‘Chicago’s “El” is a very different world,’ Meade said. ‘The trains are pleasanter, and they’ve electrified the track there, but the people like J.P. Morgan — who own the New York “El” — don’t see the point in making any improvements while it’s still a moneymaking machine just as it is.’
The train appeared, its engine belching out smoke and cinders, and the moment the doors had opened, the people on the platform surged forward, pushing those passengers who had intended to disembark at this station further back into the carriages.
After an almost indecently short wait, the train set off again. Its journey took it within a few feet of second- and third-floor apartments, and as it passed them, the windows shook and rattled. Through those windows, Blackstone saw the people inside the apartments — men in shirtsleeves, women sewing, a child playing with wooden horses on wheels.
‘Guess why there’s no “El” running up Fifth Avenue,’ Meade said, shouting to be heard over the noise of the rattling train.
‘Because that’s where the rich live,’ Blackstone shouted back.
‘Because that’s where the rich live,’ Meade agreed.
They reached 59th Street, and through a combination of luck and elbowing managed to reach the platform before the train pulled out again.
On foot, they cut across town to Central Park, where they had arranged to meet Inspector O’Brien’s partner, Sergeant Saddler.
‘Why was he so insistent on meeting in the park?’ Blackstone asked, as they walked.
‘Because he knows he’s safe from the Lower East Side gangs there,’ Meade told him.
Blackstone nodded. ‘Makes sense,’ he said. ‘Even a hot-headed kid sent out to prove himself isn’t going to attempt to kill Saddler with so many potential witnesses around.’
‘It’s nothing to do with potential witnesses,’ Meade told him. ‘Saddler will be safe from the gangs in Central Park because he knows that no gang members will be in Central Park.’
‘He knows that, does he?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.
‘Yes.’
‘For a fact?’
‘Certainly.’
‘How can he be so sure?’
‘He can be sure,’ Mead said, ‘because Central Park is not in the Lower East Side.’
‘So what’s to stop one of these gang members taking the “El”, just like we did?’ Blackstone asked.
‘In theory, there’s nothing at all to stop it,’ Meade replied. ‘But it just doesn’t happen.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because they never even see it as an option. Their world is bounded by a few city blocks. It’s all they know about, and all they care about. They’re born there, live there, and die there — and they’d never dream of leaving it, even for a day. Their existence down on the Lower East Side is a violent one, right enough, but they’re not afraid of violence and they’re not afraid of an early death — it’s the unknown which scares the shit out of them.’
They entered the park on the south-eastern side, and stood with their backs to the Pond.
‘The first superintendent of this park was a man called Olmsted,’ Meade said. ‘He was high-minded, upright and honest. He refused to be bribed or to give bribes, but even a good man like him couldn’t stop Tammany Hall using the park’s construction to its own advantage.’
‘Is that right?’ asked Blackstone, who was getting used to playing the role of hayseed stooge to Meade’s smart city boy — and was even starting to enjoy it. ‘And just how did Tammany Hall manage that?’
‘It was easy,’ Meade said. ‘Tammany provided the labour for the works, so just by the act of giving men jobs which hadn’t existed before, it was already buying their votes. But that wasn’t enough for Boss Tweed, who was running the machine at the time. He came up with the brilliant idea of having not just one gang of labourers working on the job, but two.’
‘Why did he need two gangs?’ Blackstone asked, as he knew he was supposed to.
‘Because one gang planted the trees in the daytime, and the other dug them up at night,’ Meade said. ‘Then the next day, the first crew would plant them again, and the next night, the second crew would dig them up again. So instead of giving a hundred men ten days’ work, Tweed was giving two hundred men work for as long as he wanted to. And, of course, that raised the cost of the project — which meant there was more money for Boss Tweed to skim off.’
A large man in a tired blue suit appeared at the entrance to the park. He seemed edgy, and even from a distance Blackstone could tell that he was sweating heavily.
‘Is that him?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Yes, that’s Sergeant Saddler,’ Meade agreed, and immediately turned around to face the water.
Meade was in charge, and Blackstone was more than prepared to follow his lead, but as he turned himself, he said, ‘Why are we giving the sergeant the cold shoulder, Alex?’
‘We’re not. He knows we’re here, and when he’s made sure we’re not being watched, he’ll come over and talk to us.’
‘I thought you told me the Lower East Side gangs wouldn’t operate in Central Park,’ Blackstone said.
‘The gangs aren’t the only killers in New York,’ Meade replied.
They stood staring into the water for perhaps three minutes before Saddler decided it was safe to sidle up to them, and even then he said, ‘Don’t look at me. Look at the Pond.’
‘Is there somebody here?’ Meade asked.
‘I don’t think so,’ Saddler replied, in a voice which seemed half-strangled. ‘But when you’re in my situation — when your boss has just been murdered — you don’t want to take any chances.’
‘Before we start talking about Patrick, why don’t you tell Mr Blackstone about the extent of police corruption in New York City?’ Meade suggested.
‘Can’t you tell him yourself?’ Saddler asked.
‘I have told him myself,’ Meade replied. ‘But I don’t think he quite believes it’s as bad as I say it is. And I can understand that, because if I came here from the outside, I don’t think I’d quite believe it was that bad, either.’
From out of the corner of his eye, Blackstone saw Sergeant Saddler give a slight shrug.
‘The whole thing stinks,’ the sergeant said. ‘Saloons are supposed to close at one o’clock in the morning. and stay shut all day Sunday, but that’s bad for business, so instead they pay their local precinct twenty dollars a month and stay open. Then there are the brothels. They pay fifty dollars a month for protection. But that ain’t the end of it — not by a long way. Sometimes the whores steal from their clients, and sometimes the clients complain about it to the police. It don’t get them nowhere. The police never arrest the whores.’
‘Why not?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Because the patrolmen get their cut of what’s been stolen,’ Saddler said. ‘Then there’s the supply racket.’
‘What supply racket?’
‘Brothels need all kinds of stuff to keep running. Booze, cigarettes, food, medicine, linen. But since the brothels are illegal, the precinct captains don’t allow any of the legitimate businesses to sell them anything.’
‘So where do they get what they need?’
Saddler laughed, though there was not much evidence of humour in it. ‘They get their supplies from the police. The captains buy the stuff from the legitimate supplier and sell it on to the brothels for a profit.’
‘Jesus!’ Blackstone said.
‘Then there are the opium dens — there are ten thousand of them in New York, and they all have to pay a bribe. Pushcart pedlars give patrolmen three dollars a week to stay in business. The sail makers on South Street pay just to hang out the canvas banners advertising their wares. The inspectors and captains take the biggest cut of the money, but everybody gets their share.’
‘Is that why you joined the Detective Bureau?’ Blackstone asked. ‘To get away from all that?’
Saddler laughed again. ‘Hell, no, Mr Blackstone! The reason that I joined the Detecti
ve Bureau was because there was even more money to be made there than there was in uniform.’
‘How?’
‘By working the rich areas, rather than the poor. See, Inspector Byrnes, who was the first Chief of Detectives-’
‘Mr Blackstone knows who he was,’ Meade interrupted.
‘Inspector Byrnes figured out that the people who really needed protection — by which he meant the people who could really afford protection — were the bankers and stockbrokers in the Wall Street area. So one of the first things he did after he was appointed was to ask the brokers if they’d give him an office right there in the Stock Exchange — and seeing how that could work to their advantage, they agreed immediately. The next thing the inspector did was draw an invisible line around the area and send the word out on to the streets that no criminals would be allowed to operate inside it.’
‘Well, no common criminals, anyways,’ Meade said.
‘That’s right,’ Saddler agreed. ‘The criminals in wing collars and top hats, who worked in banks and brokerage houses, could come and go as they damn well pleased.’
The sergeant suddenly stopped talking, and glanced nervously over his shoulder.
‘Something wrong?’ Meade asked.
‘I just got the feeling, for a second there, that we were being watched,’ Saddler said.
‘And are we?’
‘No, I don’t think so. It must just be my nerves playing me up. But, hell, who wouldn’t be nervous in my position?’
‘Who indeed?’ Blackstone asked. ‘Do you think you can stay long enough to finish your story?’
‘If it don’t take too long,’ Saddler said. He paused, then admitted, ‘I’ve forgotten what I was saying.’
‘Byrnes drew an invisible line around the Wall Street area,’ Blackstone prompted.
‘Oh, yeah. But there’s no point in drawing that line if you ain’t going to enforce it — especially in a place like Wall Street, where everybody knows there are such rich pickings — so enforcement was just what the Detective Bureau spent most of its time doing. Course, paying so much attention to the Wall Street area meant that we didn’t solve much crime anywhere else — but why should we, when there was no profit in it?’
‘Just how much profit was there in guarding Wall Street?’ Blackstone wondered.
‘Plenty, especially for Inspector Byrnes. See, the sergeants just got cash from the brokers for protecting them, but what the inspector got was tips about which stocks to buy — and since the system’s crooked, that advice was never wrong and those stocks always went up.’
‘How much money did he make?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Hard to say for sure, but the Lexow Committee found one bank account of his with three hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it. They asked him to explain how a man who earned less than three thousand dollars a year could end up with so much money, and he couldn’t explain it at all. But even then, he wasn’t arrested. Even then, he hung on for a couple more years before resigning from the force.’
‘You’re being very frank about what you and others have done,’ Blackstone said.
‘Yes, sir, I am,’ Saddler agreed earnestly.
‘Why?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Tell Mr Blackstone about what happened to you to make you a new man,’ Meade suggested.
‘I heard the Reverend Parkhurst preach,’ Saddler said simply.
‘Reverend Parkhurst?’ Blackstone repeated.
‘He was the pastor who stirred up all the fuss about corruption and led to the Lexow Committee being formed,’ Meade explained.
‘The reason I happened to hear the reverend speak was that I was on the tail of this judas goat. .’ Saddler continued.
‘This what?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Judas goat. It was another one of Inspector Byrnes’ ideas. See, we didn’t always charge everybody we arrested — not even all the guilty ones. Sometimes, we’d let a suspect go, but we’d follow him, and see who he talked to. Then we’d rearrest him, and work him over until he gave us something on the people he’d been associating with.’
‘Something real — or something he’d simply made up to avoid further beating?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Didn’t really matter, as long as it gave us grounds to arrest them. Then we’d let the judas goat go again, as long as he promised to give evidence against his friends. You see how it works?’
‘Yes,’ Blackstone said. ‘By using the judas goat, you make several arrests instead of just the one.’
‘And that looks good on paper,’ Saddler said. ‘And not just on paper, but in the newspapers. Most of the citizens of New York thought Inspector Byrnes was their saviour. And only the Detective Bureau — and the poor devils we’d arrested — knew the real truth.’
‘You were telling us about hearing the Reverend Parkhurst preach,’ Meade reminded him.
‘Oh, yeah. The goat realized I was on his tail, so he dived into the Madison Square Presbyterian Church. And I followed him, and sat down beside him. And do you know what I said to him — right there in the House of God?’
‘No.’
‘I said to him, God forgive me, “When this service is over, you’d better tell me something I can use — or I’m gonna break both your arms.” Then Reverend Parkhurst stepped into the pulpit, and even before he started to speak, it was like a bright shining light had entered my world. And as he spoke — about how there was all this vice in this modern Gomorrah, and about how the police were feathering their own nests instead of stamping it out — that light grew brighter and brighter. And when the service was over, I looked afresh at the poor wretch next to me, who’d been driven by poverty to become what he was, and who I’d been determined to abuse. And I wept. I left that church a new man, Mr Blackstone, and, though I may be guilty of the sin of pride in even saying this, a better man.’
‘Is that when you met Inspector O’Brien?’ Blackstone asked.
‘It’s when I sought out Inspector O’Brien,’ Saddler replied. ‘I was now a true believer, floating in the midst of a sea of heathens. I’d already given all the money I’d made through graft and corruption to the Reverend Parkhurst’s church, but I knew that, without support, I would slip back into that trough of depravity from which the Reverend Parkhurst’s words had raised me. And I also knew that only one man could give me that support — Inspector O’Brien.’
‘And so, a legendary team was born,’ Meade said.
Saddler laughed again, bitterly this time.
‘Legendary?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t think so. Alexander the Great, who conquered most of the known world, was a legend. George Washington, who brought America its freedom, was a legend. And what have we done? Built up cases — against a handful of patrolmen — which were so strong that even a Tammany-appointed judge couldn’t ignore the evidence. Sent one sergeant to jail, and forced one captain into retirement. That’s no more than skimming the frothy top off the scum. But what drove us on was the hope that one day — one day — we would land that really big case which would truly shake this city to its rotten core.’
‘What were you working on just before the inspector was killed?’ Meade asked.
‘We had several investigations running.’
‘Like what?’
‘There was a fantail gambling ring in Chinatown that a couple of patrolmen were taking a percentage from. There was a sergeant who was selling off the bicycles belonging to the Police Bicycle Squad-’
‘But nothing earth-shattering?’ Meade interrupted. ‘Nothing that would truly shake this city to its core?’
‘No,’ Saddler replied hesitantly.
‘You don’t seem entirely sure of that,’ Meade pressed.
‘I think Inspector O’Brien might have been working on something he hadn’t told me about,’ Saddler admitted.
‘Hadn’t told you about?’ Meade repeated, incredulously. ‘But you were his partner. And I know, from the things that he said to me about you, that he would have trusted you with his
life.’
‘And I like to think that I’d earned that trust. But Inspector O’Brien simply wasn’t himself for the last few days of his life.’
‘How had he changed?’ Blackstone asked.
‘He was on edge. Not exactly irritable with me — Mr O’Brien was too much of a gentleman for that — but like he was so stressed that he wanted to be angry. Then there were moments when he was hopeful, too — like you sometimes are when everything looks black, but you think there might just be a ray of sunshine on the horizon.’
‘He seemed excited. Or perhaps nervous. I do not know which one it was,’ Schultz, the fat German in Bayern Biergarten, had said.
‘If he was working on something big, why didn’t he tell you about it?’ Meade asked.
‘Maybe because he thought it would be dangerous for me to know too much. Maybe he was keeping me in the dark to protect me. Inspector O’Brien was that kind of guy.’
‘So there’s nothing you can tell us?’ Meade asked disappointedly.
‘No.’
‘Think about it!’
‘Like I told you-’
‘This whole case might hang on one small scrap of information that only you can give us. Without that information, the killer may go free. So please, think about it,’ Meade implored.
For perhaps two minutes Saddler was silent. Then he said, ‘There maybe is one thing.’
‘Yes?’
‘This happened three or four days ago. I was leaving headquarters and heading for home, when I realized I’d left my door key on my desk. When I got back to the office, the inspector was on the phone. He didn’t see me, and just carried on talking. I didn’t mean to listen to what he was saying, but it was kind of hard to avoid it.’
‘What did you hear him say?’ Meade asked.
‘He said, “Let’s cut to the chase. We both know you’re up your elbows in slime, and that one day you’re going to go to jail for it. But if you’ll help me out with this one thing, I might be able to make the situation a little easier for you when your fall eventually comes.” The man on the other end of the line said something, and the inspector said, “Yes, I thought you’d see it that way, Senator Plunkitt.” Then he noticed me standing there, and he hung up without another word.’
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