Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘And what did Imre do?’

‘What would you have done? He asks the inspector to wait there while he goes and sees if Madam is available. And the three of us — me, Lucy and the cop — are left alone in the parlour.’ The girl giggled again. ‘It was too funny for words.’

‘Funny? How?’

‘Well, you could tell that he wasn’t a regular at that kind of establishment, and he seems very uncomfortable being there at all. So me and Lucy try to make him feel more at home.’

‘How did you do that?’

‘I pat my hand on the chaise lounge and ask him if he’d like to sit between us. He says, “No, thank you.” He’s very polite about it, but very firm. And then he just stands there, in the centre of room, fiddling with the rim of his hat and gazing up at the ceiling. Then he sees what’s painted on the ceiling, and he quickly looks down at the floor.’ Trixie chuckled throatily. ‘It’s a good job that Madam didn’t get any of them erotic carpets she was thinking of buying, ain’t it?’

‘Did Madam invite him into her apartment?’ asked Meade, who was growing redder by the minute.

Trixie shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Like I said, she’s very particular about who goes in there.’

‘So she came into the parlour instead?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘She asks him what he wants, and when he tells her he just wants a private word, she leads him across to the far end of the room, where the escritoire is.’ Trixie paused. ‘That’s French for “writing desk”.’

‘I know,’ Meade said.

‘Anyway, they talk for about five minutes — only, it’s in a whisper, so we can’t hear. Then Madam opens the drawer of the escritoire, and takes out a sheet of paper. She writes something on it and hands it to the cop.’

‘And did that seem to satisfy him?’

Trixie frowned, as if there was only one activity that she was used to hearing the word ‘satisfy’ applied to.

‘How do you mean?’ she asked.

‘Did he seem pleased?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘And what did he do with the piece of paper?’

‘Folded it up and put it in his pocket.’

‘And then?’

‘And then he left — in a great hurry.’

‘Was that because he wanted to get away from the brothel as quickly as he could?’

Trixie frowned again. ‘I don’t think so. It was more of a case of him wanting to get to somewhere else quickly.’

‘What did Madam say to you when he’d gone?’

‘She smiled at us, in a funny sort of way. .’

‘What do you mean by “in a funny sort of way”?’

‘I don’t know,’ Trixie said perplexedly. ‘Like she’d found something funny, I suppose. And then she says, ‘It’s always nice to be of service to the police force, isn’t it, girls?’

‘And what do you think she meant?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Trixie paused for the briefest of instants. ‘Do I get the money now?’

Meade laid a ten-dollar bill on the table. ‘Regard that as a down payment,’ he said.

‘A what?’

‘A down payment. An advance. If your information checks out, there’ll be more.’

‘Funny way to do business,’ Trixie complained. ‘In my game, you make sure you have all the money in your hand before you so much as open your. .’ She paused again. ‘How much more will there be?

‘A hundred dollars,’ Meade promised.

Trixie beamed with pleasure.

‘Now that’s a better way to make a living than lying on your back with your eyes closed, pretending you’re reading Harper’s Bazaar .’

By the end of a long afternoon, Meade had screwed up 68 pieces of paper, and had only one — Number 27 — still in front of him.

‘So what do you think, Sam?’ he asked Blackstone.

‘I think that even though Plunkitt thought that he and O’Brien talked about nothing of any consequence, your inspector managed to squeeze an important piece of information out of the senator without Plunkitt even knowing he’d done it,’ Blackstone replied.

‘You see!’ Meade said triumphantly. ‘I told you Patrick wouldn’t have wasted his opportunity, didn’t I? I told you he wasn’t just talking about the weather and the state of baseball.’

‘You also told me that he was the most direct man you’d ever met,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘And he doesn’t seem to have been very direct in the way he handled Plunkitt.’

Meade looked a little crestfallen. ‘Yes, well, I did say he was direct, but maybe, on just this one occasion, he realized that being direct wouldn’t work.’

Or maybe you didn’t know him as well as you believe you did, Blackstone thought. Maybe he was much less of a saint — and much more of a clever, practical policeman — than you ever imagined.

‘I wonder just what it was that Plunkitt let slip without knowing he’d even done it,’ Meade said.

‘We’ve no way of knowing,’ Blackstone replied. ‘And now that Inspector O’Brien’s dead, we may never know. But it doesn’t really matter, anyway.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘No. Because while each link in the chain, like the meeting with Senator Plunkitt, may be of some interest in itself, what’s really important — what we’re actually looking for — is what lies at the end of it. And we find that by following the chain link by link.’

‘And the next link is the brothel where Trixie works?’ Meade asked.

‘Exactly.’

‘Being the man that he was, Patrick must have hated ever crossing the threshold of that brothel,’ Meade said. ‘But he forced himself to go there anyway — because his sense of duty told him that he had no choice.’

‘And once he was there, he picked up another piece of information — which led him to the next link in the chain.’

‘But this time he felt he could be more direct in his approach — more like his true self. He asked the madam for exactly what he wanted, and — according to Trixie — the madam wasn’t the least bit worried about giving it to him. She even seemed to be amused by the whole process.’

‘She may not have realized how important that piece of information actually was,’ Blackstone said. ‘In fact, it may not have been of the slightest importance at all to her .’

‘But from the way he acted when he’d got it, it seems to have been very important to Patrick’s investigation.’

‘And perhaps important enough to someone else, for that person to decide that O’Brien had to die.’

‘We need to find out what it was that the madam wrote on that piece of paper,’ Meade said.

‘We certainly do,’ Blackstone agreed.

The street they were walking up was only a short distance from Madison Square. Trees had been planted — a few yards apart — along its entire length, and the sidewalk appeared to be recently repaved. And as they passed by the brownstone houses, Blackstone noted that while they were similar to the ones on the street where Inspector O’Brien had lived, these had only a single bell-pull by their front doors.

‘Nice area,’ he said to Meade.

‘Yes, it’s a thoroughly respectable neighbourhood populated by moderately prosperous families,’ Meade replied. ‘And that, of course, is why it was such a smart move for the madam to open her brothel here.’

They were back to playing the I-know-this-city-and-you-don’t game again, Blackstone thought with a smile.

‘Why was it a smart move?’ he asked.

‘For two reasons.’ Meade paused. ‘You’d say that Trixie is a fairly high-class whore, wouldn’t you?’

‘I can’t speak for New York, but she would certainly be fairly high-class if she worked in London.’