Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

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.’

‘Well, no common criminals, anyways,’ Meade said.

‘That’s right,’ Saddler agreed. ‘The criminals in wing collars and top hats, who worked in banks and brokerage houses, could come and go as they damn well pleased.’

The sergeant suddenly stopped talking, and glanced nervously over his shoulder.

‘Something wrong?’ Meade asked.

‘I just got the feeling, for a second there, that we were being watched,’ Saddler said.

‘And are we?’

‘No, I don’t think so. It must just be my nerves playing me up. But, hell, who wouldn’t be nervous in my position?’

‘Who indeed?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Do you think you can stay long enough to finish your story?’

‘If it don’t take too long,’ Saddler said. He paused, then admitted, ‘I’ve forgotten what I was saying.’

‘Byrnes drew an invisible line around the Wall Street area,’ Blackstone prompted.

‘Oh, yeah. But there’s no point in drawing that line if you ain’t going to enforce it — especially in a place like Wall Street, where everybody knows there are such rich pickings — so enforcement was just what the Detective Bureau spent most of its time doing. Course, paying so much attention to the Wall Street area meant that we didn’t solve much crime anywhere else — but why should we, when there was no profit in it?’

‘Just how much profit was there in guarding Wall Street?’ Blackstone wondered.

‘Plenty, especially for Inspector Byrnes. See, the sergeants just got cash from the brokers for protecting them, but what the inspector got was tips about which stocks to buy — and since the system’s crooked, that advice was never wrong and those stocks always went up.’

‘How much money did he make?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Hard to say for sure, but the Lexow Committee found one bank account of his with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it. They asked him to explain how a man who earned less than three thousand dollars a year could end up with so much money, and he couldn’t explain it at all. But even then, he wasn’t arrested. Even then, he hung on for a couple more years before resigning from the force.’

‘You’re being very frank about what you and others have done,’ Blackstone said.

‘Yes, sir, I am,’ Saddler agreed earnestly.

‘Why?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Tell Mr Blackstone about what happened to you to make you a new man,’ Meade suggested.

‘I heard the Reverend Parkhurst preach,’ Saddler said simply.

‘Reverend Parkhurst?’ Blackstone repeated.

‘He was the pastor who stirred up all the fuss about corruption and led to the Lexow Committee being formed,’ Meade explained.

‘The reason I happened to hear the reverend speak was that I was on the tail of this judas goat. .’ Saddler continued.

‘This what?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Judas goat. It was another one of Inspector Byrnes’ ideas. See, we didn’t always charge everybody we arrested — not even all the guilty ones. Sometimes, we’d let a suspect go, but we’d follow him, and see who he talked to. Then we’d rearrest him, and work him over until he gave us something on the people he’d been associating with.’

‘Something real — or something he’d simply made up to avoid further beating?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Didn’t really matter, as long as it gave us grounds to arrest them . Then we’d let the judas goat go again, as long as he promised to give evidence against his friends. You see how it works?’