Meade reached into his pocket for his shield.
‘Senator Plunkitt?’ he asked crisply. ‘I’m Detective-’
‘You’re little Alex Meade,’ Plunkitt interrupted. ‘Well, well, well. Seems a long time since I last dandled you on my knee at a Tammany Hall picnic, don’t it? So how’s your daddy gettin’ on, Alex?’
Meade swallowed, as if not sure what to say next. But a question had been asked of him, and — almost against his will — he found his good breeding forcing out an answer.
‘My father’s doing fine, Senator,’ he said.
‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Be sure to give him my best wishes the next time you see him.’
‘I will,’ Meade said awkwardly. He paused for a second, to regroup his forces, then continued. ‘Considering the nature of this meeting, Senator, you might prefer to hold it in your office.’
‘Now, I’m just a simple man from the peat bogs, but I always thought that an office was the place where you did your business,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Did I get that wrong, Alex?’
‘No, you didn’t get it wrong, Senator,’ Meade said, miserably.
‘Well, then, we’re in the right place, ain’t we?’ Plunkitt said, waving his hand expansively up and down the street. ‘This is my office, boy,’ he said. ‘Always was, an’ always will be.’ He looked down at the shoeshine boy. ‘Ain’t that the plain simple truth, Antonio?’
‘It is, Senator,’ the boy agreed, as he continued to polish.
‘A fine young man, and the best shoeshine in New York City,’ Plunkitt told Blackstone and Meade. ‘Why, I’d walk miles out of my way just to have this lad shine my shoes.’
The boy gazed at Plunkitt with a look which came close to adoration on his face, but the Senator’s attention had already been transferred to a Jewish tailor who was walking past with a bolt of cloth under his arm.
‘See you at the bar mitzvah, Jake,’ Plunkitt called out.
‘It’ll be an honour to have you there, Senator,’ the other man called back.
Plunkitt turned back to Meade. ‘So, you’re the one who asked for this meeting, let’s hear what you got to say.’
‘Inspector O’Brien, the policeman who’s just been killed, was conducting an important investigation just before he died,’ Meade began.
‘I would hope all our city officials are always engaged in important work, ’cos we sure as hell wouldn’t want to pay them their fine salaries for doin’ unimportant work,’ Plunkitt replied.
‘And we know he came to see you, which would suggest that he considered you to be connected — if only in a minor way — with that investigation,’ Meade pressed on.
‘I was sorry to hear of the inspector’s death,’ Plunkitt said. ‘I sent the widow some flowers and a note which said if there was anything I could do for her in her time of woe, she only needed to ask.’
‘You haven’t answered my question, sir,’ Meade said.
‘I wasn’t aware you’d asked one,’ Plunkitt countered.
‘Did Inspector O’Brien think you might be connected with the investigation he was conducting?’
‘To tell you the truth, I don’t rightly know,’ Plunkitt replied. ‘When I spoke to him on the telephone, I certainly thought that might be the case. But then I spent half an hour with the man, and if he had a point he wanted to make — or a question he wanted to ask — he never got around to it.’
‘So what did the two of you talk about?’ Meade asked sceptically. ‘The weather?’
‘As a matter of fact, we did,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Inspector O’Brien was of the opinion that it was even hotter this summer than it was last. We also talked about whether this American League they’re thinkin’ of founding will ever turn baseball into a national sport.’ He paused for a second. ‘An’ the Oklahoma Territory,’ he added. ‘We discussed that, too. He thought it was about ready for statehood, and I didn’t.’ Plunkitt smiled. ‘So you see, while it was an amiable conversation on the whole, we did have our disagreements.’
‘And he gave no indication that he suspected you might be involved in anything illegal?’ Meade persisted.
‘No indication at all. But if you were to ask me what I thought he believed, deep down inside himself, I’d guess he believed what men like him always believe when they see men like me, with our big houses an’ our yachts.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That I was probably one of the rottenest apples in the barrel.’
‘And are you one of the rottenest apples in the barrel?’ Blackstone asked.
Plunkitt looked at him, with an amused smile playing on his lips.
‘Who’s your friend, Alex?’ he asked.
‘Inspector Sam Blackstone,’ Meade said.
‘I didn’t know we’d got any Inspector Blackstone workin’ for the New York Police Department.’
‘He’s not a New York policeman — he’s from Scotland Yard.’
‘Now ain’t that interestin’?’ Plunkitt said. ‘Why are you here, Inspector? Are there so few Irishmen left for you to persecute in the Old Country that you have to come over here in search of new ones?’
A working man, carrying a bag of tools in his hand, had arrived on the scene, and was now waiting patiently to be noticed.
‘Are you here about your boy, Walter?’ Plunkitt asked.
‘Yes, Senator.’
‘I talked to the precinct captain this mornin’. The charges have been dropped, an’ he’ll be home in time for supper.’
‘Thank you, Senator,’ the workman said. ‘I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.’
‘Don’t want no repayment,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Just want you to remember to put your tick in the right box come next election day.’
‘I will, Senator,’ the workman promised. ‘You have my word on that.’
‘An’ your word’s as good an assurance as any man should need, Walter,’ Plunkitt said.
The workman walked away, and when he was just out of earshot, Plunkitt said, ‘We were talkin’ about rotten apples, weren’t we, Mr Blackstone?’
‘We were,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘Then listen to what I have to say about how things work here in New York City, an’ you might just possibly end up a wiser man.’ He turned to Meade. ‘Cards on the table, Alex?’
‘Cards on the table,’ Meade agreed.
‘You hear that your Inspector O’Brien has been to see me, which must mean he’s investigatin’ me. .’
‘I never suggested. .’ Meade began.
‘Hear me out,’ Plunkitt said imperiously. ‘He must be investigatin’ me, which, in turn, has to mean I must be runnin’ scared. An’ it ain’t a big step from that to thinkin’ I paid somebody to put a bullet in the inspector. Ain’t that right?’
‘I never thought that,’ Meade protested.
Plunkitt smiled. ‘Maybe you did, an’ maybe you didn’t. But now I’ve gone an’ planted the thought right there in your head, you got to admit it’s a possibility, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I suppose it is a possibility,’ Meade admitted, reluctantly.
‘No, it ain’t.’ Plunkitt said. ‘Because Inspector O’Brien didn’t scare me one little bit. I honestly don’t think he was even there to scare me, though I still ain’t got no idea what he did want. But say that had been what he wanted — say he’d intended to frighten the livin’ bejesus out of me, it still wouldn’t have worked.’
‘No?’ Blackstone asked sceptically.
‘No,’ Plunkitt replied. ‘You see, the problem with people like him — with all them do-good reformers — is that they don’t draw the distinction between honest graft an’ dishonest graft.’
‘Is there a difference?’ Blackstone asked.
‘A world of difference,’ Plunkitt said. ‘Dishonest graft is when you set about blackmailin’ gamblers, saloon keepers, disorderly people, etc. I’ve never gone in for that, and neither have any of the other men I know who have made big fortunes in politics.’