‘So next week, when you come round for your bribe, I can give you a bit less, on account o’ this, can I?’ the barman asked hopefully.
The patrolman smiled bleakly.
‘Dream on,’ he said.
Customers who’d almost finished their drinks before the police arrived had already allowed themselves to be shepherded out on to the sidewalk, while the ones who’d just ordered new ones attempted to drain their glasses even as the patrolmen hustled them towards the door.
‘This ain’t right,’ the barkeeper complained, as he reached for his jacket from the peg behind the bar.
‘So file a complaint,’ the patrolman said, unhelpfully.
10.50 a.m.
When the two carriages pulled up at the Silver Spur, some of the displaced and disgruntled customers were still milling around outside. A few of these customers — the more observant ones — noted that sitting next to the driver of the lead carriage was a large policeman holding a large shotgun, but most were too busy complaining to each other that things had come to a pretty pass in New York City when you couldn’t even buy a dishonest cop.
Blackstone and Meade emerged from the second coach, and only when they had taken up their positions next to the door of the first coach did that door open and Harold and George climb out.
Harold was holding the almost-yellow satchel tightly in his hand, and as he made his way to the door of the saloon, the two policemen and his brother formed a tight cordon around him.
‘What ya got in the bag? A million dollars?’ one of the customers on the sidewalk called after them.
‘Not quite,’ Blackstone said, as he ushered Harold into the saloon.
The four men entered the now empty Silver Spur.
George Holt looked around him. ‘Why here?’ he asked, for perhaps the fifth or sixth time.
‘I don’t know,’ Blackstone replied, wishing the bloody man would just shut up.
‘We might as well make ourselves comfortable while we wait,’ Meade said, sitting down at a table near the door and gesturing to the others that they should join him.
The three men sat, and Harold placed the leather satchel in the centre of the table.
‘They’re not just going to walk in here and ask for the money, are they?’ George asked.
Don’t you ever listen, you big oaf? Blackstone wondered silently. No, they’re not going to just walk in and ask for the money — because they’d have to be as stupid as you are not to realize that the guy inspecting apples at the store across the street, and the other one leaning against the wall and reading his newspaper, are detectives!
‘As Alex has already explained, this is just the starting point for the exchange,’ he said, in as reasoned and measured a tone as he could muster. ‘You’ve noticed the phone over by the counter, haven’t you?’
‘Well, no, I haven’t actually,’ George admitted.
Of course he hadn’t!
‘The fact that it has a phone is probably the main reason the kidnappers chose this place,’ Blackstone explained. ‘And, when they’re ready, they’ll ring and give us fresh instructions.’
‘We’ve issued descriptions of the satchel to every officer involved in the operation,’ Meade said. ‘Once you’ve handed it over, Harold, the guy who’s taken it from you will be a marked man.’
And it was the fact that he would be a marked man which was bothering Blackstone. The kidnappers should have specified that the money be carried in a nondescript bag, but they had said nothing at all on the subject — and he wished he knew why.
10.55 a.m.
They had been sitting there in uneasy silence for almost three minutes, when George, who had been looking troubled for some time, said, ‘Why don’t you let me deliver the ransom, little brother?’
He spoke casually, as if, since it didn’t really matter which of them did it, it might as well be him — but there was no disguising the pleading tone which underlined the words.
‘Well?’ he asked, when Harold made no reply. ‘What do you think? They won’t care who makes them rich, will they?’
‘They asked for me,’ Harold said, looking pale and nervous — but also very determined. ‘You know they did. They turned you down, and they asked for me.’
‘But you could get hurt,’ George whined.
‘So could you.’
‘I’m much stronger than you are.’ George appealed to Blackstone. ‘You tell him that it’s better if I do it.’
‘Harold’s right,’ Blackstone said. ‘Only he will do. And why should they hurt him? He’s nothing more than a delivery boy.’
‘They’ll hurt him because they hate the Holts,’ George said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I can feel it — and if Harold won’t let me deliver the ransom, then I want to call the whole thing off.’
‘And let Father die?’ Harold asked.
George put his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
‘The chances are that they’ll kill Father whatever we do,’ he said gently.
‘We’ll have the satchel in our sights for nearly the whole time,’ Meade assured, ‘so if it’s losing the money that’s worrying you-’
‘The money!’ George said, in a voice that was almost a scream. ‘Is that what you think I’m worried about — the damned money?’
‘It would be only natural for you to be concerned. .’ Meade began, but it was clear that he realized he’d made a big mistake.
George took hold of the satchel, and slid it across the table, so it was almost in Meade’s lap.
‘Here’s the money!’ he said. ‘You take it! Give it to charity! Or keep it for yourself! I don’t care! Because it doesn’t matter! All I’m worried about is my little brother!’
Meade looked mortified. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, in a subdued voice. ‘I should never even have suggested that it was your main concern.’
‘Damn straight you shouldn’t, you bastard!’ George agreed.
‘Stop it!’ Blackstone ordered. ‘This is the time when we all need to be working together, not tearing each other apart!’
‘He’s right,’ Harold told his brother. ‘It’s pointless to argue, George, because whatever you or anyone else says, I am the one who’s going to deliver the money.’
11.02 a.m.
Even though they should have been expecting it, the metallic shriek of the phone on the bar made all four men jump.
George recovered first, and was almost on his feet when Alex Meade put a restraining hand on his shoulder, then went over to the bar himself.
Meade unhooked the earpiece and said, ‘Yes?’
‘Harold Holt?’ asked a thick, heavily disguised voice at the other end of the line.
‘Yes.’
‘No, it ain’t,’ the voice snarled. ‘Get me Holt right now — or the whole deal’s off, and his father’s dead.’
Meade gestured to Harold to join him, and handed him the earpiece.
‘Yes?’ Harold said, with a slight tremble in his voice. ‘Yes, this is Harold James Holt. . You want me to do what?. . I’m not sure I can get there in. . All right, I’ll try. . No, I won’t tell them, but you must promise not to. .’
He hung up the phone, and looked at the others.
‘I have to go,’ he said, walking across to the table and picking up the satchel.
‘Go where?’ George demanded.
‘I can’t tell you.’
George stood up, and grabbed the satchel from his brother’s hands. ‘If you don’t tell me, I’m not going to let you go.’
‘Please, George-’
‘Tell me!’
‘Make him give me the satchel,’ Harold begged Blackstone.
‘Your brother’s right — we need to know where you’re going,’ Blackstone said firmly.
‘They. . they want me to go to S.J. Moore’s. They say I’ll get fresh instructions there.’
‘What the hell is S.J. Moore’s?’ Blackstone demanded.
‘It’s a big dry goods
store, further down Broadway,’ Meade explained.
‘He’s only given me five minutes to get there, so, for God’s sake, give me the satchel, George!’ Harold said.
George, finally, looked to Blackstone for guidance.
‘How will you be given these new instructions?’ Blackstone asked Harold.
‘I don’t know!’ Harold replied, on the verge of hysteria. ‘They didn’t say! Please give me the satchel!’
Blackstone nodded, and George gave his brother the bag. The moment he had it in his hands again, Harold turned and headed for the door.
‘You know the plan,’ Blackstone said to Meade. ‘Stick to it as closely as you can.’
11.04 a.m.
When the Brush Electric Light Company had begun installing arc lights on Broadway in late 1880, New Yorkers, watching the process as they strolled by, had not been unduly impressed.
Sure, arc lights were a dandy idea, and the more the better, they thought. But the lights had already lost some of the novelty value they’d had only a couple of years earlier.
What these citizens were being kept in the dark about (so to speak) was how much more ambitious this project was than any that had gone before it, and what effect the arc lights — mounted on twenty-foot-tall ornamental cast iron posts, and located on every block — would have once they were switched on.
Then, on the 20th of December, they could see for themselves. The work was completed, the lamps were switched on, and the whole boulevard was bathed in a brilliant white light. It was a magical moment. Broadway, they realized, would never be just Broadway again — from now on, it was the Great White Way.
But the Great White Way only existed at night, and the Broadway that Blackstone was rapidly walking down — on the trail of Harold Holt — could have been any other wide New York City thoroughfare, bustling with streetcars and carriages, shoppers and workmen.
Blackstone looked over his shoulder, and saw that both the detective who had been buying apples and the one who’d been reading a newspaper were close behind him.
The kidnappers’ plan couldn’t be as simple as it seemed at that moment, he told himself.
They must know that Broadway — and the streets which crossed it — were saturated with cops, and that the moment the switch had taken place, those same cops would close the whole area down.
So it couldn’t be just a switch. There had to be some refinement to the plan. And he hadn’t an idea in hell what that refinement might be.
11.07 a.m.
Harold Holt had reached 10th Street, where Broadway dog-legged, and Blackstone got his first real look at S.J. Moore’s Dry Goods Store.
‘Jesus!’ he said.
He’d expected it to be big, but not the monster which was confronting him now.
Moore’s frontage ran for a whole block, and the top of the building towered seven floors above the street. A non-stop line of people was entering through one of its large front doors, and a second line was leaving through another.
There were no uniformed cops in sight, but there were dozens of them close by, and if Alex Meade did his job properly — and he would — Moore’s would be completely surrounded in another three minutes.
But that wouldn’t do any good, would it — not if Harold Holt and the kidnappers were somewhere else entirely in three minutes’ time?
Harold came to a stop in front of the store, and glanced around, as if wondering what to do next.
A ragged boy of seven or eight sidled up to him, and pulled at the edge of his jacket. When Holt looked down, the boy handed him a piece of paper and then rapidly merged into the crowd.
Blackstone signalled to the apple-buying detective to follow the boy, but even as he was doing so, he knew it would be a waste of time, because the urchin had already vanished.
Harold joined the line of people entering the building.
There had to be more instructions waiting for him inside, Blackstone thought, because it simply wasn’t possible that the kidnappers would take the bait when they must know that the trap was already closing around them.
And yet, despite what his brain was telling him, his instinct was screaming that this was it, and that in a couple of minutes, it would all be over.
With a growing sense of foreboding, he followed Harold into the store.
TWENTY-THREE
Escalators were still a recent enough invention to be regarded as a dangerous novelty by many shoppers. When they had been installed in Harrods’ store in London, some customers had been so unnerved by the experience of using them that the management had had to ensure that staff were always on hand with smelling salts and glasses of cognac. And even in S.J. Moore’s — in modern, go-ahead New York City — the men and women mounting the escalator did not seem to be entirely at ease.
Getting on the escalator did not appear to worry Harold Holt, Blackstone observed.
It didn’t worry him, either, but what was causing him concern was the fact that the note Holt had been handed must have instructed him to go upstairs.
Going upstairs didn’t make any sense at all. What the kidnappers needed, once they had the money in their hands, was a clear escape route. The last thing they should have wanted was to be three or four floors in the air, well away from the exit.
No need to panic, they’re just sending Harold up there to get more instructions, Blackstone’s brain told him.
Two minutes from now, the money will be gone, his instinct predicted confidently.
There were perhaps fifteen steps between the two of them when Blackstone mounted the escalator, but by the time Holt had reached the top — Haberdashery, Silks, Bonnets and Cloaks — the policeman had narrowed the gap to five steps.
And that was just about right, Blackstone thought, because he was close enough to keep Holt in view when he reached the top, yet not so close that it was obvious he was following the man.
Holt got off the escalator, and immediately mounted the one travelling up to the next floor.
Just how bloody high were they going?
Say his instinct — rather than his brain — was right, Blackstone argued. Say the kidnappers were planning to take the money from Harold in this store. How, then, did they plan to get away? By making some kind of daring high wire escape from one of the windows?
At the second floor, Holt got the escalator to the third. On the third he mounted the escalator to the fourth — the fur coat department.
There were no more sales floors beyond the fourth. This would be where the journey ended.
Since there was no longer any need to stay so close, Blackstone allowed himself to drop back a little, and by the time he mounted this final escalator himself, Holt had almost reached the top.
This was where the exchange would take place — he was convinced of that now.
But it still didn’t make sense!
He was two-thirds of the way up the escalator when the screaming began.
‘Fire!’
‘It’s on fire! Oh, sweet Jesus, the whole place is on fire!’
‘We’re all going to die!’
The people on the fourth floor rushed madly towards the down escalator, elbowing each other aside in their effort to escape. The first few made it without incident, and rushed down the steps to the safety of the floor below. Then — inevitably — one man lost his footing. He fell, and the woman behind him fell over him, and soon bodies were bouncing down the escalator like snowballs down an icy slope.
Only seconds had passed since the first alarm had been raised, but already pandemonium ruled.
The falling people tried to stop themselves by jamming their hands and legs against the sides of the escalator. Sometimes they succeeded. But now they presented an obstruction both to the further falling bodies — which slammed into them — and to the more nimble of foot — who tried to kick them out of the way.
The noise swelled with the panic. There was screaming and cursing and sobbing and praying.
‘Please let me through — I have
three little children waiting for me at home.’
‘Help me save my baby! For the love of God, won’t somebody help me save my baby?’
The customers who had been on the fourth floor were not the only ones trying to escape. Those who had been on the up escalator when the fire started had turned around, and were attempting to fight against the movement of the escalator and return to the safety of the floor below. And to make matters even worse, the down escalator was now so jammed with bodies that some of the fourth-floor customers had turned to the up escalator as their means of salvation.
Blackstone struggled against the tide, trying to force his way up to the fourth floor — but it was an impossible task. The sheer collective weight of the people coming down slammed into him, knocking him off his feet — and he became no more than a part of the tumbling mass of humanity which gravity was rapidly propelling back to the floor below.
When he landed, it was on the bodies of those who had fallen before him, and even before he had time to raise his arms in order to protect himself, more of the human avalanche was piling on top of him.
‘Keep calm!’ Blackstone told the man he had landed on — and the man who had landed on him, and the people who were sandwiching him in from both sides. ‘Keep calm! You’ll do less damage that way.’
But he might as well as saved what little breath he had left, because within the mound — within this Chinese puzzle of flesh and bone — there was already movement. Trunks squirmed and twisted, legs kicked, and hands clawed, as people tried to pull themselves clear.
Gradually, the situation eased. Gradually, some of the fallen freed themselves from this horrendous mêlée, and some were assisted by shop assistants and other customers.
Once he was clear of the mound himself, Blackstone conducted a rapid assessment of damages.
His head ached. His cheek — after an unwelcome encounter with someone else’s boot — was throbbing furiously, and a knee smashing into the small of his back had not helped matters either.
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