Blackstone and the New World isb-1

by Sally Spencer

  ‘I know,’ Blackstone said, sympathetically.

  ‘Make them give me Jenny’s body soon,’ Mary begged, and she was crying now. ‘Please make them give me the body.’

  ‘If I thought it would do any good, I’d certainly try,’ Blackstone told her. ‘But I’m only a visitor, and I have no influence here.’

  ‘What about Alex Meade?’ Mary asked. ‘Do you think that he has any influence?’

  ‘I would imagine he has some, even if it’s only through his father,’ Blackstone said. ‘Though whether it’s enough to get you what you want. .’

  ‘Then speak to him,’ Mary pleaded. ‘Ask him to do what he can — however little that might be.’

  ‘I will,’ Blackstone promised.

  ‘And find my husband’s killer, Mr Blackstone,’ Mary said, with a certain firmness in her voice. ‘Help me to close that door behind me, too.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Small, scrawny children were playing lethargically in the dirt. Bent old women were hobbling painfully — and fearfully — away from the saloons, clutching bottles of the cheapest booze available in their gnarled and withered hands. Gangs of boys were gathered at street corners. Small groups of men gambled away money which could have been used to feed their families. Five Points looked much as it had done the day before, Blackstone thought — and as it would probably always look, until some more honest, more caring city council pulled the whole area down and replaced it with something fit for human beings to live in.

  ‘I don’t want to be here,’ Florence, the peevish scullery maid, whined. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Stop complaining,’ Blackstone said curtly. ‘It’s better than having to work in the kitchen, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why don’t you take me somewhere fancy?’ Florence suggested in a sickly sweet voice, as she ran her index finger up and down the lapel of his jacket. ‘If you was nice to me, I could be very nice to you.’

  Blackstone angrily brushed the girl’s hand away.

  She would end up as a whore, he thought. She would be driven to it by her own laziness.

  But she would not be the kind of whore that Trixie was — working in a fancy midtown brothel, servicing customers who had specially asked for her, and saving for the day when she could open an establishment of her own. No, Florence’s future was altogether bleaker. She would become one of those women who lurked in the shadows on street corners, and whose only appeal was that she carried something between her legs which offered the men who used her some fleeting satisfaction at rock-bottom prices.

  ‘Did you hear me? I said, why don’t you take me somewhere fancy?’ Florence repeated.

  ‘Have you already forgotten why we’re here?’ Blackstone asked, his words edged with contempt.

  ‘Course I ain’t forgot,’ Florence replied. ‘I ain’t stupid, am I? Yer want me to finger Nancy for you.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘And she won’t be anywhere fancy, will she? Because, according to you, this is where she lives.’

  Florence laughed unpleasantly. ‘What a dump,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet Nancy wishes that she was back in the big house. But she can’t go back, can she? She’s burnt her bridges, an’ now she’s stuck with it.’

  ‘And you’re very pleased about that, aren’t you?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be pleased? She thought she could lord it over me, didn’t she? Well, now she knows she can’t.’

  ‘Did she ever actually say anything to show that she wanted to lord it over you?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Well, no, she didn’t say anything, not in so many words,’ Florence admitted. ‘But Mr Boone thought the sun shone out of her backside.’

  ‘And why do you think that was?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  ‘Could it have been because she worked harder, and more cheerfully, than you did?’ Blackstone suggested.

  Florence shrugged. She was already bored with the subject and, besides, a new thought had already entered her mind.

  ‘How much will I get paid for this?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Blackstone told her.

  ‘Nothin’! I’m not doin’ it for nothin’. If yer don’t pay me, you’ll never find Nancy. ’Cos I’ll say I haven’t seen her — even if I have.’

  ‘You have to find Nancy,’ Blackstone told her coldly. ‘Because if you don’t, I’ll tell Mr Boone you didn’t even try to.’

  ‘Bastard!’ Florence said, almost under her breath.

  The door of a run-down saloon opened, and a girl of about sixteen, carrying a jug of beer in her hand, stepped out on to the sidewalk.

  ‘That’s her!’ Florence said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Blackstone asked suspiciously.

  ‘I’m sure,’ Florence replied.

  And the malicious glee with which she said the words was enough to convince Blackstone that this was indeed the girl he was looking for.

  ‘What are you goin’ to do with her?’ Florence asked eagerly. ‘Are you goin’ to arrest her? Will she be sent to jail?’

  ‘You can leave now,’ Blackstone said, keeping his eyes firmly on the girl with the beer jug.

  ‘What do yer mean? I can leave?’

  ‘I mean that you’ve pointed out Nancy for me, and now I have no further use for you.’

  ‘And how do yer think I’m supposed to get back to the house?’ Florence demanded.

  But Blackstone had already begun to walk rapidly towards the girl with the beer jug.

  ‘I gave you seven dollars yesterday,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Use it to take a bloody cab.’

  He caught up with Nancy before she had gone two blocks, and when he said, ‘Nancy Greene! I want to talk to you!’ in a harsh authoritative voice, she froze, and slowly turned around to face him.

  She was a pretty enough girl, he thought, and he himself could read in her features that same evidence of character that Mr Boone, the van Horne’s butler had read.

  But he could also see that she had a black eye.

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked, and though there was uncertainty in her voice, there was no sign of fear.

  ‘I’ve already told you what I want, Nancy,’ Blackstone replied. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Haven’t got the time to talk,’ the girl said. ‘Eddie wants his beer, and if I keep him waiting for it too long. .’

  She left the rest unsaid, but there was no need to say it, when her black eye said it for her.

  ‘If you won’t talk to me voluntarily, then I’ll have to arrest you,’ Blackstone threatened.

  Nancy nodded fatalistically.

  She hadn’t even asked on whose authority he would arrest her, or what she was supposed to have done wrong, he thought.

  She simply assumed that he did have the right, and that she had done something wrong, even if she herself didn’t know what it was — because that was what girls in her position always assumed.

  ‘All right, I’ll talk to you, mister — but can you make it quick?’ Nancy pleaded.

  Blackstone glanced up and down the sidewalk. Though the two of them had only been standing there for a minute, they had already begun to attract the attention of some of the boys who were loitering on the corner, as well as some of the men who were bent over their card game.

  For the moment, these men and boys were showing nothing but mild curiosity at the encounter, but the longer he and Nancy stayed there, the more likely it was that someone would decide to take offence at a local girl being questioned by a stranger. And then things could turn extremely nasty.

  ‘You live near here, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Nancy replied.

  He would not have believed her if she’d said she didn’t, because the jug in her hand was evidence that she did not have far to go.

  ‘We’ll go back to your apartment,’ he suggested.

  ‘My apartment?’ Nancy repeated incredulously. ‘Who do you think I am, mister? I haven’t got an apartment — I’ve got a room!’

>   ‘Then we’ll go there.’

  ‘We can’t. Eddie’s there, and he wouldn’t like it if I brought anybody back with me who wasn’t paying for the privilege.’ Nancy paused. ‘And that’s not what you want, is it?’

  ‘No, that’s not what I want,’ Blackstone said, without even bothering to ask what that was.

  He quickly surveyed the street again. The card game had been temporarily suspended, and the boys on the street corner were looking first at the two of them, and then at each other.

  Where could he take the girl? he wondered. In most other areas of New York, he would have headed immediately for the nearest tea room, but this was Five Points, and no such establishment existed.

  It would just have to be the saloon, he decided.

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ Nancy said firmly.

  ‘You might not want one, but, believe me, you’re going to need one,’ Blackstone assured her.

  The tables in the saloon had a layer of filth on them that seemed to have been cultivated over generations. The glasses were chipped or cracked — or both — and to describe them as merely dirty would have been paying them a compliment. The floor was uneven, the windows were streaked with grime, and the barman — a fat brute of a man, who hadn’t shaved for days — wore a stained apron over a stained shirt. All in all, it was far from the ideal place for this meeting — but it was the best that was on offer in Five Points.

  Blackstone had ordered a beer for himself and a gin for the girl. He had already drunk half the beer, but the glass of gin sitting in front of Nancy remained untouched.

  ‘Tell me about Jenny,’ he said.

  ‘Jenny?’ Nancy repeated, as if she had never even heard the name before. ‘Which Jenny would that be, then?’

  Blackstone sighed. ‘Jenny from the orphanage,’ he said. ‘Jenny, your best friend.’

  ‘Oh, you mean that Jenny,’ Nancy said. ‘Why would you want to know anything about her?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t you want to tell me about her?’ Blackstone countered.

  ‘Because. .’

  ‘Yes?’

  Nancy thought for a moment, then shrugged and said, ‘No reason. Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘At the beginning. In the orphanage.’

  ‘I hated it,’ Nancy said simply.

  ‘Because they were cruel to you in there?’

  ‘No. They weren’t cruel to us. They were strict — but never cruel. I hated it because. .’ Nancy waved her hands helplessly in the air, ‘. . just because of the place itself. You’ve no idea what it was like, living there.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Blackstone said. ‘I have a very good idea — because I’m an orphan myself.’

  ‘Then you’ll know how very alone you can feel, even though you’re surrounded by other people. You’ll know how you search for one thing, or one person, you can rely on — one thing or one person you can hold on to, that will convince you that everything’s going to be all right.’

  ‘Yes, I do know that,’ Blackstone agreed, as he felt an involuntary shudder run though his body.

  ‘Jenny found me,’ Nancy said. ‘She chose me as her big sister.’

  And you exploited her, Blackstone thought. Not then. Not in the early days. But later.

  He was trying to avoid getting angry — because, in many ways, Nancy was a victim, too — but it wasn’t easy for him.

  ‘Did you like being her big sister?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, she’s a sweet girl.’

  It had been obvious from the start that Nancy didn’t know Jenny was dead, Blackstone thought.

  And in the terms of this interrogation, that was all to the good, because it meant he could hold the fact back — like a reserve cavalry unit — until he needed it to break down her defences.

  ‘You continued to see her after you both left the orphanage, didn’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. Jenny used to come and visit me on my half-day off.’

  ‘Didn’t you ever go and visit her on your half-day off?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because. .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Because I didn’t, that’s all.’

  ‘Surely it would have better for you to have visited her,’ Blackstone persisted. ‘When she came to see you, you both had to walk the streets — which must have been cold in winter. But if you’d gone to the O’Briens’ apartment, I’m sure Mrs O’Brien would have allowed you to use one of the parlours.’

  ‘I. . didn’t have as much time off as Jenny did,’ Nancy said. ‘If I’d had to travel across the city to see her, I’d have had to start back almost as soon as I’d arrived. That’s why she came to me instead.’

  It was a good lie — an intelligent lie, even — but it was still a lie.

  ‘When did you meet Eddie Toscanini?’ Blackstone asked.

  Nancy gave him a hard stare. ‘I never said Toscanini was Eddie’s second name.’

  ‘No, you didn’t, did you?’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But I still want an answer to my question. When did you first meet him?’

  ‘It was a few months ago now. When Jenny and me were out on one of our walks.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘He wasn’t looking where he was going, and he accidentally bumped into us. He said he was very sorry for being so careless, and offered to buy us both a coffee to make up for it.’

  But had that “bumping into them” been accidental at all, Blackstone wondered.

  Or, because of who Jenny worked for, had they been carefully targeted?

  ‘So he offered to buy you a coffee, and you said yes?’

  ‘Of course we did. Neither of us had ever been into a real coffee house before. It was very exciting.’

  ‘And you kept on seeing him?’

  ‘Yes, every time we went out, Eddie joined us.’

  ‘And you became his girlfriend?’

  ‘Sort of. He couldn’t romance me, ’cos Jenny was always with us, an’ even if she hadn’t been, you need a bit of privacy for romance.’

  ‘Then in what way would you say that you — rather than Jenny — could have been called Eddie’s girlfriend?’

  ‘When we had drinks, he paid for both of us, and once he hired skates so we could both go ice skating in Central Park. But when he brought little presents, they were only for me.’

  ‘And what did you do for him in return?’

  ‘Nothing. Not then. But I’m paying for that now, because now he treats me worse than a slave.’

  ‘So why don’t you leave him?’

  Nancy laughed bitterly. ‘Leave him? And where would I go, if I did?’

  ‘Mr Boone would find you a position if I asked him to,’ Blackstone said. ‘Not in the van Horne household, obviously, but somewhere very like it.’

  ‘And would you do that for me?’ Nancy asked, her voice suddenly thick with wonder and hope.

  ‘That depends,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘On what?’

  ‘Before I help you, you have to help me.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And you can start by telling me the truth.’

  ‘I have been telling you the truth.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. When I asked you what you did for Eddie in the days when he used to buy you drinks and take you ice skating, you said that you did nothing at all.’

  ‘And that was true!’ Nancy protested. ‘I was a scullery maid with no money of my own, so I couldn’t buy him anything in return. I couldn’t even let him have his way with me then, because we were always in public places. So what could I have done for him back then?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what you could have done,’ Blackstone said. ‘You could have persuaded Jenny to look through her master’s private papers, and then passed the information on to Eddie. And not only is that what you could have done, it’s what you did do.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Nancy said, with so much conv
iction that — but for the way the evidence was pointing — Blackstone would almost have believed her.

  ‘So you deny you ever did that?’ he asked.

  ‘Course I deny it. I’d never have asked Jenny to do anything that might make her lose her job, and even if I had, she’d never have agreed.’

  She was mounting a very good defence for herself, Blackstone thought, but the moment he released his cavalry, that defence would collapse in complete and utter confusion.

  ‘Jenny’s dead,’ he said, making no effort to soften the blow. ‘She’s dead — and it’s partly your fault.’

  Nancy blanched.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she moaned.

  And then she picked up the glass of gin from the table and knocked it back in a single gulp.

  Blackstone waited patiently for her to speak again, because he was certain that when she did, she would tell him all he wanted to know.

  But Nancy did not spout out a confession which would show that he’d been right all along.

  Instead, she said, ‘It was suicide, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But how did you-?’

  ‘Then you’re right in what you said,’ Nancy interrupted him. ‘It is partly my fault.’

  ‘Why? Because it was you who persuaded her to betray her master to Eddie Toscanini?’

  ‘No, I told you, I never did that.’

  ‘Then why is it your fault?’

  ‘Because I didn’t push her enough. I should have tried harder to make her see. .’

  ‘Make her see what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Make her see what?’ Blackstone repeated.

  ‘I’m not sayin’ any more,’ Nancy said firmly, crossing her arms. ‘You can do what you like to me. You can arrest me. You can beat me up. But I’m not sayin’ any more.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because poor little Jenny’s dead, and now she should be allowed to rest in peace.’

  ‘And how will your telling me the truth stop her doing that?’

  ‘Are you arresting me?’ Nancy asked, avoiding the question.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then I’m going home.’