Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘In trouble?’ Blackstone repeated. ‘With Mr Boone?’

‘With Eddie,’ Florence said.

‘I promise you that whatever you tell me, I won’t say it came from you,’ Blackstone said, dangling the $5 bill in the air, just as he had dangled the single one.

‘How do I know I can trust you?’ Florence whined.

‘You don’t,’ Blackstone told her. ‘But if you do decide not to trust me, then you’ll never get this money.’

‘Eddie works as a runner for the Five Points Gang,’ Florence said, the words spilling out of her mouth as she reached forward and snatched the $5 bill from Blackstone’s hand.

If there were a prize for being the one place on earth that God had truly forgotten, Five Points would not have been a racing certainty to win, Blackstone thought — but it would certainly have been in with a chance.

The area owed its name to the fact that five streets — Anthony, Orange, Mulberry, Cross and Little Water — all met there, and it was at least as depressing as anything he had ever come across in London.

The houses were historical only in the sense that they were old. They were mostly three and four storey dwellings, which — like drunken men — lurched heavily against each other for support. The roofs had gaps in them, many of the windows were no more than holes in the walls to which ragged blankets had been nailed, and the doors hung crookedly on their hinges.

The streets which ran in front of these houses were no better than the houses themselves. They had been hurriedly constructed of cheap concrete slabs, many of which were broken or missing. In some of the alleys there was no paving at all, but only a compacted dirt floor that would become a river of mud in heavy rains. And everywhere there was garbage — a detritus that even the poverty-ravaged inhabitants no longer had any use for.

Blackstone stood and watched two uniformed policemen who — no doubt for a substantial fee — were escorting a group of middle-class people around the area.

How those respectable people gawped and pointed — as if they were viewing a freak show!

But at least freaks were paid for being stared at, Blackstone told himself. At least they got something out of their humiliation.

Not so the actual residents of Five Points. All they got from their well-dressed visitors was a reminder that somewhere beyond this decay there was a better life to be had — but that it was a life which was not for them.

Blackstone shifted his attention from the visitors to the inhabitants — and especially those who were boys, and aged around fourteen or fifteen. Some of these boys were prowling pointlessly up and down the streets, like bears confined in a cage that was far too small for them. Others loitered on street corners, looking out disinterestedly at a disinterested world.

There were dozens of such boys.

Perhaps even scores of them.

Any one of them could be a member of the six-hundred-strong Five Points Gang — any one of them could be the boy who Herr Schiller had seen gun down Inspector Patrick O’Brien.

And this was the place that Nancy had fled to from the van Horne mansion of Fifth Avenue. This — according to Florence, the envious scullery maid — was where she was now living high on the hog.

But if she did live there, he had certainly not been able to find her during the course of that early evening.

‘Never heard of no Eddie Toscanini,’ lied a youngish man, whose breath reeked equally of whiskey and tooth decay.

‘There ain’t no girl called Nancy livin’ round here,’ an old woman — who was so bent with age and poverty that she was almost doubled-over — mumbled unconvincingly before hobbling off.

But the youngish man and the old woman had at least spoken to him, Blackstone thought. They hadn’t just lowered their heads and hurried on without saying a word, as most of the others who he had approached had done.

He did not blame any of the people for their reluctance to talk to him. In fact, he could quite understand why they acted as they had. Because even a man in a shabby suit had untold wealth in the eyes of the residents of Five Points — and that meant that he was not to be trusted.

The sun was starting to set. Soon it would be dark, and in Five Points it would darker than in most of the city, because street lighting seemed to be one more thing that the area was not deemed worthy of.

The darker it got, the more dangerous this place would become, he told himself — and while he was not afraid of danger, he had never been a man to recklessly court it.

He would return to Five Points the following day, after he had attended Inspector Patrick O’Brien’s funeral, he decided.

But the next time he came here, he would not be alone. Next time he would bring with him someone who just might be able to turn his fruitless search into a successful one.

It was a little after nine o’clock in the morning, and though the early mist blown up from the river had finally dispersed, a distinct chill still lingered in the air.

In the Calvary Cemetery, Queens, the funeral cortège was making its way slowly towards the chapel. It was led by the hearse, a truly splendid vehicle which was panelled in delicately lacquered wood and pulled by four jet-black horses. The hearse was followed by three private carriages. And behind the carriages were the rest of the mourners, who were making this solemn journey on foot.

Blackstone was at the very back of the cortège — so far back, in fact, that he might have been said not to have been part of it all. There were reasons for this. Religion — any religion — made him distinctly uncomfortable. Besides, he felt something of a fake even being at the funeral of a man he had not even known existed until he was already dead.

He wished that Alex Meade were there instead of him, while he himself manned the observation post outside Mrs de Courcey’s brothel. But when he had suggested that, the sergeant would have none of it.

‘I’m a New York City police officer, and you’re not,’ Meade had said. ‘I’m the one with the shield.’

‘But this isn’t a police operation,’ Blackstone had countered. ‘Not an official one. I don’t need a shield to make sure that O’Shaugnessy’s keeping to his side of the deal.’

‘Anyway, I know what to look out for, and you don’t,’ Meade had said, almost frantically. ‘There are hundreds of ways to smuggle supplies into the brothel. Ways which I’d spot, and you’d miss entirely.’

It was all nonsense, Blackstone had thought.

But he hadn’t argued the point further, because they both knew the real reason that Meade didn’t want to go to the cemetery.

Blackstone looked beyond the cortège, to the chapel which lay ahead. It was an impressive and ornate structure, with a cupola at its centre, and a pair of elaborate towers, one each side of the arched doorway. It looked like no Christian building he had ever seen before. Rather, it reminded him of the mosques he had known during his soldiering days in India.

The cortège drew up in front of the chapel. Mary O’Brien and her family emerged from the first carriage, Commissioner Comstock and the Chief of the Detective Bureau from the second.

The third carriage had been carrying the six police officers in full dress uniform who were to act as pall bearers. They heaved Patrick O’Brien’s coffin on to their shoulders and carried it into the chapel. The rest of the mourners soon followed them.

Now there were only two of them left out in the chill air — the driver of the hearse, and the policeman who was far away from home.

It was a strange funeral in some ways, Blackstone thought. The hearse and the carriages were lavish — almost in the extreme. Yet most of the mourners were, judging by their dress, from a humbler background.