‘What I said yesterday is neither here nor there,’ Blackstone told him. ‘Yesterday I hadn’t watched Jenny die, and I was too willing to give up easily. But I’m not willing any longer. The bitch will talk. I’ll make her talk!’
‘How?’
‘You believe that everything that happens in New York City is lubricated by money, don’t you?’ Blackstone asked.
‘Absolutely,’ Meade agreed.
‘So let’s see how Mrs de Courcey feels when the money starts to dry up,’ Blackstone suggested.
EIGHTEEN
Precinct Captain Michael O’Shaugnessy liked to think of himself as a plain straightforward man who would always rather use his fists than his brain, and, having clubbed his way up through the ranks, he had long ago lost count of the number of heads he had broken.
Now he was sitting pretty, with a country estate and an ever-expanding bank account, but he was not one of those men who repudiated the past which had made him the man he was, and whenever he heard one of the officers serving under him refer to him as ‘Bull’, he took it as a compliment.
In general terms, he could best be described as a man who travelled life’s highway in a state of brutish happiness. But he was not feeling happy that morning. In fact, he found the two men sitting opposite him, on the other side of his desk, distinctly unsettling.
They unsettled him because he was not meeting them through any choice of his own, but because he had been ordered to meet them by that damned Commissioner Comstock. And since he hadn’t been able to contact any of the other three commissioners — who worked maybe one day a week between them — he had felt compelled to obey the order.
They unsettled him because one of them was Detective Sergeant Alexander Meade, a far-too educated man whose father had very good political connections, and who was well known to regard straight-down-the-middle honesty as something of a virtue.
And they unsettled him because the other man — the Limey cop in the shabby suit — had a determination and intensity about him which would have unsettled anybody.
‘I’m a busy man,’ said O’Shaugnessy, who firmly believed that, when in doubt, you should always take the offensive. ‘So say what you gotta say, an’ then leave me to do my work.’
Meade nodded. ‘Of course, sir,’ he replied, deferentially. ‘And may I just say that we really appreciate the fact, as busy as you are, you’ve still managed to find the time to-’
‘You’ve already wasted thirty seconds,’ O’Shaugnessy told him. ‘Get to the goddam point!’
Meade swallowed. ‘As you probably already know, sir, we — that is, Inspector Blackstone and I — have been asked by Commissioner Comstock to investigate Inspector O’Brien’s murder and-’
‘Listen, kid, I’m sorry O’Brien got killed,’ O’Shaugnessy interrupted. ‘An’ I’m sorry for his wife and children, too. But any man who goes around disturbin’ existing practices is just askin’ for trouble.’
‘And deserves what he gets?’ the Limey asked, with a voice you could have cut diamonds with.
‘Yeah, I suppose you could say that,’ Captain O’Shaugnessy agreed, because he was sure as hell not going to be intimidated — or made to feel he’d been put in the wrong — by an Englishman.
‘Did you know that a large part of the investigation that Inspector O’Brien was conducting just before he died was focused almost exclusively on you — and the bribery you’re involved in, sir?’ Meade asked.
So what? O’Shaugnessy asked himself.
Why should that bother him, when there wasn’t a captain in the whole of New York City who made a secret of the fact that he accepted payments for the services he performed?
How could it be a secret, even if he wanted it to be, when there were so many people involved in the process — the saloon keepers and brothel owners who paid the bribes; the patrolmen who collected the bribes; the sergeants who peeled off their percentage before passing the bribes up to the captain; the inspectors, superintendents, judges and politicians at the end of the chain, all of whom, unlike hard-working precinct captains, did virtually nothing to earn their share. .
The inspectors, superintendents, judges and politicians!
O’Shaugnessy felt his heart beating just a little faster, because it could be argued, if you were of a mind to, that some of their share — which they didn’t earn, but certainly expected — had never actually reached them, and was now residing in the bank account with the name O’Shaugnessy on it.
If that snooping son of a bitch, Inspector Patrick O’Brien, had found out about that, and if the information ever did actually reach those people higher up the chain. .
But then Captain O’Shaugnessy realized it was never going to happen, because after O’Brien’s death, certain actions had been taken which made it impossible for it to happen.
And it was this realization which immediately turned what could have been a stressful meeting into an opportunity to have some good bullying fun at the expense of the hoity-toity sergeant and the skinny Limey.
‘So you’re sayin’ Inspector O’Brien had some files on me, are you?’ O’Shaugnessy asked.
‘A great many files,’ Meade said.
‘In fact, there’s a whole drawer-full of them,’ the Limey added with conviction.
‘An’ have you got them now?’ O’Shaugnessy asked.
‘We have.’
O’Shaugnessy smiled. ‘Do you know, boys, I simply don’t believe you.’
Meade turned to Blackstone. ‘Captain O’Shaugnessy must have heard the rumour that all the files which were in Inspector O’Brien’s office have disappeared,’ he said lightly.
‘Perhaps he even went so far as to help them to disappear himself,’ the Limey suggested.
O’Shaughnessy’s grin widened. ‘An’ let’s just say you’re right in suspectin’ that I had somethin’ to do with their disappearance,’ he told the Limey. ‘Let’s go even further, an’ say I had a big fire in that stove over there in the corner — even though it is midsummer, an’ almost hot enough to roast a pig on the sidewalk — how are you goin’ to prove that what I burned was Inspector O’Brien’s files?’
‘The good captain thinks that he’s completely in the clear,’ the Limey said to Meade.
‘But that’s because he doesn’t know about all the files that Inspector O’Brien kept in his office at home,’ Meade said to the Limey.
O’Shaugnessy felt another twinge of misgiving.
‘So just what was in these files of his?’ he asked, praying that Sergeant Meade wouldn’t suddenly start quoting certain bank account numbers or lists of property deeds.
And Meade didn’t!
All he did say was, ‘I’d prefer not to reveal that at the moment.’
Which, as far as Captain Michael O’Shaugnessy was concerned, was a mistake.
A big one!
‘You ever play poker, Alex?’ the captain asked.
‘I have been known to.’
‘An’ I’ll just bet that every time you do, you go home with a hole in your pocket. See, boy, the second you said you’d prefer not to reveal that, I knew you were bluffin’ — I knew that though you were pretendin’ you’d got a full house, you were holdin’ no more than a pair of deuces. At best! An’ you ain’t gonna bring down Bull O’Shaugnessy with a pair of deuces.’
‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Meade agreed quietly. ‘Or perhaps I’ve got such a good hand that I don’t want to lay it on the table yet.’
‘And anyway, the poker analogy doesn’t really hold up,’ the Limey said calmly.
‘The what don’t hold up?’ O’Shaugnessy asked.
‘The poker analogy. If you’re playing poker, then the hand you have is the hand you have. It’s fixed — unless you’re foolish enough to try and deal off the bottom of the deck — and there’s nothing you can do about it. Bribery and corruption isn’t like that at all. Firstly, there are many more cards in the deck, and secondly, you can draw them at any time.’