‘So what’s honest graft?’ Blackstone asked.
‘I’ve got some time on my hands, so I’ll give you a couple of examples,’ Plunkitt said graciously. ‘My party’s in power in this city, so when they’re goin’ to make public improvements, I’m one of the first to hear about it. So supposin’ they’re goin’ to build a bridge. I get tipped off, and I buy as much property as I can where the approaches to the bridge are goin’ to be. Then, when the city needs the land — ’cos the bridge ain’t no good if there’s no way to reach it — I sell my land for a good price. And ain’t it perfectly honest to make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course it is. Well, that’s honest graft.’
‘If you say so,’ Blackstone said in a flat voice.
‘Then take another case,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘The city was goin’ to fix up a big park. I heard about it, and went looking for land in the neighbourhood. There wasn’t any land goin’ at a price I was prepared to pay, ’cept for a big piece of swamp. Well, I took that swamp fast enough, and held on to it. Things turned out just like I thought they would. They couldn’t make the park complete without Plunkitt’s swamp, and they had to pay a real good price for it. You find anything dishonest in that, Mr Inspector?’
‘I don’t know the law in America,’ Blackstone said.
‘You surely don’t,’ Plunkitt agreed.
A thin woman in a faded dress had arrived, and was standing where the workman had stood earlier.
‘I’ve paid your rent for this week, Eliza, but I ain’t goin’ to do it again, so you better tell your Lew to get off that fat ass of his an’ go out an’ earn some money,’ Plunkitt said.
The woman smiled weakly. ‘Thank you, Senator,’ she said.
‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told her. ‘An’ it ain’t just in land that money’s to be made,’ he said to Blackstone and Meade. ‘For instance, when the city’s repavin’ a street and has several hundred thousand old granite blocks to sell, I’m on hand to buy them. An’, believe me, I know just what they’re worth. How do I know? Never mind that. Anyways, I had a sort of monopoly on this business for a while, but then one of the newspapers, which are always stirrin’ up things that are none of their concern, tried to spike it for me. How? It persuaded some outside men to come over from Brooklyn and New Jersey and bid against me. Well, there we all are in the auction room, me, an’ the outside men, an’ the newspaper reporters, who are just waitin’ to see me get my butt kicked. So what did I do?’
The story was interrupted by the arrival of yet another supplicant, a young man in a shabby suit.
‘The booze has been delivered for the wake, Senator,’ he said.
‘Glad to hear it,’ Plunkitt told him. ‘Now that’s top-dollar Irish whiskey I sent over. Treat it with the respect it deserves.’
‘We will, Senator.’
‘Which is just another way of sayin’ that if everybody ain’t rollin’ drunk by the time I arrive, I may start thinkin’ that I’ve wasted my money.’
The man in the shabby suit grinned. ‘No worries on that score, Senator. We’ll be drunk, right enough.’
‘So, where was I, Alex?’ Plunkitt asked.
‘Granite blocks,’ Meade reminded him.
‘That’s right. So what did I do? I went to each of the men the newspaper had persuaded to bid against me, an’ I said, “How many of these 250,000 stones do you want?” Well, one said 20,000, another wanted 15,000 and some of the others wanted 10,000 each. So I said, “All right, let me bid for the lot, and I’ll give each one of you all you want for nothin.”. They agreed, of course. So the auctioneer says, “How much am I bid for these 250,000 fine pavin’ stones?” And I says, “$2.50.” “$2.50!” he screams. “That’s a joke! Give me a real bid.” But he soon found out the bid was real enough. My rivals kept as silent as the stone I was biddin’ for. I got the lot for the price I bid, an’ gave them their share, An’ that’s how the attempt to do Plunkitt down ended — an’ that’s how all such attempts end.’
This wasn’t just the New World, Blackstone thought, it was a very different world.
‘Now when these reform administrations come into office, like they do once in a while, the first thing they do is spend money like water, tryin’ to find out about the public robberies they talked about during their campaigns,’ Plunkitt continued. ‘And guess what? They don’t find nothin’. The books are always all right. The money in the city treasury is all right. Everything is all right. All they can show is that Tammany heads of departments looked after their friends, within the law, and gave them what opportunities they could to make honest graft. Now, let me tell you, that’s never goin’ to hurt Tammany with the people. Every good man looks after his friends, and any man who doesn’t isn’t likely to be popular. If I have a good thing to hand out in private life, I give it to a friend of mine. So why shouldn’t Alderman X do exactly the same in public life?’
‘So Inspector O’Brien’s corruption investigation didn’t bother you?’ Blackstone said.
‘That’s what I’m sayin’. I knew he was never goin’ to uncover what I done wrong, because I never done nothin’ wrong.’ Plunkitt smiled. ‘Which brings us right back to where we started, which is that I had no reason on God’s green earth to have the man hit. Any more questions you’d care to ask, Alex?’
‘No,’ Meade said weakly. ‘Thank you for your time, Senator.’
‘My pleasure,’ Plunkitt told him. He turned to Blackstone again, and fixed him with his piercing eyes. ‘Say, for the sake of argument, that my worst enemy was given the job of writin’ my epitaph when I’m gone. An’ say, for argument’s sake again, that he tried to work out the worst possible thing he could write about me. You followin’ me so far?’
‘I’m following you so far,’ Blackstone agreed.
‘An’ say he wasn’t allowed to lie. Say he could write anythin’ about me as long as it was the truth. Do you know what the worst thing he could come up with would be?’
‘No,’ Blackstone said. ‘What would it be?’
A fresh smile spread across the senator’s broad face. ‘“George W. Plunkitt”,’ he said. ‘“He seen His Opportunities and He Took ’Em.”’
TWELVE
It wasn’t Blackstone’s normal practice to start drinking that early in the morning, but when he saw the look of mute appeal in Meade’s eyes as they passed the saloon on 12th Street, he quickly decided that even if he didn’t need the boost that a shot of alcohol would give him, the sergeant certainly did.
He sat Meade down at a table, went over to the bar, and ordered a draft beer for himself and a whiskey for the sergeant. When he returned to the table, Meade was gazing down speculatively at his hands, as if wondering if they were up to the job of strangling him.
‘Cheer up,’ Blackstone said.
‘Cheer up?’ Meade repeated bleakly, grabbing the shot glass as a drowning man might clutch at a straw, and knocking the whiskey back in a single gulp. ‘Cheer up! Plunkitt ran rings round me. You warned me he might, but I was such an arrogant little prig that I wouldn’t listen to you.’
‘He’s been in the game a long time,’ Blackstone said consolingly. ‘He was at it before you were even born.’ He hesitated for a second, before asking, ‘Did Plunkitt really dandle you on his knee at one of the Tammany Hall picnics — or was that just a tactic to knock you off balance?’
‘I don’t know,’ Meade admitted. ‘He may have dandled me on his knee! He may even have ruffled my goddam hair and told me I was a sweet kid. I don’t remember.’
‘But you did attend Tammany picnics?’
‘We attended a few of them,’ Meade said, with the shame evident in his voice. ‘My father despises the whole Tammany crowd — but if you want to do business as a lawyer in New York City, you sometimes have to force yourself to be pleasant to them.’
‘You do what you have to do,’ Blackstone said. ‘I sometimes have to force myself to be pleasant to my assistant commissioner — and that man is the scum of the earth.’