‘Knox never went to jail.’
‘He was arrested, wasn’t he?’
‘Of course he was arrested. After he’d failed in his murder attempt, George Holt knocked him out cold and then called the police. But he was never tried for the crime.’
‘Why, in God’s name?’ Meade asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Maxwell admitted. ‘But if you want to find out, maybe the prosecutor’s office will tell you.’ His good humour was returning, and he chuckled again. ‘And if you get no answer there, you can always ask the captain of the precinct that Knox was taken to when he was arrested.’
‘Do you know which captain it was?’ Meade asked.
‘Sure do,’ Maxwell said. ‘It was Inspector Blackstone’s old friend, Bull O’Shaugnessy.’
SEVENTEEN
The black mood, which Alex Meade had been drifting in and out of for the past two days, descended on him again as he and Blackstone sat at the back of the streetcar which was slowly making its way up Fourth Avenue.
‘If the NYPD was a real police force, we’d have Mad Bob and Jake the Snake in the holding cells by now,’ he said morosely. ‘Hell, if it was a real police force, we’d have taken them both off the streets a long time ago.’
‘Have you got any leads on them at all?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Not a goddam one. Sure, when I ask them, the patrolmen say they’re keeping their eyes peeled, but-’ He suddenly stopped talking, and tapped the shoulder of the man sitting in front of them. ‘Hey, you!’ he said.
The man turned around.
‘Yes?’ he said.
He was in his early twenties, but somehow had managed to maintain a look of boyish enthusiasm which made even the fresh-faced Alex Meade look grave and staid. He was probably a college student, who threw himself into his work with a joyousness which quite exhausted his professors, Blackstone guessed.
‘Are you listening to our conversation?’ Meade asked aggressively.
‘Of course not!’ the young man protested in a voice of deepest innocence, then he spoiled it all by adding, ‘Are you guys really detectives?’
‘You better believe it,’ Meade said, producing his shield. ‘You want to move further up the car, before I arrest you?’
‘Arrest me? What for?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ Meade promised.
The young man rose heavily to his feet.
‘And they say this is a free country,’ he complained.
‘Who says?’ Meade demanded. ‘You tell me who they are, and I’ll have them behind bars before you can say “Bill of Rights”.’
‘Feeling better now, Alex?’ Blackstone asked, as he watched the young man move further up the car.
‘Yeah,’ Meade said, automatically. Then he changed his mind, and continued, ‘No, I’m not. See Sam, what just happened shouldn’t have happened. We’re city officials, engaged on important city business, and we should have our own transportation.’
Meade’s mood had very little to do with his current complaint, Blackstone thought, but if he had to blow off steam at something — and he clearly did — then transportation was a relatively harmless target.
‘So what you’re saying you want is your own personal carriage?’ he prodded.
‘No,’ Meade replied. ‘I don’t want my own personal carriage — I want my own personal automobile. Every police officer should have one — and it won’t be long before we all do.’
He had seen one — or possibly two — automobiles in Manhattan that day, Blackstone thought, and there were days when he saw none at all — so the idea of every cop in the city driving around in one definitely qualified as one of Alex’s more fanciful ideas.
‘You think I’m wrong, don’t you?’ Meade challenged, still looking for a fight.
‘Maybe, in time, every police officer who has a private income — like you do yourself — will have one,’ said Blackstone, in a placatory tone, ‘but I certainly can’t see them being anything like as widely used as you seem to-’
‘The price will come down,’ said Meade firmly.
‘They’re handmade, by professional carriage makers,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘It takes weeks, if not months, to-’
‘I met a guy called Olds, at one of my father’s dinner parties,’ Meade interrupted. ‘He’s building a factory in Detroit, Michigan, which will use something he’s invented called a “mass production technique”. He reckons he should be able to turn out five thousand automobiles every single year — and I believe him.’
‘Five thousand a year!’ Blackstone repeated, incredulously. ‘Well, if you say so.’
‘I do say so!’ Meade said, forcefully. Then he grinned, looked a little sheepish, and said, ‘Shall we get back to the case?’
‘If you’re ready,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘You were saying that you’d got no leads on Tate and Thompson.’
‘I’ve got no leads on Inspector Flynn, either. He’s taken some leave he was owed, and has completely disappeared.’
‘Maybe he’s gone on holiday,’ Blackstone said.
But he didn’t really believe that himself, because any man who’d been on the trail of Tate and Thompson no more than twelve or fourteen hours after the kidnapping wasn’t going to get any rest until the whole thing was over.
‘Do you know what’s got me puzzled?’ Meade asked.
‘You’re wondering why Captain O’Shaugnessy is willing to see us?’ Blackstone guessed.
‘Damn straight,’ Meade agreed. ‘The man hates your guts.’
‘It’s because he hates my guts that he’s agreed to the meeting. He wants to see me squirm.’
‘And will he?’
‘I’m not planning on it. In fact, I’m rather hoping that it will be the other way around.’
Precinct Captain Michael O’Shaugnessy sat in his office chair, his feet on the desk and his hands locked behind his bull-like neck. A cigar drooped from the corner of his mouth, and he had a smug expression on his face which Blackstone would very much have liked to rearrange with a ball-peen hammer.
Even in a police department which was justly famous for being rotten from top to bottom, O’Shaugnessy stood out as a shining beacon of deviousness and corruption. He had personally broken more heads than a boatload of invading Vikings, and he had amassed a larger fortune — through bribery and graft — than all but the most successful of the city’s politicians.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, ‘what have we here? The Limey cop and his little buddy Detective Sergeant Meade. Remember when that prisoner of yours escaped, Inspector Blackstone?’
‘I remember,’ Blackstone said.
He was not likely to forget. In fact, every day he spent in New York City was a reminder of it.
‘Yeah, that was some prison break,’ O’Shaugnessy said, really enjoying himself. ‘Steel bars as thick as your arm, four men on guard — an’ he still managed to get out.’
‘I thought your story at the time was that he escaped en route to your cells,’ Blackstone said.
‘Maybe it was,’ O’Shaugnessy agreed. ‘Maybe it was. It’s kinda hard for me to keep track of all my lies an’ deceits.’ He took a puff on his cigar, and blew the smoke contemptuously in Blackstone and Meade’s direction. ‘So just what can I do for you guys?’
‘We’d like some information,’ Blackstone said.
‘Now, ain’t that nice?’ O’Shaugnessy said lazily. ‘And what do I get in return?’
‘The satisfaction of upholding the oath you’ve sworn to uphold, and of doing the job you’re paid to do?’ Meade suggested.
‘I was talkin’ to the organ grinder, not his monkey,’ O’Shaugnessy pointed out. ‘Well, Inspector Blackstone?’
‘You don’t get anything,’ Blackstone said.
‘Then I got nothin’ to say,’ O’Shaugnessy replied.
Blackstone turned to Meade. ‘That’s five dollars you owe me’ he said.
‘Have you boys been betting against each other?’ Shaugnessy asked.
>
‘That’s right,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘So you bet five dollars that I wouldn’t help you, and Meade bet five dollars that I would.’ O’Shaugnessy turned to Alex. ‘You really are one dumb asshole, ain’t you, Sergeant Meade?’
‘That wasn’t the bet,’ Blackstone told him.
‘No?’
‘No. It wasn’t about whether you would help us or not — it was about whether you’d be too scared to help us.’
‘Scared?’ O’Shaugnessy repeated. ‘Scared of what?’
‘That for all your boasting about how smart you are — and how safe you are — you’re still worried that, if you say too much, a Limey and a humble detective sergeant from your own department might find some way to bring you down.’
‘Boy, you sure do live in some kinda dream world, don’t you?’ O’Shaugnessy asked, with a smirk.
‘In his position, that’s what I’d say,’ Blackstone told Meade. ‘I’d smile just like he is now, and I’d produce just the same line of bullshit — even if I was crapping my pants at the time.’
‘You got it all wrong, you Limey bastard,’ O’Shaugnessy said, angry now. ‘I could tell you everythin’ that goes on in this precinct. I could tell you exactly who pays the bribes an’ exactly how much they pay. Hell, I could even give you the numbers of my secret bank accounts — and even with all that, you still wouldn’t be able to bring me down, because this is New York City, an’ I’m only doin’ the same as every other captain.’
‘Prove it,’ Blackstone challenged.
‘Prove what?’
‘That you’re not scared.’
‘How? Do you actually want to know the numbers of them secret bank accounts of mine?’
‘No, I want to know about a man called Knox, who, seven years ago, tried to kill William Holt. Do you remember that?’
‘Sure do. Not likely to forget it, ’cos Holt was a big wheel in the city at the time.’
‘Yes, he was,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘And the fact that he was important makes it all the more surprising that his would-be assassin never went to prison. Would you mind explaining how that came about?’
‘The case was all set to go to court — an’ then the evidence went missing.’
‘What evidence?’
‘Well, for openers, the gun that Knox shot Holt with. One minute we had it safely locked up in the evidence room down in the basement, and the next minute it was gone.’
‘And, of course, you launched an inquiry to find out just what had happened to it?’
‘There didn’t seem much point in doing that.’
‘No?’
‘No. See, the way I had it figured out, the sergeant in charge of the case had removed the evidence himself.’
‘And why would he have done that?’
O’Shaugnessy chuckled. ‘You know why he’d have done it — because Knox had bribed him to do it.’
‘And you didn’t expect any trouble from the powerful Holt family over the fact that the evidence had disappeared?’
‘Hell, no! They knew the way things work in this city, just like everybody else did. If they wanted the case to go to court, all they had to do was pay the sergeant a bigger bribe than Knox had — which they could well afford to do — and the evidence would turn up again.’
‘Wouldn’t Knox have kicked up a stink if that had happened?’
‘What could he have said — that the sergeant hadn’t lived up to his part of the bargain? If he’d done that, he’d have been admitting to bribery, and that would have added five or six years to his sentence.’
‘Ah, now I get the point!’ Blackstone said.
‘You do?’
‘You’d get a cut of the bribe that Knox paid the sergeant, whatever happened. But if you recovered the evidence yourself, that’s all you’d get. On the other hand, if you just sat there and waited, you’d get a cut of the second bribe — the one which the Holts would have to offer — and that bribe would be much larger than the one from Knox.’
‘Now you’re catching on,’ O’Shaugnessy said.
‘But the Holts never did pay a bribe?’
‘That’s right, and that was a real surprise to me, because Big Bill was known to be one of the most vengeful men in whole of New York City.’
‘But at least you got part of the Knox bribe.’
O’Shaugnessy frowned. ‘Not even that. See, the sergeant said there’d been no bribe, and that the evidence had just gone missing.’
‘And did you believe him?’
‘Sorta yes, and sorta no. When I spoke to him, he looked me straight in the eye and told me there’d been no bribe. And I did believe that.’
‘So where does the “sorta no” come into it?’
‘I also asked him if he’d removed the evidence, and when he said he hadn’t, he had to look away.’
‘So why do you think he did it?’
‘Who the hell knows? And if there’s no money to be made out of it — which there wasn’t — who the hell cares?’
‘It must have come as a shock to you to realize you had even a halfway decent and honest officer working for you,’ Blackstone said.
‘Damn straight,’ O’Shaugnessy agreed.
‘And is he still working for you?’
‘Do I look like a rube to you?’ O’Shaugnessy demanded. ‘Do you really think I’d tolerate that kinda guy in my precinct? Course he ain’t still working for me! I got him promoted to inspector, then had him transferred the hell away from Manhattan. The last I heard, he was working way out in the sticks.’
Blackstone’s mind was racing.
The sergeant in question had lost the evidence against Knox, but he had not done it for money — because O’Shaugnessy was completely convinced no bribe had been paid.
So what had been his motive?
Was it perhaps less to do with Knox himself than with the man he had tried to kill?
And there was more — the sergeant had been promoted to inspector, and was now working way out in the sticks.
But just what did O’Shaugnessy mean by ‘the sticks’?
‘Are you talking about Coney Island?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘Is this man you had promoted to inspector based on Coney Island now?’
‘Yeah,’ O’Shaugnessy said. ‘How did you know that? Wait a minute! I ain’t made the connection before, but Big Bill Holt lives on Coney Island, don’t he?’
‘Yes, he does,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘The other thing you never told us is the policeman’s name. It wouldn’t be Flynn, by any chance, would it?’
‘Goddam right it’s Flynn,’ O’Shaugnessy said.
‘I told you we shouldn’t trust Flynn,’ Alex Meade said, once they had left that cesspool of corruption which was O’Shaugnessy’s office behind them. ‘I told you right from the very start.’
It could all be traced back to Flynn, Blackstone thought. Alex’s dark moods, his aggression, his refusal to consider any viewpoint but his own, could all be traced back to that first meeting with Inspector Flynn.
Yet despite everything that had happened, Blackstone could not bring himself to share his partner’s feeling about the man. There was a singleness of purpose and deadly earnestness about the inspector which reminded him a little of himself, and though he had no idea what the singleness of purpose was directed towards, or what had occurred to forge that deadly earnestness, he couldn’t help feeling a sneaking admiration for him.
‘He certainly did a good snow job on O’Shaugnessy,’ Meade said. ‘Bull really doesn’t believe he took a bribe to lose Knox’s gun.’
Neither do I, Blackstone thought.
‘And what the hell was he doing sending a cable to Scotland Yard about Fanshawe, even before the kidnapping?’ Meade demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘Nor can I explain why he seems to have made it his personal mission to track down the kidnappers of a man who he appears to despise.’
‘If that’s what he�
�s doing,’ Meade said, enigmatically.
‘And just what do you mean by that?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘Maybe what he’s actually doing is covering his own tracks — because he’s the brains behind the kidnapping,’ Meade said.
‘Oh, come on, Alex,’ Blackstone protested.
‘Think about it!’ Meade urged. ‘He deliberately got himself posted to Coney Island, where Holt has his home.’
‘We don’t know that for a fact.’
‘He did a background check on Fanshawe to see if he was a suitable man to use in the kidnapping.’
‘Then why would he tell me he’d done it?’ Blackstone asked.
But Meade was not to be deterred.
‘Who had more reason to get to know the Pinkerton men than the local inspector?’ he continued. ‘And who was in a better position to recruit some New York thugs for the job than a man who’d worked among them?’
‘It’s not Flynn,’ Blackstone said firmly.
‘I don’t know where the bastard is,’ Meade said, ignoring him. ‘But wherever he is, he’s not on vacation.’
EIGHTEEN
It was too dark in the warehouse for him to see the rat, but he heard it scuttle past him clearly enough, and, seconds later, when the scuttling had stopped, his ears picked up the sound of its defiant squeak.
He laughed, both at the absurdity of the rat’s situation and at the absurdity of his own.
‘You’re just like me,’ he told the furry rodent in a soft voice. ‘When you’re scared, you run like hell — and it’s only when you feel safe again that you take the time to show you were never scared at all.’
But he wouldn’t run this time, he promised himself. This time, he would draw his inspiration from Edward Knox, a pathetic little man who — because he overcame his fear and stood his ground — transformed himself into a real hero.
The timbers of the decaying warehouse creaked complainingly. The squeaking rat — or it may have been some other rodent — indulged in another mad dash. Other than that, there was silence.
How long had he been standing there, he wondered.
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