‘Thank you, sir,’ Meade said. ‘Where would you like me to conduct the interviews?’
‘Where will you talk to the stinking bums, you mean? Inspector O’Brien’s office is in the basement — you can use that.’
‘Do you think that’s such a good idea, sir?’
Connolly sighed in exasperation. ‘Yeah, I think it’s a good idea. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?’
‘Because the office is probably still full of confidential files from Inspector O’Brien’s investigations,’ Meade said, with the same disarming innocence as Blackstone had seen him employ so effectively before.
Connolly blinked. He only did it once — but once was more than enough.
‘Inspector O’Brien’s confidential files probably are still there in the office,’ he agreed. ‘But we all know what a careful man the inspector was, and I’m sure all those files of his are safely under lock an’ key.’
‘No doubt you’re right, sir,’ Meade agreed.
‘Did you see the look on Connolly’s face when I mentioned Patrick’s confidential files?’ Meade asked Blackstone, once they were standing in the corridor outside the chief of the Detective Bureau’s office.
‘Yes, I did see it,’ Blackstone replied. ‘It would have been rather hard to miss it.’
‘Either Connolly’s had the files removed himself, or he knows who did have them removed,’ Meade said.
‘True,’ Blackstone agreed, ‘but it doesn’t do us any good to know that, because in either case, they’re probably lost and gone for ever.’
‘You may be right,’ Meade replied. ‘Not that it matters anyway — because we don’t really need them any more.’
‘Don’t we?’
‘No, we don’t! We’ll get all the information we need from the people who are waiting to talk to us in the basement.’
Meade’s spring of optimism was a perpetual source of wonder, Blackstone thought. Cover it with a large rock — the missing files, for example, or the dead end that their talk with Plunkitt had led them to — and for a while it was silent. But that did not mean that the spring had been truly dampened down. Rather that it was simply building up enough pressure to throw the rock high into the air, and so free itself again.
‘Weren’t you taking a big chance by telling Connolly that Senator Plunkitt was the one behind the reward?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Taking a chance? Not a bit of it!’ Meade said airily. ‘If the chief of detectives rings Plunkitt up — and I don’t think he will — the senator will confirm everything that I’ve said.’
‘Why?’
‘Because, by that time, my father will already have rung Plunkitt up himself, and told the senator what to say.’
‘And that’s all it will take?’ Blackstone asked, amazed.
‘That’s all it will take,’ Meade confirmed. ‘You see, guys like Plunkitt treat favours owed to them in the same way misers treat gold coins. Their greatest pleasure in life is to build up a big old chest full of them.’
‘So Plunkitt will do it because your father asks him to, and then your father will owe Plunkitt?’
‘Sure.’
‘And doesn’t putting him in debt to the senator bother you at all?’
‘Hell, no!’ Meade said. ‘It’s highly unlikely that Plunkitt will ever call the favour in.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do. See, the miser doesn’t want to spend his gold — he just wants to have it. And sometimes, late at night, he’ll open the chest and let all his gold coins trickle through his fingers. I think Plunkitt’s like that, too — he likes to let all the favours that he’s owed trickle through his fingers, then he just sits back and thinks about how rich he is.’
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ Blackstone said.
‘And what’s that?’
‘It’s still just possible he was involved in whatever O’Brien was investigating. And if he was involved in it, then the last thing he’ll want to do is anything that may help us catch the inspector’s killer.’
‘Men like him are so arrogant they don’t think anything can touch them, even if they’re as guilty as sin,’ Meade said. ‘And after I allowed him to run rings round me this morning. .’
‘What?’
Meade grinned sheepishly. ‘OK, after he ran rings round me, whether I wanted him to or not, he’s got us marked down as two guys who couldn’t find their own assholes — even if he gave them a detailed map. But we’re gonna prove him wrong on that, ain’t we?’
‘I certainly hope so,’ Blackstone said.
‘So shall we go downstairs and see what our bait’s hauled in for us?’ Meade suggested.
‘Why not?’ Blackstone agreed.
The people whom Meade hoped would make Inspector O’Brien’s files unnecessary had been herded into the three cells closest to the door.
They were a mixed bunch, Blackstone noted — men and women, young and old. Some of them were dressed more or less respectably, though a fair number wore clothes which would have been pushed to pass themselves off as rags. But there was one thing that united them all — the look of expectant greed which shone in their eyes when they saw Meade arrive.
A young patrolman stood guard over this motley crew.
‘Exactly how many of these people are there, Officer Turcotte?’ Alex Meade asked.
The patrolman shrugged. ‘Don’t know for sure,’ he admitted. ‘I kept countin’ till I reached thirty, then I kinda lost interest.’
Blackstone did his own headcount, and estimated there were around fifty of the ‘informers’.
And how many of these informers would be a complete waste of time? he asked himself.
Around fifty would be as good a guess as any, he decided.
‘I’ll be interviewing them in Inspector O’Brien’s office,’ Meade told the patrolman. ‘I want to see them one at a time, and I’ll leave it up to you to choose what order I see them in. Is that all right with you?’
‘Sure,’ Turcotte agreed.
But it was clearly not all right with some of the current residents of the cells, who had overheard the conversation.
‘Why should he choose?’ demanded an old woman who was wearing a thick shawl, despite the heat.
‘Yeah, it should be first come, first served,’ said a younger woman in a floral hat. ‘An’ I was here first.’
‘The hell you were,’ called out a voice from behind her. ‘I was here first. Ask the cop.’
‘I got another important appointment to go to,’ said a man who, from the downtrodden look of him, had never had an appointment — important or otherwise — in his entire life.
Meade waited until the noise had died down. ‘Anyone who doesn’t like the arrangement I’ve suggested is perfectly free to leave now,’ he said, gesturing towards the stairs with his hand.
But none of the people in the cells took him up on the offer. They all had the scent of money in their nostrils, and they were determined not to leave without at least getting a chance to take a bite at it.
‘It feels strange,’ Meade said uncomfortably.
‘What does?’
‘To be sitting here in Patrick O’Brien’s office, behind Patrick O’Brien’s desk.’
‘Somebody always has to step into dead men’s shoes eventually,’ Blackstone pointed out.
‘I know they do,’ Meade agreed, still sounding ill at ease. ‘But that person, whoever he is, should be worthy of filling those shoes — and I don’t feel worthy of filling Patrick’s.’
‘You’ll fill them well enough, given time,’ Blackstone assured him. ‘And even if you don’t, it won’t be through lack of trying.’
‘Sometimes, you know, you’re almost like a father to me, Sam,’ Meade said emotionally.
‘Then maybe I’ll take you out on a Tammany Hall picnic,’ Blackstone countered.