Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘So Inspector O’Brien’s corruption investigation didn’t bother you?’ Blackstone said.

‘That’s what I’m sayin’. I knew he was never goin’ to uncover what I done wrong, because I never done nothin’ wrong.’ Plunkitt smiled. ‘Which brings us right back to where we started, which is that I had no reason on God’s green earth to have the man hit. Any more questions you’d care to ask, Alex?’

‘No,’ Meade said weakly. ‘Thank you for your time, Senator.’

‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told him. He turned to Blackstone again, and fixed him with his piercing eyes. ‘Say, for the sake of argument, that my worst enemy was given the job of writin’ my epitaph when I’m gone. An’ say, for argument’s sake again, that he tried to work out the worst possible thing he could write about me. You followin’ me so far?’

‘I’m following you so far,’ Blackstone agreed.

‘An’ say he wasn’t allowed to lie. Say he could write anythin’ about me as long as it was the truth. Do you know what the worst thing he could come up with would be?’

‘No,’ Blackstone said. ‘What would it be?’

A fresh smile spread across the senator’s broad face. ‘“George W. Plunkitt”,’ he said. ‘“He seen His Opportunities and He Took ’Em.”’

It wasn’t Blackstone’s normal practice to start drinking that early in the morning, but when he saw the look of mute appeal in Meade’s eyes as they passed the saloon on 12th Street, he quickly decided that even if he didn’t need the boost that a shot of alcohol would give him, the sergeant certainly did.

He sat Meade down at a table, went over to the bar, and ordered a draft beer for himself and a whiskey for the sergeant. When he returned to the table, Meade was gazing down speculatively at his hands, as if wondering if they were up to the job of strangling him.

‘Cheer up,’ Blackstone said.

‘Cheer up?’ Meade repeated bleakly, grabbing the shot glass as a drowning man might clutch at a straw, and knocking the whiskey back in a single gulp. ‘Cheer up! Plunkitt ran rings round me. You warned me he might, but I was such an arrogant little prig that I wouldn’t listen to you.’

‘He’s been in the game a long time,’ Blackstone said consolingly. ‘He was at it before you were even born.’ He hesitated for a second, before asking, ‘Did Plunkitt really dandle you on his knee at one of the Tammany Hall picnics — or was that just a tactic to knock you off balance?’

‘I don’t know,’ Meade admitted. ‘He may have dandled me on his knee! He may even have ruffled my goddam hair and told me I was a sweet kid. I don’t remember.’

‘But you did attend Tammany picnics?’

‘We attended a few of them,’ Meade said, with the shame evident in his voice. ‘My father despises the whole Tammany crowd — but if you want to do business as a lawyer in New York City, you sometimes have to force yourself to be pleasant to them.’

‘You do what you have to do,’ Blackstone said. ‘I sometimes have to force myself to be pleasant to my assistant commissioner — and that man is the scum of the earth.’

‘Really?’ Meade asked gratefully.

‘Really,’ Blackstone confirmed.

But he was thinking, even so, I’d rather cut my own arm off than go on a picnic with Todd.

‘Why am I so stupid?’ Meade wailed. ‘Why did it have to turn out that Plunkitt was the organ grinder and I was no more than the monkey? And what would Clarissa have thought of me if she’d been there? Would she ever have considered marrying me after that?’

‘Clarissa wasn’t there,’ Blackstone said firmly. ‘And the way things turned out wasn’t your fault. You can only do serious damage to the enemy if you have the right ammunition — and we didn’t.’

‘Do you think he was telling the truth?’ Meade asked. ‘Do you think the only graft he’s involved in is what he calls “honest graft”?’

‘I don’t know,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘But even if it is true — even if every cent he’s ever made has been, strictly speaking, legal — that still doesn’t make him exactly a choirboy, does it?’

Meade forced a smile on to his face. ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Not even a defrocked one.’

‘Because he’d never have had the opportunity for this “honest graft” of his if he hadn’t been an important politician,’ Blackstone continued. ‘And he’d never have become an important politician in this city if he hadn’t used all possible means — legal and illegal — to fix elections.’

Meade’s smile had been growing in strength as Blackstone spoke, and now he looked positively amused.

‘Have I said something funny?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Not exactly,’ Meade replied. ‘Or rather, it’s not what you said that was funny, so much as it’s the fact that it was you who said it.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ Blackstone admitted.

‘You remember me meeting you down at the docks, don’t you?’ Meade asked.

‘Of course I do.’

‘And you remember me saying that there were no real detectives in New York City?’ Meade paused, and suddenly looked a little troubled. ‘I was maybe being a little disloyal to Inspector O’Brien when I said that,’ he continued, ‘but I’ve always thought of him as a moral crusader rather than a true detective.’ He paused again. ‘Anyway, you remember me saying that about the Detective Bureau?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘And you didn’t believe me, did you?’

‘Well, I. .’ Blackstone began, uncomfortably.

‘Now imagine that instead of talking about the Detective Bureau, I’d talked about Senator Plunkitt. Imagine if I’d delivered then that little speech on Plunkitt that you delivered just now . You’d have thought I was a prime candidate for the funny farm, wouldn’t you?’

Good God, Meade was right, Blackstone told himself. He would have thought the sergeant was a candidate for the funny farm. But now his whole view of the city — his whole way of thinking about it — had altered.

And how long had that taken ?

Amazingly — incredibly — it had taken less than a day and a half!

Yet, in some ways, he was starting to feel as if he’d never existed anywhere else — as if New York City had been his entire universe for as long as he could remember.

So maybe the city did actually have the power to change people, without them even really noticing it happen.

And maybe that power was both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness.

‘What’s on your mind, Sam?’ he heard Meade say.

Blackstone grinned self-consciously. ‘I was worried about becoming a new man without ever having got the old one quite right.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Blackstone said. ‘Shall we get back to the matter of Senator George Plunkitt?’

‘Sure.’

‘The one thing I’m absolutely sure of is that when he said he had no real idea why Inspector O’Brien visited him, he wasn’t lying.’

‘But he had to know,’ Meade protested. ‘Otherwise, none of it makes any sense.’

‘None of what makes any sense?’

‘I knew Patrick O’Brien well. Very well indeed. Given the opportunity to speak to Plunkitt, he wouldn’t have wasted that time by talking about the weather, or baseball, or if Oklahoma should be a state.’

‘But that’s just what Plunkitt says he did talk about,’ Blackstone said. ‘And I believe him.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Meade said stubbornly. ‘Patrick was one of the most direct men I’ve ever met.’

‘Perhaps, but. .’