Blackstone and the New World isb-1

by Sally Spencer

  ‘The first is that the closer he gets to you, the more you can see of him, and the bigger a target he becomes.’

  ‘Sure. Makes sense.’

  ‘But the second one is even more important. You see, he knows you’re pointing your rifle at him. He expects you to fire it. And because of that, he knows he has no choice but to keep on running. And maybe that will work out for him. Maybe he’ll be able to dodge the bullet and be on top of you before you have time to fire again.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s war for you,’ said Meade, who had never had any military training.

  ‘But if you don’t fire, it unnerves him even more than a bullet flying past his ear would,’ Blackstone continued. ‘Because he’s not sure what the rules are any more. And that will affect the way he acts. Sometimes the uncertainty will slow him down. Sometimes it will make him start to waver from side to side. But whatever he decides to do, he’ll start making mistakes — because you’ve robbed him of his clear sense of purpose.’

  Meade grinned. ‘I get it,’ he said.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Sure! You’re saying I shouldn’t go into this meeting with Plunkitt with all guns blazing.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying,’ Blackstone confirmed.

  ‘Relax, Sam,’ Meade said. ‘I’ll run rings around the man.’

  I very much doubt that, Blackstone thought.

  George Plunkitt had a barrel chest and legs as thick as small tree trunks. His broad face was dominated by a large nose and a thick black moustache which looked as if it could have served as a heavy-duty scrubbing brush.

  But, as they drew closer to the man, it was his eyes that fascinated Blackstone the most. They had the sharpness of a fox’s, and the cunning of a peasant’s — but what they totally lacked was any sign of the worry that Meade expected them to be showing. If they revealed anything at all, Blackstone decided, it was a sort of amusement which, while it was not exactly contemptuous, was certainly a long way from respectful.

  Meade reached into his pocket for his shield.

  ‘Senator Plunkitt?’ he asked crisply. ‘I’m Detective-’

  ‘You’re little Alex Meade,’ Plunkitt interrupted. ‘Well, well, well. Seems a long time since I last dandled you on my knee at a Tammany Hall picnic, don’t it? So how’s your daddy gettin’ on, Alex?’

  Meade swallowed, as if not sure what to say next. But a question had been asked of him, and — almost against his will — he found his good breeding forcing out an answer.

  ‘My father’s doing fine, Senator,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Be sure to give him my best wishes the next time you see him.’

  ‘I will,’ Meade said awkwardly. He paused for a second, to regroup his forces, then continued. ‘Considering the nature of this meeting, Senator, you might prefer to hold it in your office.’

  ‘Now, I’m just a simple man from the peat bogs, but I always thought that an office was the place where you did your business,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Did I get that wrong, Alex?’

  ‘No, you didn’t get it wrong, Senator,’ Meade said, miserably.

  ‘Well, then, we’re in the right place, ain’t we?’ Plunkitt said, waving his hand expansively up and down the street. ‘This is my office, boy,’ he said. ‘Always was, an’ always will be.’ He looked down at the shoeshine boy. ‘Ain’t that the plain simple truth, Antonio?’

  ‘It is, Senator,’ the boy agreed, as he continued to polish.

  ‘A fine young man, and the best shoeshine in New York City,’ Plunkitt told Blackstone and Meade. ‘Why, I’d walk miles out of my way just to have this lad shine my shoes.’

  The boy gazed at Plunkitt with a look which came close to adoration on his face, but the Senator’s attention had already been transferred to a Jewish tailor who was walking past with a bolt of cloth under his arm.

  ‘See you at the bar mitzvah, Jake,’ Plunkitt called out.

  ‘It’ll be an honour to have you there, Senator,’ the other man called back.

  Plunkitt turned back to Meade. ‘So, you’re the one who asked for this meeting, let’s hear what you got to say.’

  ‘Inspector O’Brien, the policeman who’s just been killed, was conducting an important investigation just before he died,’ Meade began.

  ‘I would hope all our city officials are always engaged in important work, ’cos we sure as hell wouldn’t want to pay them their fine salaries for doin’ unimportant work,’ Plunkitt replied.

  ‘And we know he came to see you, which would suggest that he considered you to be connected — if only in a minor way — with that investigation,’ Meade pressed on.

  ‘I was sorry to hear of the inspector’s death,’ Plunkitt said. ‘I sent the widow some flowers and a note which said if there was anything I could do for her in her time of woe, she only needed to ask.’

  ‘You haven’t answered my question, sir,’ Meade said.

  ‘I wasn’t aware you’d asked one,’ Plunkitt countered.

  ‘Did Inspector O’Brien think you might be connected with the investigation he was conducting?’

  ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t rightly know,’ Plunkitt replied. ‘When I spoke to him on the telephone, I certainly thought that might be the case. But then I spent half an hour with the man, and if he had a point he wanted to make — or a question he wanted to ask — he never got around to it.’

  ‘So what did the two of you talk about?’ Meade asked sceptically. ‘The weather?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, we did,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Inspector O’Brien was of the opinion that it was even hotter this summer than it was last. We also talked about whether this American League they’re thinkin’ of founding will ever turn baseball into a national sport.’ He paused for a second. ‘An’ the Oklahoma Territory,’ he added. ‘We discussed that, too. He thought it was about ready for statehood, and I didn’t.’ Plunkitt smiled. ‘So you see, while it was an amiable conversation on the whole, we did have our disagreements.’

  ‘And he gave no indication that he suspected you might be involved in anything illegal?’ Meade persisted.

  ‘No indication at all. But if you were to ask me what I thought he believed, deep down inside himself, I’d guess he believed what men like him always believe when they see men like me, with our big houses an’ our yachts.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘That I was probably one of the rottenest apples in the barrel.’

  ‘And are you one of the rottenest apples in the barrel?’ Blackstone asked.

  Plunkitt looked at him, with an amused smile playing on his lips.

  ‘Who’s your friend, Alex?’ he asked.

  ‘Inspector Sam Blackstone,’ Meade said.

  ‘I didn’t know we’d got any Inspector Blackstone workin’ for the New York Police Department.’

  ‘He’s not a New York policeman — he’s from Scotland Yard.’

  ‘Now ain’t that interestin’?’ Plunkitt said. ‘Why are you here, Inspector? Are there so few Irishmen left for you to persecute in the Old Country that you have to come over here in search of new ones?’

  A working man, carrying a bag of tools in his hand, had arrived on the scene, and was now waiting patiently to be noticed.

  ‘Are you here about your boy, Walter?’ Plunkitt asked.

  ‘Yes, Senator.’

  ‘I talked to the precinct captain this mornin’. The charges have been dropped, an’ he’ll be home in time for supper.’

  ‘Thank you, Senator,’ the workman said. ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.’

  ‘Don’t want no repayment,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Just want you to remember to put your tick in the right box come next election day.’

  ‘I will, Senator,’ the workman promised. ‘You have my word on that.’

  ‘An’ your word’s as good an assurance as any man should need, Walter,’ Plunkitt said.

  The workman walked away, and when he was just out
of earshot, Plunkitt said, ‘We were talkin’ about rotten apples, weren’t we, Mr Blackstone?’

  ‘We were,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘Then listen to what I have to say about how things work here in New York City, an’ you might just possibly end up a wiser man.’ He turned to Meade. ‘Cards on the table, Alex?’

  ‘Cards on the table,’ Meade agreed.

  ‘You hear that your Inspector O’Brien has been to see me, which must mean he’s investigatin’ me. .’

  ‘I never suggested. .’ Meade began.

  ‘Hear me out,’ Plunkitt said imperiously. ‘He must be investigatin’ me, which, in turn, has to mean I must be runnin’ scared. An’ it ain’t a big step from that to thinkin’ I paid somebody to put a bullet in the inspector. Ain’t that right?’

  ‘I never thought that,’ Meade protested.

  Plunkitt smiled. ‘Maybe you did, an’ maybe you didn’t. But now I’ve gone an’ planted the thought right there in your head, you got to admit it’s a possibility, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is a possibility,’ Meade admitted, reluctantly.

  ‘No, it ain’t.’ Plunkitt said. ‘Because Inspector O’Brien didn’t scare me one little bit. I honestly don’t think he was even there to scare me, though I still ain’t got no idea what he did want. But say that had been what he wanted — say he’d intended to frighten the livin’ bejesus out of me, it still wouldn’t have worked.’

  ‘No?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.

  ‘No,’ Plunkitt replied. ‘You see, the problem with people like him — with all them do-good reformers — is that they don’t draw the distinction between honest graft an’ dishonest graft.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘A world of difference,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Dishonest graft is when you set about blackmailin’ gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, etc. I’ve never gone in for that, and neither have any of the other men I know who have made big fortunes in politics.’

  ‘So what’s honest graft?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘I’ve got some time on my hands, so I’ll give you a couple of examples,’ Plunkitt said graciously. ‘My party’s in power in this city, so when they’re goin’ to make public improvements, I’m one of the first to hear about it. So supposin’ they’re goin’ to build a bridge. I get tipped off, and I buy as much property as I can where the approaches to the bridge are goin’ to be. Then, when the city needs the land — ’cos the bridge ain’t no good if there’s no way to reach it — I sell my land for a good price. And ain’t it perfectly honest to make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that’s honest graft.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Blackstone said in a flat voice.

  ‘Then take another case,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘The city was goin’ to fix up a big park. I heard about it, and went looking for land in the neighbourhood. There wasn’t any land goin’ at a price I was prepared to pay, ’cept for a big piece of swamp. Well, I took that swamp fast enough, and held on to it. Things turned out just like I thought they would. They couldn’t make the park complete without Plunkitt’s swamp, and they had to pay a real good price for it. You find anything dishonest in that, Mr Inspector?’

  ‘I don’t know the law in America,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘You surely don’t,’ Plunkitt agreed.

  A thin woman in a faded dress had arrived, and was standing where the workman had stood earlier.

  ‘I’ve paid your rent for this week, Eliza, but I ain’t goin’ to do it again, so you better tell your Lew to get off that fat ass of his an’ go out an’ earn some money,’ Plunkitt said.

  The woman smiled weakly. ‘Thank you, Senator,’ she said.

  ‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told her. ‘An’ it ain’t just in land that money’s to be made,’ he said to Blackstone and Meade. ‘For instance, when the city’s repavin’ a street and has several hundred thousand old granite blocks to sell, I’m on hand to buy them. An’, believe me, I know just what they’re worth. How do I know? Never mind that. Anyways, I had a sort of monopoly on this business for a while, but then one of the newspapers, which are always stirrin’ up things that are none of their concern, tried to spike it for me. How? It persuaded some outside men to come over from Brooklyn and New Jersey and bid against me. Well, there we all are in the auction room, me, an’ the outside men, an’ the newspaper reporters, who are just waitin’ to see me get my butt kicked. So what did I do?’

  The story was interrupted by the arrival of yet another supplicant, a young man in a shabby suit.

  ‘The booze has been delivered for the wake, Senator,’ he said.

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ Plunkitt told him. ‘Now that’s top-dollar Irish whiskey I sent over. Treat it with the respect it deserves.’

  ‘We will, Senator.’

  ‘Which is just another way of sayin’ that if everybody ain’t rollin’ drunk by the time I arrive, I may start thinkin’ that I’ve wasted my money.’

  The man in the shabby suit grinned. ‘No worries on that score, Senator. We’ll be drunk, right enough.’

  ‘So, where was I, Alex?’ Plunkitt asked.

  ‘Granite blocks,’ Meade reminded him.

  ‘That’s right. So what did I do? I went to each of the men the newspaper had persuaded to bid against me, an’ I said, “How many of these 250,000 stones do you want?” Well, one said 20,000, another wanted 15,000 and some of the others wanted 10,000 each. So I said, “All right, let me bid for the lot, and I’ll give each one of you all you want for nothin.”. They agreed, of course. So the auctioneer says, “How much am I bid for these 250,000 fine pavin’ stones?” And I says, “$2.50.” “$2.50!” he screams. “That’s a joke! Give me a real bid.” But he soon found out the bid was real enough. My rivals kept as silent as the stone I was biddin’ for. I got the lot for the price I bid, an’ gave them their share, An’ that’s how the attempt to do Plunkitt down ended — an’ that’s how all such attempts end.’

  This wasn’t just the New World, Blackstone thought, it was a very different world.

  ‘Now when these reform administrations come into office, like they do once in a while, the first thing they do is spend money like water, tryin’ to find out about the public robberies they talked about during their campaigns,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘And guess what? They don’t find nothin’. The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you, that’s never goin’ to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn’t isn’t likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend of mine. So why shouldn’t Alderman X do exactly the same in public life?’

  ‘So Inspector O’Brien’s corruption investigation didn’t bother you?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘That’s what I’m sayin’. I knew he was never goin’ to uncover what I done wrong, because I never done nothin’ wrong.’ Plunkitt smiled. ‘Which brings us right back to where we started, which is that I had no reason on God’s green earth to have the man hit. Any more questions you’d care to ask, Alex?’

  ‘No,’ Meade said weakly. ‘Thank you for your time, Senator.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told him. He turned to Blackstone again, and fixed him with his piercing eyes. ‘Say, for the sake of argument, that my worst enemy was given the job of writin’ my epitaph when I’m gone. An’ say, for argument’s sake again, that he tried to work out the worst possible thing he could write about me. You followin’ me so far?’

  ‘I’m following you so far,’ Blackstone agreed.

  ‘An’ say he wasn’t allowed to lie. Say he could write anythin’ about me as long as it was the truth. Do you know what the worst thing he could come up with would be?’

  ‘No,’ Blacks
tone said. ‘What would it be?’

  A fresh smile spread across the senator’s broad face. ‘“George W. Plunkitt”,’ he said. ‘“He seen His Opportunities and He Took ’Em.”’

  TWELVE

  It wasn’t Blackstone’s normal practice to start drinking that early in the morning, but when he saw the look of mute appeal in Meade’s eyes as they passed the saloon on 12th Street, he quickly decided that even if he didn’t need the boost that a shot of alcohol would give him, the sergeant certainly did.

  He sat Meade down at a table, went over to the bar, and ordered a draft beer for himself and a whiskey for the sergeant. When he returned to the table, Meade was gazing down speculatively at his hands, as if wondering if they were up to the job of strangling him.

  ‘Cheer up,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Cheer up?’ Meade repeated bleakly, grabbing the shot glass as a drowning man might clutch at a straw, and knocking the whiskey back in a single gulp. ‘Cheer up! Plunkitt ran rings round me. You warned me he might, but I was such an arrogant little prig that I wouldn’t listen to you.’

  ‘He’s been in the game a long time,’ Blackstone said consolingly. ‘He was at it before you were even born.’ He hesitated for a second, before asking, ‘Did Plunkitt really dandle you on his knee at one of the Tammany Hall picnics — or was that just a tactic to knock you off balance?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meade admitted. ‘He may have dandled me on his knee! He may even have ruffled my goddam hair and told me I was a sweet kid. I don’t remember.’

  ‘But you did attend Tammany picnics?’

  ‘We attended a few of them,’ Meade said, with the shame evident in his voice. ‘My father despises the whole Tammany crowd — but if you want to do business as a lawyer in New York City, you sometimes have to force yourself to be pleasant to them.’

  ‘You do what you have to do,’ Blackstone said. ‘I sometimes have to force myself to be pleasant to my assistant commissioner — and that man is the scum of the earth.’

  ‘Really?’ Meade asked gratefully.

  ‘Really,’ Blackstone confirmed.