‘This isn’t going to help, Sam,’ she sighed.
And you were an optimistic fool to ever think it would, she added silently.
It was as she was reading about the pelvis that she began to feel a slight, familiar tingle, and by the time she had reached the description of the fibula, it had become a positive itch.
If she’d listened correctly to what Sam had had to say about Rudge, then she was definitely on to something, she told herself.
But what if she’d misheard or misunderstood, which was always possible?
There was only one way to find out for sure — and that was to ring Sam.
But when she placed the call through to the Mulberry Street police headquarters, the switchboard operator told her that the inspector’s line was engaged.
Except for the times when Blackstone interrupted her with a question, Mrs Turner talked solidly for another five minutes. She did not always keep to the point. Sometimes she spoke with the voice which imitated an evangelic preacher’s. At others she would suddenly transform herself into the poor lonely widow she actually was. But sandwiched between the righteous fire of indignation and the tragic expression of loss there were words which — to an investigator — were pure gold.
When Blackstone hung up the phone, there was a smile on his face. He could never remember a case in which one piece of information had made so much difference — in which one single fact could change the whole way he looked at the investigation and provided him with the answers he had been so desperately searching for.
He thought about Inspector Flynn and his theory.
Flynn had said that the kidnapping had been faked — and he had been quite right.
Flynn had said that the reason it had needed to be faked was that William Holt was about to be subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury — and he had been quite right about that, too.
There was just one thing that Flynn had been wrong about. But it was a huge thing — a gigantic thing!
The office door opened, and Alex Meade entered. His shoulders were slumped and he looked utterly defeated.
‘A body’s been discovered in the woods near Ocean Heights,’ he said miserably. ‘The Coney Island police haven’t identified it yet, but there’s no doubt that when they do, they’ll find that it’s Big Bill Holt.’
‘It’s not Holt,’ Blackstone said.
‘How can you possibly say that?’
‘Because I know who it actually is.’
‘Have you lost your mind?’ Meade wondered aloud.
‘Not at all,’ Blackstone said airily. ‘It’s never been clearer. And that’s because I’ve just been talking to Mrs Turner, and she’s told me all about the whores who visited the Ocean Heights bunker.’
‘So what?’ Meade asked.
‘So they were the wrong kind of whores,’ Blackstone replied.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Meade and Blackstone stood at the corner of Canal Street, and watched a slow stream of men enter the Blue Light Club.
‘Jesus Christ, it’s only just after eleven o’clock in the morning,’ Meade said with disgust. ‘How could anybody think about even normal sex at eleven o’clock in the morning?’
Blackstone grinned. Alex, he suspected, was still a virgin, intent on keeping himself pure in the hope that Miss Clarissa Bonneville’s mother would eventually overlook the fact that he had chosen to become a policeman and allow him to marry her daughter.
‘Now that you’ve seen the place for yourself, does what I’ve been telling you make sense?’ he asked.
‘Maybe,’ Meade said reluctantly. ‘Maybe more than maybe, but I’ll still be happier when I’ve heard it straight from the whore’s mouth.’ He smiled self-consciously. ‘No pun intended,’ he apologized.
One of the patrolmen whose regular beat was Canal Street sidled up to them. ‘The boys are ready,’ he said.
Meade nodded. ‘Good.’
‘The thing is, they all want to know if we really have to do it,’ the patrolman said.
‘Have to do it?’ Meade repeated.
‘See, this finocchio club hands over its brown envelope regular as clockwork every week,’ the patrolman explained, ‘so the boys figure it has the same right to privacy as everybody else who pays a bribe.’
A look of deep contempt filled Meade’s face for just a moment, and then, though it obviously took him some effort, was replaced by a bland, uncritical expression.
‘Tell “the boys” they’ve no need to worry,’ he said. ‘We’re not here to close the place down, or even arrest anybody. All we want to do is scare a couple of people into cooperating with us. You’ve no problem with that, have you?’
‘No problem at all,’ the patrolman agreed.
Meade watched him walk away. ‘One day. .’ he said, in a half-growl, ‘one day, when I’m the Commissioner of Police for New York, I’ll clean up this whole rotten city.’
And he probably would, Blackstone thought.
‘What does finocchio mean?’ he asked.
‘It means “fairy”,’ Meade said. ‘It’s an Italian word for what — in the Lower East Side at least — is mainly an Italian vice.’
The arrival of four uniformed policemen, blowing their whistles and waving their nightsticks, sent a wave of panic through the clients at the Blue Light Club.
‘I just walked in off the street. I swear to you, officers, I had no idea what was going on in here!’ babbled one portly middle-aged man, as he struggled to button up his pants.
‘Look, you gotta let me go,’ pleaded another man. ‘I’m not a bad guy. I’m a deacon at St Mary’s.’
‘Everybody shut the hell up — or I’ll start making arrests right here and now!’ Meade bawled from the doorway.
Gradually the noise subsided.
‘I’m not here to judge you,’ Meade continued, ‘but if that was my intention, I’d have to say that you’re the biggest collection of sick bastards I’ve ever come across, and you should all be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves.’
‘I am,’ a stick-thin man in a flashy suit moaned. ‘I am — and I promise I’ll never do it again.’
‘The customers can go,’ Meade said. ‘The people who work here — if that’s what you want to call it — will stay.’
There was no real difficulty in telling the two groups apart. The customers — who shuffled through the door with their eyes fixed on the ground — were mostly in their thirties and forties, and wearing their business suits. The workers were much younger — in their teens and twenties — and though some of them were wearing men’s clothing, they all had painted faces and heavily blackened eyebrows.
‘Right,’ Meade said, when all the customers had gone, ‘now I’d like to talk to the boss.’
The boss was a thickset man in a blue dress, and even the heavy make-up he was wearing did not quite obscure the stubble on his square jaw. He said he’d like to be addressed as Miss Annie, if they didn’t mind, and Meade bit on the bullet and said he didn’t mind at all.
‘You know, it’s really not fair that you should disrupt my business in this way,’ Miss Annie said, in a high falsetto voice which didn’t quite come off. ‘I should be very cross indeed, but,’ looking directly into Meade’s eyes, ‘it’s hard to be cross with such a pretty boy as you.’
Meade shrank away, and it was all Blackstone could do to stop himself from laughing out loud.
‘I. .’ Meade began, with a crack in his voice which showed just how dry his throat had suddenly become.
‘You do know you’re a pretty boy, don’t you?’ Miss Annie interrupted.
‘And you do know that we could haul you — and all your nancy boys — down to the jail, don’t you?’ Blackstone asked, deciding the time had come to rescue his partner.
Miss Annie flashed him a look of pure hatred. ‘And how long do you think you could keep us in jail?’
‘Not long,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘But then, consider this — you don’t have to go jail at all. If you were to answer a few si
mple questions, we’d be out of here before you could say, “Bent as Dickie’s hat band”.’
‘What kind of questions?’ Miss Annie asked suspiciously.
‘Let’s start with an easy one,’ Blackstone suggested. ‘How long have you been sending out your whores to the house on Coney Island?’
‘Entertainers,’ Miss Annie said. ‘They are entertainers.’
‘Your entertainers, then.How long?’
‘I’m really not sure I know what you’re talking about,’ Miss Annie said huffily.
‘Call for a paddy wagon,’ Blackstone told Meade. ‘It’s time to make a few arrests.’
‘There’s no need to be so hasty,’ Miss Annie told him. ‘Did you say a house on Coney Island?’
‘Yes.’
‘I suppose I must have been sending my entertainers there for six or seven years, now.’
‘And how is it arranged?’
‘A gentleman called Fanshawe — an English gentleman like yourself, though with more manners — visits us about once a month. Not for his own benefit, you understand, but merely acting as an agent for another gentleman.’
‘I understand.’
‘Mr Fanshawe knows the other gentleman’s taste, and selects an appropriate entertainer to meet his needs. The entertainer travels back to Coney Island in the afternoon, and returns to the city the next morning.’
‘What’s the name of this other gentleman?’ Blackstone asked.
‘I have no idea, but my girls tell me he likes them to call him “Daddy”.’
‘And what does he look like?’
‘How would I know that? I’ve never met the gentleman.’
‘If your “girls” have told you what he wants them to call him, I’m sure they’ve also given you a description of him,’ Blackstone said.
Miss Annie sighed. ‘This is all most unprofessional, you know.’
‘Give me a description, and that’s the last you’ll see of us,’ Blackstone promised.
Miss Annie nodded, and did as requested.
‘Now do you believe me?’ Blackstone asked Meade.
‘Now I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’ Meade said.
When Blackstone, Meade and Ellie Carr got off the streetcar at its terminal on Coney Island, the veteran Sergeant Jones was already waiting for them with the police carriage.
‘How’s our Inspector Flynn?’ the sergeant asked, once the introductions had been performed.
‘Inspector Flynn is growing stronger all the time,’ Blackstone told him. ‘And when I get back to city and report to him on what’s happened here, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he rises up from his sick bed and does a jig.’
‘I’m delighted he’s improving,’ Jones said, ‘but I think you’re wrong about the jig. It’s not Mr Flynn’s style.’
But maybe it would be, now that the heavy weight he’d been carrying on his shoulders for seven years was finally about to be lifted, Blackstone thought.
‘Did you seal off the house?’ he asked.
‘We did,’ Jones confirmed, sounding a little worried. ‘But I can’t say the family were exactly happy about it. Mr George said,’ he glanced at Ellie, ‘excuse my language, ma’am — he said that first he’d have my balls on a platter, and then he’d have my job.’
‘That’s just the sort of thing Mr George would say, but your job is safe enough — and so are your balls,’ Blackstone assured him. ‘You didn’t tell him why you’d sealed it off, did you?’
‘No, only that I’d been instructed to.’
‘So nobody in Ocean Heights knows anything about the corpse that was found in the woods?’
‘Not a thing.’
‘And where is the corpse now?’
‘It’s in the local mortuary,’ Jones turned to Ellie. ‘Will you want him moved somewhere else, ma’am?’
‘No,’ Ellie replied. ‘I can cut him up in the mortuary just as easily as I can cut him up anywhere else.’
‘It’s a strange job for a lady,’ Jones said, almost to himself.
‘Well, then, it’s just as well that I ain’t one,’ Ellie countered, in her best cockney.
The man lying on the mortician’s table was in his middle to late forties. He was five feet five inches tall, and had a bald head and waxed moustache which looked considerably less elegant than it must have done before it had been covered with earth.
Ellie studied him for a moment, then said, ‘I’ll have to cut him up, of course, but I’d be surprised if the cause of death was anything other than a single — rather professionally delivered — puncture wound to the heart.’
Jake and Bob had bragged about killing three men in the saloon — the Pinkerton men and one other. For a while, Blackstone and Meade had thought that the third victim might be Big Bill Holt, and then that it was Fanshawe the butler. But it had been neither of them — it was this man lying on the table.
‘I’ll need to do some tests, but I’d guess he’s been dead for about four days,’ Ellie said.
‘You may be right,’ Blackstone told her. ‘In fact, I know you’re right — although, legally speaking, he’s been dead for seven years.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Blackstone and Meade were shown into the parlour in which they’d first met the two Holt families, and, as on the previous occasion, Harold and Virginia were sitting on one sofa and George and Elizabeth on another. This time, however, there were no straight-backed chairs for the two detectives to sit on — this time, it was plain, their visit was unwelcome.
‘I must complain in the strongest possible terms, Inspector Blackstone!’ George said. ‘We have been told by your police officials that under no circumstances are we to be allowed to leave the house. We have, in short, been treated like common criminals, and I very much resent it!’
‘Shut up, George,’ Harold said firmly.
‘What was that, little brother?’ George asked, amazed.
‘It takes a brave man to forcibly detain an important family like ours, George. Do you think Inspector Blackstone would ever have contemplated such an action if he didn’t believe he could more than justify it to some higher police authority?’
George frowned. ‘No, I. . err. . suppose not,’ he said doubtfully.
‘So your best plan would be to shut up, and let him tell us exactly what’s made him so brave, wouldn’t it?’
‘I still think it’s a damned impertinence,’ George said.
‘I have something that I wish to say to you, Inspector,’ Virginia told Blackstone.
He turned towards her. She had on a dress with a flared skirt and a finely beaded bodice which swept down to her magnificent cleavage, and she was wearing silk flowers in her hair. She looked stunning, he thought.
‘Yes, ma’am?’ he said.
Virginia gave him a look which would have reduced a lesser man to a smouldering crisp.
‘I thought you should know that I have better things to do with my time than sit here listening to a man in a shabby suit expound his improbable theories,’ Virginia said. ‘And so, for that matter, does my sister-in-law,’ she added, standing up. ‘Come, Elizabeth.’
Elizabeth looked up at Virginia with startled eyes. She was wearing a day dress of finely striped cotton, and though it — like Virginia’s — had a plunging neckline, what bosom she had was chastely covered by the cotton blouse she wore beneath the dress.
‘Come, Elizabeth,’ Virginia repeated.
The other woman studied her hands. ‘I’m not sure. .’ she mumbled.
‘Now!’ Virginia said firmly.
And Elizabeth rose reluctantly to her feet.
‘It’s all right with you if we leave, isn’t it, Inspector Blackstone?’ Virginia asked.
‘It’s all right with me,’ Blackstone agreed.
Virginia shook her head, and her magnificent curls swirled around her shoulders,
‘That is a pity,’ she said. ‘I was rather hoping you’d forbid it, so I could have the pleasure of ignoring you.’
‘She has some spirit, that wife of yours, Mr Holt,’ Blackstone said.
‘Yes,’ Harold agreed, in a suddenly subdued voice. ‘Yes, she does.’
‘How’s your head now?’ Blackstone continued, looking at the bandage swathed around the top of Harold’s skull.
‘Much improved,’ Harold replied.
Blackstone nodded. ‘Good! But then it wasn’t really that serious an injury in the first place, was it? Self-inflicted ones never are.’
‘Self-inflicted ones!’ George sputtered. ‘What the hell are you talking about? My poor brother was dragged across the fourth floor of Moore’s Dry Goods Store by two large men-’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ Blackstone interrupted. ‘Those men never existed. Oh, I know you had to have someone else to make the phone calls and plant the incendiary devices, but it would have been far too risky to get your accomplices more actively involved in the plot — because there was always the chance they might get caught. And, after all, they weren’t really necessary, were they?’
‘Involved in the plot?’ George repeated. ‘What plot?’
‘I’d like you to think back to the moment in the Silver Spur Saloon when the kidnappers called,’ Blackstone said.
‘Why should I do that?’ George asked.
‘Because you asked me what plot — and I’m about to tell you.’
‘Waste of time,’ George said.
‘But you’ll do it?’
‘I suppose so.’
When the phone rings, it is Alex Meade who answers it.
‘Harold Holt?’ asks the man on the other end of the line.
‘Yes.’
‘No, it ain’t. Get me Holt right now — or the whole deal’s off, and his father’s dead.’
‘How did the kidnapper know it wasn’t Harold he was talking to?’ Blackstone asked George.
‘I should have thought it was obvious. He didn’t sound like Harold.’
‘No, that’s not it at all. Alex’s problem was that he didn’t know the password.’
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