Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘But I’m not off it yet?’ Meade asked.

‘So this Limey’s av. . av. . What the hell was it you said that he was doin’?’ Connolly asked, ignoring the question.

‘Availing me of his experience in my inquires.’

‘Availing you of his experience! And that’s what Commissioner High-and-Mighty Comstock wants him to do? Avail you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Jesus Christ, you’d have thought the War of Independence had never happened,’ the chief of detectives said in disgust. ‘You’d have thought that George Washington had never kicked the Brits’ butts right back in the Atlantic Ocean.’ He paused for a second to chew on his tobacco. ‘But we ain’t here to talk about your Limey friend.’

‘No, sir?’

‘No, sir!’ the chief echoed him. He reached into his drawer, took out one of the O’Brien posters — much the worse for wear after having been torn off a wall — and slammed it down on his desk. ‘Did you authorize this?’

‘Yes, sir, I did.’

‘Sure you did,’ Connolly agreed. ‘This is just the kind of cockamamie idea you would come up with!’

‘Has anyone responded to it, sir?’ Meade asked.

‘ Responded to it!’ Connolly repeated. ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Why don’t you ever speak plain straightforward American, for God’s sake?’

‘Has anyone come here with information?’ Meade clarified.

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘But there’s a whole crowd o’ bums in the holding cells who say they’ve got information.’

‘You’ve locked them up?’ Meade asked, alarmed.

‘No, I ain’t locked them up. The cell doors are open, an’ they can walk outta here any time they want to. Only they ain’t gonna walk out, are they? ’Cos they want this big reward you promised them.’

‘Yes,’ Meade said. ‘I expect they do.’

‘But there ain’t gonna be no big reward. Any why? Because you’re personally gonna throw all these bums out on to the street again. And when you’ve done that, you’re gonna get your ass down to the Lower East Side an’ tear down all these fly-posters.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘I do say so.’

‘And when would you like me to tell Senator Plunkitt that those were your orders, sir?’ Meade asked. ‘ Before I throw the bums out and tear down the posters, or after I’ve done it?’

‘And what — in the name of all that’s holy — has Senator Plunkitt got to do with it?’ Connolly asked.

‘It was all his idea,’ Meade explained. ‘He’s the one who’s posting the reward.’

Connolly looked suddenly troubled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before, Sergeant Meade?’

‘You never gave me the chance to, sir.’

Connolly screwed up his face, as if searching for some way to get out of the hole that he’d so readily dug himself into.

‘I still think the whole idea’s crazy,’ he said finally, ‘but Senator Plunkitt has served this city faithfully for nearly forty years, and his opinion is certainly always worth listenin’ to. So if he thinks there’s even the slightest chance you might turn up something with these posters of yours, well, I’m more than willin’ to bow to his experience.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Meade said. ‘Where would you like me to conduct the interviews?’

‘Where will you talk to the stinking bums, you mean? Inspector O’Brien’s office is in the basement — you can use that.’

‘Do you think that’s such a good idea, sir?’

Connolly sighed in exasperation. ‘Yeah, I think it’s a good idea. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?’

‘Because the office is probably still full of confidential files from Inspector O’Brien’s investigations,’ Meade said, with the same disarming innocence as Blackstone had seen him employ so effectively before.

Connolly blinked. He only did it once — but once was more than enough.

‘Inspector O’Brien’s confidential files probably are still there in the office,’ he agreed. ‘But we all know what a careful man the inspector was, and I’m sure all those files of his are safely under lock an’ key.’

‘No doubt you’re right, sir,’ Meade agreed.

‘Did you see the look on Connolly’s face when I mentioned Patrick’s confidential files?’ Meade asked Blackstone, once they were standing in the corridor outside the chief of the Detective Bureau’s office.

‘Yes, I did see it,’ Blackstone replied. ‘It would have been rather hard to miss it.’

‘Either Connolly’s had the files removed himself, or he knows who did have them removed,’ Meade said.

‘True,’ Blackstone agreed, ‘but it doesn’t do us any good to know that, because in either case, they’re probably lost and gone for ever.’

‘You may be right,’ Meade replied. ‘Not that it matters anyway — because we don’t really need them any more.’

‘Don’t we?’

‘No, we don’t! We’ll get all the information we need from the people who are waiting to talk to us in the basement.’

Meade’s spring of optimism was a perpetual source of wonder, Blackstone thought. Cover it with a large rock — the missing files, for example, or the dead end that their talk with Plunkitt had led them to — and for a while it was silent. But that did not mean that the spring had been truly dampened down. Rather that it was simply building up enough pressure to throw the rock high into the air, and so free itself again.

‘Weren’t you taking a big chance by telling Connolly that Senator Plunkitt was the one behind the reward?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Taking a chance? Not a bit of it!’ Meade said airily. ‘If the chief of detectives rings Plunkitt up — and I don’t think he will — the senator will confirm everything that I’ve said.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, by that time, my father will already have rung Plunkitt up himself, and told the senator what to say.’

‘And that’s all it will take?’ Blackstone asked, amazed.

‘That’s all it will take,’ Meade confirmed. ‘You see, guys like Plunkitt treat favours owed to them in the same way misers treat gold coins. Their greatest pleasure in life is to build up a big old chest full of them.’

‘So Plunkitt will do it because your father asks him to, and then your father will owe Plunkitt?’

‘Sure.’

‘And doesn’t putting him in debt to the senator bother you at all?’

‘Hell, no!’ Meade said. ‘It’s highly unlikely that Plunkitt will ever call the favour in.’

‘You think so?’

‘I do. See, the miser doesn’t want to spend his gold — he just wants to have it. And sometimes, late at night, he’ll open the chest and let all his gold coins trickle through his fingers. I think Plunkitt’s like that, too — he likes to let all the favours that he’s owed trickle through his fingers, then he just sits back and thinks about how rich he is.’

‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ Blackstone said.

‘And what’s that?’

‘It’s still just possible he was involved in whatever O’Brien was investigating. And if he was involved in it, then the last thing he’ll want to do is anything that may help us catch the inspector’s killer.’

‘Men like him are so arrogant they don’t think anything can touch them, even if they’re as guilty as sin,’ Meade said. ‘And after I allowed him to run rings round me this morning. .’

‘What?’

Meade grinned sheepishly. ‘OK, after he ran rings round me, whether I wanted him to or not, he’s got us marked down as two guys who couldn’t find their own assholes — even if he gave them a detailed map. But we’re gonna prove him wrong on that, ain’t we?’