Blackstone and the New World isb-1

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Comstock said. ‘Certainly so. The guilty must be punished as speedily as possible. I agree with you on that.’ He paused. ‘And, indeed, passage has been booked for you on the first available ship, which sets sail in four days’ time. But, as regards the other matter I just mentioned. .’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you had mentioned another matter, sir.’

  ‘Weren’t you? Then perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. At any rate, during the course of last night, and then again this morning, I exchanged a number of telegrams with Assistant Commissioner Todd on the subject of when you will, in fact, return to England yourself.’

  When you don’t know which way a conversation is going, the quickest way to find out is to shut your trap and just listen, Blackstone thought — and then followed his own advice.

  ‘Yes, Assistant Commissioner Todd,’ Comstock repeated. ‘Even from his telegrams, he struck me as a fine man who I am sure is a credit to his force.’

  There were many things Blackstone could have said at that moment — but he said nothing.

  ‘And. . er. . between us we have decided that one of my men will be given the task of escorting Duffy back to England instead, and that you, for your part, will remain with us for a while.’

  ‘What would be the point of that?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I. . er. . felt — and your assistant commissioner agreed with me — that this visit of yours presented us with the ideal opportunity to give you the chance to learn how we do things over here, while one of my men would learn how you do things over there.’

  It made sense in a way, Blackstone thought, but it still didn’t quite add up — particularly given Todd’s attitude to American policing methods.

  ‘I see,’ he said, non-committally.

  ‘And I further thought that the best way for you to profit from the experience would be to work on an actual case that we have pending at the moment — specifically, a murder case, in which field, I’m led to believe by Mr Todd, you yourself are something of an expert.’

  ‘I’m not sure-’ Blackstone began.

  ‘Nor is it any ordinary murder investigation,’ Comstock interrupted him. ‘The victim, in this case, was Inspector O’Brien, a very bright young man whose promising future was sadly curtailed by an assassin’s bullet.’

  Now, finally, a few of the pieces of the puzzle were starting to click into place, Blackstone thought.

  The murder of one of its own was a traumatic event for any police force to have to deal with, and that would certainly explain Comstock’s nervousness and hesitation — though it didn’t quite yet explain why he himself had been drawn into the process.

  ‘I’ll be glad to help you in any way I can, sir,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure that the team you already have investigating the case won’t need — and probably wouldn’t appreciate — any guidance from a-’

  ‘The investigation will be headed by Detective Sergeant Meade, who I believe you have already met,’ Comstock said, interrupting for a second time, ‘and you will serve as his assistant, though, strictly speaking, you outrank him.’

  ‘A detective sergeant?’ Blackstone repeated incredulously. ‘You’re going to put a mere detective sergeant in charge of an investigation into the murder of an inspector?’

  ‘That is correct.’

  ‘In London, we would never even consider-’

  ‘This isn’t London,’ Commissioner Comstock said. ‘This is New York — and we do things differently here.’

  He had overstepped the mark, Blackstone realized.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ he said apologetically. ‘It was not my intention to criticize your procedures.’

  ‘I’m sure it wasn’t,’ Comstock said generously.

  ‘How many men are you planning to assign to Sergeant Meade’s team, sir?’ Blackstone asked.

  Commissioner Comstock sniffed uneasily. ‘As I thought I’d already made clear to you, Inspector Blackstone, there will be Detective Sergeant Meade, and there will be yourself.’

  ‘Just the two of us?’ Blackstone exclaimed, convinced that he must have somehow misheard.

  ‘Yes, just the two of you,’ Commissioner Comstock confirmed.

  ‘Nobody else at all?’

  ‘Nobody else at all.’

  Insane, Blackstone thought. Completely bloody insane!

  Sergeant Meade took the astounding news that he was to be placed in charge of a serious investigation — and that Blackstone was to be his one and only assistant — in his stride.

  ‘The moment I heard that Commissioner Comstock wanted to see you, I knew it had to be connected with the investigation, though I rather thought that you would be in charge and I would be your assistant,’ he said.

  Blackstone took a close look at the other man.

  A few hours earlier, when Meade had met him off the boat, the sergeant had seemed as fresh-faced and unsure as a youth at his first dance, as overenthusiastic as a playful puppy let loose in the wool basket. Now the lines on his face had hardened considerably, and there was a crispness to both his words and his bearing which had been entirely missing before.

  So what had brought about the sudden change — the virtual metamorphosis — in him, Blackstone wondered.

  ‘The last time we were together, I still hadn’t heard about Inspector O’Brien’s murder,’ Meade said, reading his mind again.

  ‘He was your friend, was he?’ Blackstone asked, sympathetically.

  ‘He was more than my friend — he was my hero!’

  ‘And you’re really not in the least surprised to have been put in charge of investigating the murder?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘You don’t think, perhaps, that someone with more experience in that kind of work would have a better chance of bringing your friend’s killer to justice?’ Blackstone asked tactfully.

  ‘I do not. And if you knew this city like I do, neither would you,’ Meade said, with bitterness in his voice.

  ‘In that case, I think it’s perhaps time that I learned a little bit more about this city,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘So do I,’ Meade agreed. ‘We’ll talk about it over lunch.’

  FIVE

  Meade had decided to take Blackstone to lunch at Delmonico’s Restaurant on Beaver Street.

  ‘Delmonico’s is the oldest restaurant in New York City,’ the sergeant said, as they approached the place. ‘And some parts of it are older than others. See those marble pillars around the door?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They were brought all the way from Pompeii, Italy.’

  Blackstone grinned. ‘As you told me earlier, Americans just love neoclassical,’ he said.

  ‘And real classical — gen-u-ine classical — is even better,’ Meade said, smiling back.

  They entered the restaurant, and Blackstone quickly glanced around the interior. Even from the outside, it had been plain to him that this was not the kind of restaurant he could ever afford to patronize himself, and the splendour he was now confronted with only confirmed the impression.

  ‘Is the police department paying for this?’ he asked, trying not to sound nervous.

  ‘No,’ Meade told him. ‘I am.’

  They ordered two of Delmonico’s special steaks, which Meade promised were the finest steaks in the world, and when the waiter had left them, the sergeant began his lesson.

  ‘This city runs on two things,’ he began. ‘Power and money.’

  ‘That’s what all big cities run on,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Maybe they do,’ Meade agreed. ‘But not like here.’ He paused to take a sip of water. ‘I have to start with Tammany Hall, because that’s where everything does start.’

  ‘All right,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘The Tammany Society was named after Tamanend, who was an Indian chief. It started out as a social organization, but about sixty years ago, it began getting political. The key to its power is its ability not only to get the voters out on polling day, but t
o get them to vote Democrat.’

  ‘How do they manage that?’

  ‘They have a political machine that would take your breath away. They started out by mobilizing the Irish vote — most of the Tammany leaders are Irish — but as there were successive waves of new immigrants — German Jews, Italians, Central Europeans, Russian Jews — they began working with them, too. You have to put yourself in the shoes of those immigrants, Inspector Blackstone. .’

  ‘Call me Sam.’

  ‘And you call me Alex. You have to put yourself in their shoes. They’ve left their homelands behind them, and they’re in a new country where they don’t even speak the language. America is so very different, and they simply don’t understand how things work. So they go to their ward leader, who’s a Tammany man.’

  ‘And what does he do?’

  ‘He makes things work for them. If they need a pedlar’s licence, he gets them one. If they want to apply for citizenship, he goes through the forms with them. If they want a job, he usually finds them one. If they’re behind on their rent, he pays it. When they can’t afford fuel in winter, he sees to it that some is delivered to them. And all he asks in return is that they vote on a straight Democratic ticket.’

  ‘Which means that the people from Tammany Hall get elected?’ Blackstone guessed.

  ‘No, some of them do stand for public office, but more often than not, they don’t want to be elected themselves.’

  ‘Then what do they want?’

  ‘They want to be the people who choose the people who are elected.’

  ‘People who will forever be in their debt,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Now you’re catching on, Sam,’ Meade said. ‘Tammany controls the people who have their hands on the purse strings of New York City, and it uses that fact to its own advantage. And both because Tammany Hall is corrupt, and because its web stretches everywhere, every public body in the city is corrupt, too.’

  ‘Including the police,’ Blackstone said, starting to see where Meade was going.

  Meade nodded. ‘Six years back, a special committee headed by State Senator Lexow looked into municipal corruption. The report it produced was 10,500 pages long, and 9,500 of those pages were concerned with corruption in the police department. The police commissioner admitted to the committee that eighty-five per cent of the men joining the police were accepted on the recommendation of Tammany Hall, and in the previous five years, he’d only promoted two men based on merit alone.’

  Blackstone whistled softly. ‘That’s bad,’ he said.

  ‘It gets worse,’ Meade told him. ‘What the commissioner didn’t admit — though everybody knew — was that Tammany had to be bribed to make those recommendations. It would cost a man $300 to be accepted as a patrolman. If he wanted to be promoted to sergeant, that would cost him $2,500. A captaincy was anything between $10,000 and $15,000, even though captains only earned $2,750 a year, and if you wanted to be an inspector, that could be anything up to $20,000. And there were always plenty of men willing to pay those bribes — because they knew just how much they could make through bribery and extortion once they were in their new positions.’

  ‘But, surely, once the report was published, the whole rotten system was cleaned up, wasn’t it?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you?’ Meade said. ‘It started promisingly enough. The mayor, who, for once, wasn’t a Tammany nominee, sacked the four commissioners and brought in new ones, including Teddy Roosevelt.’ Meade paused, as if expecting Blackstone to say something, and when the Englishman remained silent, he continued, almost incredulously, ‘You haven’t heard of Teddy Roosevelt?’

  ‘Can’t say I have,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘He’s a famous man in this country,’ Meade said. ‘Teddy likes to think of himself as a cowboy, even though he’s a native New Yorker. And I guess you could say he’s done just about everything — though none of it for very long. He worked for the Civil Service Commission, he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy — a position he used to start a war with Spain over Cuba-’

  ‘On his own?’ Blackstone interrupted.

  Meade grinned. ‘No, he had some help from the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers, but a lot of it was down to him. When war was declared, he raised his own regiment to fight in it, and after the war, when he was discharged from the Army, he became governor of New York State. Now he’s President McKinley’s running mate in the November election, which means — God help us — that he’s only a bullet away from being president himself.’ Meade paused. ‘That last bit’s a joke.’

  ‘But not a very funny one,’ Blackstone said.

  Meade shook his head. ‘Maybe you have to be American to understand it,’ he said. ‘Anyway, the Mayor brought him in to sweep the stable clean, and he tackled that job like he’s tackled most of the others he’s been given — with a lot of energy and enthusiasm, and only the occasional pause for effective thought and planning. Do you know that while the other three commissioners walked down Mulberry Street to their new jobs, Teddy ran?’

  ‘I see,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘He did do some good things,’ Meade admitted. ‘He fired some of the worst policemen. He insisted on promotion based on merit — and that worked for a while. But he acted as if he was running a one-man show, and the other commissioners grew to hate him. And he enforced old laws that banned soda fountains, florists, delicatessens, boot blacks and ice dealers from working on a Sunday — so pretty soon the public hated him, too. He left the job less than two years after he’d been sworn in.’

  ‘And nothing much had changed,’ Blackstone guessed.

  ‘And nothing much had changed,’ Meade agreed. ‘As a result of the Lexow Report, seventy policemen, including two former commissioners, four inspectors and twenty-four captains, were charged with criminal offences. And despite the fact that they were appearing before Tammany-appointed judges, some of them were actually convicted. But then most of those convictions were reversed by other Tammany judges in the higher courts. So not only did the guilty men get off free and clear, but some of them were even given their old jobs back.’

  ‘I see,’ Blackstone said again, sounding more troubled this time.

  ‘You’re wondering how I ever got to be a sergeant, aren’t you, Sam?’ Meade asked. ‘You’re wondering if I’m up to my elbows in filth and corruption like almost everybody else.’

  ‘It had crossed my mind,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘I used influence,’ Meade said. ‘Not money, but influence.’

  ‘I see,’ Blackstone said for a third time.

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Meade contradicted him. ‘My father’s a state senator, but he’s also a lawyer — a very good one, and a very rich one — and when I was studying at Harvard, it was always assumed I’d join the family firm. I assumed it myself — and then I met Patrick O’Brien.’

  ‘The dead inspector,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘The dead inspector,’ Meade confirmed. ‘He was a captain then, and he addressed a debating club I belonged to. What he said was that New York City, and the police department in particular, was a cesspit, and was likely to stay a cesspit as long as people like us simply walked past it holding our noses. And I knew immediately that he was right, and that it was up to people like me — people from the patrician class, if you like — to do something about it. So I used my father’s influence to join the police — but only so I could do good.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Alexander,’ said a female voice.

  Meade looked up, then stood up so quickly that he almost knocked the table over.

  ‘Good afternoon, Clarissa,’ he said, almost with a gasp.

  The young woman who had so quickly reduced him to this state was perhaps a year or two younger than he was. It would have been stretching the truth somewhat to say that she was a pretty girl, but even the least charitable of men could scarcely have avoided describing her as ‘sweet’.

  ‘This is Miss Clarissa Bonneville,’
Meade said to Blackstone. ‘Clarissa, may I introduce you to Inspector Sam Blackstone, a famous detective from England.’

  ‘Charmed, Mr Blackstone,’ the girl said, holding out her hand for him.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Blackstone replied, wondering if that was the correct etiquette in America.

  ‘We seem to see so little of you, these days,’ the girl said to Meade.

  ‘That’s true,’ Meade agreed. ‘Perhaps we could. .’

  Another woman had suddenly appeared at the table. She was older and stockier than Clarissa, and her face was pure vinegar.

  ‘You are keeping our guests waiting, Clarissa,’ she said sternly.

  ‘I only wanted a few words with Alex, Mama,’ the girl protested.

  ‘I am sure that Mr Meade understands that your guests must take priority over other social acquaintances,’ Mrs Bonneville said. She turned her sour face on Alex. ‘Isn’t that so, Mr Meade?’

  ‘Indeed it is, Mrs Bonneville,’ Meade agreed.

  ‘Then let us go, child,’ Mrs Bonneville said, almost pushing Clarissa away from the table.

  Meade watched the two women depart, then sighed softly to himself.

  ‘There was a time when that dragon would have given her right arm to see me marry her daughter,’ he said.

  ‘So what changed?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I became a policeman, and her attitude towards me altered overnight.’

  ‘What if you left the force and joined your father’s firm? Would her attitude alter again?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Then I’d once more be a good catch,’ Meade said. ‘But I don’t really care what she thinks of me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not at all. I love Clarissa, and, in the end, we will be married.’

  ‘And does she love you?’ Blackstone wondered.

  ‘Of course she does,’ Meade said. He grinned, a little sheepishly. ‘But perhaps she’s not yet quite as aware of it as she might be.’

  ‘Tell me more about Inspector O’Brien,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘He was a wonderful man,’ Meade said, and as he spoke, his eyes began to mist over. ‘Of all the appointments Roosevelt made during his brief tenure, Patrick’s was by far the most important. Teddy gave him a roving brief — to root out police corruption wherever he could find it — and though there were plenty of people who would have liked to have stripped him of that power once Roosevelt went, nobody’s ever had the guts to do it. It was Patrick’s mission to cleanse the department or die trying.’ The sergeant shuddered. ‘And die trying is just what he did.’