apart?’

‘Yeah, more or less. He pretty much rebuilt it from scratch, which made him real popular round here.’

‘How so?’ Meade asked.

‘Well, he didn’t bring all his workers in from the city, you see, which is what the high muckety-mucks usually do. No, sir, he employed local men. And when the house was finished and ready to move into, he employed local folk to run it for him, too. Matter of fact, the only people who work there that ain’t from Coney Island are that butler of his, and — of course — the Pinkertons.’

‘Of course,’ Blackstone agreed.

But he was thinking, who — or what — are the Pinkertons ?

A number of improbable possibilities flashed fancifully through his mind:

Fred and Lily Pinkerton, a famous music hall act he personally had never heard of, but who were now exclusively employed to entertain the Holt family.

Members of an obscure North American Indian tribe.

A sect which had broken away from the Dutch Reform Church.

‘Any time you’re ready, Sam, I’m more than willing to help you,’ Meade said, with barely concealed amusement.

Blackstone sighed. ‘All right, who are the Pinkertons?’ he asked dutifully.

‘Members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was founded by Allan Pinkerton in 1850.’

‘And I take it that they’re well-known to most Americans,’ Blackstone said, resignedly.

‘Hell, yes,’ Meade agreed. ‘They acted as President Lincoln’s bodyguards during the Civil War, and were employed to help track down Jesse James and the Wild Bunch. At one point, there were more Pinkerton agents than there were men serving in the US Army. They’ve done all kinds of work — including strike-breaking. And until Congress passed a law in ’93 to make it illegal for them to work for government agencies, they practically ran the investigative branch of the Department of Justice. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Jones?’

‘It is,’ the sergeant agreed. ‘There sure is a lot of stuff about this country that you don’t know, ain’t there, Mr Blackstone?’

‘There sure is,’ Blackstone agreed.

And even with Alex Meade to guide him, that ignorance still had a fair chance of tripping him up at some point in this investigation, he cautioned himself.

‘It was a couple of the Pinkerton agents who were killed,’ Jones said.

‘Killed?’ Meade repeated incredulously, as if he suspected he might have misheard.

‘Had their throats slit,’ Jones told him.

‘But the cable we got in Sing Sing never said anything about that!’ Meade protested.

Of course it hadn’t, Blackstone thought. Big Bill Holt was important, and Big Bill Holt had been kidnapped. What had happened to the hired help was neither here nor there.

‘There’s Ocean Heights now,’ Sergeant Jones said, pointing out of the open carriage window.

Blackstone looked out at the house. In England, he thought,a dwelling like that would have been surrounded by a long high wall, but walls did not seem to be the American way.

The house was on a small hillock, three stories tall and — unlike most of the other dwellings they had passed en route — was made of stone. It was large and impressive enough to be called a ‘grand’ house, Blackstone decided, but it fell well short of the size — and ostentation — of the Fifth Avenue chateaux which many of William Holt’s fellow millionaires had built for themselves.

He turned his attention from the building itself to its surroundings. There were formal gardens — fifty yards wide — running along the front and sides of the house. Beyond them was woodland, which was the ideal hiding place for kidnappers waiting for the right moment to swoop. The back of the house presumably — given its name — faced out on to the ocean, which, if these same kidnappers had chosen to avail themselves of it, would have presented a perfect escape route.

‘Holt must have put all his faith in security inside the house,’ said Alex Meade, who was developing an uncanny knack for reading his new partner’s thoughts.

‘Yes — and that seems to have worked out very well indeed,’ Blackstone said sourly.

‘Just dandy,’ Meade agreed.

Sergeant Jones banged on the roof of the carriage, as a signal for the driver to stop.

‘Better go and see how my boys are doing,’ he said.

There were plenty of his ‘boys’ in evidence. At least half a dozen uniformed policemen were wandering around in a purposeful-looking — yet clearly disorganized — manner.

It wouldn’t do any good, of course, Blackstone told himself. Searches required patience, not energy, and in their attempt to show their sergeant how enthusiastic they were, they’d probably already destroyed any clues the kidnappers had thoughtfully left for them.

‘See what I mean about hayseeds?’ Meade asked, as the carriage began to move again. ‘These guys don’t have a clue about how to handle a case as big as this one.’

That was probably true, Blackstone agreed, though he doubted if the New York City Police Department — which seemed to spend very little time on police work, and a great deal of time on lining its own pockets — knew how to handle it either.

‘This is your big chance to show the department what you’re made of, Sam,’ Meade said with his characteristic bubbling enthusiasm. ‘This is your opportunity to demonstrate to the stuffed-shirts and time-servers how a real policeman — a Scotland Yard policeman — handles a tough investigation.’

Maybe it was, Blackstone agreed. Or maybe it was his opportunity to demonstrate just how much out of his depth he was in this young country with its strange ways.

It was as the carriage drew to a halt a second time that they noticed the man in the tweed suit. He was in his late thirties, or perhaps a little older, with sandy hair and the sort of bland, unexceptional features that even a police artist would struggle to make look distinctive. He was watching the arrival of the carriage, and though the expression on his face said it was really of very little interest to him, the intensity of his stance told quite a different story.