Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Slit the throats of two o’ the bastards!’ he says, and as he speaks, he draws two of the fingers on his free hand across his own throat. ‘Stood behind ’em, an’ slit their throats right open. Shoulda heard the noise they made – kinda like a drinkin’ fountain, just before the water comes up.’ He turns to his partner for confirmation. ‘Ain’t that right, Bob?’

  ‘Damn straight!’ Mad Bob agrees.

  ‘Do you wanna tell ’em what we did with the third guy, Bob?’ Jake asks. ‘Or do ya want me to do it?’

  ‘I’ll tell ’em.’ Bob says. ‘It was real funny with the third guy, cos—’

  The door of the saloon swings open, and the uniformed patrolman whose beat this is walks in.

  He has not come to arrest these two self-confessed murderers, or even to check on whether or not the barkeeper is maintaining an orderly house. He has no interest at all in what is going on in the saloon – he is there merely to pick up the weekly bribe, from which he will take his own cut before passing the rest of it on up through the command structure.

  Everybody – including Bob and Jake – knows this, but even so, the two men are not quite drunk enough to carry on their boasting as if he were not there.

  The patrolman picks up his envelope and leaves, but like actors whose most dramatic speech has been cut off in the middle, Bob and Jake no longer seem to have any appetite for finishing their performance. They drain their drinks and leave themselves, and once they are out of the door the rest of the customers breathe a sigh of relief that this time nobody was hurt.

  ‘So they never said how they killed the third man?’ Meade asked.

  ‘No, they just said it was kinda funny,’ the snitch replied.

  ‘They didn’t even give you an idea of when they killed him?’

  ‘Like I said, after the cop had gone, they kinda clammed up.’

  Could they have killed Holt, Blackstone wondered.

  And if they had, had they done it on their own initiative, or because they’d been told to?

  Killing him might make sense from the kidnappers’ point of view – but not before the ransom was paid, because surely George would insist on speaking to his father again before handing over half a million dollars.

  ‘I got somethin’ else for you,’ the snitch said. ‘But it’s gonna cost you an extra five.’

  ‘You’ve already been paid to tell us all you know,’ Meade said, with a hint of anger creeping into his voice.

  ‘No, I ain’t,’ replied the snitch, nervous, but determined to hold his ground. ‘I was paid to tell you about Bob an’ Jake – an’ I done that. But the other thing I got happened later, when they’d gone.’

  Meade handed over a second five dollar bill. ‘This had better be good,’ he said menacingly.

  ‘It’s maybe half an hour before this other man comes into the saloon,’ the snitch said. ‘I notice him straight away – even before I see his face – because he ain’t dressed like a regular guy.’

  ‘And how does a “regular guy” dress?’ Meade asked.

  ‘Like your buddy there. This guy was dressed more like you.’

  ‘I get the picture,’ Meade said.

  ‘When I get a look at his face, I know I’ve seen him before, but I can’t put a name to him,’ the snitch continued. ‘Anyway, he walks into the saloon, and he don’t look like he’s done it by accident. I mean, it ain’t his kind o’ place, but he don’t seem uncomfortable, if ya know what I mean.’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ Meade confirmed.

  ‘So then he starts asking questions.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Stuff like, “Have there been any guys in here tonight with money to burn?” That kinda thing.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him nothin’,’ the snitch said, sounding offended. ‘I can’t be seen talkin’ to cops – I got my reputation to consider.’

  ‘He was a policeman?’ Meade asked.

  ‘Yeah, he was. Didn’t I say that?’

  ‘Not that I recall.’

  ‘OK, so I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ’cos of my rep, but there’s this lowlife called Freddie Burns who ain’t got my . . . what’s the word?’

  ‘Scruples?’ Blackstone suggested, with a half-smile on his face.

  ‘Yeah that’s it,’ the snitch agreed. ‘He ain’t got my scruples. So Freddie takes him into the corner, an’ they’re talkin’ for a while. Then the cop gives Freddie twenty dollars for tellin’ him just what I told you.’

  ‘He gave him twenty dollars!’ Meade asked, disbelievingly. ‘Do you think I came here straight from Ellis Island?’

  ‘All right, maybe he give him five, the same as you give me,’ the snitch admitted. ‘The thing is, as the guy was headin’ for the door, I managed to put a name to the face.’

  ‘And are you going to tell us what it is – or would you like us to guess?’ Meade asked, with growing irritation.

  ‘I knew him from the old days, see. He wasn’t like the other cops. He never took no bribes, an’ he never did nobody any favours.’

  ‘The name!’ Meade said.

  ‘Seems to be that if you want the name so bad, it must be worth another five,’ the snitch said.

  ‘And it seems to me that if you don’t give me the name in the next ten seconds, I’ll be obliged to take back the ten bucks I’ve already given you, cuff you, and take you down to the nearest station house – where I’m sure they’ll find a way to make you talk,’ Alex Meade said.

  ‘My old mom told me never to trust a cop – an’ she was right,’ the snitch whined.

  ‘Tick tock!’ Meade said.

  ‘People used to call him the Frozen Mick, on account of he never showed his feelings,’ the snitch said, in a sulky mumble.

  ‘And what was his real name?’

  ‘It was Flynn,’ the snitch admitted. ‘Sergeant Flynn.’

  SIXTEEN

  It was mid-morning, and as he walked down Fourth Avenue with Meade at his side, Blackstone was playing the numbers game in his head.

  Big Bill Holt’s kidnapping had occurred early on Monday morning – say, fifty-three or fifty-four hours previously.

  The kidnappers had demanded that the ransom be paid on Friday – which meant, roughly speaking, that they would expect it in their hands somewhere between forty-eight and fifty-two hours from that moment.

  Fifty-four and fifty-two, repeated grimly.

  He didn’t have to be Isaac Newton to work out that more time had already gone than was now remaining. Nor did it take a great brain to realize that if as little progress was made in the fifty-two hours as had been made in the fifty-four, the Holt brothers would probably lose half a million dollars and their father would probably lose his life.

  ‘We’re there,’ Meade said.

  Blackstone looked up.

  The Wall Street Gentlemen’s Club was not actually located on Wall Street itself, but it was close enough for all but the most bloated capitalist to reach on foot from their brokerage houses. Its portal was guarded by an impressively uniformed doorman, who looked at Blackstone’s suit with disdain, and was probably on the point of telling him to push off when he noticed that the semi-tramp was accompanied by a younger – much more smartly dressed – man.

  ‘Mr Meade, sir,’ he gushed, like an over-pressurized fountain. ‘What a pleasure it is to see you.’

  ‘Good to see you, too, Alfred,’ Meade replied. ‘Is there anyone inside who I might know?’

  ‘I should imagine there’ll be at least a dozen gentlemen who would count it an honour to be thought of as your friend,’ the doorman said ingratiatingly. ‘And even if – by some unhappy chance – there aren’t, there’ll be at least a score more who hold your father in the highest esteem.’

  You saw a different world when you went places with Alex Meade, Blackstone thought.

  But that had nothing to do with the fact that he was an American policemen, rather than an English one – cops everywhe
re were regarded as little more than servants by everyone but the lower orders.

  No, it was because his family had money, and – in a country still too young to have developed an entrenched inflexible aristocracy – they also had what passed for class.

  He wondered if he would still have been a policeman if his father had been Lord Blackstone, instead of a private soldier who had been killed in battle even before he was born.

  Yes, he decided, he would have. He could have been born into the royal family and still ended up a copper – because that was always what he was meant to be.

  ‘Is there any chance you could bring one of the members who might know me to the door?’ he heard Meade ask.

  ‘Now why should you want me to do that, sir?’ Alfred wondered.

  ‘Well, this is a very exclusive club, and since I’m not a member, I’ll need someone to sign me in,’ Meade said, guilelessly.

  The doorman laughed. ‘Oh, I think we can waive the rules on this occasion, sir,’ he said.

  A different world, Blackstone reiterated to himself. A very different world indeed.

  There had been occasions when, in connection with one of the cases he’d been investigating, Blackstone had been granted access to the gentlemen’s clubs in London. What he remembered – standing there while the man he was questioning sat – was large rooms filled with worn, overstuffed leather armchairs which the merely prosperous would have thrown out long ago, but the very rich clung on to as if they were heirlooms.

  The Smoking Room of the Wall Street Club could have been in one of these London clubs. In fact, he suspected it had been copied from those clubs.

  But from what I’ve seen, the Yanks won’t be copying us for much longer, he thought. Give it a few years, and we’ll be copying them.

  Meade scanned the room with his eyes.

  ‘Looking for anyone in particular?’ Blackstone asked, reaching for his cigarettes.

  ‘Yeah,’ Meade replied. ‘Someone who likes to gossip but also has a brain – and men with both those attributes are thinner on the ground than you might think.’

  A club servant, dressed in the full penguin suit, appeared at Blackstone’s side with such discretion that it was almost as if he had materialized there.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, sir, but while cigars are more than acceptable within the precincts of this establishment, the smoking of cigarettes is not permitted’ he said – laying much the same emphasis on the word “cigarettes” as some people would have laid on “leprosy”. He held out an ash tray in his immaculately white-gloved hand. ‘If you would care to stub out the offending article in this receptacle, sir?’

  Blackstone stubbed out the offending article as requested, and the club servant instantly faded away into the background.

  ‘You can’t take me anywhere, can you?’ Blackstone asked Meade with a grin. ‘It’s like the old saying goes – “You can put a peasant in the best shabby second-hand suit that money can buy, but he’ll still be a peasant”.’

  A couple of days earlier, Meade would have come back with a sharp reply, but he was no longer as comfortable with Blackstone as he had been, and now all he said was, ‘I think I’ve found the man we want.’

  He led Blackstone across the room to a group of armchairs arranged around a coffee table, where a solid white-haired man was sitting alone.

  ‘Mr Maxwell!’ Meade said. ‘What a pleasure! Would you mind if we joined you?’

  The man looked up through heavily hooded eyes.

  ‘I don’t mind at all, Alexander,’ he said, ‘but I do wish that you’d drop the act.’

  ‘The act?’ Meade repeated innocently.

  ‘The delight you just displayed! The sheer joy you appear to feel at finding me here! This meeting is no happy coincidence, Alexander. You’re here specifically because you want to talk to me – or someone very like me. Isn’t that true?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Meade conceded.

  ‘The bonhomie is totally unnecessary, Alexander,’ Maxwell continued. ‘If you want something from me – and we both know you do – you only have to ask.’

  Meade grinned sheepishly. ‘This is my colleague, Inspector Blackstone, from New Scotland Yard,’ he said.

  ‘Ah, so that’s who he is!’ Maxwell said. ‘Your fame justly precedes you, Inspector.’

  ‘I see you’ve heard about how he tracked down Inspector O’Brien’s killer,’ Meade said.

  ‘I’ve heard, but that’s not what I was referring to,’ Maxwell said airily, brushing away, with a gesture of his podgy hand, the idea that a major murder investigation could be of much interest.

  ‘Then what . . .?’ Meade asked, puzzled.

  ‘There’s any number of policemen who could track down a killer,’ Maxwell said, ‘but, as far as I know, Inspector Blackstone’s the only cop who’s ever made Captain Bull O’Shaugnessy jump through hoops – a feat previously considered nigh on impossible without the payment of a very large bribe.’

  It was true that he had made O’Shaugnessy ‘jump through hoops’ – or, at least, hit him hard in the wallet by pressuring him to temporarily close down a brothel – Blackstone thought.

  But O’Shaugnessy had got ample revenge by ‘losing’ the prisoner who Blackstone had been sent over to America to collect – and pretty much condemned him to staying in the new world until that prisoner was recaptured.

  ‘Why don’t you both sit down and tell me exactly what it is you want?’ Maxwell suggested.

  They sat, and though they did so with some care, the old leather chairs creaked in protest.

  ‘I’m investigating the Holt kidnapping,’ Meade said.

  Maxwell nodded. ‘There’s been a ransom demand, I take it,’ he said.

  ‘There has.’

  ‘And what did the kidnappers say in their note?’ Maxwell chuckled. ‘That if those two sons of Big Bill’s don’t pay the ransom, they’ll send him back home to them?’

  ‘I take it you’re not a great admirer of Holt’s,’ Meade said.

  ‘Nobody I’ve ever talked to is an admirer of Big Bill’s,’ Maxwell said simply. ‘To know William Holt is to loathe him.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Indeed it is. I’ve been acquainted with all the wheelers and dealers in my time. Mellon, Gould, Morgan, I knew the whole bunch. They were, without doubt, some of most vicious, arrogant, unscrupulous men ever to walk on the face of the earth, but none of them could hold a candle to Big Bill in the son-of-a-bitch stakes. He ruined dozens of good men, but I think it’s his sons I feel most sorry for.’

  ‘He was hard on them?’ Meade asked.

  ‘Damned hard. He wanted them to be just like him, you see – men of iron, who didn’t mind the pain they inflicted on themselves as long as everyone else was suffering more.’ He took a puff on his cigar. ‘Let me tell you one story I heard. When George was nine, Big Bill decided it was time for him to learn to ride. But he didn’t get him a pony – that would have been too easy – he bought him a full-sized horse, and a bad-tempered one at that, by all accounts. Well, George fell off, and lay on ground, crying. Big Bill told him to get back on the horse, but he said it hurt too much. So Bill started kicking him – and kept on kicking until he eventually struggled back to his feet and mounted the horse again. When the doctor examined George later, he discovered he had two serious injuries. One was a broken leg, from falling off the damned horse – and the other was two broken ribs from the kicking his father had given him.’

  So was it any wonder that the main reason the brothers wanted their father back alive was to protect the value of their shares? Blackstone thought.

  And who could blame them for eating a hearty meal on the very day that monster of a father had been kidnapped?

  If he’d been in their shoes, he’d have cracked open a dozen bottles of the best French Champagne.

  ‘The only way George survived was by working as hard as he could to become the man his father wanted him to be,’ Maxwell continued, ‘and in many ways he’s su
cceeded, though, of course, the old man isn’t satisfied with the result, because he’d never be satisfied. Harold, on the other hand, was smarter than his brother, though I’m not sure whether what he did turned out to be so smart in the end.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Meade asked.

  ‘He pretended to be someone who he knew that his father would despise – someone Big Bill wouldn’t bully because he wasn’t worth bullying. The problem with that, of course, is that if you act a part long enough, you eventually become the part. You’ve met Harold, I take it?’

  ‘We have,’ Meade agreed.

  ‘Not much of a man, is he? But then, in quite another way, neither is George. If you could weld them together, you might just end up with a complete person, but even then, I wouldn’t put any money on it.’ Maxwell took another puff of his cigar. ‘Wall Street’s quite right to be jittery about this kidnapping. If Big Bill does end up dead, the company’s finished. Maybe it won’t happen next week, maybe not even next year, but, in the long run, it is doomed – because neither of those boys are anywhere near big enough to step into Big Bill’s shoes.’

  According to Fanshawe, they already had stepped into his shoes, and all Big Bill did now was sign the paperwork, Blackstone reminded himself.

  But then the butler had lied about other things, so why should he have been telling the truth about that?

  ‘Thank you for filling in some of the background on his sons, Mr Maxwell,’ Alex Meade said politely. ‘I’m sure it will be very helpful to our investigation – but what we’d really like to hear about is some of the men that Holt ruined.’

  A sudden chill filled the air around them.

  ‘You’d like to hear about some of the men that Holt ruined?’ Maxwell repeated.

  ‘That’s right,’ Meade said. ‘Just for background.’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Maxwell said. His hooded eyes closed for a second, and when he opened them again, he said, ‘The men he ruined are now either old, or broken in spirit, or both. Can you really see them carrying out a kidnapping?’

  ‘No,’ Blackstone said, ‘but we could see them hiring someone else to do the work for them.’

  Not quite true, he admitted to himself. He could see it. Alex, on the other hand, was still refusing to entertain it as a possibility. Yet despite that, Meade had agreed to go through this whole charade, and, for that, Blackstone was grateful.