‘Funny? How?’
‘Well, you could tell that he wasn’t a regular at that kind of establishment, and he seems very uncomfortable being there at all. So me and Lucy try to make him feel more at home.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘I pat my hand on the chaise lounge and ask him if he’d like to sit between us. He says, “No, thank you.” He’s very polite about it, but very firm. And then he just stands there, in the centre of room, fiddling with the rim of his hat and gazing up at the ceiling. Then he sees what’s painted on the ceiling, and he quickly looks down at the floor.’ Trixie chuckled throatily. ‘It’s a good job that Madam didn’t get any of them erotic carpets she was thinking of buying, ain’t it?’
‘Did Madam invite him into her apartment?’ asked Meade, who was growing redder by the minute.
Trixie shook her head. ‘Oh, no. Like I said, she’s very particular about who goes in there.’
‘So she came into the parlour instead?’
‘That’s right.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She asks him what he wants, and when he tells her he just wants a private word, she leads him across to the far end of the room, where the escritoire is.’ Trixie paused. ‘That’s French for “writing desk”.’
‘I know,’ Meade said.
‘Anyway, they talk for about five minutes — only, it’s in a whisper, so we can’t hear. Then Madam opens the drawer of the escritoire, and takes out a sheet of paper. She writes something on it and hands it to the cop.’
‘And did that seem to satisfy him?’
Trixie frowned, as if there was only one activity that she was used to hearing the word ‘satisfy’ applied to.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Did he seem pleased?’
‘Yes, he did.’
‘And what did he do with the piece of paper?’
‘Folded it up and put it in his pocket.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he left — in a great hurry.’
‘Was that because he wanted to get away from the brothel as quickly as he could?’
Trixie frowned again. ‘I don’t think so. It was more of a case of him wanting to get to somewhere else quickly.’
‘What did Madam say to you when he’d gone?’
‘She smiled at us, in a funny sort of way. .’
‘What do you mean by “in a funny sort of way”?’
‘I don’t know,’ Trixie said perplexedly. ‘Like she’d found something funny, I suppose. And then she says, ‘It’s always nice to be of service to the police force, isn’t it, girls?’
‘And what do you think she meant?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Trixie paused for the briefest of instants. ‘Do I get the money now?’
Meade laid a ten-dollar bill on the table. ‘Regard that as a down payment,’ he said.
‘A what?’
‘A down payment. An advance. If your information checks out, there’ll be more.’
‘Funny way to do business,’ Trixie complained. ‘In my game, you make sure you have all the money in your hand before you so much as open your. .’ She paused again. ‘How much more will there be?
‘A hundred dollars,’ Meade promised.
Trixie beamed with pleasure.
‘Now that’s a better way to make a living than lying on your back with your eyes closed, pretending you’re reading Harper’s Bazaar.’
By the end of a long afternoon, Meade had screwed up 68 pieces of paper, and had only one — Number 27 — still in front of him.
‘So what do you think, Sam?’ he asked Blackstone.
‘I think that even though Plunkitt thought that he and O’Brien talked about nothing of any consequence, your inspector managed to squeeze an important piece of information out of the senator without Plunkitt even knowing he’d done it,’ Blackstone replied.
‘You see!’ Meade said triumphantly. ‘I told you Patrick wouldn’t have wasted his opportunity, didn’t I? I told you he wasn’t just talking about the weather and the state of baseball.’
‘You also told me that he was the most direct man you’d ever met,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘And he doesn’t seem to have been very direct in the way he handled Plunkitt.’
Meade looked a little crestfallen. ‘Yes, well, I did say he was direct, but maybe, on just this one occasion, he realized that being direct wouldn’t work.’
Or maybe you didn’t know him as well as you believe you did, Blackstone thought. Maybe he was much less of a saint — and much more of a clever, practical policeman — than you ever imagined.
‘I wonder just what it was that Plunkitt let slip without knowing he’d even done it,’ Meade said.
‘We’ve no way of knowing,’ Blackstone replied. ‘And now that Inspector O’Brien’s dead, we may never know. But it doesn’t really matter, anyway.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No. Because while each link in the chain, like the meeting with Senator Plunkitt, may be of some interest in itself, what’s really important — what we’re actually looking for — is what lies at the end of it. And we find that by following the chain link by link.’
‘And the next link is the brothel where Trixie works?’ Meade asked.
‘Exactly.’
‘Being the man that he was, Patrick must have hated ever crossing the threshold of that brothel,’ Meade said. ‘But he forced himself to go there anyway — because his sense of duty told him that he had no choice.’
‘And once he was there, he picked up another piece of information — which led him to the next link in the chain.’
‘But this time he felt he could be more direct in his approach — more like his true self. He asked the madam for exactly what he wanted, and — according to Trixie — the madam wasn’t the least bit worried about giving it to him. She even seemed to be amused by the whole process.’
‘She may not have realized how important that piece of information actually was,’ Blackstone said. ‘In fact, it may not have been of the slightest importance at all to her.’
‘But from the way he acted when he’d got it, it seems to have been very important to Patrick’s investigation.’
‘And perhaps important enough to someone else, for that person to decide that O’Brien had to die.’
‘We need to find out what it was that the madam wrote on that piece of paper,’ Meade said.
‘We certainly do,’ Blackstone agreed.
FIFTEEN
The street they were walking up was only a short distance from Madison Square. Trees had been planted — a few yards apart — along its entire length, and the sidewalk appeared to be recently repaved. And as they passed by the brownstone houses, Blackstone noted that while they were similar to the ones on the street where Inspector O’Brien had lived, these had only a single bell-pull by their front doors.
‘Nice area,’ he said to Meade.
‘Yes, it’s a thoroughly respectable neighbourhood populated by moderately prosperous families,’ Meade replied. ‘And that, of course, is why it was such a smart move for the madam to open her brothel here.’
They were back to playing the I-know-this-city-and-you-don’t game again, Blackstone thought with a smile.
‘Why was it a smart move?’ he asked.
‘For two reasons.’ Meade paused. ‘You’d say that Trixie is a fairly high-class whore, wouldn’t you?’
‘I can’t speak for New York, but she would certainly be fairly high-class if she worked in London.’
‘Which would suggest, wouldn’t it, that the place where she works is a fairly high-class brothel?’
‘I would assume so.’
‘And when you’re running that kind of business, you want it to be in an area where your potential clients will feel safe — an area much like this one.’
That made sense, Blackstone agreed. A gentleman’s pleasure between the legs of a willing whore could be quite spoiled by the thought that, once he s
tepped outside, he was likely to be robbed at knifepoint.
‘You told me there were two reasons,’ he said to Meade. ‘What’s the second one?’
‘I pointed out to you the people who live on this street are all moderately prosperous. But moderately prosperous is not the same as being rich. And in New York City, if you’re not rich, you’re not powerful.’
‘So while the residents might not much like the idea having a brothel virtually on their own doorsteps, there’s not a great deal that they can do about it,’ Blackstone said.
‘Exactly,’ Meade confirmed. ‘As long as the police bribes are paid in full, and on time, the brothel’s here to stay, however they might feel. But if it was located a few blocks west of here, close to Fifth Avenue, then people like the Vanderbilts and the Astors would see to it that, however big a bribe the madam was prepared to pay, it wouldn’t stay open for even a day.’
They had reached the brothel. The front door was open, and standing in the doorway was a tall man in a frock coat and top hat.
That would be Imre, Blackstone thought.
Trixie had said the doorman was built like a brick shithouse, and he couldn’t have come up with a better description himself. And yet, even allowing for the man’s size and obvious strength, Inspector O’Brien’s righteous anger had been enough to have him worried.
There were four steps leading up to the front door, and the moment Meade mounted the first one, the doorman took a step forward himself.
‘I am afraid that we are not open, gentlemen,’ Imre said in heavily accented English.
Meade looked up at the house. Lights were blazing at most of the windows, and the sound of a tinkling piano was drifting down the hallway.
‘Looks open enough to me,’ the sergeant said.
‘It is a private party,’ the doorman told him firmly.
Blackstone, still standing on the sidewalk in partial shadow, was beginning to think there was something familiar about Imre. In fact, he was certain there was something familiar about him. But, for the moment at least, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Meade reached into his pocket and produced his detective’s shield.
‘I don’t really give a damn if it’s the Republican Party Convention that’s going on in there,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Meade of the Detective Bureau, and I’m investigating the death of Inspector Patrick O’Brien.’
‘So what?’
‘So, in pursuance of that investigation, I’d like to come inside and speak to the owner of this establishment.’
Imre took a quick step back, so that he was now clearly inside the house again.
‘Do you have a warrant?’ he asked.
‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,’ Alex Meade admitted. ‘But I can easily get one, if I have to.’
Imre smirked. ‘I don’t think you will find it easy at all,’ he said. ‘And without a warrant, you may not come into the establishment nor may you talk to anybody at all.’
There was a filing cabinet which occupied a good part of Blackstone’s policeman’s brain, and now one of the drawers suddenly flew open — and a single file fell out.
‘Hello, Freddie,’ he said. ‘’Ow’s tricks, me ole mate?’
‘Freddie?’ Imre repeated. ‘I do not know of whom you speak.’
‘Have you heard from either of the Wilkins brothers recently?’ Blackstone asked.
Imre peered into the gloom at the foot of the steps.
‘Is that you, Mr Blackstone?’ he asked, with a slight wobble entering his voice.
Blackstone stepped out into the light.
‘None other,’ he said grandly. ‘Let me introduce you to French Freddie,’ he continued, turning to Meade. ‘Not that he’s always been French Freddie. For a while, he was Eric the Dutchman, and before that Sven the Swede. And before even that, when he was a kid growing up in the East End of London, he was plain Horace Grubb.’ He returned his attention to the doorman. ‘As far as I can recall, you’ve never been a Hungarian before, Freddie, but then, I suppose, you must be running out of nationalities to impersonate.’
‘Listen, Mr Blackstone. .’ the doorman began.
‘With Freddie’s build, he made an ideal collector for the Wilkins brothers, who ran a particularly nasty little gang down in Whitechapel,’ Blackstone said, ignoring the doorman and talking to Meade again. ‘Then, one day, when he’d been out on his collecting round, he completely disappeared. And so, as it happened, did the bag stuffed full of money.’
‘That was really quite a coincidence,’ Alex Meade said, playing along with him.
‘Wasn’t it, though?’ Blackstone agreed. ‘A few weeks later, a body was fished out of the Thames, and it had Freddie’s wallet in its pocket.’
‘And you thought he was dead?’ Meade asked.
‘Not for a split second,’ Blackstone replied. ‘And, as a matter of fact, neither did either of the Wilkins brothers.’ He fixed the doorman with his gaze again. ‘Did you really think, even in your wildest dreams, that you could fool a couple of sharp villains like them, Freddie?’
‘I. . I. .’ Freddie-Imre gasped.
‘They put a price on your head, Freddie. Would you like to guess how much they were offering for information on your whereabouts?’
‘No, I. .’
‘A thousand pounds! Just think of that. One thousand pounds. It’s a fortune, isn’t it?’
The doorman nodded numbly.
‘And, of course, it’s much more than the amount of cash that you actually did a runner with,’ Blackstone continued. ‘But as far as the brothers are concerned, you see, what you really stole from them wasn’t their money at all — it was their reputation. And they knew that the only way to get that reputation back was by subjecting you to a particularly slow and painful death — preferably in front of witnesses.’
‘Listen, Mr Blackstone, there’s no need to-’
‘But they couldn’t kill you, could they?’ Blackstone ploughed on. ‘And why couldn’t they? For the very simple reason that they had absolutely no idea where you were. But they will know, as soon as I send them a telegram.’
‘Yer. . yer wouldn’t do that to me, Mr Blackstone,’ the doorman gasped. ‘Yer couldn’t do that to me. Yer a copper, sworn to up’old the law.’
‘But I wouldn’t have to be a copper if I had a thousand pounds in my pocket, now would I?’ Blackstone asked. ‘With a thousand pounds I could buy myself a nice little farm somewhere in the countryside and sit back while other people did all the work for me.’
‘Please, Mr Blackstone. .’ the doorman said.
‘It does seem very hard on poor Freddie to condemn him to death after he’s built up a new life for himself in America,’ Meade said solicitously. ‘Isn’t there any alternative, Sam?’
‘Well, I suppose we could reach some kind of deal instead,’ Blackstone mused.
‘What kind of deal?’ the doorman asked miserably.
‘You do something that I want you to do, and in return I won’t do something you don’t want me to do.’
‘How d’yer mean?’
‘We’d very much like to enter this house, but without a warrant we can’t come in unless we’re invited in. So why don’t you do that, Freddie? Why don’t you invite us in?’
‘The boss will have my guts for garters if I do anyfink like that,’ the doorman protested.
‘No, she won’t,’ Blackstone said dismissively. ‘But the Wilkins brothers would. They’d have your guts flying from a flagpole — and if they did it just right, you’d still be alive to see it.’
The doorman bowed his head in defeat.
‘Please come inside, gentlemen,’ he said, almost back to being Imre the Hungarian count again.
The door to the main salon led off the hallway. It was slightly ajar and Blackstone caught the briefest glimpse of three naked girls — who were entertaining their invisible audience by playing leapfrog — before Imre ushered them onwards.
The hallway itsel
f was decorated with thick crimson wallpaper, its plushness relieved, every yard or so, by a piece of French Second Empire furniture or a gilded mirror.
‘Now this is what I call a brothel,’ Meade said, perhaps in an attempt to compensate for his earlier blushes.
Imre led them into a small parlour which was slightly less flamboyant than anything else they’d seen so far.
‘If you wouldn’t mind waiting here, gentlemen, I’ll see if Madam is available to grant you an audience,’ the doorman said, stepping back into the hallway and closing the door behind him.
Meade looked at Blackstone quizzically. ‘Did these Wilkins brothers of yours really put a price on his head?’ he asked.
Blackstone shrugged. ‘Not as far as I know. I actually believed someone else had drowned Freddie and stolen the money. And so, I assume, did the brothers. And even if they had put up the money, they’re in no position to pay it now — as Freddie would know if he read the English papers.’
‘They’re in prison?’
‘They were in prison, after I arrested them towards the end of last year,’ Blackstone said. ‘But it was a very short stay indeed — it usually is when you’re hanged.’
The door opened again, and a woman, who could only have been the madam, entered the room.
She was in her mid-to-late forties, Blackstone guessed. She had a huge bosom, which must have been a great asset to her while she was working her way up the ranks, but now merely provided a steady income for someone employed in the corsetry industry.
The woman smiled warmly at them. ‘I am Mrs de Courcey,’ she said. ‘And you are. .?’
‘Detective Sergeant Meade, and my colleague from England, Inspector Blackstone.’
‘An Englishman!’ Mrs de Courcey exclaimed. ‘How utterly charming. Do take a seat, gentlemen.’
They sat.
‘I’d like to ask you-’ Meade began.
‘Before you ask me anything, I would like to apologize for the behaviour of my doorman,’ Mrs de Courcey interrupted. ‘Despite his size, he is a very gentle soul, and though he may have appeared rude to you, I’m sure that was not his intention. He sometimes forgets that he is no longer a Hungarian count,’ she continued in a lower voice, as if imparting a great secret, ‘and that he has now risen to an even higher station in life — that of a free American citizen.’
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