Blackstone and the Wolf of Wall Street (3 page)

He paused again, in case there was anything Blackstone wished to say.

‘I'm not much of a scientist,' the Englishman admitted.

‘Tesla invented AC while he was working for Edison, but Tom wasn't interested in the idea. Westinghouse was quite another matter. He could see the potential of a power source that could be created many miles away from where it was being used, and went into competition with Edison.'

‘And part of that competition was to see who could produce the first electric chair?' Blackstone guessed.

Meade chuckled. ‘You couldn't be further from the truth. What actually happened was that it soon became obvious to Edison that Westinghouse's system was vastly superior, but – Tom being Tom – he couldn't bring himself to admit it publicly and change over to it himself. So what he did do was to start spreading the story that alternating current was much more
dangerous
than direct.'

‘I believe that's what you Americans would call “dirty pool”,' Blackstone said.

‘Yeah, but, at the same time, we can't help admiring the guy for being so smart,' Meade replied. ‘Where was I?'

‘Dangerous,' Blackstone prompted.

‘That's right. Now, at just that time, the authorities were looking for a more humane way of executing people than hanging them,' Meade continued. ‘A dentist called Southwick had already come up with the idea of an electric chair, and Edison secretly financed a guy called Brown to develop it.'

‘Because of his
own
interest in finding a more humane way?'

Meade shook his head. ‘Edison was against capital punishment on principle – totally against it,' he shrugged, ‘but, when all's said and done, business is business.'

‘Ah, now I understand,' Blackstone exclaimed. ‘The chair was to be powered by alternating current!'

‘Exactly! The message he was sending out was, “If AC can fry a man to death, do you really want it in your home?” So Brown developed the chair, and Edison held a number of public demonstrations to show just how dangerous it was. It was mostly stray cats and dogs he electrocuted – kids were paid fifty cents to collect them for him – but he would sometimes use it on unwanted cattle or horses. Course, he didn't want the process to be called “electrocution” – that would give
all
electricity a bad name. What he was pushing for was for it to be known as being “Westinghoused”.'

‘Clever,' Blackstone said, grudgingly.

‘It sure was,' Meade agreed. ‘Anyway, New York State bought the idea of the electric chair, and was all set for its first execution. Then it hit a snag.'

‘And what was that?'

‘Westinghouse didn't want alternating current associated with the electric chair, and so he refused to sell the prison the generator. So what Edison did was to set up a fake company in South America, and buy a generator for a university down there. Then, once he had his hands on it, he shipped it right back to New York, where it was used for the execution of a man called Kemmler.'

‘And it was a great success, was it?' Blackstone asked.

Meade suddenly looked slightly cagey. ‘Not immediately,' he admitted.

‘So what went wrong?'

‘It took a little longer than expected.'

‘
How
much longer?'

‘Well, the first seventeen second burst didn't kill him, and the doctors in attendance said he should been given a second dose, straight away. But they
couldn't
do it straight away, because the generator needed to be recharged.'

‘But when it
was
recharged, it
did
work?' Blackstone asked.

‘Sure,' Meade agreed – much too quickly.

‘Immediately?' Blackstone pressed.

‘Well, no,' Meade conceded. ‘Not until the blood vessels under his skin had burst and he'd caught fire.'

‘Very humane,' Blackstone said drily.

‘Yeah, it was a botched job,' Meade admitted. ‘George Westinghouse said, with some glee, that they could have done a better job with an axe – but we've improved since then, as you've just seen for yourself.'

A uniformed prison guard entered the saloon, looked around him, and then walked over to the table where the two men were sitting.

‘Detective Sergeant Meade?' he asked tentatively.

‘That's right,' Meade agreed.

The prison officer held out a telegram. ‘This just arrived. They said it was urgent.'

Meade slit the cable open, quickly scanned the words, and then whistled softly.

‘Ever heard of William “Big Bill” Holt?' he asked Blackstone.

Blackstone shook his head. ‘Is he important?'

‘He's about the most important reclusive millionaire in the whole of the USA.'

‘And just how many reclusive millionaires
are
there?' Blackstone asked, with a smile.

‘Must be hundreds of them,' Meade said. ‘Well,' he corrected himself, ‘ten or fifteen, anyway. But like I said, Big Bill's the most important.'

‘And I take it something's happened to him – or someone close to him,' Blackstone guessed.

‘To him,' Meade confirmed.

‘Robbed?' Blackstone speculated. ‘Murdered?'

‘Possibly both,' Meade said. ‘But all we actually know at the moment is that he's been
kidnapped
.'

TWO

T
he first stage of the streetcar journey from Manhattan to Coney Island took them along the canyons which ran between brown and crumbling tenement blocks, but soon they had left the City of Brooklyn behind them, and were out in open country, where the only buildings they now saw were white clapperboard farmhouses.

‘Strictly speaking, this case is outside our jurisdiction,' Alex Meade said, as the streetcar rattled noisily along. ‘If we were playing it by the book, the whole thing would be handled by the local boys on Coney Island.'

‘So why
isn't
it being handled by them?'

‘My guess is that the powers-that-be in Albany – the Governor and the Attorney General – think that the kidnapping of a man like Holt is far too important a matter to be left in the hands of hayseeds.'

‘So if it's
that
important, why has the case been given to a detective sergeant and a Limey who's just passing through?' Blackstone pondered.

‘Because we're good?' Meade asked.

‘Or could it be that if things go wrong, there'll be a lot of shit flying about, and none of the higher-ups want any of that shit sticking to them?' Blackstone countered.

‘Maybe,' Meade conceded. ‘But with two guys like us on the case, nothing
is
going to go wrong, is it?'

Blackstone shook his head in wonderment. There really was no limit to Alex Meade's optimism, he thought. Place the man in front of a thousand angry tribesmen who were waving spears at him, and he would be still be planning what he was going to do the next day.

Nothing
is
going to go wrong!

There were a hundred things which could go wrong with
any
investigation – and in a kidnapping, you could multiply that by ten.

The streetcar rattled on, taking them ever closer to the place where nothing could go wrong.

‘So what can you tell me about this Big Bill Holt?' Blackstone said.

‘Very little,' Meade told him, almost shamefacedly.

Blackstone raised a surprised eyebrow. If this case had been on his own patch, back in London, then
he
would have known very little, too, because, as a boy brought up in an orphanage and a man mainly used to dealing with common criminals, Holt would have moved in circles far above him.

But Alex Meade was different. His father was a very successful lawyer, he himself was Harvard-educated – and, before he had chosen to disgrace himself by becoming a policeman, he had been very much a part of fashionable and prosperous New York society. Besides, Alex was an incorrigible gossip who collected information in much the same way as other men collected stamps or grievances, and it was almost inconceivable that he didn't have a full tale to tell.

‘Big Bill dropped out of the limelight when I was little more than a kid,' Meade said, as if he felt the need to defend his ignorance. ‘Nobody says much about him any more – because there's not much to say.'

‘But he
is
still in business, is he?'

‘Oh hell, yes, he's never
off
the financial pages. When William Holt catches a cold, the whole of Wall Street shivers.'

The streetcar crossed a bridge over a muddy creek, and suddenly they were in another world, as distinct from the countryside they had recently travelled through as that countryside itself had been from grim industrial Brooklyn. Immediately ahead were lines of single-storied brick buildings, but beyond them – beyond
them
– lay some of the most fantastic structures Blackstone had ever seen in his life.

There were Chinese towers and Moorish domes, castles painted in gaudy colours, swings which hung from a fulcrum dizzily high in the air, and a huge wheel which turned with majestic slowness while its passengers jabbered and pointed excitedly into the distance.

‘Welcome to Coney Island, the entertainment capital of America,' Alex Meade said complacently. ‘Bet you ain't got anything like this over in old England, Sam.'

No, they hadn't, Blackstone admitted to himself. It would never have occurred to the English to indiscriminately borrow bits of half the cultures of the world and lump them in all together on one garish site. And yet, he had to concede, it somehow worked.

‘Don't worry, Sam, you'll soon catch up with us,' Meade said, in a kindly tone.

And they probably would, Blackstone thought. Give it a few years, and staid Southend-on-Sea would probably look
just
like Coney Island.

The streetcar juddered to a halt, and the conductor announced they had reached the terminus.

‘There's our ride,' Meade said, and pointed to a black police department carriage which had a white-haired uniformed police sergeant standing next to it.

The sergeant said his name was Walter Jones. He immediately reminded Blackstone of the wise old sergeants he had known back in London, and when Jones informed him, as they were getting into the carriage, that he'd been policing Coney Island for a long, long time, the Englishman was not in the least surprised.

‘It was no more than a village when I started out,' Jones said, as the carriage left the shops, the bars, the vaudeville houses and the amusement parks behind it. ‘Kinda peaceful and slow.'

‘And then the railroad and the streetcars arrived,' Meade said.

Jones nodded. ‘And everything changed for ever,' he said, with just a hint of sadness in his voice. ‘The railroad came in '89, the first amusement park – Captain Paul Boyton's Sea Lion Park – opened in '95, and now it seems like the whole world wants to spend its money on Coney Island.'

‘When did William Holt buy his house here?' Blackstone asked.

‘Must have been 1893,' Jones answered.

Blackstone and Meade exchanged a knowing glance– that was the same year Holt decided to became a hermit, the glance said.

‘Tell us about it,' Meade suggested.

‘Well, Mr Holt bought the house – it's called Ocean Heights – from the van Ryans. They were a real old Coney Island family, and very well-liked. But, it has to be said, they'd let the place go to rack and ruin. So the first thing Mr Holt did was to have it ripped apart.'

‘Ripped apart?'

‘Yeah, more or less. He pretty much rebuilt it from scratch, which made him real popular round here.'

‘How so?' Meade asked.

‘Well, he didn't bring all his workers in from the city, you see, which is what the high muckety-mucks usually do. No, sir, he employed local men. And when the house was finished and ready to move into, he employed local folk to run it for him, too. Matter of fact, the only people who work there that ain't from Coney Island are that butler of his, and – of course – the Pinkertons.'

‘Of course,' Blackstone agreed.

But he was thinking, who – or what – are the
Pinkertons
?

A number of improbable possibilities flashed fancifully through his mind:

Fred and Lily Pinkerton, a famous music hall act he personally had never heard of, but who were now exclusively employed to entertain the Holt family.

Members of an obscure North American Indian tribe.

A sect which had broken away from the Dutch Reform Church.

‘Any time you're ready, Sam, I'm more than willing to help you,' Meade said, with barely concealed amusement.

Blackstone sighed. ‘All right, who
are
the Pinkertons?' he asked dutifully.

‘Members of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, which was founded by Allan Pinkerton in 1850.'

‘And I take it that they're well-known to most Americans,' Blackstone said, resignedly.

‘Hell, yes,' Meade agreed. ‘They acted as President Lincoln's bodyguards during the Civil War, and were employed to help track down Jesse James and the Wild Bunch. At one point, there were more Pinkerton agents than there were men serving in the US Army. They've done all kinds of work – including strike-breaking. And until Congress passed a law in '93 to make it illegal for them to work for government agencies, they practically ran the investigative branch of the Department of Justice. Isn't that right, Sergeant Jones?'

‘It is,' the sergeant agreed. ‘There sure is a lot of stuff about this country that you don't know, ain't there, Mr Blackstone?'