Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

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.

In 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.