‘Which means that we need to have a talk to him ourselves, every bit as much as Patrick did.’
‘That’s possibly true,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘But why should he want to talk to us?’
‘For the exact same reason that he agreed to talk to Patrick O’Brien,’ Meade said, as if it was obvious to him, and he was surprised it wasn’t equally obvious to his companion.
‘Maybe it would be better if you spelled it out a little more simply for me,’ Blackstone suggested.
‘Plunkitt knows that he’s bound to fall one day — even the mighty Boss Tweed himself was eventually arrested and died in jail. And when Plunkitt does fall, he’s going to need the support of people who, if they’re not exactly on his side, are at least willing to give him the odd break. Besides, we’ve got even more leverage than Patrick had.’
‘Have we?’
‘Of course we have. Patrick went to see the senator, and now Patrick’s dead.’ Meade’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s a pretty suspicious sequence of events, don’t you think?’
‘It’s not a sequence at all — it’s just two events,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘Besides, I’m sure there are a lot of people who’ve been to see Plunkitt in the last few days who didn’t end up dead.’
‘Yes, there are bound to be,’ Meade agreed, brushing the argument aside with a wave of his hand, as if it were of no consequence at all. ‘But how many of those people who’ve been to see him were New York police inspectors who had based their entire careers on investigating municipal corruption?’
‘At a rough guess, I’d say only one.’
‘Of course it’s only one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that Plunkitt had anything to do with Patrick’s death himself, but Plunkitt is bound to worry that we’ll try to link him to it, isn’t he? And that alone should be enough to make him want to cooperate with us, at least to the extent that he’ll tell us what it was that he told Patrick.’
There were times when Alex Meade could sound wise beyond his years, Blackstone thought. But there were also times — and this was one of them — when quite the reverse was true; when — like a small child — he seemed to believe that he could achieve anything he wanted to, simply because he wanted to.
And it was precisely because he was in the second kind of mood at that moment that Meade was able to paint such a rosy picture of a future meeting with Senator Plunkitt.
Certainly, Plunkitt had agreed to see O’Brien, but O’Brien had been an inspector who already had a formidable reputation, rather than an inexperienced young sergeant with an English detective, (who was still learning the rules of the game), in tow.
And even if the meeting did take place, Blackstone was far from convinced that Meade could use O’Brien’s death to put pressure on the Irish-born senator — because any man who had played Tammany’s game so successfully, for nearly forty years, was highly unlikely to be that easily intimidated.
‘So what should we do now?’ Meade asked, his enthusiasm still bubbling over. ‘I suggest we go straight down to the Lower East Side, and trace the route Inspector O’Brien took last night.’
‘Trace the route?’ repeated Blackstone, who was suddenly feeling incredibly weary.
‘That’s right.’
‘And how, exactly, do you propose to trace it?’
‘We’ll go around all the saloons and brothels, and ask the people there if they saw Inspector O’Brien last night. Then, by putting all the sightings together, we should be able to plot out. .’
‘How many saloons and brothels are there on the Lower East Side?’ Blackstone asked.
Meade shrugged. ‘I’ve never actually thought about it before, but I suppose there must be thousands of them.’
‘And if we really put our backs into it, how many of them do you think we should be able to get round tonight?’
‘Two or three dozen,’ Meade said, starting to sound a little less sure of himself.
‘And do you think that most of the people we talk to in those two or three dozen places are going to be forthcoming?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘If they did see Inspector O’Brien last night, are they likely to admit that they did?’
‘They might admit it,’ Meade said, though he was not even convincing himself.
‘Or are they more likely to lie, in order to avoid being dragged into the middle of a police murder investigation?’ Blackstone asked.
‘They’re more likely to lie,’ Meade admitted. ‘At least, they’ll lie at first. But the more we question them, the more they’ll begin to realize that it would be better for them if they started telling the truth.’
‘And how long do you think it would take us to question one of these people?’
‘Two or three hours.’
‘So what you’re talking about is questioning three or four people, from each of two or three dozen saloons and brothels, for up to two or three hours per person,’ Blackstone said. ‘Have I got that right, Alex?’
Alex Meade grinned self-consciously. ‘It’s not really one night’s work, is it, Sam?’
‘No,’ Blackstone agreed. ‘It isn’t. The more you learn about police work, Sergeant Meade, the more you’ll discover that most of it is no more than a long drawn-out grind.’
‘You’re quite right, of course,’ Meade said, humbly. ‘And anyway, I shouldn’t be telling you what I think we should do, I should be asking what you think we should do. Because I do want to learn from you, Sam — I know I can learn from you. So what do you think. .?’
‘I think you should take me to my lodgings, while I’ve still got the strength to stand up,’ Blackstone said.
The hotel was on Canal Street. It was called, as the desk sergeant had promised, the Mayfair Hotel, but with its cracked paint and peeling wallpaper, it was as different to any building in London’s Mayfair as it could be.
Alex Meade was mortified by the state of the place.
‘I knew that no hotel on Canal Street was ever going to be as swish as the hotels you find on Fifth Avenue,’ he said. ‘But even so, Sam. .’
‘The department probably booked me in here because it was no more than a short walk to the Mulberry Street police station,’ Blackstone said. ‘And as far as the place itself goes, it’s perfectly fine.’
Better, in fact, than his lodgings in London, he thought, because while no Scotland Yard inspector ever lived in a grand style, most of them managed to live better than a man who donated half his salary to Dr Barnardo’s Orphanage.
‘This has nothing to do with being close to Mulberry Street,’ Meade protested. ‘Some clerk in the office booked you in here because it was cheap. And that’s just typical of the stuffed shirts and pen-pushers who make this kind of decision. They simply don’t have anything like enough respect for real policemen, but I do — so why don’t you let me see if I can find you a room somewhere a little classier?’
‘And who’ll pay for this classier room?’ Blackstone wondered. ‘Will it be the police department? Or will it be you?’
Meade bit his lower lip. ‘Why does no one ever seem to want to take my money?’ he asked plaintively.
‘Maybe because, since you’re offering it so willingly, they think there has to be a catch,’ Blackstone suggested.
‘And do you think there’s a catch, Sam?’
‘No, I don’t. But I don’t want you running around, trying to find me a classier room, either. Not when you’ve got better things to do with your time.’
‘Like what?’ Meade asked.
Blackstone suppressed a sigh. ‘Like trying to find out exactly where Inspector O’Brien went last night.’
‘But that can’t be done in one evening,’ Meade countered. ‘You said yourself that it was a long, drawn-out grind.’