Blood Money

by Tom Bradby

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I heard about the press conference and there’s a rumour over at the Sun that he has a big story for the morning. Do you know what it is?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You want to tell me what kind of evidence you have about corruption at City Hall?’

  ‘I’d rather keep it to myself. It’s … sensitive.’

  ‘I bet it is. I could order you to tell me.’

  ‘And I could refuse.’

  ‘You have balls, Quinn, I have to give you that. If you survive this, who knows? You could even make it to chief of detectives one day. But it’s a mighty big “if”. What do you want?’ Schneider thrust his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Do you have any briefing notes on the Mecklenburg case?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Byrnes never seems to be in the office and I can’t find the file.’

  ‘I have it right here. I have to brief the commissioner in ten minutes. You’ve probably heard they’ve found the body, or what remains of it. They tried to burn it first, then dropped what was left in a canal. What is it you want to know?’

  ‘I’d like the name of the agency Amy Mecklenburg got her job through.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘There’s a pattern. A group of men used the agency to identify and ensnare Miss Mecklenburg. They’ve done it before, perhaps many times, and they’ll do it again.’

  Schneider went to the other side of the desk. He opened a drawer, took out a file and threw it across to him. ‘Be my guest. It’s on the front sheet.’

  Quinn hesitated. He glanced through the report then turned the file over to check who had already signed for it.

  Danny Byrnes

  Johnny Brandon

  Courier Dept

  Danny Byrnes

  Ed McCredie

  Danny Byrnes

  Deputy Commissioner Schneider

  ‘The courier department?’

  ‘It means it was signed out to a precinct overnight. They must return it by dawn.’

  ‘Which precinct?’

  ‘You’d have to check. Whichever the girl is from, I should think.’

  Quinn noted down the name and address of the recruitment agency.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ve not had much in the way of briefing from you on this case, Quinn. Is that because McCredie told you to cut me out?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You’re a poor liar. And you forget how long I’ve been around. I guess he told you I was set on doing him in so I could claw my way up to the commissioner’s chair.’

  ‘No, sir. He didn’t say that.’

  ‘I’ll bet he did.’ Schneider moved to the other side of his desk and sat down. ‘I’ll tell you something, Quinn. The commissioner is going to step down all right, but I wouldn’t take the job even if it was all that stood between me and eternal damnation.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir.’

  ‘I doubt it. There are people who are looking out for you. Did you know that?’

  ‘Not exactly, sir, no.’

  ‘From your behaviour, I’d say you haven’t guessed who they are.’

  ‘I’m just trying to get my work done and go home.’

  ‘I admire your single-minded pursuit of this, even if your motives are frankly transparent. But I feel compelled to say that the odds remain stacked against you, whatever you may have told your new friend Mr Goldberg.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’

  ‘If a group of powerful men have kept a secret for more than a decade, you’d have to wager that they’re going to carry on keeping it, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘What is the secret?’

  ‘Don’t play the fool with me, Quinn. You have an idea already, but it’s the tip of the iceberg. Men in this city have got away with murder, quite literally, for longer than I care to think. They’re protected by the system. And all we can do is keep shuffling the cards.’

  Quinn thought of Mrs Mecklenburg’s cries in the corridor below. ‘Is that all we can do?’

  ‘For the time being, yes. To smash a cabal, you need someone to break ranks.’

  Quinn looked at his superior. ‘Duncan was going to turn state’s evidence.’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Moe Diamond and Dick Kelly might have threatened to do the same.’

  ‘You may be right. What do you make of our friend Mr McCredie over there? Do you trust him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In a way that you don’t trust me?’

  ‘Sir, you’re the deputy commissioner.’

  ‘Don’t insult my intelligence, Quinn. This isn’t about a tag on a desk. I suppose he asked you how I managed to afford an estate out on Long Island.’

  ‘I don’t recall him mentioning it.’

  ‘He told you I spent my time kissing the backside of every politician this side of Washington in the hope of preferment once the commissioner is on his way.’

  ‘No, sir, he didn’t say that.’

  ‘I don’t blame you, Detective. Why trust a Jew over a good, hard-drinking man from the old country?’

  ‘Sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do, Quinn. These men generate enough wealth to buy God. They probably already have. Only if we unite will we stand a chance of defeating them.’

  ‘How are we going to unite, sir?’

  ‘Just keep me informed and remember what I said. I know what you’re doing. If you need help, you know where to find me. And think about this. Your father was the best – and the straightest – detective we ever had in here. But we all make … mistakes. We all have … emotions beyond our control.’

  ‘You’re not his son.’

  ‘No, but you are. And it’s hard. Believe me, I understand that better than you might imagine. If you want help, Detective – I mean really want it – you know where to come.’

  Quinn closed Schneider’s door quietly behind him. When he reached his desk, the deputy commissioner was still watching him.

  Quinn picked up the telephone and asked for the courier department. ‘It’s Joe Quinn here from the main floor,’ he told the woman who answered the call. ‘I need to check something.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘Last week, the Mecklenburg briefing file was signed out overnight to you. Where did you send it?’

  ‘Just hold on a minute, sir, and I’ll check.’

  Quinn waited, still aware of Schneider’s penetrating gaze. The woman came back on the line. ‘It went to the First Precinct, sir. It was addressed to Gerry Quinn.’

  He cut the connection.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  BEN SIEGEL LOCKED ONTO THEIR TAIL THE MOMENT CAPRISI NOSED the Gardner into the afternoon sunshine. His men no longer stood out on the running boards, but they made no attempt to hide their pursuit.

  ‘What do you figure they’re going to do?’ Quinn asked.

  ‘They want to show us their stamp collection.’

  ‘That’s very funny, Caprisi.’ Quinn rested his head against the leather door pillar. ‘This could begin to get on my nerves.’

  ‘Relax. If they were going to kill us, they’d have done it already.’

  ‘That’s real encouraging.’

  The recruitment-agency address in the Mecklenburg file was on Sands Street. It was a low, dirty white building sandwiched between a flophouse and a Filipino restaurant. The air was charged with the aroma of spices and roasting coffee from the nearby factories and the Manhattan skyline loomed in the distance beyond the East River, like the backdrop of a Broadway set.

  The grimy cobbled street was still damp from the rain and its sidewalks almost deserted save for a few sailors who idled in the afternoon sun. Jackhammers pounded from the salvage pontoon close by inside the Navy Yard.

  The office was deserted. There was a small discoloured area of brick by the door where a sign had been jemmied off and the windows had been boarded up. Qu
inn broke down the door, but the interior had been stripped of its contents: there were no desks, chairs, pinboards, notices or filing cabinets.

  The owner of the Filipino restaurant didn’t know who had operated there. Neither did any of his neighbours.

  ‘Byrnes gave the wrong address?’ Caprisi suggested.

  ‘Probably.’

  Quinn circled the interior once more. Out of the window he saw an old woman reading a newspaper in her garden. Behind her was one of the ugly frame houses La Guardia had condemned so vociferously during his campaign for office. She reminded him of his grandmother, wrapped up in a black shawl and thick hat.

  Quinn hummed the Irish rebel song she had sung to them as children. More or less his first memory was of the day she had shuffled through the immigration pens at Ellis Island, muttering curses at the new land that rose like a mirage across the water. She had only lasted a week before dying peacefully in her sleep.

  ‘What next, Joe?’ Caprisi asked. ‘If we start trying to trace every missing girl in the last fifteen years, we’ll be here until hell freezes over.’

  ‘We have to be able to find out what happened on the twenty-second of June 1919. You can clean the files, but not the public record.’ Quinn turned for the stairs.

  ‘Joe, are you sure you’re ready for this?’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘You think you want to know the truth about your father. I understand that. But are you certain you’re ready for it?’

  Quinn stopped dead. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Sometimes it’s better not to know.’

  ‘It’s never better.’

  ‘I wish I didn’t know who killed my brother. I wish I didn’t know that my father doffs his cap to him every morning.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. I’m just advising you to think about it before it’s too late. I’m frightened for you, scared for both of us. And I have been, right from the start.’

  ‘And I’ve always told you, there’s no need to make it your affair.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘It’s too late for everything. They’ve found the Mecklenburg girl’s body. All that was left of her was a pile of bones and a burnt shoe.’ Quinn looked at his partner. ‘Go take a look at the girl’s mother in the corridor, Tony, then tell me I have a choice.’

  Quinn kept his foot hard on the gas pedal all the way up Fifth Avenue.

  Newspapers and periodicals were stored in a dingy room on the ground floor of the library. Quinn shoved his badge at the assistant. She wasn’t impressed. ‘How may I help you?’

  He explained what he wished to see and was directed to a seat. Caprisi had disappeared.

  The woman returned with newspapers piled high on a wooden trolley. Quinn had chosen only copies of the Evening News and the Sun, but the library had every edition, so he ended up with a mountain of paper. Caprisi returned, took a seat and helped himself to a slice of the pile.

  ‘I’ll take June and July,’ Quinn said. ‘You take August.’

  Caprisi pulled the newspapers closer and set to work. Quinn turned to the twenty-second of June 1919, but he could find no reference to a missing girl, an abduction or a murder from that day or any of those that immediately followed it.

  He read everything, every item of news, however brief, in every column.

  The room was warm, the air heavy. He searched for hidden significance in every headline. ‘$15,000 For Girl Attacked at Fifteen’, ran one. ‘A verdict of $15,000 has been awarded against a man who attacked the girl two years ago and is now serving seven years in prison as a result.’

  Twenty minutes later, he lingered over ‘Sold Sister to White Slave Ring, Syndicate Agent’s Kin Tell. U-S.’

  ‘Greedy for what were called “commissions”,’ it read, ‘at least one member of New York’s shame syndicate sold his own sister into white slavery.’

  Quinn spun the newspaper around so that Caprisi could look. ‘ “The operations of the syndicate”,’ he read aloud, ‘ “were revealed by the arrest of Albert Lucks, held under charges that he had conspired to transport young women to Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and St Louis. Evidence that the gang was organized on the principle of a Broadway booking office was found by investigators during a raid of the office of men suspected of being Lucks’ accomplices in Coney Island. Bookers, who made the rounds of dancehalls, were paid $500 for their recruiting efforts.”’

  Caprisi pushed the newspaper back. ‘It doesn’t mention a recruitment agency.’

  Quinn took out his notebook and scribbled down half a dozen details. He turned the pages faster. A British airship made the first two-way crossing of the Atlantic, and Dempsey thrashed Willard to take the world heavyweight title in Toledo, Ohio.

  He stopped. ‘Rice Arrested’, ran a headline, ‘as Attorney General Alleges Wall Street Fix over Idaho Copper’. He flipped back to a story that had caught his eye a few days previously. ‘Rice under Fire, as Investigators Probe Wall Street Fix over Columbia Emerald Company’. He turned a few more pages. ‘Idaho Copper Sound, Claims Finance Director Matsell. No One Will Lose a Dime. Rice Denies $25,000,000 Profit’.

  ‘Tony, look at this.’ Quinn ripped out the relevant pages and passed them over. ‘I saw this a few days ago in the CIB files.’

  ‘So what?’ Caprisi said.

  ‘That’s why they had money spilling out of their pockets at Jacob Zwirz’s place.’

  ‘How does that help us?’

  ‘The CIB must have a file on this fix, right?’

  Caprisi leant back. ‘There’s nothing here, Joe, is there? Admit it.’

  ‘Maybe they kept it out of the newspapers.’

  ‘C’mon!’ Caprisi threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘I need something to eat.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Yes, now. Because now is when I’m hungry. There’s a café opposite. I’ll see you there when you finally admit defeat.’

  Quinn watched him leave and started turning the pages again. After half an hour, he had found nothing. He returned to the twenty-second of June. He flipped the pages over more slowly this time, but still nearly missed the story. It was at the very bottom of the City pages in a ‘News in Brief’ column: ‘Rice Link to Missing Brooklyn Girl’.

  Police last night acknowledged a girl reported missing in Brooklyn two months ago had been on her way to a job at the Idaho Copper Company when she disappeared. Rice’s lawyers told the News last night that their client had been cleared of any connection to the girl’s disappearance, which police still believe is ‘domestic’ in nature.

  This has nothing to do with Idaho Copper, which remains sound, Finance Director Matsell told the News.

  Quinn turned over the pages for the days and weeks that followed, but could find no further reference to the disappearance on the City pages or anywhere else. He ripped out the article and darted across the road to the café. Caprisi was eating steak and fries in a booth by the window.

  ‘Okay, but there’s nothing in our files,’ Caprisi said, after he’d read it. ‘I asked Maretsky to check twice. There are no missing girls and no relevant homicides from June 1919.’

  ‘A girl disappeared in Brooklyn. She was on her way to a new job. The cops tried to write it off as a family issue. The similarities are overwhelming.’

  ‘You don’t have a name.’

  ‘I’ll find one.’

  ‘How? There’s no file, and there’s no name in that article.’

  ‘I’ll call every precinct in Brooklyn and ask them to check their records.’

  Caprisi pushed away the last of his fries. ‘Jeez, you’re a persistent bastard.’

  The waitress came to take Caprisi’s plate. ‘You boys want anything else?’

  Quinn ignored her. The sleek Buick was parked across the street. ‘We should find the cops who worked the Idaho Copper case.’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘What do you figure Ben Siegel wants?�
�

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ve a feeling we’re about to find out.’ Caprisi tapped on the window. Siegel was striding towards them. ‘Relax, Joe.’

  The door banged shut. Siegel took off his Homburg and nodded at the waitress. ‘A cup of coffee, doll.’ He chucked his hat into the centre of the table and slipped in beside Caprisi. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen.’ His blue eyes were fixed on Quinn.

  ‘How long do you plan to trail us around?’

  ‘As long as it takes. We’ve interests in common, Joe.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Charlie Matsell was a friend of mine.’

  ‘Is this what you do for all your friends?’

  ‘No.’ Siegel’s flawless face was devoid of expression.

  ‘So what is it you want?’

  ‘We want you with us.’

  ‘I’m a lowly Headquarters cop. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me, Detective.’ They stared at one another. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you, Quinn. There isn’t another cop in Manhattan who’d fail to make the right decision on a case like this.’

  ‘What decision is that?’

  ‘Make it clear you’re with us, or we’ll have to conclude you’re against us.’

  Quinn sighed. ‘I’ll be sure to tell La Guardia that’s your take.’

  ‘Screw La Guardia.’

  ‘Listen to me, Ben. You’re a two-bit hustler and I’d like to see you rot in hell, but you don’t need to make this your affair. If there’s a shakedown coming at Headquarters, you’re better off out of it. Wait to see how it pans out and you can hook up with whichever side wins.’

  Siegel frowned. ‘You figure there’ll be a shakedown in Centre Street?’

  ‘You know it.’

  Siegel thought about this. ‘We’ve got a system.’

  ‘You’ve got a guy who’s more trouble than he needs to be. You pay him enough, right? So who needs to be cleaning up after a man like that? There are better … arrangements. It’s time for a change.’

  ‘Is that a pitch?’

  ‘It’s a statement of the obvious.’

  ‘Lucky doesn’t like change.’