Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘I certainly hope so,’ Blackstone said.

‘So shall we go downstairs and see what our bait’s hauled in for us?’ Meade suggested.

‘Why not?’ Blackstone agreed.

The people whom Meade hoped would make Inspector O’Brien’s files unnecessary had been herded into the three cells closest to the door.

They were a mixed bunch, Blackstone noted — men and women, young and old. Some of them were dressed more or less respectably, though a fair number wore clothes which would have been pushed to pass themselves off as rags. But there was one thing that united them all — the look of expectant greed which shone in their eyes when they saw Meade arrive.

A young patrolman stood guard over this motley crew.

‘Exactly how many of these people are there, Officer Turcotte?’ Alex Meade asked.

The patrolman shrugged. ‘Don’t know for sure,’ he admitted. ‘I kept countin’ till I reached thirty, then I kinda lost interest.’

Blackstone did his own headcount, and estimated there were around fifty of the ‘informers’.

And how many of these informers would be a complete waste of time? he asked himself.

Around fifty would be as good a guess as any, he decided.

‘I’ll be interviewing them in Inspector O’Brien’s office,’ Meade told the patrolman. ‘I want to see them one at a time, and I’ll leave it up to you to choose what order I see them in. Is that all right with you?’

‘Sure,’ Turcotte agreed.

But it was clearly not all right with some of the current residents of the cells, who had overheard the conversation.

‘Why should he choose?’ demanded an old woman who was wearing a thick shawl, despite the heat.

‘Yeah, it should be first come, first served,’ said a younger woman in a floral hat. ‘An’ I was here first.’

‘The hell you were,’ called out a voice from behind her. ‘ I was here first. Ask the cop.’

‘I got another important appointment to go to,’ said a man who, from the downtrodden look of him, had never had an appointment — important or otherwise — in his entire life.

Meade waited until the noise had died down. ‘Anyone who doesn’t like the arrangement I’ve suggested is perfectly free to leave now,’ he said, gesturing towards the stairs with his hand.

But none of the people in the cells took him up on the offer. They all had the scent of money in their nostrils, and they were determined not to leave without at least getting a chance to take a bite at it.

‘It feels strange,’ Meade said uncomfortably.

‘What does?’

‘To be sitting here in Patrick O’Brien’s office, behind Patrick O’Brien’s desk.’

‘ Somebody always has to step into dead men’s shoes eventually,’ Blackstone pointed out.

‘I know they do,’ Meade agreed, still sounding ill at ease. ‘But that person, whoever he is, should be worthy of filling those shoes — and I don’t feel worthy of filling Patrick’s.’

‘You’ll fill them well enough, given time,’ Blackstone assured him. ‘And even if you don’t, it won’t be through lack of trying.’

‘Sometimes, you know, you’re almost like a father to me, Sam,’ Meade said emotionally.

‘Then maybe I’ll take you out on a Tammany Hall picnic,’ Blackstone countered.

Meade grinned. ‘Yeah, I was getting kinda maudlin just then, wasn’t I?’

‘Yeah, you kinda were,’ Blackstone agreed, smiling as he imitated the young detective sergeant.

Meade squared his shoulders and turned his attention to the stack of plain white paper which was on the desk in front of him. He peeled off the top sheet and wrote ‘1’ on it in pencil.

‘Send in the first of the informants,’ he called out to Officer Turcotte, who was waiting in the corridor.

Turcotte shepherded the potential informant into the room. It was a man somewhere in his late thirties. He was unshaven, had bad teeth, and emitted an essence of eau de vie de sewer, even from a distance.

‘Name?’ Meade said.

‘Dickie Thomas.’

Meade wrote it down.

‘Occupation?’

‘Well. . you know, Sergeant.’

‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,’ Meade replied sharply.

‘I do a bit o’ this, an’ I do a bit o’ that.’

‘Address?’

‘I’m kinda between addresses at the moment.’

‘No fixed abode,’ Meade wrote down. ‘So what have you got to tell me, Mr Thomas?’

‘I seen him.’

‘Inspector O’Brien?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Where?’

‘O’Malley’s Saloon.’

‘When?’

‘Tuesday night.’

‘Give me all the details.’

‘O’Malley was standin’ behind the counter, and this cop walks up to him, bold as brass, and asks for his bribe money. Well, O’Malley says business is bad, an’ he can’t afford to pay this week, and this inspector says in that case he’ll be closing the place down.’ Thomas paused for a second. ‘I just had a thought,’ he continued unconvincingly.

‘Well, that must be a novelty,’ Meade said.

‘You what?’

‘Tell me about this thought you’ve just had.’

‘Ain’t it obvious?’

‘Not to me.’

‘It was O’Malley what killed him.’

‘And why should he have done that?’

‘To stop him from closin’ the place down, o’ course.’ Thomas held out a dirty hand, palm up. ‘Can I have my money now?’

‘I don’t think the inspector was ever in O’Malley’s Saloon,’ Meade said. ‘I think you made all that up.’

‘I didn’t,’ Thomas told him. ‘I swear I didn’t.’

‘And the reason I think you made it all up was because I know for a fact that, when Inspector O’Brien went out collecting bribes, he always wore his lucky green hat.’

‘What?’

‘He always wore his lucky green hat when he was collecting his bribes. And you never mentioned that.’

‘Didn’t I?’ Thomas asked. ‘I thought I did.’

‘No.’

‘Then I must just have forgotten to.’

‘So he was wearing the hat?’

‘Yes, he was. He definitely was.’

‘With the pink feather in the hatband?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘And with the small wooden duck, sewn on to the crown?’

‘I. . er. . don’t think I saw that,’ Thomas said uncertainly. ‘Maybe it had fallen off before he went into the saloon.’

Meade screwed up the sheet of paper, and threw it into the bin.

‘Officer Turcotte, please show this man out, and then bring me the next one,’ he said.

‘O’ course, the little wooden duck!’ Thomas said wildly. ‘Painted yellow, wasn’t it? I didn’t notice it at first, because the lightin’ in O’Malley’s Saloon is very poor. .’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘An’ besides, my eyesight ain’t what it was.’

But despite his protest, Thomas knew as well as Meade did that the game was up, and when the officer grabbed hold of his arm and hauled him to his feet, he did not resist.

Meade did not seem in the least discouraged by the way that the interview had gone.

‘When you’re panning for gold, you have to sift a lot of silt before you get to the nugget,’ he said.

‘True,’ Blackstone agreed.

But he was thinking that sometimes there wasn’t even a nugget there for you to find.

Meade wrote ‘27’ at the top of the clean white sheet of paper and then looked up at the girl.

She was perhaps nineteen or twenty, but she was wearing as much powder and rouge as a woman with sixty years of ravages to hide. Her dress was of good quality material, and had been cut not-so-much to show off her figure to its best advantage as to put her merchandise on display. She could, perhaps, have been called a lady, but only if the words ‘of the night’ were added as a qualification.