Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street

by Sally Spencer

  Seven years later

  There were barmen who would have been uncomfortable about working in a saloon that was only a short step from Sing Sing Prison, but this particular one – Jack O’Toole – considered himself a student of human nature in all its manifestations, and saw the location almost as a bonus. He liked the fact that his customers were not the run-of-the-mill carpenters and plumbers who patronized most saloons, and prided himself on being able to spot which side of the law each of them had been drawn from.

  The saloon had been busy that morning – it always was on execution days – but the rush had eased off somewhat by the time the two men came in, and as they walked across the room to the counter, O’Toole made one of his famously rapid assessments of them.

  They were an odd pair, and that was for sure, the barman thought.

  The older of the two looked around forty. He was over six feet tall, and thin as a rake, but there was a hardness emanating from his wiry frame which would make even the beefiest troublemaker think twice about tangling with him. He had a large nose which – the barman thought whimsically – he could almost have borrowed from the Old Testament, and dark eyes which were not actually blazing with righteousness and anger at that moment, but looked as if they could manage the trick quite easily. He was dressed in a brown suit that had seen better days and had a decidedly un-American cut.

  The other man was younger – possibly only twenty-three or twenty-four – and though he looked fit enough and manly enough, there was still evidence on his face of the boy he had so recently been. His disposition seemed sunnier – more overtly optimistic – than his companion’s, and his suit had a sharpness and style about it that made the barman green with envy.

  ‘What can I do for you, gentlemen?’ O’Toole asked.

  ‘I’d kill for a beer,’ said the shorter man.

  ‘So would I,’ the taller man agreed. ‘Kill for it – and damn the consequences.’ He paused, and smiled down at his companion. ‘But if I was to be executed for the crime, I still think I’d prefer the rope to the electric chair.’

  ‘What do you really think of the way we dispatch our murderers over here?’ the shorter man, Alex Meade, asked, as the barman was filling a jug for them.

  ‘It was . . . interesting,’ replied the taller man, Sam Blackstone.

  ‘You mean, impressive.’

  ‘I mean interesting.’

  Meade chuckled. ‘You just can’t bring yourself to say that we’ve got the edge on you in this matter, can you, Sam?’ he asked. ‘You just can’t admit that while you Brits are still stuck in the fifteenth century with your executions, we Yanks have embraced living in the twentieth.’

  Strictly speaking, it wasn’t the twentieth century until next year – 1901 – Blackstone thought, but there seemed little point in getting into a pedantic debate with the American colleague who had been kind enough to take the trouble to bring him to Cayuga County to witness the execution.

  ‘To tell you the truth, the whole process seemed rather slow and ponderous,’ Blackstone admitted.

  ‘Slow and ponderous?’ Meade repeated. ‘The guy was dead within fifteen seconds of pulling the switch.’

  ‘Maybe he was,’ Blackstone conceded. ‘But, dear me, it seemed to take for ever to get him into a position where the switch could be pulled.’

  ‘And how long would it take in Limeyland?’ Meade asked, sounding a little aggrieved.

  ‘If everything goes smoothly, there’s never more than twelve seconds between the condemned man leaving his cell and taking the drop which breaks his neck.’

  Meade shook his head in wonder. ‘You guys,’ he said. ‘England must be the only country in the world that makes a positive virtue out of being old-fashioned. It’s a miracle to me that you ever gave up bows and arrows.’

  ‘Being old-fashioned is not just one of our greatest strengths,’ Blackstone replied, as the barman handed him the jug of frothing beer. ‘It’s also an important part of our charm.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Meade asked, as he turned and headed for a free table. ‘I must admit, I never knew Englishmen had charm.’

  There were many things about America that Blackstone found strange and disconcerting, and the saloon culture was one of them. Back in England, each pub was a series of small rooms, only vaguely connected to one another. Here, on the other side of the pond, intimacy seemed to have been sacrificed in the interest of ostentatious democracy, and most drinking establishments were like this one, consisting of one vast, almost prairie-like room.

  The beer was different, too. It had none of the gravity of a pint of London bitter. It was lighter and more frivolous – a sign, as he saw it, that Americans had still not come to appreciate what a serious matter drinking was.

  ‘You’re drawing comparisons again, aren’t you?’ Alex Meade asked him, from across the table.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ Blackstone admitted.

  But then, wasn’t it only natural that he would?

  It was less than a month since he had disembarked from the second class deck of the liner that had brought him to New York, and been met on the quayside by the fresh-faced detective sergeant in the straw boater.

  His mission had been simple – to identify a prisoner and take him back to England, where the man was under sentence of death. But things had not worked out quite as intended. Within a few hours of first setting foot on American soil – or rather, on American concrete – Blackstone had found himself involved in an investigation into the murder of a police inspector.

  Nor had the successful conclusion of that case done anything to speed his return home. His prisoner had escaped – been allowed to escape, bribed his way into an escape – and until he was recaptured, Blackstone was seconded to the NYPD.

  ‘Did I ever tell you how the invention of the electric chair came about?’ Alex Meade asked innocently.

  But there was nothing really innocent about it – Meade had an almost missionary zeal when it came to explaining his country to his English friend, a zeal which Blackstone found fascinating and irritating in almost equal measure, and often both at the same time.

  The Englishman smiled again. ‘No, you never did tell me,’ he confessed.

  Meade took a long sip of his beer, which Blackstone guessed meant that this would be one of his longer anecdotes.

  ‘As with so many other things in this great country of ours, it was driven by commerce,’ Meade began. ‘Specifically, it was driven by the War of Currents.’

  ‘The War of Currents?’ Blackstone repeated, as he knew he was supposed to.

  ‘Indeed,’ Alex Meade replied. ‘See, the first person to start supplying power in America was Thomas Edison.’ He paused. ‘You’ll have heard of him?’

  Blackstone nodded. ‘Invented the light bulb, didn’t he?’

  ‘Among other things,’ Meade agreed. ‘At any rate, Edison’s power system used direct current, which was fine and dandy in a way, but had the drawback that the power generator could never be more than a mile and a half from the place that was using the power. That didn’t matter at first, because direct current was the only show in town, so everybody used it. Then along came Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse with their alternating current.’

  He paused again, in case there was anything Blackstone wished to say.

  ‘I’m not much of a scientist,’ the Englishman admitted.

  ‘Tesla invented AC while he was working for Edison, but Tom wasn’t interested in the idea. Westinghouse was quite another matter. He could see the potential of a power source that could be created many miles away from where it was being used, and went into competition with Edison.’

  ‘And part of that competition was to see who could produce the first electric chair?’ Blackstone guessed.

  Meade chuckled. ‘You couldn’t be further from the truth. What actually happened was that it soon became obvious to Edison that Westinghouse’s system was vastly superior, but – Tom being Tom – he couldn’t bring himself to adm
it it publicly and change over to it himself. So what he did do was to start spreading the story that alternating current was much more dangerous than direct.’

  ‘I believe that’s what you Americans would call “dirty pool”,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Yeah, but, at the same time, we can’t help admiring the guy for being so smart,’ Meade replied. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Dangerous,’ Blackstone prompted.

  ‘That’s right. Now, at just that time, the authorities were looking for a more humane way of executing people than hanging them,’ Meade continued. ‘A dentist called Southwick had already come up with the idea of an electric chair, and Edison secretly financed a guy called Brown to develop it.’

  ‘Because of his own interest in finding a more humane way?’

  Meade shook his head. ‘Edison was against capital punishment on principle – totally against it,’ he shrugged, ‘but, when all’s said and done, business is business.’

  ‘Ah, now I understand,’ Blackstone exclaimed. ‘The chair was to be powered by alternating current!’

  ‘Exactly! The message he was sending out was, “If AC can fry a man to death, do you really want it in your home?” So Brown developed the chair, and Edison held a number of public demonstrations to show just how dangerous it was. It was mostly stray cats and dogs he electrocuted – kids were paid fifty cents to collect them for him – but he would sometimes use it on unwanted cattle or horses. Course, he didn’t want the process to be called “electrocution” – that would give all electricity a bad name. What he was pushing for was for it to be known as being “Westinghoused”.’

  ‘Clever,’ Blackstone said, grudgingly.

  ‘It sure was,’ Meade agreed. ‘Anyway, New York State bought the idea of the electric chair, and was all set for its first execution. Then it hit a snag.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘Westinghouse didn’t want alternating current associated with the electric chair, and so he refused to sell the prison the generator. So what Edison did was to set up a fake company in South America, and buy a generator for a university down there. Then, once he had his hands on it, he shipped it right back to New York, where it was used for the execution of a man called Kemmler.’

  ‘And it was a great success, was it?’ Blackstone asked.

  Meade suddenly looked slightly cagey. ‘Not immediately,’ he admitted.

  ‘So what went wrong?’

  ‘It took a little longer than expected.’

  ‘How much longer?’

  ‘Well, the first seventeen second burst didn’t kill him, and the doctors in attendance said he should been given a second dose, straight away. But they couldn’t do it straight away, because the generator needed to be recharged.’

  ‘But when it was recharged, it did work?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Meade agreed – much too quickly.

  ‘Immediately?’ Blackstone pressed.

  ‘Well, no,’ Meade conceded. ‘Not until the blood vessels under his skin had burst and he’d caught fire.’

  ‘Very humane,’ Blackstone said drily.

  ‘Yeah, it was a botched job,’ Meade admitted. ‘George Westinghouse said, with some glee, that they could have done a better job with an axe – but we’ve improved since then, as you’ve just seen for yourself.’

  A uniformed prison guard entered the saloon, looked around him, and then walked over to the table where the two men were sitting.

  ‘Detective Sergeant Meade?’ he asked tentatively.

  ‘That’s right,’ Meade agreed.

  The prison officer held out a telegram. ‘This just arrived. They said it was urgent.’

  Meade slit the cable open, quickly scanned the words, and then whistled softly.

  ‘Ever heard of William “Big Bill” Holt?’ he asked Blackstone.

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘Is he important?’

  ‘He’s about the most important reclusive millionaire in the whole of the USA.’

  ‘And just how many reclusive millionaires are there?’ Blackstone asked, with a smile.

  ‘Must be hundreds of them,’ Meade said. ‘Well,’ he corrected himself, ‘ten or fifteen, anyway. But like I said, Big Bill’s the most important.’

  ‘And I take it something’s happened to him – or someone close to him,’ Blackstone guessed.

  ‘To him,’ Meade confirmed.

  ‘Robbed?’ Blackstone speculated. ‘Murdered?’

  ‘Possibly both,’ Meade said. ‘But all we actually know at the moment is that he’s been kidnapped.’

  TWO

  The first stage of the streetcar journey from Manhattan to Coney Island took them along the canyons which ran between brown and crumbling tenement blocks, but soon they had left the City of Brooklyn behind them, and were out in open country, where the only buildings they now saw were white clapperboard farmhouses.

  ‘Strictly speaking, this case is outside our jurisdiction,’ Alex Meade said, as the streetcar rattled noisily along. ‘If we were playing it by the book, the whole thing would be handled by the local boys on Coney Island.’

  ‘So why isn’t it being handled by them?’

  ‘My guess is that the powers-that-be in Albany – the Governor and the Attorney General – think that the kidnapping of a man like Holt is far too important a matter to be left in the hands of hayseeds.’

  ‘So if it’s that important, why has the case been given to a detective sergeant and a Limey who’s just passing through?’ Blackstone pondered.

  ‘Because we’re good?’ Meade asked.

  ‘Or could it be that if things go wrong, there’ll be a lot of shit flying about, and none of the higher-ups want any of that shit sticking to them?’ Blackstone countered.

  ‘Maybe,’ Meade conceded. ‘But with two guys like us on the case, nothing is going to go wrong, is it?’

  Blackstone shook his head in wonderment. There really was no limit to Alex Meade’s optimism, he thought. Place the man in front of a thousand angry tribesmen who were waving spears at him, and he would be still be planning what he was going to do the next day.

  Nothing is going to go wrong!

  There were a hundred things which could go wrong with any investigation – and in a kidnapping, you could multiply that by ten.

  The streetcar rattled on, taking them ever closer to the place where nothing could go wrong.

  ‘So what can you tell me about this Big Bill Holt?’ Blackstone said.

  ‘Very little,’ Meade told him, almost shamefacedly.

  Blackstone raised a surprised eyebrow. If this case had been on his own patch, back in London, then he would have known very little, too, because, as a boy brought up in an orphanage and a man mainly used to dealing with common criminals, Holt would have moved in circles far above him.

  But Alex Meade was different. His father was a very successful lawyer, he himself was Harvard-educated – and, before he had chosen to disgrace himself by becoming a policeman, he had been very much a part of fashionable and prosperous New York society. Besides, Alex was an incorrigible gossip who collected information in much the same way as other men collected stamps or grievances, and it was almost inconceivable that he didn’t have a full tale to tell.

  ‘Big Bill dropped out of the limelight when I was little more than a kid,’ Meade said, as if he felt the need to defend his ignorance. ‘Nobody says much about him any more – because there’s not much to say.’

  ‘But he is still in business, is he?’

  ‘Oh hell, yes, he’s never off the financial pages. When William Holt catches a cold, the whole of Wall Street shivers.’

  The streetcar crossed a bridge over a muddy creek, and suddenly they were in another world, as distinct from the countryside they had recently travelled through as that countryside itself had been from grim industrial Brooklyn. Immediately ahead were lines of single-storied brick buildings, but beyond them – beyond them – lay some of the most fantastic structures Blackstone had ever seen
in his life.

  There were Chinese towers and Moorish domes, castles painted in gaudy colours, swings which hung from a fulcrum dizzily high in the air, and a huge wheel which turned with majestic slowness while its passengers jabbered and pointed excitedly into the distance.

  ‘Welcome to Coney Island, the entertainment capital of America,’ Alex Meade said complacently. ‘Bet you ain’t got anything like this over in old England, Sam.’

  No, they hadn’t, Blackstone admitted to himself. It would never have occurred to the English to indiscriminately borrow bits of half the cultures of the world and lump them in all together on one garish site. And yet, he had to concede, it somehow worked.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sam, you’ll soon catch up with us,’ Meade said, in a kindly tone.

  And they probably would, Blackstone thought. Give it a few years, and staid Southend-on-Sea would probably look just like Coney Island.

  The streetcar juddered to a halt, and the conductor announced they had reached the terminus.

  ‘There’s our ride,’ Meade said, and pointed to a black police department carriage which had a white-haired uniformed police sergeant standing next to it.

  The sergeant said his name was Walter Jones. He immediately reminded Blackstone of the wise old sergeants he had known back in London, and when Jones informed him, as they were getting into the carriage, that he’d been policing Coney Island for a long, long time, the Englishman was not in the least surprised.

  ‘It was no more than a village when I started out,’ Jones said, as the carriage left the shops, the bars, the vaudeville houses and the amusement parks behind it. ‘Kinda peaceful and slow.’

  ‘And then the railroad and the streetcars arrived,’ Meade said.

  Jones nodded. ‘And everything changed for ever,’ he said, with just a hint of sadness in his voice. ‘The railroad came in ’89, the first amusement park – Captain Paul Boyton’s Sea Lion Park – opened in ’95, and now it seems like the whole world wants to spend its money on Coney Island.’

  ‘When did William Holt buy his house here?’ Blackstone asked.

  ‘Must have been 1893,’ Jones answered.