Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘I didn’t know we’d got any Inspector Blackstone workin’ for the New York Police Department.’

‘He’s not a New York policeman — he’s from Scotland Yard.’

‘Now ain’t that interestin’?’ Plunkitt said. ‘Why are you here, Inspector? Are there so few Irishmen left for you to persecute in the Old Country that you have to come over here in search of new ones?’

A working man, carrying a bag of tools in his hand, had arrived on the scene, and was now waiting patiently to be noticed.

‘Are you here about your boy, Walter?’ Plunkitt asked.

‘Yes, Senator.’

‘I talked to the precinct captain this mornin’. The charges have been dropped, an’ he’ll be home in time for supper.’

‘Thank you, Senator,’ the workman said. ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.’

‘Don’t want no repayment,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Just want you to remember to put your tick in the right box come next election day.’

‘I will, Senator,’ the workman promised. ‘You have my word on that.’

‘An’ your word’s as good an assurance as any man should need, Walter,’ Plunkitt said.

The workman walked away, and when he was just out of earshot, Plunkitt said, ‘We were talkin’ about rotten apples, weren’t we, Mr Blackstone?’

‘We were,’ Blackstone agreed.

‘Then listen to what I have to say about how things work here in New York City, an’ you might just possibly end up a wiser man.’ He turned to Meade. ‘Cards on the table, Alex?’

‘Cards on the table,’ Meade agreed.

‘You hear that your Inspector O’Brien has been to see me, which must mean he’s investigatin’ me. .’

‘I never suggested. .’ Meade began.

‘Hear me out,’ Plunkitt said imperiously. ‘He must be investigatin’ me, which, in turn, has to mean I must be runnin’ scared. An’ it ain’t a big step from that to thinkin’ I paid somebody to put a bullet in the inspector. Ain’t that right?’

‘I never thought that,’ Meade protested.

Plunkitt smiled. ‘Maybe you did, an’ maybe you didn’t. But now I’ve gone an’ planted the thought right there in your head, you got to admit it’s a possibility, don’t you?’

‘Yes, I suppose it is a possibility,’ Meade admitted, reluctantly.

‘No, it ain’t.’ Plunkitt said. ‘Because Inspector O’Brien didn’t scare me one little bit. I honestly don’t think he was even there to scare me, though I still ain’t got no idea what he did want. But say that had been what he wanted — say he’d intended to frighten the livin’ bejesus out of me, it still wouldn’t have worked.’

‘No?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.

‘No,’ Plunkitt replied. ‘You see, the problem with people like him — with all them do-good reformers — is that they don’t draw the distinction between honest graft an’ dishonest graft.’

‘ Is there a difference?’ Blackstone asked.

‘A world of difference,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Dishonest graft is when you set about blackmailin’ gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, etc. I’ve never gone in for that, and neither have any of the other men I know who have made big fortunes in politics.’

‘So what’s honest graft?’ Blackstone asked.

‘I’ve got some time on my hands, so I’ll give you a couple of examples,’ Plunkitt said graciously. ‘My party’s in power in this city, so when they’re goin’ to make public improvements, I’m one of the first to hear about it. So supposin’ they’re goin’ to build a bridge. I get tipped off, and I buy as much property as I can where the approaches to the bridge are goin’ to be. Then, when the city needs the land — ’cos the bridge ain’t no good if there’s no way to reach it — I sell my land for a good price. And ain’t it perfectly honest to make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that’s honest graft.’

‘If you say so,’ Blackstone said in a flat voice.

‘Then take another case,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘The city was goin’ to fix up a big park. I heard about it, and went looking for land in the neighbourhood. There wasn’t any land goin’ at a price I was prepared to pay, ’cept for a big piece of swamp. Well, I took that swamp fast enough, and held on to it. Things turned out just like I thought they would. They couldn’t make the park complete without Plunkitt’s swamp, and they had to pay a real good price for it. You find anything dishonest in that, Mr Inspector?’

‘I don’t know the law in America,’ Blackstone said.

‘You surely don’t,’ Plunkitt agreed.

A thin woman in a faded dress had arrived, and was standing where the workman had stood earlier.

‘I’ve paid your rent for this week, Eliza, but I ain’t goin’ to do it again, so you better tell your Lew to get off that fat ass of his an’ go out an’ earn some money,’ Plunkitt said.

The woman smiled weakly. ‘Thank you, Senator,’ she said.

‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told her. ‘An’ it ain’t just in land that money’s to be made,’ he said to Blackstone and Meade. ‘For instance, when the city’s repavin’ a street and has several hundred thousand old granite blocks to sell, I’m on hand to buy them. An’, believe me, I know just what they’re worth. How do I know? Never mind that. Anyways, I had a sort of monopoly on this business for a while, but then one of the newspapers, which are always stirrin’ up things that are none of their concern, tried to spike it for me. How? It persuaded some outside men to come over from Brooklyn and New Jersey and bid against me. Well, there we all are in the auction room, me, an’ the outside men, an’ the newspaper reporters, who are just waitin’ to see me get my butt kicked. So what did I do?’

The story was interrupted by the arrival of yet another supplicant, a young man in a shabby suit.

‘The booze has been delivered for the wake, Senator,’ he said.

‘Glad to hear it,’ Plunkitt told him. ‘Now that’s top-dollar Irish whiskey I sent over. Treat it with the respect it deserves.’

‘We will, Senator.’

‘Which is just another way of sayin’ that if everybody ain’t rollin’ drunk by the time I arrive, I may start thinkin’ that I’ve wasted my money.’

The man in the shabby suit grinned. ‘No worries on that score, Senator. We’ll be drunk, right enough.’

‘So, where was I, Alex?’ Plunkitt asked.

‘Granite blocks,’ Meade reminded him.

‘That’s right. So what did I do? I went to each of the men the newspaper had persuaded to bid against me, an’ I said, “How many of these 250,000 stones do you want?” Well, one said 20,000, another wanted 15,000 and some of the others wanted 10,000 each. So I said, “All right, let me bid for the lot, and I’ll give each one of you all you want for nothin.”. They agreed, of course. So the auctioneer says, “How much am I bid for these 250,000 fine pavin’ stones?” And I says, “$2.50.” “$2.50!” he screams. “That’s a joke! Give me a real bid.” But he soon found out the bid was real enough. My rivals kept as silent as the stone I was biddin’ for. I got the lot for the price I bid, an’ gave them their share, An’ that’s how the attempt to do Plunkitt down ended — an’ that’s how all such attempts end.’

This wasn’t just the New World, Blackstone thought, it was a very different world.

‘Now when these reform administrations come into office, like they do once in a while, the first thing they do is spend money like water, tryin’ to find out about the public robberies they talked about during their campaigns,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘And guess what? They don’t find nothin’. The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law , and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you, that’s never goin’ to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn’t isn’t likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend of mine. So why shouldn’t Alderman X do exactly the same in public life?’