‘The police in New York City have two functions — and two functions only,’ he said.
‘And what are they?’ Blackstone asked.
‘To protect the rich, and to line their own pockets,’ Meade replied. The carriage came to a sudden, juddering halt. ‘We’re here,’ the sergeant continued. ‘This is 300 Mulberry Street. Our headquarters — the very heart of stinking police corruption.’
THREE
The Mulberry Street police headquarters was five storeys high (including the basement) and was sandwiched between a slightly shorter building to its left and a slightly taller one to its right. Each floor had ten windows looking out on to the street. Its architectural style was decidedly Georgian — though Blackstone doubted that a country which had fought two wars against King George would ever have used that term to describe it. It was a pleasant, solid-enough building, though it was nothing like as impressive as New Scotland Yard.
‘There are plans afoot to build a new headquarters,’ Meade said, almost as if he’d read Blackstone’s mind. ‘It’s going to be neoclassical. We just love neoclassical, here in the States.’
And why wouldn’t you? Blackstone asked himself, continuing his earlier train of thought. After all, the ancient Greeks never tried to tax your tea, and it certainly wasn’t the Romans who burned down your White House.
The Mulberry Street desk sergeant sat at his desk. A pile of white forms were close to his left hand and a stack of blue ones were close to his right, but he did not appear to be showing much enthusiasm for either set of documents. He had, Blackstone decided, the same air of weariness and cynicism about him as seemed to be the lot of every desk sergeant, everywhere.
‘This is Inspector Blackstone of New Scotland Yard, London, England,’ Alex Meade announced, with considerable gravity. ‘He has come here to identify his suspect.’
The desk sergeant looked up with a blank expression in his eyes. Then enlightenment dawned.
‘Oh, yeah, the Limey cop,’ he said.
‘The Limey inspector,’ Meade said, somewhat rebuking.
‘Sure,’ the sergeant agreed easily. ‘We got your guy down in the cells. Wanna see him?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ Blackstone said.
‘Why would I mind?’ the sergeant replied. ‘He’s down in the basement. Go see him.’
‘I expect that the inspector would appreciate an escort down to the cells,’ Meade said.
‘For what?’ the sergeant wondered. ‘He wants to know what direction to go in, he can ask. An’ he should recognize the prisoner when he sees him, ’cos he’s the one on the wrong side of the bars.’
A look of concern and uncertainty was spreading across Alexander Meade’s face.
He was embarrassed by the way his guest was being treated by the desk sergeant, Blackstone thought, but he was still unsure whether saying anything further would make the situation better, or if it would simply make it worse.
The phone rang on the sergeant’s desk, and the sergeant picked up the earpiece.
‘The Limey cop, sir?’ he asked, once he’d listened to the man on the other end of the line for a moment. ‘Yes, sir, he’s. .’
The sergeant’s expression suddenly grew more alert — and perhaps a little troubled.
‘Yes, sir, Inspector Blackstone, that’s who I meant. .’ he continued. ‘No, I. . I’ll get right on to it, sir.’
He hung the earpiece up, and turned to Blackstone.
‘Would you mind waiting here for a few minutes, while we make the necessary arrangements, sir?’ he asked, in a voice which was now unashamedly ingratiating.
‘What arrangements?’ Meade enquired.
‘The arrangements that need to be arranged,’ said the desk sergeant, whose instructions to be pleasant clearly had not extended to being pleasant to Sergeant Meade.
It was the desk sergeant himself who, ten minutes later, escorted Blackstone down the steps to the basement cells.
Though there were several such cells there, only one of them was occupied, and the inspector immediately recognized the man staring at him through the bars as James Duffy.
Blackstone turned on his heel, and began to walk back towards the stairs.
‘Hold on,’ the desk sergeant said, taking him by the arm.
‘Yes?’ Blackstone replied.
‘Is that it? You ain’t even talked to the guy.’
‘There’s no need to talk to him,’ Blackstone said. ‘That’s James Duffy. There’s no doubt about it.’
‘Yeah, but I think you should still talk to him,’ the sergeant, said, beginning to sound a little desperate.
‘Why?’
‘Well, ’cos. .’cos. .’
‘Yes?’
‘’Cos the commissioner don’t want no mistakes.’
‘There is no mistake.’
‘Talk to the prisoner, can’t you?’ the desk sergeant asked, wheedling.
‘Why should I?’
‘Do it as a favour to me.’
‘As a favour to you?’ Blackstone said. ‘Why should I do you a favour? Ah, now I see. Since we’re already such good pals. .’
‘OK, I admit that I was bit rough on you when you came in,’ the desk sergeant conceded. ‘But I was busy!’
‘Yes, it must have been hard work staring at all those forms,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘An’ if you want anything at all while you’re in New York,’ the sergeant said, ‘booze, a girl. . a boy even. .’
‘I’ll talk to the prisoner,’ Blackstone said quickly, before the offers could get any worse.
‘Thanks,’ the desk sergeant said, turning on his own heel and almost rushing for the stairs.
‘Wait a minute,’ Blackstone called after him. ‘Don’t you want to be here when I question the suspect?’
‘Hell, no,’ the sergeant said over his shoulder. as he mounted the first step.
Blackstone walked towards the cell. He remembered James Duffy as a vicious brute, and it was clear from the way he looked now that his time in America had not changed him.
Yet Duffy himself seemed quite pleased to see his visitor, and even gave him a crooked smile as he said, ‘Hello, Mr Blackstone.’
‘What’s been happening to you in the last ten minutes?’ the inspector demanded.
‘Happening to me?’ Duffy asked, mystified.
‘The sergeant said I could see you straight away, then he got a phone call, and suddenly I couldn’t see you at all until arrangements had been made. So what were those arrangements?’
‘Oh, that,’ Duffy said. ‘They moved me, didn’t they?’
‘From where to where?’
‘From the cell on the end of the row to the one that I’m in now.’
Blackstone walked to the end of the row and inspected the other cell. It seemed identical, in every way, to the one Duffy was currently occupying.
Which was strange.
‘So, how are you, Jimmy?’ he asked the prisoner.
‘On top of the world, Mr Blackstone,’ Duffy replied. ‘Best fing I ever did, coming to America.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s a land of opportunity, ain’t it? If yer’ve got a bit of go about yer, yer can make a fortune.’
‘And have you made a fortune?’
Duffy smirked. ‘I’ve done all right. Even in prison, yer looked after if yer’ve got the dosh to pay for special treatment — which I have.’
‘Then it should be some consolation to you to know that when you hang, you’ll hang as a rich man,’ Blackstone said.
‘Fing is, Inspector, I don’t ’ave to ’ang at all, when you fink about it,’ Duffy said.
‘No?’
‘No! The Yanks won’t send me back unless you say I’m the man yer looking for.’
‘True,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘And for five ’undred dollars, most men I know would be willin’ to say almost anyfing.’
Blackstone smiled. ‘But there are some men who wouldn’t settle for less tha
n a thousand,’ he pointed out.
Duffy grinned back at him. ‘Yer drive an ’ard bargain, don’t yer, Mr Blackstone?’ he said. ‘But since you seem to be ’olding all the cards, let’s call it a fousand.’
‘And just what makes you think that you can bribe me, Jimmy?’ Blackstone asked.
The other man shrugged. ‘Every man ’as ’is price, Mr Blackstone. That’s somefink they understand over ’ere. Why do you fink the desk sergeant left when he did?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me.’
‘So we could get on wiv our negotiation in peace an’ quiet. Course, ’e’ll demand ’is cut, which is fair enough — but if I was you, I wouldn’t give him more than ten per cent.’
‘I intend to give him fifty per cent,’ Blackstone said.
‘That’s up to you, but I wouldn’t. .’
‘Or even a hundred per cent! Because a hundred per cent of nothing is still nothing.’
‘Yer what?’ Duffy asked.
‘I’ve seen what you did to one of your victims,’ Blackstone told him. ‘Her name was Maggie Blair, and you cut her head off with a saw. At what stage in that grisly process did she die?’
Duffy shrugged. ‘’Ard to say. But it wasn’t my fault that it ’appened, Mr Blackstone.’
‘Then whose fault was it?’
‘Maggie’s. She was asking for it. The little slut simply wouldn’t do as she was told.’
‘And having seen her,’ Blackstone continued, ‘there’s no amount of money in the world that would compensate me for missing the sight of you dangling at the end of a rope.’
‘All right, all right, two fousand, then,’ Duffy said.
‘Not if you were to offer me a million,’ Blackstone told him.
‘Four fousand,’ Duffy said desperately. ‘That’s all the money I’ve got. I swear it.’
‘If they calculate the drop right, then when the trapdoor opens, the fall breaks your neck, you know,’ Blackstone said, conversationally. ‘They say it’s an instant death, but it isn’t.’
‘I just ain’t got more than four fousand, Mr Blackstone,’ Duffy whined.
‘There are still what the doctors call “vital signs of life” for at least half an hour after that,’ Blackstone continued. ‘It’s widely believed that since you’re unconscious for that time, you don’t feel a thing, but who knows whether that’s true or not?’
‘I. . I. .’ Duffy gasped.
‘You’ll know, Jimmy,’ Blackstone said. ‘Hanging there, soaked in your own shit — because your bowels will open, like they always do — you’ll know. But the pity of it is, you’ll never be able to tell me.’
There was the sound of trickling water, and looking down at the leg of Duffy’s prison uniform, Blackstone saw that the man had wet himself.
He nodded his head, with satisfaction at a job well done.
‘If it feels like that now, just imagine how it will feel when they’re actually putting the rope around your neck,’ he said.
Then, without another word, he turned and walked towards the steps.
When Blackstone appeared at the head of the stairs, the first thing the desk sergeant did was to look up at the wall clock.
‘You were talkin’ to him for six minutes,’ he said. ‘Maybe six and a half minutes.’
‘And was that long enough?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Long enough for what?’ the sergeant countered, a shifty, evasive look coming into his eye.
‘Long enough to satisfy whoever it was told you to get me talking to Duffy in the first place.’
‘I have no idea what you mean,’ the sergeant said.
‘So if you have no idea, you — and whoever put you up to it — won’t be expecting a cut of the bribe, then?’ Blackstone asked.
The sergeant paled. ‘Don’t tell me. . don’t tell me you took a bribe. Not with the. .’
‘Not with the what?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Well, if you did take one, it don’t have nothin’ to do with me,’ the sergeant said, ignoring the question.
‘Not with the what?’ Blackstone persisted.
‘I swear before God that my slate is clean, an’ I’m innocent on all counts,’ the sergeant said, as if he was already addressing the court.
This was beginning to sound like a conversation between a dog and duck, Blackstone decided — because not only was it not going anywhere, but it seemed increasing unlikely that it ever would go anywhere.
‘Do you know if the police department has booked me into some sort of lodgings?’ he asked.
He certainly hoped it had, because the weather had been unpleasantly warm even when he’d landed, and as the morning had progressed it had grown even hotter. Now, with his shirt stuck to his back and small rivers of sweat cascading down his neck, what he wanted — more than anything else in the whole world — was a good cold bath.
‘Lodgings?’ the sergeant repeated. ‘Oh, yeah, you got a room booked for you at — ’ he rifled through the stack of paper to his left — ‘the Mayfair Hotel.’
‘Is that far from here?’
‘Maybe five minutes.’
‘Then if you’ll give me instructions on how to find it, I’d like to go there now.’
‘There ain’t time,’ the desk sergeant said. ‘Sergeant Meade’s expectin’ to take you out to lunch at twelve.’
Blackstone glanced up at the wall clock.
‘It’s only just after ten thirty now,’ he said. ‘If my lodgings are only five minutes away. .’
‘An’ before that, we’ve got your meeting,’ the sergeant said.
‘My meeting?’ Blackstone repeated. ‘What meeting is that?’
‘The one with Commissioner Comstock,’ the sergeant told him.
FOUR
Assistant Commissioner Todd of New Scotland Yard would have stayed firmly seated when Blackstone entered his office, but Commissioner Comstock of the New York Police Department was on his feet before the Englishman had even crossed the threshold.
Blackstone’s initial impression was of a scholarly, slightly built man, who wore a pair of pince-nez spectacles on the end of his nose, and looked as if he would have been far more at home on a small university campus than he could ever be in a large police department. But before there was time for further speculation, the inspector found his thoughts shifting away from the commissioner — and on to his own particular circumstances at that moment.
There was something wrong with the whole situation, he thought, as he crossed the office.
More than one thing, he told himself, as he shook the commissioner’s hand.
A whole series of things, he decided, as he accepted the commissioner’s invitation to take a seat.
The first thing that was wrong was that he was there in Comstock’s office at all. He was a relatively unimportant officer from Scotland Yard — fairly low on the totem pole, as the Americans might say — and yet he had been taken to meet one of the four police commissioners in charge of New York City.
The second — and more important — thing was the way in which Comstock himself was acting. He was doing his best to appear to be the patrician host welcoming his foreign visitor — but all he was actually succeeding in doing was looking unhappy.
Or nervous.
Or unsure of what to do or say next.
Or a combination of all of these.
The third thing. .
‘It is certainly a pleasure to meet you, Inspector,’ Comstock said in a low fussy voice which pushed the third thing Blackstone had been wondering about to the back of his mind.
‘And it’s a pleasure — and an honour — to meet you, too, sir,’ Blackstone countered.
Comstock unconvincingly shuffled some papers about on his desk for a few moments, then said, ‘I take it, Inspector, that there is no doubt at all in your mind that the man who you were sent to New York to identify is the one we are actually holding in our cells.’
‘No doubt at all, sir. As per the instructions you gave to your desk
sergeant, I spent some time talking to him — even though, for identification purposes, there was no need to.’
He was taking a shot in the dark by assuming that the man who’d rung the sergeant had been the commissioner himself, but the look on Comstock’s face quickly confirmed that the shot had found its target.
‘Yes. . er. . as per my instructions. Quite,’ Comstock said. He glanced down, once more, at the pieces of paper on his desk. ‘Did this man Duffy by any chance attempt to bribe you?’ he asked, without looking up.
‘Bribe me?’ Blackstone repeated.
‘Bribe you.’
‘Why should you ask that?’
‘Just idle curiosity,’ Comstock said, unconvincingly. ‘After all, it’s not every man who would turn down the chance of earning four thou. .’
The commissioner clamped his mouth tightly shut, but the damage had already been done.
Duffy had been moved from one cell to another for one specific reason, Blackstone thought. And that reason had been that while there were no hidden microphones in his first cell, there undoubtedly were in his second.
But why should the commissioner have even wanted to listen in on the conversation?
Could it be because he had intended to skim off a portion of the bribe for himself?
Possibly.
But, thinking about it, it did seem highly unlikely that a police commissioner for New York City — even if he were corrupt — would wish to be become involved in such a thing. For Blackstone himself, four thousand dollars was a great deal of money, but for the commissioner it must seem like very petty graft indeed.
And even if that were his intention, he would now know that though a bribe had been offered by Duffy, it had certainly not been accepted by Blackstone.
While these thoughts had been running through Blackstone’s mind, Comstock had clearly been working out how to cover his gaffe.
‘You were planning to sail back to England as soon as possible, weren’t you?’ he asked, apparently having decided that his best course would be to pretend the gaffe had never happened.
Were planning?
‘I still am planning to sail as soon as possible, sir,’ Blackstone said emphatically. ‘I’ve got what I came here for, and the sooner my prisoner is hanging at the end of a rope, the happier I’ll be.’
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