Blackstone and the New World
( Inspector Sam Blackstone - 1 )
Sally Spencer
Sally Spencer
Blackstone and the New World
PROLOGUE
New York City, 23rd August 1900
The beer hall’s sole purpose was to make the burly men in lederhosen forget that they had left their home country for ever, and in this it was a great success.
They sat, squeezed tightly together, at the long wooden tables. Some rubbed shoulders with lifelong friends, some with casual acquaintances and some with men they had only just met. None of that mattered, because they were all Bavarians, and when one spoke of the mountains and lakes he had once known, they all pictured it in their minds.
They drank foaming beer from stone steins, and nibbled at large German sausages. They swayed — gently and in unison — to the syrupy music which was being pumped out by the two accordionists on the small stage. Occasionally, one of them would sing, and even if his voice was not particularly strong, the others would beat out the time on the table in a gesture of solidarity — for though they all led separate lives on the outside, in here they were a single entity.
But there was one man — alone at the bar counter — who stood out as different. It was not simply his clothing which distinguished him, though his sober suit certainly looked out of place. Nor was it the fact that he was not German-American. What truly set him apart was the fact that he was clearly not having a good time.
Inspector Patrick O’Brien took a listless sip of his beer and checked his pocket watch for perhaps the fifth or sixth time.
He felt a bubbling in his stomach — like Irish stew boiling over — and accepted, with some reluctance, that he was nervous. It was a new experience for him. He had spent the previous seven years investigating police corruption, and in that time there had been death threats — and even one actual assassination attempt — yet his nerve had held throughout it all. But this was different. This was more important. His fate — and the fate of others — was being held in the balance.
He checked his watch again.
His contact was late.
Very late.
A tuba player had now joined the accordionists on the stage, and the music, while not losing any of its sentimentality, had become more strident.
O’Brien fought the temptation to glance at his watch again, knowing that — at most — a minute had passed since he’d last looked at it.
‘Noch einer?’ asked the barman.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Would you like another beer?’
O’Brien looked down at his stein, and saw that it was nearly empty.
‘No, I. . no, thank you, I’ve had enough.’
The barman gave him a look which said that a real man would be on his third or fourth drink by now, then turned away dismissively.
It had seemed like a good idea to arrange the rendezvous somewhere he was not known himself, but which was familiar territory to his contact, O’Brien thought. But now — as he saw that at least one of the drinkers was casting curious glances in his direction — he was beginning to think it had been a mistake.
And that was not the only mistake he had made.
It had been a mistake to go and see Senator Plunkitt — a sign of weakness that, even after this matter was resolved, a devious man like Plunkitt might be able to use against him.
His fingers instinctively reached for the chain which held his pocket watch, and it was only with considerable mental effort that he forced them to withdraw again.
Perhaps he should tell the barman that he wanted another beer after all, he thought, for though he was not normally much of a drinker, it might do him good to get really rolling drunk just this once.
‘Fool!’ he snapped at himself. ‘Coward!’
And it was only when the barman turned around and looked at him enquiringly that he realized he must not only have said the words aloud, but also rather loudly.
It was more to save an explanation, rather than for any other reason, that O’Brien turned and walked towards the frosted-glass door which led out of the beer hall.
It wasn’t a retreat, he told himself as he reached for the door handle. It wasn’t even a tactical withdrawal. He was simply leaving the place because there was no point in staying there any longer.
It was his natural caution, he had long been convinced, which had kept him alive for so long, and, once outside, O’Brien quickly checked the street.
There was not a great deal to see. The shops had closed, so both the shoppers and traders who had been so much in evidence when he’d entered the beer hall had now completely vanished. Nor was there any sign of any other foot traffic — those men set on drinking in a saloon had already reached their destination, and those men intending to leave a saloon and go home were certainly not planning to make any such move yet.
It was perhaps because the street was so tranquil that he was alarmed when, from the corner of his eye, he detected a sudden movement.
He turned quickly. From out of the shadows beyond the nearest street light, a figure had emerged, and was running towards him. His first instinct was to reach for his revolver, but then he let his hand fall to his side again.
The runner was only a boy — probably fourteen or fifteen at the most — and a very poor boy, judging by his threadbare jacket and shabby pants.
And was he — a police inspector — to take out his weapon to defend himself against a mere child?
Of course not!
Yet the closer the boy got to him, the more concerned Patrick O’Brien became.
In part, this was due to the way the boy was running — zigzagging as if he expected to come under fire at any moment.
In part, it was because, though it was a pleasantly warm evening, the boy had his cap pulled down over his eyes and had covered the lower half of his face with a muffler.
The boy was no more than a few yards away when he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pistol.
Cursing his own stupidity — his own complacency — O’Brien went for his revolver, this time in earnest. He did not want to kill a child, but since the child was clearly intending to kill him, he had very little choice in the matter.
His fingers had only just made contact with the handle of his Colt when he felt something slam heavily into his chest, and realized he had left it too late.
He staggered backwards, and was still trying to pull his weapon clear when the second jolt came, followed rapidly by a third.
His legs would no longer support him, and he fell heavily to the ground. He noted, with some surprise, that the fall seemed to have caused him more pain than the bullets.
So perhaps he was not badly wounded after all.
Perhaps he would survive.
But even if he lived, his recovery would take months, his fevered brain reminded him — and he did not have months, because what he needed to do, he needed to do now.
Maybe they’re nothing more than flesh wounds, he thought desperately. Maybe I’ll be back on my feet in a day or two.
But he knew that he had been hit three times — squarely in the chest. And he knew that the pain now coursing round his body was greater than any pain he had ever experienced before.
He heard the sound of fast footfalls as his assassin ran away.
And then he died.
ONE
Since the moment they had both embarked on the ship at Liverpool, Hiram Johnson had been fascinated by the brown-suited Englishman.
The suit itself had been the starting point of this fascination. It was, to be frank (and Johnson valued frankness as a thoroughly American virtue), not quite ‘the t
hing’. It might once, in its heyday, have been classified as a good suit, but those days of glory were far behind it now, and while such apparel might have gone unnoticed in the steerage section of the ship, it stood out like a sore thumb within the universe that was the second-class deck.
So why would a man who could afford to pay the forty dollars passage money not buy himself another, smarter suit? Johnson asked himself.
The man inside the suit was also worthy of further study. He was rather tall for an Englishman — over six foot — and as thin as a rail. Yet he seemed to exude great physical strength, and in a fight between him and one of the beefy bully-boys who swaggered around the Bowery, Johnson had no doubt which of the two he would put his money on.
Then there was the man’s general attitude. From the moment the ship had pulled away from the dock, the rest of the passengers had seemed positively desperate to mingle. They had attended the tea dances, dined at each other’s tables and had swapped their life stories with the reckless abandon of people who know they are never likely to meet again.
The man in the brown suit, in contrast, had kept himself very much aloof. From the very start of the journey, he had eaten alone, strolled around the deck by himself, and merely shaken his head — in a firm, though not unfriendly manner — when asked if he wished to join in any of the deck games.
Yet, for all that, it seemed to Hiram Johnson, the man in the brown suit had missed nothing — for all that, he had probably learned a great deal more about his fellow passengers than they (despite their loquaciousness) had learned about each other.
And so it had continued for the six days, one hour and seventeen minutes they had been on the ship. Now, as they were sailing towards the dock, the man in the brown suit stood on the deck, looking out over — and apparently absorbed by — the Manhattan skyline, and it seemed to Johnson that if he were ever to crack through the man’s shell, this was not only his last chance, but also the best one which had been presented so far.
He sidled up to the rail, coughed discreetly, and when the Englishman noticed him, held out his hand and said, ‘Hiram Johnson.’
He would only have been slightly surprised if the other man had turned away at that point, but instead the Englishman took the proffered hand and said, ‘Sam Blackstone.’
The man had a powerful grip, Johnson thought, but it was a natural power, rather than one designed to intimidate.
‘Could I ask you if this is your first visit to my country, Mr Blackstone?’ the American said.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘And what do you think of it?’
‘I’m impressed,’ Blackstone said.
Johnson felt a surge of satisfaction course through his veins.
‘And what, particularly, is it that you find impressive, Mr Blackstone?’ he asked.
‘Those very tall buildings, beyond the port. We don’t have anything like them back in London.’
Johnson nodded. He supposed it would have to have been that. It was the tall buildings just beyond the port which impressed everyone.
‘Over here, we call them skyscrapers,’ he said. ‘It’s a term that was originally applied to tall sails on ships, you know.’
‘Yes, I did know that,’ Blackstone replied, though without any hint of superiority in his voice.
‘They look like they’ve been here for ever, don’t they?’ Johnson continued. ‘As much a part of the natural landscape as your own baronial castles back in England?’
‘Well, perhaps not quite as much as the castles,’ Blackstone said, in polite disagreement.
‘No, perhaps not,’ Johnson conceded. ‘And, in fact, they haven’t been there very long at all. The first one was completed in ’89.’
‘Only eleven years ago,’ Blackstone said reflectively.
‘Only eleven years ago,’ Johnson echoed. ‘And that particular building has quite a story attached to it, if you’d care to hear it.’
‘I would,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘It all started when a smart young silk merchant by the name of Stearns bought a vacant lot at 50 Broadway. He planned to put up a building that he could rent out as offices, but the problem was that the frontage was only twenty-one and a half feet wide, and if he built it out of stone — which is what all buildings of that nature were built of at the time — the walls would be so thick there wouldn’t be enough space inside to turn a profit.’ Johnson chuckled. ‘And we Americans, you know, always want to turn a profit.’
‘So I’ve heard,’ Blackstone said.
‘Well, sir, Stearns pondered on the problem mightily, and then the solution came to him in a flash. Why not build it on a steel skeleton framework, a bit like a bridge — although in this case, the bridge would be standing on its end, rather than spanning a gap? If he did it that way, he argued, the walls would only have to be twelve inches thick, and need bear no weight at all.’
‘Very clever,’ Blackstone said.
‘Not everybody thought so. When the newspapers got to hear of it, they soon started calling it the Idiotic Building.’
Blackstone’s lips twitched, forming a slight smile. ‘That does sound rather unkind of them,’ he said.
‘Yes, it was rather unkind,’ Johnson agreed. ‘But you could see their point, because apart from Stearns and his architect — a guy called Gilbert — there wasn’t a soul in New York who didn’t believe that it would blow over in the first strong wind. Then, one Sunday morning in ’89 — when all thirteen floors had been finished and there was only the roof left to be put on — there was one God Almighty storm, with the winds reaching up to eighty miles an hour. Stearns and Gilbert rushed straight to their building, as you’d imagine they would, and by the time they arrived, there was already a crowd there — just waiting for it to come toppling down. And do you know what Gilbert did next?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Blackstone said.
‘He grabbed a plumb line and began to climb a ladder up the side of the building. The people who’d come to watch began screaming at him, telling him not to be such a reckless fool and to come down before he was killed. But he didn’t pay them no mind.’
‘A determined man.’
‘A very determined man. He climbed right to the top of that thirteen-floor building, and once he was there, he crawled on his hands and knees along the scaffolding, until he reached the very edge of the structure.’
‘This would be where the plumb line comes in,’ Blackstone suggested.
‘You’ve heard the story before, Mr Blackstone,’ Johnson said, sounding a little disappointed.
‘No, I promise you that I haven’t,’ Blackstone replied. ‘Do please go on, Mr Johnson.’
Well, Gilbert got the plumb line out of his pocket, held one end, and let the other — the one with the lead weight on it — fall towards the street. And there it was — hanging taut. Which meant, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, that the building wasn’t vibrating at all. And that day, sir,’ Hiram Johnson said, with an impressive swelling to his voice which indicated he was reaching the grand finale of his story, ‘was the day that changed the history of New York City.’
‘Is that the place?’ Blackstone asked, pointing at a domed building in the distance.
‘Why, no sir, that’s the Pulitzer Building. It’s named after its owner, Joseph Pulitzer, the publisher of the New York World newspaper, and that’s got a story of its own.’
The ship had almost reached the dock, and already there was a flurry of activity, as stevedores prepared to unload the cargo, and customs offices stood waiting to come on board. Within half an hour or so, he would be on American soil for the first time in his life, Blackstone thought.
‘I said, the Pulitzer Building’s got a story of its own,’ Johnson repeated. ‘Would you care to hear that, too?’
Blackstone smiled again. ‘Why not?’
‘Pulitzer’s a Hungarian by birth,’ Johnson said. He paused. ‘I guess that’s somewhere in Europe.’
‘Yes, it is,’ Blackstone confirme
d.
‘Joe came here in the Fifties, and when the Civil War broke out in ’61, he already felt patriotic enough about his new home to join the Union Army as a cavalryman. Well, one day, when he was on a short leave in New York City, he went into French’s Hotel in search of some refreshment, but the management was worried his frayed uniform might offend some of their fancier guests, so they refused to serve him.’
‘Bastards,’ said Blackstone, who had been a soldier himself, and knew all about frayed uniforms.
‘Joe survived the war, and started his newspaper, which became a big success, and when he’d made enough money, he bought French’s Hotel outright, had it razed to the ground, and put the Pulitzer Building there in its place.’
‘So the story had a happy ending,’ Blackstone said.
‘Yes, it did,’ Johnson said, though that was not the point of his story at all. ‘But do you know why he built it so tall?’
‘Because he needed a great deal of space to run his newspaper properly?’ Blackstone guessed.
‘That’s part of the answer, but only part of it. You see, the World’s two biggest rivals, the Sun and the Herald, have their offices nearby, and Joe wanted his building to dwarf theirs. The popular tale is that he said he wanted a building in which his editors only had to go to the window in order to spit on the Sun, but I believe — if you’ll excuse the crudity — that what he actually said was that they only had to go to the window in order to piss on it.’
‘That sounds more like a Hungarian,’ Blackstone said in a tone which left the American unsure whether he was joking or not.
‘So that’s the building he wanted, and that’s what he got,’ Hiram Johnson continued. ‘It’s three hundred and nine feet tall, which makes it the tallest building in the whole wide world.’
‘But from what I’ve already learned about you Americans, I don’t think it will be the tallest building in the world for long.’
‘I do believe you’re right, sir,’ Johnson agreed.
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