By the end of a long afternoon, Meade had screwed up 68 pieces of paper, and had only one — Number 27 — still in front of him.
‘So what do you think, Sam?’ he asked Blackstone.
‘I think that even though Plunkitt thought that he and O’Brien talked about nothing of any consequence, your inspector managed to squeeze an important piece of information out of the senator without Plunkitt even knowing he’d done it,’ Blackstone replied.
‘You see!’ Meade said triumphantly. ‘I told you Patrick wouldn’t have wasted his opportunity, didn’t I? I told you he wasn’t just talking about the weather and the state of baseball.’
‘You also told me that he was the most direct man you’d ever met,’ Blackstone pointed out. ‘And he doesn’t seem to have been very direct in the way he handled Plunkitt.’
Meade looked a little crestfallen. ‘Yes, well, I did say he was direct, but maybe, on just this one occasion, he realized that being direct wouldn’t work.’
Or maybe you didn’t know him as well as you believe you did, Blackstone thought. Maybe he was much less of a saint — and much more of a clever, practical policeman — than you ever imagined.
‘I wonder just what it was that Plunkitt let slip without knowing he’d even done it,’ Meade said.
‘We’ve no way of knowing,’ Blackstone replied. ‘And now that Inspector O’Brien’s dead, we may never know. But it doesn’t really matter, anyway.’
‘Doesn’t it?’
‘No. Because while each link in the chain, like the meeting with Senator Plunkitt, may be of some interest in itself, what’s really important — what we’re actually looking for — is what lies at the end of it. And we find that by following the chain link by link.’
‘And the next link is the brothel where Trixie works?’ Meade asked.
‘Exactly.’
‘Being the man that he was, Patrick must have hated ever crossing the threshold of that brothel,’ Meade said. ‘But he forced himself to go there anyway — because his sense of duty told him that he had no choice.’
‘And once he was there, he picked up another piece of information — which led him to the next link in the chain.’
‘But this time he felt he could be more direct in his approach — more like his true self. He asked the madam for exactly what he wanted, and — according to Trixie — the madam wasn’t the least bit worried about giving it to him. She even seemed to be amused by the whole process.’
‘She may not have realized how important that piece of information actually was,’ Blackstone said. ‘In fact, it may not have been of the slightest importance at all to her.’
‘But from the way he acted when he’d got it, it seems to have been very important to Patrick’s investigation.’
‘And perhaps important enough to someone else, for that person to decide that O’Brien had to die.’
‘We need to find out what it was that the madam wrote on that piece of paper,’ Meade said.
‘We certainly do,’ Blackstone agreed.
FIFTEEN
The street they were walking up was only a short distance from Madison Square. Trees had been planted — a few yards apart — along its entire length, and the sidewalk appeared to be recently repaved. And as they passed by the brownstone houses, Blackstone noted that while they were similar to the ones on the street where Inspector O’Brien had lived, these had only a single bell-pull by their front doors.
‘Nice area,’ he said to Meade.
‘Yes, it’s a thoroughly respectable neighbourhood populated by moderately prosperous families,’ Meade replied. ‘And that, of course, is why it was such a smart move for the madam to open her brothel here.’
They were back to playing the I-know-this-city-and-you-don’t game again, Blackstone thought with a smile.
‘Why was it a smart move?’ he asked.
‘For two reasons.’ Meade paused. ‘You’d say that Trixie is a fairly high-class whore, wouldn’t you?’
‘I can’t speak for New York, but she would certainly be fairly high-class if she worked in London.’
‘Which would suggest, wouldn’t it, that the place where she works is a fairly high-class brothel?’
‘I would assume so.’
‘And when you’re running that kind of business, you want it to be in an area where your potential clients will feel safe — an area much like this one.’
That made sense, Blackstone agreed. A gentleman’s pleasure between the legs of a willing whore could be quite spoiled by the thought that, once he stepped outside, he was likely to be robbed at knifepoint.
‘You told me there were two reasons,’ he said to Meade. ‘What’s the second one?’
‘I pointed out to you the people who live on this street are all moderately prosperous. But moderately prosperous is not the same as being rich. And in New York City, if you’re not rich, you’re not powerful.’
‘So while the residents might not much like the idea having a brothel virtually on their own doorsteps, there’s not a great deal that they can do about it,’ Blackstone said.
‘Exactly,’ Meade confirmed. ‘As long as the police bribes are paid in full, and on time, the brothel’s here to stay, however they might feel. But if it was located a few blocks west of here, close to Fifth Avenue, then people like the Vanderbilts and the Astors would see to it that, however big a bribe the madam was prepared to pay, it wouldn’t stay open for even a day.’
They had reached the brothel. The front door was open, and standing in the doorway was a tall man in a frock coat and top hat.
That would be Imre, Blackstone thought.
Trixie had said the doorman was built like a brick shithouse, and he couldn’t have come up with a better description himself. And yet, even allowing for the man’s size and obvious strength, Inspector O’Brien’s righteous anger had been enough to have him worried.
There were four steps leading up to the front door, and the moment Meade mounted the first one, the doorman took a step forward himself.
‘I am afraid that we are not open, gentlemen,’ Imre said in heavily accented English.
Meade looked up at the house. Lights were blazing at most of the windows, and the sound of a tinkling piano was drifting down the hallway.
‘Looks open enough to me,’ the sergeant said.
‘It is a private party,’ the doorman told him firmly.
Blackstone, still standing on the sidewalk in partial shadow, was beginning to think there was something familiar about Imre. In fact, he was certain there was something familiar about him. But, for the moment at least, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Meade reached into his pocket and produced his detective’s shield.
‘I don’t really give a damn if it’s the Republican Party Convention that’s going on in there,’ he said. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Meade of the Detective Bureau, and I’m investigating the death of Inspector Patrick O’Brien.’
‘So what?’
‘So, in pursuance of that investigation, I’d like to come inside and speak to the owner of this establishment.’
Imre took a quick step back, so that he was now clearly inside the house again.
‘Do you have a warrant?’ he asked.
‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t,’ Alex Meade admitted. ‘But I can easily get one, if I have to.’
Imre smirked. ‘I don’t think you will find it easy at all,’ he said. ‘And without a warrant, you may not come into the establishment nor may you talk to anybody at all.’
There was a filing cabinet which occupied a good part of Blackstone’s policeman’s brain, and now one of the drawers suddenly flew open — and a single file fell out.
‘Hello, Freddie,’ he said. ‘’Ow’s tricks, me ole mate?’
‘Freddie?’ Imre repeated. ‘I do not know of whom you speak.’