Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street Page 12

  ‘They’re leaving, oh Lord,’ she moaned. ‘They’re leaving, and now there will be no justice for my Joseph.’

  She realized, with horror, that what she had just said might well be interpreted by the Almighty as a complaint.

  ‘I know, oh Lord, that my Joseph will get his reward in heaven, and that those who took his life will burn forever in hellfire,’ she said quickly, ‘but is it so wrong for me to wish for justice in this world, as well as the next?’

  She waited for an answer, but though she was practised in praying, she did not know how to listen.

  It had always been Joseph who’d listened – who’d got the answer directly from God and had passed it on to her. And now Joseph could tell her no longer, because he was dead.

  She rose stiffly to her feet, and walked over to the table, where her Bible was resting.

  She was as poor a reader as she was a listener, but she knew there were countless examples in the Good Book of the wicked being punished for their sins on earth.

  Perhaps it was not part of the Lord’s plan for Joseph’s murderers to be punished in the here and now, she thought. Perhaps, by striving for that herself, she was going against His wishes. But if she was, He would forgive her in time, because that was what an all-merciful God did.

  She paced the room, and slowly the life came back to her aching knees.

  She had no idea what to do next, she thought, almost in despair.

  There had been times when – weak woman that she was – she had silently questioned the wisdom of the rule that the womenfolk of the Soldiers of God should be kept well away from the affairs of the corrupt world in which they lived.

  Not any more!

  She’d needed that protection, because she was useless – because she couldn’t think of a single way in which she could help avenge her husband’s death.

  Unless . . .

  Unless his unexplained trips to New York really had had something to do with his murder.

  ‘He was not killed because of who he was, he was killed because of where he was,’ she had said to Blackstone.

  And part of her – most of her – still believed that.

  But there was also a small – insistent – voice nagging away at the back of her mind, which said if there was even the slightest chance he could have died for another reason, it was her duty to find out what that reason was.

  She came to a halt at the table, almost as if it had been preordained that she should do so.

  It was at this table that Joseph had spent hour upon hour studying the Holy Writ. But it was at the same table that he had written his reports to the Vicar General, and nightly recorded his efforts to carry out God’s work in his journal.

  She had never seen the journal – it was another of the things she was to be shielded from.

  But she knew where he kept it!

  It was in the locked drawer under the table top.

  She found herself wondering – for the first time in her married life – why Joseph had kept the drawer locked.

  Was it that he hadn’t trusted her?

  No, that couldn’t be it!

  He had trusted her, but he hadn’t trusted the who might find a way to tempt her at any time.Devil,

  And was it the Devil who was tempting her at that moment, now that she no longer had her husband’s protection?

  If it was, she didn’t care. She wanted to see her husband’s journals – more than she could ever remember wanting anything.

  The drawer was locked, as it always was, and no amount of tugging would force it to open.

  But she was not to be deterred. Not now.

  Using her husband’s hammer and chisel, she set to attacking the drawer. She was not very adept – this, again, was man’s work – but she was determined, and kept at it even after she cut herself.

  At the end of five minutes, the drawer and a chunk of the table top were all but destroyed – but she had the journal in her bloody hand, and had never felt so empowered in her life.

  The animated conversation between Blackstone and Meade – which Flynn had so accurately noted from his hiding place in the woods – continued as the police carriage drew ever closer to the Coney Island streetcar terminal.

  ‘Holt’s kidnapping just has to have been a professional job, Sam,’ Meade argued, for perhaps the fifth or sixth time.

  ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t carried out by professionals,’ Blackstone countered, ‘only that it wasn’t commissioned by them.’

  ‘So the guys who Holt had ruined finally decided to have their revenge on him?’ Meade asked sceptically.

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘Why would they wait seven years?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Blackstone admitted. ‘Perhaps, after they had the bookkeeper killed, they lost their nerve.’

  ‘That’s a weak argument even if Rudge was murdered,’ Meade said. ‘And if he wasn’t . . .’ he added with a shrug.

  Blackstone felt a sense of pride that his protégé had enough confidence to argue his case so strongly – and also a sense of grievance that this still-wet-behind-the-ears pipsqueak was daring to question his judgement.

  ‘If it was them – and if they do hate him so much – why didn’t they just have him killed?’ Meade demanded.

  ‘If they’d had him killed, they’d never get the ransom money, which they probably see as a small return for what they lost,’ Blackstone said. ‘Besides, they may not want him dead. They may just want to see him humiliated. They may want to show that they can buy and sell him – just as he bought and sold them!’

  ‘And if a couple of guards get killed along the way, that’s no concern of theirs?’ Meade asked.

  ‘If the businessmen are behind it, I don’t think they ever intended the guards to die,’ Blackstone said.

  ‘They must have known that if you employ thugs—’

  ‘They knew nothing! That’s the point! They come from the cosy civilized world of New York society – they have no idea of just how violent some men from outside that world can be.’

  ‘I still don’t see it,’ Alex Meade said stubbornly.

  ‘So let’s look at your theory,’ Blackstone said, trying not to sound irritated. ‘A gang of criminals, somewhere on – say – the Lower East Side, decide to kidnap a rich man and hold him for ransom. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Meade agreed cautiously.

  ‘They sit around and discuss their possible targets. They know that they only have to go along Fifth Avenue, late at night, to see any number of millionaires returning from a party, guarded only by their coachmen. But they reject that idea. And what do they choose to do instead? They choose to go way beyond their normal stamping ground and snatch a man from a bunker which is guarded by two armed Pinkertons!’

  ‘For God’s sake, Sam, they knew the Pinkertons would be no problem, because they were working with Fanshawe. And that’s also precisely why they selected Holt rather than any other millionaire – because it was Fanshawe’s plan!’

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘However are we going to conduct this investigation when we can’t even agree on a starting point?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe we could conduct two investigations,’ Meade said. ‘You follow up any leads you can find on the disgruntled businessmen, and I’ll go and listen to the rumblings in the underworld.’

  It sounded like a suggestion, Blackstone thought, but it wasn’t – it was a challenge!

  Apart from a ball of fluffy cotton-wool hair perched precariously over each of his ears, the Dean of the Cornell University Medical School was totally bald. He had a largish – almost Roman – nose, on which rested a pair of half-moon glasses, and he seemed to Ellie Carr to look more like a dean than any dean had a right to.

  ‘It really is most kind of you to give up some of your valuable time to instruct our students,’ the Dean said.

  ‘It’s my pleasure,’ Ellie replied.

  And so it was. The Americans were treating her like a princess, and while sh
e told herself that a serious scientist like her didn’t need that kind of adulation, she was rather starting to enjoy it.

  ‘It has been proposed that we schedule you to perform an autopsy which some of our brighter students would be allowed to monitor,’ the Dean said. ‘Would you have any objection to that?’

  ‘None at all,’ Ellie replied.

  The Dean coughed awkwardly. ‘I must admit that I was opposed to it at first, and it was only with some reluctance that I allowed my colleagues to talk me round to the idea.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ellie said. ‘And why were you opposed to it, if I may ask?’

  ‘I was afraid you might find our young men a little hard to handle.’

  ‘Because I’m a woman?’

  ‘Partly. And partly because you’re English.’

  ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about either of those things,’ Ellie said airily.

  ‘Quite,’ the Dean agreed. ‘But I thought it was only fair to warn you that, in the past, some of our colleagues from England have found our American ways a little brash for their taste.’

  ‘Yer don’t know what brash is till yer’ve been fru the East End of a Sat’dy night,’ Ellie said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to handle it.’

  ‘The problem is exacerbated, you see, by the type of young men we have here,’ the Dean pressed on. ‘Naturally, they all come from very good families.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Ellie agreed drily.

  ‘And no doubt, in time, they’ll all make excellent physicians. But their background does tend to give them rather more self-confidence in their own abilities than one might consider desirable in someone who is here mainly to learn.’

  ‘In other words, they’re arrogant little bleeders.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’ the Dean said, for a second time.

  ‘I said, “That doesn’t matter, as long as they’re good readers.”’

  ‘I’m not sure I quite follow you, but no matter,’ the Dean said. He consulted the sheet of paper which lay on the desk in front of him. ‘The particular cadaver we have in mind for you is a suicide victim,’ he continued. ‘You have no objection to that, do you?’

  ‘No objection at all, but if you have a corpse that’s had an argument with an express train – and lost – then you’d really be giving me something to work with,’ Ellie said.

  ‘I’m not sure we can—’ the Dean began.

  ‘Only joking,’ Ellie told him. ‘A suicide will do me fine. After all, we don’t want to give your nice young men nightmares. How did this suicide victim die, by the way?’

  ‘He hanged himself.’

  ‘Poor soul,’ Ellie said. ‘Still, at least he’s given me an interesting prop to work with.’

  They shook hands, and the Dean showed her to the door of his office.

  It was only when she was in the corridor that he placed a hand on her shoulder and smiled.

  ‘By the way, you were right, Dr Carr,’ he said.

  ‘Right?’ Ellie repeated. ‘Right about what?’

  ‘They are arrogant little bleeders,’ the Dean said.

  Eileen O’Grady was in her late forties, and was regarded by the Irish community of Coney Island as a fine figure of woman – which was another way saying that she had childbearing hips and the strong muscular legs of a natural potato picker.

  She had run her boarding house for eight years.

  ‘There was no choice in the matter,’ she would tell her cronies. ‘What else could I do after that fecker O’Grady had run away with a circus midget?’

  Her friends would nod, sympathetically, although they knew that the woman ‘that fecker O’Grady’ had run off with had been an athletic trapeze artist rather than a midget, and that, as much as Eileen might bemoan running the boarding house, she really rather enjoyed it.

  Her favourite lodger was undoubtedly Inspector Flynn, who had been with her for over two years. He was quiet and somewhat withdrawn, but after twenty years of living with her loud-mouthed fecking husband, she considered that something of a bonus.

  Occasionally, when they were both in the mood, she would take Flynn to her bed. She did not flatter herself that she was his ideal woman, nor did she particularly want to be his woman at all, but it was pleasant and comforting, and when it was all over and they went downstairs again, they found it easy enough to return to their normal landlady–tenant relationship.

  It therefore came as something of a shock to her, that late morning, to find Flynn not only in his room but packing his few possessions into his suitcase.

  ‘You’re surely not thinking of moving out on me, are you, Mr Flynn?’ she asked.

  ‘My rent’s paid up until the end of the month, Mrs O’Grady,’ Flynn replied, avoiding the question.

  ‘As if the thought of money had even entered my mind, Mr Flynn!’ Mrs O’Grady’s hands automatically moved to her hips in a gesture of displeasure.

  ‘The fact is, Mrs O’Grady, that the police force owes me a great deal of leave, and I’ve finally decided to take some of it,’ Flynn said.

  ‘And where will you go?’

  ‘To the city.’

  ‘New York?’

  ‘Is there any other city, on this side of the water, worth talking about?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘Sure, and if you’re going no further than that, couldn’t you keep your room here and travel in every day?’

  Flynn sighed. ‘I’m doing it for you,’ he admitted.

  ‘For me, is it?’ Mrs O’Grady asked, far from mollified. ‘And would you mind explaining exactly how you think I’d be better off without you?’

  ‘I’m involved in something that could turn nasty, Eileen,’ Flynn said. ‘Very nasty indeed! And I don’t want you caught in the middle of it.’

  ‘You called me “Eileen”,’ Mrs O’Grady said.

  ‘Yes, I . . .’

  ‘You’ve never called me Eileen before, not even when we were . . . when we were . . .’

  ‘Did you hear what I just told you?’ Flynn persisted. ‘I said things could get very nasty.’

  ‘You called me Eileen because this is goodbye,’ Mrs O’Grady mused. ‘You’re never coming back from that leave of yours, are you, Michael?’

  Flynn closed his suitcase. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It all depends on what happens in the next few days.’

  ‘But would you like to come back if you could?’ Mrs O’Grady asked.

  ‘Very much,’ Flynn replied.

  ‘Then I suppose that’ll have to do me,’ Mrs O’Grady said.

  Flynn picked up his suitcase and walked over to the door. He did not pause to kiss her, nor had she expected him to.

  ‘I should never have told you that I was going to New York City,’ he said from the head of the stairs. ‘If anybody asks you, tell them you’ve no idea where I’ve gone.’

  FOURTEEN

  The brownstone houses on the leafy midtown New York street had probably started out life as single-family dwellings, but now – as the presence of so many bell-pushes showed – they had almost all been divided into apartments. Not that the change in circumstances made the area at all undesirable, Blackstone decided. Even on an afternoon which lacked the gentle sunshine this one had been blessed with, it must still have felt a pleasant place to live – the sort of place, in fact, that would just suit the moderately prosperous middle class.

  Arthur Rudge, Big Bill Holt’s head bookkeeper, had been moderately prosperous, and he had lived – and died – in the upstairs apartment which Blackstone, standing in the street, was currently gazing up at.

  The report from the Fire Department said that the blaze had started in Rudge’s bedroom, and spread to other rooms in the apartment, but that, due to the vigilance of one of Rudge’s neighbours – a Mrs Fairbrother – assistance had been called quickly enough to prevent the house from suffering any serious structural damage.

  ‘Vigilance,’ Blackstone repeated softly to himself.

  T
he word could have a number of meanings. It could indicate that the person who possessed it felt a strong sense of responsibility for his or her community, or that he or she had a natural gift for being aware of what was going on around them. But – more often than not – it suggested that the person in question was a nosy parker, and Blackstone was hoping that was just the case here.

  The front door opened, and a woman appeared on the threshold.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, but what she really meant was, ‘What the hell are you doing out there in the street?’

  She was displaying, Blackstone quickly decided, all the classic signs of a nosy parker, from the suspicious gleam in her eyes and the disapproving droop of her mouth, to an air of grievance she carried on her shoulders like a heavy sack of coal. She was one of those people who, almost from the moment they emerged from the womb, saw the world as both hostile and grossly unfair.

  ‘I said, can I help you?’ the woman repeated, tightening up the aggression in her voice a notch further.

  Blackstone found himself wishing that Meade was by his side – because Alex could charm even this vinegary old bat, and have her eating out of his hand in five minutes. But Meade was not there. Meade was off somewhere else, trying to prove that he was smarter than his mentor.

  ‘Are you Mrs Fairbrother?’ Blackstone asked, though there was no doubt in his mind that that was exactly who she was.

  ‘Yes?’ the woman replied – cagey, reluctant.

  Blackstone produced his temporary shield. ‘I’m from the police department, madam.’

  ‘Police department!’ Mrs Fairbrother repeated, with contempt.

  Blackstone sensed that she was on the point of slamming the door in his face.

  ‘I’m making some enquiries, and I wondered if you could help me,’ he said hastily.

  ‘Why should I help you?’ Mrs Fairbrother demanded. ‘You’ve never helped me. When I think of the number of times I complained to the police about Arthur Rudge – and that’s just one example of the problems I’ve had – it makes my blood boil. And what did you do about all my complaints? Not a thing!’

  ‘But your complaints about Rudge are precisely why I’m here now,’ Blackstone said, thinking on his feet.