The Alienist - Caleb Carr [8]
Flynn chuckled and glanced again at the body. “No arguing that, sir!”
“Sergeant!” Theodore’s voice, always a little too rasping and shrill for his appearance, scratched a little more than usual as he barked at Flynn, who stood up straight. “Not another word out of you, sir, unless it’s to answer my questions! Understood?”
Flynn nodded; but the cynical, amused resentment that all longtime officers in the department felt for the commissioner who in just one year had stood Police Headquarters and the whole chain of departmental command on its ear remained evident in the slightest curl of his upper lip. Theodore could not have missed it.
“Now then,” Roosevelt said, his teeth clicking in that peculiar way of theirs, cutting each word out of his mouth. “You say the boy was called Giorgio Santorelli, and that he worked out of Paresis Hall—that’s Biff Ellison’s establishment on Cooper Square, correct?”
“That’d be the one, Commissioner.”
“And where would you guess that Mr. Ellison is at this moment?”
“At this—? Why, in the Hall itself, sir.”
“Go there. Tell him I want him at Mulberry Street tomorrow morning.”
For the first time, Flynn looked concerned. “Tomorrow—now, begging your pardon, Commissioner, but Mr. Ellison’s not the sort of man to take that kind of a summons sweetly.”
“Then arrest him,” Theodore said, turning away and staring out at Williamsburg.
“Arrest him? Sure, Commissioner, if we arrested every owner of a bar or disorderly house that harbors boy-whores, just because one gets roughed up or even murdered, why, sir, we’d never—”
“Perhaps you would like to tell me the real reason for your resistance,” Theodore said, those busy fists of his starting to flex behind his back. He walked right up and put his spectacles in Flynn’s face. “Is Mr. Ellison not one of your primary sources of graft?”
Flynn’s eyes widened, but he managed to draw himself up haughtily and affect wounded pride. “Mr. Roosevelt, I’ve been on the force for fifteen years, sir, and I think I know how this city works. You don’t go harassing a man like Mr. Ellison just because some little piece of immigrant trash finally gets what’s coming to it!”
That was all, and I knew that was all—and it was fortunate for Roosevelt that I did, for had I not shot over at just that moment to grab his arms he would certainly have beaten Flynn into a bloody pulp. It was a struggle, though, to keep hold of those strong arms. “No, Roosevelt, no!” I whispered in his ear. “It’s what his kind want, you know that! Attack a man in uniform and they’ll have your head, there’ll be nothing the mayor can do about it!”
Roosevelt was breathing hard, Flynn was once again smiling, and Detective Sergeant Connor and the roundsman were making no move toward physical intervention. They knew full well that they were precariously positioned at that moment between the powerful wave of municipal reform that had swept into New York with the findings of the Lexow Commission on police corruption a year earlier (of which Roosevelt was a strong exponent) and the perhaps greater power of that same corruption, which had existed for as long as the force and was now quietly biding its time, waiting until the public wearied of the passing fashion of reform and sank back into business as usual.
“A simple choice for you, Flynn,” Roosevelt managed, with dignity that was notably unimpaired for a man so full of rage. “Ellison in my office or your badge on my desk. Tomorrow morning.”
Flynn gave up the struggle sullenly. “Sure. Commissioner.” He spun on his heel and headed back down the watchtower steps, mumbling something about a “damned society boy playing at policeman.” One of the cops who had been positioned below the tower then appeared, to say that a coroner’s wagon had arrived and was ready to haul the body away. Roosevelt told them to wait a few minutes and then dismissed Connor and the roundsman as well.