Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (17 page)

‘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

T
he 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.

The 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.

‘What do you mean?'

‘The department recognizes – belatedly, admittedly – that it has treated you very shabbily in that particular matter, and is prepared to issue a full apology.'

‘A full apology?' Mrs Fairbrother said, taken aback.

In for a penny, in for a pound, Blackstone thought.

‘And that apology would, of course, be printed – in full – in the newspaper,' he said.

‘What newspaper?' Mrs Fairbrother asked, not quite as unyielding as she had been previously, but still unyielding enough.

‘Whatever newspaper you care to choose,' Blackstone told her. ‘The
New York Times
?'

‘I read the
New York World
,' the woman said sulkily.

‘The
New York World
it is. Our only aim is to make you happy.'

‘It's a little late for that,' Mrs Fairbrother said.

It had
always
been a little late for that, Blackstone thought.

‘Of course, before we can prepare the apology, we need to make sure we've got all the details right this time – which is why I'm here,' he said.

‘I suppose you'd better come inside, then,' Mrs Fairbrother told him, with a lack of grace which was almost breathtaking.

Mrs Fairbrother's sitting room was, as might have been expected, orderly and soulless. There were, it was true, various knick-knacks – arranged with military precision – on the shelves, but Blackstone got the clear impression that they were there more because people were
supposed
to have knick-knacks than because they gave the woman any pleasure.

‘You'll probably want to sit down,' Mrs Fairbrother said, with the same reluctance she had shown when inviting him in.

Blackstone sat, noting, as he did so, that one chair had been strategically positioned by the window, and that next to it was a pair of opera glasses.

‘I'm not one to speak ill of the dead,' Mrs Fairbrother began, without preamble, ‘but this was a very respectable neighbourhood before Arthur Rudge moved in.'

‘And he brought the tone down?'

‘He most certainly did.'

‘How?'

‘With his parties,' Mrs Fairbrother said. ‘Not that I have anything against parties as such,' she added hastily. ‘I often invite a few respectable ladies round for coffee mornings. But
his
parties were a positive disgrace.'

‘In what way?'

‘In all sorts of ways.'

She liked all this attention, and she would drag it out for as long as possible, Blackstone thought.

He suppressed a sigh and said, ‘Would you care to give me an example, Mrs Fairbrother?'

‘Well, there were his guests, for a start,' the woman said. ‘There are only two sorts of parties a gentleman should hold – ones to which
only
gentlemen are invited, and ones which are attended mainly by married couples, with suitable escorts provided for unattached ladies. But Mr Rudge had no consideration for the proprieties. Oh no! At his parties, there were
only
women – sometimes half a dozen of them, sometimes even more.' Mrs Fairbrother paused. ‘You'll have noticed I said “women”, not “ladies”?'

‘I have.'

‘That's because that's exactly what they were. Harlots! Painted Jezebels! And once they were up there in his apartment, there were such goings on! They had a gramophone – and sometimes they'd be dancing until two or three o'clock in the morning.'

It was hard to reconcile Rudge's job as head bookkeeper with the sort of antics Mrs Fairbrother was describing, Blackstone thought.

‘You don't believe me, do you?' the woman demanded, reading his expression. ‘The local precinct didn't, either. And that's why I got proof.'

‘Proof?'

‘I bought a Kodak camera. You will have seen the advertisement – “You press the button, we do the rest”.'

‘Ah yes,' Blackstone lied.

‘Now that the price has fallen to a dollar, every Tom, Dick and Harry has one, but when I bought mine, seven years ago, there were less than a thousand in the whole of the United States. Twenty-five dollars it cost me, and though I am not a rich woman, it was worth every cent – because it proved that I was right and those snickering officers down at the precinct were wrong.'

‘You bought the camera so you could photograph the parties!' Blackstone said.

‘Not the parties themselves – I was not invited, and even if I had been, I would not have attended. I bought it in order to photograph the “guests” as they arrived.'

Mrs Fairbrother walked over to the sideboard, opened a drawer, and took out a number of photographs.

‘Look at these,' she ordered Blackstone.

The photograph on the top of the pile was of a short man and a much taller woman, standing in the street outside the house. The man had a nearly bald head and a waxed moustache – and looked very angry. The woman was wearing a dress which missed being stylish by just enough to make it gaudy, and though the photograph was not clear enough to say with any certainty that she was wearing a great deal of powder on her face, Blackstone
suspected
that Mrs Fairbrother's description of a “painted Jezebel” was not too far off the mark.

‘It was the first photograph I took,' Mrs Fairbrother said. ‘Rudge was furious. He tried to snatch the camera away from me, but I was too quick for him. After that, I had to be much more careful.'

And the fact that she was being more careful showed in the photographs which followed, Blackstone saw. The pictures were less distinct – and probably shot through Mrs Fairbrother's window – but they did, at least, support her contention that a stream of women had passed through Rudge's apartment.

So maybe despite his looks and physique, Rudge had been a real ram who had serviced half the women – rather than the
ladies
– of Manhattan.

But that didn't matter a damn, because if Rudge
had
been killed it was not because of his virility, but due to his connection with Big Bill Holt.

‘Did you notice anything unusual in the days before Mr Rudge died?' he asked.

‘What do mean – unusual?' Mrs Fairbrother countered.

‘Well, for example, that someone seemed to be watching his apartment from the street.'

‘No, if anybody had been doing that, I'd have seen them.'

I'll bet you would have, Blackstone thought.

‘Then did he have any visitors, other than the women who normally visited him?' he said, changing track.

‘Rudge
never
had visitors other than his harlots,' Mrs Fairbrother replied. She paused for a moment. ‘Although . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘There were the two furniture delivery men, on the very day he died.'

‘Go on,' Blackstone encouraged.

‘They arrived in the late afternoon, with an armoire. I was surprised he'd ordered such a thing, because I'd seen his furniture when he moved in, and though it wasn't to my taste, it was good quality.'

‘And that furniture had included an armoire?'

‘Two of them – and they'd both looked new.'

‘So the furniture men arrived with the armoire,' Blackstone said. ‘And I suppose what happened next was that they rang the doorbell and Mr Rudge let them in.'

‘No,' Mrs Fairbrother said. ‘Rudge wasn't at home.'

‘Are you sure of that?'

‘Positive. I saw him arrive half an hour later.'

‘Then how did they get into the building?'

‘They had a key. Rudge probably left it at the shop for them. But it must have been a poor copy, because it wouldn't open the door at first.'

Perhaps that was true. But it was much more likely that instead of using a badly cut key provided by Rudge, the delivery man had been attempting to open the door using his own set of skeleton keys.

‘What did they look like, these two men?'

‘I couldn't really say,' Mrs Fairbrother admitted

Of course she couldn't.

‘So they took the armoire upstairs and then left,' Blackstone said, though he would have been greatly surprised if Mrs Fairbrother had replied, ‘Yes, that's exactly what happened.'

‘No, they didn't leave,' the woman said. ‘They were still in the apartment when Rudge arrived home from work.'

‘So when
did
they eventually go?'

‘About twenty minutes after that. And the funny thing was that they were carrying the same armoire out as they carried in.'

It wasn't funny at all, if the theory which was starting to form in Blackstone's mind was correct.